Placing Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amours in the context of the formal upheavals of the early 13th century provoked by prosification (writing without verse) and “disenchantment” (writing without song), I compare Richard’s prose text with its verse adaptations and suggest that (1) his prose attempts to silence song which is then to some extent restored in the verse versions, (2) but that it nevertheless remains saturated with song, inaugurating a kind of chanson en prose that would be the harbinger of the later “poème en prose,” and (3) that this duality points a larger negotiation of the fact that both humans and other animals share not only “love” but a voice, particularly a singing voice. - [Publisher]

Language: French

0226-0174; DOI: 10.1484/J.LMFR.5.111307