Anna Isabell Wörsdörfer

• While French Enlightenment seems philosophically dominated by a pejorative idea of the medieval past as the ‘Dark Ages’, this is only one conception among others. This article focuses on a different, a positive, representation of the Middle Ages in eighteenth-century literature, analyzing the chivalric novella Bliombéris (1784) by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. On the one hand, the eponymous hero is considered a ‘noble savage’ who develops into an ideal knight by education and successful learning – two central ideas of the Enlightenment period.While French Enlightenment seems philosophically dominated by a pejorative idea of the medieval past as the ‘Dark Ages’, this is only one conception among others. This article focuses on a different, a positive, representation of the Middle Ages in eighteenth-century literature, analyzing the chivalric novella Bliombéris (1784) by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. On the one hand, the eponymous hero is considered a ‘noble savage’ who develops into an ideal knight by education and successful learning – two central ideas of the Enlightenment period. On the other hand, the study shows how the medieval topic of the Matière de Bretagne, exclusively required by English literature for a long time, is finally regained by the French and is reintegrated into their national memory.…