Bacchus / Monsieur de la Bonne Trogne : le diabolique pouvoir d’une « antiquaille »
Bacchus/Master Merry-face: the malicious power of an “antiquaille”

Summary/Abstract: Charles De Coster is a master in drawing on legends, including those he forges himself. In a creative and uncanny language, underpinned by the medieval coloration, he becomes a remarkable image- maker. In the tale Les Frères de la Bonne Trogne [The Brotherhood of the Cheerful Countenance], the writer appropriates a tradition that comes from far away, to endow it with the Belgian colourful characteres of yesteryear. To recount the advent of Bacchus, the emblematic figure of the wine civilization, an antique motif is accompanied by a local mythology: among beer lovers, in some part of Flanders, during the time of the Good Duke... The god of drunkenness, absent from the title of decosterian fiction, is astutely baptized “Monsieur de la Bonne Trogne” [Master Merry-face] by the men of Uccle who establish in his honour a jolly brotherhood. Based on this scenario, the paper examines how the representation of Bacchus responds to a conglomerate of mythical elements (more or less allusive), to which is added a strong sense of somewhereness.

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