A Courtier Is Always In Danger. Jean de Bueil and the Perils of the Court

TY - JOUR

T1 - A Courtier Is Always In Danger. Jean de Bueil and the Perils of the Court

AU - Taylor, Craig David

PY - 2023/1/30

Y1 - 2023/1/30

N2 - In the mid-1460s, an experienced French soldier named Jean de Bueil wrote Le Jouvencel, a fictional account of the military career of an anonymous young soldier rising through the ranks. This was inspired by real events, people and places that the author had known and witnessed during his own military career stretching back to the 1420s. Though it was not an autobiography or memoir that offered a simple account of the life and career of its author, it did provide an unusually realistic window into both warfare and attitudes towards the military life during the final stages of the Hundred Years War. So it is striking that Le Jouvencel offered an aggressive diatribe against courtiers and the court, denouncing it as a dangerous environment full of envy and corruption. It might therefore be tempting to see this as evidence for a growing separation between martial and court cultures during the brutal last decades of the Hundred Years War, foreshadowing later developments in the professionalization of military cultures. But the criticisms of the court offered in Le Jouvencel testified to the literary sophistication of Bueil, echoing learned traditions of anti-curial writing, and more importantly, as a reaction by Jean de Bueil to specific events in his own life that both he and his biographer, Guillaume Tringant, deliberately omitted from their narratives.

AB - In the mid-1460s, an experienced French soldier named Jean de Bueil wrote Le Jouvencel, a fictional account of the military career of an anonymous young soldier rising through the ranks. This was inspired by real events, people and places that the author had known and witnessed during his own military career stretching back to the 1420s. Though it was not an autobiography or memoir that offered a simple account of the life and career of its author, it did provide an unusually realistic window into both warfare and attitudes towards the military life during the final stages of the Hundred Years War. So it is striking that Le Jouvencel offered an aggressive diatribe against courtiers and the court, denouncing it as a dangerous environment full of envy and corruption. It might therefore be tempting to see this as evidence for a growing separation between martial and court cultures during the brutal last decades of the Hundred Years War, foreshadowing later developments in the professionalization of military cultures. But the criticisms of the court offered in Le Jouvencel testified to the literary sophistication of Bueil, echoing learned traditions of anti-curial writing, and more importantly, as a reaction by Jean de Bueil to specific events in his own life that both he and his biographer, Guillaume Tringant, deliberately omitted from their narratives.

U2 - 10.1484/J.NMS.5.136400

DO - 10.1484/J.NMS.5.136400

M3 - Article

SN - 0078-2122

VL - 67

SP - 247

EP - 264

JO - Nottingham Medieval Studies

JF - Nottingham Medieval Studies

ER -