Scapegoats and Conspirators in the Chronicles of Jean Froissart and Jean le Bel

Summary

Ever since the rediscovery of a manuscript of Jean le Bel's Vrayes Chroniques in the mid-nineteenth century, scholars have acknowledged that much of Book One of Jean Froissart's Chroniques derives from le Bel's work. Indeed, Froissart admits his indebtedness to the canon of Liège at the very beginning of the Chroniques. For this reason, many modern readers, more interested in discussing the historical cause and effect of the events in both chronicles than the narrative relationships between them, acknowledge Froissart's indebtedness to le Bel and then move on to historical analysis of one or the other work. To take only the more prominent examples, it has been noted that Froissart “borrows from” le Bel; that le Bel is a “primary source” for Froissart; that Froissart had a “slavish dependence” upon le Bel; that Froissart copied “verbatim” or, more guardedly, “almost verbatim”; and that Froissart copied “virtually word for word” what was in le Bel's Vrayes Chroniques. In all of the modern scholarship on either of these chronicles, there is no systematic comparison of one to the other; this critical gap seems to stem, at least in part, from the assumptions underlying the above mentioned language of “verbatim duplication.”

However, the two chronicles are not, in fact, identical. A few scholars have acknowledged that there are differences of content, and their work demonstrates how difficult it can be to explain the changes that Froissart effected in his treatment of le Bel's history.