Le Jouvencel is an interesting work and a great example of the complexities of medieval literature. It is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction written for, and with input by, one of the greatest commanders of the end of the Hundred Years War. Jean de Bueil, who is credited as the author although it seems he at a minimum had help writing it and may in fact have only provided feedback on the writing of others, wished for a text to teach a new generation the art of war and to encourage fellow members of the nobility to pursue a life of combat rather than one of courtly or purely political life.
The story in question is about the life of a young, relatively poor noble who earns the nickname Jouvencel, which literally means “young man,” which he bears for the entirety of the book. The story charts his rise from obscurity through daring raids escalating to skirmishes, sieges, and full-scale battles, culminating in him marrying a princess and helping a foreign king regain his kingdom from a rebellion of some of his nobles. Interspersed throughout the story of his rise are didactic sections describing best practice in warfare, advising young men on how to be good nobles, and even an extended section on the proper method for resolving a trial by combat.
What makes Jouvencel particularly interesting is that the test draws very explicitly upon the real life of Jean de Bueil. Events in the fictional Jouvencel’s life are modelled directly on the life of de Bueil – and since he participated in many of the climactic moments of the Hundred Years War this makes the book almost a history of that conflict. These parallels are made even more explicit in a commentary written by another associate of de Bueil’s which is appended to the end of the text. In this commentary the author tells the reader which moments in the story can be read as representing real history and what that historical event was. At the same time, the main text includes extended descriptions of real historical events from some of its characters, creating a strange, blended reality where both the fictional and real worlds exist simultaneously.
Le Jouvencel is not the most engaging medieval text I have ever read, but it is one of the most interesting in terms of its structure and the view it provides of late medieval French writing and noble life. Soldiers’ memoirs would become more common in the following century, and Le Jouvencel exists as a strange cross between memoir and mirror for princes, or a book written for the education of the nobility. It is interesting more for the insight that it provides into its time period than for the actual literary style or story. There are other medieval texts that I would recommend to anyone interested in reading a medieval work for the first time, but for medieval specialists or anyone with a serious interested in mid-15th century French history this is a worthwhile read.
Craig Taylor and Jane Taylor have provided an excellent translation from the work’s original middle French into modern English. The text is readable and does a great job at conveying many of the complexities present in the original text – some of the challenges of which they explain in their introduction. The book also has ample footnotes to direct you to further scholarship on sections of the book, events described within it, or even to provide more context about what exactly the author meant. I wish all translations were this thorough and enjoyable to read.