La Rhétorique du lion. Invraisemblance et vérité dans les fables de Marie de France

In order to understand certain aspects of the hermeneutical interplay which led to the development of a mechanism of reference to truth in vernacular French fables from collections between the 12th and the14th centuries one should not ignore the debate concerning the statute of narrative fiction which can be found in sources from the 12th century. Amongst those collections, the Esope signed by Marie de France is of special interest since it is the first collection of fables known to be produced in the vernacular French, testifying, along with the Lais, of significant aspects of that debate. In this article, I argue that the poetical creation in the Esope is deeply connected with the philosophical and poetical dimensions of the hermeneutics of allegory and the use of image. A reading of fable 37, “Le Lion et le Paysan”, will illustrate this argument.