Talk:Antoine de la Sale

De La Sale not Necessarily the Author of QJ
Antoine de la Sale is not the accepted author of Les XV Joyes de Mariage. This is merely a theory, one of many, in fact. The author remains anonymous and mysterious, and other possible authors include Lemonde, Samer, Bellemere, Lerse, Jean Wauquelin de Mons and Clermont. The riddle at the end of 3 of the manuscript transmissions does not necessarily point to de la Sale. Check Joan Crow's article in 'Studies in Medieval French Presented to Alfred Ewert' for more details on that.

Sir Loin Ofsteak (talk) 03:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Agreed and material removed and placed below. This work should probably just be mentioned in passing in the La Sale article, but have its own article with a discussion of the authorship there.

Temporarily parked material from article
La Sale is generally accepted as the author of one of the most famous satires in the French language, Les Quinze Joyes de mariage, because his name has been disengaged from an acrostic at the end of the Rouen manuscript.

The title of Les Quinze Joyes de mariage is, with a profanity characteristic of the time, borrowed from a popular litany, Les Quinze Joies de Notre Dame, and each chapter terminates with a liturgical refrain voicing the miseries of marriage. Evidence in favor of La Sale's authorship is brought forward by M. E. Gossart (Bibliophile belge, 1871, pp. 83-7), who quotes from his didactic treatise of La Sale a passage paraphrased from St. Jerome's treatise against Jovinian which contains the chief elements of the satire. Gaston Paris (Revue de Paris, Dec. 1897) expressed an opinion that to find anything like the malicious penetration by which La Sale divines the most intimate details of married life, and the painful exactness of the description, it is necessary to travel as far as Balzac. The theme itself was common enough in the Middle Ages in France, but the dialogue of the Quinze Joyes is unusually natural and pregnant. Each of the fifteen vignettes is perfect in its kind; there is no redundance. The diffuseness of romance is replaced by the methods of the writers of the fabliaux.

/* Discussing Le petit */ The language of the book is not disfigured by coarseness of any kind, but, if the brutal ending was the expression of the writer's real views, there is little difficulty in accepting him as the author of the Quinze Joyes de mariage and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. Both these are masterpieces in their way and exhibit a much greater dramatic power and grasp of dialogue than does Petit Jehan.

/* Editions */ Les Quinze Joyes de mariage by Pierre Janet (Bibl. elzev., 1857)

Mcewan (talk) 10:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Some More (from eNotes,com)
Gray, Irvine. Introduction to Little John of Saintré (Le Petit Jehan de Saintré), pp. 1-27. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1931.

Provides a biographical account of La Sale's life and surveys his majors works, with special emphasis on Little John of Saintré.

Kelly, Allison J. “Jehan de Saintré and the Dame Belles Cousines: Problems of a Medieval Title.” French Forum 14, no. 1 (December 1989): 447-57.

Contends that the title of La Sale's Little John of Saintré is misleading on several counts, as it suggests the work is primarily concerned with Saintré, and that the work is similar to other fifteenth-century biographies concerned with chivalric themes.

Knudson, Charles A. “The Historical Saintré.” In Jean Misrahi Memorial Volume: Studies in Medieval Literature, edited by Hans R. Runte, Henri Niedzielski, William L. Hendrickson, pp. 284-309

Mcewan (talk) 14:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Larousse
"Antoine de La Sale Écrivain français (vers 1385-1460). Fils d'un mercenaire gascon, il fut page, écuyer, gouverneur à la cour d'Anjou et à celle du Luxembourg. Il voyagea à plusieurs reprises en Italie. Il composa notamment deux recueils destinés à l'enseignement des princes et à l'illustration des vertus chevaleresques, dans lesquels l'Antiquité, avec Tite-Live, Salluste, Suétone, fournit les modèles. La Salade (1442-1444) comprend de « bonnes herbes » pour édifier Jean de Calabre, en particulier des commentaires sur le bon gouvernement, une liste d'historiens (avec extraits choisis), ou une généalogie de la maison d'Aragon et un exposé des rituels chevaleresques et de l'héraldique, avec des détails techniques sur les combats. La Sale (1451) est le montage allégorique d'une salle, fondé sur la compilation des grands auteurs : les fondements sont constitués de Prudence active, les murs de Justice, Miséricorde, etc. Mais l'œuvre la plus célèbre de l'auteur est Jehan de Saintré (1456), roman imaginaire plutôt que biographie d'un personnage historique contemporain, grand homme de guerre, qui ne fournit que son nom. Antoine de la Sale combine deux types de récits et de genres, en associant un thème de chronique chevaleresque, avec didactisme moral et connaissances héraldiques dans la première partie, et un thème de nouvelle érotique dans la seconde (une veuve trompe son jeune amoureux avec un abbé jouisseur). Il crée ainsi un roman original, d'un grand intérêt littéraire et historique, bien que les faits de deux siècles se trouvent confondus pour construire l'image d'une cour royale fastueuse et cultivée. C'est la protection financière de la Dame qui assure l'ascension sociale du jeune champion, héros de tous les tournois, mais qui doit affronter le truculent abbé, non sans mordre la poussière, avant de se venger : il confondra l'infidèle devant la cour des dames, qui commentera l'aventure. Le roman donne une interprétation pessimiste de la réussite sociale et de l'échec amoureux." http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/#larousse/2011961/100/La-Sale

Parentage
The information about the Froissart mention and his mother came from French wiki. No other source found yet. Mcewan (talk) 15:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)