Verum/Veritas: le vrai à l’épreuve de la fiction chez saint Augustin et dans la tradition poétique du Moyen Âge

What is the difference between the two terms vrai and vérité (which both mean “ truth” in French) ? Where does falsity come from and how can it be recognized ? Is it consistently of one nature, or can one admit to a lawful simulacrum of truth (fiction) existing alongside diabolical deceit ? How does truth relate to language ? Both as languages and as a form of discourse emerging and developing in the 12th and 13th centuries, romance was particularly receptive to this complex issue raised in Augustine’s Soliloquies. Indeed, no matter what the texts, genres and variations were, the authors (or revisors) of medieval narrative prologues and epilogues endlessly proclaimed how poetically superior their writerly project was, constantly – and obsessionally – insisting on the truthful nature of their version of the story.