Di rumore e di luce: effetti son et lumière e forme dell'alterità numinosa nella matière de Bretagne

The paper aims to discuss the phono-luminous synaesthetic values of hierophany in Arthurian Old French literature. The danger of the beste glatissant in its later incarnations lies in a fatal interplay of glances and phono-luminous effects capable of enchanting and inducing mirages in the staring knight. The Arthurian space of the adventure is disseminated with light and sound traps, sensory islands governed by diabolical illusionists capable of creating hallucinatory scenarios. The Cité Gaste episode in Renaut de Beaujeau’s Bel Inconnu is entirely based on acoustic and luminous illusionistic enchantments, an implacable alternation of harmony and dissonance, darkness and light, with disturbing implications. The thunderous and blinding, noisy and incandescent aspects of the literary hierophanies we discuss stage the synaesthetic experience of what Rudolf Otto calls the experience of numinous, in which the moment of mysterium tremendum is succeeded by the moment of fascinans.