Le savoir sur l’inde dans la littérature française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles

Abstract

The knowledge about India expressed in the French didactic literature of the 7th and 8th centuries came exclusively from the written sources inherited from the Antiquity (especially by means of Pliny’s and Solin’s compilations), transmitted by medieval Latin authors, and had as a main aim to instruct the reader by using unusual examples and to celebrate God as Creator. This explains a large number of unusual, miraculous or monstrous creatures represented in the descriptions of India: animals such as unicorn, griffon or manticora; hybrid people such as Cynocephali, Sciapods, and others; legendary sites: sea with sand, forest of pepper, rivers that flow through regions rich with precious stones, etc. In some analyzed works (Pierre de Beauvais’s Mappemonde, Letter of Prester John, bestiaries) the symbolism is still present. However, in Gossouin de Metz’s Image du monde and Placides et Timéo of an anonymous author, we can observe the authors’ tendency to suppress all symbolical interpretation and to describe the world without explicit symbolism. That is a general inclination of that time, as a result of the translations of a number of scientific texts (mainly of Greek origin) from Arabic, with the comments of the Arab authors, where natural phenomena were described and explained without allegory.