III. A tower of fiction. Legend, literature and popular culture

   Beyond history and image, Nesle’s tower memory perpetuates most of all in popular culture thanks to – or because of – a legend stating that the tower was the location of bloody orgies at the end of which profligate princesses were throwing their lovers in the Seine. Based on an authentic scandal involving in 1314 the daughters-in-laws of the French king, this legend took shape one century later and kept on evolving according to literary links and historical approximations, giving as a result birth to ballads, romantic dramas, theme parks, animated movies, novels and films.
   The third part of this exhibition invokes this rich material and give room to the author’s works that have often been remake or adapted to the stage as much as to the screen : thanks to them an imaginary Nesle’s tower where everything is chaos, fury and lust has become popular.
   The public will be able to see an incunabulum copy of Ballade of Ladies of Time Gone By by Villon, Maurice Druon’s autograph manuscript of The Accursed Kings as well as Alexandre Dumas’ play original copy or cheap copies of popular novels. Artworks also have a prominent place in this section with stage costumes, posters and collectible vignettes.

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François Villon, Le Grand testament ; Ballades ; Le Jargon ; Le Petit testament. Paris : Jean Trepperel pour Michel Le Noir, c. 1494.

   By evoking in 1461, in a ballad which will later on printed along with Le grand testament, among the ladies of time gone by, the « queen who ordered Buridan to be thrown in a bag in the Seine River », Villon lays the foundations of a legend promised to a great literary future.
   In fact, it seems here that Villon just quotes a Parisian student’s tradition which still remains under other forms. A few years later, Hans Jencz recount the same story in a much more developed way, after a tale he had heard during his studies in Paris in 1460: a queen of Navarre and France seduces the scholar Jean Buridan and invites him in her place nearby the Seine. After three days of loving embraces, she condemns him to be drawn in the Seine, like the previous 99 other students before him. Nevertheless, Buridan manages to escape and reveals the queen’s infamy.

MAZARINE : Inc 933 A-1

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