The Shadow of Faux Semblant: Fiction, Deception, and Truth in Late Medieval Allegorical Poetry (France, England, and Italy)

This talk will explore one aspect of a much wider project concerned with reassessing the profound and transformative impact of the popular Roman de la Rose on European literary and intellectual culture during the period 1280–1600. I will discuss the Rose’s reflection on the ability of poetry to convey philosophical and transcendent truths, and the legacy of this reflection in later texts written in French, English, and Italian. I will focus in particular on the character of Faux Semblant, a personification of the Liar Paradox who becomes an emblem for the elusive and paradoxical poetics of truth/deception that sustain the Roman de la Rose in its entirety. The problems crystallised by this figure, I argue, become endemic in late medieval vernacular poetry more broadly, especially in France, Britain, and Italy, where many major poets — from Dante to Machaut, Deguileville, Chaucer, or Langland — continue to grapple with a range of profound problems regarding the opaque and unstable epistemic status of poetic fiction.