Jean d'Arras

Jean d'Arras (fl. 1392-94) was a 14th-century Northern French writer about whom little is known.

He collaborated with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in putting together a collection of stories entitled L'Évangile des quenouilles ("The spinners' gospel"). The frame story is a group of ladies at their spinning who relate the current theories on a great variety of subjects. The work is of considerable value for the light it throws on medieval manners, and for its echoes of folklore, sometimes deeply buried under layers of Christianity.

There were many editions of this book in the 15th and 16th centuries, one of which was printed by the early printer Wynkyn de Worde in English, as The Gospelles of Dystaves. A more modern edition (Collection Jannet) had a preface by Anatole France.

Jean d'Arras, perhaps the same, wrote at the request of John, duke of Berry, as he says in his introduction, a long prose romance variously called the Roman de Mélusine or the Chronique de Melusine part of Le Noble Hystoire de Lusignan ("The Noble History of the Lusignans"), in 1392-94. He dedicated the work to Marie of Valois, Duchess of Bar and expressed the hope that it would aid in the political education of her children.

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