Un imaginaire médiéval européen
The Medieval European Imagination

Summary/Abstract: The fifteenth-century French book Le Livre des fais du bon Messire Jehan le Maingre dit Bouciquaut, mareshal de France et gouverneur de Jennes sets out to present what the world should be like (a world grounded on chivalresque values) and not what it really is (sullied by politics of bourgeois ruptuaries). The hero, a marshal, has traveled extensively to the Eastern part of the Mediterranean and the Balkans: his view of the world, when describing places yet unknown at the court of France, is shaped precisely by these noble principles. Thus there appears to be a tension between a traditional approach to reality, which separates the territory of the Christians from that of the Saracens, and a more pragmatic approach to international relationships, very much present at the time in the Italian Republics. It is most of all this ‘tectonics of mentalities’ which is of interest to us.

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