Le Meneur de louves : a rewriting of Historia Francorum

Abstract

Rachilde, a prolific French author writing during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, published Le Meneur de louves in 1905. Although it was considered a historical novel by critics, its plot is a reworking of books nine to twenty of Volume 2 of the French translation (Histoire ecclésiastique des Francs) of the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours. Reworking of earlier texts is a technique frequently used by Rachilde, and in this novel this technique is very evident as a result of the constant presence of the hypotext in the hypertext. Rachilde is also regarded as a Decadent writer, and despite preserving some of the features of the source text, she adapts the plot by incorporating characteristics of the Decadence movement of the late 19th century.