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RUTEBEUF, or RUSTEBUEF (fl. 1245-1285) , French irouvere, wasSee also: barn in the first See also: half of the 13th century
.
His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries
.
He. frequently plays in his verse on the word Rutebeuf, which was probably a nom de guerre, and is variously explained by him as derived from See also: rude &zuf and rude a;uvre
.
He was evidently of humble See also: birth, and he was a Parisian by See also: education and residence
.
Paulin See also: Paris thought that he began See also: life in the lowest See also: rank of the See also: minstrel profession as a jongleur
.
Some of his poems have autobiographical value
.
In Le Mariage de Rutebeuf, he says that on the 2nd of See also: January 1261 he married a woman old and ugly, with neither dowry nor amiability.' In the Complaints de Rutebeuf he details a series of misfortunes which have reduced him to abject destitution
.
In these circumstances he addresses himself to Alphonse, comte de See also: Poitiers, See also: brother of See also: Louis IX., for
See also: relief
.
Other poems in the same vein reveal that his own miserable circumstances were chiefly due to a love of See also: play, particularly a See also: game played with dice; which was known as griesche
.
It would :seem that his See also: distress could not be due" to lack of patrons, for his metrical life of See also: Saint See also: Elizabeth of Hungary was written by
See also: request of See also: Erard de Valery, who wished to See also: present it to See also: Isabel, See also: queen of See also: Navarre; and he wrote elegies on the deaths of Anceau de 1'Isle See also: Adam, the third of the name, who died about 1251, Eude, comte de See also: Nevers (d
.
1267), Thibaut V. of Navarre (d
.
1270), and Alphonse, comte de Poitiers (d
.
1271), which were probably paid for by the families of the personages celebrated . In the Pauvrete de Rutebeuf he addresses Louis IX. himself . The piece which is most obviously intended for popular recitation is the Dit de l'Herberie, a dramatic monologue inSee also: prose and verse supposed to be delivered by a See also: quack See also: doctor
.
Rutebeuf was ' also a master in the verse See also: conte, and the five of his fabliaux that have come down to us are gay and amusing
.
The See also: matter,' it may be added, is sufficiently See also: gross
.
The adventures of See also: Frere Denyse le cordelier, and of " la See also: dame qui alla trois fois autour du moaner," find a place in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles
.
Rutebeuf's serious See also: work as a satirist probably See also: dates from about• 1260
.
His chief topics are the iniquities of the friars, and the defence of the secular See also: clergy of the university of Paris against their encroachments; and he delivered a series of eloquent and insistent poems (1262, 1263, 1268, 1274) exhorting princes' and See also: people to take See also: part in the See also: crusades
.
He was a redoubtable champion of the university of Paris in its See also: quarrel with the religious orders who were supported by See also: Pope See also: Alexander IV., and he boldly defended Guillaume de Saint-Amour when he was driven into exile
.
The libels, indecent songs and rhymes condemned by the pope to be burnt together with the Perils
See also: des derniers temps attributed to Saint-Amour, were probably the work of Rutebeuf
.
The satire of Renart le Bestourne, which borrows from the Reynard See also: cycle little but the names under which the characters are disguised, was directed, according to Paulin Paris, against See also: Philip the Bold
.
To his later years belong his religious poems, and also the Voie de Paradis, the description of a dream, in the manner of the
See also: Roman de la See also: Rose
.
The best work of Rutebeuf is to be found in his satires and verse conies . A miracle play of his, Le Miracle deSee also: Theophile, is one of the earliest dramatic pieces extant in French
.
The subject of See also: Theophilus, the Cilician See also: monk who made a pact with the devil, which was afterwards returned to him by the intervention of the Virgin, was a
See also: familiar one with the See also: story-tellers of the See also: middle ages
.
Rutebeuf can claim no priority in the choice of the subject, which had been treated dramatically in the Latin piece ascribed to the nun Hroswitha of See also: Gandersheim, but his piece has considerable importance in dramatic See also: history
.
The Euvres of Rutebeuf were edited by Achille Jubinal in 1839 (new edition, 1874) ; a more critical edition is by Dr Adolf Kressner
' It has been suggested that Brunetto See also: Latini was thinking of Rutebeuf when he wrote in his Li',re du Tresor: " Le Rire, le jeu, voila la See also: vie du jongleur, qui se moque de lui-mcme, de sa femme, de ses enfants, de tout le monde."
(Rusiebuef's Gedichte; Wolfenbiittel, 1885)
.
See also the article by Paulin Paris in Hist. lilt. de la See also: France (1842), vol. xx. pp
.
719-83, and Rutebeuf (1891), by M
.
Leon Cledat, in the Grands Ecrivains See also: francais Series
.
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