L’amore “vissuto” e l’amore raccontato: la finzione autoriale di protagonismo del Joufroi de Poitiers

This paper focuses on the authorial approach to the «two-way affair» between life so-called and narrative in medieval romances, and deals specifically with the case of the Joufroi de Poitiers. The unfolding of the two stories narrated in this anonymous romance (the narrator’s story and the protagonist’s story) paradoxically demystifies the aspiration of metaleptic narrative to synchronize autobiography and fiction. The outcome of the romance (as the manuscript tradition allows us to read it) unveils the “fiction of protagonism” that synchronizes life with its narrative, on the basis of which medieval romances and then modern novels suggest that everybody is the leading character of his or her own story.