La forme de la litanie comme cadre: le cas du lai et d’autres genres littéraires médiévaux

Abstract

This paper aims to search for the traces of how the meter of lai interferes or cooperates with the form of a litany. The research will be conducted on the basis of medieval French literature from first paraphrases of litanies in vernacular language to popular literary genres like for instance roman, dit, alba to lai included in Mélusine of Coudrette. The question of infinity of the form of litanies — which are the forms established on the repetition and the enumeration — is raised with the conclusion that when the lai differs from the rest of a literary work by the metrical pattern, the sign of the end of the structure, in other examples relatively weak, becomes evident.