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Reading Debate Literature in Middle French: Approaches to a Courtly PlayThis paper concerns medieval debate literature, a literary genre common to a variety of European literatures. These literary dialogues were often written in verse and pitted against each other the opinions of two or more characters on a similar topic. Recent studies demonstrate the importance of looking at the genre in its social context. To complement these studies, which concern the effects of debate on poetic creation, this paper examines the actual situations in which these texts were read. Several clues from the corpus, which consists of all the debates in Middle French published to date, suggest that they should be viewed as public readings. Our research also highlights immediate post-readings of the text, or that the text acted as a trigger for playful and poetic activity in a group of readers as the group reading was taking place.