French Global: A New Approach to Literary History

The two concepts linked in the phrase “French literature” are equally problematic in their pertinence to medieval times. There are many ways of saying “French” to designate a language in the Middle Ages; when it is in fact used, the term français encompasses concepts of varying breadth. We might attempt a definition based on geography, but this brings up the complex question of defining the borders of what is called “France” in various periods: the territory of the Franks, the kingdom of France, the region today known as Île-de-France. We could also propose a definition based on the concept of a people: French would then be the language of a community united around a king and speaking the same idiom, the langue Francour. In Jean Bodel’s La chanson des Saisnes (“Song of the Saxons,” ca. 1180–1202), Sebile, wife of the King of Saxony, addresses Bérard, a man from the Ardennes, “en la langue Francour [in the Francour language].”¹ The langue Francour here appears as a kind of koiné, a common language.

Two other terms designate the French language: roman and oïl. The word roman is used when the perspective is historical rather than geographical or political. Initially, it denotes the relationship of French or other romance languages to Latin. Brunetto Latini (c. 1220–94) uses the term roumanç to explain his choice of language in writing his Livres du tresor (Book of Treasure): “Et se aucuns demandoit pour quoi ces livres est escris en roumanç, selon le raison de France, puis ke nous somes italien [And if some should ask why this book is written in roumanç, in accordance with the language of France, seeing as its author is Italian].”² The clarification “selon le raison de France” shows that the two terms roman and français are not exact synonyms. Variants found in different manuscripts for the word raison—langue for one group, patois for another—suggest that roman is understood as more broad than français. The relationship between roman and Latin is made clear by phrases that invoke the process of translation: translater de latin en romanç (translate from Latin to romanç); traire du latin, en roman mettre (extract from Latin, to put in roman); and, in the case of translations from the point of view of the vernacular, enromancer. In his prologue, the author of the Evangiles des Domées (Gospel of Sundays, second quarter of the thirteenth century) states that he has “enrommancié” these gospels while following the Latin as closely as he could.³ Yet roman is in dialogue not only with Latin but also with other vernacular languages: for instance, we find the term enromancer used for the translation of what certain texts call sarrazinois into French. Jean de Joinville notes, in his Vie de saint Louis (Life of Saint Louis, 1309): “Il avait gens illec qui savoient le sarrazinnois et le françois, que l’en appele drugemens, qui enromançoient le sarrazinnois au conte Perron [There were men present called dragomans, who knew both Saracen and French and they translated the Saracen into French for Count Peter].”⁴

Jacques Bretel’s Le tournoi de Chauvency provides valuable evidence related to such encounters between languages and observations of their potential hybridization. It documents, with scrupulous precision, a tournament held in October 1285 in Lorraine, where knights of various geographical origin fought each other. One of the fighters, Conrad Warnier, is a German lord who nevertheless speaks roman. Jacques Bretel mocks his idiom, calling it a “tÿois romant” (romanized German) and a “tÿois bastart” (bastardized German; one variant gives instead “romans bastart”) when the knight claims, “Savrai je bien parler romant, / La bon fransoise trestout sai [Do I know well to speak romance / I know all the good French],” an affirmation given a comical effect by his grammatical mistakes.⁵ For Jacques Bretel, Conrad Warnier “fastrouille” (babbles), “Et le bon fransoiz essille [mutilates proper French usage; one variant gives instead “roman”].” He uses “un walois tout despannei [a language in rags; are we to translate as Gallic or Walloon? one variant gives “roman” in place of “walois”]”; he “desraine . . . son fransois / Moitiét romans moitiét tïois [speaks his French half in roman, half in German].”⁶ His French: the use of the third-person singular possessive shows how the knight’s idiom singles him out instead of integrating him into a community of speakers. His French, for Jacques Bretel, is not true French but a “faus roumanz,” a faulty language.⁷ Here, the two terms roman and français are used interchangeably to designate the French language; we even find, in a variant, a third term, walois. While roman is the broadest term, françois is often paired with adjectives of praise: “bel et joli [fine and pleasing],” for instance.⁸ Pejorative terms used to disqualify the French spoken by a foreigner are consistent, whether this foreigner is a German knight or a speaker born in England: bastart, despanné, faus. “Un faus franceis sai d’Angleterre, / Ke ne l’allai ailurs quere [I know a bad French from England: I did not seek it anywhere else],” admits the nun of Barking Abbey who writes La vie d’Edouard le Confesseur (The Life of Edward the Confessor, end of the twelfth century).⁹ These pejorative terms are the same ones used to denigrate literary works. Linguistic and literary violations are denounced as violations of genealogical purity through the word bastart (bastard); as violations of integrity through the word despanné (in tatters, in rags); and as violations of truth, through the adjective faus (false). Language and literature are thus linked in praise as in blame. The term roman encompassed the meaning of français in the Middle Ages and could almost be a synonym. At the end of the medieval period and in the sixteenth century, roman begins to play the role formerly played by Latin in relation to roman itself: an earlier language that has transformed into French. Pierre Durand, in the sixteenth century, writes a prose version of Guillaume de Palerne, a tale in verse from the thirteenth century. He explains this undertaking in his prologue: “Et je, considerant le langaige qui estoit rommant anticque rymoié en sorte non intelligible ne lisible à plusieurs . . . ay traduit et transféré le langage de ceste dicte histoire en langage moderne françoys pour a chascun qui lire le vouldra estre plus intelligible [Seeing as it was ancient rhymed roman, neither intelligible nor legible to many, I have translated and transferred the language of this story into modern French language to make it more intelligible to anyone who desires to read it].”¹⁰

What we today call French can also be defined more precisely and according to linguistic characteristics: the langue d’oïl as opposed to the langue d’oc and the langue de si, the chosen criteria being the manner of saying “yes” in each of these different languages. In De vulgari eloquentia, Dante observes that these three languages share a common origin: “Now the proof that the vulgar tongues of these three nations proceed from one and the same idiom is obvious, because they call many things by the same names, as Deum, coelum, terram, and vivit, moritur, amat, and almost all other things.”¹¹ The triad of sacred languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, described by Brunetto Latini in his Tresor (III, I, 3), finds a counterpart in a new triad of modern languages, oc, oïl, and si. While their common origin can be underscored, their differences can also be emphasized: by playfully making the word oïl, for instance, a sign that not only identifies a language but defines the culture of the people who use it, as André de Coutances does in his Roman des Français (end of the twelfth century). This title is difficult to translate but would amount to something like “the Frenchness of the French” or “the French in French.” It is a parodic, satiric text written by a continental Norman against his neighbors: the French of the Île-de-France. At the time of its composition, the two provinces belong to different kingdoms. André de Coutances is a Plantagenet subject. He imagines a French king named Frolle—the alliteration in fr plays into the invention of the name¹²—who is vanquished by Arthur, and from whom French hold their affirmative particle, oïl, the modern oui. Yet Frolle does not pronounce oïl but instead aol (v. 124).¹³ This phonetic approximation brings the affirmative particle close to the word ail (garlic), a condiment greatly enjoyed by this king and his subjects, the French. The king even uses his pungent breath as a weapon. The satirical bent of the text is clear: a linguistic trait becomes linked to a cultural trait in a powerfully carnivalesque play on words. Differences between accents are also perceived by contemporaries, and authors note them. They likewise present comic potential. The French spoken by the English provides much fodder for the wit of Philippe de Remi (ca. 1205–65) in Jehan et Blonde as well as the author of the branch of Renart jongleur (“Renart the juggler,” ca. 1190–95). Accents can sometimes have tragic consequences: in his Memoirs, Philippe de Novarre (1195– post 1265) recounts how the Cypriots mistakenly killed one of their own, a knight born in Lombardy yet “norri et adoubé a chevalier en Chipre [raised and knighted in Cyprus]” when because of his accent they mistook him for one of their enemies, the Italians aligned with Frederick II, seeing as he “ne sot crier l’enseigne le roy: ‘vaillance,’ et cryoit ‘baillance’ [mispronounced the rallying cry of the king, “vaillance,” and yelled “baillance”].”¹⁴ Likewise, in the accounts of the Passion, the apostle Peter is identified because of his accent when he denies knowing Christ. Jean Courtecuisse (ca. 1353–1423) comments on this linguistic trait in his Sermon sur la Passion: “Tous parloient ebrieu, mais avoient entre eulz difference comme entre françois et picart [All of them spoke Hebrew, but there were differences between them as between French and Picard].”¹⁵

What is the place of French among the three languages of oc, oïl, and si? Answers refer to a feeling of affinity between some of these languages and specific literary genres, as if the writer could pick from a range of choices; problems of mutual comprehension do not seem to arise or are not brought up. In his Razos de trobar, Raimon Vidal (first half of the thirteenth century) asserts that the French language is better suited to the composition of romances and pastorals, whereas the “limousi” (oc, the language of the troubadours) lends itself to verse—“vers e cansos e sirventes,” which is to say stanzas, love songs, and satirical poems.¹⁶ Dante develops a similar view in his De vulgari eloquentia:

The evolution of the meaning of roman in French, from language to genre (romance, novel), is a remarkable testament to this impact of language on a literary genre. As for the link between oc and poetry, which is historically verified, Philippe Mousket (1215–83) proposes, in his Chronique, a fantasized historical and genealogical explanation: when Charlemagne divided his conquests, he gave Provence as a fief to the minstrels and jugglers who had followed his army. Poetry is, in a way, passed along with the land, and the Provençal are poets “by nature”: “Font Provenciel et cans et sons / Millors que gent d’autre païs [Provençals make songs and melodies / better than people from other lands].”¹⁸ The Albigensian Crusade (1208–44) marks a break in this harmonious repartition of the literary use of languages. The author of the oc story Frayre de Joy et Sor de Plaser (Brother of Joy and Sister of Pleasure), while he recognizes the beauty of the French language, refuses to employ the idiom of those who have violently repressed the people of the South: “Sitot Francess a bel lengatge / No-m pac en re de son linatge, car son erguylos ses merce / . . . Per qu’eu no vull parlar frances [Although the French have a fine language, I have no love for their lineage, since they are arrogant without mercy . . . which is why I do not want to speak French].”¹⁹ Even this author, who expresses hostility toward the French as a people, acknowledges the beauty of the French language: this sentiment, in addition to political and economic factors, explains its diffusion.

Brunetto Latini says as much: one chooses to write in French “por çou que la parleure est plus delitable et plus commune a tous langages [because this way of speaking is more delightful and more common to all languages]” or, according to another group of manuscripts, “commune a toutes gens [common to all peoples].”²⁰ Dante shares this opinion, as we have seen: the language of oïl is “an easier and pleasanter vulgar tongue” therefore more widespread.²¹ Yet he does not draw the same consequences. After having, aside from Latin, written a few texts in Provençal, he chooses Italian for The Divine Comedy. Three reasons are given by those writers who choose French: first, “lengue franceise cort parmi le monde [the French language is found throughout world]” according to Martin da Canal, who writes his Estoires de Venise in French, likely between 1267 and 1275. French is indeed present in Anglo-Norman England since William’s conquest, where it remains the language of power and administration. It carries prestige, as is attested by Anglo-Norman miracle tales discussed by Ian Short.²² Not only do Anglo-Norman saints make the mute speak, but they also make them speak French. The language is also present in Sicily and the south of Italy, first through the Norman kingdom and later through the kingdom of the Angevins. It has also spread to the Eastern Latin kingdoms.²³ In Cyprus, Philip of Novara, Italian by birth, writes in French. Second, French is “common to all languages” and “to all peoples.” It is shared by a great number of people instead of being, like Latin, limited to an elite, which does not mean that the term commun should be understood as depreciative or related to the lower classes. When Olivier de La Haye writes his Poëme sur la Grande Peste de 1348 (Poem on the Great Plague of 1348, 1426), he states, “le translater veritablement / De latin en commun françoiz [translating it truthfully / from Latin to common French].”²⁴ Commun designates a language level. Because it is addressed to a great number of people, this literary French creates a community. Jacques Legrand (1360–ca. 1418), in the chapter “On Rhymes” of his Archiloge Sophie (ca. 1400), provides rules to “bien et raisonnablement rimer et versifier en commun langage [rhyme and versify correctly and well in common language]” and repeatedly uses an expression that highlights this link established by language: “en nostre français [in our French].”²⁵ Now an equal to Latin, French has become worthy of receiving rules. Whereas the mother tongue is still a dialect, a patois, a private language, this literary French erases particularities and local differences: textual and monumental, French has become an “illustrious vernacular.” “La langue française théorique et vulgaire,” an expression encountered in the prologue and dedication to Charles VIII of an Art de Rhétorique (possibly composed by Jean Molinet), testifies to this particular status of literary French. This Art de Rhétorique affirms, under the name of Henry de Croy: “Sire . . . il est de necessité que les roys ou les princesy mettent leur entendement pour apprendre a parler, a dicter et a bien mettre par escript tant es oeuvres de poeterie, semblablement en langue latine pareillement a la langue françoise theorique et vulgaire [Sir . . . it is necessary that kings and princes strive to learn to speak, compose and put into writing also in poetic (that is mythological) works, equally in Latin and in learned and common French language].”²⁶

The third reason given relates to aesthetics, beauty, and pleasure. Every author cited above mentions this aspect: French is “plus delitable a lire et a oïr que nule autre [more delightful to read and hear than any other],” according to Martin da Canal. Miracle tales again attest this supremacy: La légende dorée (The Golden Legend, composed around 1261–66) recounts how Saint Francis received the French language as a gift from God, and how “toujours, quand il était embrasé du feu de l’Esprit-Saint, il exprimait en français ses emotions brûlantes [always, when he was engulfed by the fire of the Holy Ghost, he expressed his burning emotions in French].”²⁷ This exaltation of French is made at the detriment of other languages, directly or not. Jacques Bretel (end of the thirteenth century) praises the “bel et joli” (fine and pleasing) French of the minstrel Henriet de Loon [Henry of Laon] by stating : “si ne parloit mie breton [and he did not speak Breton at all].” Bretel plays on words: breton designates a language but has also given birth to the verb bretonner, meaning bredouiller, to mumble, to speak an incomprehensible language. One can see the connotations of Breton for the author, and among French speakers in general, since a breton can also designate, in Old French, the unseemly sound of the belch.

The choice of a language, for medieval authors, is a fundamental political, ethical, and aesthetic statement. Writers who choose French, rather than Latin or their maternal idiom, are thereby choosing a public: that of the courts, a public of laymen and women. To choose French is to choose a particular type of diffusion and inscription in posterity. At the court of Gui de Dampierre in Flanders, a bilingual country, Adenet le Roi (ca. 1240–97) writes in French. In his chanson de geste Berte as Grans Pies (Berte with the big feet), he underscores that his heroine, the daughter of the king of Hungary, knows French, as do her father and mother: “le françois de Paris / Com se ils fussent né ou bourc a Saint Denis [the French of Paris as if they were born in the town of Saint Denis].”²⁸ Aimon de Varennes, born in the Mâconnais, specifies in the opening of his romance Florimont (1188): “Il ne fu mie fait en France / Maix en langue de fransois / Le prist Aymes en Loenois [It was not composed in France, but Aimon got it in the Laon area in the language of the French].”²⁹ Laon is indeed the domain of French, as well as a place that carries associations with the chanson de geste.³⁰ Authors sometimes cunningly use their birth outside the kingdom of France in a variant of the topos of humility. In such cases, the affirmation of particularity functions as a ruse: it distinguishes rather than excludes them. Jean Baudoin, the author of L’instruction de la vie mortelle (The Instruction on Mortal Life, completed shortly after 1431), says that he was “né / Je ne fu mie de Saint Denis en France,” not born in Saint Denis in France—for he was born in Lorraine, in the hamlet of Rosière-aux-Salines. Jacques de Bugnin states that “car du dicteur la langue nutritive / Partit premier du pays de Savoye [for the mother tongue of the poet belonged first to the land of Savoy]” (in Le Congié pris du siecle seculier [Retreat from the Secular World], completed in 1480). Olivier de la Haye writes that “aussi n’ay je pas grant savance / Du propre langage de France / Car ma mere estoit pure Brete [thus I do not know well / the proper language of France / since my mother was pure Breton],” while Pierre Michault, in the opening of his Doctrinal du Temps présent (Teaching of the Present Time, 1466), reminds his readers that they should be forgiving given his “lengaige maternel.” Language and lineage: for certain authors who use nasalized spellings, the two words are quite close. In the sole manuscript of Philippe de Remi’s Jehan et Blonde, for instance, the word lineage is spelled “lingage,” while the word “langages” is also used in a way that links language and region. Blonde calls Jehan “Li mix servans et li plus sages / Qui ainc issist de nos langages [The best serving and the most sensible man / Who ever issued from our langages].”³¹ The first editor of the text, Herman Suchier, corrected this as “lingnages,” most likely abusively. The word language is indeed used in Le voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et Constantinople (The Journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople, mid-twelfth century) to designate a group of people of different nationalities who rub shoulders with one another: “Car li language I venent de trestute la vile, / Il i vendent lur pailes, lur teiles e lur siries [Because, throughout the city, people of many nationalities go there / To sell their silk cloth, their linen cloth, and their damasks].”³² Language unites groups as well as differentiates them.

Among such claims of distinctiveness, the case of Christine de Pizan (1365– 1430) is exemplary. Like other authors who announce they were not born in Paris, or better yet in Saint-Denis, she affirms her identity by acknowledging her alterity. Christine, however, is doubly other: she is both a foreigner and a woman. She initially lacks two languages, French and Latin. Being Italian, Christine insists on the fact that French was not the language of her parents, and that learning this new language has delayed her more advanced studies: “Mais comme trop joenne encorre fusse, ne me savoie appliquer ne mes a apprendre le langaige different d’icellui des mes parens [But since I was still too young, I could not undertake to learn anything else than a language different from the language of my parents],” she notes in L’advision Christine (Christine’s Vision).³³ Because she is a woman, she is estranged from Latin, the “natural” language of the cleric. She must learn it in order to become a “clergesse” and gain access to knowledge. Yet instead of stating her Italian origin as part of a topos of humility, she uses this difference to suggest other models in the debate she launches around the Roman de la rose. She dares to attack Jean de Meun, who has already achieved canonical status at the time she writes: condemning his antifeminism and his crudeness, she proposes Dante as model instead. In terms of significance, composition and style, the Roman de la rose cannot compare to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Christine asserts this, using irony, to Pierre Col, the king’s secretary: “lis le livre que on appelle le Dant, ou le te fais exposer pour ce que il est en langue florentine souverainnement dicté [read the book that is called le Dant, or have it explained to you since it is masterfully composed in Florentine language].”³⁴ She displays a kind of superiority over clerics, these rivals who, while they have a command of Latin, have not necessarily mastered Dante’s illustrious vernacular. She thus specifies, in La prodommie de l’omme (The Worth of Man, 1405–1406): “et pour ce dit un tres bel notable en moult beaulx vers en son lengaige, Dant de Florence [and Dante of Florence composed a very renowned work in beautiful verse in his language].”³⁵ Her comprehension and mastery of Italian distinguishes and qualifies her. In addition to Dante, Christine mentions, elsewhere in her oeuvre, Cecco d’Ascoli (whom she criticizes), Boccaccio, and Petrarch; she also knows Francesco da Barberino. This is a new canon for a French readership. The biographic event of having been born in Italy, in Venice, and “transported” to Paris could have remained significant in the constitution of her psyche alone; Christine instead reclaims it and upholds it as a constitutive element of her literary persona. She voluntarily experiences the event as a translacion; she transforms the anecdote into her purpose and her destiny. She embodies, in her biographical trajectory, the movement of translatio studii. Her provocation—to propose a new canon—is important in that it occurs precisely at the time when the concept of nation takes shape,³⁶ and when writers are more and more frequently identified to a region. Eustache Deschamps does so, for example, in his ballad given the title “Des meurs et condicions des Champainoys” in manuscripts (“On the mores and conditions of the Champenois”).³⁷ He names five authors, “habiles a l’escripture,” skillful in writing, who bring fame to the province of Champagne: Pierre le Mangeur, who writes in Latin, Saincte More (a name he gives, erroneously, to the author of L’Ovide moralisé), Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, and Nicolas de Clamanges. In such a context, Petrarch’s statement, “Oratores et poetae extra Italiam non quaerentur [Orators and poets should not be sought outside of Italy],” is perceived as scandalous.³⁸ We see how the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflect more and more on what will later be called the genius of nations. Martin Le Franc (ca. 1410–61), in his Champion des Dames (The Ladies’ Champion, 1140–42), provides valuable evidence. Having noted his French origin—“je qui naissance / Ay pris en la tres doulce France [I, who was born in very sweet France]”; born in Normandy, he is at the time the provost of Lausanne—he goes on, through a declaration by the Champion, to characterize what he calls “l’engin franczois,” that is, the French genius or spirit:

This idea is related to another, developed as early as the fourteenth century, in the context of French-English rivalry, according to which, if Latin is the language of God, French comes immediately after: it is the language of angels.⁴⁰ Yet Martin Le Franc also has reservations concerning the French spirit: “Et trop suivons pompes et gale, / Une fois le faloit il dire [It must be said at least once that we are too fond of pompous feasts].”⁴¹ Such is the weight of the etymological imagination: the Gallic are too galois, which is to say too frolicsome and frivolous. Compared to the Greek and the Latin, the French do not write enough; they are too lighthearted, and because of this laziness, “la fetardise et muableté de l’engin françzois [the idleness and fickleness of the French genius],” the Champion is unable to give any more names of women writers. Thankfully, there is Christine de Pizan:

This geographic alterity, resolved through praise for the French language, can also be a temporal alterity. In the sixteenth century, Clément Marot, editing the works of François Villon (1431–63), states that “Je ne suy certes en rien son voysin [I am admittedly in no way near to him].”⁴⁴ Marot is particularly aware of the fact that all that made the Testament so topical is no longer accessible. Yet his relationship to the poet’s language is remarkable. He understands how its alterity manifests itself at two levels: in the archaistic playfulness of the ballad “Autant en emporte ly vens” (Gone with the wind), which he entitles “Ballade a ce propos en vieil langage françois” (Ballad on this topic in old French language), as well as in the discrepancy between his own language and that of Villon, which he characterizes as an “antique façon de parler [ancient manner of speaking].”⁴⁵ François Villon himself, albeit in an amused manner, shows he is well aware of the importance of the linguistic question. He tackles it through a superbly ironic play in his quatrain of self-definition and self-derision: “Je suis François, dont il me poise, / Né de Paris emprés Pontoise [I’m Frank, which weighs me down of late, / Born in Paris—by Pontoise situate].”⁴⁶ Villon is twice “François”—his given name, and a Frenchman—but he is from Paris, not from Pontoise. In affirming this, he flaunts his milieu, the city. Pontoise’s reputation of linguistic purity was well established since Conon de Béthune’s (ca. 1150–1219) famous verse, in which he countered Philip Augustus’s mockery of his “mos d’Artois” (words of Artois): “Car je ne fus pas norris a Pontoise [for I was not raised in Pontoise].”⁴⁷ Villon derides the pretensions of the great and lays claim to a French language from Paris, not as the city of power, but as that of the “joyeux gallois.”

At the end of the Middle Ages, Latin undergoes a change in status in relation to national languages: it no longer lords over these other idioms in its authority as a sacred language. It has become a tool, an intermediary, a latinier (mediator). Indeed, an interpreter can be designated by two terms in Old French: drugement, a word of Semitic origin that entered French through Arabic, and latinier, derived from the general as opposed to the specific sense of the word Latin, meaning “language.” Latin, for instance, is used as a mediator in the translation of Boccaccio’s Italian into French. Written in Italian, the last story of the Decameron is translated into Latin by Petrarch, then translated from Latin into French by Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405). Around the same period, the whole Decameron is translated into French by Laurent de Premierfait, using an intermediate Latin version. The work is completed in 1414, and Laurent dies in 1418.

There had been a global Latin in the High Middle Ages: the Latin of the clerics. French then held that place for a few centuries, during the Crusades. At the turn of the fifteenth century, Italian threatens to overtake it in this role. The question of the harmony or discord between these two languages is brought up by Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1524): in this context of rivalry, the phrase langue gallicane or Gallic language (from gallicus, of the Gauls) begins to appear, as the French language claims, in opposition to Italian, a historical and to some degree legendary origin. The triad of modern languages, oc, oïl, and si, is replaced by a trinity combining an ancient language (Latin) with two modern languages: Tuscan and French. This new trinity resounds in the Temple of Venus of the Concorde des deux langages, and Jean Lemaire cites it in a letter to one of the Duchess Anne de Bretagne’s advisors: “le langage Latin, Toscan, et Français, se rapportent l’un à l’autre, tout ainsi comme une petite trinité [Latin, Tuscan, and French are in relation, like a small trinity].”⁴⁸ He adds that his interlocutor, François le Rouge, in addition to his “langage naturel de Bretaigne Armorique [native language of Armorican Brittany],” is an expert in all three. Lemaire takes up again, in La concorde, the confrontation of Jean de Meun to Dante launched by Christine de Pizan. The two languages are pitted against each other and defended by their champions, the great writers who made them illustrious. The series of French writers opens with Jean the Meun, the Italian with Dante. These “illustrious” languages exist through their literature. Lemaire attempts to identify the qualities proper to Italian and French. He finds on one side “magnificence, elegance et doulceur” (sweetness) in the Tuscan language, and on the other “gentillesse,” which is to say nobility, and “courtoisie humaine” in French. He isolates aesthetic qualities on the Italian side, and moral, universal values (if we interpret the word “humain” in this manner) on the French side. Yet he also notes divergences. These nations and languages are “desjoinctes et separées par obstacle des Alpes et des montaignes interposites, et par la difference du ciel, des meurs et des coustumes quant au fait, et des accentz, contenances et prononciations quant à la parolle [disjoined and separated by the obstacle of the Alps and other mountains in between, and by the difference of climate, mores and customs in deeds, of accent, bearing, and pronunciation in words].”⁴⁹ Is French a locus, a link, a literature? The question is still worth pondering.