Reproach and Remonstrance in Romance: the Trésor des Amadis

• In Event: Reproach, Disagreement, Resistance in Literary Fictions

Abstract

In this paper I will analyze scenes from the Amadis de Gaule that were selected as set pieces of harangues or remonstrances in the early modern period. My purpose is to apply the moral and political discourses of institutional disagreement or resistance (present in the innumerable examples of harangues and remonstrances of the Ancien Régime, and in the dominant social/ethical discourse of friendship) to the sphere of sentimental relations, such as between lovers or other characters in romance. Speeches of reproach and disagreement were excerpted and featured in compilations, presumably to be used as models, and seemingly according to criteria that also determined political rhetoric. I will look at some samples of these speeches closely, to see if sentimental disagreement is truly of a different nature from political or ethical disagreement.

Author

• Anne Theobald, Hillsdale College