OUTREMEUSE, JEAN D'

born 1338? died 1399? French author of two romanticized but fascinating historical works. The first, La Geste de Lige, is a leisurely account, partly in prose, partly in verse, of the mythical history of his native city, Lige. Ly Myreur des Histors (The Mirror of History) is even more ambitious, purporting to be a history of the world from the Flood up to the 14th century. D'Outremeuse was no accurate historian, but his fictionalized accounts of the past offer insights into the workings of a medieval mind. It is also possible to discover, amidst a great deal of pure invention, unique evidence about the author's time and especially about literature in his age.