La Tavola Ritonda: le joug et le jeu de la chevalerie = The Tavola Ritonda: The Yoke and the Game of Chivalry

The chivalric romance known as Tavola Ritonda, written in Italy in the early 14th century, bears the seal of contemporary leanings. His anonymous compiler gives life to a project inspired by the desire to make the legend of Tristan and Yseut a sort of encyclopaedia, able to establish a dialogue with the Italian contemporaneity and to update the myth while rationalizing and moralizing its message. The chivalrous universe of the Tavola Ritonda is thus suspended above the system of genres of medieval Italy, presenting chivalry at the same time as a game, a literary amusement, and as a yoke, a concrete possibility to promote the civil commitment that derives from adhesion to Christian values. The present paper aims at focusing on the complex representation of the chivalrous society painted in the novel. The vision of a monolithic chivalry, perfectly at ease in a feudal system organized by closed castes, is turned upside down by the very notion of adventure thanks to its many facetings, while an atmosphere of imminent end masters the text and compels the knights to question the meaning of their own civilization, the irrational drift of certain customs, the obsolescence and inconsistency of the values they persist (sometimes unjustifiably) to perpetuate.