Mélior de Chef d'Oire: manipulatrice habile ou femme résignée? Les réécritures du et le rôle social de l'héroïne dans le roman propre

Anne Reynders (1)

1 Lessius - K.U.Leuven

One of the more striking features of the twelfth century old French verse romance is the substantial change the heroine undergoes in the course of the romance proper. In the beginning as powerful and imperative as the fairy mistresses of the , Melior loses her magical powers at an early stage and when she marries the hero in the end she has become—at least apparently—a passive and submissive victim. Modern scholars have appreciated this evolution in many different ways. The most intriguing question seems to be how the contemporary audience may have reacted to this loss of power of the heroine. Did it welcome Melior's degradation as a return to the traditional social order or not? In an attempt to answer this question, this article explores two thirteenth century rewritings of the romance proper: the old French continuation as it is attested by manuscript T and the Middle Dutch adaptation of . Both versions add a considerable amount of text to the romance proper in which Melior plays an important part.

Mots clés: Partonopeu de Blois; Romance proper; Continuation; Parthonopeus van Bloys; Female characters

Anne Reynders. Mélior de Chef d'Oire: manipulatrice habile ou femme résignée? Les réécritures du et le rôle social de l'héroïne dans le roman propre. Neophilologus, 2009, 94 (3), pp.407-419. ⟨10.1007/s11061-009-9175-7⟩. ⟨hal-00552523⟩