La faute de Narcisse et la leçon du droit : la philautie selon André Alciat, entre allégorie et discours juridique

Abstract

The jurist and humanist Andrea Alciato went down in history as the creator of the literary genre of the emblem, bound to a great fortune in the Renaissance and in the Classical period. However, his poetic work, put at the service of his conception of the teaching of law, also reflects the views of its author in the legal field. Indeed, in his emblem Philautia (1546), Alciato offers a true manifesto in favor of legal humanism through a very personal reading of the myth of Narcissus, dismissing back-to-back his opponents, jurists as well as philologists.

Keywords

• legal Humanism
• books of emblems
• allegory
• method
• Renaissance
• Alciato Andrea (1492-1550)