Rutebeuf (fl. c.1249-c.1277). One of the most important French poets of the 13th c., Rutebeuf's real identity is unknown, the name being a pseudonym upon which he puns frequently. 56 texts survive in a large number of manuscripts, indicating considerable contemporary popularity. They range from short lyrics to narrative poems of several thousand lines. The style and content of many suggest that he was well-educated. Almost certainly a clerk, he was possibly also a semi-professional poet and in some way attached to the recently founded Paris University.
Rutebeuf is thought to have been from the Champagne region. His Dit des Cordeliers (1249) suggests he lived in Troyes for a time, but he probably moved to Paris shortly after 1250, and many of his poems can be linked to the dispute there between the secular teachers of the university and those from the Mendicant orders (who were mainly Dominicans, though there were some Franciscans). The Mendicants were disliked because chairs were reserved for them and because they taught for nothing. In 1252 the university tried to limit the number of chairs held by religious orders, and in 1253 all maîtres were obliged to take an oath to observe university statutes. The Mendicants refused and were consequently banned from teaching. From 1254 Guillaume de Saint-Amour, leader of the secular faction, headed a systematic attack on the Mendicants, but by 1256 it was clear that the university was not powerful enough to take on the orders, particularly once they had secured the support of the pope. Guillaume (d. 1272) was exiled. In poems like the Discorde des Jacobins (1255), D'Hypocrisie (1257), the Dit de Guillaume de Saint-Amour (1258), the Complainte de Guillaume de Saint-Amour (1258), De Sainte Eglise (1259), and Les Ordres de Paris (1260), Rutebeuf shows himself to be an ardent defender of the secular cause, an opponent of the Mendicant orders, and a passionate supporter of Guillaume. In the Dit du mensonge (1260), one of his finest and most amusing poems, he satirizes the Mendicants by constructing an elaborate ironic allegory in which Humility conquers the world.
Rutebeuf is best known to modern readers for the so-called ‘poésies personnelles’: La Griesche d'hiver (1260), La Griesche d'été (1260), Le Mariage Rutebeuf (1261), La Complainte Rutebeuf (1262), La Repentance Rutebeuf (1262), and La Pauvreté Rutebeuf (1277). In this sequence Rutebeuf constructs a fictional autobiography. He complains of his poverty and misfortune, which he attributes to gambling (griesche means dicing), drink, and an unfortunate marriage; finally he repents and turns to God. These poems are characterized by rampant punning and an often vulgar sense of humour. Some of the details he gives about his life are patently false and the entire tale of woe is probably fabricated, but he inaugurates a tradition of ostensibly autobiographical poetry about city life which culminates in the later Middle Ages with Villon.
Rutebeuf's corpus is striking for its range. In addition to the university poems and the ‘poésies personnelles’, he wrote an important sequence about the Fourth Crusade, fabliaux, a play (Le Miracle de Théophile, 1264), a poem related to the Roman de Renart (Renart le Bestorné), hagiography, and comic narratives with moral denouements. If many of his poems indicate fervent religious commitment, there is no evidence of a progression in his work towards devotional poetry, as some critics have argued. He seems at home in a wide variety of genres, witness two texts which are almost contemporary: the wickedly irreverent Le Dit de frère Denise (1262), in which a young girl enters a male religious order in disguise with predictable, if hilarious, consequences, and the beautifully lyrical La Vie de sainte Marie L'Egyptienne (1263), a version of a well-known saint's life. Though diverse, the corpus derives a degree of unity from Rutebeuf's robust, often earthy sense of humour and from a sustained interest in linguistic play.
[Simon Gaunt]
Bibliography
- N. F. Regalado, Poetic Patterns in Rutebeuf (1970)
- M. Zink, La Subjectivité littéraire (1985) and (ed.), Rutebeuf: Œuvres complètes, 2 vols. (1989-90)
