Pastiche, postiche and parodic power

In Rome, but not only, intellectuals were quick to legitimize tyranny. This final session of the lecture is devoted to questioning this strange fascination with the fictional power of authoritarian rule. It brings us face to face with the face of the tyrant. By comparing Albertino Mussato'sEcerinis with Dante's letter of dedication to Cangrande della Scala, we attempt to put this ambivalence of political fiction to the test. This ambivalence is also expressed in the reversals, displacements and parodic irradiations of medieval theater, the Renardian rewriting of La mort le roi Artu and the roman à clefs of the Roman de Fauvel. But what about the real political effectiveness of such carnivalesque inversion? We end these reflections as we began them, faced with the impossibility of caricaturing the dictator - an impossibility staged by Charlie Chaplin, analyzed by André Bazin in his great 1945 article "Sur Le Dictateur: pastiche et postiche ou le néant pour une moustache", and bound to make us think today of the anachronism and prophetism of a laugh without comedy.

Contents

• When intellectuals believe in magic (Jean-Claude Milner, Harry Potter à l'école des sciences morales et politiques, Paris, 2014)
• Machiavellianism in Game of Thrones : "Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and that he was wise and good. But he does not ask the question: what was Aragorn's fiscal policy?" (George Martin, quoted in Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Game of Thrones. Série noire, Paris, 2015)
• "How philosophers legitimized tyranny" (Pierre Vesperini)
• The escorting discourse of the stabilized imperial regime under the Flavians and Antonines: the prince, living law and good shepherd
• "You don't know what an immense monster power is": Tiberius and the altered mental health of those in power
• Here we are again, facing the face of the tyrant - the one who smiled at us from the top of his pedestal
• Dante to Cangrande della Scala: "But we, to whom it is given to know what is best in ourselves, must not follow in the footsteps of the herds, but rather we are bound to correct their errors."
• Dante, Marsilio of Padua and Albertino Mussato after the death of Emperor Henry VII (1313)
• Renaissance of the tragic genre: theEcerinis : "Speak mother: all that is grandiose and wild delights my ear"
• The fertile womb and the foul beast, hear today the tragic chorus, a song of freedom that can only be sung when we fear losing it
• Betrayal and lucidity in Dante: "She and I were born of the same root"
• Parody, satire and political fiction: the Renardian rewriting of La mort le roi Artu (branch XVI, "Renart empereur", after Roger Bellon)
• The "barat" and serial parody writing: the destruction of courtly myths
• Theatrical parody as a space of performativity
• Parodic reversals, displacements and irradiations in the Roman de Fauvel (after Jean-Claude Mühlethaler)
• "Because of Fauvel, whom I see gently currying without hurting him, I have sunk into melancholy, for he is a much-pampered beast. He is often depicted in paintings, but many don't know whether to see mockery, wisdom or folly in it" (Gervais du Bus, prologue)
• The image and the impossibility of carnivalesque reversal: unveiling and actualization
• Er ist wieder da : "Hitler's first, daily, inexorable obligation was to preserve, for the awakening, his physical likeness" (Jean Genet, Le captif amoureux)
• André Bazin and the "ontological burglary" of Charlie Chaplin's moustache ("Sur Le Dictateur : pastiche et postiche ou le néant pour une moustache", Esprit, 1945)
• "Any resemblance between the dictator Hynkel and the Jewish barber is purely coincidental": a failure of fiction
• "A true war of annihilation, in which the existence of one protagonist is only possible at the price of the disappearance of another" (Jean Narboni, Pourquoi les coiffeurs? Notes actuelles sur Le Dictateur, Paris, 2010)
• The anachronism and prophetism of laughter without comedy
• "People seem to be afflicted with a kind of physical repugnance against the truth" (Klauss Mann, Against Barbarism)