L’acrostiche, arme politique?

Technique littéraire et dénonciation morale dans la poésie de Walahfrid Strabon

Abstract

Jean-Yves Tilliette: The acrostic, a political weapon? Literary technique and moral denunciation in the poetry of Walahfrid Strabo

The courtly poetry of the Carolingian period, following a practice that had begun in Constantine’s Roman Empire, liked to use acrostics to emphasise the names of the great figures it wished to celebrate. How-ever, Walahfrid Strabo’s use of this device in his Visio Wettini seems to be different: unlike usual, the reader has to pay close attention to decipher the names written vertically, including those of Abbot Waldo of Reichenau and Charlemagne, which the layout tends to hide. The hypothesis is that this unusual graphic layout reflects the severe judge-ment passed on these figures at a time when Louis the Pious and Bene-dict of Aniane were advocates of moral reform: from an eschatological point of view, between the erasure of their names, to which the damned are condemned, and the explicit proclamation of the names of the elect, an intermediate treatment is reserved for individuals whose shortcom-ings have earned them purgatorial punishments in the hereafter.