THE ROLE OF ANCIENT IMAGERY IN THE FIFTH NOVEL OF JEANNE FLOR’S CONTES AMOUREUX

Abstract

The article, based on the material of the fifth novel of Jeanne Flor’s Contes Amoureux, analyzes the role of ancient images, with the help of which the authors of the collection translate some of the main ideas underlying the new concept of love, the “vray amour” (if a beautiful young man falls in love with a girl, she must reciprocate, otherwise she will face the wrath of Venus and cruel punishment). The subject of the analysis is the images of Venus, Mars, Minos, Orestes, Alcinous, Paris, Hector, Parcae, Furies, Trojan war and related motifs. Referring to them allows us to trace the polemics of the authors of the collection with the Spanish court writer Juan de Flores (in one of his works, he describes a world hostile to lovers), as well as the transformation of the plot in relation to the fifty-eighth novel of Boccaccio’s Decameron, which is the basis of the text being analyzed. The analysis of ancient images allows us to describe a new system of world order, which is reflected in the French novel, in which the place of the Christian God is occupied by Venus and Cupid.