Debate and Dialogue: Alain Chartier in His Cultural Context by Emma Cayley

ISBN: 9780199290260

Oxford University Press 28 September 2006

Hardcover | 272 pages

In early humanist France two debating traditions converge: one literary and vernacular, one intellectual and conducted mainly via Latin epistles. *Debate and Dialogue: Alain Chartier in His Cultural Context* demonstrates how the two fuse in the vernacular verse debates of Alain Chartier, secretary and notary at the court of Charles VI, and later Charles VII. In spite of considerable contemporary praise for Chartier, his work has remained largely neglected by modern critics. Emma Cayley’s study shows how Chartier participated in a movement that invested a vernacular poetic with moral and political significance, inspiring such social engagements as the fifteenth‑century poetic exchange known as the *Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy*. Cayley sets Chartier in the context of a late‑medieval debating climate through a model of participatory poetics which she terms the “collaborative debating community,” a dynamic and generative social grouping that accounts for both the competitive and collaborative nature of late‑medieval poetry. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}