“Faisons du con le lai novel” Parody, Transtextuality and the Breton lai

This essay explores how the playful Lai du Lecheor works as a parody, using Gerard Genette’s theory of transtextuality to sharpen the understanding of the poem as an active transformation of the lai genre. Genette’s theory provides a helpful framework for thinking about Lecheor’s jaunty overturning of generic expectations and its creation of a lai novel. However, his model may need to be adapted further for use when considering a text’s parodic function within a dynamic manuscript context.