Le debat de Cuidier et de Fortune
La Marche, Olivier de, 1426?-1502
Le debat de Cuidier et de Fortune - 1 online resource : multiple file formats
Release date is 2025-12-07
Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))
Le debat de Cuidier et de Fortune by Olivier de La Marche is an allegorical debate poem written in the late 15th century. The work stages a moral-philosophical contest between human self-confidence and the power of Fortune, exploring fate, free will, and the instability of earthly honors and pursuits.
The poem opens with a narrator, imprisoned after a disastrous battle, who hears a quarrel between Cuidier (presumption, bold self-belief) and Fortune, the blindfolded lady turning her wheel. Cuidier boasts that daring and resolve win love, glory, wealth, and renown; Fortune declares herself the heaven-sanctioned scourge who overturns such hopes. Before the narrator, set as judge, Cuidier tests every path—noble birth, learning, arms, trade, marriage, crafts, farming, courtly love, physical strength, hunting, travel, shepherding, heraldry, even the religious life—claiming will can secure success. Fortune rebuts each with classical and biblical exempla of sudden ruin (Hector, Samson, Absalom, Oedipus’s sons, Nebuchadnezzar, martyrs), showing that outcomes rest in her turning. The dispute remains unresolved; the vision breaks, and the narrator records it soberly, framed by his grief and captivity after his lord’s death at Nancy. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
French poetry -- To 1500
PQ
Le debat de Cuidier et de Fortune - 1 online resource : multiple file formats
Release date is 2025-12-07
Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) Laurent Vogel (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))
Le debat de Cuidier et de Fortune by Olivier de La Marche is an allegorical debate poem written in the late 15th century. The work stages a moral-philosophical contest between human self-confidence and the power of Fortune, exploring fate, free will, and the instability of earthly honors and pursuits.
The poem opens with a narrator, imprisoned after a disastrous battle, who hears a quarrel between Cuidier (presumption, bold self-belief) and Fortune, the blindfolded lady turning her wheel. Cuidier boasts that daring and resolve win love, glory, wealth, and renown; Fortune declares herself the heaven-sanctioned scourge who overturns such hopes. Before the narrator, set as judge, Cuidier tests every path—noble birth, learning, arms, trade, marriage, crafts, farming, courtly love, physical strength, hunting, travel, shepherding, heraldry, even the religious life—claiming will can secure success. Fortune rebuts each with classical and biblical exempla of sudden ruin (Hector, Samson, Absalom, Oedipus’s sons, Nebuchadnezzar, martyrs), showing that outcomes rest in her turning. The dispute remains unresolved; the vision breaks, and the narrator records it soberly, framed by his grief and captivity after his lord’s death at Nancy. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
French poetry -- To 1500
PQ