Thibaut le Chansonnier, Thibaut le Posthume: sur la réception de la lyrique française dans la tradition manuscrite

Old French lyric poetry does not match the monolithic image often presented by critics. It begins and ends with two exceptional cases, Conon de Béthune and Thibaut de Champagne and moreover the exclusive insistence on the grand chant courtois with its love theme largely re ects the choice of the songbook compilers. Selective criteria control the organisation of the aesthetic canon shown for example by mss. K N P X. However, analysis of Thibaut de Champagne’s manuscript tradition demonstrates that his Liederbuch, with which these same songbooks begin, presents characteristics that are different from and incompatible with the criteria governing the early canon of trouvère lyric. Placing the King of Navarre at the head of the trouvère tradition may therefore be a late move revealing a change of taste and a new literary concept of lyric production.