FROISSART, JEAN. – Chronicler and poet, b. at Valenciennes in 1337 (?), d. in Hainaut after 1404.
He is celebrated for his Chroniques, a vivid fresco of the wars in Europe from 1327 onward (which, among other things, provide many details about the popes), chronicles that are historiographically not very profound, not always reliable, often partial either toward the English or toward the French, but always sustained by a superb gift for storytelling born of a conscious love for the world of chivalry. Religious and devout, though worldly, F. bows before miracles, which, according to Sainte-Beuve, remain in him as remnants of the fabliaux dévots à la Joinville. – Vedi tav. CXX.
BIBL.: C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Converies du lundi, IX, Paris 1854, pp. 61–96; F. Chabod, s. V. ENOCH. Ital., XVI, (1932) pp. 104–105 and the bibliography cited there, to which add: F. S. Scheers, F., choulées and post, London 1930. Massimo Petrucchi