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Jean d’Escornebeuf
Jean de Coras was a lawyer and university professor who served as a judge when the case of Martin Guerre was tried at the Parlement of Toulouse, the most powerful court near the village of Artigat. He later wrote one of the best-known accounts of the case, the Arrest Memorable (1561), which Davis describes as an “innovative” book that encompasses multiple genres. Coras was well-positioned to write a book like this. He was not only a law professor whose lectures drew large crowds, but he also had personal experience with the law himself: after his mother died, she left him her property, and Coras sued his father for access to the inheritance. He was very fond of his wife, to whom he wrote long love letters, and became increasingly interested in the Protestant cause. Davis suggests that all this might have meant that Coras had reason to be sympathetic to Arnaud du Tilh, who was probably Protestant, had appeal as a romantic hero, and tried to use the law to assert his rights. And indeed, Coras does write the story of the case in a way that sometimes casts Arnaud in a positive light: he describes the story as “a tragedy for this fine peasant” that “makes it hard to tell the difference between tragedy and comedy.” Davis points out that it is very unusual for someone at that time to conceive of a case involving peasants as a “tragedy,” suggesting that Coras could see a tragic narrative even among people of low social status. Coras died in the St Bartholomew Day’s Massacre of 1572, in which many French Protestants were killed.
Jean de Coras Quotes in The Return of Martin Guerre
The The Return of Martin Guerre quotes below are all either spoken by Jean de Coras or refer to Jean de Coras. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 10
Quotes
Lawyers, royal officers, and would-be courtiers knew all about self-fashioning—to use Stephen Greenblatt’s term—about the molding of speech, manners, gesture, and conversation that helped them to advance, as did any newcomer to high position in the sixteenth century. Where does self-fashioning stop and lying begin?
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Chapter 11
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The originality of Coras’s vision of this peasant story should be stressed. The French tragicomedy ended happily and used aristocratic figures for its leading personages. […] That Coras could conceive of “a play of tragedy between persons of low estate” depended on his being able to identify himself somewhat with the rustic who had remade himself.
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In Coras’s “comitragic” version…one can approve the cuckolding of the once impotent and now faraway husband. Here Arnaud du Tilh becomes a kind of hero, a more real Martin Guerre than the hard-hearted man with the wooden leg. The tragedy is more in his unmasking than in his imposture.
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Jean de Coras Quotes in The Return of Martin Guerre
The The Return of Martin Guerre quotes below are all either spoken by Jean de Coras or refer to Jean de Coras. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 10
Quotes
Lawyers, royal officers, and would-be courtiers knew all about self-fashioning—to use Stephen Greenblatt’s term—about the molding of speech, manners, gesture, and conversation that helped them to advance, as did any newcomer to high position in the sixteenth century. Where does self-fashioning stop and lying begin?
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11
Quotes
The originality of Coras’s vision of this peasant story should be stressed. The French tragicomedy ended happily and used aristocratic figures for its leading personages. […] That Coras could conceive of “a play of tragedy between persons of low estate” depended on his being able to identify himself somewhat with the rustic who had remade himself.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
In Coras’s “comitragic” version…one can approve the cuckolding of the once impotent and now faraway husband. Here Arnaud du Tilh becomes a kind of hero, a more real Martin Guerre than the hard-hearted man with the wooden leg. The tragedy is more in his unmasking than in his imposture.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
