L’Empire des livres: imagination, matière d’Orient, et archive du possible aux Pays-Bas bourguignons An Empire of Books : Imagination, Matter of the East, and the Archive of the Possible in the Burgundian Low Countries

The dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, and their entourage, Jean de Créquy, Jean de Wavrin,
Jean de Croÿ, Louis of Gruuthuse, actively commissioned works (translations, prosifications, new works) dealing with
the « matter of the East ». I first offer a definition of this matter and then propose the libraries of the Burgundian
Low Countries as an archive of the future possibles: the whole of its holdings – histories, treatises, chansons de geste,
romances etc. – is a roadmap, a network of possible arrangements, for the launch of a new crusade and the creation of a
new empire, the Valois Empire of Burgundy. The Burgundian libraries are an empire of books ; more precisely, they are
a history of a coming empire. A reading of this « acting » library makes possible a rereading of Miguel de Cervantès’
critique of chivalry that Don Quixote represents.