Voler pour aimer : l’intelligence émotionnelle dans le fabliau de la « Pucele qui voloit »
Voler pour aimer : l’intelligence émotionnelle dans le fabliau de la « Pucele qui voloit »

Summary/Abstract: In the anonymous fabliau « La Pucele qui voloit », the most intriguing aspect is the affective valence of sexual initiation as declined in the three surviving manuscripts from the XIIIth-XIVth centuries. Depending on the aggravating or accommodating circumstances which turn the intellectual (clers) into a scrupleless seducer or a playful husband, and the young virgin into a pregnant victim of abuse or into a pregnant bride, it is possible to interpret their teasing intercourse in the said codices either as rape or as prenuptial valentinage. The alternative outcome of deception-reprimand or of merry « amendement » depends on the reading of acts and pacts in affective communication. The modern notion of “emotional intelligence” (Goleman), the distinction between the feeling and expression of affect, as integrated into the paradigm of late-medieval “emotionology” of amor (Stearns, Reddy) are useful instruments that we can put to test in this medieval context in which the feminine dream of flying “lasus” meets Daedalus, God, saint John and saint Amant, only to come down to earth and undergo meta/physical censure.

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