Antoine de La Sale's 'La Sale': the cannonball and the prince's head

Leglu, C. (2011) Antoine de La Sale's 'La Sale': the cannonball and the prince's head. French Studies, 65 (2). pp. 143-155. ISSN 1468-2931 doi: 10.1093/fs/knq252

Abstract/Summary

The elderly tutor La Sale's didactic treatise for his charges (dated 1451) includes an eye-witness account of the siege of Anjou-held Naples by the Aragonese in 1438. It narrates the accidental death (or miracle, depending on the perspective of the chroniclers) of the infante Pedro of Castille, brother of King Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon. This article explores how "La Sale", an adapted version of the Middle French translation of Valerius Maximus's 'Facta et dicta memorabilia', frames and skews the anecdote towards an exploration of the reliability and authority of the tutor-narrator.