Replacer la farce dans les festivités joyeuses du XVIe siècle. Le cas des Soupiers de Monville

Abstract

This article deals with the farce Les Soupiers de Monville, which appears in the ms. f. fr. 24341 of the BnF, a collection known as “La Vallière” or “de Rouen”. The interest of this little-known play lies not in its very simple plot (the punishment of three backbiting quidams), but in the complex relationship that is established, in this legal fiction, between the stage, the audience and the current situation in Rouen in the mid-16th century. The approach adopted is at once historical, performative and poetic. Indeed, the analysis of the performative framework of Les Soupiers de Monville helps us to better understand the role of the merry company of the Conards of Rouen at the end of the 1540s, but it also sheds new light on the mediating function of farcical representation in the 16th century, as well as its complex connections with satire and polemical writing.