Il fascino della guerra nei romanzi borgognoni

During the Thirties Johan Huizinga introduced among scholars a new portrait of French cultural universe of the late Middle Ages. Even if this work has been criticized, it soon became the starting point of a new rise of interest in the fourteenth and fifteenth century French literature. The paper has in aim to focus on the treatment of the ideal of chivalry as it is proposed by the texts composed under the patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy, particularly of Philip the Good, who ordered many prose adaptations of earlier works. But despite the use of many traditional themes, the Burgundian romances show also some aspects of the interest in politics of expansion of the duchy, such as the crusade in the Near East and, consequently, the interest in battle, war and tournaments. Thereby the treatment of themes of war and tournaments is analyzed as described mainly in three late medieval Burgundian romances: the "Gilles de Chin", the "Histoire des seigneurs de Gavre" and the "Gillion de Trazeignyes", trying to isolate both continuity and changes.