Remembering to Forget Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour in Italy: The Case of Pierpont Morgan MS 459

Abstract This article focuses on the prologue to the expanded version of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour contained in a manuscript of Italian origin: New York, Pierpont Morgan MS 459. Its aim is to shed light on the cultural antagonism on the part of the prologue author towards the authorial version of Richard's Bestiaire . While the prologue author alludes to the authorial Bestiaire and even devotes a biographical sketch to its author in the form of a vida , I show that the prologue author nevertheless definitively ‘authorizes’ for posterity the francophone Italian continuation, which is retrospectively framed as the sole authentic version of the Bestiaire . The vida , for its part, does more to condemn Richard to oblivion than to memorialize him. This new, expanded version of the Bestiaire is in turn authenticated through cultural markers of ‘Frenchness’, even though the prologue author subtly indicates his own non-French status. The logic of the prologue is thus ambivalent: it both draws attention to the genuine version of the Bestiaire and ensures that it is perceived as insignificant; both memorializes Richard as an author and relegates him to oblivion; both heaps on markers of Frenchness and indicates its position of cultural remove.