Rewriting Medieval French Literature: Studies in Honour of Jane H. M. Taylor 9783110639032, 9783110638370

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Rewriting Medieval French Literature

Rewriting Medieval French Literature Studies in Honour of Jane H. M. Taylor Edited by Leah Tether and Keith Busby

The initial version of this book included incorrect DOIs. All DOIs have been replaced and corrected. ISBN 978-3-11-063837-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-063903-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-063862-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934378 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover Image: Scribe writing in his study, Méliadus de Leonnoys (Paris: Denis Janot, 1533), sig. iir; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés Y2–56 Printing and Binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents List of Contributors

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List of Illustrations

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Jessica Taylor Foreword: Jane H. M. Taylor

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Keith Busby and Leah Tether Introduction: Rewriting Medieval French Literature

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Logan E. Whalen The Legacy of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle: Rewriting the Charroi de Nîmes, 9 the Couronnement de Louis, and the Prise d’Orange Mireille Séguy Back to the Future: The Conte du Graal and the First Continuation in the light 31 of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran Christine Ferlampin-Acher Artus de Bretagne, An “Extensional” Romance: Comparing Ysaïe le Triste, Perceforest, and Artus de Bretagne 53 Ad Putter The Popularity of the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Continuations in Medieval England and Scotland 85 Anne Salamon and Patrick Moran The Chapel on the Borderland: Perlesvaus retold by Fouke Fitz Warin Keith Busby Jofroi de Waterford Rewrites Troy and Rome

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Nathalie Koble Gifts Given and Received: The Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier, a multimedia present 141

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Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma What Makes a Narrative Cycle Work? The example of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript 157 Richard Trachsler From Verse to Prose, a Matter of Size? Length and lacunae in French mises 181 en prose Carol J. Chase Retouching the Hero’s Portrait in the Burgundian Prose Erec: The significance of the insignificant 193 Maria Colombo Timelli All Around the “Table”, or How to Read Galien Rethoré (Antoine Vérard, 213 1500) Laura Chuhan Campbell and Leah Tether Printers’ Prefaces and Rewriting in Arthurian Romance

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Joan Tasker Grimbert Passionate Friendship in Pierre Sala’s Chevalier au lion (Yvain, Lunete, and 261 the Lion) Jean-Claude Mühlethaler From Rewriting to Recycling: Medieval material in Pierre Sala and Jeanne Flore 281 Michelle Szkilnik Guinglain in Arcadia

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Thomas Hinton Rewriting Renart: Medieval obscenity for modern children Elizabeth Archibald 339 Afterword Index

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List of Contributors Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies and Principal of St Cuthbert’s Society at Durham University. She is the author of Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Variations (1991) and Incest and the Medieval Imagination (2001), and the co-editor of A Companion to Malory with A. S. G. Edwards (1996), and The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend with Ad Putter (2009). Bart Besamusca is Professor of Middle Dutch Textual Culture from an International Perspective in the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies at Utrecht University. He has published widely on medieval narrative literature, manuscripts and early printed editions, and manages the research tool Arthurian Fiction in Medieval Europe (www.arthurianfiction.org). He is currently directing the research project “The Multilingual Dynamics of the Literary Culture of Medieval Flanders, c. 1200 – c. 1500”. Frank Brandsma is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature (Middle Ages) at Utrecht University and the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies. His research focuses on narrative technique and audience in Arthurian romance, especially on the presentation and sharing of emotions. With Carolyne Larrington and Corinne Saunders, he edited Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature (2015). Keith Busby is Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous books and articles on Medieval French Literature. His most recent books are French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds (2017) and The French Works of Jofroi de Waterford (2020). Carol J. Chase is Professor Emerita of Modern Languages and Literatures at Knox College. Her research focuses on Arthurian literature; her interests include narrative technique, text and image, and manuscript work. She has published numerous articles on the thirteenth-century Estoire del Saint Graal and the fifteenth-century Burgundian prose Erec; she has also translated both texts into modern English. She has also published studies on the prose Lancelot. Laura Chuhan Campbell is Assistant Professor in Translation Studies and French at Durham University. Her research focuses primarily on translation and rewriting in medieval literature, particularly French and Italian cultural exchanges, as well as Gender Studies and Ecocriticism. She is the author of The Medieval Merlin Tradition in France and Italy: Prophecy, Paradox, and Translatio (2017) and co-author of The Bristol Merlin (2021). Maria Colombo Timelli is Professor of the History of the French Language and Medieval French Literature at Università degli Studi di Milano. A specialist in Middle French, she has published many studies and critical editions of works from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on mises en prose.

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Christine Ferlampin-Acher is Professor at the Université Rennes 2 and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Her research mostly focuses on late-medieval French Arthurian texts, such as Perceforest and Artus de Bretagne. She is the editor of Artus de Bretagne (2017). Joan Tasker Grimbert is Professor Emerita of French and Medieval Studies at the Catholic University of America. Her research focuses primarily on Arthurian literature and film. Her books include Yvain dans le mirroir: une poétique de la réflexion dans le Chevalier au lion de Chrétien de Troyes (1988), Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook (1995), A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes (2005) with co-editor Norris J. Lacy, and Chrétien de Troyes in Prose: The Burgundian Erec and Cligés (2011) with co-translator Carol J. Chase. Thomas Hinton is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Exeter. His publications include The Conte du Graal Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance (2012), and a special issue of the journal French Studies on the medieval library co-edited with Luke Sunderland (2016). He has also published on Arthurian literature, Occitan love lyric, and medieval multilingualism, especially Anglo-French. Nathalie Koble is Maîtresse de Conférences at the École Normale Supérieure and the École Polytechnique (Palaiseau) in Paris, where she teaches medieval language and literature. Her research focuses on courtly literature, as well as the memory of the Middle Ages in contemporary art and literature. Amongst her most recent publications are Les Suites du roman de Merlin en prose: des romans de lecteurs (2020), Le Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier au Lion (2021), and Décamérez! Des nouvelles de Boccace (2021). Patrick Moran is Associate Professor of Medieval French Literature at the University of British Columbia. His research mainly focuses on Arthurian literature, cyclicity, and medieval thought. He is the author of Lectures cycliques: le réseau inter-romanesque dans les cycles du Graal du XIIIe siècle (2014). Jean-Claude Mühletahler is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Lausanne (Switzerland). He has edited and translated the poetry of Charles d’Orléans and François Villon; recently, he published a translation of the Quinze Joies de mariage (ed. Jean Rychner). His publications include studies and articles on satire, parody (L’Ecrivain face aux puissants, 2019), and courtly poetry in manuscript and print culture. Other areas of interest are the relationship between French and Italian culture, food, and literature, and the reception of Antiquity from the Middle Ages to modern times (Enée le mal-aimé, 2016). Ad Putter is Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bristol. He has written various books on the Gawain-poet and on verse form. With Elizabeth Archibald he has edited The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (2009) and with Myra Stokes the Penguin edition of The Works of the Gawain Poet (2014).

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Anne Salamon is Assistant Professor of Romance Philology at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses primarily on fifteenth-century literature, from the point of view of ecdotics, codicology, and material philology. Her main area of expertise is universal chronicles, compilations, and translations. She edited Le Traictié des Neuf Preux by Sébastien Mamerot (2016). Mireille Séguy is Professor of Medieval Language and Literature at the Université de Paris VIII‐Vincennes/Saint-Denis. She has published numerous works on the paths of literary invention in the fictions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well as on the rereading of medieval forms and images in contemporary creation and criticism, with a particular interest in the time and memory of such works. Michelle Szkilnik is Professor of Medieval Literature at the Université de Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle and Co-Director of its Centre d’Etudes du Moyen Âge. A specialist of narrative literature, she has published articles and books about medieval French romances from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Jessica Taylor is Managing Director of PRELOADED, a BAFTA-winning games studio, working in immersive technologies and connected play with organisations such as the BBC, Magic Leap, Google, LEGO. Prior to PRELOADED, as VP, Experience Design at Antenna International, she worked with clients such as MoMA, Tate, the Vatican, the Royal Collection, and the Sagrada Familia. Jessica also spent ten years as a TV producer/director, making films about the arts, history, and science for international broadcasters such as the BBC, Discovery, the History Channel, Channel 4, and PBS. Leah Tether is Professor of Medieval Literature and Publishing at the University of Bristol. She is the author of The Continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval: Content and Construction, Extension and Ending (2012), Publishing the Grail in Medieval and Renaissance France (2017), The General Reader and the Academy: Medieval French Literature and Penguin Classics (2019), and co-author of The Bristol Merlin (2021). Richard Trachsler is Professor of Medieval French and Occitan Literature at the Universität Zürich having previously held positions at the Universities of Paris IV-Sorbonne and Göttingen. His main interest lies in medieval narrative literature and text editing, on which he has published extensively. His interest in critical editions has led him to researching manuscript contexts, in particular of fabliaux. He is currently working, with an international team of colleagues, on a new edition of the Ovide Moralisé and is co-directing a critical edition of the Arthurian Guiron le Courtois-cycle. Logan E. Whalen is Professor of Medieval French Literature at the University of Oklahoma. He has published two books on Marie de France, Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory (2008), and A Companion to Marie de France (2011). His most recently published book is a co-translation with Catherine M. Jones and William W. Kibler, An Old French Trilogy: Texts from the William of Orange Cycle (2020).

List of Illustrations Jessica Taylor, “Foreword: Jane H. M. Taylor” Fig. : Jane H. M. Taylor (photo: Jessica Taylor) XIII Fig. : Jessica Taylor and Jane H. M. Taylor in Africa (photo: Jessica Taylor)

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Nathalie Koble, “Gifts Given and Received: The Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier, a multimedia present” Fig. : The lady seated in a garden next to her lover-poet in the company of her unicorn and holding a mirror; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. , fol. r 145 Maria Colombo Timelli, “All Around the ‘Table’, or How to Read Galien Rethoré (Antoine Vérard, 1500)” Fig. : Fig. :

Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly – Musée Condé, IV–G–, fols Ar and 219 r Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly – Musée Condé, IV–G–, fol. v 220

Laura Chuhan Campbell and Leah Tether, “Printers’ Prefaces and Rewriting in Arthurian Romance” Fig. :

Writer in his study as depicted in Perceforest (Paris: Galliot Du Pré, ), sig. Ñiiv; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés Y –  236

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Jessica Taylor

Foreword: Jane H. M. Taylor

Fig. 1: Jane H. M. Taylor (photo: Jessica Taylor)

Jane’s life has been fuelled by a love of adventure. Where could this have come from? Perhaps from her love of the mountains, which has seen her crest impressive peaks in multiple continents over the years? Perhaps from her potholing, dare-devil father, who capitalized on her size as a small child to send her deep into newly discovered caves (having just blown them up using the dynamite kept in a drawer at home!)? I attribute Jane’s love of adventure to an unquenchable curiosity and an enviable trust in the universe, which have seen her continually take on challenges throughout her eight decades. Jane was born in West London, in 1941. Her parents, Jack and Muriel Burnett, met as undergraduate scholars and communists in Oxford in the 1930s. Jack was a civil engineer who worked on RADAR during World War Two. Muriel taught English and linguistics.

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A London war baby, Jane’s first memory was of an air raid siren. Before long, she was evacuated from London to her paternal grandmother’s house in Norham Gardens in Oxford. In 1953, the Burnetts moved from London to Hexham in Northumberland, a very happy move for Jane. Jack was a keen mountaineer and took his family away at weekends and for longer holidays in his badly converted military ambulance. Jane was enthusiastic – unlike her sister and mother – and she and her father walked extensively together in Northumberland and in the Highlands, with Jane often trailing several mountain tops behind him. At school, Jane excelled in literature and languages and she longed to visit France. In 1957, she jumped at the offer of a French exchange. So it came about that Jane’s first trip on her own was made to France aged 15, unaccompanied. The journey involved multiple trains, a ferry crossing and treks between stations in London and Paris. Her arrival in Macon, exhausted, at her French family’s house, was made all the more memorable by the “lemonade” with which they greeted her. It was only when she fell up the stairs later that evening, that she realised that she’d been drinking her first glasses of Champagne. Jane was hooked. Jane won a scholarship to her mother’s college, St Hilda’s, Oxford, to read French. But before going up, she embarked upon another French sojourn, this time as an au pair to the seven unruly sons of a family living just outside Paris. All previous au pairs had left within weeks; Jane stayed the full contracted six months, keeping order (just about) and building strong bonds. After she left, all the boys were sent to a military boarding school. Going up to Oxford in 1960, Jane revelled in others’ encouragement and belief in her. She joined the Oxford University Mountaineering Club (OUMC) and quickly became part of a strong community that endures today. She met Colin Taylor, a Physics doctoral student, and passionate mountaineer, and in him, she had found another adventurous spirit. They married in 1964, a year into Jane’s DPhil, after a term spent in Paris. Still working on her DPhil, Jane was appointed to the French Department at Manchester University in 1966, while Colin took a job nearby at the Risley Atomic Energy Authority. The young couple enjoyed many mountain adventures together – in the Dolomites, Alps, Scotland. They were both still independently spirited, Jane continuing her intellectual life in Paris, Colin travelling to the Himalayas. Just after I was born in 1974, Colin was tragically killed in an accident in the mountains above Zermatt in Switzerland. Of course, this hit Jane very hard, as did her mother’s death just a few years later, and times were tough for our little family. Despite this, they were still full of adventure: a sabbatical to Paris in the early 80s, skiing and mountaineering trips and annual visits to the Vercors.

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Jane’s friends in Manchester, in the French Department and beyond, provided great support for her during this time. Jane met and married John Gurd in 1987, a professor of Computer Science at Manchester University. Her life – and mine – was transformed and as a new family, we travelled widely, hut to hutting in Austria, interrailing around Europe, and climbing Half Dome in Yosemite on a trip to California. Jane and John enjoyed two sabbaticals in Boston, Jane at Harvard and John at MIT. In 1990, Jane secured a fellowship at St Hilda’s and moved to Oxford for a decade. Her first tutorial lasted over two hours – and she was thrilled. It was here that Jane’s love of teaching and ability to connect with students really came into its own. Throughout her career, Jane has always been passionate about scholarship, but equally committed to her students. She champions them, supports them to find their voices, and encourages them to reach higher – and delights in their achievements. This diaspora is now extensive, global, and extremely successful! With a flourish, Jane rolled the dice again in 2001. She and John moved their main home from Manchester to the Cumbrian hills and she returned to the north east for her final post. Her dual role as Principal of Collingwood College and Professor of French at Durham University was perhaps the most fulfilling of her professional life. Jane was able to combine her leadership experience at scale alongside her teaching and increasingly prolific publishing schedule – a winning formula. Officially retiring in 2009, Jane has of course done nothing of the sort, and publishes widely, chairs committees, speaks at conferences and stays “in the business”. The adventuring has continued, too, with trips to the wilderness of the Wind Rivers in Wyoming, another sabbatical – in California this time – and trekking in the Himalayas. In 2006, Jane and I went to Africa together – to Kenya and Tanzania. We had a wonderful time walking and camping in the Crater Highlands, a volcanic region of Tanzania but I suspect if asked what she remembers most about that trip, Jane would say the little school we visited in the middle of nowhere and the pupils to whom she managed to send school books and equipment as soon as she returned to England. Jane remains an inspiration to so many of us in her adventuring, her teaching and in her life – and long may it continue. It is entirely fitting that she should be the honoree of this Festschrift. To those organizing it, thank you for recognizing the contribution Jane has made not only to medieval French scholarship but also to the lives of so many of her students throughout her professional life.

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Fig. 2: Jessica Taylor and Jane H. M. Taylor in Africa (photo: Jessica Taylor)

Keith Busby and Leah Tether

Introduction: Rewriting Medieval French Literature

During her academic career, Jane H. M. Taylor has produced a world-class research record on French literature of the later Middle Ages. Indeed, tribute has already been paid to the significant influence of Taylor’s scholarship by the appearance of a previous Festschrift (Dixon 2010), celebrating her life’s work on later medieval French literature. Taylor, however, has never been one to rest on her laurels. In the last twenty-five or so years, and perhaps most notably since her retirement, she has foregrounded in her research some of the preoccupations with core processes of medieval literary creation that had partially shaped her earlier work (Taylor 1996, 1998, 2004 inter alia), and has developed a profile as one of the world’s foremost scholars of medieval “rewriting” (see, as just some examples, Taylor 2007, 2008, 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2017, 2023). Her focus has been on literary works composed and initially transmitted in medieval and Renaissance France, but the practice of rewriting – including modes such as continuation, translation, and adaptation – is a process that lies at the very heart of medieval literary tradition in all vernaculars, as well as in medieval textual traditions more generally. The reinterpretation of narratives across chronological, social, and/or linguistic boundaries represents not only a crucial feature of textual transmission, but also a locus of cultural exchange. In the last ten years or so, scholarship has seen an exponential rise in interest in the practice of rewriting, perhaps understandably amongst Taylor’s own students, who are now setting agendas of their own (for example, Armstrong 2010; Campbell 2017; Tether 2012, 2017), but also amongst a wider community of medievalists and early-modernists, who habitually turn to Taylor’s famously lively and always meticulous work for methodological inspiration (amongst the many see, for example, Rockwell 1995; Szkilnik 2005; Kelly 2010; Grimbert and Chase 2011; Bußmann 2011; Edlich-Muth 2014; Moran 2014; Griffin 2015). Surprisingly, however, despite a growing number of studies of rewriting in relation to a given text or group of texts, what has not yet appeared – and thus what makes a volume such as the present one timely –, is an up-to-date collected volume of essays, presented in English, on the rewriting of medieval French literature more broadly. There is, of course, the excellent proceedings volume entitled The Medieval “Opus”, edited by Douglas Kelly in 1996, but scholarship on medieval rewriting has moved on considerably in the intervening twenty years, due in no small part to Taylor’s contributions. A handful of more recent collections of https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-004

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studies on rewriting do exist, but in other languages. Published in German, but not specific to medieval Ur-Texts, is Wiedererzählen (Schumann et al 2015). More focused on literature originating from the medieval period, and France, is Réécritures (Kullmann and Lalonde 2015), though presented only in French. Similarly, Übertragungen (Bußmann et al 2005) covers rewriting of medieval German and is published in German. The present volume thus hopes to bring the topic of the transhistorical rewriting of medieval French literature to a broader audience, enabling the methodological and theoretical models outlined to be accessible to, and adoptable by, scholars working on rewriting in all vernaculars. That such an approach is warranted is evidenced by similar recently-published endeavours on the Middle English context, such as the Festschrift for Helen Cooper, Romance Rewritten (Archibald, Leitch, and Saunders 2018), and The Transmission of Medieval Romance (Putter and Jefferson 2018). All of these books serve to evidence both the current appetite in scholarship for the subject of rewriting, and the significance of Taylor’s contribution to the field thanks to her regular appearances in both the lists of contributors and the bibliographies contained within them. To put it succinctly, Taylor’s research has demonstrated to scholars the world over that the adaptation of material to conform to the expectations, values, or literary tastes of a different audience has the potential to reveal important information regarding the acculturation and reception of medieval texts. Written by Taylor’s friends, colleagues, and former students to honour both the considerable platform she has given to the later repackaging and reinterpretation of medieval French literature, and the vim and enthusiasm she herself has injected into its study, this collected volume of sixteen essays is dedicated to examining examples of rewriting practice from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries. The volume is organized broadly chronologically, to enable the reader to witness rewriting practice as it develops across the ages. It aims to offer not only a fitting tribute to Taylor’s remarkable career, but also a timely consolidation of the very latest research in the field, thus creating a go-to volume for scholars of rewriting in all contexts.

Editors’ personal tributes to Jane H. M. Taylor I can’t remember when I first met Jane Taylor, and I don’t expect she can, either. It must have been at an Arthurian Congress (Regensburg in 1979?) or one of the British Branch weekends in the late 1970s or early 1980s. That I can’t remember the time or place doesn’t mean that the meeting didn’t make an impression on me (I can’t speak for Jane). On the contrary, I remember being at once intimidated by Jane and doubtful whether her work on what I (as a Chrétien man) fool-

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ishly considered degenerate and corrupt fifteenth-century prose was of any interest to me. How wrong I was on both counts. I am no longer intimidated, albeit still in awe, and avidly read everything she writes as a matter of course. When we met, Jane was still in the immediate aftermath of personal tragedy, but her strength of purpose and devotion to teaching and scholarship enabled her to overcome her loss. Over the years, our encounters became more and more frequent, and I sought them out, not only during conferences. Visits to Circular Road in Manchester and St Hilda’s College in Oxford, pints in pubs and dinners in Thai and Indian restaurants cemented a friendship which continues to be one of the joys of my life. I also stayed in her Paris apartment on the Rue Raynouard. As a friend, scholar, and teacher, Jane is open and forthright. She doesn’t always tell you what you may want to hear, a quality that has also stood her in good stead dealing with both students and colleagues as Dean of St Hilda’s and Principal of Collingwood College in Durham. You don’t mess with Jane, but why would you want to? As Dean and Principal, Jane willingly shouldered her part of the administrative burden, knowing that if you want something done properly, it is sometimes best to do it yourself. Yet these tasks she undertook not just from a sense of duty, but also from a desire to improve the lives of others. Jane is one of those rare scholars who writes beautifully and clearly, even on complex theoretical matters. You receive the impression that each sentence is carefully weighed before becoming part of a chapter, article, or conference presentation, yet there is nothing contrived about Jane’s writing. Whether it be Villon, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century prose romance, or late medieval recueils, Jane is my “go-to” person, as she is for many of us and our students. If I am unfamiliar with a text she is commenting on, I want to go and read it; if I do know the text, I always wonder “why did I never think of that?” The question is rhetorical, of course. Jane’s scholarship is always perfectly balanced between sound textual analysis and historical contextualization, often grounded in ideas of influential thinkers such as Pierre Bourdieu, yet without losing sight of the medieval text. In Oxford, Manchester, and Durham, Jane has been variously student and colleague of Elspeth Kennedy, Eugène Vinaver, and Fanni Bogdanow, to name but a few. If her institutional career has been a traditional British one, her scholarly activity has earned her the respect and admiration of the medievalist community on both sides of the Channel and both sides of the Atlantic. This collection of essays, commissioned to pay tribute to Jane by exploring one of the defining themes of her scholarship, shows how wide her reach has been and how much we are all in her debt in so many ways. Keith Busby

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Unlike Keith, I remember the exact moment that I first encountered Jane Taylor, though it will probably have been of little consequence to her. As a third-year undergraduate at Durham, I was coming towards the end of my year abroad as a Klassenassistentin in Germany. I had selected some options for my final year, amongst them one that I thought sounded fun: “The Romance of the Grail”. The module was to be led by a new member of staff and, I’ll confess, selecting it had been far less about its focus on medieval literature, and far more because it promised to cover some cinema, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A bit of light relief at the end of my degree, I thought. I’d had the privilege of having been taught by fine medievalists, such as Jenny Britnell, Ann Moss, and Neil Thomas, but it’s fair to say my fondness for medieval literature had not yet formed. In fact, I’d already drafted a proposal for an MA by Research on modern Austrian literature. Whilst in Germany, I received a bundle from the School Office, confirming my choices and offering pre-reading lists so I could prepare for the return to study. For “The Romance of the Grail”, the documentation also included a letter – yes, a letter – from its convenor, one Dr Jane Taylor. So enthusiastic and positive was this letter, I remember to this day telling my mum that this must be a freshly-minted academic, barely out of a PhD. Needless to say, I was in for a surprise. Not because Jane was not the epitome of how she came across in her letter, but because she was a well-established academic, a College Principal and a past President of the International Arthurian Society no less, whose enthusiasm for the work she did seemed not to have gone the way of that of a few other senior staff members at Durham. She was inspirational in the classroom, and barely two weeks of our module went by before I had become a convert to Old French. But again, now I look back, perhaps it was less the content than the delivery. I’d always struggled to get more than “very good” grades at university, but just one tutorial with Jane was revelatory. She put her finger on what I was doing wrong immediately, and with that transformed my marks profile. The issue was a basic one, but it had taken Jane to see it. I knew then that she was someone that I needed as a mentor and as a role model, and so – much to my German tutor’s dismay – I withdrew my MA application and wrote a new one to work with Jane. And the rest, as they say is history. But I don’t want to give the impression that Jane was “just” an excellent tutor. It’s true that throughout my research degrees, and well beyond, Jane – as any good tutor – continued to fill up the margins of my draft work with helpful, considered advice for improvement (though I will say, in terms of volume, I think she is unsurpassed: ask any of her students just how averse to white space Jane is, with her sometimes even turning the page over to fill up the all-

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too-blank reverse side…). Much more important than this, though, is the friendship I enjoy with her – as well as the other relationships that our initial connection as supervisor/supervisee allowed me to develop. For instance, were it not for Jane, I’d not have met Keith so early in my career, and been so lucky as to have his help and support since that fateful day in Kalamazoo (admittedly, the price for such support is always the promise of curry, but this still strikes me as a fair exchange). There’s also the global family of “Jane-ites” (Jane’s supervisees), with whom you seem automatically to form an immediate, life-long connection, just by virtue of knowing what it is to receive a “Jane letter” (a mildly terrifying device Jane uses to tell you politely, but also firmly, that you need to sort something out in your work, and sharpish!). These days, as well as still turning to Jane for research advice, I feel lucky to have had many opportunities for long, surprisingly strenuous(!), walks in her Lakeland surrounds, accompanied by her perfect-borrowed dog, Tess, and always followed by an amazing home-cooked dinner and just a bit too much wine in her hilltop home (my husband, a German, claims Jane’s cabbage salad is “erst-klassig” – praise indeed). Out in the wilds of Cumbria, usually dealing with last night’s hangover whilst Jane appears entirely unaffected, I’ve lost count of the times she’s said “it’ll just be a bit of a scramble, honey”, only to be faced with a vertical rock face up which Jane seems to glide with ease whilst I, on hands and knees, do my best to keep up. In a sense, though, I’ve always had that feeling of following in her wake, and the contributions to this volume give the impression that most of us feel that way. This is probably why I genuinely felt I’d finally made it when Jane asked, not all that long ago, if I might like to write an article together. I’m as proud of this article, which will eventually appear in Arthurian Literature (Taylor and Tether 2023), as I am of anything else I’ve written. Standing on the shoulders of giants, indeed. Leah Tether

References Archibald, Elizabeth, Megan Leitch, and Corinne Saunders, eds. Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018. Armstrong, Adrian. “Printing and Metrical Naturalisation: Jean Molinet’s Neuf Preux de Gourmandise.” Essays in Later Medieval French Literature: The Legacy of Jane Taylor. Ed. Rebecca Dixon. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. 143 – 59. Bußmann, Britta. Wiedererzählen, Weitererzählen und Beschreiben: der jüngere Titurel als ekphrastischer Roman. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011.

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Bußmann, Britta, Albrecht Hausmann, Annelie Kreft, and Cornelia Logemann, eds. Übertragungen: Formen und Konzepte von Reproduktion in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Formen und Konzepte von Reproduktion in Mittelalter und Fruher Neuzeit. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2005. Campbell, Laura Chuhan, The Medieval Merlin Tradition in France and Italy: Prophecy, Paradox, and Translatio. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Dixon, Rebecca, ed. Essays in Later Medieval French Literature: The Legacy of Jane Taylor. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Edlich-Muth, Miriam. Malory and his European Contemporaries: Adapting Late Medieval Arthurian Romance Collections. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Griffin, Miranda. Transforming Tales: Rewriting Metamorphosis in Medieval French Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Grimbert, Joan Tasker, and Carol J. Chase, trans. Chrétien de Troyes in Prose: The Burgundian Erec et Cligés. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Kelly, Douglas. “Fictio Personae and Subtle Rewriting in Later Medieval French Poetry.” Essays in Later Medieval French Literature: The Legacy of Jane Taylor. Ed. Rebecca Dixon. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. 91 – 106. Kelly, Douglas, ed. The Medieval “Opus”: Imitation, Rewriting and Transmission in the French Tradition: Proceedings of the Symposium Held at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, October 5 – 7 1995, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Kullmann, Dorothea, and Shaun Lalonde, eds. Réécritures: Regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Toronto: PIMS, 2015. Moran, Patrick. Lectures cycliques: Le réseau inter-romanesque dans les cycles du Graal du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2016. Putter, Ad, and Judith A. Jefferson, eds. The Transmission of Medieval Romance: Metre, Manuscripts and Early Prints. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018. Rockwell, Paul Vincent. Rewriting Resemblance in Medieval French Romance: Ceci n’est pas un graal. New York, NY and London: Garland, 1995. Schumann, Elke, Elisabeth Gülich, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, and Stefan Pfänder, eds. Wiedererzählen: Formen und Funktionen einer kulturellen Praxis. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Medieval Adaptations and Translations of Chrétien’s Works.” A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. 202 – 13. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting: Translation, Continuation and Adaptation.” Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature. Ed. Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 162 – 82. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Experiments in Fiction: Framing and Reframing Romance at the End of the Middle Ages.” Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes 30 (2015a). 287 – 95. Taylor, Jane H. M. “From courtoisie to galanterie: What Becomes of Tristan in the Renaissance?” Réécritures: Regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Ed. Dorothea Kullmann and Shaun Lalonde. Toronto: PIMS, 2015b. 83 – 94.

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Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Arthur in Manuscript in Renaissance France: The case of Ysaïe le Triste, Gotha, MS A 688.” Journal of the International Arthurian Society 1 (2013a): 140 – 160. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting Chrétien Three Centuries Later or More…” Chrétien de Troyes et la tradition du roman arthurien en vers. Ed. Annie Combes, Patrizia Serra, Richard Trachsler and Maurizio Virdis. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013b. 329 – 341. Taylor, Jane H. M. “‘Minds of the Vulgar Sort’: The Arthur of the Renaissance and the Anxiety of Reception.” 22e Congrès de la Société Internationale Arthurienne, Rennes 2008. Formerly available at . Taylor, Jane H. M. “Antiquarian Arthur: Publishing the Round Table in Sixteenth-Century France.” L’Héritage de Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. William W. Kibler. Cahiers de recherche médiévales et humanistes 14 (2007): 127 – 42. Taylor, Jane H. M. “La Reine-Fée in the Roman de Perceforest: Rewriting, Rethinking.” Arthurian Studies in Honor of P. J. C. Field. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. 81 – 91. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Significance of the Insignificant: Reading Reception in the Burgundian Prose Cligès.” Fifteenth-Century Studies. 24 (1998). 183 – 97. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Sense of a Beginning: Genealogy and Plenitude in Late Medieval Narrative Cycles.” Transexualities: Of Cycles and Cyclicity in Medieval French Literature. Ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996. 93 – 123. Taylor, Jane H. M., and Leah Tether. “Navigating and Indexing Arthurian Romance in Benoît Rigaud’s edition of Lancelot du Lac (1591).” Arthurian Literature 38 (forthcoming 2023). Tether, Leah. Publishing the Grail in Medieval and Renaissance France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Tether, Leah. The Continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval: Content and Construction, Extension and Ending. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012.

Logan E. Whalen

The Legacy of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle: Rewriting the Charroi de Nîmes, the Couronnement de Louis, and the Prise d’Orange At the beginning of the 1943 French film, L’Éternel retour,¹ the following quotation scrolls across the screen: “Éternel retour […] ce titre, emprunté à Nietzsche, veut dire, ici, que les mêmes légendes peuvent renaître sans que leurs héros s’en doutent” [Eternal return […] this title, borrowed from Nietzsche, means here that the same legends may be reborn without their heroes being aware of it] (Delannoy and Cocteau 1943).² Whilst Jean Cocteau was specifically referring in this case to the legendary love between the medieval couple, Tristan and Isolde, reborn in 1940s France through the film characters, Patrice and Nathalie, other heroes from early French medieval literature have known the same legacy throughout the centuries. The stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Charlemagne, and Roland, to name a few, have even survived to the modern era in popular culture. To this list of heroes that transcend time and who made their appearance in different genres of different cultures must be added the name of William of Orange, the central figure of the early French epic cycle that bears his name. The Geste de Guillaume d’Orange is the largest of the cycles of chansons de geste and includes twenty-four poems from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that recount the exploits of William of Orange and his extended family.³ The literary William of Orange is based partly on the historical William of Orange (755 – 812), Charlemagne’s cousin, who was Count of Toulouse from 790 until 811. The popularity of the literary and historical figures is well attested in the early Middle Ages, even before the composition of the epic songs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that comprise the William of Orange cycle. Andrew Taylor (2001, 51)  The film was released in the United States in 1948 under the title Love Eternal. See IMDb, L’Éternel retour.  All translations are my own except those for the verse versions of the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange which are taken from Jones et al. (2020).  See Jones (2014, 32– 33). The Geste de Guillaume d’Orange is also known as the Geste des Narbonnais, after the family of Aymeri of Narbonne, William’s father, and the Geste de Monglane, for Garin of Monglane, William’s grandfather. For a list of the texts in this cycle see Suard (2011, 117– 120). See also his discussion of the cycle on 131– 161. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-005

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has noted that epic heroes like Charlemagne, Roland, Olivier, and William of Orange often appeared in sermons of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: Medieval preachers often referred to the epic heroes and their gesta to stir up their audience or drive home a point – thus providing one of the major sources of evidence for the circulation of these stories. […] Hugh of Avranches’s [1047– 1101] chaplain Gerold was not the only cleric to sing the praises of Guillaume d’Orange. Orderic [1075 – 1142] tells how Anthony, a monk from Winchester, ‘complying with our eager desire,’ brought the story of Guillaume to Orderic’s monastery of St. Evroul one winter, and how Orderic managed to copy only part of it because of the cold.

Moreover, William of Orange’s name appears in the eleventh century in the Nota Emilianense (c. 1065 – 1075), where he is mentioned as one of Charlemagne’s peers, and the Vita sancti Wilhelmi (1125) recounts the literary hero’s taking of Orange.⁴ This hero of the Geste de Guillaume d’Orange, also known as Guillaume Fierebrace [Strong-Armed William] and Guillaume au Cort Nes [Short-Nosed William], is renowned for his boisterous laughter, his loyalty to his king, Louis the Pious, and his exceptional strength. These traits are highlighted in three twelfthcentury verse texts composed in decasyllabic assonanced laisses that constitute the heart of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle: the Couronnement de Louis (c. 1150), the Charroi de Nîmes (c. 1150), and the Prise d’Orange (c. 1160). The texts were composed during the Crusades (1095 – 1291), at the time of feudalism, and bear themes common to chansons de geste of this period: faithful service of a vassal to his lord, the lord’s protection of his vassals, military exploits, and the Christian-Muslim conflict. To convey these themes, the poems use humour and parody to relate William’s heroic deeds, his struggles against Saracens, his relationship with his king, and his love of a Saracen queen. The manuscript tradition of this trilogy of texts bears witness to its auspicious reputation in the Middle Ages.⁵ Eight medieval manuscripts preserve the three texts sequentially so that “they form a virtually continuous narrative of William’s (fictional) early victories against enemies of the church and the crown” (Jones et al. 2020, 3).⁶

 Much of the information here and in the next paragraph comes from the Introduction of Jones et al. (2020, 2– 3).  In this study, I often refer to the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange as a trilogy, a word from the title of our translation of these three texts (Jones et al. 2020).  The manuscripts follow four principal redactions: A, B, C, and D. For a list of the manuscripts, see Jones et al. (2020, 19 n. 10); we translate the AB redaction. For a thorough discussion of the

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The current study examines how this verse trilogy was rewritten into prose three centuries after its composition, specifically how the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange are recast in the fifteenth century in the prose version of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle known as the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange. Space does not permit a comparison of all episodes of the three texts under consideration here as they are represented in the fifteenth-century romance and the twelfth-century cyclical verse versions. Consequently, the following comparison is necessarily limited in scope and represents differences between the two texts I feel are the most striking.⁷ But before considering the mise en prose of these texts in the late Middle Ages, it will be useful to review briefly the essential elements of the stories from the verse models three hundred years earlier. After a short but important prologue,⁸ the Couronnement de Louis, the first chronologically of the three texts in question, opens by narrating the events surrounding the coronation of Charlemagne’s young son, Louis, to whom the ruler wishes to pass the crown in order to ensure royal succession. When Charlemagne calls on him to accept the crown, young Louis, barely fifteen years old at the time, becomes timid and does not immediately step forward to receive it. Hernaut of Orléans quickly uses the opportunity to try to seize the crown and the throne for himself. William immediately kills Hernaut by striking him on the neck with his fist,⁹ takes the crown, and places it on Louis’s head. After killing Hernaut, the hero leaves for Rome and defends the pope against a Saracen invasion. During the conflict, William fights the Saracen giant, Corsolt, in single combat. He eventually kills the giant, but not before his enemy cuts off part of William’s nose, which gives the hero the name of Guillaume au Cort Nes used periodically throughout the poems. Once he has killed Corsolt and defeated

manuscripts and redactions, see the introductions to the editions by Lepage (1978, ix – xxvi); McMillan (1978, 14– 26); and Régnier (1966, 12– 32).  For an exhaustive study of the fifteenth-century Roman de Guillaume en prose, including the differences between the romance and the texts from the early Guillaume cycle, see Suard (1979).  An important aspect of this prologue centers on ll. 5 – 6: “Vilains jugleres ne sai por quoi se vant / nul mot a dire trusque l’en li comant” [I don’t know why an ignoble jongleur boasts, / Who doesn’t say a single word until he’s ordered to]. These two lines differ from manuscript to manuscript and lead to ambiguity: are jongleurs in general being criticized here or just any jongleur who would recount a different version of this specific poem? See Jones et al. (2020, 22 n. 1). All Old French references to the verse versions of the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange are from Lepage (1978), McMillan (1978), and Régnier (1966), respectively.  This is one of the episodes in the Couronnement de Louis that earns him the moniker Guillaume Fierebrace.

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the Saracens, William leaves for Tours where he must deal with traitors who seek to overthrow Louis and install as king Acelin, the son of Richard of Normandy. William deals with those who wish to take the crown by killing some and imprisoning the others, then returns with Louis to Rome to save Christianity yet again. This time, Guy the German has taken Rome and laid claim to the empire. During battle with Guy’s army, William saves Louis for the third time in the poem and eventually defeats Guy in single combat. He then places the imperial crown on Louis’s head as he had previously done during the coronation at the beginning of the text. Even though William gives his sister in marriage to Louis, one of his many expressions of loyalty throughout the story, the text nonetheless ends by highlighting the king’s lack of gratitude toward his vassal.¹⁰ The Charroi de Nîmes, the second of the stories in the trilogy, resumes the unfavourable image of Louis that was presented in the Couronnement de Louis. Whilst distributing fiefs to his barons, Louis neglects to compensate William for his faithful service.¹¹ William complains to Louis and reminds him of his many acts of loyalty to his king. Louis then offers William various fiefs, but he will not accept them because they should be given instead to the rightful heirs of the land. Thus Louis is portrayed here not only as an ungrateful king who ignores the faithfulness of one of his barons, but also as a ruler willing to engage in unethical negotiations by offering William possessions he knows rightfully belong to others. Louis proposes to William a quarter of his kingdom, but he again refuses the gift of land so as not to be known as the vassal who took significant wealth from his king. Eventually, Louis agrees to let William conquer the cities of Nîmes and Orange held by Saracens, a solution that satisfies the hero. On their way to the city of Nîmes, William and his knights meet a peasant leading a cart with a barrel of salt. The cart and the barrel inspire William and his company to conceive of a method to conquer Nîmes similar to that of the Trojan horse. William purchases many carts and barrels. He orders his men to hide in the barrels which are placed on carts, then he leads the carts, disguised as a merchant, into Nîmes. Once inside the walls, the knights spring from the barrels and take the city. As it is presented in the eight surviving manuscripts, the last of the texts in the trilogy, the Prise d’Orange, is probably a reworking of a lost primitive version of the story (Frappier 1965, 257– 278). The poem focuses on William’s conquest of Orange, the other city that Louis allows him to conquer in the Charroi de Nîmes.  For more detailed descriptions of the events in the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange see Jones et al. (2020, 9 – 10, 12– 13, and 15, respectively).  This episode calls to mind Marie de France’s lay of Lanval that opens with a reminder of how King Arthur had overlooked his knight Lanval when rewarding his vassals for their service.

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William learns of Orange’s glory and the beauty of Queen Orable who resides there in a tower named Gloriette. William is now determined more than ever to take the city and its queen. As was the case for the capturing of Nîmes, deception also plays a central role in William’s plan to take Orange. William and two others are able to enter the city disguised as Saracen interpreters, but their true identities are soon discovered and they must fight the Saracens. The three men are taken prisoner with Orable who had previously helped them, but William’s nephew, Bertrand, arrives with a large army of Christians who defeat the Saracens and take Orange. Orable converts to Christianity under the name of Guibourc and marries William. As previously mentioned, this epic verse trilogy from the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle of the twelfth century, along with a number of other texts from the cycle, are recast into prose form for a new audience in the fifteenth century by an anonymous author as a single work known as the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange. Prose works began their ascent to prominence in the thirteenth century and at that time were often expansions of elements from previous texts such as the lengthy Lancelot-Grail Cycle that gave new life to existing Arthurian material found in the earlier verse poems of writers like Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron, or the Tristan en prose that amplified in prose form the stories of Tristan and Iseult presented in the verse versions of Béroul and Thomas d’Angleterre from the previous century. This literary process may have reached its apogee in the fifteenth century, but the art of mise en prose continued “into the Renaissance and into a rationalising eighteenth century” (Taylor 2015, 288). In the study of rewriting early medieval French fictions during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the recent contributions by Jane H. M. Taylor, to whom this volume is dedicated, stand as some of the most important work on the subject and has incited us to rethink and reshape our understanding of this creative literary activity.¹² Her scholarship has focused largely on mise en prose, or as Taylor states, “the intralingual prose rewriting of romances, and epics, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries in France […],” a rewriting that seeks to “translate, continue, adapt, of course, but also reframe, refashion, revise, reinterpret” (2017, 173 – 174 and 177). Traditionally, and mainly before Taylor’s work on the subject of rewriting in the fifteenth century and beyond, scholars did not take seriously the late mise en prose, for reasons that Catherine M. Jones (1998, 115) observed in her study of Philippe de Vigneulles:

 For example, her book on rewriting Arthurian romance during the Renaissance remains the authoritative work on the subject (Taylor 2014).

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Indeed, it is perhaps their [the authors of the late medieval mises en prose] unabashed concern for audience and subject matter that long rendered these works so distasteful to modern scholars. Georges Doutrepont, in his monumental study of the genre, observes that while the prose adaptation generally succeeds in communicating essential narrative material, it shows little regard for the ‘style’ and ‘soul’ of epic poetry.¹³

Taylor (2015, 288) echoed this sentiment by pointing out that “[t]oo many critics, and certainly too many literary manuals, still talk of late medieval fictions as merely mediocre: repetitive, derivative, at best dutiful”. But one must realize, she adds, that prosateurs who compiled their works centuries after the original verse versions on which they drew were writing for an entirely different audience who appreciated different “modes” and “styles”: [T]he readers they [préfaciers of fifteenth-century fictions and histories] have in mind, and whose tastes, they say with happy confidence, they are satisfying, are newly sophisticated, newly demanding, ‘plus agut[s] et soubtille[s]’[more acute and delicate], says Philippe de Vigneulles, than readers used to be, and thus appreciative of new and different modes and styles. These new readers prefer, says Philippe in the preface to his mise en prose of the Geste des Lorrains, ‘chose abregee et plaisante’ [something condensed and pleasant] […] The romanciers, the translators, the prosateurs, of the later Middle Ages naturally play to this urbane and lettered clientele, a clientele prepared to appreciate and pay not only for subtleties of language, but also, and lavishly, for appropriately sumptuous manuscripts to add to their magnificent libraries. (2015, 287)¹⁴

As noted, the three poems that comprise the trilogy in the epic cycle considered here were composed in the twelfth century during the time of feudalism and the Crusades (1095 – 1291) and emphasized struggles between monarchs and feudal lords and the Christian-Muslim conflict (Jones et al. 2020, 2). Therefore, the differences in modes and styles that Jones and Taylor highlight are apparent in the prose version of the story of William of Orange written in the fifteenth century approximately one hundred and sixty years after the last Crusade and toward the end of the Hundred Years’ War. The sizeable Roman de Guillaume d’Orange was composed in the Burgundian domain by an anonymous author not long after 1450 and elaborates and reorganizes into prose thirteen verse texts from the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle totalling about sixty thousand lines that celebrate the deeds of William and his

 Jones quotes Doutrepont (1939, 655 – 658).  Taylor quotes Jones (1998, 117) who quotes Philippe de Vigneulles. The English translations in brackets are my own. The “s” in brackets at the end of agut and soubtille are Taylor’s.

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father, Aymeri of Narbonne,¹⁵ including the three poems of the trilogy, presented in the same order in which they appear in the early cyclical manuscripts: the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange (Suard 1979, 106).¹⁶ The romance is preserved in two fifteenth-century manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS fr. 1497 and fr. 796, the latter of which was destined to be richly illuminated, and thereby to become one of the “sumptuous manuscripts” of the later Middle Ages to which Taylor refers, but unfortunately its eighty-three miniatures were never executed.¹⁷ As for the form of the late medieval prose versions of earlier epic poems, and specifically in the case of the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange, the organization of the story by chapters replaced the structure by laisses in the original verse versions. As Bernard Guidot (2001, 595) notes: Un des mérites des prosateurs a été de répartir la matière en la divisant par des chapitres et des rubriques. Le cadre du récit primitif y gagne en netteté. Au quinzième siecle, sont de mode des titres développés, suivis de prologues explicatifs et justificatifs, qui constituent “d’heureux et de lumineux points de repère.” […] le travail de refonte doit être envisagé comme un apport d’unité: de ce point de vue et à bien des égards, le Guillaume d’Orange en prose prouve “une part sérieuse d’invention propre.”¹⁸ [One of the merits of prose writers was to distribute the material by dividing it into chapters with rubrics. The framework of the original narrative increases in clarity. In the fifteenth century, developed titles are in style, followed by explanatory and justifying prologues, which constitute “delightful and luminous points of reference.” […] The work of recasting must be considered as a contribution of unity: from this point of view and in many respects, the Guillaume d’Orange en prose demonstrates “a serious part of invention proper.”]

 The Roman de Guillaume d’Orange was not reproduced by printers during the sixteenth century like other epic material, an absence that may have been due to its length (Tyssens et al. 2000, i). See also Suard (2011, 314 and 323) where he notes that the romance never appeared in print.  For a list of the other texts upon which the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange is based see Suard (1979, xii – xiii), Suard (2011, 323), and Corbellari (2011, 194). The Couronnement de Louis is omitted from the list in Corbellari.  It appears that Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 796 is a copy of fr. 1497 that contains one hundred and twenty-eight chapters distributed over five hundred and forty-eight folios. For descriptions of these manuscripts see Suard (1979, 2– 8) and Henrard and Tyssens (2006, 1– 4).  Guidot quotes Doutrepont (1939, 470 and 645). He highlights elsewhere the role of the prose writers to adapt to the style of their day and specifically notes the concern of the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange to rejuvenate “old literature” (2001, 583).

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Accordingly, the author of the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange reshapes and arranges his source material over one hundred and twenty-eight chapters, many of which are preceded by rubrics.¹⁹ The prologue of the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange opens the romance by stating the aim of the author: [Q]ui d’armes, d’amours, de noblesse et de chevalerie vouldra ouïr beaux mos et plaisans racompter mecte painne et face silence, ou lise qui lire vouldra, et il pourra veoir, savoir et aprendre comment Aimery de Beaulande conquist par sa proesce la cité de Nerbonne, que Sarrasins octupoient et tenoient en leur pocession, et avoient de tout temps ancienement tenue et possedee avecques tout le païs qu’on nomme presentement Languedoch ou Terre Basse, que depuis tint Guillaume son filz, comme l’istoire, qui n’est mie messongiere, devisera en ce livre, se Dieu donne par sa grace que je le puisse translater de vielle rime en telle prose. Car plus volentiers s’i esbat l’en maintenant qu’on ne souloit, et plus est le laingage plaisant prose que rime, ce dient ceulx aux quieulx il plaist et qui ainsi le veulent avoir. Je proteste en ce faisant toutevoies de n’y adjouster, mectre ni oster a mon pouoir rien du mien si non du changement ou de la mutacion du langaige, se le quel n’est prolixement et si bien aourné comme bien appartient a la matire, ceulx qui le liront ne le deveront blasmer que bien a point. Car l’istoire est riche, belle et veritable, composee par ceulx qui le estraïrent des croniques anciennes, et continuee de point en point du commencement du conte Aimery jusques au finement de son filz Guillaume au court nez, qui conquist Orange, dont il porta le seurnom tout son vivant. (I, 1)²⁰ [Whoever wishes to hear fair and pleasant words told about combats, love, nobleness, and chivalry should be silent and listen carefully, or read them whoever prefers to read, and he will see, know, and learn how Aymeri of Beaulande conquered the city of Narbonne by his bravery, which the Saracens occupied and held in their possession, and that they had formerly held and possessed for a long time along with all the territory that one currently calls Languedoc or the Low Land, that now his son William holds, as the story, that is not at all untrue, will organize in this book, if God grants his blessing so that I may translate it from old rhyme into such prose. For one is more accustomed to it now than one used to be, and the language of prose is more pleasant than that of verse, say those whom it pleases and who wish to have it. In doing this, I pledge, however, not to add to it or take anything away from it of my own accord except to change the language, if it is not verbose and well adorned in the source, those who will read it will only need to blame it fittingly. For the story is rich, fair, and true, composed by those who took it from old chronicles, and it continues from one moment to the next beginning with Count Aymeri up until the end with his son Short-Nosed William, who conquered Orange, which would be his surname all his life.]

 All the chapters of the trilogy are preceded by substantial rubrics except Chapter 34, the first chapter of the Prise d’Orange story. Suard offers a brief summary in a sentence or two of all one hundred and twenty-eight chapters (1979, vii – xxii).  All references to the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange are from the edition of Tyssens et al. (2000). I refer to passages by chapter, followed by paragraph number.

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This prologue reveals much about the author’s plan for his work and the style of his composition. One notices in this passage the abundant use of subordinate clauses and long sentences, a style prevalent throughout the rest of the text, but also a characteristic of other mises en prose of the fifteenth century.²¹ It is indeed difficult to know at times where a sentence begins and ends; one often thinks to have come to the end of a sentence, only to realize that it continues with more subordinate clauses (Suard 1979, 198). The preference for extremely long sentences is echoed in the prologue by the use of the words prolixement and aourné. François Suard (2010, 40) comments generally on the translation from verse to prose and specifically on the author’s prefatory remarks here: Cette libération du joug de la rime, mais aussi ce souci de fidélité au modèle semblent induire la recherche de l’amplification et de l’ornement rhétorique comme solution idéale au problème de la translation. C’est ce que dit de façon particulièrement nette l’auteur du Guillaume d’Orange, qui, après avoir évoqué par les termes de mutacion du langaige le passage du vers à la prose, le décrit ensuite de la façon suivante: se lequel n’est prolixement et si bien aourné comme bien appartient a la matire, ceulx qui le liront ne le deveront blasmer que bien a point. II s’agit donc, à ses yeux, de trouver dans un style ample et orné un registre correspondant à la matire, c’est-à-dire au mode lyrico-narratif de l’épopée. [This liberation from the yoke of rhyme, but also this concern for faithfulness to the model, seems to induce the search for amplification and rhetorical ornamentation as an ideal solution to the problem of translation. This is what the author of the Guillaume d’Orange says in a particularly clear manner, who, after having evoked the passage from verse to prose by the terms mutacion of langaige, describes it as follows: if it is not verbose and well adorned in the source, those who will read it will only need to blame it fittingly. It is a question in his eyes, therefore, of finding in an ample and ornate style a register corresponding to the source material, that is to say to the lyrico-narrative mode of the epic.]

Yet the intention of the author is at times blurred throughout the romance by his often-repeated expression, pour la matiere abregier [to shorten the source material], or a similar construction, which at times he in fact does, as in the case of episodes from the Couronnement de Louis, whilst at other times he amplifies the story as he does with the amorous discourse in various paragraphs from the trilogy discussed below. In addition to the themes of nobleness and chivalry mentioned in the opening line, two concepts pertinent to his fifteenth-century audience, the author also announces that he will focus in his prose text on the theme of love, a theme that is not developed in the epic trilogy:

 See for example Jones (1998, 123) and Suard (1979, 201– 203).

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Le romancier donne au sentiment amoureux une place plus importante que ne lui en accordaient les jongleurs; il lui consacre des chapitres entiers, dont certains sont ajoutés au modèle (visite de Guillaume à Orable, chapitres 24– 25), étudie avec soin la psychologie des amants et fait jouer à l’amour un rôle accru dans le déroulement de l’action. (Suard 1979, 382) [The romance writer gives love a more important place than the jongleurs accorded it; he devotes entire chapters to it, some of which are added to the model (William’s visit to Orable, chapters 24– 25), he carefully studies the psychology of the lovers and makes love play an enhanced role in the course of the action.]

The development of William’s sentimental personality in the prose version of the trilogy is one of the most striking contributions of the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange. As mentioned earlier, the trilogy and its order in the epic cycle are maintained in the prose version and occupy Chapters 29 – 38 of the one hundred and twenty-eight chapters.²² The romance writer reshapes significantly the first of the three texts, the Couronnement de Louis. ²³ The distribution of fiefs that takes place at the beginning of the verse Charroi de Nîmes is placed instead in Chapter 30 of the prose retelling of the Couronnement de Louis and becomes more exact. The verse version of the Charroi de Nîmes opens by mentioning that Louis had given fiefs to all his barons: “Nostre emperere a ses barons fievez: / Cel done terre, cel chastel, cel citez, / Cel done vile selonc ce que il set / Moi et vos, oncle, i somes oublïé” (ll. 36 – 39) [“Our emperor has provided his barons with fiefs: / To one he gave land, to another a castle, to another a stronghold, / To another a town, as he saw fit. / You and I, uncle, are forgotten”]. Whereas the poem does not specify which barons received which domains, the episode as it is presented in the Couronnement de Louis part of the romance specifically records which barons are given which fiefs: Hernaut receives the duchy of Orléans, Aÿmer is given Venice, and William requests Nîmes and other cities (XXXII, 10 – 13).²⁴ A serious argument ensues in the verse version as a result of Louis’s royal ingratitude toward William who feels neglected and who eventually proposes the city of Nîmes as his reward so as not to infringe upon Louis’s domains.

 The trilogy in the romance is distributed as follows: Couronnement de Louis, Ch. 29 – 32; the Charroi de Nîmes, Ch. 33; and the Prise d’Orange, Ch. 34– 38.  Suard (1979, 52) recognizes a closer relationship between this text and the Charroi de Nîmes in the romance than in the epic cycle. He also notes that the romance author uses only a small part of the epic text, about 1250 lines.  Suard (1979, 2) proposes that the conquest of Nîmes therefore stands as a consequence of the Couronnement de Louis in the prose version.

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The distribution of fiefs in the romance version, however, does not result in an argument between Louis and William and the latter’s motives have been refashioned: “[…] cy presens tous vos hommes, vous offre en faire hommaige, car tenir ne veil que de vous, et tant vous dy que je conquerray Nismes, Bedziers, Carcassonne, Montpellier et Orange ou sont mes amours et la riens que le mien cueur desire [le plus] en ce monde. Et quant j’avray mon vouloir acomply et Orable, la fille Desramé, conquestee, lors vous semondray je a mes nopces; si vous y trouvés, s’il vous plaist, car d’aultre avoir en mariaige ne me savroit l’en faire acorder.” (XXXII, 14)²⁵ [“[…] here in front of your men, I offer to pay tribute to you, because I only want to hold from you, and this I declare to you that I will conquer Nîmes, Béziers, Carcassonne, Montpellier, and Orange where my loves are and the thing that my heart desires the most in this world. And when I have accomplished my mission and won Orable, the daughter of Desramé, then I will invite you to my wedding; and you will come, if it pleases you, for I would like to have no other in marriage.”]²⁶

William’s confession of his love for Orable here, along with his earlier praise of her in the Couronnement de Louis section of the romance as will be discussed below, stands in stark contrast to her mention in the epic poem in which her name appears in but a single verse: “Trestote avoit entroublïé Orable” (l. 1417) [“He [William] had quickly forgotten Orable”].²⁷ The romance author’s arrangement of these amorous references early in his prose version of the trilogy not only emphasizes the theme of love that he highlights in his prologue, but the narrative technique also looks forward to the abundant discourse of love in the prose Prise d’Orange. In the verse version, William’s gift of his sister in marriage to Louis is mentioned only in passing at the end of the poem, “Et sa sereur li fist il espouser” (l. 2668) [And he gave Louis his sister in marriage], and William’s king’s ingratitude toward him is only invoked in the last line, “Quant il [Louis] fu riches Guil-

 The square brackets are in Tyssens et al. (2000).  As Suard (1979, 405) notes, “La distribution des fiefs […] ne donne lieu à aucune querelle entre Louis et Guillaume; ce dernier demande une terre hors du domaine royal pour des raisons uniquement militaires et personnelles” [The distribution of the fiefs […] does not give rise to any argument between Louis and William; the latter asks for land outside the royal domain for purely military and personal reasons].  This line from the epic Couronnement de Louis occurs in response to William’s intention to marry another woman after his battle with Corsolt in Rome: “The mention of her name here […], before she actually appears chronologically in the action of the trilogy [in the verse Prise d’Orange], is a later interpolation in the manuscripts based on her appearance in another text, the Enfances Guillaume” (Jones et al. 2020, 63 n. 14). See also Frappier (1965, 91 n. 1).

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lelme n’en sot grez” (l. 2670) [But when he became powerful, he was not grateful to William]. In the romance, however, William significantly describes to Louis the attributes of his sister, Blancheflour, as her name appears in the prose text, whom he offers to his king: “‘J’ay une sueur, sire, fet il, bonne, belle, courtoise, gracieuse et saige; de l’aage qu’elle peult avoir et de sa noblesse est chose aisee et legiere enquerir et savoir, car Aymery l’engendra en la contesse Hemengart de Pavie’” (XXXII, 7) [“I have a sister, my lord, he said, who is good, beautiful, courtly, and wise; she is of age and it is clear she is noble, for she is the offspring of Aymeri of Narbonne and Countesse Hemengart of Pavia”]. In several paragraphs that follow William’s description of his sister, the romance author recounts in detail the marriage of Louis and Blancheflour. Another significant difference between the verse and prose version centres on the representation of the battle between Corsolt and William. The violent episode consumes nine substantial laisses in the verse Couronnement de Louis, but is reduced in Chapter 30 of the romance to what Suard (1979, 52) refers to as “un exploit chevaleresque rondement mené” [a well-executed chivalrous achievement]. Corbault, as he is known in the fifteenth-century romance, remains a formidable adversary for William, but the prose text does not present him in the nefarious manner in which he is portrayed in the poem: L’en li ameine le roi Corsolt en piez, Lez et anchés, hideus comme aversier; Les eulz ot roges com charbon en brasier, Le teste lee et herupé le chief; Entre .ii. eulx ot de lé demi pié, Une grant toise d’espaules au braier; Plus hideus home ne peut de pain mengier. (Couronnement de Louis, ll. 507– 513) [King Corsolt was brought before him [the pope], Stout and cross-eyed, ugly as the devil; His eyes were as red as coals in a brazier, His head was broad, his hair was bristly; There was a half-foot distance between his two eyes, And a good six feet from his shoulders to his waist; An uglier man could not live on bread.]

Corbault, whilst not entirely courtly, nonetheless does not embody the same anger during battle as the twelfth-century villain does. He even exhibits courtly characteristics by offering wine to those present for his duel with William, including offering some to William himself who refuses (XXX, 2). He also recommends to William the gift of land and his sister, Matrosne, if only the count will renounce Christianity and accept Mohammed’s law, an element missing from the battle scene in the verse text: “‘[…] et sy avras ma suer Matrosne, qui

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tant est belle que en Peannie n’a sa pareille de beaulté’” (XXX, 8) “[[…] and you will have my sister Matrosne, who is so beautiful that she has no equal in all pagan lands”]. This offer prompts William to respond: “Et au regart de ta sueur, dont tu m’as cy parlé, ne tien je compte, car j’ay plus belle sans nulle comparaison que n’est Matrosne, dont je n’ay mie oublié le nom; et se tu me demendoies qui elle est, je te diroie que c’est Orable, la fille Desramé, que je conque[r]ray si tost comme je avray a toy combatu. Sy te gardes de moy, car [pour] l’amour d’elle te feray au jourd’uy desplaisir.” (XXX, 9)²⁸ [“And regarding your sister, about whom you spoke to me here, I am not interested, because I have one more beautiful compared to Matrosne, whose name I have not at all forgotten; and if you ask me who she is, I will tell you it is Orable, the daughter of Desramé, whom I will win as soon as I have fought you. Now defend yourself, because for her love I will harm you today.”]

This admiration of Orable comes even earlier in the romance version of the Couronnement de Louis than the reference discussed above. William’s battle with Corbault, that is already less violent than his combat with Corsolt in the verse version, is further tempered here by sentiments of love. The verse Corsolt extends no such courtesy to William during their fierce fight in the Couronnement de Louis and the giant brutally cuts off the count’s nose, giving him his infamous moniker, Short-Nosed William. Corbault does not, however, administer this wound in the prose version; instead, William receives the scar as a result of combat outside Narbonne recounted in Chapter 40 of the romance after the story of the Prise d’Orange. ²⁹ But perhaps the most significant difference between the verse and prose texts lies in the way in which they depict the events surrounding the coronation of Louis and the would-be usurpers of the crown. In the poem, two individuals attempt to take the throne from young king Louis: Hernault of Orléans in the Royal Chapel at the beginning of the text and Acelin, son of Richard of Rouen, later in the story at a church in Tours. The poem opens by recounting Louis’s hesitation to receive the crown from his ageing father, Charlemagne, at the coronation ceremony in Aix-la-Chapelle. Upon returning from a hunt, William hears bad news from his nephew Bertrand: “Hernaut si velt son droit seignor boisier: Sempres iert rois, que François l’ont jugié.”

 The square brackets are in Tyssens et al. (2000).  Suard (1979, 464) notes that William’s wound suffered whilst he was fighting outside Narbonne appears to be less remarkable than it is in the verse Couronnement de Louis.

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– “Mal le pensa,” dist Guilleimes le fier. Espee ceinte est entrez el mostier, Deront la presse devant les chevaliers: Hernaut trova mout bien apareillié; En talant ot qu’il li copast le chief, Quant il remembre del glorïeus del ciel, Que d’ome ocire est trop mortex pechié. Il prent le brant, si le ra estoié, Puis passe avant quant il fu porpensé, Le poing senestre li a mellé el chief, Hauce le destre, enz el col li asiet; L’os de la gueule li a par mi brisié; Mort le tresbuche a terrë et a ses piez. (ll. 119 – 133) [“Hernaut is trying to betray his rightful lord: He is about to become king, for the Franks have so chosen.” – “It was an evil thought,” said proud William. With sword girded on, he entered the church And pushed his way through the crowd before the knights. He found Hernaut fully armed; He had it in mind to cut off his head Until he remembered the glorious God in heaven, And that it was a most grievous sin to kill a man. He took his sword and put it back in its sheath, Then strode forward once he had gathered himself; He grabbed Hernaut by the hair with his left fist, Raised the right one and hit him on the neck; He broke his chin right in two, Striking him dead to the ground at his feet.]

In the verse version, the young Louis does not step forward to take the crown so Hernault of Orléans intervenes and tries to seize power with the help of his relatives, then William grabs him and strikes him dead with his mighty hand after he had contemplated killing him with his sword. In the romance, by contrast, Charlemagne has already died and Hernaïs, the son of Richard of Normandy, and his supporters are assembled in Paris, rather than in Aix-la-Chapelle, to decide the successor to the throne. Additionally, the scene in Tours during which William kills Acelin, son of Richard of Rouen, for having planned to take the crown from Louis is omitted in the romance. The prose author thereby conflates the two scenes into a single episode: there is no longer a question of Acelin or Hernault as in the epic source, but instead Hernaïs comes to Paris to take the

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throne from Louis, the rightful heir, who has fled to Meulan.³⁰ And instead of learning the scheme from his nephew after returning from a hunt, William hears of the plan whilst he is in Rome after having liberated the papal city. In fact, he travels to Paris with the pope’s authority to prevent the usurping of the throne. In the romance, William does not hesitate to use his sword: “[…] et de l’espee qu’il tenoit nue lui donna ung coup si grant que le chief lui fist plus de dix piez voller emmy le parc voire, en criant ‘Nerbonne!’ si haultement que de toutes pars peust bien estre ouÿ et entendu” (XXXII, 3) [[…] and he gave him such a heavy blow with the bare sword he held in his hand that he made his head fly more than ten feet into the middle of the assembly, whilst crying out “Narbonne!” so loudly that one could hear it from all directions]. The Charroi de Nîmes section of the romance also differs from the original poem and has been shortened. As the discussion above demonstrated, the romance places the scene of the distribution of fiefs in the Couronnement de Louis section, whilst it constitutes part of the verse version of the Charroi de Nîmes; at the beginning of the epic poem, a protracted debate arises over Louis’s ingratitude toward William by not giving him land and eventually ends with the king’s granting the count the opportunity to capture the city of Nîmes. The romance assigns three paragraphs at the beginning of the section for dialogue between Louis and William and the anger expressed in the poem is absent in the prose rendition (Suard 1979, 55). Yet another difference between the two versions lies in the way in which they each delineate the comic theme of taking the city by deception. Both versions recount the episode of William’s men hiding in barrels and being led into Nîmes on carts by William and others disguised as merchants. However, the scene receives less attention in the romance than it does in the poem and the prose version uses only seven paragraphs to recount William’s voyage to the city and his conquest of it. The poem, by comparison, devotes twenty-five laisses to the barrel episode and the capture of the city.³¹ The verse version also highlights one humorous event that occurred en route to the city, just after Bertrand complains that the cracked boots he wears as part of his disguise will give him blisters:

 The action has thus shifted from Aix-la Chappelle and Tours to Paris and Meulan. For further discussion of these events in the romance see Suard (1979, 52– 53).  The verse version uses the word tonnel (or another form of the word: tonel/tonne/tonnes/ tones/toneaus/tonneaus) seventeen times in twenty-five laisses, reinforcing the comic aspect of the conquest. The romance also repeats the word tonneaulx, but by comparison the word appears nine times in the entire chapter devoted to this episode.

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“Niés,” dit li quens “envers moi entendez Fetes ces bués trestot cel val aler.” Et dist Bertran: “Por neant en parlez. Ge ne sai tant ne poindre ne bouter Que ge les puisse de lor pas remüer.” Ot le Guillelmes, s’en a un ris gité. Mes a Bertran est molt mal encontré, Qu’il ne fu mie del mestier doctriné; Ainz n’en sot mot, s’est en un fanc entré, Trusqu’a moieus i est le char entré; Voit le Bertran, a poi n’est forsené. Qui le veïst dedenz le fanc entrer Et as espaules la roe sozlever, A grant merveille le peüst resgarder; Camoisié ot et la bouche et le nes. Voit le Guillelmes, si le prist a gaber. (ll. 996 – 1011) [“Nephew,” said the count, “listen to me. Lead these oxen down to the valley.” And Bertrand said, “You are wasting your breath. I don’t know how to prod or push them Well enough to make them move.” Hearing this, William burst out laughing. But a bad thing happened to Bertrand Because he knew nothing about driving oxen: Before he realized it, his wagon hit mud And sank up to the middle of the wheels. Seeing this, Bertrand nearly went out of his mind. If you had seen him in the mud, Raising the wheel with his shoulders, You could have witnessed quite a spectacle! His mouth and nose were bruised; Seeing this, William started to tease him.]

The prose text reduces this comic episode simply to William’s standing in the mud: “[…] il se mist a chemin lors, et vint jusques sur la porte amont, comme cellui qui vouloit tout le charroi veoir, et vist Guillaume qui premier estoit voire en la boue jusques pres de my jambe” (XXXIII, 4) [[…] he [the Saracen] left, and came to the upper door, because he wanted to see all the convoy, and saw William first in mud up to the middle of his legs]. William’s love for Orable expressed earlier in the romance version of the Couronnement de Louis noted above becomes more fully developed at the end of the prose Charroi de Nîmes and foreshadows the author’s emphasis on their love in the chapters of the Prise d’Orange to follow. Once William has taken Nîmes successfully, his thoughts turn to conquering Orange and reuniting with Orable as he thinks to himself:

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“Hay! Orable, doulce amye, fet il, comme pour voustre amour sera desoremais ma vie avanturee et le mien corps en grant dangier, en peine et en travail, car certainement je n’avray jamais joie, soulas ne repos d’ycy atant que je vous avray conquise et que en Orange me puisse avecques vous trouver, au plaisir de mon cueur et a la consolaction du voustre.” (XXXIII, 8) [“Ah! Orable, sweet friend, he said [to himself], how my life will be miserable and my body in great danger, in pain and suffering, for certainly I will never have joy, relief, or rest from now until I have won you and can be with you in Orange, to the delight of my heart and to the consolation of yours.”]

He continues this sentiment a few sentences later in the same paragraph, but this time as an audible confession to his close friends: “[…] et tant vous dy que jamais de bon somme ne feray repos d’ycy atant que je avray Orange la grant conquestee par quelque maniere que ce soit; car leans en Gloriecte le palaix est enfermee la riengs que j’aime en ce monde le myeulx et que je plus desire veoir. Sy saichiés que ceans plus n’arresteray ne en lieu nul ne sejourneray jusques a ce que j’aie la esté et que j’avray la belle Orable veue.” (XXXIII, 8) [“[…] and I tell you truly that I will never sleep nor rest from now until I have conquered Orange by whatever means necessary; for the person I love most in this world and whom I long to see is held there in the palace, Gloriette. And be assured that I will never stop nor stay at any place until I am there and have seen the beautiful Orable.”]

Whereas William articulates adoration of Orable’s beauty and his love for her multiple times here at the end of the prose Charroi de Nîmes, the verse version of the story references the Saracen queen’s attractiveness, but in that case simply to highlight her marriage to the Saracen king, Tibaut:³² Le roi Tiebaut i doit l’en coroner; Prise a Orable, la seror l’amiré; C’est la plus bele que l’en puisse trover En paienime n’en la crestïenté. (ll. 521– 524) [King Tibaut is to be crowned there. He married Orable, the emir’s sister. She is the fairest woman to be found In any pagan or Christian land.]

 Orable is also mentioned one other time under her baptized name, Guibourc, at the beginning of the poem in the prefatory comments of the jongleur: “Aprés conquist Orenge la cité / Et fist Guibor baptizier et lever / Que il toli le roi Tiebaut l’Escler; / Puis l’espousa a moillier et a per” (ll. 7– 10) [Then [William] conquered the stronghold of Orange, / And had Guibourc baptized and christened / After he captured her from the pagan King Tibaut. / Then he took her as his wife and spouse].

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The romance concentrates then, much more than the verse version does, on William’s amorous sentiments.³³ In the epic trilogy, William becomes obsessed with Orable only after he learns of her beauty at the beginning of the Prise d’Orange from a prisoner who had just escaped from the city.³⁴ There also exist several differences between the verse and prose versions of the final text in the trilogy, the Prise d’Orange. ³⁵ In the fifteenth-century romance, William had previously visited the city and already knows Orable, as evidenced by his earlier declarations in the Couronnement de Louis and the Charroi de Nîmes cited above, but in the twelfth-century epic cycle the count learns of the city’s splendor and Orable’s beauty for the first time at the beginning of the Prise d’Orange. ³⁶ The method by which William and his companions enter Orange also differs in the verse and prose versions: in the chanson de geste, they enter the city disguised as Saracen interpreters (ll. 421– 423), but in the romance they dress as pilgrims seeking safe passage on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (XXXIII, 10).³⁷ To my mind, though, one of the most fascinating aspects of the romance Prise d’Orange section lies in the portrayal of the character of Orable. For example, in the chansons de geste, William is known for his boisterous laughter, in addition to his extraordinary strength, a trait referenced in eleven verses throughout the trilogy, usually with an expression like, “Ot le Guillelmes, s’en a un ris gité” (Charroi de Nîmes, l. 459) [Hearing this, William burst out laughing].³⁸ He does not exhibit this quality in the romance, instead his hearty laugh is replaced

 William’s open expression of his love for Orable is a common theme in the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange. In addition to his declarations in the Couronnement de Louis, Charroi de Nîmes, and Prise d’Orange sections, Suard (1979, 382) notes that he had visited her earlier in Ch. 24– 25, the Enfances Guillaume part of the romance.  In the verse version, Gilbert of Lenu tells William of Orable’s beauty and the grandeur of Orange where he had been imprisoned (ll. 108 – 292).  For example, the romance introduces Rainouart, the brother of Orable, in the Prise d’Orange section. Orable sends for him to be brought to Orange to join her after William and his men liberated the city. Rainouart is never mentioned in the epic poem, but the episode of his arrival in the romance takes place in Ch. 38 of the Prise d’Orange and the source for this chapter has garnered critical debate. For a discussion of the differences between the chanson de geste and the romance concerning the Prise d’Orange, see Suard (1979, 55 – 58), and especially 57– 58 for the source of Ch. 38.  See n. 34 above.  This plan was actually devised at the end of the previous text, the Charroi de Nîmes.  The references to William’s laughter occur in the Couronnement de Louis, ll. 1175, 1684, and 2579; the Charroi de Nîmes, ll. 44, 459, 478, 995, 1001, and 1230; and the Prise d’Orange, ll. 338 and 630.

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by that of Orable who laughs four times in the Prise d’Orange; she does not laugh in the epic poem.³⁹ Orable’s conversion to Christianity also differs in the romance from its presentation in the poem. Her baptism in the verse Prise d’Orange is only briefly mentioned and happens in Orange, whilst the prose version moves the action to Narbonne in the presence of William’s family. Moreover, the decision to baptize her in the epic version resides solely with William and their marriage appears to be based more on obligation than on emotion: “Beau niés, dist il, entendez mon semblant De ceste dame au gent cors avenant Qui m’a gari de la mort voiremant; La moie foi li plevi loiaument Que la prendrai a moillier voirement.” […] Orable firent de ses dras desnüer, Il la baptisent en l’enor Damedé, Le non li otent de la paieneté; Bertran la tint et Guïelin li ber Et Guilebert, le preuz et le sené; A nostre loi la font Guibor nomer. A un mostier qu’eurent fet dedïer, La ou Mahom fu devant reclamé, L’ala li cuens Guillelmes espouser. (ll. 1853 – 1857 and 1867– 1875) [“Fair nephew,” he said, “listen to my thoughts About this beautiful and comely lady Who truly saved my life: I pledged my word to her in all honesty That I would truly take her as my wife.” […] They had Orable strip off her clothing And baptized her to the honour of God. They removed her pagan name; Bertrand and valiant Guielin and Gilbert, The brave and wise, held her over the font; They gave her the Christian name of Guibourc. In a church they had just had dedicated, Where Mohammed had once been worshipped, Count William married her.]

The prose version, in contrast, grants Orable a voice in her own baptism as she debates within herself to consider her act of conversion:

 Her laughter is recorded in the prose Prise d’Orange in XXXIV, 9; XXXVI, 14; XXXVI, 26; and XXXVI, 27.

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“Mais il est en mon couraige, ne say par quelle inspiraction, que le lavement que font les Crestiens est de plus grant valleur et efficace que celluy que font les Sarrasins, et pour ce veil crestienne devenir et estre en fons baptisie, selon l’usaige et la loy que tient Guillaume, laquelle je aprouve, prise et ayme myeulx que je ne fay la loy païenne, que tient le roy Thibault.” (XXIII, 11)⁴⁰ [“But my heart tells me, and I’m not sure why, that the Christians’ ablution is of greater value and more efficacious than that of the Saracens, and for that reason I wish to become Christian and be baptized over the font, according to the custom and law that William observes, that I approve, esteem, and like more than the pagan law that King Tiebaut follows.”]

Although Orable’s reflection here on her conversion actually occurs earlier in the romance in the Enfances Guillaume section that immediately precedes the trilogy considered in this study, it nonetheless reveals, along with her laughter discussed above, how the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange privileges her voice in a way that the epic poems do not. In conclusion, the legacy of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is well attested by the survival of its stories throughout the centuries following the composition of the poems.⁴¹ This study has specifically examined the fifteenth-century Roman de Guillaume d’Orange that recasts material from thirteen of the twenty-four poems in the epic cycle into a sizeable prose romance of one hundred and twenty-eight chapters. This late medieval version of the life of the legendary William of Orange recounts the deeds of the epic hero and his family, opening with the story of Aymeri of Narbonne, William’s father, and closing with events from the Moniage Guillaume. The romance preserves the order of the twelfth-century trilogy, the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange, as it appears in the cyclical manuscripts a few centuries earlier since these texts represent an uninterrupted narrative. Their organization and reshaping in the romance results in a closer relationship between these three texts than they have in their earlier verse versions. Perhaps the appeal of the early epic cycle to a fifteenth-century audience lies in its ability to express the themes the author puts forth at the beginning of his prologue: “combats, love, nobleness, and chivalry.” William of Orange, as he is presented in the Roman de Guillaume d’Orange, certainly embodies all of these qualities. He remains in the fifteenth century a formidable hero and defender of Christianity,  For further discussion of Orable’s conversion see Suard (1979, 432– 433).  My focus here has been on the legacy of the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle as it was adapted in the fifteenth-century Roman de Guillaume d’Orange. However, the legend of William of Orange has been retold in numerous languages and genres since the original composition of the poems. For studies on the subject see Corbellari (2011, 189 – 234) and Jones (2014, 136 – 148).

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as he is in the twelfth-century epic trilogy, but he has acquired at the hands of the romance author a more sentimental side to his personality. As the prose trilogy draws to a close with the Prise d’Orange, a nostalgic William gazes at the city and reminds the audience of the two loves of his life: “Hay! Orange, fet il, comme tu es belle ville et que tant t’ay a avoir desiree pour l’amour de Orable” (XXXV, 14) [Ah! Orange, he said, what a beautiful city you are and how I have desired you for the love of Orable”].

References Corbellari, Alain. Guillaume d’Orange ou la naissance du héros médiéval. Paris: Klincksieck, 2011. Doutrepont, Georges. Les Mises en prose des épopées et des romans chevaleresques du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1939 [repr. 2011]. Guidot, Bernard. “Formes tardives de l’épopée médiévale: mises en prose, imprimés, livres populaires.” L’Épopée romane au Moyen Âge et aux temps modernes: Actes du XIVe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes, Naples, 24 – 30 Juillet 1997. Ed. Salvatore Luongo. Naples: Fridericiana, 2001. 579 – 610. L’Éternel retour. Dir. Jean Delannoy. Writ. Jean Cocteau, DisCina, 1943. IMDb. . Frappier, Jean. Les chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume d’Orange. Vol. 2: Le Couronnement de Louis, Le Charroi de Nîmes, La Prise d’Orange. Paris: SEDES, 1965. Henrard, Nadine, and Madeleine Tyssens, ed. Le Roman de Guillaume d’Orange, III. Paris: Champion, 2006. Jones, Catherine M. An Introduction to the Chansons de geste. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2014. Jones, Catherine M. “‘Modernizing’ the Epic: Philippe de Vigneulles.” Echoes of the Epic: Studies in Honor of Gerard J. Brault. Ed. David P. Schenck and Mary Jane Schenck. Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1998. 115 – 132. Jones, Catherine M., William W. Kibler, and Logan E. Whalen, trans. An Old French Trilogy: Texts from the William of Orange Cycle. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2020. Lepage, Yvan G., ed. Les Rédactions en vers du Couronnement de Louis. Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1978. McMillan, Duncan, ed. Le Charroi de Nîmes. Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle. 2nd edn. Paris: Klincksieck, 1978. Régnier, Claude, ed. Les Rédactions en vers de La Prise d’Orange. Paris: Klincksieck, 1966. Suard, François. Guide de la chanson de geste et de sa postérité littéraire (XIe – XVe siècle). Paris: Champion, 2011. Suard, François. “Les mises en prose épiques et romanesques: les enjeux littéraires.” Mettre en prose aux XIVe – XVIe siècles. Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman, with Irene Finotti. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. 33 – 52. Suard, François. Guillaume d’Orange: Étude du roman en prose. Paris: Champion, 1979. Taylor, Andrew. “Was there a Song of Roland?” Speculum 76 (2001): 28 – 65.

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Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting: Translation, Continuation and Adaptation.” Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature. Ed. Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 168 – 181. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Experiments in Fiction: Framing and Reframing Romance at the End of the Middle Ages and Beyond.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 30 (2015): 287 – 295. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Tyssens, Madeleine, Nadine Henrard, and Louis Gemenne, ed. Le Roman de Guillaume d’Orange, I. Paris: Champion, 2000.

Mireille Séguy

Back to the Future: The Conte du Graal and the First Continuation in the light of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran It could be said that continuation, as a strategic and a complex game, acts as rough barometer of an audience’s expectations, and of their sense of the importance, the desirability, of an original; that the interpretative manoeuvres of the Continuators expose a rich and collective history of literary production. (Taylor 2017, 173) Morte Darthur, Arthur of little Britaine, yea, and Amadis of Gaule, etc. accompt violente murder, or murder for no cause […]. (Thomas Underdowne, An Aethiopian Historie, quoted by Taylor (2008, 5)

The first part of Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future shows a teenage boy leaping back thirty years in time using a car equipped with a plutonium-powered “Flux capacitor”. After having unintentionally disturbed the scenario of his parents’ first meeting, as his mother had related it to him, the main character dedicates most of his energy to making the two young persons fall in love with each other, a necessary condition for his own existence and that of his siblings. A photograph he brought with him from the future measures the progress of his enterprise, images of his siblings fading or reappearing as his future parents move away from or towards each other. This scenario playfully draws on one of the most fundamental impulses of time-travel plots, namely the consequences that a change in a single element in the chronological chain can have on the course of events. The modification of the past may improve the future (which is finally the case in the optimistic Back to the Future), yet it proves most of the time catastrophic or at least impossible, with the traveller ending up trapped in a timeloop that he is doomed to live over and over forever, as in Chris Marker’s emblematic and desperate photo-roman, La Jetée. In the space-time of fiction, “prequels” are part of a similar problematic: by writing retrospectively the past of existing narratives, they necessarily influence those narratives themselves. This influence can manifest itself by disruption in the course of events of the diegesis: factual contradictions appear, the future adjusting poorly to the past with which it is suddenly endowed. On the other hand, this influence may also enhance the legitimacy or the cohesiveness of events which might have appeared insignificant, gratuitous, or disparate. In any case, prequels produce interpretative revaluations and reassessments, their existence retrospectively adding another dimension to well-known plots and opening https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-006

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new narrative perspectives that may drive the diegesis towards unexpected futures. Less frequently, they can also affect the very writing of the narratives to which they are conjoined. In the modern world of printed books, a sequel, whether it is analeptic or proleptic, never directly affects the writing of the work to which it is grafted since this work is already published. The same cannot be said in the Middle Ages, where a manuscript version of a work can record the various shifts caused by this kind of continuation. This chapter seeks to analyze these different retrospective modifications by taking as an example the way in which the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, by (re)writing the past of the Conte du Graal and the First Continuation, affect the reading and writing of these works.¹ Even before the Renaissance and its critical reading of the “old romances”, of which Jane Taylor has analyzed the diversity and subtlety so well, the style shifts brought about by these two “prequels” fundamentally question, as I will show, the place of violence in Arthurian fictions and their imagined worlds.

Reassembly and continuity errors In Fictions transfuges, the essay he devotes to the analysis of phenomena related to transfictionality (that is to say, the fictions sharing the same narrative universe), Richard Saint-Gelais (2017) underlines the fact that prequels, unlike sequels, generally evoke an impression of strangeness. This effect is mainly due to the fact that one finds it difficult to imagine that a narrative can be continued upstream, i. e., backwards in the course of time: Manifestement, la pulsion de récit s’exerce (et se pense) plus volontiers vers l’aval, comme si le fil narratif était noué (ou coupé) à son terme, mais non à son amorce; comme si le point de butée terminal était plus arbitraire, ou fragile, que le point de départ.

 It is estimated that the Elucidation was composed in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, after the first two Continuations to which it refers. Whilst it is likely that the Bliocadran post-dates the writing of the First Continuation (around 1190 – 1200), after which it was copied in the oldest extant manuscript of this text (see infra, note 5), it cannot be excluded that it is in fact contemporary. Even in this hypothetical scenario, the limited distribution of this text (two extant manuscripts) compared to that of the First Continuation (eleven copies) suggests that the medieval reader/listener became aware of the former before the latter. Hence, the Bliocadran appeared to them, as it must have done to the readers of the Conte du Graal, like a retrospective investigation into the past of the narrative. This observation is also true for later readers: if read at all, the Bliocadran, like the Elucidation (transmitted by only one manuscript), probably continued mostly to be read after the Conte du Graal and the Continuations, which (except for Gerbert’s Continuation) were much more widely distributed.

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[Clearly, narrative force flows (consciously) more readily downstream, as if the narrative thread was tied (or severed) at its end, but not at its beginning; it is as if the ending was more arbitrary, or more fragile, than the point of departure.]

Quoting Bernhild Boie and Daniel Ferrer, Saint-Gelais (2011, 78) continues: “On parle volontiers de l’inachèvement d’une oeuvre ou d’un manuscrit, mais […] on ne peut guère envisager d’oeuvre incommencée” [One readily speaks of the incompletion of a work or a manuscript, but […] one can scarcely conceive of a work not begun]. These observations are particularly well adapted to the cases of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, which extend into the past the ensemble formed by the Chrétien’s Conte du Graal and its Continuations. Even though the Conte du Graal, a tale interrupted in the middle of a dialogue, objectively calls for continuation – a call answered by four different sequels between the last decade of the twelfth century and the 1230s –, Chrétien’s last romance is not a work cut off from its beginning. Admittedly, as some authors have pointed out, the unusual opening scene can seem somewhat abrupt to a reader/listener expecting to find what Lenora D. Wolfgang (1976, 3) designates as “the reassuring background and guarantee of [Arthur’s] court”. Yet this destabilization is not such that it needs to be fixed in advance by a preliminary tale. Besides, the threshold of the Conte du Graal does not consist of the beginning of the romance itself, but of a detailed prologue of more than sixty lines in which Chrétien, as is his custom, skilfully prepares the reader/listener to “hear” the story that is to follow, whilst flattering its dedicatee and promoting himself at the same time. The editing problems posed by these prequels are first evident on a material level. Contrary to the proleptic Continuations, which follow on smoothly from the preceding text,² the addition of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran to the corpus clearly did not happen without difficulty. The codicological and textual tinkering that accompanied their insertion into the extant manuscripts that transmit them, and the very rarity of those manuscripts,³ can show the challenge that the simple fact of giving a place to these prequels has presented to the copyists. In the Mons manuscript (P), in which the Elucidation, the Bliocadran, the Conte du Graal, the  With two exceptions, no paratextual index (rubric or explicit / incipit) marks the passage from one text to another (Tether 2012, 2014).  The Elucidation has been transmitted in a single manuscript, Mons, Université de Mons-Hainaut, MS 331/206, olim 4568, (P). The Bliocadran, which follows in this last manuscript, has also been preserved in London, British Library, MS Add. 36614 (L). L is now considered to date from the first quarter of the thirteenth century and P from the third or last quarter (Bouget 2018). On the manuscript tradition of the Conte du Graal and its Continuations, see Micha (1966); Busby et al. (1993b); Busby (2002).

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First, Second, and Third Continuations were copied one after the other by the same hand, the scribe moved the Conte du Graal’s prologue to the end of The Elucidation and cut the first sixty lines. The connection intended to make the Bliocadran appear as part of the Conte du Graal (a heading preceding the narrative specifies: “Ci endroit comence li contes del saint Greail”, fol. 8r)⁴ is thus made at the cost of a mutilation of Chrétien’s prologue. This mutilation does not go unnoticed, even more so since the few remaining verses, in which the mention of a “comandement le conte” survives, no longer identify Philippe de Flandres, and barely make any sense. However, such manipulations are most numerous and obvious in manuscript L. Close examination shows in fact that the Bliocadran was copied by another hand after the Conte du Graal, which is placed after it in the assembled collection. To insert this narrative at the beginning of the manuscript, a scribe detached the first page of the Conte du Graal, pasted it at the beginning of a new prefatory section and copied his text again afterwards, not before having previously erased, probably with acid, the first verses of Chrétien’s romance.⁵ Further to these material clues of the challenge represented by the addition of the two prequels at the head of the Conte du Graal, narrative signs appear. Several factual inconsistencies are evident between the Elucidation and the Bliocadran on the one hand, and the stories to which they were joined, on the other. These inconsistencies reveal a delicate “conjointure” difficult to achieve. Regarding the Elucidation, whose opacity and strangeness have justly struck scholars, points of contact are numerous. Some concern important points of the narrative (such as the attribution of the visit to the Grail Castle to Perceval, a scenario that clearly corresponds to that of Gauvain in the First Continuation), but mostly they relate to the narrator’s propensity for announcing events. In this case, it concerns seven narrative branches (oddly designated as seven “gardes”), which do not correspond, or correspond imperfectly, to the actual content that the reader will find in the Conte du Graal and the Continuations. For the Bliocadran, which positions itself more as an “ante-episode” of Chrétien’s romance than as an actual prologue, the discrepancy, which is a glaring contradiction, affects the entire narrative. We indeed learn how Perceval’s mother settles in the “gaste forest” in order to remove her only son from the chivalric world after her husband’s eleven brothers and then her husband himself (Bliocadran) have died in combat. In the Conte du Graal, it is to escape the unrest caused by King Uter I use the edition by Bouget (2018), in which the text of the Bliocadran and, thus also of the Elucidation, is that of P.  For an analysis of this example in the light of a broader reflection on the modes of composition and reading of the Arthurian book, see Gingras (2010).

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pandragon’s death that the hero’s entire family, ruined by the disabling injury inflicted on the father and by the devastation of his lands, decides to take refuge in a manor they own in the forest. It is only when she loses her two oldest sons “at arms” one after the other, and then her husband, who died of sorrow, that the hero’s mother conceives the project of keeping her youngest son out of the world. Although these obvious mismatches, as well as the various deletions, cutting, copying, and pasting operations carried out by the scribe, may attest to the resistance of the texts to the integration of an unanticipated past, their disruptive dimension is in fact much less important than one might fear. When read, the two prequels above all recreate coherence and meaning in the narratives which, although they predate them, or were read before them, follow in the order of the diegesis, exactly as they do in the two extant manuscripts, and are thus modified.

Re-readings Significantly, scholars who have sought to reduce the importance of the contradictions created by the addition of the two prequels to the corpus of the first verse Grail romances have in essence focussed on the consequences they have on the corpus when read. By imagining a past for the Conte du Graal and the First Continuation, the Bliocadran, and the Elucidation provide them with a new memory that indeed profoundly transforms the reading of them, especially because the act of reading is based, as Wolfgang Iser has convincingly shown, on a constant interaction between the elements of the “déjà-lu” [already read], as they are assembled as the story progresses, and the apprehension of what remains to be read (Iser 1985 [1976]). The principal effect of prequels on readers/ listeners who become aware of them after having read the stories to which they are added, is to oblige them to reorganize all their interactions. Hence, one can appreciate the significance of continuity errors that can arise between texts in light of such serious cognitive reworking. By using this reading-based approach, Thomas Hinton (2011; 2012) has shown how much the inconsistencies generated by the Elucidation, which, according to most scholars, mar this text, can in fact better prepare the reader/listener to face the disparate and contradictory nature of the corpus to which it is joined. In particular, he does justice to the much decried passage of the “seven guards” – this obscure episode in which the plots of seven tales (that one can hardly follow subsequently) succeed one another – by proposing how much these disconcerting announcements allow the reader to appreciate more properly the centrifugal aesthetic that characterizes the First Continuation. Most of the

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many false connections that can be observed between the Elucidation and the rest of the corpus are thus shown to operate as real intertextual links, which ultimately reinforce the cyclical dimension of the whole. In the same perspective, Wolfgang (1976) stresses the factual gaps between the ante-episode and Chrétien’s romance in the light of the retrospective effect of “rationalization” produced by the Bliocadran’s plot regarding the Veuve Dame’s story in the Conte du Graal. By sharpening the focus on the hero’s mother (who takes the initiative to depart into the forest in the Bliocadran) and, above all, on the dangers inherent in tournaments (Bliocadran’s foolish death during a joust with a stranger), the Bliocadran’s narrator, according to some scholars, clarifies and reinforces the condemnation of chivalry expressed by the Veuve Dame in Chrétien. Hence, this condemnation should be understood more as the condemnation of a kind of chivalric practice seen as vain and social. Whilst it seems true that the Elucidation and the Bliocadran can (re)write the past of the narratives that follow so as to facilitate or improve the reader/listener’s understanding – which is in fact the primary function of prequels – the reach of their shadows actually extends far beyond these deliberate intertextual bridges. Like all travels into the past, they indeed bring about modifications in the future that do not seem to follow a concerted plan. This is the case of the First Continuation, the understanding of which is completely modified by reading the Bliocadran beforehand. Bliocadran’s death is not only gratuitous, but also appears particularly unexpected and brutal: the suddenness of the tragic end of a character, struck in the face by a spear after having fought brilliantly all day during the tournament, the utter coldness of the description and the rapid rhythm of the narration everything drives the reader/listener to feel astonishment characteristic of an unpredictable and irreversible catastrophe. In an instant, even though the joust could equally well have turned to his advantage, the hero receives a spectacularly fatal wound that will plunge his entire kingdom into suffering and, one might imagine, precarity, starting with his young wife, who gives birth to a boy right at the very moment of his father’s death. It is therefore hardly surprising that this episode is strongly anchored in the memory of the reader/listener who becomes aware of it, leading him/her to envisage subsequent adventures and discourses of the narrative. This is particularly the case with the declarations made twice in the First Continuation according to which death by arms is an outcome to be avoided at all costs, not because it would be immoral, but simply because it is irreparable. If this observation is first made by Keu, a character known for his fractious attitude (he states it in L through a wordplay in which the verb “entrer”, in the future tense “enterront”, reads like the verb “enterrer”: the point is to stress that those

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who enter the closed field of battle are also those who are buried⁶), it is then enunciated inwardly by Gauvain, paragon of chivalry and, moreover, hero of the story. Whilst his brave opponent, the Riche Soudoyer, has passed out during their fight, Gauvain is unable to kill him: “Qu’il se porpense, s’il l’ocit, / Tot a perdu sans contredit” (ll. 6331– 6332) [For he thinks to himself that if he kills him, he will doubtless have lost everything]. Bliocadran’s absurd death not only confers weight on these unusual considerations, but also allows us to grasp more properly the asynchronous, strange, or even blatantly incoherent way in which almost all of the combats are treated in the First Continuation. Three branches of the story are organized around combats which oppose Arthur’s knights and various groups of adversaries (Guiromelant and his army in Branch I, defenders of Brun de Branlant’s castle in Branch II, defenders of the Château Orgueilleux in Branch IV). Although the specifics of these encounters vary somewhat from one episode to another – even if two of them are organized around a siege – their structural scenario is always the same, and may be summarized like this: after having tested its opponents’ determination and bravery, Arthur’s side finally prevails. Bitter hostility gives way to general peace, everyone pays tribute to Arthur, and yesterday’s adversaries become staunch allies. The systematic nature of these “happy endings” has been noted by Colette-Anne van Coolput-Storms, who saw in them the mark of the author’s “optimisme” and “indulgence souriante face aux travers humains” (Van Coolput-Storms 1993, 34) [smiling indulgence in the face of human failings]. Considering the past related in the Bliocadran, these comforting conclusions seem rather to demonstrate concerted strategies aimed at avoiding armed clashes at all costs, whatever they may be, ending in the death of the combatants. In fact, the authors of the First Continuation multiply narrative tricks to prevent the characters from achieving this eventuality, despite its usually being a banal situation for an Arthurian knight. The surprising episode of Gauvain’s fight against the Riche Soudoyer eloquently illustrates this. When the latter regains consciousness after his long faint, he explains to Gauvain that his defeat would inevitably lead to the death of his companion (and consequently to his

 l. 5788. I am quoting here the text of L (with any significant variants from P) in William Roach’s 1952 edition, which was taken over by Colette-Anne van Coolput-Storms (1993). The tone and content of this intervention make Keu a precursor of Dinadan, the rebellious knight of the Tristan en prose, who opposes the traditional values of valour and honour – which have the notable disadvantage of often leading to death – to those of peace, security, and well-being. Whilst he is generally decried for his undesirable irony, the character of Keu undergoes, throughout the First Continuation, a notable rehabilitation, in line with the ideological orientation and aesthetic choices of the narrative.

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own), as she would be unable to bear the fact that he would not emerge victorious from a duel. Determined to avoid this disastrous outcome at all costs, Gauvain then lends himself to an unprecedented masquerade consisting of multiplying the signs of his defeat, to the great displeasure of Arthur and his companions, who are unable to understand how such a reversal could have occurred. He thus constitutes himself prisoner, and gives his sword to the Riche Soudoyer’s companion, before the truth is finally established as soon as the lady turns her back. If this surprising episode, told in a lively style, may at first make one smile, it takes a more serious turn for those who have read the Bliocadran, in which the hero loses his life precisely for having wanted to escape the shame of “recreantise” [cowardice].⁷ In light of Bliocadran’s fate, the excessive demands of the Riche Soudoyer’s companion, which will necessarily end up leading the couple to death, exemplify the tyranny that can be exerted on individuals by the socio-cultural norm of valour when it becomes absolute. To protect oneself from it, one should resort, as the Riche Soudoyer does with the help of Gauvain, to fictions, totally fabricated stories, thanks to which the death of good knights is avoided, opponents are reconciled, and all is well that ends well. This commitment is striking in Branch II, in which the castle where Brun de Branlant and his troops have entrenched themselves is attacked by Arthur’s army. Unsurprisingly, the episode opens with an all-out battle depicted by the narrator in the hyperbolic way typical of the chanson de geste: Lors comença li pogneïs Si grans c’ainc teus ne fu oïs. Maint ceval I ot gaegnié Et maint ocis et mehagnié, Et mainte dure joste faite Et mainte lance grose fraite; Maint bon cevalier abattu Et pris a force et retenu”. (ll. 1107– 1114)

 After his brothers’ death, Bliocadran abandons himself to sorrow. The narrator then intervenes to explain at length, on the level of a maxim, the social norm that determines what is appropriate to do and, above all, not to do, for a knight in such a situation: “Mais tout adiés ne doit on mie / duel demener car c’ert folie, / ains doit on faire c’on soit liés / tel eure c’on est tous iriés, / home ki ne se viut retraire / de bien quant il le viut parfaire” (ll. 515 – 520) [But one should not always mourn, for it is unwise, but rather pretend to be joyful when one is upset, as a man who does not want to cease doing good and finishing the task]. Hence, the reader or listener is not surprised to see the hero finally ask for his weapons and his horse in order to compete in tournaments, to the despair of his relatives and, above all, of his wife who, unlike the Riche Soudoyer’s lady, avoids chivalric and courtly displays.

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[Then began the combat, such as was never heard before. Many a horse was won, many others killed and injured, and many a hard joust made, many a sturdy lance broken; many a good knight struck down, taken by force and captured].

Neither side having won, Arthur and his troops begin to lay siege to the castle. Again, as is to be expected, the besiegers ravage the countryside to deprive the besieged of food, whilst the latter carry out numerous lightning-swift sorties in the hope of lifting the siege. Yet this conventional warfare mechanism soon begins to seize up when two young ladies “de grant biauté” complain of being racked with hunger to Gauvain and Yvain, who curiously came to ask them whether they lacked anything during this siege for which the two knights were themselves responsible. Gauvain and Yvain easily persuade Arthur, imbued with courtly values, to send immediately to the city a quantity of “[…] pain et vin, car et poisons, / Oisiaus et fresques venisons” (ll. 1191– 1192) [[…] bread and wine, meat and fish, fowl and fresh venison]. This totally counterproductive operation is repeated, making Branlant’s siege three years longer than necessary. Whilst Bliocadran’s dramatic story retrospectively gives full meaning to these avoidance strategies – some of which are objectively absurd considering the needs of war –, it also brings full coherence to the narrative’s centrifugal aesthetic, to use Hinton’s (2012) phrase. In a world where it is crucial to escape irreparable outcomes, it is indeed understandable that the narrator multiplies adventures without any prospect of conclusion, quickly sketched out and in any case limited to the branch in which they belong (the meeting between Gauvain and the Demoiselle de Lis being a notable exception that will be analyzed later). The adventures featured prominently in the First Continuation end abruptly, giving way to digressions or other stories (“ici recomencent noveles” [here begin stories again], says the author-narrator from time to time),⁸ the characters most of the time failing to follow up on the action, either by divesting it of all seriousness, or simply by rejecting it. In this romance, a man can put his head back on his shoulders after being beheaded, the kidnapping of a child is not sufficiently alarming that it would force you to skip a meal, and you can fall asleep (like Gawain does at the Grail Castle), whilst your weeping host is about to reveal a story that is not only eagerly awaited but also terribly pathetic – unless this is precisely a technique intended to prevent him from confiding it to you.

 On the modes of narrative composition characteristic of this continuation, I refer to Séguy (2001, 292 ff).

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Opening the future of the past Paving the way for the reading of the stories into which they are inserted is not the only function of prequels.⁹ To interest the reader/listener, they must also elaborate their own content, even if this entails opening new narrative paths, different from those actually developed further in the course of the diegesis. The last part of the Bliocadran seeks such an opening. This part is indeed entirely dedicated to the way in which the eponymous character’s wife, after having carefully planned their departure, settles with her son and her household in the “gaste forest” to live an existence the reader familiar with the Conte du Graal already knows will be short-lived. If Bliocadran’s gloomy fate and the grief it causes constitute the emotional climax of the story, everything indicates that it is this last narrative sequence which interests the author-narrator above all else. First of all, there are the interventions where he explicitly states twice that he is more interested in the lady’s life than the husband’s death (ll. 729 – 733 and ll. 936 – 941); then the abundance of details that specifies, in this otherwise rapidly and drily told narrative, how the lady imagines, sets up, and deploys her escape plan, with time suddenly suspended when she enters the heart of the immense and protective forest, and attention paid, above all, to the way in which a bucolic life is reinvented there in self-sufficiency, thanks to a small industrious community which knows how to make the most of the welcoming nature surrounding it. To depict this setting-up, the author-narrator uses a technical terminology unusual in the Arthurian cycle: it is a matter of “mioure un molin” (l. 1167) [turning a mill], of “essarter” [clearing land] and “faire aprester [le] mairien” [preparing timber], “appareiller” [preparing], “gaagnier” [working], “arer” [tilling] and “semer” [sowing seed in] the earth, to set up a “palis” [enclosure] all around the newly built house (ll. 1192– 1207). The Bliocadran closes with the depiction of this, the precise contours of which are such as to leave a lasting impression on the reader/listener’s memory: a grinding mill installed on a river’s fast-flowing waters; well loosened, ploughed, and sown land; a refuge large enough to shelter the lady and her people, well enclosed by fences.

 The sub-title of this section echoes Patrick Boucheron and François Hartog’s (2018) invitation not to give priority in history to the mechanisms of cause and effect that lead essentially to studying the past according to events that have taken place, but to pay attention to causes not followed by effects, in other words, to possibilities that have not happened. Studied in this way, history can help, writes François Hartog, to “reopen the future”, that is to say, to imagine and implement other futures from our present.

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The attention given to this episode unambiguously shows the author-narrator taking the lady’s side against the feudal and chivalric society she leaves behind. By doing so, he also legitimizes fictions that allow themselves to transform reality as soon as human life is at stake – a position that is re-affirmed, as we have seen, in the First Continuation. In the Bliocadran, this perspective appears in the passage in which the messenger of Bliocadran’s companions assures the lady, who has just given birth to her child, that her husband, absent at a tournament, has been delayed, whereas he is in fact dead and already buried. This is striking, especially in this last sequence, entirely organized around the lies and dissimulations of Perceval’s mother: to the great vassals of her kingdom (to whom she announces her desire to go on a pilgrimage when she is in fact considering flight into the forest), to all her people, kept in ignorance of her preparations, and of course to her son, whom she raises in the illusion that the inhabited world stops at the limits of their small community, beyond which there are nothing but devils ready to devour him. The enchanted interlude of the Bliocadran’s “gaste forest” terminates definitively at the beginning of the Conte du Graal’s, but its echo, like all the interventions into the past, does not fail to make itself felt in the continuation of the narrative. It is particularly noticeable in two episodes that respond to each other, at each end of the Conte du Graal. The first, of course, is the discourse in which Perceval’s mother explains to her son the causes of their departure into the forest (ll. 412– 467). The second is the history of the Château de la Roche de Changuin (“de Sanguin” in P),¹⁰ of which Gauvain learns in two stages, first from the castle “notonier” (ll. 7527– 7604), then from Guiromelant (ll. 8740 – 8759). Like the Bliocadran’s last sequence, these two episodes relate how women had to face the violence of arms and how they, with their children, sought to protect themselves from it. As already noted, in the Conte du Graal, Perceval family’s flight into the “gaste forest soutaine” [waste and deserted forest] is set in the context of the destabilization that affects the kingdom after Uterpandragon’s death. Here is not only the young Perceval and his mother, but also his father, who became disabled after being wounded “parmi la anche” [between the thighs] (“les jambes” [the legs] in P), and his two older brothers. The family, although exiled and ruined, tries to maintain links with the feudal world: the father encourages his elder sons to train at the court of two kings, who welcome and knight them. It is thus at the moment she might hope to recover that Perceval’s family is struck

 As I do for the First Continuation, I quote the Conte du Graal according to ms L, with variants from P if relevant. My reference edition is Busby (1993a).

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to the heart: as they are on their way back to the family manor, the two brothers are defeated “as armes” and killed. Instead of experiencing the joy of seeing his sons knighted, their father dies of grief. At the other limit of the Conte du Graal, the history of the Chateau de la Roche de Changuin takes place in the same historical context: it is also to escape the turmoil that breaks out after Uterpandragon’s death that his wife leaves to settle beyond Calboie’s borders with her daughter, King Lot’s wife, and her young daughter, Gauvain’s sister. If the community living at La Roche de Changuin is much larger and immeasurably richer than Perceval’s family, it is a victim of the same evils, caused by the same feudal violence: there are elderly women disinherited on the death of their husbands, orphans without support, young men without land waiting indefinitely to be knighted. Everyone hopes for the arrival of an ideally courteous knight who, having become the lord of the place, will at last restore their possessions to the ladies, marry the young girls, knight the young men, and put an end to the wars. In both cases the solution adopted in order to escape the brutality of arms is the same: when the balance of power is unequal, the only possible option is to flee to a place far from the theatre of operations. However, the two episodes reveal very different attitudes towards the feudal world. These differences can be summarized in terms of space: if Perceval’s family goes into exile in the forest, the place, although deserted and far from everything, offers no solution of continuity with one of the seigneurial courts. The manor where the family settles is the father’s property, and the father insists, as we have seen, on sending his elder sons to train in the practice of arms and court life with two well-established figures of the Arthurian world. On the other hand, the area where the Château de la Roche de Changuin is situated shows all the characteristics of the Otherworld: marked by a boundary beyond which extends a territory whence one does not return, it is described to Gauvain as ‘“une terre sauvage, toute pleine de grandes merveilles”’ (ll. 7464 – 7465) [“a wild land, full of great wonders”]. Yet it is, of course, the castle itself which undoubtedly testifies to its belonging to another level of reality, different from the Arthurian feudal world: protected by many enchantments, the castle is governed by two queens, both already long dead. Although set in two very different and even opposing spaces, the “gaste forest soutaine” of the Conte du Graal and the Château de la Roche de Changuin bear witness to the same pessimism regarding the chivalric way of life, presented in both cases as irremediably violent. They show, in the first case, that it is futile to imagine escaping this violence (the cruelty of arms affects Perceval’s family despite his exile) and, in the second, that hoping to curb it is illusory (postulating that justice and peace will be restored in an Otherworld governed by dead

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queens means that these ideals, like the perfect courtoisie they imply, are definitively out of reach in this world). This disenchantment is both enhanced and surpassed by the experience in the final part of the Bliocadran, which confirms Köhler’s hypothesis that the ideal of a peaceful court society, hitherto favoured by Chrétien, is losing momentum in the Conte du Graal (Köhler 1974). This experience shows in fact that that there is another path between the relative distance of the Conte du Graal’s “gaste forest soutaine” and the definitive distance of La Roche de Changuin’s spectral community. This different path can also be understood in terms of space: between the Arthurian space where Perceval’s family continues to live in spite of everything and the literally utopian world of the dead queens’ castle, the cleared, cultivated, and inhabited space of the Bliocadran imposes itself as what Michel Foucault calls an heterotopia, i. e., not an Otherworld (“Autre Monde”) but another world (“monde autre”), another proposition of a world (“une autre proposition de monde”). The area developed by the small community in the Bliocadran possesses several characteristics of heterotopia, starting with its two main features. It is first of all a “situated utopia” (“utopie située”): it is a real place, built by and for human beings, but at the same time “outside all places”. It also constitutes a “counter-space” (“contreespace”, i. e., a space that is in opposition to all the others): […] parmi tous ces lieux qui se distinguent les uns des autres, il y en a qui sont absolument différents; des lieux qui s’opposent à tous les autres, qui sont destinés en quelque sorte à les effacer, à les neutraliser ou à les purifier. Ce sont en quelque sorte des contre-espaces. [[…] among these places which differentiate themselves one from the other, there are some which are absolutely different; places which are in opposition to all others, in some ways destined to efface, neutralize, or purify them. In a way they are counter-spaces.]

And Foucault adds “[…] ces espaces différents, ces autres lieux, [sont] des contestations mythiques et réelles de l’espace où nous vivons” (Foucault 2009, 24– 25) [these different spaces, these other places, (are) mythical and real challenges to the world in which we live]. In retrospect, the ephemeral experience of the “gaste forest” in the Bliocadran brings to the Conte du Graal the particular appeal of heterotopias: it opens up the range of possibilities. Certainly, its protagonists adhere to the pessimism that emerges from Chrétien’s romance by radically distancing themselves from the chivalric world, of which the Bliocadran explicitly shows that there is nothing to be expected. Yet, they also bet, in fiction, that a feudal counterspace could emerge in the world presented as real in the story. Of course, this counter-space is not only of a diegetic nature. The experiment carried out in the Bliocadran, which aims to profoundly reshape the world, and the words

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which articulate it,¹¹ also constitutes an alternative narrative proposal for Arthurian chivalric romance. In this last sequence, the Bliocadran, decentred from seigneurial courts, their norms and customs, becomes marked by a bifurcation framed by the same ideological structure as idyllic narrative, of which Wolfzettel (2009), in particular, has identified the salient features. Beyond the recurrent scenario of the thwarted love of young people who are eventually reunited (a scenario absent in the Bliocadran) or of a bucolic tropism (fully exploited by the ante-episode), for a medievalist the idyllic romance is first of all characterized by its criticism of Arthurian ideology, to which it opposes a radical counter-model: Le roman dit idyllique – ou la romance – est idyllique surtout parce qu’il ignore la dialectique anthropologique et sociale du roman arthurien et son éthique chevaleresque, parce qu’il ne se soucie pas d’éclairer l’écart, psychologique et idéologique à la fois, qui sépare le point de départ et le point d’arrivée, la distance mythique parcourue par les protagonistes du roman arthurien. […] En d’autres termes, le roman idyllique oppose une conception régressive à la conception progressive du roman arthurien. […] C’est le roman d’une atemporalité heureuse. […] Ce type de roman ne vise pas, tel le roman arthurien, à l’accomplissement du devoir, mais à l’accomplissement du désir. Toute la tradition soi-disant idyllique se résume en fait par la lutte entre la réalité féodale et le désir – Lacan aurait dit entre le symbolique et l’imaginaire. (Wolfzettel 2009, 62, 65, and 67) [The kind of romance called ‘idyllic’ – or romance in French – is idyllic above all because it is unaware of the anthropological and social dialectic of Arthurian romance and its chivalric ethic, because it is not concerned with explaining the distance, at once psychological and ideological, between the points of departure and arrival, the mythical distance covered by the protagonists of Arthurian romance. […] In other words, idyllic romance sets up a regressive view opposed to the progressive view of Arthurian romance. […] It is the romance of happy atemporality. […] This type of romance, unlike Arthurian romance, does not seek the fulfillment of duty, but of desire. The entire tradition so-called idyllic tradition can in fact be summed up by the struggle between feudal reality and desire – Lacan would have said between the symbolic and the imaginary.]

 Bliocadran’s son, kept in ignorance of his name, is therefore unaware of the weight of social identity. Moreover, the avoidance of the word “chevalier”, which is a common word in the small community of the “gaste forest”, erases the very existence of its referent.

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The heterotopia of the Bliocadran’s last sequence ends abruptly at the beginning of the Conte du Graal. If the idyllic temptation expressed in the ante-episode is therefore at an end, its nostalgia – for the reader/listener who will have become aware of it – pervades Chrétien’s whole romance. In the light of the Bliocadran’s alternative experience, the unfortunate fate suffered by Perceval’s family, the violence to which the women are particularly subject in this romance, the multiple threats to the Arthurian court and the kingdom of Logres, the indefinite suspense in which the inhabitants of La Roche de Changuin vegetate, and even the tale’s unfinished state, all appear to be signs of a failure that could have been avoided in another possible world, a world that would have been structured by other ideological and aesthetic choices. On the other hand, the temptation of the idyllic counter-model expressed in the Bliocadran is clearly noticeable in the First Continuation. This narrative is in fact constantly animated by a trope which might be called the “close shave” (“l’échappée belle”) where, in Wolfzettel’s terms, the logic of desire resolutely takes precedence over the logic of duty. First, one thinks of the two narrative bifurcations which, in Branch II and Branch IV, allow both Gauvain and the author-narrator to abandon the repetitive adventures of siege warfare to pursue other pleasures. In the first of these bifurcations, the character’s breakout, which will lead him to the Demoiselle de Lis’s pavilion, is the pretext for a long description in which the narrator dwells on the depiction of a wonderfully vernal and inviting nature, whose topical elements – the swiftness of the running water, the denseness of the forests, the freshness of the flowering meadows, the communicative joy of the birds, the clearness of the air – are endowed with traits that, by their variety and delicacy, surprise the reader/listener familiar with Arthurian romance. In the second, in which Gauvain meets the Riche Soudoyer and his lady without recognizing them, the narrator lingers over the description of the magnificence and sumptuousness of the characters’ clothing – yet another trope of the story. However, it is in Branch IV that the temptation of the “close shave”, characteristic of this continuation, is most keenly felt. We see Arthur giving up on sleep in order to enjoy the pleasant musical evenings to which the castle’s watchmen devote themselves, the besiegers taking advantage of the truce observed by the besieged every weekend “por acacier et por jouer” [to hunt and relax] in the forest – just like the Bliocadran’s young Perceval (l. 5826) – , Gauvain waking up Yvain early in the morning to “Deduire fors a la rousee, / Parlant tote la matinee” (ll. 6131– 6132) [relax outside in the dew, talking the whole morning],¹² whilst

 These two lines are absent in P.

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seeming to forget that on the same day he has to face the most formidable champion from the opposing side. Moreover, the narrator appeals to the reader/listener, to draw his/her attention to the image, indeed unprecedented, provided by these seasoned knights delighting in the freshness of the dew on a summer’s morning: Et savez quex ert li matins? Si biaus et si clers et si fins Com el plus bel tans de l’esté. [P: Con se il fust fais pour jüer] Dedens la rosee a lavé Son vis et ses piés et ses mains; Autresi fist mesire Yvains.” (ll. 6133 – 6138). [And do you know how the morning was? As fair and bright and fine as in the best summer weather. [P: As if made for recreation] Gauvain washed his face and feet and hands in the dew; Sir Yvain did likewise.]

Rewritings The Elucidation and the Bliocadran have thus changed the reception of the stories on to which they have been grafted. They were also influential on their written transmission. This last type of modification can be seen in manuscript P, in which the same copyist wrote the two prequels, the Conte du Graal, and its first three Continuations. This manuscript offers several points of interest, starting with its version of the First Continuation. Following William Roach (1949, xxxix), scholars identify this version as the short redaction of this continuation. However, it joins the long and mixed redactions in two episodes that are specific to them. The first, in Branch III, is the story of the capture of Guimer, Cador’s sister, by an enchanter named Aalardin. The second, which occurs in Branch IV, is Gauvain’s account of his encounter with the Demoiselle de Lis at Arthur’s court. Although, in the short version, this retrospective narrative does not add anything to the story that is already known to the reader/listener (who has read it in Branch II), it does, however, shed a completely new light on its form in the long and mixed redactions of the continuation. What had been described as an amorous adventure, not only consensual, but long anticipated by the young lady, now appears as rape. This contradiction has been much written about. My purpose is not to go back over this controversy which, moreover, has long been concluded with the recognition of the anteriority of the non-violent version of the meeting (short redaction), but to look into the reasons that may have led the copyist of P to in-

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clude, contrary to already established convention, these two episodes in his version of the text.¹³ Although other factors might have come into consideration (it is of course possible that the copyist had a model that already included these two passages), I propose the hypothesis that this peculiarity of the manuscript should associated with another notable feature of P: namely that the Elucidation and the Bliocadran precede the Conte du Graal and its first three Continuations, which is the only known occurrence of this. In fact, it is difficult not to link the writing choices of P’s copyist with the presence of these two prequels, and more particularly, in this case, of the Elucidation. Although we recall that the Bliocadran is interested in the means of protecting oneself from the violence of the chivalric world in a context that is nevertheless civilized by courtly customs, the Elucidation, for its part, seeks to identify the origin of this violence and of the series of evils that it engenders. The cause of the downfall of the kingdom of Logres, which manifests itself in a terrible drought, in the sudden impossibility of reaching the Roi Pêcheur’s court, but also, later, in the violent antagonism between Arthur’s knights and the forest inhabitants, is related there to the initial rape of the ladies with golden cups by King Amangon and his men. The voices of the ladies cease to be heard, the food and drink they used to provide for the travellers disappear forever. Thus, the text stresses an irreparable misfortune that marks a definitive break between the world of chivalry and a golden age before the sin, a sin designated in this case as a sexual one attributable to men of arms and power, which Arthurian courtesy will not be able to redeem. In fact, these two episodes added by the copyist of P to the short redaction of the First Continuation relate precisely an attempted rape (for the first) and a rape (for the second) of young women by knights who use force to impose their will on others. It should be noted that in both cases the rape, or its attempt, is not isolated: it takes place in a context of brutal confrontation in which are developed themes, dear to the Bliocadran, of the “mescheance” [misfortune] that can befall the best,¹⁴ and of the vulnerability of the inermes (in this case, women, wives, and daughters) in a world governed by chance and the cruelty of arms. In the first episode, Aalardin challenges Cador to a duel and then kid-

 These two passages were transcribed by Roach as an appendix to his edition of short redaction of the First Continuation. I quote the text of P in this edition.  It should be noted that this theme is also developed by the Veuve Dame of the Conte du Graal at the beginning of her speech to her son, echoing (in the order of the narrative) the Bliocadran, in which the narrator recalls that “sovent mesciet a preudome” (l. 502) [misfortune often happens to good men].

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naps Guimer, Cador’s sister. The two knights begin by striking each other with equal force, which knocks them and their horses to the ground. As in the Bliocadran, however, bad luck immediately turns the fight in the opponent’s favour: “[…] a Cador tant meskaï” [such misfortune befell Cador], relates the narrator, that his horse falls on him, breaking his thigh. Passing out in pain, he shows all the symptoms of death. Then, “par felounie” [by wickedness], Aalardin declares that Guimer will be shamefully “livrée” [delivered up] to his pleasure and that of his men (“Faite lor en ert livrisons” (l. 13076) [She will be handed over to them]). The latter indulges in a poignant lament, somewhat in the manner of Perceval’s mother, in which is expressed the universal distress of “desconseillees” [helpless] women facing a world governed by violence: “Ha, Diex! Bele Sainte Marie! Ma douce mere que fera Quant iceste novele ora? Quant ceste novele ora dire Tant sera li siens cuers plains d’ire, La mors li a tolu mon pere, Et d’autre part moi et mon frere Li a tolu cis aversiers. Certes que pas n’est chevalier: Qui par force fame covoite, Il fait vilounie revoite.” (ll. 13106 – 13116) [“Ah, God! Fair Holy Marie! What will my sweet mother do when she hears this news? When she hears this news, her heart will be so full of sorrow, for death robbed her of my father, and this devil has then taken me and my brother from her. He is certainly not a knight. Whoever thinks to take a woman by force commits an infamy.”]

In the second episode, in which Gauvain admits to the rape of the Demoiselle de Lis, the impulsive brutality that courtesy seeks to tame engulfs everything in its path. It not only determines Gauvain’s wrongdoing, which very unusually¹⁵ appears to be driven by an irresistible predatory instinct, but also the decisions of one of the two brothers and of the young lady’s father who, deaf to the latter’s pleas and to Gauvain’s many offers of reparation, engage one after the other in unequal duels in which they quickly meet their own death. At the end of the passage, not only will the lady, whom the ordeal leaves more dead than alive, have been dishonoured (according to the current social norms), but her status in the  This very degraded image of Arthur’s nephew, which resonates with the devaluation that the character underwent during the first third of the thirteenth century, is one of the arguments that have been put forward to support the posteriority of the long version over the short version of the First Continuation (Gallais 1988 – 1989; Busby 1980).

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feudal world will have become much more exposed, like that of Perceval’s mother in the Bliocadran and the Conte du Graal. ¹⁶ In the light of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, the strangeness of the text of the First Continuation in the Mons manuscript begins to wane. The presence of these episodes, characteristic of the long and mixed redactions, in fact becomes fully legitimate when seen in relation to the way in which the two prequels shape the past of the diegesis. The fact that the scribe of P considered it necessary to take into account the content of these two narratives when writing the First Continuation is also confirmed by the special attention he clearly paid to the cohesion of all the texts he copied into this manuscript. This is especially reflected in his choice to replace the name “Manessier” with that of “Chrétien” at the end of the Third Continuation (where the verses dedicating the story to Countess Jeanne are also omitted), but also in the remarkable fluidity that characterizes the transition from one story to the other. Although these junctures are generally quite smooth, scholars have emphasized that they tend in P to disappear almost completely, highlighting the structure of interlace that supports the totality of stories gathered here independently of their various authorial attributions. In this corpus, the Elucidation, whose presence constitutes the great peculiarity of the manuscript, plays the role of a matrix that is both poetic and formal. As a poetic matrix, as I have tried to show elsewhere, this narrative, which appears to be a “prologue to prologues”, relates the birth of Arthurian “troveüre” [poetics] in relation and in opposition to a form of original vocality, fundamentally mythical and musical, presented as definitively passé (Séguy 2019). Finally, as a formal matrix, by introducing episodes of which some are actually related in the continuation of the narrative, whilst others are clearly only unexploited paths left open to the imagination of the storytellers, the Elucidation deploys a tension characteristic of cyclical constructions, between closure and continuation, between profusion and cohesion, of narrative material. The Mons manuscript’s particular text of the First Continuation also shows that the Elucidation played the role of a thematic matrix as well, in relation to the Bliocadran, with which it offers more points of convergence than is apparent at first sight. In fact, by associating the

 In accordance with the orientation favoured by the First Continuation, these two episodes, which begin dramatically, find a happy conclusion: Aalardin, defeated by Caradoc, acknowledges his wrongs to Guimer and then forms with Cador and Caradoc a trio of inseparable companions. Bran de Lis, the Demoiselle de Lis’s second brother, ends up being reconciled with Gauvain after a long fight, thanks to the combined interventions of his sister, the child she has had of Gauvain, and then Arthur himself. After paying homage to Arthur, Bran de Lis grants forgiveness to his former mortal enemy, to whom he promises to be a friend “de cuer par bon corage” (l. 18171) [“sincere and well disposed”].

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story of the kingdom of Logres with an irreparable original rape, it explicitly situates all the narratives that follow in the shadow of a violence they will struggle to tone down (reestablishing “joy” is indeed the function that the Elucidation assigns to the “poetics” of the Grail, of which it lays out seven possible variants), but which they will never be able to curb completely. Like all journeys into the past, the Elucidation and the Bliocadran affect the way in which they are understood and – in manuscript P – even their future direction. Whilst the narratives to which they are attached may offer some resistance to this influence, as the inconsistencies between the texts show, the Conte du Graal, and especially the First Continuation, prove to be rather receptive to the past with which they are provided. In the retrospective light of the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, both of which deal in various ways with the traumas engendered by the brutality of the feudal and chivalric world, the landscapes of these two romances are redrawn. They highlight the same concern, structured narratively, with an irreducible violence that resists norms and courtly customs. The two stories respond to this concern in different ways: the disenchanted observation of the Conte du Graal is followed by the accepted thematic and narrative fantasy of the First Continuation, in which the “mainstream” of the story always seems ready to diverge in ways which give prominence to the pleasure of the senses and to the pleasure of literary invention. Informed by the Elucidation and the Bliocadran, in which the tales of Blihos Bliheris or Perceval’s mother appear to be the only way of making the world (temporarily) habitable, the narrative departures of the First Continuation read as so many attempts at occupying, in fiction, another world or another narrative in which the demands linked to the exercise of chivalry become less burdensome, meaningless, or are driven into the background. Except for the Second Continuation, where the bifurcation trope structures the hero’s journey, this other future, opened up – and hoped for – by the retrospective prologues of the Conte du Graal, will nevertheless barely be fulfilled in the Grail romances. This observation attests to the structural resistance with which Arthurian narratives confront a model in which, to be fulfilled, the hero does not necessarily have to put his life on the line, even if it is in the service of a weakened or explicitly ironic courtly ideal. From the second quarter of the thirteenth century onwards, particularly in the prose romances, the rule of arms, rather than disappearing, was, as is well known, reinvented to favour Christian law and its own redemptive scheme.

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References Boucheron, Patrick, and François Hartog. L’Histoire à venir. Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2018. Bouget, Hélène, ed. Les Prologues au Conte du Graal. Élucidation, Bliocadran, L’Élucidation de l’hystoire du Graal (1530). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018. Busby, Keith. Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Busby, Keith. Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du graal: édition critique d’après tous les manuscrits. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. Busby, Keith. Gauvain in Old French Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980. Busby, Keith, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters. Les Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes / The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes. 2 vol. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Les Hétérotopies (version intégrale de la conférence radiophonique prononcée sur France Culture en décembre 1966). Paris: Lignes, 2009. Gingras, Francis. “Le livre arthurien et la matière du roman.” Bulletin bibliographique de la société internationale arthurienne 62 (2010): 277 – 306. Hinton, Thomas. The Conte du Graal Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012. Hinton, Thomas, “New Beginnings and False Dawns: a Reappraisal of the Elucidation Prologue to the Conte del Graal Cycle.” Medium Aevum 80 (2011): 41 – 55. Iser, Wolfgang. L’Acte de lecture. Théorie de l’effet esthétique. Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga, 1985 [Munich: Fink, 1976]. Köhler, Erich. L’Aventure chevaleresque. Idéal et réalité dans le roman courtois. Études sur la forme des plus anciens poèmes d’Arthur et du Graal, Paris: Gallimard, 1974 [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1956]. Micha, Alexandre. La tradition manuscrite des romans de Chrétien de Troyes. Geneva: Droz, 1966. Roach, William, ed. The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. III/1. The First Continuation, Redaction of mss ALPRS. Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society, 1952. Roach, William, ed. The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. I. The First Continuation, Redaction of mss TVD. Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society, 1949. Saint-Gelais, Richard. Fictions transfuges. La transfictionnalité et ses enjeux. Paris: Seuil, 2011. Séguy, Mireille. “Mémoires du temps perdu. L’Élucidation médiévale et son remaniement dans l’imprimé de 1530.” Études françaises 55 (2019): 161 – 184. Séguy, Mireille. Les romans du Graal ou le signe imaginé. Paris: Champion, 2001. Taylor, Jane H. M.. “Rewriting: Translation, Continuation and Adaptation.” Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature. Ed. Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen. Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2017. 167 – 181. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Taylor, Jane H. M. “‘Minds of the Vulgar Sort’: The Arthur of the Renaissance and the Anxiety of Reception.” 22e Congrès de la Société Internationale Arthurienne, Rennes 2008. Formerly available at .

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Tether, Leah. “Revisiting the Manuscripts of Perceval and the Continuations: Publishing Practices and Authorial Transition.” Journal of the International Society 2 (2014): 20 – 45. Tether, Leah, The Continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval. Context and Construction, Extension and Ending, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012. Van Coolput-Storms, Colette-Anne, ed. and trans. Première Continuation de Perceval (Continuation-Gauvain), texte du ms L édité par William Roach. Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1993. Wolfgang, Lenora D. Bliocadran. A Prologue to the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. Edition and Critical Study. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976. Wolfzettel, Friedrich. “Le paradis retrouvé: pour une typologie du roman idyllique.” Le Récit idyllique. Aux sources du roman moderne. Ed. Jean-Jacques Vincensini and Claudio Galderisi. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009. 59 – 77.

Christine Ferlampin-Acher

Artus de Bretagne, An “Extensional” Romance: Comparing Ysaïe le Triste, Perceforest, and Artus de Bretagne There are some scholarly works that do not go out of style. They have become classics and can be read and reread with profit. This is the case with Jane Taylor’s 1987 article, “The Fourteenth Century: Context, Text and Intertext”, published in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Taylor further pursued this study of these textual relationships, particularly in the corpus of late Arthurian (“postGuironian”) romances, between internal structuring and integration into a poetic and textual tradition (Taylor 1994; 1996), but it is her 1987 article that remains the most seminal for those interested in these romances. Accordingly, my present study, as a tribute to a friend, will be based on the fruitful opposition highlighted in that very article. Taylor, by studying Le Conte du Papegau, Ysaïe le Triste, Perceforest, and Froissart’s Meliador, showed how the authors of these “late”, postGuironian romances responded to two uncomfortable dilemmas: “first, how to interpolate, with at least a semblance of authenticity, an original narrative into a pseudo-historical and defined corpus; second, how to escape from the straitjacket represented by Arthurian romance as practised from Chrétien to Guiron, whilst continuing to use as constants the motifs, types, and topoi provided by the genre” (Taylor 1987, 268). Furthermore, she distinguished between romances with contextual integration (such as the Conte du Papegau and Meliador), which fit into the Arthurian chronotope by using the “technical dovetail” (Taylor 1987, 272), and romances with “extensional” integration that develop this chronotope towards the past or the future. This article drew attention to texts that were still largely unknown: Meliador, pending the edition of Nathalie Bragantini-Maillard (2012), was only accessible in the edition of Auguste Longnon (1895 – 1899); the Conte du Papegau, before the work of Patricia Victorin and Hélène Charpentier (2004), was only accessible in the early edition of Ferdinand Heuckenkamp (1896) and the then recent English translation by Thomas E. Vesce (1986); the 1989 edition of Ysaïe le Triste was not yet available (Giacchetti 1989); and Taylor (1979) had pioneered the beginning of Perceforest, contributing, after Jeanne Lods (1951; 1953), to the rediscovery of this text, which Gilles Roussineau (1987– 2018) would publish in its entirety in the years to come.

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Without focussing on the dating of these works to the fourteenth century,¹ and considering rather globally, as Taylor invites us to do, the post-Guironian/ neo-Arthurian production, I would like to reread, by comparing it with the romances studied by Taylor and following the methodology of her 1987 article,² Artus de Bretagne, which in the late 1290s or early 1300s invented a kind of posterity for the Arthurian world. In 1987, Artus remained largely unknown despite the research of Sarah Spilsbury (1972; 1973; 1976; 1983); the text’s first scholarly edition only appeared in 2017 (Ferlampin-Acher 2017a). The hero of Artus is Artus of Brittany, son of Duke Jean of Brittany and descendant of Lancelot. This romance invents a future for Arthurian history and is based on the “matière de France” and the “geste” of Alexandre. The romance is founded on the “extensional” integration approach (Taylor 1987, 274– 276), as in Ysaïe le Triste or Perceforest (as opposed to Meliador and Le Conte du Papegau, which fit into the classical Arthurian chronotope). Artus begins: “Apréz la mort le bon roy Artus, qui tant fu nobles roys et gentilz, et entour qui fu et regna toute la noblece de toute la chevalerie de tout le monde” (2017a, § 1) [After the death of good King Arthur, such a noble and courteous king, and around whom was gathered all the nobility of all the chivalry of all the world], and tells the story of Artus, “estrait du noble et haut lignage du chevalier Lancelot, qui tant fist de hautes proeces si comme vous le pouéz avoir fois voir aucunes fois oÿ dire et conter” (2017a, § 1) [descended from the noble and high lineage of the knight, Lancelot, who carried out such deeds of high valour as you may have sometimes heard tell or relate], and named “en la ramembrance de la haute renommee du bon roy Artu” (2017a, § 2) [in memory of the great fame of good King Arthur]. Like Ysaïe, which invented a son of Tristan and Iseult, or Perceforest, which relates the origins of the Arthurian world, Artus explores a chronological extension of the Arthurian chronotope. Being somewhat less constraining than the “contextual” insertion, which requires not contradicting the tradition based on texts such as the Historia regum Britaniae and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, this tendency towards expansion was embryonic in the first integration

 Ysaïe le Triste, as well as Le Conte du Papegau, have since been dated to the fifteenth century; Perceforest, if it was composed in the years 1313 – 1344, is only preserved in a later version (1450s), which in my opinion is substantially revised (Ferlampin-Acher 2010a). There are two versions of Meliador between 1362 and 1382. Artus dates from the years 1296 – 1305 (FerlampinAcher 2017b, Spilsbury 1972, 1973). What is important is a terminus a quo (1280s) that allows us to consider a corpus of post- or neo-Arthurian romances.  Taylor took an interest in Artus in a very convincing paper, when in 2013 she accepted, to my great pleasure, to participate in the colloquium I organized in Rennes on Artus de Bretagne (Taylor 2015).

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of Arthur’s reign into an incorporating chronicle, as well as in the opening of the cycle of the Lancelot-Graal around the Creation and the Crucifixion (Merlin, the Estoire del Saint Graal): it produces what Gérard Genette designates as continuations. Forced to go beyond the reign of Arthur, the romances take elements from “matière de Bretagne” into another fictional universe, practising what Richard Saint-Gelais (2011) terms “transfiction”. In this context, “transfiction” is given a broad meaning since it covers not only the transfer of characters (impossible here, because either they were not born or have died), but also the transfer of “fictional elements” (Saint-Gelais 2011, 20), amongst which a name is one of a character’s most economical markers. If between Perceforest, who invents a past, and Ysaïe, who describes a future, a balance seems to emerge between prospective and retrospective projects, Artus tilts the balance towards the future: the “after”, as Saint-Gelais (2011, 75) has shown, has a particularly powerful appeal. Analysis of genealogical insertion (“context”; cf. Taylor 1987, 269 – 292), of its consequences on onomastics (one of the most revealing textual clues for studying the elaboration of the “text”; Taylor 1987, 292– 308), and of its consequences for the “interferences”³ between “matieres de France, de Bretagne et de Rome” (“intertext”; Taylor 1987, 308 – 332) will, on the one hand, confirm the relevance of Taylor’s analyses for Artus, and on the other, allow us to evaluate the originality of this romance.

“Context”: before, after (prequel, sequel, and genealogy) Artus shares with Ysaïe, contrary to Perceforest, the paradoxical injunction to invent a sequel to a world whose end has already been told in a rich textual tradition.⁴ Like any post-apocalyptic narrative, Artus and Ysaïe imply a survivor. The integration of this survivor into the Arthurian world is assured in both cases by lineage and by the construction of an Arthurian memory, according to modalities that diverge, and which constitute interesting objects of study particularly when considered alongside Perceforest, even though it is a prequel.

 I take this expression from Richard Trachsler (2000). On late Arthurian tradition, see Ferlampin-Acher (2020a and 2020b).  It should be noted that neither of these two texts opts for the easy solution, which would have consisted of inventing a future for the Arthurian world by betting on the descendants of Gauvain the seducer who, from the “classic”period of Arthurian production, has produced offspring everywhere, including, for example, the hero of Le Bel Inconnu.

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1 Genealogical insertion, lineage, family a) Lineage in Perceforest and Ysaïe Genealogy plays a major role in all three romances. It builds the link with the Arthurian world, for which ancestors or descendants are invented. In Ysaïe and Perceforest, the genealogical impulse leads to the population of the narrative space with “sons of” or “ancestors of”. Ysaïe invents a son for Tristan and Yseut, but also, amongst many other examples (Victorin 2002, 143) for Palamedes, Brandalis, or Dinadan. Perceforest, in its bulimic exhaustivity, aims to give ancestors to almost all Arthurian characters: it builds complex lineages, which have prompted scholars to construct family trees. This is the case, first of all, with Lods (1951, 38 and 45) in her pioneering study, then with Taylor (1987, 276 and 301), and finally with Trachsler (2000, 252, 271 and 273) and Chardonnens (2015, 697). In Ysaïe and Perceforest, the link with the Arthurian chronotope is made by “tuilage” (that is “partial overlay” or “tiling”): Perceforest integrates the history of the Holy Grail further down the line and Ysaïe begins by recounting Ysaïe’s conception, the death of Tristan and Iseult, and the end of the Arthurian kingdom, first announced in a prophecy and then fulfilled. Ysaïe, like Perceforest (even if the etymological invention is not of the same magnitude in both cases), actually deals with three generations (Ysaïe invents a son and a grandson for Tristan, their later descendants being simply evoked in passing; Perceforest invents a “contre-fiction” to the reigns of two kings mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Capoir, and Diguellus, and proposes tight-knit genealogical constructions over three generations, whose posterity once again remains vague). Yet Perceforest is interested in both male and female characters, and carries out the construction of lineage in a conspicuously systematic manner, whereas Ysaïe focusses on knights, and despite the mention of several “sons of”, develops three generations just for his main hero. In Perceforest, the construction of lineage is obsessive, ostensible, and connected with the role played by Zephir, facilitator of births and promoter (as well as controller) of sexual unions (Ferlampin-Acher 2010b), whereas in Ysaïe by contrast, Tronc must (even if he fails) guard the chastity of his protégé.

b) Artus and lineage In contrast to the lineage constructions of Ysaïe and Perceforest, no character in Artus is precisely integrated into an Arthurian line of descent. The hero’s father is loosely descended, by blood, from the lineage of Lancelot, since his father is “es-

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trait du noble et haut lignage du vaillant chevalier Lancelot” (2017a, § 1) [descended from the noble and high lineage of the valiant knight, Lancelot], but it is not known how many generations separate them. Artus’s mother is “fille le conte de Lenquestre en Engleterre” (2017a, § 2) [daughter of the count of Lancaster in England]. If one can embrace the notion that Tristan and Iseult had a child (in Ysaïe), giving Artus ancestors on Lancelot’s side presents more of a challenge. Artus treats the insertion into his lineage casually. There is no other “tuilage” [overlay] than the mention of Artus’s death, Lancelot’s lineage, or Arthur’s fame: the transitional years are glossed over, which is not the case in Ysaïe. In Artus, apart from memory, there is discontinuity. We will never know how Duke John descended from Lancelot. The somewhat inquisitive reader will be able to imagine scenarios. At the cost of a tarnished courtly image, did Lancelot have a secret child with Guinevere (which would pose a serious problem for the English succession), or even with another woman (he was, after all, seduced by Galaad’s mother)? Would Galaad truly have fathered a descendant, contradicting the entire Grail tradition? In fact, the only hypothesis that does not clash too painfully with the “matière de Bretagne” is that Duke John descends from Lancelot’s wider lineage, that is, perhaps from the lineages of King Ban de Benuic and King Bohort de Gaunes, which are sufficiently numerous for a forgotten story to slip in. It seems to me that the reader must gloss over the following tensions: first, Artus is not a chronicle, but rather begins as a tale or a legend; second, Arthur, despite his sins, became “le bon roy” with the halo of an idealized and vague “ramembrance”. It is perhaps more on the mother’s side that the medieval reader will attempt to clarify the genealogical link: unlike for the modern reader, their attention will be drawn to the fact that Artus’s mother is the daughter of the count of Lancaster. Thus, as Spilsbury (1973) demonstrates, the names of Duke John and of his son Arthur recall those of two contemporary figures, Jean II, Duke of Brittany, and his son, the future Arthur II, and the reader is invited to identify this count, in light of the date of composition of the romance (around 1300), with Edmund of Lancaster († 1296, the terminus a quo of the composition of Artus, due to the mention of the king of Majorca; Spilsbury 1973), brother of King Edward I of England. Edward was an “Arthurian enthusiast” (Loomis 1953), who had Arthur’s tomb opened up in Glastonbury (almost foreshadowing the hero’s gesture in opening Lancelot’s tomb in Ysaïe § 23), and who imagines himself as a new Arthur (Daniel 2002, 410 – 427). The hero of Artus thus has a double Arthurian kinship: with Lancelot through his father’s blood, according to a vague link, and through his mother and Edward I, with Arthur taking on a kind of spiritual parentage, a connection evoked by the hero’s name. This double kinship, suggested

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by the parallelism of the first two paragraphs of Artus, is also found in Ysaïe, and corresponds to medieval practices and mentalities, in which the godfather and the father play an important role. Ysaïe is presented as Tristan’s son, but he is dubbed by the reliquary arm of Lancelot, who thus becomes an important tutelary figure (Ysaïe § 23). In both Ysaïe and Artus, a bond of blood that constitutes a violation against Arthurian tradition is compensated for by spiritual kinship, which is much more flexible; in both cases, Lancelot plays an important part and the two romances reconcile Lancelot and Tristan, who are otherwise often in competition in the Arthurian world (Richard 2007): Ysaïe is Tristan’s son and he is dubbed a knight by Lancelot;⁵ the adventures of Artus, especially his childhood, thus make him both a new Tristan and a new Lancelot (Ferlampin-Acher 2015). These “sons of”, who contravene Arthurian tradition, need two Arthurian ancestors to be credible: a spiritual kinship, which contradicts legendary tradition to a lesser extent, reinforces a problematic blood tie, one nevertheless essential to medieval mentalities. However, there is a major difference between Ysaïe and Artus: in Ysaïe, the female lineage is barely evoked, few daughters are mentioned, and heroes are mostly sons of their father; in Artus, the hero is descended, as we have seen, from both his father and his mother. This parity can be found at different levels of the romance: a certain parity exists between the hero and Florence, who inherits both from her father and her mother, both of whom cause their territorial power to be invoked (Ferlampin-Acher 2015 and 2017a, CCIV – CCVI). From this point of view, Artus is closer to Perceforest, which gives a prominent place to women and their lineage (Ferlampin-Acher 1995), especially to fairies. Ysaïe, despite the status it gives to Martha, undermines Arthurian kinship through women, whilst Perceforest gives it a clear primacy, and Artus alone, perhaps, reveals a relative parity. These different conceptions of the vertical and genealogical lineage are completed by the horizontal representations of the family.

c) Family In Perceforest, families are large and often include twins; the Fairy Queen runs a large household. Only traitors like Cersés and Betides, or giants, like Aroés or the Giant with Golden Hair, have only one child. Some “felons” also have prolific lineages, such as Darnant, around whom an effective narrative vendetta is built.

 Nevertheless, as Michelle Szkilnik (1995) has shown, Lancelot is summoned by Ysaïe only to be kept at a distance.

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This vast chronicle, which brings together at least three main lineages (Alexandre, Gadifer, and Betis) – whilst Ysaïe only focusses on Tristan and Iseult – begins by giving founding twins to Perceforest and Gadifer; the Fairy Queen has four children, Ourseau has seven. On a horizontal level, the same profusion is logically found, as shown by the twelve granddaughters of Pergamon. On the contrary, Ysaïe insists above all on the direct parent-child bond, and values the nuclear family (Tristan and Ysaïe have only one descendant); in contrast, the “felons” have strong lineages (Victorin 2002, 131). In Ysaïe, the prolific lineages are on the side of the adversaries, who carry out discredited (and perhaps backward-looking) vendettas (this is the case, for example, with the lineage of Craventor, whose destructive power is illustrated by his name). Ysaïe and Artus share a similar representation of family. In Artus, families are not numerous: the duke and duchess of Brittany have only one son, Artus, as does the king of Valfondée, father of Estienne; the count of Blois also seems to have no other son than Hector. Emenidus, the king of Sorelois, has only one daughter, even though he and his wife have a huge territory to bequeath. At no time do these single-child parents wish to have another descendant. Certainly, the constraint of romance as a genre may explain this choice: as Köhler (1956) has shown, the hero of a chivalric romance has to marry an heiress, an only daughter. In Artus, the systemisation of only children in prominent families is notable, as are the mentions of the relationship between parents and children (a possessive mother for Artus; a father, jealous of his prerogatives, for Hector). On the contrary, extended families with a wider lineage are mentioned with respect to the adversaries: the extensive lineage of the duke of Bigorre constitutes the main reservoir of negative characters before the war against the Emperor of India. Many nephews, nephews of nephews, animated by the spirit of vendetta, provide most of Artus’s opponents before his arrival in Sorelois: Le Cornu is brother to the duke of Bigorre (§ 70, 29); Ysembart is his nephew and wants to avenge his first cousin (§ 110, 47); Fromont the treasurer is first cousin of the nephew of the duke of Bigorre (§ 112, R); Roger is “cousins germainz le neveu au duc de Bigorre, et fu niéz monseigneur Fromont de la Roce” (§ 145) [first cousin of the nephew of the duke of Bigorre, and nephew of my lord Fromont de la Roce]; “li dus et ses freres et si cousin estoient mort en la bataille du Brueil (§ 78) [the duke and his brothers and his cousins were killed in the battle of Brueil]. Later, once Artus reaches the Emenidus’s kingdom, we discover that the lineage of the emperor of India, who wants to marry the princess against her will and declares war on her father, is the most extensive, and particularly the family of the emperor’s brothers, Clamados and Floripas. In Artus, however, cousinhood is not reserved for traitors. Artus goes on adventures with his cousin Hector, who is married at the same time that he is; the king of Orcanie, who helps Florence, is

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the cousin of her mother (§ 26, 12), Florence is the niece of the archbishop of Corinth; the count of Forez is the uncle of the lord of Beaujeu and the count of Montbéliard is his “cousin germain” (§ 39); Ostes is “cousin germain” of the countess of Brueil (§ 59, 8). One difference emerges, however: “felons” have more extensive lineage solidarity (nephew of nephew), whereas the others are close relatives, brother, sister, children, “cousin germain”. Artus, contrary to Ysaïe, proposes a substitute for the united and vendetta-hungry lineage in the form of the immediate family. As shown by R. Howard Bloch (1983), in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well as a rising importance of lineage, there developed a closer representation of family ties (with implications for literature), based on household, nuclear family, and individual values. In the fifteenth century, Perceforest, an aristocratic chronicle relating the past, reactivates the old representation of lineage, whilst Ysaïe echoes the change, which at this time was already well established in literature. Around 1300, Artus, which gives a notable position to the bourgeoisie (as suggested by Aimery le Bougeois, a very interesting character), exemplifies the rise of the nuclear family, the valorization of the horizontal family and the devaluation of lineage, with this last being the cause of blood feuds. If Ysaïe and Perceforest rely on their representation of lineage for the former, and of the nuclear family (the couple Tristan and Iseult) for the latter, in order to integrate themselves into the Arthurian chronotope, Artus uses both the somewhat vague paternal lineage of Lancelot and the nuclear family of the mother: amongst the three romances, it is the closest to contemporary mentalities. At the end of the Middle Ages, the nuclear family was valued, with the horizontal family an important factor in social cohesion, whilst vertical lineage seems to have been on the decline. However, this integration of Arthurian tradition through genealogy both does and does not – depending on the text at hand – give rise to elaborate and prominent structures which legitimize fiction by insisting on memorial transmission. What Ysaïe and Perceforest have in common is that they are based on a powerful procedure for legitimizing the fiction they elaborate, which involves memory: they insert Arthurian memories and justify, through an oversight, the absence in earlier traditions of the new version upon which they are based. In Artus, by contrast, there is no strategy of overt legitimization, and no mention of oblivion.

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2 Construction of memory and remembrance a) Ysaïe and Perceforest: between memory and oblivion In Perceforest, the author sets up a visible strategy to explain how the memory of the fictional past was kept alive: he mentions books lost and found, minstrels and clerics relating history, but also monuments that punctuate space and establish the significance of past events (Heidenreich 2012). Perceforest answers the questions (Taylor 1987, 279) of how, where, and why was this story written, forgotten, and found. The answer is: through books and monuments, in other words, objects that deliver signs. Perceforest opens with the topos of the discovered manuscript and mentions two translations by the cleric Cressus and the monk Crespin of the abbeys of Wortimer and Saint Landelin, respectively: hidden after the disaster brought about by the Romans, then rediscovered, the manuscript has a complicated history, which guarantees the truth of the “contre-fiction”. Perceforest invents monuments that will be testimony to the past in a future Arthurian time, and the poet is motivated, as Taylor (1987, 281– 287) has shown, by an antiquarian impulse. It is therefore a complex and striking narrative construction that allows the integration into the Arthurian tradition of this new history, providing an alternative to the Historia regum Britanniae. In the same way, Ysaïe sets up a powerful legitimization procedure to justify the fictional invention of Tristan’s son, a new- and latecomer, a “tardillon” [runt of the litter], who is otherwise ignored by Tristanian tradition (Victorin 2002). Just as Perceforest endorses his “contre-fiction” both by objectivizing memories and by explaining the causes of oblivion (and thus the absence in the later Arthurian history), Ysaïe justifies, albeit more delicately, the absence of its hero in Tristanian romances (“Mais pour che que li romans ne voloit parler de villonnie qu’il y conchust contre l’onneur d’icelle, s’en teut, ou espoir chieux qui fist le livre ne le savoit mie” [§ 1] [“But because the romance did not wish to speak of the wickedness he devised against her honour, he said nothing, or perhaps he who write the book did not know]), and defines a fictional space through relics and Arthurian memories. The tombs of Lancelot or Merlin, the Joyeuse Garde, and, above all, the enchanted orchard, in which a marvellous bed recalls the Arthurian past, set up the time of Ysaïe as the future of Arthur’s reign: et a l’autre les du vergier avoit ung lit, et estoit ly calix d’ivoire entailliés a grans ymaiges eslevees moult soutieument, et la estoit contenu l’istoire Lanscelot et le dame du Lac, et estoit couvers d’un grant drap de diverses coulleurs moult soutieument entrelachies, et a tant de nobles istoires que ly oel en estoit tout estelly (§ 548).

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[and on the other side of the orchard there was a bed, in which was the ivory chalice delicately carved with raised images, and on them was contained the story of Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake, and it was covered by a large cloth of many colours finely interwoven, and there were so many noble stories which dazzled the eye.]

This evocation of the Fairies’ Orchard comes late in the romance: as in Perceforest, the distortion of the Arthurian tradition, a tour de force, must be legitimized at the opening of the work, but it must also be legitimized again later, in order to reactivate the procedural guarantee of reassurance. The passage of Ysaïe’s son, Marc, in the orchard is a kind of return to the roots, which, by the circularity it presupposes, ensures the possibility of an Arthurian revival. The orchard monumentalizes the poetic tradition, deploying the traditional metaphor of fabric (Wolf-Bonvin 1998) and that of sculpture, making the hero a kind of tourist going from one place of memory to another, from monuments to Arthurian relics (like Lancelot’s arm (Taylor 1987, 274)). However, Ysaïe differs from Perceforest in terms of the energy it devotes to inscribing its hero within a kinship that is both physical (the night when Ysaïe was conceived is noted by his mother in a “livre”, § 2)⁶ and moral (the hero is knighted with a bone of Lancelot who, dead as Arthurian tradition requires, and having become a “relic”, is a post-mortem godfather (§ 23; Victorin 2002, 153 – 154)). In Perceforest, written words constitute the foundations of collective history, whereas in Ysaïe, they guarantee the individual genealogy of a character. In that respect, one might glean the impression that if Perceforest corrects disorders of memory, Ysaïe never deals with amnesia. Yet a careful reading suggests that Ysaïe is undermined by fallible recollections, which contradict the reliability of the memories made sustainable by books and monuments. Indeed, if, close to the end of Arthur’s world (since the beginning of the romance is situated before the death of King Arthur), the list of knights participating in the battle of Salesbières, echoing the lists of Grail seekers of Arthurian tradition, seems in Ysaïe to recall this recent past quite faithfully,⁷ we can still note some disturbing elements. On the one hand, some names, normally well-known, are distorted, and Branghien is called Bongyen (§ 3). Is this a scribal error? It could also be a reformulation and a resemanticization of this name: “gien” means “will, de-

 This book is finally a kind of “livre de raison” [family register], even if those books were rather written by men. It marks, like a “livre de raison”, the promotion of the nuclear family.  Ector des Marés, Behourt de Gaunes, Gavain, and Baudemagus are mentioned (§ 8). On the precise knowledge of Arthurian tradition of the author, see Victorin (2002, 142).

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sire”⁸ and “bon gyen” could mean “good disposition”. Thus Branghien, who obscured Marc’s lineage by making Iseult an adulterous woman, is exonerated by this name, which contributes to the recognition of Iseult’s son, Ysaïe. In the same way, Gouvernau becomes Gomorail (§ 6). Can one imagine an involuntary error of a scribe of such a well-known and meaningful name? However, the interpretation of this new form is not so straightforward. One can identify the suffix -ail, which is often added to verbs in Old French (fermail, començail…), or the word “gomor”, to be understood as a measuring vessel, sometimes used humorously to designate an object of little value.⁹ “Gomorail” in this case would be burlesque, but this name may also have no particular meaning: it can simply suggest the fragility of Arthurian memories. If these deformations can be attributed to the scribe, other formulations explicitly point out the erosion of Arthurian memory and are due to the author: Ysaïe introduces Yseut and Marc as new characters and sums up their story: “une riche dame que l’on appelloit Yseut” (§ 1) [a rich lady they called Yseut], “li rois de Cornuaille que on appeloit Marcq estoit oncles Tristan et maris a Yseut” [the king of Cornwall they called Marcq was Tristan’s uncle and Yseut’s husband], not to mention that § 2 opens with the mention “icelle Yzeut” [that Yzeut], “icelle” referring to the context and not to Iseult’s notoriety. Arthurian fame no longer seems sufficient to guarantee being remembered. In § 25, a knight named “Herbers ly Renommés” is introduced. He was dubbed by Tristan and is killed by Ysaïe’s horse. This character, who dates back to the Arthurian times of the fathers and to Tristan’s “geste”, is a stranger in Arthurian tradition, although “ly Renommés” draws attention to his fame: this denounces the vanity of fame and signals the oblivion of ancient values. Herbert is killed by Ysaïe’s horse: the generation of fathers is condemned by that of the sons, and one may even consider the wound suffered by Herbert, “eschervelé” (§ 25) [brained], to be a sign of the failure of Arthurian memory because, since Aristotle, memory has been known to be seated in the brain (“cervelle” in French).¹⁰ It should also be noted that if Ysaïe implements a precisely dated integration into the Arthurian chronotope (as suggested by the count of the years (Victorin 2002, 71– 73)), the

 Dictionnaire de Moyen Français, ATILF, ; Latin (in) genium.  Ibid., “gomor: récipient de mesure […] employé comme valeur minimale” [gomor = measuring vessel […] used to denote negligible worth].  See DMF: “cervel: parties du cervel: la vertu memorative est ou chief derriere, et l’imaginative devant, la cogitative ou milieu; Martin de Saint-Gille’s Commentaires sur les Amphorismes Ypocras” [parts of the brain: memory is in the upper right, the imagination in front, and the reflexive in the middle]).

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digression about Sebeu, Dimustra, and Dedalus (§ 22) is problematic. We are indeed at the beginning of the romance, at the moment when the reading pact should be established. The Gaste Forêt, an important Arthurian location, acquires a foundational past through Tronc’s account: the forest withered after the murder of his brother, Dimustra, by Dedalus li Vis, the son of Sebeu, king of Brittany. However, the reader will find it difficult to situate this Sebeu in the traditional genealogy of the kings of Britain, and this distortion seems to invalidate the otherwise rigorous count of years. As in Perceforest, the monumentalization, the testimony of books and memory, is undermined by failures of commemoration. Finally, in Ysaïe, even the lineage is weakened. Indeed, if the author has managed to deal with three generations (Tristan, Ysaïe, Marc) and to establish a dynasty, as late medieval romance tends to do (Taylor 1987, 320), its genealogy is dysfunctional. On the one hand, between the father and the son, if there is succession, there is also generational effacement insofar as the father and the son marry on the same day, and time also seems to move backwards when Marc goes back to ancient Arthurian places, in particular the fairies’ orchard. Finally, Marc, although he has three children (which is many in Ysaïe), still sinks into oblivion: the last paragraph deals with his dynasty in a casual way: Sy demoura Marcq a Roche Aguë et Ysaïe a Blamir, et eurent dez enffans, sy eut Marcq deux fieux de le fille au chastelain de Vertonne: l’un fu appellé Aduré et l’autre Durant; et eut une fille de la femme de Piralius, sy l’appella on Yrienne ainsy que sa mere. Et firent Ysaïe et Marcq mainte chevalerie, et tenoient le païs en grant paix […] et tant firent que on parla de leurs fais aprés eulx, mes le gent mirent plus leur entente a mettre en mémoire les fais du roy Clovis. (§ 624) [And Marcq remained at Roche Aguë, and Ysaïe at Blamir, and they had children, Marcq, two sons by the castellan of Vertonne’s daughter: one was called Aduré and the other, Durant; and he had a daughter by the wife of Piralius, called Yrienne like her mother. Et Ysaïe and Marcq did many acts of chivalry, and maintained great peace in the country […] and they did so much that their deeds were spoken of after them, but people put more effort into preserving in memory the deeds of King Clovis.]

Both Ysaïe and Marc had (“eurent”) children, but only those of Marc are named. However, their mother is not the legitimate wife of the hero (Orimonde, the daughter of the Admiral of Persia): there was no mention earlier of this daughter of the “chastelain de Vertonne” [castellan of Vertonne]. Numerous descendants are not enough to build a dynasty, even at a time when bastards may have merit. Ysaïe, after mentioning these children, returns to the fathers and grandfathers (“et firent Ysaïe et Marcq mainte chevalerie […]”), but even they are victims of

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oblivion (“mes le gent mirent plus leur entente […]”) [but people began to make more effort […]].

b) Artus and the lightness of memory Artus does not set up a strategy for the mass legitimization of fiction: there is no discovered manuscript, no monument to remind us of the Arthurian past. The only books that are mentioned are those used by the cleric, Estienne, to practise his enchantments. Artus does not need a solid genealogical construction or a conspicuous authentication. “Clerc” Estienne, a double of the author, enchanter, and illusionist, validates poetic invention (Ferlampin-Acher 2017b). On that point, Artus comes close to Méliador, for which Taylor (1987, 291) highlights a process of “authenticity by self-identification and self-qualification”. Artus, composed around 1300, can do without a conspicuous authentication, as opposed to Ysaïe and Perceforest, because it is older and uses Arthurian material still familiar to readers, even if the comparison with Méliador (which is more recent) invites caution. Artus, without a prologue or epilogue to validate the fiction, begins in medias res, without rhetorical prudence. There is no scribe, no translator, there are no clerics, no abbeys where witnesses of the past are preserved and discovered. Estienne is an enchanter, a master of illusion and fiction: using magic, he brutally interrupts the tournament that ends the romance, and he is very different from the scribes of the Lancelot-Graal. When the author mentions an abbey, it is not to talk about clerics busy transcribing a text, but about the setbacks of its abbot, who is confronted his tainted lineage and his enchanter, and who is expelled by misery. Artus will save the abbey and then leave, without any reference to a book or a manuscript. In Artus, there is no “mirage des sources” (Dragonetti 1987). Memory, in Artus, is not constructed: it is given, obvious, and without uncertainty. The romance begins with “Apréz la mort le bon roy Artus, qui tant fu nobles et gentilz” (§ 1) [After the death of good King Arthur, who was so noble and courtly]: King Arthur has become a supple and ideal figure, somewhat voided of substance and, above all, of his past. His entourage (listed in Ysaïe, § 8), which served as a reservoir of characters for a rich Arthurian tradition, does not give rise in Artus to a fictional enumeration: the Round Table is omitted and seems to have left no memory: “entour qui fu et regna toute la noblece de toute la chevalerie de tout le monde, si comme furent Gawain, Lancelot et maint autre chevalier preu et bon” (§ 1) [around whom was gathered the whole nobility of all the chivalry of all the world, such as Gawain, Lancelot, and many other brave and good knights]. In this introductory evocation, Arthurian memories

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are not very consistent. The repetition at the opening and closing of this presentation of the same short and vague adjective “bon” (“bon roy”, “preu et bon”) suggests a certain redundancy, and a chivalric ideal reduced to a vague cliché, which plays in a loop. On the other hand, the funnel-like construction (Arthur, then the nobility, then chivalry as a whole, finally, everyone), reinforced by “et maint autre chevalier preu et bon” [and many other worthy and good knights], dissolves Arthurian elitism, which should be an essential condition for the renewal of the fictional world: this is also suggested by the missing Round Table. The only two names included, Gauvain and Lancelot, constitute a somewhat restricted mention when compared with some other Arthurian lists (Jeay 2006), especially that in § 8 of Ysaïe. In Artus, the hero is named in “ramembrance” of Arthur, but we do not know how this “ramembrance”, this memory, was elaborated in the absence of any mention of books, monuments, frescoes, oral histories, social practices, rumours. The syntax of the sentence that explains that the baby received his name from King Arthur, which is problematic in most manuscripts, could be a symptom of this flawed memory: “Li dus Jehans ot I enfant de sa femme, qu’il firent apeler en la ramembrance de la haute renommee du bon roy Artu [et] li donnerent non d’Artus” (§ 3) [Duke John had a child by his wife whom they named in memory of the great fame of good King Arthur, whose name they gave him]. The paronomasia “non-renommee” suggests the obvious and redundant process of memory, reduced to a name. King Arthur, “le bon roy Artus” – the expression is used twice – has become an invariable character. Lancelot, for his part, “tant fist de hautes proeces si comme vous le pouéz avoir aucunes fois oÿ dire et conter” (§ 1) [did so many great and worthy deeds as you may have heard tell and relate many times]: “haut” is repeated (“haute renommee”, “hautes proeces”) as was “bon”, and lacks precision, becoming a valourizing cliché. The process of memory is uncertain and vague (“pouéz”), since it is not linked to any precise source, or to any identified witness: “oÿ dire et conter” refers less to a literary tradition of “orature” (Zumthor) than to vague oral transmission. Explicit Arthurian memory is thus reduced to one which is somewhat blurred, commonplace and stereotypical, which retains only an idealized, non-narrative, non-problematic representation, and which does not need to be accompanied by cumbersome legitimization procedures. Yet the romance sets up sophisticated Arthurian rewritings, in particular of the episode of the Perilous Bed (Ferlampin-Acher 2002) or of the Knight of the Cart and his herald shouting “Or est venus qui aunera” [Now is come he who will size them up] (FerlampinAcher 2017a, 633): the author is a fervent admirer of Arthurian literature and expects an audience of very enlightened amateurs. The delicacy of the construction of memory and of the process of legitimization of fiction is therefore not a sign of

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a weakening of intertextual practice: on the contrary, it indicates that Arthurian subject-matter is self-evident, and not in danger of oblivion. In Artus, the transmission of Arthurian “matière” is not problematic, just as the genealogical process is completed without the kind of dysfunction that happens at the end of Ysaïe. Ysaie and Artus have in common that they are based on an eponymous hero, that they are about the same length (quite different from the length of Perceforest),¹¹ and that the story takes place over a period of about thirty years: Ysaïe covers thirty-eight years (Victorin 2002, 81 and 93); in Artus (at least in the biographical version, the story ends with the death of the hero at the age of thirty-two (Ferlampin-Acher 1999). Yet Ysaïe, as we have seen, finally undermines the genealogical process by neutralizing the descendants of Marc and Ysaïe, whilst Artus mentions, in its last folios, the hero’s marriage and the birth of a legitimate son, named Alexandre in homage to his godfather, King Alexandre of Majorca, who plays an important role in the romance; Alexandre succeeded his father as emperor of India and Constantinople (§ 462 and § 464). The nuclear family functioned well, and progeny is assured. Artus is based only on a consensual and self-evident Arthurian memory even as it employs sophisticated intertextuality. Neither memory nor lineage transmission is a problem. Can this be explained by the optimism that emerges from this romance (Ferlampin-Acher 1998)? Or by its date of composition, around 1300, at a time when Arthurian tradition is both old enough no longer to need to be legitimized, and fresh enough in the readers’ memory not to require serious reconstruction? Or even by the place the romance was written, in Brittany, where, perhaps, oral Arthurian tradition was more alive and self-evident? It is difficult to decide, but it is certain that Artus presents original characteristics, the consequences of which for both onomastics and intertextuality are important.

“Textˮ and names As shown by Taylor (1987, 277), genealogical constructions in “extensional” romances have implications for onomastics: naming is the simplest way to suggest Arthurian intertextuality and transtextuality.

 Length has gradually become a distinctive feature of romance as a genre (see Taylor 1997, 292).

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1 Perceforest: names are significant Perceforest, which builds prominent authentification strategies and complex genealogies, also has a “compulsive” onomastic technique, which allows it, without needing to flesh out the characters, to populate its fictional world with all necessary Arthurian ancestors. Given that its project is to bind together Arthurian and Macedonian lineages, whilst integrating the Trojans (with the descendants of Pergamon, for example) and the native Breton population (with Sebille, whose name, however, sounds antique), onomastics makes use of various repositories of names, announcing the future (Urien, Benuic, etc.) or reactivating the past (Priande, whose name comes from Priam). The processes are diverse, but all help to make more readable and memorable the complicated kinship which links the characters and which strongly invites, in this huge romance, readers to exercise their skills. Names indicate both kinship and possible transfictionality (which generally relates to Arthurian and antique, i. e. Roman or Greek, subject-matter, the latter also taking the form of the tradition about Alexander the Macedonian) thanks to homonymy (the Lyonnel and Tor of Perceforest are not those of the Arthurian tradition, but they evoke them), by suffix-derivation¹² or conversely by reduction,¹³ by paronomasia (Norhot is the father of Morholt), by partial anagram (Dorine is the ancestor of Rion), by agglutination or disagglutination (Cassel and Porrus combined give Cassiporus; conversely, the toponym Northumberland is divided into Norhot and Bellande). The semantic motivation of names is often plural: “Nestor” is presented as the combination of Tor and Ector, but it is also homonymous with the hero of the Trojan War. Names often reveal a common root, which marks the family bond, horizontal when the children of Betis are Betides and Betoine, vertical when Gadifer, inherited from the tradition of Alexander, reveals two elements, Ga- and -fer: his descendant is Galafur, which also announces the toponym Galafort of the Estoire del Saint Graal, as well as Galaad; his son is named Olofer, which evokes the biblical figure of Holofernes. Many names in Perceforest receive a double semanticization, by derivation and by homonymy (or a minima by paronomasia). As noted above, Cassiporus combines the names of Cassiel and Porrus (derivation) and is almost homonymous with that of Cassidorus, who appears in the third continuation of the cycle of Les Sept Sages de Rome. This attention to onomastic con The feminine suffixes -ette and -elle are particularly productive for female characters, such as Lyonnelle or Clamidette; for male characters the (Greek) suffix –és is frequent (FerlampinAcher, forthcoming  Neronés has a son, Nero, whose name abbreviates his mother’s name and at the same time sounds Roman, evoking Nero’s name.

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struction, which contributes both to making the lineages clearer and the intertextuality more visible, is sometimes guaranteed by the characters themselves: Quand le roy eut donné au Tors et a Estonné le don de mectre a son maisné filz tel nom qu’il leur plaisoit, ilz s’alerent accorder que avecques le nom du Tors il avroit la derraine sillebe de Estonné, dont dirent qu’il seroient nommé Nestor. Quand Gadifer entendy le nom que les II chevaliers avoient mis a son maisné filz, moult bien luy pleut, il luy sembla moult beau. Dont vint Porrus avant et dist qu’il vouloit que son ainsé filz fust nommé Porrus ainsi que il estoit. Et a mectre nom au maisné, il hucha Cassel de Badres et luy dist: “Sire cousin, il me plaist que mon maisné fils ait avec mon nom les deux premieres sillebes du voste, et pour ce est appellé Cassiporus. – Certes, sire, dist Cassel, moult me plaist et bel me semble le nom.” (Roussineau 2007, l. I § 662) [When the king had granted Tors and Estonné permission to give whatever name they pleased to their youngest son, they agreed that with the name Tors, he would have the last syllable of Estonné, and so they said that he would be called Nestor. When Gadifer heard the name that the two knights had given to his youngest son, he was pleased, for it seemed good to him. Then Porrus came forward and said that he wanted his eldest son to be called Porrus like him. And to give a name to the youngest, he called to Cassel de Badres and said: “Sir cousin, I would like my youngest son to have with my name the first two syllables of yours and therefore to call him Cassiporus. – Certainly, lord, said Cassel, this pleases me and the name seems good.”]

However, in addition to onomastics to designate lineage and contribute to the construction of genealogies, some characters have names that are merely personal identification and resemble nicknames, such as Estonné, Plaisance, or Passelion, whilst others mark a territorial inscription (fictional or realistic), for example, Zélandine (whose father is King of Zeeland), Darnant (whose name derives from the traditional “forest de Darnantes”), or Norhot, associated with “Northombelland” (Northumberland). Some characters change names according to a model established in the Estoire del Saint Graal, of which Perceforest is a prequel: this marks the continuity between the fictional universes, when Betis, who has an Alexandrian name, becomes Perceforest, clearly foreshadowing Perceval. In Perceforest, a name can indicate a lineage (derivations), individual traits (nickname), or a territorial inscription.

2 Ysaïe, names in “trompe l’oeil” It is different in Ysaïe. For the first generation, onomastic links between fathers and sons are noted, reminiscent of the Arthurian intertext (Brandor de Gaunes is the son of Brandalis), whilst the hero’s name, commented on in the text, is heavily genealogically motivated. Iseult asks the hermit Sarban to give the baby what-

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ever name he likes, rejects the hermit’s suggestion to call him Justice, and asks for “‘ung aultre qui ensieuche le son pere et le mien’” [“another [name] which is rooted in his father’s and mine”]. The wise man then proposes: “‘Vous avés a non Yzeut et ses peres Tristrans: Yzaïe li Tristes’” [“Your name is Yzeut, and his father’s is Tristan: Yzaïe li Tristes”] (§ 7). This name combines agglutination, nickname, and homonymy (with the prophet Isaiah).¹⁴ Later in the romance, Tronc, baptized, takes the name of Aubéron, which comes from Huon de Bordeaux, and which, truncated (according to a process of abbreviation that we have already seen in Perceforest), will become that of a saint, Aubert. The whole romance is framed (at the beginning and at the end) by these two episodes which are explicitly based on onomastics, and which have a strong intertextual reach, making clear the link on the one hand with Arthurian material and on the other with the matter of France. This could seem similar to Perceforest, but irony invites us to reconsider these etymological and genealogical games in Ysaïe. Indeed, Ysaïe has a son, Marc, whose name is not commented on. The son’s name does not derive from his father’s, and the genealogical link is blurred. Worse still, the son’s name evokes that of King Marc, the father’s rival, and it reanimates the trio of Yseut, Tristan, and Marc (Victorin 2002, 120), making the future of the lineage very uncertain. The son’s name does not go forward, but back in time, and commemorates original sin, just as Marc revisits important places related to the Arthurian past. Certainly, Marc’s name may recall that of his mother, Martha, but this echo is far from having a strong genealogical value, since it eradicates the father, proceeds a minima by reference to the mother, whose biological status alone is assured, and consequently underlines the problem posed by the paternal lineage. As for Tronc, his name evokes neither his ancestry nor intertextual echoes. As much as the link between Aubéron and Aubert is obvious, this name, Tronc (“trunk”) sounds burlesque: does it perhaps make a metaphor of the character’s diminutive size, like a nickname? Or perhaps it is a retroactive association with “auber” (common to Auberon and Aubert): the auber (or sapwood) designates in Middle French either a tree or the soft part of the wood (as in modern French). From trunk to sapwood, from Tronc to Auberon and Aubert, the onomastics would be based on a play on words. The burlesque could also come from the fact that the name of the saint (a great figure) results from the abbreviation of that of the dwarf, as if the saint were smaller than the dwarf. There is also a paradox in giving a name based on derivation (and suggesting a genealogical rela-

 This homonymy could announce the moralizing vein of the story and above all its development into hagiography when Tronc is converted into Aubéron and Saint Aubert.

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tionship) to a character whose mission is to preach chastity (this is the role assumed by Tronc with his protégé, Ysaïe) and who becomes a saint. The etymological construction of the names Aubéron and Ysaïe le Triste finally highlights, by contrast, the casual nature of most of the naming in Ysaïe. Some (rare) names have a genealogical meaning: Macan le Rouge is the son of Macan le Brun de Cornouaille (§ 29, § 52). The knight named Desraés could be a relative of Sagremor le Desréé, but this is not the case. He belongs to the Brun family (§ 29) and is a relative of Brun sans Pitié: a Desraés (“desreé” means “quick-tempered”, “deranged”) is related to a Brun sans Merci [“merciless”]. In the next generation, the onomastics is only partially genealogical: Desraés has five sons, named Vesterduriex, Tom, Perlus, Roux de le Verde Montaigne, Bruneaux “pour l’amour de Brun sans Pitié son tayon qui l’ot levé”(§ 33) [out of love for Brun sans Pitié, his grandfather, who had raised him]. These names are very dissimilar, they sound cacophonous: the horizontal family is not based on onomastic echoes. The name of the last son, whose genealogical meaning is explicit and reminds us of the grandfather, highlights by contrast the heterogeneity of the other names and the fact that they do not suggest a family bond: they are long or short, associated or not with a place, they have an Arthurian resonance (Perlus/Perlesvaus, Perceval?), or are realistic (Tom, an abbreviation of Thomas, is a strange name for a knight), they could evoke some trait (Duriex could be hard, Roux, red-haired). In Ysaïe, most of the names do not have a genealogical meaning and, conversely, characters with similar names do not belong to the same family: Clare, the lady of the Château Mal Assis (§ 81), Claronne the fairy (§ 602), Clarins de Trigan, a spy in the service of Marc (§ 119), and Clarisse, the wife of King Carados (§ 10) are strangers to each other. Significantly, in Ysaïe, the etymology is treated in an offhand manner (Victorin 2002, 86). The anthropophagous butcher, who boiled (“bouillir”) the loin (“longe,” “longne”) of a child, gives the city of Boulogne (§ 102) its name in a parodic way. This episode devalues the etymological games around proper names: an adult devouring a child contradicts the very principle of genealogy, and the author presents this etymological link with caution (“et quide qu’encore soit ainsy nommee”) [and thinks that it is still so called]. The only other etymology, concerning Legier Fil, sounds hollow and disappoints the reader, who normally expects an etymology to generate meaning: “Legier Fil, car ou fil de l’yeaue on va sy coyement que on ne senty oncques nul empechement” (§ 494) [Legier Fil, for one goes so gently with the current of the water that one scarcely feels any resistance] suggests neither lineage nor intertextual echo. The author of Ysaïe shows that he is a master of the construction of lineage through onomastics, and in particular through etymology, which Perceforest

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practises unrelentingly and brilliantly, whilst at the same time treating it flippantly and devaluing it. Artus remains indifferent to this practice.

3 The name in Artus In Artus, onomastics have no genealogical meaning; Artus does not use etymology to suggest blood ties. It is characterized by a diversity, which is not as prominent as it may be in the enumeration of Brun’s descendants in Ysaïe, but which is due to the different possible levels of interpretation of the text, and it plays not on derivation but on homonymy. Proper names in Artus de Bretagne are not the result of invention stemming from derivation: rather, they are based on homonymy. They may evoke literary characters, Arthurian (Artus, Gouvernaus, Hector, etc.), or belong to the tradition of Alexander the Great (Alexandre, Emenidus), Antiquity (Proserpine), or the “matière de France” (Jonas could also sound biblical), whilst some of them play on homonymy with historical and contemporary figures: as Spilsbury (1973) has demonstrated, the fictional Duke Jean de Bretagne and his son, Arthur, owe their names to Duke Jean II and his son, Arthur. When not related to historical characters, numerous names in Artus sound realistic because they are rare in Arthurian romances and common in reality, such as Marguerite, Pierre and Peronne, Ansel, Artaut, Baudouin, Bertrand, Aimeri, or Estienne,¹⁵ even if some of them may also come from literature given the permeability of literary and real systems of onomastics (Olivier, Alexandre, Artus, etc). The stock of names diminishes during the Middle Ages, with Jean and Jeanne becoming very common (Bourin 1990, 49; Bourin and Chareille 1992, 13 – 14): this is why, in Artus, the hero’s father is named Jean (like the historical duke) and the young lady, Jeannette, although they are unrelated. Not only names themselves, but also the ways of naming in Artus reflect real medieval practices. Jeanne, the first love of Artus, bears one of the most frequent female names of the time. She bears, like Peronne, whom she replaces in the bed of Artus during his first wedding night, a feminized masculine name (Jean/ Jeanne, Pierre/Peronne) that was equally common at the time. Designated before marriage by a form with a diminutive (Jeannette), she becomes Jeanne after her

 On medieval onomastics from the perspective of a historian, see the 6 volumes of Genèse de l’anthroponymie moderne (1990 – 2008), which present the results of a vast project led by the historian Monique Bourin.

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marriage, according to a practice that is is well-attested historically, but which is generally absent in romance (Michaud-Fréjaville 1997). This use of realistic onomastics differentiates Artus from Perceforest and Ysaïe. In these two texts, in fact, real names are rare (despite Blanche in Perceforest, whose name suggests in fact her supernatural nature). In Perceforest, real names are infrequent, but the naming procedures are the same as in reality: as we have seen, a child may bear the name of a parent (Blanche is Blanche’s daughter); he may have a nickname that describes him as an individual and not as a member of a lineage (Estonné, Passelion); daughters may bear the feminine form of the father’s name (Krawutschke and Beech 1995,145); a child may have a name that results from the agglutination of two names (as was practised around 1000 in Germanic names (Cursente 1995, 59; Chareille and Bourin 2002, 37– 42)). In Ysaïe, real names are likewise infrequent (and not very positive, such as when Bernard and Bertrand are presented as plotters (§ 334, § 335)). The two only obvious exceptions (Thomas and Aubert) are conspicuous. The butcher of Boulogne is called Thomas (§ 102) and Aubéron becomes Aubert: as we have seen, these two episodes may be parodic. Artus is the one of the three romances that uses the most realistic names, whilst giving names and respecting naming procedures in line with contemporary practices (especially when involving godfathers and spiritual kinship), both objectively and without burlesque or parodic insight (unlike Ysaïe).¹⁶ Artus orients the idealizing romance of chivalry towards a certain realism, which can be found in a diversification of the fictional characters (which includes the bourgeoisie and merchants, for example), and in the names, but also, as we have seen, in its representation of family relationships. However, literary names can hardly be a mere transposition of reality: if in reality, a name may make sense (when parents choose it), in literary texts, the semantic potential of names is reinforced by the necessity of constructing meaning from linguistic signs. In Artus, certain names, familiar to the medieval reader because they correspond to the tastes of the time, also contribute to the construction of fictional meaning. The conjointure of Artus is based on a hero who restores natural and seasonal rhythms, sun and light, with the help of Proserpine, a fairy, homonymous with the ancient goddess of seasons: logically, too, damsels, who have names of flowers, Florence and Marguerite, are married (Ferlampin-Acher 2017a, CXCIV – CC). Before he is crowned emperor of India, Artus receives from an automaton (“l’ymaige”) a “chapel de soucis” [a chaplet of mar-

 If Jean is the name of the hero’s father in Artus, in Ysaïe this name (Maistre Jehan) is given by Barus the Breton to Ysaïe, who has gone mad (§ 303).

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igolds]: this “chapel” may have a solar symbolism, because “soucis” in French are “solsequia” (i. e., “that which follows the sun”), and logically it helps designate Artus as the husband of Florence (Ferlampin-Acher 2018). Estienne is a cleric and he is Artus’s friend and rival. His name (Estienne < Stephanos) etymologically means “crowned” (which every cleric would have known, and which is clear from the Legenda Aurea): it refers to his status as a cleric (as such, he is “crowned”, i. e., tonsured) and presents him as a double of Artus (FerlampinAcher 2017a, CLXXXVIII – CXCIII). The name “Estienne”, even if commonly used at the time, is also poetically significant. In Artus, realistic names also make sense in the pseudo-etymological construct set up by the author. They do not refer to any intertextuality, but generate an original meaning. Doubles are important in Artus, with Florence being the look-alike of Proserpine and of the “ymage”, the automaton that gives Artus the chaplet/crown (FerlampinAcher 2002, 122– 135). The linguistic equivalent of this fascination with lookalikes is homonymy, which gives the same appearance to words of different meanings, or the same name to two distinct characters. Not surprisingly, therefore, the onomastics of Artus makes little use of the resources of derivation, but exploits homonymy, which is explicitly mentioned twice: in the beginning, the hero is named Artus “en remembrance de la haute renommee du bon roy Artu” (§ 3) [as a reminder of the great fame of good King Arthur], and at the end, his son receives the name of Alexandre from his godfather: “Si jut la nuit Artus avec Florence et engendra I biau filz, que Alixandre tint sus fons, et ot non Alixandre por lui” (§ 464, 24– 26) [And Artus lay that night with Florence and fathered a son, whom Alexandre held over the font, and who was called Alexandre after him]. Alexandre, the heir of the blood-line (he is the consequence of an indisputable and explicit wedding night (§ 464)), receives the same name as Alexandre of Majorca, an ally and close friend of his father. These two cases of homonymy do not suggest a genealogical link as in Perceforest, where Blanche is the daughter of Blanche and Ourseau the son of Ourseau, but a spiritual, elective kinship with a role model or a godfather, chosen and not inherited, individual and not collective. If in Ysaïe, homonymy, about Marc, is symptomatic of disruptions in the lineage, in Artus, it contributes, contrastingly, to the consolidation of blood ties by the addition of spiritual kinship. These explicit comments on the names of Artus and Alexandre, which frame the romance (just as two etymological explanations – about Ysaïe le Triste and Aubert – are given at the beginning and the end of Ysaïe), make the reader aware of the importance of names and of the different ways of interpreting them in Artus. At the beginning, “Artus” supposes two types of reading: the contemporary reader will have noticed that it reflects reality, whilst the “ramembrance”

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of King Arthur points towards an intertextual reading. The reader is therefore led to read the name Alexandre like that of Arthur, both as a realistic and an intertextual name. Intertextuality suggests a relationship with Alexander the Great (which is confirmed in context by the name Emenidus). The question, however, is what realistic potential can this name have? In the thirteenth century, the Duchy of Brittany underwent complex successions, involving the families of Penthièvre, Plantagenêt, Thouars, and then Dreux (including Jean II and Arthur II). Some names, such as Arthur, borne by the Plantagenêt Arthur I († 1203), and succeeded by Arthur II from the house of Dreux (this family had three further dukes named Jean), contribute to an imaginary continuity that reinforces the genealogical link via women: Duchess Alix, daughter of Duchess Constance, herself wife of Geoffroy II Plantagenêt and daughter of Conan IV, married Pierre Mauclerc, first duke of the family of Dreux, from whom descend John II and then Arthur II. The name Alix was given by Pierre Mauclerc’s successor, Jean I, to his first daughter († 1288), and the future Arthur II also had a daughter named Alix in 1297 (i. e., at the time Artus was composed). The name Alix, like Jean or Arthur, may have been felt to be a dynastic name. The name of Artus’s son, Alexandre, may echo that of Alix: in manuscripts Alexandre is very often abbreviated as Alix. The author may have given Artus a son named Alexandre, reminiscent of Alix, in order to suggest a certain dynastic continuity through women (Artus became emperor of India and Constantinople by marrying Florence, whilst Jean II indirectly inherits from Alix). This might explain why the author did not proceed in the same way for Alexandre as he did for Arthur, and did not simply justify the name of Arthur’s son by the “ramembrance” of the Macedonian conqueror. Alexandre of Majorca, godfather of Artus’s son, would in effect suggest to the reader an interpretation of the name other than an intertextual one, an interpretation related to the celebration of the Duchy of Brittany, as in the case of Jean or Artus. This hypothesis, however, must be proposed cautiously, but it may explain why the son’s name does not acquire, like that of his father, an explicit intertextual tinge. However, the fact remains that onomastics offer a very economical and suggestive indicator of intertextuality in Artus, just as in Perceforest and Ysaïe.

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“Intertextˮ: Artus and Alexandre Artus de Bretagne, Ysaïe and Perceforest are characterized by numerous cases of “interférences des matières” [interference between subject-matters],¹⁷ in which the “matière de Rome” is represented by Alexander the Great, who was a prominent figure at the end of the Middle Ages. Perceforest and Artus have in common the combination of the “matière de Bretagne” and Alexandrian tradition (through marriage), with the “matière de France” being represented in military episodes (Ferlampin-Acher 2010a). If Perceforest says that the descendants of Alexandrian characters are ancestors of the Arthurian heroes, Artus, in spite of some allusions to Bucephalus (§ 65), presents a more allusive reinvestment of the Alexandrian tradition, based on homonymy, and not on the reuse of familiar characters: the hero’s father-in-law is called Emenidus, like Alexandre’s companion (without this connection being explained), and his son is named Alexandre, like Alexander the Great. In Perceforest, we have an explicit reinvestment based on genealogy and chronology; Ysaïe, just like Perceforest, presents interferences explicitly based on chronology and the identity of characters, but between the “matière de France” and the “matière de Bretagne”; on the contrary, Artus’s practice of interference is based on homonymy, allusions, and the reversal of the direction of history, since Alexandre comes after Artus/Arthur. Beyond these differences, however, these three romances can be read as continuations of the Roman d’Alexandre, reflecting the success of this tradition and its very strong poetic potential. Medieval readers of Artus who, with Jean and Artus, and even Gouvernau, grasped the homonymic logic of the romance, are encouraged to search for homonymic links with two other male names given to prominent figures, Emenidus and Alexandre, which both refer to the Alexandrian tradition. Strict genealogical logic would have required the name Alexandre not be given to Arthur’s descendant, but to a member of the lineage of Florence (his father, for example), the lineages of Artus and Alexandre then uniting through Florence and the eponymous hero. Making a hero named Alexandre the descendant of a character named Arthur places Alexandrian “matière” in a dominant position, which is in contradiction to historical chronology, but in line with the success enjoyed at the end of the Middle Ages by the Macedonian. However, the practice of homonymy around Artus (intertextual and poetic homonymy) and Jean (historical homonymy) invites us to discuss the name Eme Ariane Lefebvre is currently writing a doctoral thesis on intertextualiy and onomastics in Artus.

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nidus. Emenidus of Sorelois’s name is a homonym of that Emenidus who, in the Alexandrian tradition, reigns over “Arcade”, i. e., Arcadia in Greece; in Artus, Emenidus reigns over a territory that partly corresponds to medieval Morea (Ferlampin-Acher 2017a, CCIV – CCX), but also includes some exotic lands such as Egypt (§ 25), which may correspond to the fact that, in the Alexandrian tradition, the companion of Alexandre named Emenidus is king of Arcade in the Peloponese, and inherits Nubia in branch IV of the Roman d’Alexandre. Emenidus of Sorelois, through his name and territory, corresponds to Emenidus of Arcade. The toponym Sorelois is, however, Arthurian (Ferlampin-Acher 2019b): the two elements of the name “Emenidus de Sorelois” suggest interferences between the “matière” of Alexander and the “matière de Bretagne”. This Emenidus is a secondary character in Alexandre de Bernay’s Roman d’Alexandre (c. 1180): he is a companion of Alexander the Great. Perhaps the author of Artus chose this name because Emenidus enjoyed a certain success around the time of Artus (c. 1300). Emenidus is the main figure of the Fuerre de Gadres, an episode of the Alexandrian “geste”. Its first version, by Eustace, is lost, but it was integrated by Alexandre de Bernay into his Roman d’Alexandre. As noted by Emmanuèle Baumgartner (2002, 29), this razzia (“fuerre”), whilst not very attractive to modern readers (Harf-Lancner does not include it in her anthology of 1994), was appreciated and reused by Alexandre de Bernay. Yet the episode seems to have been especially in vogue during the fourteenth century: at this time, Jacques de Longuyon invented a sequel to the Fuerre, Les Voeux du Paon (1312– 1313); Le Restor du Paon (before 1338) imagines a past for Emenidus (in what is certainly an interpolation), and the Fuerre de Gadres was translated into Middle Scots by John Barbour, before 1395. My hypothesis is that the biography of Emenidus, perceived as incomplete, was completed by new tales, in particular Le Restor du Paon, which deals with his youth, and perhaps Artus (around 1300 and before 1305).¹⁸ However, Artus does not reuse the character from the Fuerre named Emenidus in a transfictional way; it only reuses his name. The reader, prepared by the episode in which Artus is named, relates this new Emenidus to the old one. Emenidus of Sorelois may owe his name and his territory to Alexandre’s companion, of whom he may be the descendant (given that the two

 Although they are almost contemporary, chronology suggests that the author of Artus did not know Les Voeux du Paon. On the contrary, the motif of the Nine Worthies and the episode of the courtly vows (which is responsible for the success of Jacques de Longuyon’s romance) would surely have been found in Artus, but this is not the case, although later they are found in Ysaïe and Perceforest (on Perceforest, see Ferlampin-Acher 2010b, 118; in Ysaïe the vows of the “butor” [bittern] (§ 421) modify the courtly vows of the peacock in a burlesque way [Victorin 2002, 277– 86]).

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kings reign over the same territory). In medieval reality, descendants often bear the name of their ancestors: Emenidus de Sorelois may inherit the name of Emenidus d’Arcade. Artus does not make this homonymy explicit, rather merely stimulating the curiosity of the reader about names and an interest in intertextuality. If Emenidus may have the same name as one of his ancestors and be a descendant of Emenidus, who, then, in the romance is descended from Alexander the Great? The Emperor of India, a “felon” [wicked person] who is finally conquered by Artus, remains anonymous, even though his brothers have names. Nevertheless as “empereur d’Inde”, he may remind the reader of Alexander the Great. The author of Artus is confronted with a difficulty: he has to promote the Breton Artus, Emperor of India, and thus dethrone Alexander the Great’s supposed descendant, and at the same time he has to make Arthur the spiritual heir of Alexander. This contradictory project was resolved by leaving the Emperor of India anonymous, and by inventing another Alexandre, Alexandre de Maillogres. Alexander the Great is thus disqualified both as “empereur d’Inde” and as ancestor, although Alexandrian intertextuality remains effective. Artus constitutes a sequel to the Fuerre, which, like the sequel it proposes to the Arthurian story, is without a precise genealogy and is based on homonymy. If writing a post-Arthurian sequel at the time that Artus was composed (c. 1300) is exploring a new fictional world without much risk of contradiction, it is not the same for Alexandre, whose story was completed, as is shown by the Venjance Alixandre of Jehan le Nevelon (c. 1180) and the Vengement d’Alixandre by Gui de Cambrai (c. 1190, and later fifteenth century versions). This is why Emenidus, a hero with a biography still incomplete, inspired several authors, and why his name is reused in Artus. Collateral characters (not Alexandre, but Emenidus; not King Arthur, but Artus of Brittany) allow the author of Artus to invent a new story, although the traditions about King Arthur and Alexander the Great are already set. In Perceforest, Betis and Gadifer and, in Ysaïe, Aubéron are chosen for the same reason. The continuation of Artus is thus as much Arthurian as Alexandrian. From this perspective, the presence of Alexandrian names in Artus is understandable, through references to the real Alexander (§ 65, 54, § 248, 4, § 262, 13), and to the real Bucephalus (§ 65, 54), and mostly through homonymy. In Artus, Gadifer is an oriental king, ally of the emperor of India, enemy of Emenidus. Because ancestors and descendants may have the same name, he could be considered as a descendant of the Gadifer of the Alexandrian tradition, who avenges his nephew, killed by Emenidus, and is in turn killed by the latter. In Artus, as in Alexandrian tradition, Gadifer is the enemy of Emenidus. Cliçon, the seneschal of Philip of Sabaria, a relative of Emenidus, likewise bears in Artus the name of Clin or Clis-

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son, a relative of Alexandre in the earlier tradition. Homonymy predetermines the role of the characters in Artus. This interest, which is shown by several texts in Emenidus – Les Vœux du Paon as well as Le Restor du Paon or Artus –, may explain Emenidus’s discreet presence in Perceforest: his biography was already complete at the time at which Perceforest was written. The beginning of Perceforest takes up Le Fuerre de Gadres and Les Voeux du Paon and uses them to “tile”, to overlay, the origin of the Breton world. Yet Perceforest hesitates between Emenidus and Permenio. The beginning of Perceforest relies on Orosius (Taylor 1979, 34 n. 21) to rectify Le Fuerre de Gadres and Les Voeux du Paon by replacing Emenidus with Permenio (Taylor 1979, Roussineau 2007, I, § 87– 96 and § 118), whom it presents as a “mareschal” (Roussineau 2007, I, § 89), a change the author emphasizes by specifying “Permenio, que plusieurs clamerent Emenidum” (Roussineau 2007, I, § 96) [Permenio, whom some called Emenidum]. Later, however, when Perceforest no longer follows Les Voeux du Paon, it uses the name Emenidus again (Roussineau 2007 and 1999, I, § 611; II, i, § 174, § 175), and mentions the confusion once more (II, § 263): “Permenio, que plusieurs appelloient Emenidon” [Permenio, whom some called Emenidon]. Perceforest thus hesitates: either, as Jane Taylor (followed by Chardonnens) suggests, it follows Orosius, or (and the two are not incompatible) it keeps Emenidus at bay because he already has a history (which is not English) in the Fuerre, in its “continuations”, Artus, Les Vœux du Paon, and Le Restor du Paon. Perceforest would replace Emenidus by a much less visible Permenio, whom Artus only names once (§ 106,19)¹⁹ and which seems to have been of little interest to earlier tradition. Artus thus invents a future after Arthur’s death, and after the death of Alexandre, the history of the two kingdoms having run in parallel, and the two kings having descendants both in blood and in spirit, thanks to parallel and homonymous figures: an Arthur who is duke of Brittany and not king of England, an Emenidus without Alexander as emperor of India.

Conclusion Artus corroborates Jane Taylor’s (1987, 269) remark: these romances based on Arthurian “extensional” insertions are very different from each other and can con He is named only once, in § 106, as king of Valfondée: he is the father of Estienne. The reluctance of the text to use his name, the preference for his title “Roi de Valfondée”, the opacity of this name in some manuscripts (Pamenion in A), which suggests that it was not recognized, suggest that Permenio is little known and available for reuse (for example in Perceforest).

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stitute neither a corpus nor a “genre”, nor even a similar “horizon d’attente” [horizon of expectation]: they show constant features evident neither to the medieval reader nor to the modern scholar (Ferlampin-Acher 2017c and 2019a). Genealogy and onomastics, beyond characteristics shared by the projects, underline the originality of Artus which, chronologically, is certainly the oldest text of the three. Intertextuality is not only binary, uniting a before and an after, but also ternary. The “matière d’Alexandre” constitutes a third term: Perceforest assimilates it by going beyond it in its manner of succession and translatio, whilst Ysaïe rejects it, in the manner of burlesque inversion. Artus sets up, at the same time as an inverse succession like Ysaïe (Arthur has a son named Alexandre), a marriage which renders Alexandrian and Breton worlds contemporaneous. At the end of the romance, the name of Artus’s son, Alexandre, goes back to that of Alix, (re)constructing in the somewhat troubled history of Brittany a continuity between Arthur I, his half-sister Alix, Jean I, her son, Jean II, her grandson, and Arthur II, her great-grandson. At a time when Artus remained generally unknown, Richard Trachsler (2000, 208) noted of Ysaïe: C’est la première fois qu’un roman arthurien élargit son horizon générique en accueillant des éléments empruntés à une autre matière. Jusqu’à présent, on a seulement vu les chansons de geste s’ouvrir à un merveilleux associé fréquemment à la matière de Bretagne pour se transformer en “chansons d’aventures”. [This is the first time that an Arthurian romance expands its generic horizon by welcoming elements borrowed from another subject-matter. Up to this point, we have only seen chansons de geste open up to the kind of merveilleux frequently associated with the matter of Britain to transform themselves into “chansons d’aventures”.]

Artus certainly predates Ysaïe and implements an original poetic system, based on homonymy, which helps bypass the constraints of genealogy. If, finally, the originality of Artus and the differences between Artus, Ysaïe, and Perceforest are notable, the fact remains that they constitute, if not a corpus, then at least a textual constellation responding to the project of inventing an extensional continuation for Arthurian and Alexandrian “matières”. If Ysaïe and Perceforest are romances with an end (no one thought to write the story of the sons of Marc), Artus was formed by adding continuations (Ferlampin-Acher 2017a, LXXV – CI). I ventured the hypothesis of a first version (V. I) which may have ended with the return of Artus to Brittany, continued by a second one (V. II), proceeding as far as the interruption of the wedding tournament by Estienne, after the announcement, in a prolepsis, of the birth of the son, and after three marriages (Florence and Artus, Gouvernau and Jeannette, Marguerite and Estienne). This motif of three simultaneous marriages, although not common, is found in Les

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Voeux du Paon: does this suggest, if V. I is earlier than Les Voeux du Paon and presents itself as a continuation of Le Fuerre de Gadres, that V. II may be posterior to the Voeux and borrow from it the motif of the three marriages? There is no proof of this: the influence, if any, could be in either direction, even if a priori the Voeux seems to have had a wider audience at the time of its composition than Artus, as shown, for example, by Les Voeux de l’Épervier. Nevertheless, the Alexandrian background of Artus de Bretagne may have become more important over time.²⁰

References Alexandre de Paris. Le Roman d’Alexandre. Trans. Laurence Harf-Lancner. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1994. Barbour, John. The Buik of Alexander or the Buik of the Most Noble and Valiant Conquerour Alexander the Grit. Ed. R. L. Graeme Ritchie. 4 vols. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1921 – 1929. Baumgartner, Emmanuèle. “The Raid on Gaza in Alexandre de Paris’s Romance.” The Medieval French Alexander. Ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. 29 – 38. Bloch, R. Howard. Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Bourin, Monique, and Pascal Chareille, ed. Genèse de l’anthroponymie moderne, III. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1995. Bourin, Monique, and Pascal Chareille, ed. Genèse de l’anthroponymie moderne, II-1. [Persistance du nom unique. Le cas de la Bretagne. L’anthroponymie des clercs]. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1992. Bourin, Monique, and Pascal Chareille, ed. Genèse de l’anthroponymie moderne, II-2 [Désignation et anthroponymie des femmes]. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1992. Bourin, Monique, ed. Genèse de l’anthroponymie médiévale, I. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1990. Chardonnens, Noémie. L’autre du même: emprunts et répétitions dans le Roman de Perceforest. Geneva: Droz, 2015. Chareille, Pascal, and Monique Bourin. “Colons et serfs dans le polyptyque d’Irminon: Quelles différences anthroponymiques?” Genèse médiévale de l’anthroponymie moderne, V-1. Ed. Monique Bourin et Pascal Chareille. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 2002. 31 – 132. Charpentier, Hélène, and Patricia Victorin, ed. and trans. Le conte du papegau. Paris: Champion, 2004.

 I would like to thank Leah Tether and Keith Busby for their patient and careful proofreading.

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Chédeville, André. “L’anthroponymie bretonne.” Genèse médiévale de l’anthroponymie moderne, II-1. Ed. Monique Bourin and Pascal Chareille. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1992. 9 – 40. Cursente, Benoît. “Les leçons d’une généalogie auscitaine des XIe et XIIe siècles.” Genèse de l’anthroponymie médiévale, III. Ed. Monique Bourin and Pascal Chareille. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1995. 55 – 56. Daniel, Catherine. Arthurianisme et littérature politique. PhD thesis: Université de Paris Est-Créteil, 2002. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le mauvais genre des noms propres féminins se terminant par -és dans Perceforest.” Par le nom connait on l’homme. Onomastique et poétique médiévale. Ed. Christine Ferlampin-Acher, Fabienne Pomel, and Emese Egedi-Kovács. Forthcoming. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine, ed. Arthur en Europe à la fin du Moyen Âge. Approches comparées (1270 – 1530). Paris: Garnier, 2020a. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine, ed. LATE (1270 – 1530): la matière arthurienne tardive en Europe. Late Arthurian Tradition in Europe). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020b. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le roman arthurien tardif en prose: un corpus négligé et réhabilité? Pour un parcours critique et historiographique du Moyen Âge à nos jours.” Expériences critiques. Approche historiographique de quelques objets littéraires médiévaux. Ed. Véronique Dominguez and Elisabeth Gaucher-Rémond. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2019a. 187 – 199. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le Sorelois oriental d’Artus de Bretagne.” De la pensée de l’histoire au jeu littéraire. Études médiévales en l’honneur de Dominique Boutet. Ed. Sébastien Douchet, Marie-Pascale Halary, Sylvie Lefèvre, Patrick Moran, and Jean-René Valette. Paris: Champion, 2019b. 761 – 774. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Artus de Bretagne, la couronne et le chapel de soucis.” L’œuvre et ses miniatures. Les objets autoréflexifs dans la littérature européenne. Ed. Luc Fraisse and Eric Wessler. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018. 225 – 245. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine, ed. Artus de Bretagne. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 2017a. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Artus de Bretagne et ses suites, Perceforest, Isaïe le Triste, Le Conte du Papegaut: les romans néo-arthuriens en prose français constituent-ils un corpus?” Studi sulla Letteratura Cavalleresca in Francia e in Italia (secoli XIII – XVI). Ed. Margherita Lecco. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2017b. 29 – 44. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le noir et la merveille dans les miniatures d’Artus de Bretagne (manuscrits BnF, fr 761, Carpentras, BM 104, New York Public Library, Spencer 34 et Turin Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria L.III.31).” Merveilleux, marges et marginalité dans la littérature et l’enluminure profanes en France et dans les régions septentrionales (XIIe – XVe siècles). Ed. Adeline Latimier, Joanna Pavlevski, and Alicia Servier. Brepols: Turnhout, 2017c. 111 – 122. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Artus de Bretagne: la Bretagne et ses marges.” Histoires des Bretagnes 5. En marge. Ed. Hélène Bouget and Magali Coumert. Brest: Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, 2015. 245 – 258. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “La présence des chansons de geste dans Artus de Bretagne, entre réminiscence et récriture.” Le souffle épique. L’esprit de la chanson de geste (textes réunis en l’honneur de Bernard Guidot). Ed. Muriel Ott. Orléans: Paradigme, 2010a. 407 – 424.

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Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. Perceforest et Zéphir: propositions autour d’un récit arthurien bourguignon. Geneva: Droz, 2010b. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “D’un monde à l’autre: Artus de Bretagne entre mythe et littérature, de l’antiquaire à la fabrique de faux meubles bretons.” Le monde et l’autre monde. Ed. Denis Hüe and Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Orléans: Paradigme, 2002. 129 – 168. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Artus de Bretagne: une histoire sans fin.” PRIS-MA [Clore le récit: recherche sur les dénouements romanesques] 15 (1999): 53 – 68. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le charme d’Artus de Bretagne.” Miscellanea mediaevalia, Mélanges offerts à Ph. Ménard. Ed. Jean-Claude Faucon, Alain Labbé, and Danielle Quéruel. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1998. I: 513 – 528. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Le rôle des mères dans Perceforest.” Arthurian Romance and Gender. Ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995. 274 – 284. Froissart, Jean, Melyador. Ed. Nathalie Bragantini-Maillard. Geneva: Droz, 2012. Froissart, Jean. Méliador. Ed. Auguste Longnon. 3 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1895 – 1899. Giacchetti, André, ed. Ysaïe le Triste. Roman arthurien du Moyen Âge tardif. Rouen: Presses de l’Université de Rouen, 1989. Heidenreich Findley, Brooke. “Interpréter le paysage du Perceforest: forêts, jardins, monuments.” Perceforest: un roman arthurien et sa réception. Ed. Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012. 203 – 211. Heuckenkamp, Ferdinand, ed. Le chevalier du papegau. Halle: Niemeyer, 1896. Köhler, Erich. Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der höfischen Epik. Studien zur Form der frühen Artusund Graldichtung. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1956. Jeay, Madeleine. Le commerce des mots. L’usage des listes dans la littérature médiévale (XIIe – XVe siècles). Geneva: Droz, 2006. Krawutschke, Eleanor, and George Beech. “Le choix du nom d’enfant en Poitou (XIe – XIIe siècles: l’importance des noms familiaux.” Genèse de l’anthroponymie médiévale, III. Ed. Monique Bourin and Pascal Chareille. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1995. 143 – 154. Lods, Jeanne. Le roman de Perceforest: origines, composition, caractères, valeur et influence. Geneva: Droz. 1951. Lods, Jeanne, ed. Les pièces lyriques du roman de Perceforest. Geneva: Droz, 1953. Loomis, Roger Sherman. “Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast.” Speculum 28 (1953): 14 – 27. Michaud-Fréjaville, Françoise. “Dans son pays on l’appelait Jeannette. Essai sur le discours et l’usage anthroponymique dans les procès de Jeanne d’Arc.” Genèse médiévale de l’anthroponymie moderne, VI. Ed. Monique Bourin and Pascal Chareille. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1997. 163 – 177. Richard, Adeline. Amour et Passe-Amour. Lancelot-Guenièvre, Tristan-Yseut dans le Lancelot en prose et le Tristan en prose. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2007. Roussineau, Gilles, ed. Perceforest, complément, variantes inédites. Geneva: Droz, 2018. Roussineau, Gilles, ed. Florilèges de Perceforest. Geneva: Droz, 2017. Roussineau, Gilles, ed. Perceforest. Première partie, 2 vols; Deuxième partie, 2 vols; Troisième partie, 3 vols; Quatrième partie, 2 vols; Cinquième partie, 2 vols; Sixième partie, 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1987 – 2014. Saint-Gelais, Richard. Fictions transfuges. La transfictionalité et ses enjeux. Paris: Seuil, 2011.

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Spilsbury, Sarah V. “Traditional Material in Artus de Bretaigne.” The Legend of Arthur in the Middle Ages. Studies Presented to A. H. Diverres. Ed. P. B. Grout, R. Anthony Lodge, and E. K. C. Varty. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1983. 138 – 193. Spilsbury, Sarah V. “Artus de Bretaigne: Structure and Unity.” Romania 97 (1976): 63 – 76. Spilsbury, Sarah V. “On the Date and Authorship of Artus de Bretaigne.” Romania 94 (1973): 505 – 522. Spilsbury, Sarah V. Artus de Bretaigne: A Critical and Literary Study. PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1972. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Le Restor d’Alexandre dans Ysaÿe le Triste.” The Medieval Opus: Imitation, Rewriting and Transmission in the French Tradition. Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, 5 – 7 October 1995 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ed. Douglas Kelly. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 181 – 195. Szkilnik, Michelle. “L’ombre de Lancelot dans Ysaÿe le Triste.” Lancelot-Lanzelet, hier et aujourd’hui. Pour fêter les 90 ans d’Alexandre Micha. Ed. Danielle Buschinger and Michel Zink. Greifswald: Reineke, 1995. 363 – 369. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Artus de Bretagne, célébrer le tournoi d’antan.” Artus de Bretagne. Du manuscrit à l’imprimé (XIVe – XIXe siècle). Ed. Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015. 57 – 67. Taylor Jane H. M. “The Sense of the Beginning: Genealogy and Plenitude in Late Medieval Narrative Cycles.” Transtextualities: Of Cycles and Cyclicity in Medieval French Literature. Ed. Sara Sturm-Maddox and Donald Maddox. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1996. 92 – 124. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Order from Accident: Cyclic Consciousness at the End of the Middle Ages.” Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chanson de geste and Arthurian Romances. Ed. Bart Besamusca et al. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1994. 59 – 73. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Fourteenth Century: Context, Text and Intertext.” The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 1987. II: 267 – 332. Taylor, Jane H. M., ed. Le roman de Perceforest. Première partie. Geneva: Droz, 1979. Trachsler, Richard. Disjointures-conjointures: étude sur l’interférence des matières narratives dans la littérature française du Moyen Âge. Tübingen and Basel: Francke, 2000. Vesce, Thomas E., trans. The Knight of the Parrot (Le Chevalier du Papegau). New York, NY and London: Garland, 1986. Victorin, Patricia. Ysaïe le triste: une esthétique de la confluence: tours, tombeaux, vergers et fontaines. Paris: Champion, 2002. Wolf-Bonvin, Romaine. Textus: de la tradition latine à l’esthétique du roman médiéval: Le bel inconnu, Amadas et Ydoine. Paris: Champion, 1998.

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The Popularity of the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Continuations in Medieval England and Scotland Jane Taylor’s Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France (2014) reveals the extraordinary longevity of Chrétien’s popularity with readers and writers in France. As far as we can tell from the surviving manuscript evidence, no romances of Chrétien de Troyes were copied after the middle of the fourteenth century (Nixon 1993, 13 – 14), but this does not seem to have stopped people reading his works. Writing in the 1520s, Pierre Sala complained of the difficulty he had trying to read the text of “the old Tristan” in an early manuscript (Taylor 2014, 21), and given the apparent absence of late medieval copies of Chrétien de Troyes he must have had the same difficulty reading Chrétien’s verse. Fortunately, he persisted and then produced his own rhymed version of Chrétien’s Yvain in order to make it more accessible to other readers (Sala 1996). Pierre Sala was not your average reader, but neither was he the only person who was still interested in Chrétien in the sixteenth century. From roughly the same period, we have the printed Perceval of 1530,¹ which continued the medieval practice of amalgamating Chrétien’s Conte du Graal with its various Continuations and prequels in a single book, a comprehensive “Perceval and Gawain” cycle, whilst also bringing the Old French verse up-to-date in elegant Renaissance prose. Did Chrétien’s Arthurian romances and the Continuations of his last unfinished romance also achieve such long-lasting popularity in medieval England and Scotland? As far as I am aware, the question has not been systematically investigated. It is briefly raised by Dieter Mehl in his book on Middle English romances: It can be said even of the first centuries after the conquest that courtly society and culture was less exclusive. The influence of Chrétien de Troyes, for instance, was not very far-reaching, and even during the twelfth century the Anglo-Norman poet Hue de Rotelande portrays chivalry and courtly ceremony with a certain degree of detached irony. This applies even more to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period in which most of the extant Middle English romances were probably written. (Mehl 1968, 3)

 There is now a modern edition by Colombo Timelli (2017– 2021). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-008

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If Chrétien’s influence was indeed negligible, this essay would have been much shorter than it is, but the situation is more complicated. As I hope to show, there is evidence of very different kinds – allusions and borrowings in literature and in art, translations and adaptations, lost and extant manuscripts, to show that Chrétien’s romances and the Continuations circulated in medieval England and Scotland. Certainly, his popularity was eventually eclipsed by that of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, but this was also the case on the Continent (Hult 1998, 13 – 14), where the production of Arthurian verse romance was displaced by that of prose romances (Trachsler 2017). In English romance, that displacement never happened, which might explain why, as we shall see, the vogue for Chrétien and the Continuations seems, if anything, to have been longer-lived in England and Scotland than it was across the Channel. My aim in this essay is to assemble this varied evidence and also to explore some of the conditions that made Chrétien’s long-lasting popularity possible. That exploration must begin with a rejection of the crude distinction that Mehl makes between insular and continental court culture. Especially in a period where the realms of the kings of England included large parts of what we today call France, it makes little sense to separate “English” from “French” culture. Court culture was transnational (Salter 1988, 29), and in Western Europe the most exclusive and internationally mobile court of Chrétien’s day was that of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Vincent 2007, 305). It is not surprising therefore that Henry II’s “English” court was known to Chrétien de Troyes. As many scholars have noted (Schmolke-Hasselmann 1981; Burgess 1984, 97– 99), the description of Erec and Enide’s Christmas coronation feast in Nantes harks back to the court that was held there at Christmas in 1169 by Henry II to mark the betrothal of his son Geoffrey to Constance, daughter of the Duke of Brittany. For instance, the lists of guests at the Christmas court in Erec include a historical personage, Brian of the Isles (l. 6668), otherwise known as Brian of Wallingford (a place near Oxford, as Chrétien knew, for in Cligés he places the tournament “devant Oxenefort, / qui pres est de Galinguefort” (Micha 1982, ll. 4543 – 4544) [before Oxford, which is near to Wallingford], and when Chrétien outlines the dominions from which Arthur summons his barons he is actually describing the vast expanse of Henry II’s empire: Assez i ot contes et rois, Normanz, Bretons, Escoz, Irois; d’Eingleterre et de Cornoaille i ot molt riche baronaille, et des Gales jusqu’an Anjo, ne an Mainne ne an Peito, n’ot chevalier de grant afeire

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ne gentil dame de bon eire que les meillors et les plus gentes ne fussent a la cort a Nantes […] (Erec et Enide, ll. 6585 – 6594)² [There were many counts and kings, Normans, Bretons, Scottish, and Irish; from England and Cornwall, there were many powerful barons; and from Wales to Anjou and from Maine to Poitou there was no important knight nor fine and noble lady that the best and worthiest of them were not present at the court at Nantes […]]

Chrétien’s unusual knowledge of English geography (Bullock-Davies 1981) suggests the possibility that he had visited England. Henry II evidently played some role in the making of Erec et Enide, though if he were the patron, as has been suggested (Duggan 1997, 11), we might have expected Chrétien to have done him the compliment of naming him. The family ties between Chrétien’s patron, Countess Marie of Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Henry II, Eleanor’s second husband, were in any case so close that Chrétien’s connections with the “English” court can be explained without assuming Henry’s personal patronage. I find no trace of Chrétien’s influence in Early Middle English literature, but of course the literature of entertainment in courtly circles was in French and not in English. To measure his influence before the fourteenth century we must therefore turn to literature in the “French of Britain”. The earliest romance that seems to show his influence is Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomedon, probably composed shortly after 1180. Hue was from Rhuddlan, and he tells us in his poem that he lives in Credenhill (just north of Hereford). Two other individuals named in the poem, Walter Map and Hugh of Hungary, were canons of Hereford Cathedral and personal acquaintances of the poet (Cartlidge 2011). The action of Ipomedon takes place not in Arthurian Britain, but in the Sicilian realm of King Meleager, and whilst the characters are not Arthurian either, Hue’s chivalric world bears more than a passing resemblance to Chrétien’s imaginative universe. There is a tournament in which the eponymous hero fights incognito in different colours on different days (as in Chrétien’s Cligés), a knight “without name” who willingly incurs shame out of love for his lady (as in Chrétien’s Chevalier de la charrette), a maiden who arrives at court to challenge the knight to raise a siege (as in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal). And what Dieter Mehl calls the “the detached irony” with which Hue de Rotelande treats his protagonists seems to me to be not evidence of a less exclusive court culture in England, but rather a quality that Hue and Chrétien had in common (Haidu 1968).

 Cited from the edition by Roques (1981), with some emendations required by sense.

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Scholarship is divided on the question of whether Hue used Chrétien’s romances (contrast Gay 1917 with Calin 1998), and the most recent editor of Ipomedon, A. J. Holden (Hue de Rotelande 1979, 52), leaves the question open: Bien entendu, il semble acquis que la cour de Meleager est calquée sur celle du roi Arthur. Presque aucune convention ne manque ; on retrouve le souverain vénérable, arbitre des bienséances et fontaine de sagesse, preux et énergique en théorie, mais en fait passif et peu enclin à agir lorsque l’aventure fait son irruption inévitable. On retrouve également le neveu du roi, Capaneus (= Gauvain), le sénéchal vantard, médisant, sarcastique, Caemius (= Keu), et même des personnages de second plan, tel que Sicanius le desreié (= Sagremor). Mais il est évident, d’autre part, qu’une familiarité avec les conventions arthuriennes n’implique pas nécessairement, en 1185, l’exploitation directe de Chrétien de Troyes. [Of course, it seems accepted that Meleager’s court is modelled on King Arthur’s. Almost no convention is missing: we encounter the venerable sovereign, arbiter of good manners and fount of wisdom, valiant, and energetic in theory but in fact passive and little inclined to act when the inevitable adventure arrives. We also encounter the king’s nephew, Capaneus (= Gawain), the boastful, bad-mouthing, and sarcastic seneschal, Caemius (= Kay), and even secondary characters such as Sicanius the Impetuous (= Sagremor). But, on the other hand, is it is also evident that a familiarity with Arthurian conventions need not necessarily imply, in 1185, the direct use of Chrétien de Troyes.]

This describes the situation well. We are dealing mostly with stock Arthurian conventions and romance motifs. Some of these also appear in Marie de France’s Lanval (c. 1180), whilst the motif of the three-day tournament also occurs in Partenopeus de Blois, written sometime in the last quarter of the twelfth century, perhaps before Ipomedon (Eley and Simons 1999, 324). The only question that Holden’s agnostic position begs is where Hue de Rotelande, in 1185, could have encountered “Sagremor le desreié” if not in Chrétien’s romances. For whilst he is a fixture there (typically occurring with his epithet: Erec, ll. 1701, 2175, Cligés, l. 4596, Conte du Graal, ll. 4198 – 4199),³ he has no standing at all in earlier Arthurian chronicles or non-Arthurian literature, and I know of no other texts that mention him before the Continuations and the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, which are both later.⁴

 References to the CFMA editions by Roques (1981), Micha (1982), and Lecoy (1984), respectively.  West’s Index of Proper Names in the Arthurian Verse Romance (1978) gives Renaut de Beaujeu’s Bel Inconnu as the earliest post-Chrétien Arthurian verse romance to mention Sagremor, but recent scholarship prefers a date (1191– 1220) later than the one traditionally assumed (c. 1185), and in any case Sagremor never features in Le Bel Inconnu with his epithet. There is a possibility that the second part of the First Continuation (Short Version) may recycle older material (Corley 1987, 35), but again Sagremor only appears here without his epithet.

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To a slightly later period, the early decades of the thirteenth century, belong three Anglo-Norman Arthurian romances, Yder, Gui de Warewic [Guy of Warwick], and Fergus, which all show familiarity with Chrétien. The romance of Yder was probably composed between 1199 and 1216 (Adams 1983, 13). The dialect of the only surviving manuscript copy (Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.4.26) is markedly Anglo-Norman, and the geographical setting is idiosyncratically insular. Thus King Arthur holds court in Pontefract (l. 57), and the Wild Forest that is home to dangerous giants is bathetically English: “C’est pres,” dist ele, “Wircercestre Dedans la forest de Malverne Qui siet sur la val de Saverne.” “Sire Gagains,” dist li reis, “sire, Ço est en Gloccestresire.” “La vos savrai jo bien mener,” Dist Keis, “si joen m’en voil pener.” (ll. 5360 – 5366) [“It’s near Worcester,” she said, “in the Malvern forest, which lies above the Severn valley.” “Sir Gawain,” said the King, “sir, that’s in Gloucestershire.” “I can easily take you there,” said Kay, “if I put my mind to it.”]

The poet was presumably English, and yet his knowledge of Chrétien is plain to see. A number of narrative motifs recall Chrétien’s romances. The hero grows up destitute and fatherless, and when he goes to Arthur’s court hoping to be knighted the king ignores him (cf. young Perceval). In the course of his travels he receives hospitality from an impoverished knight (ll. 509 – 717; cf. Erec, ll. 368 ff.), encounters a grieving lady holding the corpse of her lover who has been violently killed (ll. 3556 – 3620; cf. Conte du Graal, ll. 3366 – 3393) and subsequently meets an evil dwarf who shamefully strikes him (ll. 3849 – 3882; cf. Erec, ll. 208 – 224). He then teams up with Yvain and Gawain, who are presented as compagnons (ll. 3496 – 3530; cf. Yvain, ll. 6323 – 6361). Heinrich Gelzer, who first edited the romance, also noted some verbal echoes (Gelzer 1913, lix – lx): many go back to Chrétien’s battle scenes, which the poet of Yder seems to have read with special interest. The influence of Chrétien’s romances (specifically Erec, Cligés, and Yvain) on Gui de Warewic has already been thoroughly discussed by Velma Richmond (1996, 31– 36), and I limit myself here to one clear instance of Gui’s debt to Chrétien’s Yvain. Like Yvain, Gui interrupts a fight between a dragon and a lion, coming to the lion’s rescue just when the dragon is about to kill it. The grateful lion then joins its paws in a gesture of vassalage, and becomes the hero’s friend (Ewert 1993, ll. 4115 – 4190). The obvious parallels between Yvain and Gui end here, because in Gui the lion is soon killed by the wicked seneschal Morgadour.

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The Roman de Fergus belongs to the same period but takes us to Scotland, where the action is firmly set. The two surviving manuscripts are continental rather than insular, and Tony Hunt (2005) sees no reason to believe that the romance was actually composed in Scotland, but the Scottish lowlands are so vividly and precisely evoked that I find it difficult to imagine an author and an intended audience who were foreign to these parts.⁵ D. D. R. Owen (1991, 162 – 169) has suggested that the poet, who names himself Guillaume le Clerc, may have been William of Malveisin (c. 1160 – 1238), clerk at the court of William the Lion, King of Scotland, and later bishop of Glasgow and St. Andrews. We need not look hard for parallels between Chrétien’s romances and Fergus, because Guillaume’s use of Chrétien is a conspicuous element of his literary game. The romance opens with King Arthur holding court at Cardigan. Arthur’s knights are talking idly after dinner in the hall (cf. Yvain), when Arthur proposes that the assembled company should hunt the white stag (Fergus 1983, l. 20), as in Erec. After the stag has been caught, Arthur and his knights travel to Carduel. En route they encounter a country bumpkin, Fergus, who is ploughing the fields but who on seeing Arthur’s knights announces to his parents that he must go to Arthur’s court to serve him (cf. young Perceval in Conte du Graal). And so on and so forth. When a romance feeds so blatantly on its intertexts, it is an understatement to say that the poet knew Chrétien’s romances. He was a connoisseur and liked nothing better than sharing with his audience the pleasure of recalling treasured memories of Chrétien’s romances (Hunt 2005). A special example is the scene in which Fergus is armed. The heroes of Chrétien’s romances come forward with arms and armour, including Perceval, who gives Fergus a sword: Une espee en sa main trençant Tint Percevals que li donna Ses bons ostes qui l’herberga. (Fergus, ll. 1412– 1414) [In his hand Perceval held a sharp sword, which he had been given by the good host who gave him hospitality.]

We are, of course, meant to recall the scene in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal where Perceval’s host in the Grail Castle, The Fisher King, passes on to the hero a precious sword (Zemel 2006, 109). But there are dividends for readers who know the

 For a critical review of different theories about authorship and patronage based on the Scottish toponyms and anthroponyms, see Zemel (2006, 136 – 160). Zemel concludes from the placenames that the author must have lived in Scotland, but suggests that he could have been a continental French speaker who resided there temporarily.

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scene in Chrétien so well as to remember the curious words spoken by the servant boy who hands Perceval the sword: Vos la donroi cui vos pleira, Mes ma dame seroit mout liee Se ele soit bien anploiee La ou ele sera donee. (Conte du Graal, ll. 3138 – 3141) [You may give the sword to whomever you please, but my lady would be most glad if it were put to good use where it was bestowed.]

The possibility that Perceval should give the sword away in future comes to pass in Fergus precisely because it has been foreseen in Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien’s Conte du Graal usually circulated in manuscripts with the Continuations, and it is worth noting that Guillaume, too, appears to have read the Conte du Graal in a compilation that included the Continuations, which are also involved in his intertextual mosaic (Owen 1987). For instance, in one episode the hero liberates two damsels who have been taken captive by a giant. Fergus fights the giant in combat; his horse is clubbed to death, but he avenges this by killing the giant and helping himself to a magnificent horse from the giant’s own stable. If we substitute Perceval for Fergus and one captive damsel for two, we find the same episode in the Second Continuation (Roach 1971, ll. 21659 – 21955). At the court of Edward I, later on in the thirteenth century, Chrétien’s romances continued to remain in vogue. An interesting witness to this vogue is John of Howden, who around 1280 wrote a verse homily entitled Rossignos for Eleanor of Provence, Edward I’s mother (John of Howden 2006). There have been many great heroes, John writes, but God is far greater, and none of the knights now famous can rival his glory: Ne Wawyn qui fu sanz bobance, Ne Lancelot qui sot de lance N’Ywain qui soun lion agence, Ne Percevauz qui bien s’avance. (ll. 3989 – 3992) [Not Gawain who was without arrogance, nor Lancelot who was expert with the lance, nor Ywain who trains his lion, nor Perceval who makes good progress.]

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Whilst the brief references to most of these heroes could theoretically be to other romances, the mention of Yvain and his lion suggests the poet had Chrétien in mind.⁶ The festivities and tournaments inspired by Arthurian romances provide further evidence of Chrétien’s popularity at Edward I’s court. The chronicler Lodewijk van Velthem, who early in the fourteenth century provided a continuation of Maerlant’s Spiegel Historiael (1283 – 1288), provided a long account of a Round Table spectacle which he claims was enacted at Edward I’s court.⁷ “The third course,” Loomis (1959, 558–559) summarizes, was followed by the entrance of the Loathly Damsel on a bony nag, charmingly made up with a nose a foot long, a goitre on her neck, and teeth projecting a finger’s length from her wry mouth. She challenged Perchevael to win the castle of Leicester from its lord (Simon de Montfort), and bade Walewein to ride to Cornuaelge (doubtless a corruption of Kenilworth, a stronghold of the rebel barons) to end the strife between commons and lords.

According to the chronicle, all the stage acts were devised and directed by Edward I himself. No English chronicle corroborates Lodewijk van Velthem’s story, and much of what he wrote about Edward I is pure fiction (Summerfield 2009). Apart from being a chronicler, Lodewijk was a compiler of Arthurian romances, and his assurance (taken on trust by Loomis 1958 and 1959) that his information came from a Latin source seems all the more dubious when we consider that the script for Edward I’s interlude goes back to Chrétien’s Conte du Graal (ll. 4584– 4768). However, Loomis was perhaps right not to dismiss Lodewijk’s account out of hand. We know for a fact that Edward I did indeed organise Round Table feasts – he seems to have hosted at least five – and on one such occasion, in 1306, he and his son made a public vow that they would never sleep two nights in the same place before they had subjugated the rebellious Scots. As Loomis noted, this chivalric vow may have been inspired by the same scene of the Loathly Lady in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal (ll. 4704– 4712), where Perceval swears “Qu’il ne girra an un ostel / .II. nuiz an trestot son aage […] Tant que il del graal savra / cui l’an sert” [That he will never sleep two nights in one house for his whole life until he knows who is served by the grail].

 Yvain’s rescue of the lion is also in the Prose Yvain, but this survives in just a single manuscript of Italian provenance (Muir 1964; Lacy 2004) and is therefore unlikely to have been known in England.  For the Middle Dutch original see Van der Linden and De Vreese (1906, I: 295 – 321), accessible at .

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Edward’s familiarity with Chrétien’s romances is also implied by the Arthurian-themed tournament at Le Hem in 1278, organised by the knights Huart de Bazentin and Aubert de Longueval (Vale 1983, 12– 16). The latter’s sister had the honour of being cast as Queen Guinevere on this occasion, whilst Count Robert of Artois played Yvain, complete with lion. In the event Edward failed to arrive, but he had been cast as King Arthur, and his familiarity with Chrétien’s Yvain must have been expected. Court life often imitated literary art, and kings and princes needed to know their chivalric romances to be able to act the proper part. This explain Edward III’s payment (recorded in the Exchequer records for 10 December 1365) for three romances, “which said books were taken into the King’s hands because it was certified to the King that the said books related to the solemnity of feasts” (Devon 1837, 187). Needless to say, the romances in question would have been francophone, for until the fifteenth century at least the great and the good in England still entertained themselves with literature in French (Mathew 1968, 23; Scattergood 1983, 40; Busby 2002, II: 747– 66). Medieval wills, booklists, and inventories make frequent mention of French Arthurian romances. William de Beauchamp of Elmley Castle (Worcester) left a “book of Lancelot” to his daughter Joan in 1268 (Wilson 1952, 107). The bequest of Guy de Beauchamp, Count of Warwick, to Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire, lists “Un volum, en lequel est le premer livere de Launcelot” (Blaess 1957). The will of the Duchess of York, Isabella of Castille, of 1392 refers to a “Lancelot” (Wilson 1952, 107), and a book of the same title was owned by Thomas, Duke of Gloucester (Dillon and Hope 1897). Thomas Hebbeden in 1435 bequeathed to Isabella “unum librum gallicum vocatum Launcelot”. Susan Cavanaugh’s “A Study of Books Privately Owned in England, 1300 – 1450” yields a similar picture: numerous French romances appear in the wills of those rich enough to own books. Thomas Arnold, a monk of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, left to the abbey a “Liber de launcelet”, and a “Liber qui vocatur Graal”. Thomas of Lexham, a canon of Hereford Cathedral, owned a “Perseuall”. A “Lanchelot”, “Lanselake”, and a “livre du romans du Roy Arthur” were owned by Simon Burley, Elizabeth Day, and Elizabeth la Zouche respectively (Cavanaugh 1980, 51– 52, 154– 155, 229 – 230, 512– 515, 954). Given the popularity of Arthurian prose romances, it would be unwise to assume that these were manuscripts of Chrétien. The “Lancelots” mentioned above must be manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail (or Post-Vulgate) Cycle, of which there were many in England and Scotland (Middleton 2003). However, references to a book entitled “de Perceual et Gauwayn” and another (or the same?) book “de Percivall & Gawyn”, owned respectively by Queen Isabella (Edward III’s wife) and Richard II (Wilson 1952, 108; Devon 1837, 213) can plausibly be taken to refer to manuscripts of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal and the Continuations, since

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the double focus on these two heroes is the distinguishing feature of these cycles. No doubt at all exists about the reference to a “Liber de per de Galois” in the fifteenth-century inventory of books of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, for the compiler had the good sense to provide incipits and to take these from the second folios of manuscripts (knowing that the first was often lost). The incipit for “romaunz de per le galois” was “et oreisons”. This corresponds with the opening words of line 155 of the Conte du Graal (“et orisons….”) (Blaess 1973, 355).⁸ Although it might at first seem surprising to think of monasteries as safe houses for manuscripts of Chrétien’s romances, we have from the early fourteenth century a remarkable mention of Chrétien by name, with titles of his romances and some by his epigones, and again the setting is a monastery. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 496 is a composite early fourteenth-century miscellany, written and assembled at the Benedictine abbey of Wymondham (Norfolk). It contains, amongst others, a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, a copy of Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina in what appears to be an earlier (thirteenthcentury) hand (Smith 2013), and the text that matters for our purposes, a commentary on Geoffrey’s Prophecies of Merlin, which must have been written after the battles of Stirling Bridge (1297) and Faukerk (1298), which are both alluded to in the text (Bohny and Métry-Perone 2011, 109). About the prophecy that King Arthur’s deeds will be food for future storytellers, the commentator writes: Plana est littera et non indiget expositionem. Nullius enim gesta tam celebre referentur per uniuersum orbem, quia iocunda et delectabilia, non dico solum de bellis, sed etiam de aliis, que gessit tempore tranquillitatis et pacis et milites eius de rotunda tabula sua, quibus attestantur libri Gallici, tam a Christiano de Trecis, quam aliis conscripti, vtpote liber de esse periculoso, liber de pulcro incognito, liber de milite leonis, liber de milite quadrige, de Perceuallo, de Lancelot de Lacu, de Gualguano muto et alii infiniti in omne fere lingua conscripti. (32– 34) [The sense is clear and requires no exposition. After all, no one’s deeds are narrated as much as his across the whole world, because they are pleasing and charming. I speak here not only of deeds of war but also about other deeds that were accomplished during that time of tranquillity and peace by Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. These deeds are reported by the French books written both by Chrétien de Troyes and by others, such as Âtre Périlleux, Le Bel inconnu, Le Chevalier au lion, Le Chevalier de la charrette, Perceval, Lancelot du Lac, Les enfaunces Gauvain, and countless others written in almost every language.]

 In the Medieval Libraries of Great Britain database , this is item BA1. 1530.

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The “time of tranquillity and peace” refers to the twelve years of peace during Arthur’s reign. Geoffrey of Monmouth mentions this peaceful period en passant, but our commentator follows the example of Wace and other writers by investing this period with historical significance (Putter 1994). This period, said Wace (Weiss 2005, Roman de Brut, ll. 9787– 9799), was the time when the marvellous adventures of Arthur and his knights as narrated by storytellers took place. Unlike Wace, the commentator goes on to provide exact references, though some have got lost in Latin translation. As noted by the editors (Bohny and Métry-Perone 2011, 35), Âtre Périlleux [Perilous Graveyard] seems to have been misunderstood as Être Perilleux (giving Latin esse periculoso) and Enfances Gauvain as Infans Gauvain (giving Latin Gualgano muto). Clearly recognizable, however, are the titles of three of Chrétien’s romances (Lancelot du Lac more probably refers to the Prose Lancelot). Even more remarkable is the mention of our poet by name (Christianus de Trecis, garbled by a scribe to Christianus decretis). Chrétien’s name was remembered by various continental French and German writers but disappeared from the record after the thirteenth century (Van Coolput 1987, 332– 342). It is curious therefore to find it, of all places, in an early fourteenthcentury Anglo-Latin text (Trachsler 2005, 356), copied in Wymondham. As far as surviving insular manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes is concerned, the haul is disappointingly low. There are only two. The first, from the middle of the fourteenth century, is London, British Library, MS Harley 4971, a manuscript which c. 1400 belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (Nixon 1993, 82– 84). Making the most of some unused space on fol. 127v, a scribe used an empty column to jot down a list of knights present at Erec and Enide’s wedding (ll. 1671 ff.). The extract (edited by Busby 2007) is headed La Rounde Table, and the item is referred to in the Table of Contents to the manuscript as Sessiones tabule rotunde. Apparently, this reader of Chrétien was historically minded and wished to record who had been in attendance when Arthur held court at Cardigan. Chrétien makes rather a joke of that kind of “historical” interest by making the attendees progressively more fantastical: after King Aguisel of Scotland and King Ban of Ganeret (plausible enough), there enter old King Kerrin of Orcel and his colourful band of three hundred centenarians, followed by Biblis, king of the Antipodes, a tiny dwarf, and his brother Bliant, who is half a foot taller than anyone else. If this is a send-up of the epic convention of the roll call of exotic kings and princes, the joke seems to have gone unnoticed by this English reader. The second manuscript, London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XIV, again suggests a historical interest. The manuscript contains Chrétien’s Perceval. Unusually, it is not accompanied in this manuscript with any of the Continuations, but (apart from Walter of Henley’s Housebonderie and an Art d’aimer that was added later) with historical narratives: Wace’s Brut, Gaimar’s Histoire des Engleis,

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Haveloc, and Langtoft’s Chroniques (Nixon 1993, 81– 82). The historical core, of which Perceval formed part, was copied around the middle of the fourteenth century. A third mid-fourteenth-century manuscript sometimes associated with Chrétien de Troyes, the “Smithfield Decretals,” London, British Library, MS Royal 10 E IV, can safely be ignored: according to the British Library catalogue,⁹ the illustrations (by an English artist) on fols 80v–88r depict the “story of a lion and a knight based on the Chevalier au lion by Chrétien de Troyes,” but, as we have already seen, a similar story appears in Guy of Warwick. And since the last image shows the lion being killed by a man (representing Morgadour), we can be sure that the lion in question is Guy’s rather than Yvain’s. The dearth of insular manuscripts of Chrétien is not entirely surprising, for the tally of Continental manuscripts is fairly modest, too. Considering his huge influence on Arthurian writing in verse and prose in the first half of the thirteenth century, it is striking how “mediocre” Chrétien’s showing in the surviving manuscript tradition is (Hult 1998, 15): each of his first four romances exists in ten or so manuscripts/manuscript fragments, with only his last romance achieving a more impressive tally, thanks largely to compilers who chose to combine it with the Continuations into a cycle that Chrétien never intended, as far as we know. What is surprising, however, is the lateness of the English manuscripts. Both were copied c. 1350 and represent the last link in a chain of scribal transmission that on the Continent had already become tenuous after the middle of the thirteenth century, when French prose romances became the fashion and superseded Arthurian verse romance (Trachsler 2017). The mention of Chrétien’s name in an Anglo-Latin text, c. 1300, when his name had disappeared from the lips of French writers, similarly suggests that he remained current in England longer than he did on the Continent. The disappearance of Chrétien in manuscripts after c. 1350 coincides, however, with his reception into vernacular English literature, which begins at the same time (Steinbach 1885). I discuss below some unambiguous cases of adaptation and influence, and pass over some possible (but I think tenuous and doubtful) traces of influence in the works of Chaucer (Brewer 1974; Hamel 1983), Lybeaus Desconus (Mills 1966), Generides (Hibbard 1963, 234) and Sir Thomas Malory (Field 1991; Norris 2008, 77– 78, 89 – 90).

 Available at . The information seems to be based on Warner and Gilson (1921, I: 334). The scenes are correctly identified as illustrating Guy of Warwick in Hibbard (1968, 131).

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The earliest Middle English romances that are based on Chrétien’s romances are Ywain and Gawain and Sir Percyvell of Gales. Both were probably composed around the middle of the fourteenth century, and both are in Northern English dialects. Ywain and Gawain tracks Chrétien’s romance so closely that the poet must have had the French version in front of him when he was working on the Middle English poem (Mills et al. 1999, 117– 124). English audiences seem to have had a special fondness for this particular romance. The scene of Yvain’s horse being sliced in two by the portcullis of Laudine’s castle can be found, from the late fourteenth century onwards, in misericords in churches all across England: Chester Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral, St Mary’s Enville (Staffordshire), St Botolph’s (Boston), and New College, Oxford (Rushing 1995, 198 – 211). This does not mean, of course, that these artists all knew Chrétien (or the Middle English translation Ywain and Gawain), for iconographical motifs of this sort soon begin to lead a life independent of the written text. That said, the story must have resonated with at least some of the artists and audiences. Sir Percyvell is less straightforward, since it is a much freer adaptation of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. The Middle English redactor wanted a shorter story with a happy ending and made some drastic revisions to achieve this goal (Putter 2004). He cut out the Grail and Gawain’s adventures altogether, kept Perceval’s mother alive, and then tied up the plot by returning Perceval to his mother near the end of the story. In line with this breezy approach to Chrétien’s tragi-comic romance, he increased the humour (Eckhardt 1974). For instance, when (as in Chretien’s original) the young hero kills the Red Knight, he has difficulty not just in getting his armour off, but in grasping the fact that his opponent is dead and no longer capable of conversation. As Perceval continues to talk to a corpse, it is the poet who has to excuse the dead man for observing silence: The knyghte lay still in the stede: What sulde he say, when he was dede? The childe couthe no better rede, Bot down gun he lyghte. (Braswell 1995, ll. 737– 740)

As Keith Busby (1978) has noted, the scene perhaps owes something to the fifth branch of the First Continuation. Here Gawain’s son is comically cast as a simpleton knight who keeps asking questions of a defeated knight who is obviously dead. As Busby also notes, since Chrétien’s Conte du Graal was usually transmitted with the Continuations, a poet who had read the one was probably also familiar with the other. Because the converse is also true, that is, borrowings from the First Continuation imply the circulation of manuscripts that also contained Chrétien’s Conte

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du Graal, the influence of the Continuations on medieval English literature is very relevant to our topic, and so it is worth pointing out how popular the First Continuation appears to have been with later medieval English writers. Apart from Sir Percyvell of Gales, at least three Middle English romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Jeaste of Sir Gawain, and the Scottish Golagros and Gawane, draw on it. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1380) was composed by a poet with a compendious knowledge of French Arthurian romances in verse and prose (Putter 1995), and the Continuations must have formed part of his reading. The First Continuation gave him the plot of the Beheading Game (Benson 1961), and a summary of the French story clearly shows the connections. As Arthur holds plenary court, he refuses to eat until some great marvel arrives. The poet promptly obliges by serving up an adventure. A strange knight comes riding in on horseback and offers a game: if anyone wishes to cut his head off, he will in a year’s time, return the favour. Caradoc (the hero in this episode) steps forward, beheads the knight, but the challenger retrieves his head and puts it back on: La chief li volle nom pas pres Mais li cors le suit de si pres Q’ainçois que garde s’an soit prise Ra li cors sa teste reprise. (ll. 7207– 7210)¹⁰ [The head flies far away from him, but the body follows it so closely that before anyone noticed the body has taken its head back.]

Exactly a year later, the knight returns to Arthur’s court to return the blow. Caradoc bends down to receive the blow, but the knight delays and Caradoc accuses him of cowardice. The knight gets ready to strike but only touches Caradoc with the flat of his sword. After praising Caradoc, he reveals he is in fact his father, the sorcerer Eliavrés. There are, it is true, some important differences between the First Continuation and Sir Gawain. The second stage of the beheading game does not take place in Arthur’s court; the body in Gawain does not put its head back on but holds it by the hand; the magic in Sir Gawain is explained with reference not to the challenger, a sorcerer, but to Morgan le Fay, whose reputation for malicious meddling and black magic could be taken for granted by a poet and audience who knew the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. However, the differences do not to my mind justify the theory that there existed another version of this story, now lost (Tolkien and Gor-

 Cited from the Long Redaction (Roach and Ivy 1950).

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don 1967, xvi): they merely show that the Gawain-poet felt under no obligation to follow his source faithfully. There are other indications, too, of his knowledge of the Continuations, for instance, in the playfully intertextual seduction scenes which revolve around Gawain and his literary reputation as a lady’s man (Putter 1995, 109 – 114). As Thomas Hinton (2012, 167– 185) has pointed out, such scenes are fixtures in the Continuations. The paradigmatic situation – a woman falls in love with Gawain and offers herself to him because he is the famous Gauvain whom she has heard so much about – is first encountered in the First Continuation, where the woman in question is the Pucelle de Lis. It is repeated, with variations of course, in the Second Continuation, where the lady, Tanree, throws herself at Gawain with the words: “Car vos estes de tel renon / Que je vos ai amé pieç’a” (Second Continuation, ll. 29848 – 29849) [“because you are so famous that I have long loved you”]. And it appears again in Gerbert de Montreuil’s Continuation in the episode of Urpin’s daughter (Gerbert de Montreuil 2014, ll. 12381– 13956), who initially feigns a passionate interest in Gauvain (with the intention of killing him) and ends up loving him for real. In Sir Gawain, this scenario is replayed. The hero arrives at a strange castle, where the host’s wife tries to seduce him, knowing that he is the great Gawain, and when he does not live up to expectation she calls his identity into question: “Bot that ye be Gawan, ungayn gos hit in mynde” (l. 1293) [“But that you might be Gawain I find difficult to believe”]. Compare the Pucelle de Lis’s reply to Gawain: “‘Je suis Gauvains.’ – ‘Gauvains!’ fait elle, / ‘Je ne croi mie’” (First Continuation, ll. 6277– 6278) [“‘I am called Gawain’ – ‘Gawain’, she replied: ‘I don’t believe it’”]. Again there is an important difference: Gawain in the English romance neither deserves nor lives up to his reputation as a lady’s man, whilst Gauvain does, but the idea of playing off the “real” Gawain against the literary reputation that precedes him probably owes something to the poet’s knowledge of the Continuations, though admittedly the idea is also found in other Continental Arthurian verse romances from the period (Busby 1980, 245 – 314). The episode I have just mentioned, that of the Pucelle de Lis, also forms the basis of the Jeaste of Sir Gawain, usually dated to the second half of the fifteenth century (though the earliest surviving witnesses are sixteenth century). The basic story is more or less the same as that of the First Continuation. ¹¹ Gawain sleeps  I pass over the complication that this episode is narrated twice in the First Continuation, in branch II and then again in branch IV, with puzzling discrepancies between the accounts. For instance, whilst in Branch II Gawain kills the Pucelle’s father and then fights her brother Bran, in the Long Version of Branch IV Gawain is reported as having killed both her father and a brother, before his fight with a second brother, Bran de Lis.

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with a lady he finds in a tent, but her father arrives and challenges him to combat. Gawain defeats first the father and then fights her two brothers. He defeats the first, but the second, Sir Brandles (“Bran de Lis” in the French) holds his own against Gawain, and to end the stalemate the two combatants agree to resume the duel when next their paths cross. In the First Continuation, battle is rejoined many lines and many adventures later, but the English poet wanted to keep his story short and simple, and proceeds briskly to a “just” and patriarchal conclusion. Sir Brandles beats up his sister to teach her a lesson and nurses his father (killed by Gawain in the First Continuation) and brother back to health, and since Gawain and Bran de Lis never meet again a happy ending follows: And after that tyme they never mette more; Full gladde were those knightes therfore. So there was made the ende. (Hahn 1995, ll. 533 – 536)

Finally, there is the Scottish Golagros and Gawane, extant in a printed edition published in Edinburgh by Chepman and Myllar in 1508 (Hanna 2008). This romance strings together two episodes from the First Continuation. First, there is the adventure of Kay and Gawain as they seek to procure hospitality for King Arthur and his knights on their travels. When they chance upon a house where a dwarf is roasting a peacock (in Golagros and Gawane, “small birdis”), Kay rudely helps himself to the roast, and is then knocked to the floor by the dwarf’s master. Gawain, by contrast, asks politely, and Arthur and his men receive lavish hospitality. In the long redaction of the First Continuation, these events occupy lines 12921– 13283. Second, there is the adventure of the Riche Soudoier. This knight is defeated by Gawain, but in order to save appearances (for the sake of his lady love in the French, for that of his public honour in Golagros), Gawain pretends to be the loser, and allows himself to be taken to Golagros’s castle as his prisoner. Arthur and his men despair, but their anguish turns to joy when Gawain reappears triumphant, accompanied by his opponent who surrenders himself to the king. Since both episodes revolve around Gawain’s courtesy, the Scottish poet managed to create a coherent and, in an English context, characteristically short romance (1365 lines). This is no mean feat considering that he was working from the protracted and sprawling First Continuation. In conclusion, there is plentiful evidence that Chrétien’s Arthurian romances and the Continuations were influential in England and Scotland. It is true that in English-language literature the signs of this influence are late, for they are found in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances (Ywain and Gawain, Sir Percyvell, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Jeaste of Sir Gawain, Golagros and Gawane), but of course literature in English was itself late. His influence on insular liter-

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ature before the rise of English is apparent in literature in the other languages of medieval England and Scotland: in Anglo-Norman romances (Gui de Warewic, Yder, Fergus, and perhaps Ipomedon) and in more unexpected places (Rossignos, a Latin commentary on Merlin’s Prophecies, the visual arts, Round Table feasts). It might be objected that, with only two insular manuscripts in existence, hard codicological evidence for Chrétien’s popularity is lacking, but it should be recognized that the manuscripts we have today are merely the surviving nodes in a complex network of manuscripts that has otherwise vanished, though not without trace. Especially intriguing are the multiple clues that there existed in England and Scotland manuscripts of Perceval with the Continuations. Their ghosts appear in the Perceval manuscript that was once in St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and in references to books of “Perceval and Gawain” in fourteenth-century libraries. Their former existence is also indicated by the only text of Perceval in an insular manuscript: the Arundel version. This has two unique interpolated passages which connect the sword given to Perceval to the history of that sword given in the First Continuation (Busby 1993). It seems likely, as Keith Busby has observed, that the Arundel scribe’s exemplar was a manuscript that had already amalgamated Chrétien’s Conte with the Continuations (Busby 1993, 80 – 81). Finally, we have the evidence of English and Scottish poets using the First Continuation, in a recension that has no living descendants in the manuscript tradition. Not counting two fragments, there are eleven surviving manuscript witnesses, MSS AELMPQRSTUV (sigla in Tether 2012, 204– 207), which show that there existed at least three verse versions: a Short Version (c. 1190), a Mixed Version and a Long Version (both c. 1230?), plus the printed prose version of 1530 (Tether 2012, 11– 12). In the case of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Golagros and Gawane, correspondences between the French and the English versions are close enough to allow us to determine which of these versions the English poets had before them. For instance, it is only in the prose Perceval that the challenger who offers the beheading game is dressed in green, and again it is only in the prose Perceval (and the Long Version it is based on) that Arthur and his knights traverse “forestz, maretz, landes et plainnes” (Colombo Timelli, II: 103; my italics) in search of shelter, just as in Golagros and Gawane they ride “our firthis (over forests) and felles […] dovnis and dellis, montains and marresse” (27– 30, my italics). Based on these and other correspondences, Benson (1961) and Ketrick (1931) were able to show that the poets of Gawain and Golagros used a recension that was closer to the printed prose Perceval than any surviving manuscript version of the Continuations. When the poets of Gawain and Golagros and Gawane read or heard the First Continuation, what manuscript of the Continuations should we be imagining for

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that situation? Ketrick (1931) argued that later medieval English poets had access to some earlier prose redaction on which the 1530 Perceval was based. This theory still holds sway in modern scholarship (Mills 1999, 162, 333; Hanna 2008, xxxi), but is not credible. The Preface to the 1530 Perceval (missing in the printed edition that Ketrick consulted) implies that the prosification of Perceval and the Continuations was undertaken specifically for the 1530 edition, and as Colombo Timelli has demonstrated, what the 1530 edition actually goes back to is a verse manuscript of Chrétien’s Perceval and the Continuations that does not fit any stemma: “TU sembleraient les mss privilégiés pour le Conte du Graal, EU (U surtout) pour la Première Continuation, E (mais aussi PST pour la Deuxième, TU encore pour Manessier” (Colombo Timelli 2009, 33 n. 74) [TU would appear to be the closest manuscripts for the Conte du Graal, EU (U especially) for the First Continuation, E (but also PST) for the Second, TU again for Manessier]. The mystery only deepens when we consider the full assortment of Arthuriana (including the prequels Bliocadran and the Elucidation) gathered together in the prose Perceval. As Jane Taylor (2014: 136 – 137) has shown, only P contains all these stories, but, since P has the Short Version of the First Continuation whilst the prose Perceval used the Long Version, only a combination of versions or more probably some hybrid version no longer attested in the written tradition can have served as the exemplar. The author of the prose Perceval thus had as his model a verse recension that confronts us with a black hole in our universe of positive manuscript evidence. What Sir Gawain and Golagros and Gawane add to our known unknowns is the indication that similar manuscript recensions, now lost, must have circulated in fourteenth-century England and fifteenth-century Scotland. The authors of both these poems were apparently reading texts of the First Continuation with peculiarities that only emerge in the surviving written tradition of that romance in the 1530 prose Perceval. In short, the popularity of Chrétien and the Continuations must be measured, not by surviving manuscripts but mainly by the traces of their influence in later writings. In Anglo-Norman and Middle English writings such traces are numerous, and we cannot tell the history of literary reception in medieval England and Scotland by treating their influence as insignificant.¹²

 I would like to thank Myra Stokes and Corin Corley for comments on an earlier draft, and Richard Trachsler and the editors, Leah Tether and Keith Busby, for sending me scans of various books and articles which made it possible for me to complete this essay during lockdown.

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Devon, Frederic, ed. Issues of the Exchequer. London: Murray, 1837. Dillon, H. A., and W. H. Hope. “Inventory of Goods and Chattels Belonging to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester.” Archaeological Journal 54 (1897): 275 – 308. Duggan, Joseph J. The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Eckhardt, Caroline D. “Arthurian Comedy: The Simpleton-Hero in Sir Perceval of Galles.” The Chaucer Review 8 (1974): 205 – 220. Eley, Penny, and Penny Simons. “Partonopeus de Blois and Chrétien de Troyes: A Re-assessment.” Romania 117 (1999): 316 – 341. Ewert, Alfred, ed. Gui de Warewic, roman du XIIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris, Champion, 1933. Field, P. J. C. “Malory and Chrétien de Troyes.” Reading Medieval Studies 17 (1991): 19 – 130. Gay, Lucy M. “Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomédon and Chrétien de Troyes,” PMLA 32 (1917): 468 – 491. Gelzer, Heinrich, ed. Der altfranzözische Yderroman. Dresden: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1913. Gerbert de Montreuil. La Continuation de Perceval, quatrième continuation. Ed. Frédérique Le Nan. Geneva: Droz, 2014. Guillaume Le Clerc. The Romance of Fergus. Ed. Wilson Frescoln. Philadelphia, PA: W. H. Allen, 1983. Hahn, Thomas, ed. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1995. Haidu, Peter. Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Cligès and Perceval. Geneva: Droz, 1968. Hamel, Mary. “The Franklin’s Tale and Chrétien de Troyes.” Chaucer Review 17 (1983): 316 – 331. Hanna, Ralph, ed. The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane. Scottish Text Society. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008. Hibbard, Laura A. Mediaeval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances. New York, NY: Burt Franklin, 1963. Hinton, Thomas. The Conte du Graal Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, The Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012. Hue de Rotelande. Ipomedon: poème de Hue de Rotelande (fin du XIIe siècle). Ed. A. J. Holden. Paris: Klincksieck, 1979. Hult, David. Manuscript Transmission, Reception and Canon Formation: The Case of Chrétien de Troyes. Berkeley: University of California, 1998. Accessible at . Hunt, Tony. “The Roman de Fergus: Parody or Pastiche.” The Scots and Medieval Arthurian Legend. Ed. Rhiannon Purdie and Nicola Royan. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. 55 – 69. John of Howden. Rossignos. Ed. Glynn Hesketh. London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2006. Ketrick, Paul. J. The Relation of Golagros and Gawane to the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1931. Lacy, Norris J., “The Enigma of the Prose Yvain.” Textual Traditions of Mediaeval Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of P.J.C. Field. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. 65 – 71. Loomis, Roger Sherman. “Arthurian Influence on Sport and Spectacle.” Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. Ed. Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. 553 – 559.

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Loomis, Roger Sherman, “Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast.” Speculum 33 (1958), 242 – 255. Mathew, Gervase. The Court of Richard II. London: Murray, 1969. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge, 1968. Middleton, Roger. “Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England and Wales: Some Books and their Owners.” A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Ed. Carol R. Dover. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. 219 – 235. Mills, Maldwyn. “The Huntsman and the Dwarf in Erec and Libeaus Deconnus.” Romania 87 (1966): 33 – 58. Mills, Maldwyn, et al. “Chivalric Romance.” The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Life and Literature. Ed. W. R. J. Barron. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999. 113 – 183, 313 – 344. Muir, Lynette. “A Reappraisal of the Prose Yvain.” Romania 85 (1964): 355 – 365. Nixon, Terry. “Catalogue of Manuscripts.” Les manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes/The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes. 2 vols. Ed. Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. II: 1 – 96. Norris, Ralph. Malory’s Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. Owen, D. D. R., trans. The Romance of Fergus. Everyman. London: Dent, 1991. Owen, D. D. R. “The Craft of Fergus: Supplementary Notes.” French Studies Bulletin 7 (1987): 1 – 5. Putter, Ad. “Story Line and Story Shape in Sir Percyvell of Gales and Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal. Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance. Ed. Nicola McDonald. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. 171 – 196. Putter, Ad. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Putter, Ad. “Finding Time for Romance: Medieval Arthurian Literary History.” Medium Aevum 53 (1994): 1 – 16. Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. The Legend of Guy de Warwick. New York, NY: Garland, 1996. Roach, William, ed. The Continuations of Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. Volume IV, The Second Continuation. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1971. Roach, William, and Robert H. Ivy, ed. The Continuations of Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. Volume II, The First Continuation: Redaction of MSS EMQU (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1950). Rushing, James A. Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Sala, Pierre. Le Chevalier au Lion. Ed. Pierre Servet. Paris: Champion, 1996. Salter, Elizabeth. English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Scattergood, V. J. “Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II.” English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne. London: Duckworth, 1983. 29 – 43. Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate. “Henry II Plantagenêt, roi d’Angleterre, et la génèse d’Erec et Enide.” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 24 (1981): 241 – 246. Smith, Thomas W. “Oliver of Cologne’s Historia Damiatina: a New Manuscript Witness in Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 496.” Hermathena 194 (2013): 37 – 68.

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Steinbach, Paul. Über den Einfluss des Crestien de Troies auf die altenglische Literatur. Leipzig: Metzger & Wittig, 1885. Summerfield, Thea. “Schrijven in Maerlants schaduw. Lodewijk van Velthem, Edward I en koning Artur.” De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering. Ed. Bart Besamusca and Remco Sleiderink. Hilversum: Verloren, 2009. 182 – 206. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Tether, Leah. The Continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval. Content and Construction, Extension and Ending. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2012. Trachsler, Richard. “Le roman arthurien en vers. Profil codicologique d’un genre littéraire” (Guest Lecture, École nationale de Chartres, 2017), available at . Trachsler, Richard. “Le visage et la voix. L’auteur, le narrateur et l’enlumineur dans la litte´rature narrative me´die´vale.” Bulletin bibliographique de la Socie´te´ internationale arthurienne 57 (2005): 349 – 371. Vale, Juliet. Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and Its Contexts 1270 – 1350. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1983. Van Coolput, Colette-Anne. “Appendice: Références, adaptations et emprunts direct.” The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes: Chrétien et ses contemporains. Ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987. I: 333 – 337. Van der Linden, Hans, and Willem de Vreese, ed. Lodewijk van Velthem’s Voortzetting van den Spiegel Historiael. 3 vols. Brussels: Hayez, 1906. Vincent, Nicholas. “The Court of Henry II.” Henry II: New Interpretations. Ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007. 335 – 361. Warner, George F., and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collection. 4 vols. London: British Museum, 1921. Weiss, Judith, ed. Wace’s Roman De Brut: A History Of The British: Text and Translation. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2005. West, G. D. An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Prose Romances. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978. Wilson, R. M. The Lost Literature of Medieval England. London: Methuen, 1958. Zemel, Roel. The Quest for Galiene: A Study of Guillaume le Clerc’s Arthurian Romance Fergus. Münster: Nodus, 2006.

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The Chapel on the Borderland: Perlesvaus retold by Fouke Fitz Warin Perlesvaus ¹ is a mysterious romance in more than one way. Its content departs significantly from the central Grail tradition that developed in the late twelfth century and first half of the thirteenth from Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal. The persistent uncertainty surrounding its date means that no one has yet convincingly demonstrated whether it was composed at the very beginning of the period of emergence of Old French Arthurian prose, c. 1190 – 1200, or whether it is one of the last products of the rich 1200 – 1250 period which saw the composition of such major prose texts as Robert de Boron’s romances, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, the Prose Tristan, and Guiron le Courtois. Perlesvaus’s geographical origin is similarly mysterious; Nitze and Jenkins, in their 1932– 1937 edition, popularized the hypothesis of a role played by Glastonbury Abbey in the creation of the text (II: 45 – 72), which would possibly have served as propaganda for the institution and its publicized connection to the matière de Bretagne. Yet this hypothesis remains uncertain, especially in the context of Old French Arthurian prose, which is generally considered to be of Continental rather than Anglo-Norman origin. Nearly all surviving manuscripts of the romance “have seemed to be linked with the north-eastern part of France” (Carley 1992, 37). Though Thomas E. Kelly (1974, 18) believed that “this does not mean that its author, even if he were also from this region, necessarily composed his work on the Continent”, it is odd that none of the thirteenth-century witnesses exhibits marks of Anglo-Norman. The only Anglo-Norman fragment of Perlesvaus, that designated We, is dated by Carley to the first half of the fourteenth century (Carley 1992, 39), between half a century and over a century after the romance is thought to have been composed. Perlesvaus had little success in the Middle Ages, if the small number of surviving manuscripts is to be believed. The only four complete or nearly complete witnesses all date from the thirteenth century, whilst manuscripts of the roman-

 All references to Perlesvaus are to Nitze and Jenkins (1932– 1937 [1972]). A more recent edition in Lettres Gothiques is available: Strubel (2007). However, it is based on the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1428, which is less relevant to our purpose, as will be argued below. The text of MS fr. 1428 begins p. 44, l.511 of Nitze and Jenkins and lacks the episode of the Chapel in its entirety. Strubel supplements the missing beginning with Nitze and Jenkins’s edition. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-009

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ces of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, for instance, are abundant in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But Perlesvaus is not a complete unknown in the history of medieval literature either. The romance reappears here and there in a piecemeal fashion, taken up in part in two linked manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in the early 1400s, and in full in L’Hystoire du Sainct Greaal printed by Galliot Du Pré, Jean Petit, and Michel Le Noir in 1516 (along with the Estoire del Saint Graal and a shortened version of the Queste del saint Graal).² Perlesvaus was also adapted into Welsh in conjunction with the Queste in the late-fourteenth-century Ystoryeaeu Seint Greal. Finally, one of its episodes, the initial adventure at the Chapel of Saint Augustine, is summarized in at least two texts produced in England: the ancestral romance of Fouke Fitz Warin (produced in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) and John of Glastonbury’s Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey (written shortly after 1342). Perhaps significantly, this is the same episode that was inserted in the two aforementioned manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, Paris, Bibilothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 120 and Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3480, right before the beginning of the Queste. The highly condensed rewriting of the episode of the Chapel of Saint Augustine in Fouke Fitz Warin ³ is of particular interest because of what it can tell us about the romance’s early reception and popularity – or relative lack thereof. As Jane Taylor (2015, 290) argues: Translation and ré-écriture have, of course, always been about the power relation between source culture and target culture: the adaptor or translator has always as his first preoccupation to appropriate and thus refract – sometimes to rewrite – a source text in order to ensure that it can remain alive and functioning in a new cultural context.

The summary in Fouke Fitz Warin (hereafter FFW) is one of the oldest clear references to the contents of the Perlesvaus in another text, in French moreover, and it could give us some indication of how this Arthurian romance circulated in England and Wales. As such, it deserves particular attention. Perlesvaus may have had little success compared to other Arthurian prose romances of the same period, but the reception of FFW is even more difficult to grasp, as the text has been preserved in a single manuscript. It makes sense to consider the conjunction of these two texts as significant in this regard, since it cannot be attributed to the ubiquity of one or the other.

 For a comprehensive analysis, see Taylor (2014, Ch. 5).  All references to Fouke le Fitz Waryn are to Hathaway et al. (1975). All references to its translation are to Kemp-Welch (2001 [1907]).

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The episode of the Chapel of Saint Augustine in Fouke Fitz Warin The connection between Fouke Fitz Warin and Perlesvaus has been known since the end of the nineteenth century and was first mentioned by Sebastian Evans, who uses it to claim that Perlesvaus is “not only the most coherent and poetic of all the many versions of the Legend, but is also the first and most authentic”, as well as to prove that “the writer held this book to be conclusive authority on the subject” (Evans 1898, 290 and 292). We will not dwell here on these dated opinions and the debate over the “authenticity” of Perlesvaus. What interests us is that Evans then refers to an excerpt from the end of FFW, which he quotes in translation, where a prophecy by Merlin appears in verse. This prophecy succinctly sums up the adventure of the Chapel of Saint Augustine that opens Perlesvaus (26 – 30) and which the critics have unanimously recognized as the source for this passage and the text designated here as “le Graal, / Le lyvre de le seint vassal”. The complete passage reads as follows: En Bretaigne la Graunde Un lou vendra de la Blaunche Launde. .xii. dentz avera aguz, Sys desouz e sis desus. Cely avera si fer regard Qu’il enchacera le leopard Hors de la Blaunche Launde, Tant avera force e vertue graunde. Mes nous le savom qe Merlyn Le dit par Fouke le fitz Waryn, Quar chescun de vous deit estre ensur Qe en le temps le roy Arthur La Blaunche Launde fust appelee Qe ore est Blaunchevile nomee; Quar en cel pays [60v] fust la chapele De Seint Austyn, que fust bele, Ou Kahuz le fitz Yweyn sounga Qu’il le chaundelabre embla E qe il a un home acountra, Qe de un cotel le naufra E en la coste le playa, E il, en dormaunt, si haut cria Qe roi Arthur oy le a, E de dormir esveilla. Et quant Kahuz fust esveillee, Si mist sa meyn a son costee;

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Le cotel yleqe ad trovee Que parmi ly out naufré. Issi nous counte le Graal, Le lyvre de le seint vassal. Yleqe recovery ly reis Arthur Sa bounté e sa valur, Quant il avoit tot perdu, Sa chevalerie e sa vertu. (60) [“In Britain the Great a wolf will come from the White Plain. Twelve sharp teeth will he have, six below and six above. He will have so fierce a look, that he will drive the leopard from out the White Plain, such great strength and virtue will he have.” But we know that Merlin said this of Fulk Fitz Warine, for each of you may be sure that in the time of King Arthur that was called the White Plain which is now named White Town. For in that country was the chapel of St. Augustine, which was fair, where Kahuz the son of Ywein dreamt that he stole the candelabrum, and that he encountered a man who wounded him with a knife, and bruised him in his side. And he cried out so loud as he slept, that King Arthur heard him, and awoke from sleep. And when Kahuz was awaked, he put his hand to his side, and there he found the knife by the which he had been wounded. Thus says the Graal, the book of the holy vessel. There recovered King Arthur his goodness and his valour, when he had quite lost his chivalry and his virtue.] (69)

The episode is too condensed to offer much information, but the reference is fully coherent with the text of Perlesvaus. In addition to this reference, John Thomas Lister (1921, 17– 21), an early editor of Perlesvaus building upon an article by Jessie L. Weston (1914, 423 – 424), drew attention to another passage, this time at the beginning of FFW, which echoes this prophecy. The Chapel of Saint Augustine mentioned at the end of the narrative makes an earlier appearance at the beginning of the romance, where the reader is told of its creation: E pus avynt qe tote ceste countré fust apellee la Blaunche Launde, e moy e mes compaignons enclosames la launde de heut mur e parfounde fosse, yssi qe nul’ entré fust si noun parmy ceste ville, qe pleyne fust de mavoys espiritz, e en la lande feymes jostes e tornoyementz, et plusours vindent pur vere les merveilles, mes unqe nul n’eschapa. Ataunt vynt un disciple Jhesu qe apelé fust Augustyn, e par sa predicacion nous toly plusors des nos, e baptiza gent, e fist une chapele en son noun, dont grant encombrer nous avynt. (6, ll. 6 – 14) [And afterward it came to pass that all this land was called the White Plain, and I and my comrades set the plain about with a high wall and a deep fosse, so that there was no way in save only by this town, the which was full of evil spirits. And in the plain we held jousts and tournaments, and many came for to see the marvels, but never had one escaped. And at last there came a disciple of Jesus, who was called Augustine, and by reason of his preaching he took many from us, and he baptized folk, and built a chapel in his name; from the which sore trouble came to us.] (12)

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In Lister’s (1921, 19 – 20) opinion, this passage echoes the elements of description of the Chapel of Saint Augustine in Perlesvaus given indirectly by both Guinevere and a young woman whom Arthur meets on the way there: Sire, dist la roïne, se vos aliez a la chapele Saint Augustin, qui est en la Blanche Forest, que on ne puet trover se par aventure non, je cuit que vos avriez talent de bien fere au reperier. […] li lius est molt perillex e la chapele est molt aventureuse. (26, ll. 91– 93 and 27, l. 97) [Sire, said the Queen, if you went to the Chapel of Saint Augustine that is in the White Forest, which can only be found by chance, I think you would want to behave fittingly when you returned […] the place is very dangerous and the chapel is full of peril.] Mes la lande e la forez environ est si perilleuse que nus chevaliers n’i puet entrer qui n’en reviegne o morz o meheigniez. (34, ll. 273 – 275) [But the plain and the forest around it are so dangerous that no knight can enter it without being killed or wounded.]

Although it is less clear whether this should be considered a second allusion to Perlesvaus, the text does refer to the same chapel at these two meaningful moments of the narrative, and two elements do reinforce the idea that this convergence is of a literary nature (i. e., FFW borrowing from Perlesvaus), rather than a purely geographical one whereby the two romances happen to talk about the same real-life chapel. The first argument is that there is no known source for the episode of the Chapel of Saint Augustine other than Perlesvaus; the only other known version of the episode, John of Glastonbury’s, was arguably composed too close in time to the romance to be considered a possible source, and itself derives from Perlesvaus in any case.⁴ The second argument is both onomastic and geographic. FFW seems to merge the Blanche Forest [White Forest] where the chapel is located in Perlesvaus (27, l. 92), and the Blanche Lande [White Plain], which is said to be the land that belongs to the FitzWarins. This land is located in Shropshire and extends to the borders of Wales: “e s’en alerent vers Blancheville, qe ert .xii. Lywes de Saloburs” (38, ll. 20 – 21) [and went to the White Town, the which was twelve leagues from Shrewsbury] (46).

 This account by John of Glastonbury has been edited by James P. Carley (1985, 76 – 79). Carley re-examined Nitze’s arguments on the relationship between Perlesvaus and John of Glastonbury’s version and concludes against Nitze that the Latin text must indeed be a translation by John of the vernacular romance and that there is no lost Latin original as postulated by Nitze and his successors (Carley 1992, 45 – 48; Carley 2003, 57– 58).

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And it is, according to the text, explicitly called “Blanche Lande”: Cesty Willam fist en la Blanche Launde un tour, e le apela Blaunchetour, e la ville q’est entour est uncore apelee Blauncheville, e[n] englois Whytyntone. (7, l. 38 and 8, ll. 1– 3) [And this William built a tower in the White Plain, and he called it White Tower, the which is in English Whittington.] (14)

Locating the Blanche Forest of Perlesvaus is unlikely to be possible, and it may be more plausible to suggest that the author of FFW simply seized on a book reference to give authority to a local and regional space and past, and thus also to his/her own narrative. Although the exact dating of the two texts is not secure, given the strong local dimension of the FFW narrative, it is probably in this frame that we must read the relationship between the two texts, rather than imagine either that the Perlesvaus is later than FFW and is thus referring to it, or that the two romances converged independently towards the mention of a real landmark entirely by chance.

The familial networks of Fouke Fitz Warin The text of FFW is preserved in a single manuscript (London, British Library, MS Royal 12 C XII, fols 33 – 61). The successive editors of the text have demonstrated that this prose version is a reworking of a lost original in verse, and this is now commonly accepted. The author of the mise en prose was most likely the scribe who copied the manuscript itself; although anonymous, this scribe has been well known for a long time and is commonly referred to as the “Ludlow scribe” or “Harley scribe”, after London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, which he likely also copied (Hathaway et al. 1975, xix – xxvi and xxxvii – xlvii). This scribe’s career is now particularly well known thanks to the palaeographical work of Carter Revard (2000, 21– 109) who, by a systematic examination of the pieces and three manuscripts (British Library, MSS Harley 2253, Royal 12 C XII and Harley 273) associated with this scribe, proposed a convincing chronological outline of his work. It is on the basis of this study that the copy of FFW can now also be dated as Revard (2000, 60 – 61) sets out here: The scribe began copying it on fol. 33, but broke off in the middle of line 28 on fol. 53r. Up to that point his style is clearly pre-1331, the only question being how much before 1331 he copied this section. […] if one had to choose the likeliest period it would be ca. 1325 – 1327, though there are arguable reasons for a slightly earlier or slightly later date. The latter portion of Fouke is clearly post-1329 […]. In any event, the difference in appearance between earlier and later portions of Fouke, appears to require a dating of ca. 1327 for the earlier et

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ca. 1333 for the later work. The interval might have been shorter – from say, 1329 – 1331 – but it does not seem possible for it to have been a matter of a few months. The break had to be long enough for the change from earlier to later style to be quite pronounced, and a good guess would be that it was from ca. 1327– 29 to at least 1333 – 35.

However, not only does Revard provide us with a more precise timeframe for the copy, but he also proposes several hypotheses regarding the scribe’s network and patrons, which leads him to two questions: on the one hand, why make a prose copy of FFW in MS Royal 12 C XII, and on the other, why did the scribe interrupt his copying for so long? He suggests: Obviously the Harley scribe was not working on a commission or a deadline; this break and resumption would seem to show a personal or familial interest in the text rather than a professional scrivener’s concern, the kind of interest suited to a man producing Fouke for himself or his patron-household rather than for a remote patron (Revard 2000, 71).

The interruption in copying can thus be justified in various ways. A first hypothesis is linked to the political context and a “life-protecting caution” in a context where it could have been dangerous “to be caught copying a pro-FitzWarin romance during the regime of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who was lord of Ludlow Castle” (Revard 2000, 109).⁵ The other two hypotheses are based on the temporary absence of the exemplar for a short period of time, either because of a disruption in the FitzWarin archives when the family was “forced into exile or prison in the period March to December 1330” or because of an interruption in access to Maud Hodnet Ludlow’s archive because of lawsuits between 1327 and 1330. Although all three options are left open by Revard, he does mention that this last hypothesis fits the most closely his palaeographic estimate of the break in copying the romance (Revard 2000, 108). This also fits most closely with the network of patrons that Revard describes as being connected with the manuscript. He shows that one of the families with the most ties to the FitzWarins in the region are “the Ludlows of Stokesay”. He even identifies a specific member of this family as a possible recipient of the prose version, Sir Laurence Ludlow, whose mother, the aforementioned Maud de Hodnet, is the descendant of Baldwin de Hodnet, Fulk’s companion and, if the romance is to be believed, also his cousin, which is likely: [d]escended from a companion of Fulk FitzWarin, Sir Laurence Ludlow is therefore someone who might be expected to have shown an interest in the romance of Fouke le Fitz

 For more details on the historical and political context, see Revard (2000), as well as Hanna (2011).

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Waryn, and even to have wanted a copy of it made for the household, in about 1324– 1326. (Revard 2000, 78)

If Revard’s assumptions are correct, FFW does appear to be a familial and local text, enjoying only limited circulation within a small circle of people linked by family relationships and ties of friendship and political loyalty. Nothing is known of the subsequent transmission of the manuscript, except that it belonged at the beginning of the seventeenth century to John, Lord Lumley (Meyer 1893, 38 – 39). From then on, its history is better known: “On Lord Lumley’s death in 1609, his collection was purchased by the son of James I, and in 1612 some of it, including this manuscript, became part of the royal library” (Rock, 2008, 29). Whilst it is unclear how the book came to John Lumley, it is perhaps relevant to note that he inherited the library of his stepfather, Henry FitzAlan, 19th earl of Arundel. The FitzAlan family leads us back to the families at the heart of the network that Revard unearthed around the Harley scribe, which encompasses the Ludlows of Stokesay and the Hodnets, the LeStranges, the FitzWarins, and finally the FitzAlans, earls of Arundel (Revard 2000, 78). If the mise en prose was made for the Ludlows of Stokesay, or someone in their entourage, and even though we do not know how it was transmitted afterwards, it appears that it remained within a local circle of families linked by feudal ties, a subject to which we will return in relation to Perlesvaus. Whilst the mise en prose is now dated with reasonable precision, matters are more complicated for the verse original. The successive editors of FFW have even attempted to reconstruct the lost original in verse (Wright 1855, v – viii; Wood 1911, 62– 63; Brandin 1929; Hathaway et al. 1975, xix – xxii). It was presumably an Anglo-Norman/Anglo-French romance in rhymed couplets of octosyllables, as can be attested from a few passages kept in verse in the mise en prose, but also from passages where the verse lines seem to be preserved in the prose (Lecco 2012, 41– 50); Brandin goes even further by asserting that “à vrai dire, il n’y a pas une page où l’on ne sente un rythme, d’ailleurs assez vague, comme il convient à l’octosyllabe anglo-français” [to tell the truth, there is not a page where one does not feel a rhythm, albeit rather vague, as befits the AngloFrench octosyllable] (Brandin 1929, 25). However subjective this assertion may be, these hypotheses are backed by another witness to the history of FFW that confirms the existence of the verse version. In the sixteenth century, John Leland seems to know of two versions of the story of Fulk and offers an abridgment of the narrative in his Collectanea. This summary is interesting for several reasons. The first is that it clearly announces its source as being a romance in verse:

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Here lakkid a Quayre or ii. In the olde Englisch Booke of the nobile Actes of the Guarines. And these things that follow I translated owte of an olde French Historie yn Rime of the Actes of the Guarines onto the Death of Fulco the 2. (Leland 1774, I: 236 – 237)

This abridgment has been used by the editors to compare the contents of this verse version with the mise en prose in order to evaluate possible interventions of the prosateur (Hathaway et al. 1975, xxiii – xxvi). Lastly, this version is of interest because it starts with another source used for the first and main part of the narrative, a rhymed text in English, which appears not to have survived: “Thinges excerpted owte of an old Englisch boke yn Ryme of the Gestes of Guarine, and his Sunnes” (Leland 1774, I: 230 – 236). Wright (1855, xi) suggests this must refer to an alliterative poem and more recently Hanna (2011, 354– 356) has tried to gather evidence in favour of this hypothesis, but this remains the only version that has come down to us. The editors’ conclusion in 1975 therefore remains a fair summary of the state of current knowledge on the history of this text: Since the verse fragments appear only in certain parts of the prose text, it might be supposed that much or all of the remainder was added by the remanieur of the prose text. But we can delimit these interventions more closely owing to the fortunate survival of John Leland’s synopsis of an English verse romance; this work ended incomplete at a point corresponding to 53.35 of the extant FFW, and from this point onwards Leland summarized a similar romance in French verse. Both these lost poems agree closely and sometimes verbally, even in Leland’s abridged paraphrase, with the extant FFW. (Hathaway et al. 1975, xxi – xxii)

Additionally, the stemma proposed in the 1975 edition (Hathaway et al. 1975, xxv) posits a single verse manuscript as the source for both the mise en prose and the text that Leland summarizes: The extracts from the French book which conclude Leland’s synopsis (Lf ) are so close to FFW as to suggest that he had access to the same copy of the couplet romance as the prose remanieur. (Hathaway et al. 1975, xxiii)

However, the stemma adds a possible second manuscript in verse. This hypothetical second manuscript would, in principle, be different from the one that served as the basis for the prosateur and then for Leland’s French abridgment, and the editors add it in order to account for differences between Leland’s summary and the other versions. The editors emphasize that there is no guarantee that some of the differences are not explicable by other means, such as that they might have been made deliberately in the mise en prose: the various studies on the Harley

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scribe have indeed shown his tendency to intervene and correct what he considered to be mistakes (Hathaway et al. 1975, xxvi). At this point, one final fact requires scrutiny, although it is difficult to make it weigh the argument decisively: Keith Busby (2002, II: 678 – 680) notes that the inventory following the death of Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester and youngest son of Edward III, which was made in 1397, mentions “un veile livre de Ffraunceys appellez la gest de Fouke Filtz Waryn” [an old book in French called the Story of Fulk FitzWarin]. However, Hanna (20, 355) indicates that the mention of this copy in French (whether in prose or verse is unknown), which comes from within the restricted period of favour for alliterative poems at the end of the fourteenth century and the period of political alliance between Thomas of Woodstock and Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel, allows us to perceive a convergence that would imply both a date and a context for the composition of the poem in Middle English. We have already established that the prose version could have belonged at some later point to the library of the earls of Arundel. Could they also have had a verse version in French? The pre-eminence of these figures also makes it possible to understand better how the English poem and a French text might have come into the hands of Leland: Just conceivably, given his access to royal books, this was the copy seized by King Richard II in 1397 from the library of his attainted uncle, Thomas of Woodstock. (Hanna, 2011, 355)

Regardless of the exact status of the lost poem in English or of other possible copies of the French verse and prose versions, the evidence unearthed so far points to the significant early role of a verse manuscript in the tradition, which is believed to have existed in Shropshire, and specifically in the Ludlow area where the FitzWarins and Ludlows of Stokesay had their seats. We will thus conclude, from this quick overview of what we know about the text and the preserved FFW manuscript, that the text was unlikely to have been in wide transmission, and circulated mainly locally (or through a tight network of families) either in its original or prose form, with the latter having probably made use of a locally available manuscript due to the long period of time taken to complete the copy now in MS Royal 12 C XII. Paradoxically, this observation and the fact that the text did not circulate much does not help with dating the postulated original version in verse, if it ever existed. Wright (1855, x) originally proposed the date of 1256 – 1264, which is often quoted in subsequent scholarship (e. g., Rock 2008, 55). 1256 is the date of the death of Fouke III, and 1264 that of the death of Fouke IV; Wright’s proposed date range takes as its justification the fact that Fouke IV’s death is not mentioned and thus probably had not happened at the time of the romance’s

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composition. Subsequent scholars have noted the weakness of this argument. Brandin proposes a similar date, but relies on an analysis of the language of the observable verses to propose the earlier part of the second half of the thirteenth century (Brandin 1930, vi – vii) or about 1260 (Brandin 1929, 37). The 1975 edition of FFW takes a broader view and proposes that the text dates from the “late thirteenth century” (Hathaway et al., ix), whilst showing that the arguments in favour of an older dating are problematic (xxxv). Ralph Hanna (2011, 355) goes so far as to point out, on the basis of various comments from the editors, both historical and linguistic, that “[t]he original form in Norman verse appears, on linguistic grounds, to have been written around, or slightly earlier than the accession of Edward I in 1272”.

Perlesvaus in the Welsh Marches It is in this philological context that the link with Perlesvaus allows us to return both to the context and date of FFW’s composition and to the circulation in England and Wales of the Perlesvaus manuscripts. As noted earlier, given the extremely local dimension of FFW, it is likely that the inclusion of Perlesvaus is due to the presence of a manuscript of this romance in the region (for a period of time, or more temporarily through the network of local families that has already been discussed). Whatever the exact date of composition of Perlesvaus, Busby (1983, 4) points out that nearly all known manuscripts, whole and fragmentary, of the Perlesvaus (excluding later interpolations in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and the We fragment discovered since Busby’s study), date from the 1250 – 1300 period. This timeframe works perfectly with the supposed composition of FFW, as well as with the period when Perlesvaus gained most of its literary favour; its use in FFW gives us an additional clue to its context of reception.⁶ This said, aside from a later translation into Welsh (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 11, known as W),⁷ for a long time only one preserved manuscript of Perlesvaus had been proven to have circulated in England: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 82 [O] (Carley 1992, 37). The text of O, however, is Continental and the manuscript was most likely not copied in England. Carley later discovered another fragment, the aforementioned We, that consti On the manuscripts of the Perlesvaus, see Nitze and Jenkins (1932– 1937 [1972], I: 3 – 14 and II: 3 – 44), Busby (1983), Carley (1992), and Roach (1938).  On this text and its manuscripts, see Lloyd-Morgan (1978). For a modern edition, see Williams (1876). Jones’s edition (1992) does not contain the Perlesvaus section (Lloyd-Morgan et al. 2019, 167).

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tutes “an important witness to the circulation of this romance in England” (1992, 36); he also argues that “[v]ariants suggest that We is more closely related to O than to the other two manuscripts, although it does not appear to be a direct copy” (37). According to linguistic data, it is generally accepted that O would have been executed in the North East of France or in the Flemish regions, which raises a whole series of questions around the following three matters: “The fact that it [O] belongs to the same group of manuscripts as W (a Welsh text), that the romance was once known in the borderland of Wales, and that O itself bears (in a later hand) the ex libris of Sir Brian Fitzalan, Lord of Bedale” (Carley 1992, 38 – 39). Though this manuscript is not an Anglo-Norman copy of the text, it seems somehow related to the other versions of the story known in Anglo-Norman regions. Indeed, W and We, combined with John of Glastonbury’s Latin version of the Chapel of Saint Augustine episode and the allusion in FFW, prove that later in the fourteenth century, Perlesvaus was known in Western England and Wales. Carley argues convincingly for the relationship between We and John of Glastonbury, and how a part of the enthusiasm around Perlesvaus can be understood in the context of the “Arthurian activity provoked by John of Glastonbury’s researches” (1992, 48). He even places a lost copy of Perlesvaus at Glastonbury Abbey: We can assume that Glastonbury Abbey must have owned a copy of Perlesvaus for the Glastonbury translator to read and adapt shortly before 1340 and this copy would almost certainly have been in situ for some considerable period previously. (1992, 48)

This provides a first potential route to understanding how Perlesvaus might have come to be known to FFW’s author. However, when we try to go back further than the beginning of the fourteenth century, gathering all the threads of the tradition proves to be extremely perilous, as facts are few and many arguments rely on Nitze’s original work on MS Hatton 82 (O). Indeed, Nitze highlighted the link of the O manuscript in particular with Shropshire: The connection of P with Shropshire is also established through its association with the Fitzalans. MS O of the romance was once the property of Brian Fitzalan of Bedale […]. Later it passed into the hands of the Fitzalans of Oswestry, as may be seen from the inscription ‘Thomas Arundell’ (Fitzalan). Although the two Fitzalan families were not related, Brian Fitzalan of Bedale and Richard Fitzalan of Oswestry fought side by side in the Welsh wars of Edward I. (Nitze and Jenkins 1937 [1972], 205 – 206)

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If Nitze is right, this would put a Perlesvaus manuscript in the right network and in the right period for FFW’s author: that is, at the beginning of the reign of Edward I in the last quarter of the thirteenth century and in an aristocratic milieu. If this particular manuscript was indeed in Shropshire and thus possibly known in the circles of the Fitzalans of Oswestry, we might have to argue in favour of a late composition date for the verse version. Even though the inscriptions of the two FitzAlan names show the book did change hands, there is no evidence to pinpoint exactly how or when, especially as the note about Thomas Arundell is, according to Nitze, in a fifteenth-century hand (Nitze and Jenkins, 1937 [1972], II: 8), and the FitzAlans of Bedale and those of Oswestry were two different families (McCall 1907, 22). However, we should not assume that the manuscript changed hands at that time and/or that it was in the hands of the author of the verse FFW. The mention of the episode of Perlesvaus is succinct and could very well be based on memories of a tale read or even heard in a social context. Both families of FitzAlans fought in the Welsh Marches during the Welsh wars, but also later in Scotland at the end of the century, which gives a probable timeframe for the relevant interactions. Of interest to us also is the hypothesis that Bryan FitzAlan could have brought the copy of Perlesvaus back from the Continent, perhaps as a gift (Nitze and Jenkins 1937 [1972], 7– 8). Archives show he received “letters of protection for foreign travel in 1285” (Nitze and Jenkins 1937 [1972], 7), and Nitze implies Bryan FitzAlan might have acquired the manuscript on this occasion, but points out that there is no way of proving that someone else did not already have the manuscript and/or did not bring the manuscript to him. Assuming this copy is indeed the source for FFW, it would push back even further the possible date of composition of the verse version of FFW. The fact remains that the history of these manuscripts is still problematic and thinly documented: how a Perlesvaus manuscript came to Bryan FitzAlan and then passed to the other FitzAlans, and how it is related to a copy kept at Glastonbury Abbey, are just some of the mysteries surrounding O. The questions are even more numerous when we consider the full tradition of Perlesvaus. Both a new stemma and fresh studies into the tradition of Perlesvaus have long been deemed necessary (Busby 1983, 2– 3; Carley 1992). To conclude this short philological survey of the textual tradition of FFW and its intersection with that of Perlesvaus, we cautiously state that after a century of such enquiries, it remains impossible to prove how Perlesvaus ended up in Shropshire, with its oldest witnesses showing clear linguistic indications of Continental origins; we can nevertheless understand the interest for the text in that region. Whatever its origins, after all, modern philologists have been debating the same question for over a century, summed up here in the words of Carley (1992, 40): “In other words, does the late-medieval provenance of this manu-

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script constitute any kind of evidence that Perlesvaus itself might have been composed in the Glastonbury region as the author himself seems to claim?” However it was that Perlesvaus arrived in England, it seems that in the second half of the thirteenth century, this region of the Welsh Marches played a modest role of crossroads in the history of these two texts and their manuscripts, encircling a network of specific families, the import of which has been little studied.⁸ The two versions of the text of FFW, the lost verse and the prose ones, however, raise questions about the status of the reference to Perlesvaus in the thirteenth-century verse romance, and potentially about the context of its prose version in the fourteenth century.

The discreet charm of the episode of the Chapel The presence of a summarized episode of Perlesvaus in FFW unfortunately does not tell us much about the geographical origins or the date of composition of the Arthurian romance. At most, an examination of the relationship between the two texts and their manuscript traditions tends to suggest that Perlesvaus was a Continental romance of which at least one copy circulated in England and Wales towards the end of the thirteenth century, rather than a text that was produced specifically in an Anglo-Norman environment. The intersection of Perlesvaus with FFW might also lead us to ask whether the former was composed closer to 1250 than to 1200, which would avoid too great a chronological gap between the inscription of the romance and the moderate period of success it seems to have enjoyed in the Welsh Marches; a longer gap between the two would suggest a rediscovery of the text, which is perhaps less likely. These suggestions remain hypothetical, and the uncertainty around Perlesvaus’s origins is still significant. The rewriting of Perlesvaus in FFW tells us something, however, about the posterity of this Arthurian romance. As stated at the beginning of this article, it is not insignificant that the episode summarized by FFW – the adventure of the Chapel of Saint Augustine – is exactly the same as that which is mentioned by John of Glastonbury around the same time (though the monastic chronicler replaces Augustine with Saint Mary of Bekery), and later interpolated into twin witnesses of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle around 1400. Perlesvaus is a tenacious text that refuses to disappear from medieval literary history, despite the fact that

 See Lieberman (2010) for a recent general study of the Welsh Marches. Lieberman references FFW several times as a semi-historical source, but he does not mention Perlesvaus or the familial network that we have identified.

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almost all of its witnesses date from the thirteenth century, which seems to indicate that the romance had a very brief reception period and no real literary posterity. The reappearance of the episode of the Chapel of Saint Augustine in a variety of settings, both insular and Continental (the two manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle are Parisian), attests to a form of underground reception of the text, a discreet survival that only fully materialized in the print edition of 1516. In the meantime, between 1300 and 1516, the limited circulation of Perlesvaus can only be measured through the episode of the Chapel. Several factors explain why this specific adventure developed a life of its own. In the case of FFW, as observed earlier, toponymy no doubt played an important role by intermingling the “White Forest”, the “White Plain” and the “White Town”, thus bringing together the Arthurian legend and the history of Fulk’s lineage, the former enhancing the latter. Yet the reappearance of this episode in other medieval contexts that owe nothing to genealogical considerations suggests that the adventure of the Chapel had a particular aesthetic appeal – an appeal that undoubtedly played a role in the inclusion of the episode in FFW as well (Zink 1984, 37). The adventure of the Chapel in Perlesvaus is characterized by its high degree of autonomy. It has a strong sense of narrative cohesion, beginning as it does with the introduction of the character of Cahus and ending with his death. It also exhibits thematic unity, centred on the blurring boundaries between dream and reality – Cahus wakes up with a fatal wound that was inflicted on him during a dream sequence. Lastly, it manifests a form of structural independence: the episode of the Chapel is entirely resolved within the first branch of the romance (23 – 46) and its narrative content does not spill over into subsequent branches. In the broader aesthetic context of Perlesvaus, the episode plays the role of an atmospheric prologue that seeks above all to instil a sense of foreboding and mystery, and to make manifest Arthur’s initial weakness and doubt. It serves no real function in the overall narrative economy (Dubost 1994). This gratuitousness is the key to the episode’s success, as it renders it autonomous and detachable, and more importantly, transposable. Even modern scholars tend to treat this episode in isolation, as is evidenced by a number of articles that deal with it specifically (such as Williamson 1932; Zink 1984; Corbellari 2015; Gorecka-Kalita 2018). To quote Jane Taylor (2017, 177), the operations classed as “rewriting” are manifold: It is tempting to think of these different enterprises as acts of poetic piracy, but the rewriters claim, not without reason, to be extending the expressive relevance of their originals.

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In the medieval period, the adventure of the Chapel of Saint Augustine found itself inserted into disparate settings: a family romance, a monastic history, a rival (and far more successful) Arthurian romance. There is no clear link between FFW, John of Glastonbury’s Chronicle and the twin manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle from around 1400, which suggests instances of parallel innovation, with each of these three cases deciding independently to isolate the same specific adventure and insert it into a new environment. Thus, despite being left behind by the Arthurian canon that formed around the LancelotGrail Cycle and its satellites in the thirteenth century, Perlesvaus managed to survive through a singular episode that epitomizes what Nitze and Jenkins called the romance’s “wild and unfamiliar beauty” (Nitze and Jenkins 1932, x).

References Brandin, Louis, ed. Fouke Fitz Warin. Paris: Champion, 1930. Brandin, Louis. “Nouvelles recherches sur Fouke Fitz Warin.” Romania 55 (1929): 17 – 44. Busby, Keith. Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript. 2 vols. Amsterdam and New York, NY: Rodopi, 2002. Busby, Keith. “A New Fragment of the Perlesvaus.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 99 (1983): 1 – 12. Carley, James P. “John of Glastonbury and Borrowings from the Vernacular.” Interstices: Studies in Late Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A.G. Rigg. Ed. Richard Firth Green and Linne R. Mooney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 55 – 73. . Carley, James. P. “A Fragment of Perlesvaus at Wells Cathedral Library.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 108 (1992): 35 – 61. Carley, James, P., ed., and David Townsend, trans. The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey. An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s “Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie”. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1985. Corbellari, Alain. “Onirisme et pulsion de mort dans le Perlesvaus”. Revue des langues romanes 119.1 (2015): 113 – 132. Dubost, Francis. “Le Perlesvaus, livre de haute violence.” Senefiance 36 (1994): 180 – 199. Evans, Sebastian. The High History of the Holy Grail. London: J. M. Dent and co., 1898. Gorecka-Kalita, Joanna. “La ‘laide vérité’. Le rêve de Cahus revisité.” Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 13.1 (2018): 15 – 24. Hanna, Ralph. “The Matter of Fulk: Romance and History in the Marches.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 110.3 (2011): 337 – 358. Hathaway, Ernest John, Peter T. Ricketts, C. A. Robson, and Alan D. Wilshere, ed. Fouke le Fitz Waryn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. Jones, Thomas, ed. Ystoryaeu Seint Greal. Rhan I: Y Keis. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992. Kelly, Thomas E. Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus. A Structural Study. Geneva: Droz, 1974.

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Kemp-Welch, Alice, trans. The History of Fulk Fitz-Warine. Cambridge: Parentheses, 2001. [London, ON: Chatto and Windus; Boston, MA: Luce, 1907]. . Lecco, Margherita, ed. Il Romanzo di Folco Fitz Waryn (Fouke Fitz Waryn). Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2012. Leland, John. J. Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis Collectanea. Ed. Thomas Hearne. 6 vols. London: B. White, 1774. Lieberman, Max. The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066 – 1283. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010. Lister, John Thomas, ed. Perlesvaus: Hatton Manuscript 82, Branch 1. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy [University of Chicago]. Menasha: Collegiate Press, George Banta Publishing Company, 1921. Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen. A Study of Y Seint Greal in Relation to La Queste del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus. PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1978. Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen, and Erich Poppe, ed. Arthur in the Celtic Languages: the Arthurian Legend in Celtic Literatures and Traditions. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. McCall, Hardy Bertram. The Early History of Bedale in the North Riding of Yorkshire. London: Elliot Stock, 1907. Meyer, Paul. “Notice sur le ms. Old Roy. 12. C. XII. du Musée britannique (Pièces diverses. Recettes culinaires).” Bulletin de la Société des anciens textes français 19 (1893): 38 – 56. Nitze, William A., and T. Atkinson Jenkins, ed. Le Haut Livre du Graal. Perlesvaus. 2 vols. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1932 – 1937 [New York: Phaeton Press, 1972]. Revard, Carter. “Scribe and Provenance, Studies in the Harley Manuscript. The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library, MS Harley 2253.” Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253. Ed. Susanna Fein. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. 21 – 109. Roach, William. “A New Perlesvaus Fragment.” Speculum 13.2 (1938): 216 – 220. Rock, Catherine A. Romances Copied by the Ludlow Scribe: Purgatoire Saint Patrice, Short Metrical Chronicle, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and King Horn. Kent, OH: Kent State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008. Strubel, Armand, ed. and trans. Le Haut livre du Graal [Perlesvaus]. Paris: Lettres gothiques, 2007 Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting: Translation, Continuation and Adaptation.” Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature. Ed. Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 167 – 181. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Experiments in Fiction: Framing and Reframing Romance at the End of the Middle Ages, and Beyond: Introduction.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 30 (2015): 287 – 295. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Weston, Jessie L. “Notes on the Grail Romances.” Romania 43 (1914): 403 – 426. Williams, Robert, ed. Y Seint Greal. London: Thomas Richards, 1876. Williamson, Marjorie. “The Dream of Cahus in Perlesvaus.” Modern Philology 30.1 (1932): 5 – 11.

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Wood, A. C., ed. Fulk Fitz-Warin: Text and a Study of the Language. London: Blades, 1911. Wright, Thomas, ed. The History of Fulk Fitz Warine, an Outlawed Baron in the Reign of King John. Edited from a Manuscript Preserved in the British Museum, with an English Translation and Explanatory and Illustrative Notes. London: Warton Club, 1855. Zink, Michel. “Le rêve avéré. La mort de Cahus et la langueur d’Arthur, du Perlesvaus à Fouke le Fitz Waryn.” Littératures 9 (1984): 31 – 38.

Keith Busby

Jofroi de Waterford Rewrites Troy and Rome Around the year 1300, the Irish Dominican, Jofroi de Waterford, translated and adapted into French from Latin three texts: the De excidio Troiæ of “Dares Phrygius”, the Breviarium historiæ romanæ ab urbe condita of Eutropius, and the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum. All three of these works were wellknown in the Middle Ages and survive in numerous manuscripts. The De excidio was enormously influential in the transmission of the Troy story in the vernacular, whilst the reception of the Breviarium was much more modest, consisting of two French translations only, that of Jofroi and the earlier version by Jean de Flixecourt (1262). Eutropius’s text also left traces in vernacular histories of Rome through its incorporation into the Historia romana of Paulus Diaconus. Both of these texts are concise introductions to the complex subject-matter of Troy and Rome. The Secretum, a mirror for princes-cum-encyclopedic compilation was one of the most widespread texts of the Middle Ages, expanded and extended in several Latin versions and translated into numerous vernaculars.¹ Jofroi’s texts, copied by the Walloon merchant and tax-collector, Servais Copale, in Waterford, survive principally in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1822 (hereafter BnF, fr. 1822), which may be Servais’s own text, but is in any case very close in date to the composition of the texts themselves. A fragment of a second manuscript of the Secretum has survived in London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 101, of similar date.² It is clear from a cursory examination that Jofroi’s versions of the De excidio and the Breviarium follow the Latin quite closely, whilst his rendering of the Secretum is quite a different sort of enterprise, omitting and re-arranging the original, adding and interpolating much material from elsewhere and altering the model quite radically. Although close to the Latin texts, Jofroi’s Gerre de Troi and Regne des romains diverge occasionally from their sources and are particularly interesting by virtue of their author’s

 For texts of the De excidio, see Meister (1873), and of the Breviarium, Hellegouarc’h (2002); the De excidio is referred to by page and line number, the Breviarium, by page, book, section, and sub-section. On Jofroi’s version of the De excidio, see Vieilliard (1992); the reception of this work has been studied thoroughly by Faivre d’Arcier (2006). Vieilliard (1997) is a brief study of Jofroi and Jean de Flixecourt; for Jean’s version of the De excidio, see Vieilliard (1994). Further details with full bibliography may be found in Busby (2020).  On Jofroi, Servais, and the manuscripts, see Busby (2017, 150 – 167), and Busby (2020, 11– 15). BnF, fr. 1822 is available online at . https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-010

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choice of French words and expressions to render Latin terms and concepts. A full study of the relationship between the Latin and French versions of the Secretum would be a challenge, although I have compiled a good deal of material in the notes to the Secré de secrés in Busby (2020, 349 – 404). In this essay, dedicated to my dear friend, Jane Taylor, I will offer some thoughts on the ways in which Jofroi treats the De excidio and the Breviarium as he turns them into French.³ It is possible to argue based on quite a number of shared readings (often proper names) that the Gerre is more closely related to one specific group of manuscripts of the Excidio (Meister’s LG) than others but much more difficult to identify any copies of the Breviarium (stand-alone or Paulus-version) resembling the text Jofroi may have had in front of him when producing the Regne. Consequently, matters of verbal detail and phrasing must be approached with caution. In what follows, I first consider passages omitted and added by Jofroi, and others where he seems to have misunderstood the Latin for different reasons and failed to render the sense accurately. I then look at some instances of his choice of lexis when translating peculiarly Greek and Roman terms (the former in their own Latin guise, of course), before examining his use of standard Old French formulae already established over more than a century and a half of literature in the vernacular. The last, brief, section of this article is mainly devoted to a specific type of change made by Jofroi to his Latin originals. Unsurprisingly, like many translations and adaptations of Latin texts relating to classical antiquity, Jofroi’s versions medievalize the originals in an attempt to produce something more familiar to his readership. The Regne is approximately twice as long as the Gerre and provides proportionately more material for analysis. I have nevertheless been representatively selective in my choice of examples. There are very few omissions in the Gerre, but a small number of additions are worthy of note, mostly explanatory. In G4/4– 5, Jofroi adds “por garder la marine” [to guard the coast] to explain why Castor, Nestor, and Pollux remained on board when Hercules, Thelamon, and Pelleus disembarked with their troops. The De excidio gives no reason for Priam sending Hector to Paeonia during his fortification of Troy, but Jofroi adds “por asembler chevalerie” (G5/10) [to assemble troops]. On two occasions, Jofroi feels the need to explain the purpose of funeral celebrations, which he takes to be unknown to his intended audience or readers. When Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus, the De excidio simply reads “Achilles Patroclo ludos funebres facit” (25/10 – 11) [Achilles arranged funeral

 I refer to texts of the Gerre (G), the Regne (R), and the Secré (S) in Busby (2020) by section number.

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games for Patroclus], but Jofroi adds “Achillés fist mains geus solonc l’usage qui signefioit duel et tristrece por Patroclus” (G17/13 – 14) [Achilles held many games according to the custom, which signified sorrow and sadness for Patroclus]. Similarly, when Agamemnon and Priam mourn the death of Achilles, the De excidio reads “ludos funebres facit” (42/1– 1/2) [he held funeral games], Jofroi adds “si firent geus qui estoit signefiance de duel” (G40/24) [they held games to indicate their sorrow]. The text of the Secré de secrés shows that Jofroi knew the De re militari of Vegetius,⁴ and two minor additions in the Gerre hint at an interest in battle tactics. At the beginning of the second battle, the De excidio reads “Postera die Hector exercitum ex urbe educit et instruit” (24/16 – 17) [The next day, Hector led the army out of the city and set it in order], but Jofroi rephrases “exercitum”: “Lendemain Hector hors mena son ost de la citez et ordena sa gent et ses eschieles” (G17/1– 2) [The following day, Hector led his army out of the city and arranged his men and his echelons]. In the nineteenth battle, Achilles “Myrmidones instruit” (39/10) [prepared the Myrmidons], which Jofroi renders as “Lors s’en ist a la batailhe avoiques ses Mermidonois, sa gent arenga, ses eschieles ordena” (G39/3 – 4) [Then he went out to battle with his Myrmidons, organized his men, and put his echelons in order]. Whilst the translation is accurate in the matter of instructions, the addition contradicts the Latin since Achilles is wounded and does not participate in the battle; Jofroi has him recover. He also renders Latin “in prima acie” (“in the first line of battle”, 8/9 – 10) as “en la premiere eschiele” (G24/3 – 4) [in the first echelon]. During the fifteenth battle, Troilus wounds Diomedes and Agamemnon, and “Argivos caedit” (37/10) [cut down the Greeks], but Jofroi is a little more dramatic: “Les Grigois ocist a destre et a senestre” (G35/3 – 4) [he killed the Greeks right and left]. Agamemnon’s council advises the king to keep his word to those who will betray Priam, the De excidio simply calling the latter “proditoribus” (48/4) [traitors], whilst Jofroi, for clarity’s sake, calls them “ceus qui renderoient la citez” (G47/ 16 – 17) [those who would surrender the city]. Perhaps aware that “parentibus” (48/16) in Latin usually means “parents” or “ancestors” (the sense of “relatives” is quite rare), Jofroi elaborates: “lur parens, fils et filhes, femmes, cousins, prochains et amis” (G47/26 – 27) [their relatives, sons and daughter, wives, cousins, nearest and dearest]. In a possible nod to the merveilleux, he adds “por quoi il s’en mervilherent” (G50/2– 3) [which is why they were astonished] to the Greeks’ response to the storms delaying their departure from Troy. There are only rare passages where Jofroi may have misunderstood the Latin of the De excidio, seeming to read the participants in a battle as the subject of “fuissent” and beginning

 See S19/1, 29/7 and 28, and the entries for “eschiele” in the glossary in Busby (2020).

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a new phrase with Castor and Pollux as the subject of “fuerunt”. The Latin reads: “a Dardanis autem audisse qua facie et natura fuissent Castor et Pollux. Fuerunt autem alter alteri similis […]” (14/12– 14) [but to have heard from the Dardani about the appearance and nature of Castor and Pollux. And they were like one another], whereas Jofroi has “et oï avoit des Dardenois quez furent de face et de nature. Castor et Polux ambedous furent d’une semblance” (G10/4– 5) [and he had heard about the appearance and nature of the Dardani. Castor and Pollux resembled one another]. In G11/15, Jofroi appears to have mistranslated “velocem” (16/24) [rapid] as “viel” (< vetulus) [old]; the earliest derivatives of velox [rapid] postdate Jofroi by several decades.⁵ And in G11/17, Jofroi has, perhaps understandably, taken “superciliosum” (17/1) as relating to eyebrows (= supercilii), which it does etymologically, rather than an adjective meaning “supercilious” in the sense of “haughty”. Not only is the Breviarium/Regne roughly twice as long as the De excidio/ Gerre, but Jofroi’s modifications seem to be more extensive, if still relatively minor. The De excidio and Breviarium are different kinds of text, the former focussed on a single event and often repetitive in structure, whilst the latter is more expansive, more discursive, more replete with detail, and, in many ways, more demanding for its readers (in both Latin and the vernacular). In other words, the Breviarium offers far more opportunities for intervention than does the De excidio. My comments on the relationship between the Breviarium and the Regne are more selective than those on the De excidio and the Gerre; full details can be found in the notes to the edition. For obvious reasons, the dedication to Valens by Eutropius at the beginning of the Breviarium (1) is omitted by Jofroi, and replaced by a brief descriptive prologue (RProl).⁶ Jofroi does seem to have cut more from the Latin original of the Breviarium than from the De excidio, although most of the omissions are again minor, deemed non-essential for a basic understanding of the overall course of Roman history. Many of these are simply missing place-names or specification of locations, some twenty in number, of which the following are representative examples: the capture by Camillus of “Aequorum urbem et Sutrinorum” (15, II, 15,1/2) [city of the Aequi and the Sutrini] becomes “autres citez” (R13/5) [other cities]; Eutropius

 T-L give no derivatives of velox, whilst the AND only gives “velocitee” from c.1400; FEW 14: 221b has “velocité” from 1370.  “[…] quam nunc Tranquillitas uestra habet” (9, I, 12/2) [that your Serenity now has], an address to Valens, has also been reduced to “que ore tenons” by Jofroi (R9/31) [that we now have]. Eutropius’s eyewitness statement towards the end of the Breviarium (“Ea pacis […] factum est” [43, X, 17/2]) [On condition of peace […] was made] is likewise, for similar reasons, omitted by Jofroi (R96/10).

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specifies the location of Magnesium as “circa Sipylum” (46, IV, 4/2) [near Sipylum] but Jofroi (R27/11) does not; likewise, “in Barbarico” (89, VII, 9) is not said by Jofroi to be the location of the river Elba (R49/77); after the assassination of Gordian, Eutropius says that the Philips, father and son, were murdered at Verona and Rome, respectively (113, IX, 6), but Jofroi (R76/5) does not specify; the same is true of Interamna, where Hostilian and Volusianus were killed (117, IX, 5; R78/4); according to Eutropius (123, IX, 17/2), Probus had vines planted “Almam montem apud Sirmium et Aureum apud Moesiam” [on Mount Alma in Sirmium and on Mount Aureus in Moesia], but the locations are wanting in Jofroi (R88/5 – 6); and whilst Eutropius tells us that Constantine died “in uilla publica” (137, X, 8/2) [in the Villa Publica], Jofroi (R92/63) does not give the place of his demise. More consequential in terms of the geography of the empire is Jofroi’s reduction of the finer details of the regional and provincial divisions at the beginning of the final book of the Breviarium (132, X, 1/1– 2), including omission of Constantius’s declining the opportunity to govern Italy and Africa (R91/1– 3), and even making him governor of Italy as well as the Gaulish regions. A contrary example is Jofroi’s taking “colonia” in the phrase “Narbone in Gallia colonia deducta est” (56, IV, 23) [a colony was led out to Narbonne in Gaul] as the place name for Cologne: “[…] esmurent gerre a Coloingne en Ardenne en France” (R33/10) [they raised war at Cologne in Ardenne in France].⁷ Omission of other types of detail are common. The size of the field cultivated by Quinctius Cincinnatus, for example (“quattuor iugerum”, 11, I, 17/1) [four acres], is not given by Jofroi (R9/31). This is arguably without consequence for an understanding of the text, but other omissions can affect in varying degrees the meaning of a passage and its implications for the course of Roman history. Although he mentions that Lucius (i. e., Titus Manlius) was given a nickname after removing a golden torque from a defeated Gaul (R14/4– 6), Jofroi does not give it as “Torquatus” (16, II, 5); this is not much more than a colourful detail.⁸ The Roman triumphs during the consulship of Aemilius Lepidus are reduced from four (59, VI, 5/2) to three by omitting Pompey’s success in Spain and attributing victory in Macedonia to him rather than to Curio (R39/30 – 32). Jofroi’s failure to identify “un jovencel, Scypion par non” [a young man called Scipio] (i. e., the future Scipio Africanus, R24/4) as the son of the P. Cornelius Scipio, consul during the Second Punic War (38, III, 15/1) reduces the historical importance of the dynasty. Eutropius (42, III, 23/1) praises the valour of both Scipio Africanus and Hannibal, whilst Jofroi does not (R25/20). In what appears to be a

 I reject this reading in my edition of the Regne.  Titus Manlius, however, is “Torquatus” in R19/13.

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whitewashing of Roman failure, Jofroi omits entirely the shameful peace agreements concluded by Quintus Pompeius and Hostilius Mancinus, as well as reducing the double defeat of the Romans by the Numantini to a single event (53 – 54, IV, 17/1– 2). Perhaps in order to focus on internal Roman conflicts, Jofroi removes Juba, king of Mauretania (81, VI, 23/3), from the list of those who committed suicide after the failure of the Pompeian revolt (R48/17– 18). He makes modifications to the character of Titus by omitting his valour and legal expertise, as well as his mercy towards those who had plotted against him (97, VII, 21/1– 2; R58/3 – 7). Roman historians offer different views of the counterfeiting affair and revolt of the mint workers under Aurelian, in which the supervisor, Felicissimus, is either villain or victim. Jofroi (121, IX, 14) seems to hedge his bets by omitting the details of the counterfeiting and the murder of Felicissimus (R85/12). Does this perhaps illustrate a greater involvement in Roman history on his part and knowledge of other sources? Whether out of distaste for unpleasantness or in an attempt to tone down the cruelty of Constantine, Jofroi (R92/18) omits the details of the former’s slaughter of the Franks and the Alemanni and his humiliation of their kings (134, X, 3/2). Some excisions, however, may be explained differently. Jofroi does not seem interested in the etymology of “Rome” (< Romulus; 3, I, 2/1), which he omits. Rather than explain the notion of a Roman circus, “circum Romae edificauit” (5, I, 6/1; R5/1– 2) [he built the Roman circus] is omitted as one of Tarquin the Elder’s achievements whilst king of Rome. A number of other omissions refer to Roman customs which Jofroi may have deemed superfluous to his purpose or of little interest to his intended reader. No doubt because he was unfamiliar with the liburna (which word he turns into a non-existent hybrid form, “liburnus”), Jofroi does not translate “rostratis”, meaning “with a beaked prow” (24, II, 20/1; R18/13 – 14). In the Breviarium, Marcellus bears the spoils taken from the defeated Viridomarus attached to a lance across his shoulders: “Ac triumphans Marcellus spolia Galli stipiti imposita umeris suis uexit” (33, III, 6/2) [And the victorious Marcellus bore the spoils of the Gaul on a stake on his shoulders]; Jofroi is probably unacquainted with the custom and does not translate (R19/29). Nor does he appear interested in the details of Roman dress, as “habitu Romano, togati scilicet” (of the barbarian kings before Octavian; 89, VII, 10/4) [in Roman clothing, that is, in a toga], simply saying “vestus a la maniere de Romains” (R49/90). Lack of familiarity or concern with Roman procedures and customs may also have led Jofroi to omit the declaration of Nero as a public enemy and the binding of his head to a furca before being thrown from the Tarpeian rock, as described by Eutropius (92, VII, 15/1; R53, 13 – 16). Eutropius tells how five thousand wild animals, probably felines, were massacred

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during the inauguration of the Flavian amphitheatre (97, VII, 21/4)⁹; Jofroi fails to mention the massacre, but adds interestingly that the future Colosseum was: “une place […] ou les jovenchias poroient hanter toutes choses qui apartiennent a chevalerie” (R58/12– 15) [an arena […] where young men could indulge in all things related to chivalry]. Jofroi describes Marcus Aurelius as “En philosophie tant fu bien apris” (R65/4) rather than “Philosophiae deditus Stoicae” (108, VIII, 11/1) [devoted to Stoic philosophy], because Stoicism as such was unknown to him or his readership in an age of Neoplatonism. Jofroi’s brief additions to Eutropius are usually explanatory. “Ancus Marcius, Numae ex filia nepos” (5, I, 5/1) [Ancus Marcius, grandson of Numa by a daughter] becomes “li fils la filhe Nume Pompile” (R4/1); for clarity’s sake, he also specifies in so many words that Tarquin’s wife is the daughter of Servius Tullius (R6/8 – 9) whereas this had been implicit in Eutropius (6, I, 7/2).¹⁰ Eutropius does not specify who informs Quinctius Cincinnatus of his nomination to the dictatorship (11, I, 17/2), but Jofroi assigns the task to “les eslisors” (R9/32) [the electors], creating what looks like a formal procedure (in actuality, the nomination of a dictator was made by a consul at the request of the Senate). Jofroi also feels the need to offer a definition of a province when telling of Vespasian’s successes in Achaea, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium, Samos, Cilicia, Thrace, and Commagene (96, VII, 19/4): “c’est a dire qu’il les fist propres az Romains” (R57/17) [that is, that he made them subject to the Romans]. Diocletian’s elevation of Maximian to the rank of Augustus and of Constantius and Galerius to that of Caesar (126, IX, 22/1) causes Jofroi to explain the difference in rank: “[…] et por che Diosclesian fist Maximianus Herculius, qui Cesar fu avant nomez, nomer Agustus, qu’est plus haus nons, et fist .ij. Cesars estre celuy. L’uns fu Constantius et l’autre, Maximianus Galerius” (R90/22– 24) [and because of this, Diocletian had Maximianus Herculius, who had earlier been named Caesar, named Augustus, which is a more elevated title, and made two Caesars besides him. One was Constantius, and the other, Maximianus Galerius]. This would all suggest that Jofroi did not expect his readers to be especially familiar with Roman history, hardly surprising since his project was to translate an introductory text. Other modifications to the Regne relate, like a number of the omissions, to character, motivation, and sentiment, collective or individual. In a sentence ab-

 Hellegouarc’h (97, VII, 21/4) translates “ferarum” as “fauves”, perfectly ambiguous in modern French.  There being no single-word equivalent, “socer” (81, VI, 23/2) Jofroi is obliged to explain its meaning as “li peres la femme” (R48/14). For “corrector” (121, IX, 13/2), he simply uses the word unchanged in the vernacular as “corector” (R85/10); correctors were senior senators charged with investigating and reforming the administration of the provinces.

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sent in the Breviarium (27, II, 25/2), Jofroi expands on the reasons for Marcus Atilius Regulus’s insistence on adhering to the terms of his parole and returning to the Carthaginians as their prisoner: “Et por ce que Regulus fu partis des Africans par condition se il poïst faire eschange des prisons, que il fuist quites, et se il ne poïst, que il retornast ariere en la prison et por sa fiance a garder, voloit retourner” (R18/63 – 66) [And because Regulus left the Africans on condition that if he bring about the exchange of prisoners, he would be free, and if he could not, that he would return to prison in order to keep his oath, he wanted to return]. The thirst for victory (R28/27) is added to the desire for fairness as a motivation for Roman military action in Macedonia and Illyria (49, IV, 7/3). In the same section, Jofroi reduces the ostentatiousness of Emilius Paulus by omitting mention of the banquet offered to the delegations of the subjugated kings and his pronouncement that military accomplishment should be accompanied by such feasting (49, IV, 7/3); Jofroi reduces the extravagance: “[…] et les messagiers qui vindrent a li de mout de gens de toutes pars od tres grant noblesce rechut et honestement les conjoï” (R28/28 – 30) [and the messengers who came to him on behalf of many people from all regions, he received with great nobility, and welcomed them openly]. It is also possible to argue that Jofroi found the expression of Roman debauchery in the Breviarium unsavoury. For example, where Eutropius says of Caesar’s relations with Cleopatra “[…] cum qua consuetudinem stupri habuerat” (80, VI, 22/2) [with whom he had had a debaucherous relationship], he simply translates as “[…] qu’il tint a songnante” (R48/5) [whom he had as a mistress]. Eutropius (87, VII, 7) describes Cleopatra’s suicide plainly: “Cleopatra sibi aspidem admisit et ueneno eius extincta est” [Cleopatra put an asp to herself and died from its venom], but Jofroi adds “por dolour de li” (R49/54) [out of sorrow for him]. Vitellius is killed by Vespasian’s generals according to Eutropius (“a Vespasiani ducibus occisus est”; 95, VII, 18/4) [he was killed by the generals of Vespasianus], whilst Jofroi attributes the deed to Vespasian alone (“par le duc Vaspacien fu ocis”; R56/9 [he was killed by General Vespasian]). Meanwhile, “par traïson” (R93/2) [out of treason] is given as the motivation for the murder of the virtuous Dalmatius by the soldiery; it is not in the Breviarium (137, X, 9/1). The Latin of the Breviarium, whilst not as complex as that of much classical Roman literature, is nevertheless more “difficult” than that of the De excidio, and consequently offers more opportunity for misunderstanding and mistranslation. Many of the errors are in numbers (of soldiers, prisoners, age, length of reign, etc.) and I do not discuss them here; in my edition, I have emended when diver-

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gence from majority readings are egregious.¹¹ Some of these errors clearly stem from Jofroi’s lack of familiarity (or concern) with the details of his subject, and lead him to create or modify figures who never existed in ancient Rome. He has misunderstood “auspicia” (27, II, 26/1) [prophetic signs] as a proper name and created another duke of Carthage (R18/70), and because he fails to understand “priuignum” as meaning “stepson” (89, VII, 9), he transforms the stepsons of Augustus – Drusus and Tiberius – into “Drusus Privignus” and “Tiberius Privignus”, respectively (R49/77– 78). Something similar is true of “Pertinax, grandaeuus” (110, VIII, 16) [of advanced age], since Jofroi makes the septuagenarian “Pertinax Gravilenus” (R67/1). The imaginary figure of “Lucius Scrinius”, advisor to Severus (Aurelius) Alexander, is created when Jofroi fails to understand that Ulpian was assessor or secretary in Severus’s cabinet (“scrinii”; 113, VIII, 23): “Lucius Scrinius li fu consilhieres, et Wlpianus qui faisoit les lois fu ses maistres” (R73/5 – 6) [Lucius Scrinius was his counsellor, and the jurist Ulpian was his teacher].¹² In the passage on the reign of the three emperors, Jofoi not only omits the name of Gordian’s wife, Tranquillina, but also appears to have read “aperuit” as meaning “engender” and has created a son of Gordian called “Janus Geminus” instead of understanding the sense of “Ianum Geminium” as “double Janus”: “Ianum Geminum aperuit” (116, IX, 2) [he opened the temple of double Janus] becomes “si engendra Janus Geminus” (R75/7). In R81/4, failure to grasp the meaning of “actuario” (119, IX, 9.3) as “quartermaster” leads Jofroi to create the figure of Actuarius. Other inaccuracies are semantic. For example, “oppugnaturus” (10, I, 15/2) means “ready to attack or besiege”, but is rendered by Jofroi as “destruire” (R9/18); in R15/9, Jofroi has taken “a dictatore capitis damnatus” (8, II, 8/3) [condemned to death by the dictator] literally to mean that Quintus Fabius will be beheaded, whereas it generally means “sentenced to death”; similarly, he reads the “ultimis poenis” [most extreme punishments] meted out to Hannibal’s Saguntine captives (34, II, 7/3) as fatal rather than just extreme: “et par dure painne les  Some errors are also clearly scribal or visual and may be attributed to Jofroi or Servais or to a scribe at some point in the transmission of the Latin models. For example, in R4/2– 3, Jofroi may have misread “latinos” (5, I, 5/2) as “latrones” since his translation is “larons”; in R18/24, “mastike” probably derives from a misreading of “in africam” as “masticam” > “mastike”; the “livres d’or” of R25/14 may have resulted in a misreading of “librarum” (42, II, 2/2) as “libri aurum” or similar; in R36/9 and 12, “cluentius” appears as “duentius” (61, V, 3/2 and 3) due to the misreading of “cl” as “d”. There are also several readings clearly caused by confusion between “c” and “t” at some point (the scribe of BnF, fr. 1822 usually distinguishes): “tarmates” (R8/15) for “carinatem” (65, V, 8/1, with misreading of the minims); “cocca” for “cotta” (69, VI, 6/1 and 2; R40/2 and 5); “acella” for “atella” (88, VII, 8/4; R49/62).  The origin of “Lucius” is not clear; no variants suggest it.

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ocist” (R20/9); “galies”(R43/8) does not reflect the meaning of “piratae” (3, VI, 12/1) [pirates]; failure to understand properly “blattinis”, the colour of Nero’s fishing-lines, as purple (92, VII, 14/1) leads Jofroi to default as “pressiouses” (R53/4); Eutropius says that Vitellius was “iugulatus” (95, VII, 18/5), that is to say, had his throat cut, but Jofroi translates as “decolez” (R56/12).¹³ If most of these omissions, errors, and misreadings in the text of the Regne are venial, there are just a few where Jofroi produces a version that seems to mean the very opposite of what Eutropius appears to say in the Breviarium. For example, the home of the Volsci is located by Eutropius not far from Rome for those “ad Campaniam euntibus” (6, I, 8/1) [going to Campania], rendered by Jofroi as “a ceus qui viennent de Champaingne” (R7/3 – 4); this may be more or less the same thing, but the expression is incorrect. The only Fabian not to have perished in the battle of Cremera in the first Veientine War was Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, too young to have been sent into action: “propter aetatem puerilem duci non potuerat ad pugnam” (10, I, 16/3) [on account of his young age, he could not be led into battle], but according to Jofroi, “por grant eage ne pooit aler a la batailhe” (R9/27) [on account of his great age, he could not go into battle]. Hadrian’s elevation to emperor is attributed in the Breviarium to the conniving of Trajan’s wife, Pompeia Plotina: “operam dante Plotina, Traiani uxore” (104, VIII, 6/1); in Jofroi, the promotion is “sens la volontez la femme Trajan” (R62/1– 2) [without the consent of Trajan’s wife]. Marcus Aurelius frees the enslaved Pannonians (“Pannoniis seruitio liberatis”; 109, VIII, 13/1), whereas in the Gerre, “les Pannoniens mist en servage” (R65/21– 22) [he enslaved the Pannonians]. It is a commonplace of scholarship on the romans antiques and other adaptations of classical texts to state that objects, persons, sentiments, and customs are “medievalized” and dehistoricized in an attempt to render them more accessible and meaningful to contemporary audiences. Jofroi de Waterford’s two classical translations are no exception to this. I have already given some instances of how he explains unfamiliar aspects of Greek and Roman life and others where he does not take the trouble to offer any commentary or explanation. Of particular interest is Jofroi’s choice of French lexis to denote characteristically Greek or Roman objects and notions. The less expansive and more repetitive nature of the De excidio and the Gerre provides fewer opportunities or necessities for such ren-

 The translation may be inaccurate, but Cassius Dio (64: 21) does say that Vitellius was beheaded (Cary 1925, 254– 255). Cf. also the translation of the same word in G50/10 (De excidio, 51/15).

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derings, but there are some.¹⁴ In G2/12, for example, the “barbarorum” of the De excidio (4/4– 5) is translated as “estraingnes”, despite the existence of the adjective “barbarin”.¹⁵ Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon, is “regii generis puellam” [girl of royal lineage] in the De excidio (7/10), but arguably more medieval as “de haut parage” [of high degree] in the Gerre (G5/22). Alexander is “imperatorem exercitui” in the De excidio (11/10), but “chevetain” [captain/chieftain] in the Gerre (G7/25). In the descriptions of Polixena, Achilles, and Patroclus (16/5, 12 and 14) the word “dapsilem” is translated as “bone vivendiere”, “bon vivendiers”, and merely “frans” (G10/23, G11/5 – 6 and 7, respectively). In the De excidio, the sense of “dapsilem” is something like “well-endowed (with positive qualities), but Jofroi’s translations specifically stress generosity and openness of character. The “fossam et vallum” of the De excidio (32/20) [ditch and rampart] are medievalized as “fosses et barbacanes” (G30/20) [ditches and barbicans]. The Regne provides richer pickings in this regard and my examples are more selective. In the Breviarium, Tarquin is credited with introducing drains in Rome (“cloacas fecit”; 5, I, 6/2), but Jofroi transforms the latter into private toilets (“chambres coies”; R5/4). Although he renders “magister equitium” (9, I, 12/1) literally as “maistre des chevaliers” (R9/4), it is later translated (12, I, 19/2) as a more impressive sounding “princes des chevaliers” (R11/5) when indicating Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Military terms are often rendered by using the word “chevalerie”: “in re militari” (17, II, 6/2) [in military matters] becomes “de chevalerie” (R14/13); “quaecumque Romanis agerentur” (20, II, 11/2) [whatever had been achived by the Romans] is “la chevalerie des Romains” (R16/ 11– 12); “milites” (20, II, 11/3, and elsewhere) [soldiers, troops] are usually “chevaliers” (R16/15); “magnis copiis” (26, II, 24/1), i. e., with many troops, is rendered by Jofroi as “grant plantez de chevalerie” (R18/51) [a great abundance of chivalry]; “strenuae militae” (125, IX, 21) [military worth] is “proesche de chevalerie” (R90/12). “Mout fu chevalerous” is also used in a broader sense of “chivalrous” (R57/3 – 4) to translate “priuata uita inlustris” (95, VII, 19/1) [remarkable career], referring to Vespasian; “exercendo magis quam puniendo sine aliqua acerbitate” (54, IV, 17/2) [training rather than punishing without harshness] is paraphrased in courtly terms as “et le reprist en belle maniere sens vilenie” (R41/15 – 16) [and censured him kindly without wickedness]; Eutropius writes of Trajan that “Gloriam tamen militarem ciuilitate et moderatione superauit” (103, VIII, 4) [his military fame was surpassed by his restraint and moderation],  See also Vieilliard (1992, 188 – 193) for some examples relating to specific lexical areas and a brief consideration of the transformation of certain Latin grammatical structures in the text of the Gerre.  In R90/16, “Barbaros” (126, IX, 21) are translated as “les mauffaisans”.

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which in the Regne is expanded and quintessentially medievalized as “Et tot fuist il preus et conquerrans, encore sa cortoisie et ses bonnes mours sormonterent la gloire de sa chevalerie” (R61/19 – 20) [And although he was valiant and victorious, his courtesy and good manners surpassed his military fame]. As far as vices are concerned, the “turpi libidine” [shameful debauchery] of Tiberius (90, VII, 11/1) becomes the medieval “grant lecherie et laide” (R50/1) [great and vile scurrility], whilst Caligula’s excessive “libidine” (90, VII, 12/4) [debauchery] is “ors de lecherie” [foul with lewdness] (R51/6); Nero is “inusitatae luxuriae sumptuumque” [of extraordinary lavishness and extravagance] in the Breviarium (91, VII, 14/1), but “Plains fu de chascune maniere de luxure et glotenie” [full of every kind of excess and gluttony] in the Regne (R53/2– 3). Other Roman words are given simple Old French equivalents: “lorica” (80, VI, 22/1) [cuirasse] is the medieval “haberc” (R48/4) [hauberk], whilst “pilo” (139, X, 11/2) [spear] becomes a simple “lance” (R94/11); “spectaculorum” (116, IX, 3) [public spectacles] are medievalized as “merveilhes” (R76/4). Stylistically, the most striking device used by Jofroi in his translations of the De excidio and the Breviarium is the deployment of synonymical pairs. This kind of pairing is widespread in Old French literature of all kinds through most of the Middle Ages. It demonstrates the richness of the language and is particularly useful to those writing in verse as it can help create and maintain metre. However, it is not limited to verse and is common in prose.¹⁶ Such pairings are often found in descriptions of persons. In the De excidio (15/12), the eyes of Eneas are said to be “hilaribus et nigris” [lively and black]; although already a synonymical pair, this is changed to “vairs et rians” (G10/18) [bright and laughing], an established formula, by Jofroi; Hecuba is to be “mente virili” (15/15) [strong-minded], but in the Gerre, “le corage avoit fort et baut” (G10/20 – 21) [her disposition was strong and bold]; Polixena is described as “animo simplici, largam dapsilem” (16/4– 5) [straightforward, generous and liberal], but Jofroi reformulates in typical medieval fashion as “simple et debonaire fu de corage, large et bone vivendiere” (G10/27– 28) [she was straightforward and friendly of disposition, generous and liberal]; Neoptolemus is “stomachosum” (16/25) [angry], but “hastifs et corochous” in Jofroi (G11/16) [quick-tempered and angry]. After sowing discord and criticizing Agamemnon, Palamedes demonstrates “multa sua studia” (25/14) [his great knowledge], rendered by Jofroi as “ses estudes et ses proesces” (G18/3 – 4) [his knowledge and his strengths]. During the nineteenth battle, Troilus is said in the De excidio to be “laetus” (39/13); Jofroi translates as “liés”, but is drawn into ex-

 It has been studied by Stefenelli (1967) and Melkersson (1992).

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panding to the formula “liés et joious” (G39/5) [happy and joyful]. The Trojans waiting to ambush Achilles in the Temple of Apollo “collocantur” (41/4) [gather together], but Jofroi uses a double adjective in “repons et muichiét” (G40/10) [hidden and concealed]. Such pairings are also common in the Regne. In Eutropius, the word used to describe the assault on Milan by Marcus Claudius Mercellus is “expugnauit” (33, III, 6/2) [took it by assault]; Jofroi doubles the verb as “destruist et desroba” (R19/ 28) [destroyed and plundered]. In the following section of the Breviarium, the Histrians are said to be “perdomiti” (33, III, 7/1) [defeated], whilst Jofroi uses another set synonymical pair, “vencus et dantez” (R19/31) [conquered and defeated]. Eutropius pairs “seueritate et moderatione” (57, IV, 27/1) [rigorously and with moderation] to describe Quintus Cecilius Metellus in the episode of the Jugurthine war, but in the Regne, it becomes the formulaic Old French “grans sens et cointise” (R34/9) [great intelligence and skill]. Sulla promotes the young Pompey “cognita eius industria” (65, V, 8/2) [knowing his assiduousness], specified by Jofroi as “la proesche et la cointisse” (R38/20) [worth and skill]. Publius Servilius is “uir strenuus” in the Latin Breviarium (68, VI, 3) [vigorous man], but Jofroi again uses a typical synonymy, “sage ber et preus” (R39/21) [wise man and worthy]. Pompey’s camp is “disrepta” [laid waste] by Caesar’s forces in the Breviarium (79, VI, 21/2), whilst his tents are “destruites et robees” [destroyed and plundered] in the Regne (R47/27). Never was Rome so esteemed “ne de richece ne de signorie” (R49/69 – 70) (neither for wealth nor for glory]; Eutropius had simply said “floruit” (88, VII, 9) [it flourished]. The Breviarium gives the cause of Vespasian’s death as “profluuio uentris” (96, VII, 20/2) [diarrhoea], but Jofroi seems to look forward to the medical sections of the Secré de secrés by doubling it as “menguisons et fluç de ventre” (R57/23) [diarrhoea and dysentery].¹⁷ Eutropius does not shy away from offering judgements on the vices and virtues of the major protagonists of Roman history, and Jofroi only occasionally intervenes in the Regne, as we have seen. The trials and tribulations of empire through the interaction of individuals and groups provide enough action to retain the interest of readers and listeners. Only on rare occasions does Jofroi intervene to underline emotion, such as when he dramatizes Diocletian’s negative response to Maximian’s letter from “quas ille inritas habuit” (133, X, 2/3) [which he quite ignored] to “il getta les lettres ensus de li” (R92/8 – 9) [he threw the letter away]. The Latin prose of the De excidio is plain and unadorned, generally relating events without commentary, in the voice of a supposed eyewitness. A notable feature of the Gerre, however, is the introduction of direct speech, absent in the

 For references, see the entry “fluç” in the glossary of Busby (2020).

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corresponding sections of the De excidio. Calchas advises the Greeks to return to Troy via Aulis: “Calchas ex augurio respondet, uti revertantur et in Aulidem proficiscantur” (20/13 – 14) [Calchas replied from the augur that they should turn around and leave for Aulis]; Jofroi turns this into direct speech and expands, adding the sacrifice to Diana: “‘Retornez ariere. Ainz que vos alez ver Troie, faites sacrefice a Diane en Aulide’” (G13/19 – 20) [“Go back. Before you go to Troy, make sacrifice to Diana in Aulis”]. Yielding to Palamedes, Agamemnon nevertheless commands the people to express their views on leadership in the struggle against Troy: “se tamen regnum Mycenis habere” (31/10 – 11) [if he had his kingdom of Mycenae]; Jofroi’s more assertive version is in direct speech: “‘Si ai ge roausme a Michenes’” (G29/8) [“And I have a kingdom in Mycenae”]. Hecuba’s advice to Alexander in the De excidio on how to ambush and kill Achilles is in indirect speech (40/17– 41/2), but is made more urgent and menacing by the direct speech of the Gerre: “Achillés,” fait elle, “pria que Polixena li fuist donne[e] en matrimoine, et je li prierai de par Priamus qu’il viengne former et afermer la pais entre eus al temple Apolin, qu’est devant la porte de Troie qui Tumbreas est apellee. La ferez enbuisement, et soufire vos doit en toute vostre vie se celi seul poez ocire.” (G40/4– 8) [“Achilles,” she said, “asked for Polixena to be given to him in marriage, and I will ask him through Priam to come and establish and confirm the peace between them at the temple of Apollo, which is near the gate of Troy called Thymbra. There you will set an ambush, and this is all you will need to do in your whole life if you can kill just him.”]

Priam’s upbraiding of Antenor and Aeneas (46/2– 8) gains in intensity from being in direct speech: “Coment poez vous la pais demander qui fustes principaus de la gerre comenchier et de mesagiers envoier en Gresce? A vostre repairier nos contastes que li Grigois laidengousement vos traiterent, et por ce nos enortastes de gerre a movoir. Et vous, dans Eneas, fustes avoiques Alixandre quant Helainne et la proie de Gresce ravit, porquoi toz ces maus sunt avenus, et por ce certains soiés que nulle pais ne ferons.” (G45/22– 27) [“How can you ask for peace, you who were the first to begin the war and send messengers to Greece? When you returned, you told us that the Greeks had treated you shamefully, and because of this, you urged us to go to war. And you, lord Aeneas, were with Alexander when he seized Helen and booty from Greece, the reason all these misfortunes have befallen us, and for this you may be sure that we will make no peace with you.”]

Antenor’s thanks to Agamemnon after the final fall of Troy (50/12– 15) are expressed directly: “‘Grasces rend az Grigois. Aprés, vous fais a savoir que Helenus et Cansadra tos jors enorterent lur pere a la pais et nïent a la gerre; d’autre part, Elenus fist que Achillés fu ensevelis et que Elenus set toutes choses qui sunt a

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avenir.’” (G49/9 – 11) [“I thank the Greeks. Now I can tell you that Helenus and Cassandra always urged their father to make peace and not war; moreover, Helenus had Achilles buried and Helenus knows all things that are to come.”] In the grand scheme of things, of the events leading up to the fall of Troy, of the rise of the Roman Empire, the modifications made by Jofroi de Waterford to the De excidio Troiae and the Breviarium historiae romanae are relatively minor, but nevertheless worthy of our attention for reasons suggested above. If attentive and scholarly readers of the Latin models, perhaps familiar with other accounts of Greece and Rome, might have noticed some of these changes – had they encountered Jofroi’s versions –, it is less likely that readers of the Gerre and the Regne would have raised as much as an eyebrow. Readers of vernacular literature may have known versions of ancient history through the romans antiques and parts of universal histories, but unlikely that they would have had the option of laying the Gerre de Troi alongside the Histoire ancienne and Jean de Flixecourt’s version of the De excidio, or the Regne des Romains alongside Li fait des Romains or the same Jean’s version of Eutropius. To say that Jofroi de Waterford was aiming to produce a word-for-word rendering of the Latin texts is to misunderstand the nature of medieval translation. Even if he is not producing romances which require major adaptation of source material, he makes small-scale changes, some on the fly, all with a view to providing a basic entrée en matière accessible to his anonymous patron and subsequent readers in early fourteenthcentury Ireland and other parts of medieval Francophonia.

References Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND): . Busby, Keith. French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Cassius Dio. Dio’s Roman History. VIII. Ed. and trans. Earnest Cary. London: Heinemann, 1925. Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Troiae Historia. Ed. Ferdinand Meister. Leipzig: Teubner, 1873. Eutropius. Abrégé d’Histoire Romaine. Ed. and trans. Joseph Hellegouarc’h. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002. Faivre d’Arcier, Louis. Histoire et géographie d’un mythe: la circulation des manuscrits du De excidio Troiae de Darès le Phrygien (VIIIe – XVesiècles). Paris: École des Chartes, 2006. Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW): . Jofroi de Waterford. The French Works of Jofroi de Waterford: La gerre de Troi, Le regne des Romains, Le secré de secrés. Ed. Keith Busby. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

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Melkersson, Anders. L’itération lexicale: étude sur l’usage d’une figure stylistique dans onze romans français des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1992. Stefenelli, Arnulf. Die Synonymenreichtum des altfranzösischen Dichtersprache. Vienna: Böhlau, 1967. Tobler, Adolf, Erhard Lommatzsch, and Peter Stein. Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch (T-L). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002. CD-ROM. Vielliard, Françoise. “En marge de l’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César: deux traductions françaises d’Eutrope.” Entre fiction et histoire: Troie et Rome au Moyen Âge. Ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-Lancner. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1997. 207 – 235. Vielliard, Françoise. “La traduction du De excidio Troiæ de Darès le Phrygien par Jean de Flixecourt.” Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair. Ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D. D. R. Owen. Leiden: Brill, 1994. 284 – 295. Vielliard, Françoise. “La traduction du De excidio Troiae de Darès le Phrygien par Jofroi de Waterford.” Bien dire et bien aprandre 10 (1992): 185 – 205.

Nathalie Koble

Gifts Given and Received: The Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier, a multimedia present In memory of all the walks, past and future, on either side of the Channel… “The essential thing about a gift received or exchanged is that the thing received is not inert. Even after the giver has let go of it, it still retains something of this person.” (Marcel Mauss, The Gift)

The manuscript containing the Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier is unique. Copied in Paris in the mid-fourteenth century, it was lavishly illuminated for someone of great importance. It was written in Middle French verse, with an epistolary passage in prose, in the spirit of Tristan en prose. ¹ The romance was published once before falling into oblivion, never to be republished or translated again (Gennrich 1908).² Jane Taylor (1997), one of the rare readers of this text, has pointed to the manuscript’s multimedia and collaborative aspects. She has commented on its development and layout in a seminal article that brings together three of her favourite subjects: late Arthurian romance and its rewriting, the sociological dimension of literature, and poetic practice at the close of the Middle Ages. Inspired by her work, this study seeks to renew the practice of the gift that characterizes poetry of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in France and England, and to build a bridge between two languages, two places, and two times, as a gift of friendship.

 The romance is preserved in a single, extensively illustrated manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12562). It contains one hundred and two illuminations that comment on the narrative. The text is comprised of 8575 lines (the narrative is told at first in decasyllables, and then in rhyming couplets of octosyllables); it also includes poetic insertions, all in the form of unica grafted onto the narrative, as well as a love letter in prose.  This text was prepared for a republication that never happened. In addition to the publication of a translation of the entire book into modern French under the title Le Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier au Lion (Koble 2021b), I am preparing a new edition of the insertions (Koble 2021a, forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-011

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A change in gender: the unicorn as feminine The Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier provides the modern reader with several enigmas. Although the narrative of almost eight thousand lines remains anonymous, this copy seems to conceal a specific recipient and very particular circumstances surrounding its writing, which Anthime Fourrier (1973) has commented on, all in the context of a luxurious gift that was perhaps never made. Its panegyric, tinged with tenderness, and its courtly subject, influenced by well-known stories that had circulated in princely libraries since the twelfth century, represent a counterpoint to the darkest hours of the Hundred Years’ War. Lastly, the romance consecrates the dual advent of a famous (French) word and symbol: the unicorn, which the author associates in his allegorical fiction – for the first time ever – with the feminine gender. The French word for unicorn, licorne, comes from the dialectal Italian alicorno. ³ Here, for the first time in a written document, it replaces the older unicorne present in French medieval bestiaries, in which the usually masculine noun⁴ signifies a terrifying, savage, and indomitable hybrid beast. The hunt for its precious horn is an oft-retold medieval legend: hunters would place a young virgin in the animal’s territory as bait. Drawn to the young woman, the unicorn would eventually place its head in her lap and fall asleep, thereby delivering itself to its predators without a fight. This motif was depicted in all visual media during the Middle Ages (illumination, sculpture, chests, and tapestries), and it was commented on extensively in both sacred and profane literature (Beer 1977; Freeman 1976; Delahaye and Pastoureau 2013). Religious commentary compared the unicorn to Christ, viewing it as a paragon of purity and an emblem of sacrifice, while lyric poetry saw the unicorn as a figure of courtly love, captive to the beloved woman who channels the wildness of its desire. In his Bestiaire d’amour, Richard de Fournival compared the unicorne to a lover in the service of his lady. In the thirteenth century, the troubadour Thibaut de Champagne, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, glorified it in the incipit of a song that weaves together various allegories of courtly love, all of which were taken directly from Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la rose. His unicorne (here in the feminine, it should be noted) explicitly symbolizes the amorous poet, prisoner of a lady, hunted down by Love and its steeds.

 We find a mention of l’alicorno, associated with the lion, in an Italian manuscript of the Life of Saint Margaret from the early fourteenth century. It is an evil, terrifying figure from which the saint seeks protection in a prayer.  Unicorne translates the Latin unicornis, “that which has just one horn”. The term has remained the same in the other romance languages.

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Consumed by waiting, he nevertheless hopes for mercy, of which the poem itself functions as an anticipatory echo-chamber: Ausi conme unicorne sui Qui s’esbahist en regardant, Quant la pucelle va mirant. Tant est liee de son ennui, Pasmee chiet en son giron: Lors l’ocit on en traïson. Et moi ont mort d’autel senblant Amors et ma dame, por voir: Mon cuer ont, n’en puis point ravoir.⁵ [Just like a unicorn, I remain in ecstasy whilst looking at the young lady. Its melancholy is so sweet, that it faints in her lap; it is then that it is betrayed and killed. In truth, Love and my lady have mortally wounded me, too. They have held onto my heart, which I can no longer reclaim.]

Thus, the unicorne, an androgynous noun, was a symbol of courtly love attributed to a male subject. Our fourteenth-century author makes a dual transfer of this textual and iconographic material right under our very eyes. First, the text is witness to a linguistic evolution. Through an erroneous morphological breakdown – if we can call it that – l’alicorne was replaced by la licorne, thereby rendering the noun as definitively feminine in French. Secondly, what it symbolizes in the romance also changes gender, as the animal no longer represents the lover, but instead the young lady who draws it to her, as well as her purity and perfection. The white unicorn, the emblematic polysemic animal, emerges in various subsequent iconographic traditions: in Petrarch’s Trionfi (as early as 1351), two unicorns draw the triumphal chariot of Chastity, while the royal arms of the United Kingdom combine the unicorn and the lion, the unicorn representing Scotland, and the lion, England. Ultimately, the six tapestries at the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris remain the most famous examples. The unicorn and the lion carry the standards of the patrons, the Le Viste family. In two of the tapestries (the ones devoted to touch and to sight), the unicorn plays an active role in portraying the life of the senses, resting at the side of the lady, who has been encouraged to develop her senses within her own private gardens. Originally made for a bride’s chamber in the early sixteenth century, these tapestries cultivate a sense of enigma at the same time as celebrating the refinement of sensory expe-

 The song was published in full with a musical score in Rosenberg, Tischler, and Grossel (1995, 578 – 583).

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rience as an invitation to contemplation, meditation, and boundless desire, all in the tradition of medieval courtly culture (see Planche 1984).

Blanche and the unicorn: the obscure story of a secret recipient The romance expresses this same intention two centuries earlier. The domesticated unicorn enters a lady’s room for the first time. It is white, blanche, just like the name of the princess for whom the manuscript was copied. It is depicted alongside its mistress (“La Dame Blanche qui la Licorne garde”, l. 193 [the white lady whom the unicorn guards]), as per the text in most of the miniatures that punctuate the narrative, starting from the first image, where the lady is seated in a garden next to her lover-poet, in the company of her unicorn and holding a mirror (see Fig. 1).⁶ This introductory passage may also, of course, represent the reader and the author himself, who at the outset declares his wish to tell a story as he listens to spring birdsong: Ou temps de may, que tuit li oisillon Sont en baudour pour le froit temps felon, Donc sont yssut en une verde pree Pres d’un haut boys – plaisant iert la contree – Desus le bort d’une clere fontainne. Pour le dous temps vueil employer ma painne De raconter vie douche et plesant – De tous les fais ne doi estre tesant – D’une dame, en qui toute bonté Est aparant et ensement beauté. (ll. 1– 10) [In May time, when all the little birds rejoice at the [departure of the] wicked cold season, they came forth into a green meadow near a tall wood – the land was very pleasant – above the edge of a clear spring. On account of the fine weather, I wish to devote my efforts to tell

 The unicorn did not have a standard representation in the fourteenth century, its anatomy and coat varying from one tradition to the next. In the manuscript, the unicorn is all white in the first image, and then in the others, its coat and horn become blue, flecked with white; it has the body of a horse and the head of a goat. It is present in all the intimate scenes as a guarantor of the pure and “courtly” nature of the relationship. The image of the lady holding a mirror to the unicorn seated in her lap was already widespread in the thirteenth century, the mirror symbolizing the animal’s capture and the seduction of the senses, much in the same way that tigers in bestiaries are caught by their own reflection in a mirror. The longest poem inserted into the romance, the Dit de la Chaîne (two hundred and forty-seven lines), revisits the image of the mirror, which reflects the romantic relationship and allows it to exist at a distance.

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Fig. 1: The lady seated in a garden next to her lover-poet in the company of her unicorn and holding a mirror; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12562, fol. 1r of the sweet and pleasing life – I should not conceal any details – of a lady who is the very image of all goodness and beauty.]

At the beginning of the romance, the narrative recounts the strange fate of this new animal companion: God performed a miracle for the lady by creating this unicorn as a gift for her, in homage to her unequalled goodness and beauty. Throughout this story of a consummated love, the author pairs the feminine unicorn with a complementary, equally emblematic animal, the lion, which in courtly literature symbolizes the virtues of chivalric masculinity: strength, valour, courage, and loyalty. The two are inseparable from one another throughout the narrative, forming a new symbolic couple representing perfection and completeness, the union of the feminine and the masculine, and, throughout the

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travails that the lovers endure, the inalienability of “true love”, towards which the romance gravitates despite everything. This courtly utopia was perhaps a gift made on the occasion of an important wedding, like the many ivory caskets that depict well-known courtly motifs or, later, the tapestries in the Musée national du Moyen Âge. We know almost nothing about the history of this text. A composite coat of arms depicted at a certain point reveals that the young bride to whom the book was destined was surely Blanche de Navarre,⁷ daughter of Philippe d’Evreux and Jeanne de France, queen of Navarre. A granddaughter of King Louis X, she was the most reclusive queen in the history of France. Nicknamed Belle Sagesse, the young girl was betrothed several times before being promised at eighteen for a marriage into the royal family. At first, she was set in 1349 to marry Jean le Bon [John the Good], son of King Philip, who had just lost his wife, Bonne of Luxembourg, to the plague. Then, however, Blanche was suddenly married to the king himself, Philip VI, in January 1350, one month after the leader of the French forces at the Battle of Crécy had also lost his wife, Queen Jeanne. Blanche’s presence at the court proved short-lived, as the king died just a few months later, aged fifty-eight. The young widow never remarried, and instead withdrew to a castle, whence she played a major political role, albeit entirely in the background, for the remainder of the fourteenth century, advising her former fiancé, Jean le Bon, when he became king, and then Charles le Sage [Charles the Wise]. The surviving copy of the romance bears traces of these fateful events, as the blazon seems to have been initially prepared for her union with Jean le Bon, whose coat of arms is closely tied to Blanche’s, but the execution of the heraldic drawings reveals a discrepancy that is undoubtedly tied to this abrupt change in the course of history. Probably copied during the winter of 1349, as the plague devastated Europe amidst political chaos, the manuscript was likely written for Blanche, whom the unicorn suited to perfection, and perhaps for Jean, who was much more chivalric than his father the king, and who bore a lion on his shield. So was this originally a wedding gift? Its utopian nature aside, the romance remains inextricably linked to the context of its production and reception, as Taylor (1997) has insisted. La Dame à la Licorne undoubtedly served as a promise of happiness within a precise setting; the romance provides a sentimental education that is both exacting and amusing, and which bears all the best features of the courtly literature of its time.

 We owe this irrefutable identification to Fourrier (1973).

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Of love, war, and the fantastic To please his readers, devotees of chivalric romance, the author draws on a broad range of sources, as did his contemporaries, all experienced at reusing and rewriting (Taylor 2015). The models are many and obvious, starting with the very first Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes. The Beau Chevalier, whose name, following a test of his prowess that borders on the fantastical, is soon extended to include a lion that appears throughout the manuscript’s miniatures, is based on Chrétien’s Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (Hult 1994). Certain episodes (the hero’s madness, the liberation of damsels imprisoned by an evil custom, the fight with the giant, and the lion’s combat against an evil dragon) retell this verse romance exactly (see Cremonesi 1980). The knight’s white arms, in homage to his lady, and his supernatural qualities also recall the great champion of love, Lancelot. More generally, the author repeats the motif of the quest, through which the protagonists experience love, and begin to grasp, as they undergo their perilous adventures, a sense of their own heroic identities, a convention that made Arthurian romances so popular in the thirteenth century, in both verse and prose. Courtly readers across Europe developed a passion for these intrigues where love and war were intertwined, the sincerity of the knight’s love serving as a gauge of a fantastical quasi-invincibility that was placed in the service of the courtly world to fend off the forces of evil, since the amorous medieval hero was considered a liberator. The romance is full of trials where the hero engages in spectacular combat (recounted not without a sense of humour), thus revealing the strength, courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of one who strives, in all modesty, to be “the best in the world”. Guardians of roads and bridges, bloodthirsty giants, vicious automata, monsters, entire armies, numerous wars, and damsels in distress, all become occasions for combat, whose stylized evocation, borrowed from the chansons de geste, constitutes the main narrative mechanism. Across the seasons, from one court to the next, this is in essence what the knight-errant’s life involved, that is, when he was not having fun by disguising himself as a jester or a nun to facilitate his friends’ secret love affairs!⁸ The merveilleux [fantastic] component, Celtic in origin, renders the scenes that much more spectacular. They employ an aesthetic of variation that a contemporary reader would expect to find in a kung-fu film. Beginning with Chré-

 The main season, in which the knight travels to the Kingdom of Jerusalem with the German Emperor, whom he serves as a trusted advisor, is constructed entirely around a series of burlesque scenes of cross-dressing.

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tien de Troyes, the merveilleux becomes an essential part of the chivalric romance. Readers encounter everything from wild boars with golden tusks to deer-women, characters riding porcupines, falcons who speak, and all manner of magical devices. The traces of a parallel, fictional world are also an occasion for a kind of polyphony, where inventiveness and virtuosity go hand in hand with a comic, self-ironic, even mocking, strain, amplified in later Arthurian romance, as Taylor (2015) has shown. In the second half of the text, the presence at our invincible hero’s side of a disillusioned but jolly sidekick appropriately named Petit Affilé (“Little Trickster”), adds an overtly entertaining perspective to the author’s glorification of exemplary conduct, as a way of reminding readers that they should ultimately be enjoying themselves. Throughout the novel, a “spirit knight”, a character who can walk through walls and be summoned though a simple romantic thought, distributes magic horns and flutes to lovers for them to use at any time. Through this character, we become like the author, unabashedly entering the bedroom where the naked, insomniac lady anxiously awaits news of her lover or, with the wave of a magic wand, ending an exhausting combat that risks dragging on for eternity. Why not stop time altogether? In a way, the romance allows for everything.

Text and image: the courtly utopia and its context The illuminations occupy a privileged place within the romance, as Taylor (1997, passim) has noted in her careful examination of these illustrations, comprised of one hundred and two miniatures that accompany the plot as it unfurls. The content of each one was meticulously developed by the master of the workshop, whose minuscule cursive notes in pale ink are still visible in the margins – a sign that the copy might not have left the workshop.⁹ The illuminations, bordered in gold with gold leaves growing out of the frame, were executed by a Parisian team inspired by the work of the miniaturist Jean Pucelle; the natural backgrounds (acanthus leaves and vegetation) made fashionable by Pucelle in the 1320s alternate in the manuscript’s miniatures with geometric backgrounds

 The master of the workshop gave the illuminator(s) a precise description of each image. The proposed representation also testifies to the fact that these artists had carefully read what they were illustrating.

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from an older tradition.¹⁰ The hand is deliberate and its illustration purposeful, but without being very luxurious; it lacks the splendour of the Hours of Bonne de Luxembourg, for example, the masterpiece of Parisian illumination from that same time, or of certain manuscripts of courtly texts from the 1350s, such as those of Guillaume de Machaut. The characters, with their expressive lines and ample sway to their hips, exemplify the production of Parisian workshops in the 1340s. The illumination to me seems particularly close to certain copies of the Roman de la rose, especially the (more expensive) Paris manuscripts such as Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS fr. 1565 and 1567,¹¹ or the older manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut, himself a protégé of the Navarre family.¹² The characters are dressed according to the fashions of the 1340s: the women wear surcoats that reveal the forearm of their tightly buttoned tunics. Sometimes they are long and sleeveless, while in others they have bell sleeves that flow down from the elbows. Their hair is braided into ringlets that hang down over their ears and are held in place by a hairband, a hairstyle known in French as à templettes. The men have curly hair. They wear fringed capes with long hoods, long or short robes with a Bohemian belt that holds a golden buckle, knife, or purse. They wear colourful stockings, sometimes in two colours (which were in fashion in 1346, at the time of the Battle of Crécy), and pointed shoes or simple, woven slippers.¹³ Some of the decorative elements in this ensemble are characteristic of the production at that time and help encourage the vision of a courtly utopia. Interior spaces open up to adventure, the lady’s chamber in particular, where she waits for news of her lover, reads, writes, and receives visitors. The beds are de-

 The extremely luxurious manuscript of the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (1324) introduced one of the first examples of these backgrounds, rich in vegetation.  There are two contemporary manuscripts of the Roman de la rose whose styles are quite similar: the Paris manuscripts, BnF, MSS fr. 1565 and 1567. MS fr. 1565, dated 1352, was given to a member of the House of Poitiers-Melun, an important family that was close to the courts of Kings Jean le Bon and Charles le Sage. The illustrations in this manuscript are much richer and more refined that the copy of the Dame à la Licorne; the miniatures sit within four-colour, polylobate frames, the pen-flourished initials are ornate, and the upper initials are executed in a magnificent calligraphy. However, the models for the drawings and paintings are very similar in their sway-hipped figures, hairstyles, clothing, the objects (especially the benches on which the characters sit), architecture, natural elements (the trees, with bird), and the backgrounds (the acanthus leaf background appears as early as fol. 3). MS fr. 1567 is less lavish and probably dates from the 1340s (see Coilly and Tesnière 2012, 26, 36 – 39, 66 – 67, 137).  Especially the Paris manuscript, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5203. I would like to thank Deborah McGrady and Ben Albritton for pointing out these similarities.  See the history of medieval dress provided by Van Buren (2011).

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corated with sheets and curtains in high-relief, multicolour stripes, a decorative motif that we see in many Parisian manuscripts starting in the late 1320s. These rainbow sheets endow the intimate space of the beloved’s bedroom with a remarkable sense of dynamism and enliven the figures; the room becomes a space where adventure plays out anew, towards which the many exploits of the hero, in love with his female reader, all converge.

A chain of love: a sentimental education The impressive number of combat scenes does not prevent the Roman de la Dame à la Licorne from being, in essence, a love story. The hero traverses the known world, from Frisia to Jerusalem, to prove his valour, ultimately to be worthy of his beloved lady, his peerless and most beautiful suzerain. “L’amour que l’on dit courtois” [The love we call courtly], to use historian Georges Duby’s phrase, is inseparable from an ideology that the Hundred Years’ War would seriously undermine. In a feudal society where competition was omnipresent, sentimental intimacy was ultimately based on a standard of excellence, reflected by the hero of romance. True love, one that is loyal and sincere, is conceived as grace, which feeds a circle of virtue leading to infinite happiness, both spiritual and sensual. The genre of the romance and its sense of time allow the author to include in his narration the key motifs of fin’amor that courtly song had celebrated since the first troubadours. The sense of loss and distance puts the characters’ hearts and feelings to the test. Some succumb, like the Chevalier à la Cornemuse or the Chevalier au Grillon, while others wander astray, like the Chevalier au Chef d’or, who dies in the cold; they all failed to heed the rigorous commandments that an amorous commitment entails. The Roman de la Dame à la Licorne pushes this utopian belief even further and radicalizes certain of its characteristics. In borrowing heavily from Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la rose (1992), this romance of love obeys rules governed by a highly structured imagination, which relates the characters’ affective experience with a considerable degree of precision. The commitment is as sacred as it is secret. Lovers swear on an altar in the presence of the Holy Book. The illuminators devote to this commitment a tightknit set of illuminations that accompany the text. The two characters give each other their hearts and become inseparably linked by an invisible thread. A long, virtuoso poetic insertion known as the Dit de la Chaîne describes this. This poem, undoubtedly by the author himself, is a dit, a style of narrative poem written in rhyming couplets that became widespread in didactic and courtly literature towards the end of the thirteenth century (see Cerquiglini-Toulet 1988, Boulton

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1993, and Léonard 1996). Memory, which projects the image of the beloved onto one’s heart, helps the lovers resist the distance between them, and allows them to contemplate one another from afar. The joy of being devoted to one another is, of course, pure. The concern that one feels for the other represents a gesture of sincere and limitless selflessness that helps each person construct an unimpeachable moral identity based on courage and generosity, but which also allows for ruse and playfulness. Lovers are traditionally attacked by forces that try to drive them apart: here an indignant husband, called Privé Danger [Intimate Obstacle], and slanderers, represented by the malevolent Dame à la Pie. Yet they are just as threatened by despair and bitterness, mortal enemies of love, against which they must battle continuously. And there is one more enemy underlying the narrative of this romance: the last step in the gradus amoris, coïtus, described prudishly as vilenie, or baseness, an uncontrollable eroticism with potentially disastrous consequences for important families (Baldwin 1994). There are many intimate scenes; the lovers spend entire nights together discovering one another, but the author always specifies that their caresses avoid all vilenie. The author here is perhaps recalling the Tour de Nesle affair, the scandal that rocked the Capetian dynasty at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in which the king’s three daughters-in-law stood accused of adultery, thus seriously blemishing the reputation of French noblewomen in general. Blanche de Navarre’s grandmother, Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X, was one of the women who was convicted; deposed from the throne, she died in prison in 1315, and strong doubts persisted as to the paternity of her daughter Jeanne, Blanche’s mother. The affair led to the adoption of the Salic law, resulting in the rejection of Jeanne, heir to the throne – which makes it all the more believable that she wanted to place her own daughter on the throne as a form of compensation and reparation. It may even be that Blanche commissioned the romance for Jeanne.¹⁴ As literature through the mid-fourteenth century continued to promote the virtues of courtly love, which was believed to increase one’s sensibilities, exalt loyalty, and educate young people, the gestures of desire nevertheless had to remain without consequences. This demanded a sentimental education, which the romance provided by adjusting previous poetic and chivalric lessons to the demands of a sombre and highly political story. Though based on utopian notions, Arthurian and courtly romances were rewritten in response to sociological and political contexts that impacted them and led to their reformulation. As Taylor (2001; 2007) has shown, this link between the poetic

 This is the hypothesis advanced by Fourrier (1973).

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and the political in the late Middle Ages is essential to understanding the evolution of literary forms. From the masculine to the feminine, the Roman de la Dame à la Licorne alternates between viewpoints and voices. Across the seasons – I believe there are five of them, in the serial, television sense of the term, divided according to the geographic space they traverse – we follow, step by step, the phases of a sentimental education experienced by the two lovers: from the birth of love to its fulfilment and from its declaration to its final confirmation; once all the trials have been overcome, death – both physical and spiritual – is vanquished and transcended. From start to finish, the narrative explores the reality of amorous intimacy, following its development, the customs, limits, setbacks, the many ruses, and ultimately, its outcome. It ushers readers into the happy, intimate world inhabited by the two lovers. The relationship of love is the opposite of war and violence; it insists on nurturing tenderness and goodness. The manuscript’s illuminations shed a captivating light on the private and intimate spaces: bedrooms with multicoloured curtains, idyllic gardens, secret hideaways, circles of people dancing and singing, the letters and poems exchanged by the lovers, highlighted by the generously spaced layout in the book. Here we find the echoes of another Roman de la rose that the author has drawn on, the one by Jean Renart, in which the lovers, well versed in the poetry of their time, cross the Empire to share their culture and taste for the lyric poetry of their time (see Renart 2008).¹⁵ Chivalric romance became the receptacle for these short pieces, namely love letters and poems, which otherwise remained literary orphans. In Jean Renart’s romance, the songs sung by the characters were recycled, and the characters in the Roman de la Dame à la Licorne are themselves poets. For both men and women in the fourteenth century, writing poetry was an essential component of the experience of love and of one’s courtly education – a sign of the times: “no lover can achieve perfection without being a poet […]” The romance is thus, rightly, an anthology of poems.

Lovers and poets: from sentiments to words The sense of aesthetics in the romance follows both the courtly tradition of romances from earlier centuries and the narrative texts written in courtly milieux

 This romance from the early thirteenth century is preserved in only one manuscript, currently housed at the Vatican. Its structure, which grafts poems onto the narrative, and its motifs, had significant resonance in posterity. See in particular Boulton (1993).

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during the fourteenth century, of which Guillaume de Machaut’s work is the most illustrious example. The manuscript – if not the romance itself – is the exact contemporary of the Jugement de Navarre, written for Charles le Mauvais [Charles the Bad], king of Navarre and Blanche’s brother. It comes close on the heels of Guillaume de Machaut’s Dit du Lion (1342), which also took its inspiration from Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain. The predilection for brief, narrative, lyric insertions within a longer, romance narrative in octosyllabic couplets seeking to provide a sentimental education accurately reflects the trends of that time. Like Lancelot and Guinevere, the lovers are models of amorous conduct, and their love is expressed through an assiduous exchange of letters and poems, like Tristan and Iseult, and which precedes Guillaume de Machaut’s immense Voir dit. The masterful use of poetry focuses mainly on the forms with a refrain that were in fashion at the end of the Middle Ages: the ballade and the rondeau. In romance, it is the characters who compose and write the poems, and each new insertion is adapted to the situation it accompanies: a poem of joy sung by the lovers in private, or one of sadness during the hours of solitude, a rondeau to say farewell, and poems of celebration, consolation, or rejection. In the fourteenth century, people composed poetry for many reasons: to amuse themselves, open their hearts, remember, console themselves, or to reject, but they always followed certain formal constraints, as literary virtuosity reflected the valour of the men and women who composed poems. So when the Chevalier au Chef d’or tries to seduce his lady, this takes the form of a ballad rich in word and sound-play that he sends to celebrate her perfection; she, however, puts him in his place with a cutting ballad consisting of three brief, seven-line stanzas that exploit the triple repetition of the refrain to deliver her crystal-clear refusal. These poetics are also shaped by an aesthetic of formal variation that the size of the anthology constituted by the romance allows us to measure (see Koble 2021a, forthcoming; 2021b). Poetic form embodies a form of living. With the exception of a lament and the Dit de la Chaîne, all the poems inserted into the romance are to be sung by the characters before being delivered in writing and exchanged. The manuscript preserves a visual trace of this musical requirement. The poems could also be choreographed. One of them is sung at a festival and danced to by several people, as shown in the accompanying miniature. In the manuscript, spaces were left blank for the musical notation of each piece. This more spacious layout renders the presence of poetry and song that much more visible, and it contributes to a celebration of the harmony emanating from these songs which commemorate the experience of love. They are closely connected with dance, and the same motifs resonate from one stanza to the next, focussing on the particular pleasure that poetic language yields through its ability to order words in new ways and to restore a sense of enchantment

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to the known world (which has already been seen, read, and heard), ultimately adapted with musical precision to each person’s reality.

A case-bound book: a gift in letters and images Written as a royal commission, this long-forgotten chivalric romance remains an ambitious example of the literature of its time when one considers – as Jane Taylor has in her work – the link between shifting literary forms and social developments. Inspired by an ideal that had become threatened by war, political rivalries, and epidemics, the text does not limit itself to recounting a highly chivalric and courtly love story that interweaves exterior scenes of extreme belligerence with interior scenes of great tenderness. It is instead a veritable multimedia project, to use the words of contemporary criticism.¹⁶ Before La Dame à la Licorne, in a different Parisian context, the caustic Roman de Fauvel, which centres on another emblematic animal, had already blended profane text, image, and music. In the second half of the fourteenth century, the entire oeuvre of Guillaume de Machaut would be devoted to this multidisciplinary aesthetic that fully immersed readers in the realm of the senses. In these late romances, commissioned by and for patrons of great importance, poetry, music, dance, and the nature of the images expressed a comprehensive culture of the senses, long before the famous cycle of tapestries devoted to the Lady and the Unicorn, which the romance surely helped inspire, albeit from afar. For a young woman of the court who grew up in castle hallways, this casebound book served as a code of ethical and amorous conduct, and as a promise of secret amusements. It was surely destined to help brighten the hours passed in closed chambers, not far from all the rumours and whispering, and to provide momentary shelter from the world’s very real catastrophes. In the company of a perfect lover or alone, it was for the best, even in the face of the worst.

 On the links between literature, poetry, and performance and their contemporary theorization, see in particular Campaignolle, Lesiewicz, and Théval (2017) and Penot-Lacassagne and Théval (2018).

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References Baldwin, John W. The Language of Sex. Five Voices from Northern France around 1200. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994. Beer, Rudiger Robert. Unicorn. Myth and Reality. Trans. Charles M. Stern. New York, NY: Mason/Charter, 1977. Boulton, Maureen B. M. The Song in the Story: Lyric Insertions in French Narrative Fiction. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Campaignolle, Hélène, Sophie Lesiewicz, and Gaelle Théval, ed. Livre/Poésie: une histoire en pratique(s). Paris: Editions des Cendres, 2017. Cerquiglini-Toulet, Jacqueline. “Le Dit”. Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, VIII, 1: La Littérature française aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Ed. Daniel Poirion. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1988. 86 – 94. Chrétien de Troyes. Le Chevalier au lion. Ed. and trans. David F. Hult. In Les Romans de Chrétien de Troyes. Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1994. Coilly, Nathalie, and Marie-Hélène Tesnière. Le Roman de la rose, l’art d’aimer au Moyen Âge. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2012. Cremonesi, Carla. “Le lion reconnaissant: Yvain et le Roman de la dame a la lycorne et du biau chevalier au lyon.” Marche romane. Mediaevalia 80 (1980): 49 – 53. Delahaye, Elisabeth, and Michel Pastoureau, ed. Les Secrets de la licorne. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais, 2013. Fourrier, Anthime. “La destinataire de La Dame à la licorne”. Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Pierre Le Gentil, professeur à la Sorbonne, par ses collègues, ses élèves et ses amis. Paris: Société d’Edition d’Enseignement Supérieur et Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1973. 265 – 276. Freeman, Margaret B. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976. Gennrich, Friedrich, ed. Le Romans de la dame a la lycorne et du biau chevalier au lyon. Ein Abenteuerroman aus dem ersten Drittel des XIV. Jahrhunderts. Dresden: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1908. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la Rose. Ed. and trans. Armand Strubel. Paris: Librairie générale française, 1992. Koble, Nathalie. “Échanges courtois. Les insertions poétiques du Roman de la Dame à la licorne et du Beau Chevalier”. Romania (2021a) (forthcoming). Koble, Nathalie, trans. Le Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier au Lion. Paris: Phébus, 2021b. Léonard, Monique. Le Dit et sa technique littéraire des origines à 1340. Paris: Champion, 1996. Penot-Lacassagne, Olivier, and Gaelle Théval, ed. Poésie et performance. Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2018. Planche, Alice. “Le plus fort, la plus belle. Les extrêmes de rêve courtois dans le Roman de la dame à la licorne et du beau chevalier au lion 1350”. Medieval and Renaissance Monographs. Series VI: Courtly Romance. A Collection of Essays. Ed. Guy R. Mermier. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1984. 177 – 202.

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Renart, Jean. Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole. Ed. and trans. Jean Dufournet and Félix Lecoy. Paris: Champion, 2008. Rosenberg, Samuel N., Hans Tischler, and Marie-Geneviève Grossel, ed. and trans. Chansons des trouvères. Chanter m’estuet. Paris: Librairie générale française, 1995. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Experiments in Fiction: Framing and Reframing Romance at the End of the Middle Ages, and Beyond.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 30 (2015): 287 – 450. Taylor, Jane H. M. The Making of Poetry: Late Medieval French Poetic Anthologies. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Taylor, Jane H. M. Text and Context: The Poetry of François Villon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Le Roman de la Dame a la Lycorne et du Biau Chevalier au Lion: Text, Image, Rubric.” French Studies 51 (1997): 1 – 18. Van Buren, Anne H. Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325 – 1515. New York, NY: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2011.

Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma

What Makes a Narrative Cycle Work? The example of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript Introduction In this article we return to a theme to which the dedicatee of this volume has devoted a number of thought-provoking and influential contributions in the last decade of the twentieth century. Jane Taylor identified this topic, the creation of narrative cycles, in a chapter that deals with fourteenth-century Arthurian literature in French, acknowledging that the term she introduced, cyclicity, was regrettably “a rather unattractive neologism” (1987, 313). In the early nineties, she related the composition of late-medieval Arthurian romances such as Ysaïe le Triste and Perceforest to the medieval cyclical view of universal history (Taylor 1992) and informed the scholarly community about her views on cyclicity at two colloquia in which papers and notes on cycling and recycling in medieval literature (Amherst, 1– 2 November 1991) and the development of narrative cycles in the chansons de geste and Arthurian romances (Amsterdam, 17– 18 December 1992) were presented and discussed. In these papers she introduced highly useful notions like “plenitude” (Taylor 1996) and “organic cyclicity” (Taylor 1994), which scholars gratefully adopted (and sometimes revised, as happened in Bastert 1997 and Moran 2014), and to which we will refer below.¹ In more recent research, cyclicity has attracted renewed attention. Philip Bennett, for example, linked humour to the rewriting of the chansons de geste which are part of the Guillaume d’Orange tradition and studied the formation of cyclic manuscripts (2006, 313 – 388). Luke Sunderland (2010) selected the Cycle of Guillaume d’Orange, the Roman de Renart, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and the Prose Tristan to study what he termed “the aesthetic of cyclicity” (3) across genres. In the wake of Keith Busby (1994) and in particular Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner (2009), Étienne Gomez (2011), and Thomas Hinton (2012) related Chrétien’s Perceval and its Continuations to cycle creation. Hinton defined a narrative cycle as “a collection of texts read in sequence according to a uniting principle of coherence” (6). This view on the French text corpus was contested by Leah Tether (2012), who argued that whereas a cycle is made up of sequels,

 The Amherst papers were published in Sturm-Maddox and Maddox (1996), the Amsterdam contributions were assembled in Besamusca et al. (1994). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-012

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that is, texts which follow earlier finished ones, the Perceval Continuations intend to bring unfinished texts to a conclusion (58 – 60).² Whilst Tether still accepted the word cycle, even though she found it a “sometimes nebulous term” (6), Miriam Edlich-Muth (2014), studying five Arthurian text collections (Malory’s Morte Darthur, the Tavola Ritonda, Ulrich Fuetrer’s Buch der Abenteur, the Dutch Lancelot Compilation and Micheau Gonnot’s compilation in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 112), rejected it, due to the confusion it has created over time, in favour of the term “chronography”, which suggests “the charting of chronological developments aligned to a biography” (9). Patrick Moran (2014, 31– 32) assigned the creation of French Arthurian narrative cycles to the period 1200 – 1240, arguing that later texts like Ysaïe le Triste and Perceforest are not cycles but “romans-sommes” [summa romances], lengthy homogenous narratives “sans la fragmentation inhérente aux cycles” (38) [without the fragmentation inherent to cycles]. All these more recent publications share the idea, already put forward in earlier research, that an essential characteristic of cyclicity concerns its materiality. Texts which are said to form a narrative cycle are copied in a single manuscript or a set of manuscripts. When, at the Amsterdam colloquium in 1992, Povl Skårup listed the features that he thought to be pertinent to a cycle, using the Karlamagnús saga as his example, he stressed this criterion, arguing that a cycle consists of “au moins deux textes” [at least two texts] and that these texts are part of the “même manuscrit, dans l’ordre des événements” (1994, 76) [the same manuscript, in the order of events]. Eloquent illustrations of this principle are provided by the Dutch Lancelot Compilation, which has come down to us in the compiler’s working copy, made around 1320 – 1325 (now The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 129 A 10; see Besamusca 2003, Brandsma 2021, 171– 185, and the conclusion of the present article), and the so-called Rappoltsteiner Parzival. This highly intriguing German Perceval Cycle, in which translations of the French Continuations are inserted into Wolfram’s Parzival instead of (a German translation of) Chrétien’s Perceval, is extant in two manuscripts, one of which is the original copy, made around 1335 (now Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Donaueschingen 97). The five persons involved, two authors, a translator and two scribes, worked in this manuscript to develop a narrative cycle within the material confinement of a codex.³

 As will be shown below, the Burgsteinfurt manuscript provides an interesting case for the distinction between a sequel and a continuation.  For a recent discussion of the Rappoltsteiner Parzival in French, see Dietl (2020, 898 – 903).

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In the reflections on cyclicity which we have mentioned so far, a strong, albeit not exclusive, research focus was placed on the creation of narrative cycles. Deviating from this trend, a more reception-oriented approach was advocated by Patrick Moran (2014) and, more recently, Fabian Sietz (2017), who did not intend to establish whether or not the Rappoltsteiner Parzival should be characterized as a cycle, but wondered whether the concept of cyclicity could offer a model for analyzing the coherence of this heterogeneous and decentralized text collection (25). To this end, he studied material, paratextual, and narratorial aspects of the two extant manuscripts. We enthusiastically espouse this approach. We do not want to know how a narrative cycle is formed, but how it functioned for its users, be they listeners or readers. We will study a number of codicological and narrative elements deployed by medieval authors, translators, scribes, and compilers, adopting for this purpose two umbrella terms which are usually applied to indicate different storytelling modes: showing and telling (RimmonKenan 2001, 107). Our case study is a Middle Dutch narrative cycle which is preserved in a single codex. What did users notice when they looked at the pages of that manuscript and read or heard the texts?

Showing Our material consists of three texts written by the Flemish author Jacob van Maerlant (c. 1230 – 90) and the Brabantine writer Lodewijc van Velthem (c. 1270 – 1330). Both authors produced a vast oeuvre and have received ample scholarly attention (see for example Van Oostrom 1996; Besamusca, Sleiderink, and Warnar 2009). Maerlant contributed two texts to what we will call here the Merlin Cycle (see also Brandsma 2021, 171, 185). In 1261– 1262, he wrote the Historie vanden Grale (History of the Grail) and the Boek van Merline (Merlin’s Book). These texts are Middle Dutch verse renditions of Old French prose versions of Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin. Maerlant refers to his source as “Mijn her robrecht van barioen / De in dat walsch screyff al dit doen / Vnde sonder rime al gader dichte” (Maerlant 1980, ll. 1560 – 1562) [My Lord Robert de Boron, who composed this all in French and wrote it completely in prose]. He dedicated his Historie vanden Grale to “hern alabrechte / Den heer van vorne wal myt rechte” (ll. 15 – 16) [Lord Albrecht, the legal Lord of Voorne]. The Grail story comprises around sixteen hundred lines and is followed by the Boek van Merline, which describes in almost eight thousand five hundred lines the birth of Merlin and his successful efforts to put young Arthur on the throne. Scholars have argued that Maerlant wrote this diptych as a contribution to an educational program for young noblemen of Holland and Zeeland residing at the court of

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Voorne around 1260 (Van Oostrom 1996, 127– 136; Besamusca and Brandsma 1998). More than half a century later, around 1326 – 1327, Lodewijk van Velthem provided a continuation to Maerlant’s texts by translating the Suite-Vulgate du Merlin. ⁴ This lengthy narrative of around twenty-six thousand lines relates how the young King Arthur subdues his rebellious noblemen with the aid of Merlin. Although Velthem does not mention a patron, it is conceivable that he wrote his Merlijn Continuation at the request of Albrecht van Voorne’s son, Gerard, who may have provided him with a prebend around 1216 (Van Engen 2009). Velthem’s Merlijn Continuation rounded off the Merlin Cycle which has come down to us in a single fifteenth-century codex, known as the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. This still privately-owned codex, a paper manuscript that was copied around 1425 (Deschamps 1972, 33 – 35; Maerlant 1980, 25 – 40), is kept in the Fürst zu Bentheimsche Schlossbibliothek at Burgsteinfurt under shelfmark MS 28 (olim: B 37).⁵ The manuscript was made in one campaign, preserves its original binding, and consists of nineteen quires. Each gathering counts twelve folios, with the exception of the ninth quire, which has fourteen leaves. Originally, two hundred and twenty-nine folios were used to copy the texts, but two folios, namely 5 and 6, were torn out in the nineteenth century, supposedly by the children of a clergyman (Maerlant 1980, 25).⁶ The folios measure 287 mm x 205 mm; the written space is 205 mm x c. 150 mm. The first text copied in this manuscript, Maerlant’s Historie vanden Grale, ends with the second line on fol. 13ra and is followed directly by his Boek van Merline, which continues to fol. 62vb. At that point, Velthem’s Merlijn Continuation starts and runs on until the end of the codex (fol. 229r). The texts are copied in a Low German dialect from the eastern part of the Low Countries.⁷ The codex makes a highly uniform impression, due to both the regular quire structure and the consistent layout. The text is copied in two columns of thirtyeight to forty lines per page in a very readable cursive script. The sober decora-

 Note that the French prose versions of the Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin are followed by the Didot Perceval in two manuscripts to form what Moran (2014) calls the “Petit Cycle de Robert de Boron”.  A slightly earlier date, c. 1422, has been proposed by R. Lievens on the basis of the watermarks, see Kienhorst (1988, 66). We have studied the manuscript by means of a microfilm.  The missing verses are included in the line counting of the 1880 edition by J. van Vloten, jumping from l. 641 to l. 954 (Maerlant 1880), but not in the more recent edition by Sodmann (Maerlant 1980). As a result, the line numbering of these two editions does not run parallel for the largest part of Maerlant’s texts. Sodmann did not edit Velthem’s text.  Van Vloten edited the Low German text in such a way that he restored, in his view, the original Middle Dutch wording. When quoting Velthem’s text, we will refer to the line numbering in Maerlant (1880), but will cite the text as copied in the manuscript.

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tion is limited to simple pen-flourished initials in red and black ink, red chapter headings and black paragraph signs. The only visible irregularity occurs on fol. 228r. Up to that point a single scribe copied the text. After line eleven of column a, he wrote “amen”, perhaps because his exemplar was incomplete (Maerlant 1980, 32).⁸ A second scribe, whose hand differs slightly from that of his colleague (Maerlant 1980, 32– 33), took over and copied the remaining one hundred and eighty-four lines on fols 228ra–229ra. A closer look reveals that this change resulted in an inconsistency which may have surprised the reader. Whereas the main scribe uses the name Gawyn to indicate Arthur’s nephew Gauvain, in the final episode of the Merlijn Continuation, in which Gawyn is turned into a dwarf due to his failure to greet a damsel, a change of name occurs. The second scribe calls the hero Walewijn, which is the common name for Gauvain in Middle Dutch.⁹ It is likely that both scribes had a source at their disposal that featured the name Walewijn, which the main scribe must have changed systematically into Gawyn in order to adapt his text to the literary tradition to which his patron was acquainted. Gawein is, after all, the usual name for Gauvain in German literature. The material regularity of the codex is strongly furthered by the initials. They are placed exclusively at the beginning of chapters, accompanying the rubricated chapter headings.¹⁰ On average, they are three to four lines high, occasionally two lines (most frequently near the beginning of the codex), or five (most often in the later part of the codex). The initials which mark the beginnings of the texts by Maerlant and Velthem hardly deviate from this pattern: on fol. 1r, the Historie vanden Grale starts with an initial of six lines, the Boek van Merline opens with an initial of four lines (fol. 13r), and the Merlijn Continuation begins on fol. 62v with an initial of five lines. Next to the initial on fol. 1r, the two largest initials appear in the copy of Velthem’s text. Accidentally or not, both are placed at the beginning of chapters that deal with Gawyn: on fol. 101r (Maerlant 1880, l. 16355), at the moment that the reader will be informed about his youth (six lines) and on fol. 155v (Maerlant 1880, l. 24770), when we are going to read about Gawyn’s knighting (seven lines). In both cases, moreover, Velthem announces, deviating from his French source, the beginning of a new “book”, as we will discuss in more detail in the section on “Telling”. As a result of this uniform decoration, readers do not see that they are dealing with independent texts  Maerlant (1880, l. 36034). It could well be that the scribe stopped for another reason, such as a health issue.  First appearance at Maerlant (1880, l. 36037).  There is one notable exception, which occurs in the part of the second scribe: an initial of two lines high without a preceding chapter heading on fol. 228v.

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that are brought together. It is only when they read Velthem’s prologue that they will notice this, as will be explained below. A closer look at a number of the well-known French narrative cycles reveals that the assembled texts in these collections are much more marked visually than is the case in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript.¹¹ In Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), MS fr. 794, the individual texts, including Chrétien’s verse romances, are clearly indicated by explicits and pen-flourished initials on a golden field.¹² Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1450, which Taylor (1994, 63) has characterized as a codex which “seems to herald the shift from sequential to organic cyclicity”, preserves likewise a narrative cycle that shows the reader the start of the individual verse texts, here by means of decorated initials.¹³ Various Lancelot-Grail Cycle manuscripts, like Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3479 – 3480 and BnF, MSS fr. 112, fr. 113 – 116, and fr. 117– 120, visually demarcate the autonomous romances (Moran 2014, 553 – 564).¹⁴ A notable exception is Paris, BnF, MS fr. 98, in which the large initials that mark the beginning of a new text are absent in the case of the last three romances (Moran 2014, 562). All these French manuscripts put into perspective the uniformity of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. Visually, it presents the Merlin Cycle as a continuous whole, but, as we will see below, someone who actually reads the texts is made aware of the division between the parts of Maerlant and Velthem. In addition to the initials, the rubricated chapter headings also support the uniform appearance of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. Whilst copying the text, the scribe left blank spaces in the columns in order to add the headings later, on the basis of his exemplar or an independent list of titles.¹⁵ The phrasing of these headings, which are in prose, is quite regular. Most of the time they start with the words “Van” [About] or “Hoe” [How], although the reader also comes across alternative opening phrases, like “Hier” [Here]. This regular appearance was a

 We used Gallica to consult these manuscripts.  For a description of the codex, see Busby et al. (1993, II: 28 – 31).  For a description of the codex, see Busby et al. (1993, II: 31– 33).  For BnF, MS fr. 112, see Pickford (1960).  It is notable that sometimes the blank spaces are too big for the short headings (for example, of just a single line), whilst at other moments the longer headings are cramped in order to fit into the blank spaces. On fol. 209r, the scribe erroneously copied the heading which was meant to introduce the chapter on fol. 213r (Maerlant 1880, ll. 33778 – 33779). The title was crossed out and replaced by the correct title in black ink (Maerlant 1880, ll. 33166 – 33167). For independent lists of headings, see Rouse and Rouse (2011). The idea of an independent list is supported by discrepancies between text and chapter heading at ll. 10995 – 10997, 11673 – 11675, 13311– 13313, 15121– 15127, 25195 – 25197.

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deliberate choice, as other possibilities existed. Two fragmentary text witnesses of the Merlijn Continuation show that this was the case. The Leiden fragment of the text (Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Ltk. 1107) proves that chapter headings in verse circulated around 1325 – 1350, at the time of copying.¹⁶ The only extant title reads: “Hort hier tusschen den coninc Ban den strijt / ende tusschen Claudase, dies droech nijt” (Stallaert 1880, ll. 143 – 144) [Hear here about the battle between King Ban and between Claudas, who hated it]. The awkward phrasing suggests that the scribe changed a prose heading into verses. The scribe of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript, introducing the chapter on fol. 159v, opted here and elsewhere for prose: “Den groten strijt tuschen den koninck / Ban vnde den koninck Claudas vnde de myt em weren” (Maerlant 1880, ll. 25416 – 25417 [The great battle between King Ban and King Claudas and those who were with them]. The second text witness of the Merlijn Continuation that is important for our present purposes consists of three folios (Münster, Staatsarchiv, Depositum Landberg-Velen, n.s.), which were copied around the time that Velthem finished his work, according to Jan Willem Klein (1995, 9, 14, nr. 50). As is the case in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript, the scribe wrote prose headings. An additional feature of his titles catches the eye: he numbered them. The folios preserve two headings, one in red and the other in black ink, which are given the Roman numerals VI and XIII. These titles correspond with the Burgsteinfurt headings on fols 80v (Maerlant 1880, ll. 13312– 13313) and 117v (Maerlant 1880, 18760 – 18761). A simple count makes it clear that the headings in the Münster copy must have differed slightly from the list in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript (as here the Münster chapter 13 would have been number 12, starting with number 6 on fol. 80v). More importantly, the Münster numbering reveals that in this manuscript Velthem’s Merlijn Continuation must have been regarded as a discrete text, starting with chapter number 1.¹⁷ In Burgsteinfurt, this visual demarcation of the individual texts is absent, as the scribe refrained from numbering the chapter headings.

Telling The word “boeck” [book] is a crucial element of what Hinton has dubbed the “aesthetics of coherence” (2012, 20). It is the key term when it comes to making  For the date, see Klein (1995, 14, nr. 45).  Next to the three Merlijn Continuation folios, a fourth folio preserves lines from Maerlant’s Boek van Merline. Unfortunately, this fragment contains no chapter heading. See Maerlant (1980, 221– 245). Velthem’s text of the Münster folios remains unedited.

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clear to the audience that Velthem’s Merlin text belongs to Maerlant’s preceding romances. The word is used to describe the tale Velthem creates (the story of Merlin and Arthur’s first years) as well as for the actual object from which that tale is read to the listeners, and even for divisions within the tale. There are four elements to the cyclification process, four kinds of “signaux cycliques” [cyclic signals] as Skårup (1994) called them, to be discussed here: the prologue(s) and epilogue, the source fiction (Merlin dictated the text to his scribe Blasijs and we read what he wrote), the “formal switches”, and the references forwards and backwards. When it comes to his prologue and epilogue, Maerlant more or less followed his French source.¹⁸ At the start of his Grail story, he discusses the patron and the purpose of his translation. At the end of the Prose Joseph-translation (Maerlant 1980, ll. 1559 – 1607), he refers to Robert de Boron’s cryptic and unfulfilled promise of writing four or five further books on the main characters of the Grail story (Alein, Peter, Broen, Moyses, the Fisher King), after writing about Merlin. This material, Maerlant says, can be found in “Dat grote boeck vanden grale” (ll. 1587, 1591) [The big book of the Grail], which he himself does not have at his disposal. If it were to come into his hands, he would also translate it, but now he ends the first book (see l. 1607). The second book starts with a mini-prologue: “Nv hoert gij heren al bij sonder / Van onsen heren een groet wonder” (ll. 1608 – 1609) [Hear now, my lords, a great miracle concerning Our Lord]. At this point, the actual translation is interrupted by the insertion of the so-called Mascheroen trial (ll. 1608 – 2582), added by Maerlant, or perhaps Velthem (Warnar 2009; Brandsma 2021, 149). This episode is an example of what Taylor (1994, 62; 1996, 95, 119) has termed “plenitude”, the tendency, as part of organic cyclicity, to ensure that chronological gaps are filled. It describes how the devil tries to convince Christ that all sinful people should go to hell; in vain, since Mary intercedes and makes her son promise that mankind will always be allowed to atone for its sins and thus still go to heaven. This works well to introduce the translation of the start of Robert’s Merlin, where the devils decide to create a human accomplice. Maerlant then picks up the French source again and follows this faithfully to the end.¹⁹

 For Maerlant’s highly critical approach to the French tale, especially where it contradicts the biblical narrative of Christ’s Passion, see Besamusca and Brandsma (1998), Sleiderink (2010), and Brandsma (2018).  At Maerlant (1980, l. 4170), Maerlant does close off the second book and starts a third about Vertegier, Uter, and Pandragoen, where the French text does not have such a subdivision (FügPierreville 2014, 192– 193).

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Crucial for the way in which the Merlin Cycle functions in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript is the moment Velthem takes over from Maerlant. Although the transition is not signalled with much fanfare in the manuscript, as the previous section has mentioned, there is an informative prologue to the Merlijn Continuation on fol. 62v (Maerlant 1880, ll. 10409 – 10424). In fact, Velthem starts writing some ten lines earlier, in a transitional passage with a minor yet significant change to Maerlant’s final lines. The last word Maerlant wrote in his translation must have been “vreden” [peace], concluding that after his election by way of the Sword in the Stone, Arthur was chosen to be king and ruled the land of Logres for a long time in great peace.²⁰ This corresponds with the final line of the prose version of Robert de Boron’s Merlin: “Ensi fu Artus esleüs a roi et tint la terre et le regne de Logres lonc tans en pais” (Füg-Pierreville 2014, 418, ll. 54– 55) [Thus, Arthur was elected king and held the land and reign of Logres in peace for a long time]. However, the text as Velthem changed it, now features the opposite “onvreden” [literally “un-peace”] instead of “vreden”, and states that Arthur ruled for a long time “myt groten onvreden / Als gij horen zult hier naer” (ll. 10398 – 10399) [in warlike times, as you will hear after this]. By changing just one word, Velthem undid the closure of Maerlant’s narrative, and created the need to continue the story to describe young Arthur and his conflicts with his barons. In Tether’s (2012) terminology, one could say that Velthem modified his text’s status from a sequel to a continuation. The transitional passage is followed by the chapter heading “Van eynen houe den koninch artur hielt to Caredol dar beyde koninge hertogen vnde vorsten quamen” [About a court King Arthur held in Caredol, where kings, barons, and rulers attended] which in no way stands out from the normal format of the manuscript. Yet the new chapter starts in a highly significant way: Got de alle dinck vermach Vnde zijn moder dar he inne lach Se moten my in dit begin Geuen wijsheit vnde sin To vol makene desse saken Dar iacop van morlant irst dat maken Off began vnde liet zijn dinck Dar artur de koninck crone ontfinck Als dat in merline bescreuen es Nu wilt her lodewijch zijd seker des Van velthem dit voert vt geuen Na dat in dat walsch is bescreuen

 We do not know if Maerlant wrote an epilogue to his text. If so, then Velthem deleted it.

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Want nv irst gaet an de dinck Van merlijne vnde van den koninck Wo dat artur began regneren Alto male bij merlijns leren (Maerlant 1880, ll. 10409 – 10424) [God, who is omnipotent, and His Mother, in whom He lay, must give me, in this beginning, the wisdom and ability to finish this story, which Jacob van Maerlant began to create, who left matters at the point when Arthur received the royal crown, as is described in Merline. Now Sir Lodewijc of Velthem, rest assured of that, will continue this (tale) as it is written down in the French; because only now does the story unfold of Merlin and the King, of how Arthur began his rule with the help of Merlin’s teachings.]

This prologue reveals to the audience that the Burgsteinfurt manuscript does not contain a very lengthy romance, a “roman-somme” as Moran (2014) would call it, but a narrative cycle. Due to the authorial presence and the indication of Maerlant’s and Velthem’s share in the whole of the cycle, the readers and listeners are informed at this point that separate texts were brought together in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. Seeking divine guidance in his continuation of Maerlant’s work, Velthem announces that he used a French source. He is referring to the Suite-Vulgate du Merlin, which belongs to the cyclic version of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, where it is part of the Estoire de Merlin, which follows the Estoire del Saint Graal and precedes the Lancelot (or Lancelot propre).²¹ As a result, the Grail and Merlin texts combined by Maerlant and Velthem come from two different cycles at the level of the French sources. Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin were first composed in verse, but soon cast in prose. In that form they became far more popular, sometimes in combination with the Didot Perceval (Pickens 2006). Joseph and Merlin were then rewritten and augmented with the tale of Arthur’s first years in power to become the Estoire del Saint Graal and Estoire de Merlin in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Although the Prose Joseph and Merlin clearly belong together and even show many signs of what Taylor (1994) has called “organic cyclicity”, it is important to note that this coupling originated in a cycle pre-dating the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, from which the Suite-Vulgate draws its cyclic elements. Still, the “signaux cycliques” work together well and help Velthem create the impression of a whole. The words “vol makene” (l. 10413) perfectly describe his intention: he completes the story of Merlin and Arthur. The same idea of completeness reveals itself in Velthem’s epilogue: Van merline vindick nicht mer bescreuen In dat walsch vnde om de saken

 See Combes (2003).

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En wil iks nicht mer in dutsche maken Want ene heuet eyn wijff geuaen, Dar he nummer en mach ontgaen Noch nummer mer vornemet van em man Wat machmen dar meer aff seggen dan En gheen dink so help my god Dan dat he was een fijn sod Al heet he vroet vnde conde vele Nochtan heuet ene een wijff by oren spele, Dat se em toende menichfolde Brachte int nette dar se wolde Dar by en was met nicht so vroet man Op dat dar wiues herte althen leide an Se en hoendene wal int leste (Maerlant 1880, ll. 36192– 36207) [About Merlin I have found no more in the French text, and therefore I will write no more about him, because a woman made him a captive in a prison he may never escape, and no one will ever hear from him again. What difference would it make to say more about it? Nothing, so help me God, apart from saying that he was a complete fool, even when he is considered wise and could do many things. Nonetheless a woman, by her tricks, which she played on him frequently, has brought him in the net; there never was a man so wise who, if a woman set her heart to it, would not be put to shame by her in the end.]

Before the anti-feminist rant (cf. Brandsma 2021, 181, 188 – 189), Velthem does explain that there is no more Merlin material in his source. He also sounds somewhat disappointed in the Merlin character itself, which may have kept him from looking for other sources. With a brief prayer and the date of writing the final lines (Maundy Thursday, 1326), he ends his work, “Desen boek van merline” (l. 36211) [This book of Merlin], “Dar men schone iesten in vint” (l. 36218) [in which great tales are found]. Whilst Velthem textually signposted the beginning and end of his contribution, he also provided two more prologue-like passages within that work itself. These are signalled by the two largest initials in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript, mentioned above under “Showing”. In these interior prologues, he announces the start of a new section of the narrative, for which he also uses the term “boeck”. There are two more similar passages, far less elaborately worded and with a smaller initial, where the narrator also says that a new book begins.²²

 ll. 22295 – 22297 announce the story of how King Arthur won Guinevere and states that here ends the second book and that there are two more to come. The chapter heading also mentions that the second book of Merlin starts here and is about the wooing. With the second prologuelike passage still to come (again the start of a new book, and therefore two more “books” in the rest of the text), this is correct and that would mean that the Velthem section has four parts,

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In all, this would mean five subdivisions or chapters in the continuation. In all cases, there is no equivalent subdivision in the French source (in Sommer’s edition). The subdivisions are not consistently numbered one to five in Velthem’s section, whilst Maerlant explicitly speaks of books one to three. In a way, the two longer transitional passages are epilogues and prologues at the same time: one section is closed and the next opened, not unlike the formal switches discussed below. In the first (ll. 16323 – 16354), the narrator concludes an episode on fighting the Saxons near “Cambenijc” (l. 16271) by stating that this region will return in the narrative when Arthur goes there to win his bride Guinevere. He thus ends “dit boek” (l. 16342) and starts up another “Van gawans kintheit” (l. 16344) [About Gawain’s childhood].²³ The reference forward to the later events clearly shows that although a new part begins, it belongs to the same larger tale. The second prologue-like passage also concerns Gawain. It lies well over eight thousand lines later in the narrative. Again, the first-person narrator ends a “boec” (l. 24761) and begins a new one, this time on how Gawain and his companions were knighted by King Arthur. The first line of the new section is in full prologue mode: “Ic beginne in godes name” (l. 24770) [I will start in God’s name], and then describes how beloved the character Gawain is by whoever hears tell of him.²⁴

quite different in size, and signposted quite differently as well. Also, in l. 27444, the narrator states that he brings to a close “dit boek” [this book] and will start talking about Arthur’s marriage. The prologue-less reference to a book about King Rion in l. 33599 is cryptic and will not be taken into account here. In overview, the five books would be: Book 1, l. 10409; Book 2, l. 16355; Book 3, l. 22298; Book 4, l. 24770; Book 5, l. 27450, with books 3 and 4 being smaller than the other three.  The corresponding passage in Sommer (1979, 133 – 134), does not mention anything like this reference forward or the transition from one book to the next. In our contribution, we have used Sommer (1979) as representative of the French Suite-Vulgate tradition, which has not been charted like that of the Merlin and Lancelot. Besamusca (1991, 142– 152) has shown that up to the Battle of Trebes, the Dutch translation follows the so-called “long” version (found in Sommer), and after that combines that version with variants of the “short version” (often also represented in Sommer’s variants). Poirion et al. (2001, LXVIII), which could also be used, gives the text of Bonn, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 526, and suggests that it is related to BnF, MS fr. 110 and thus to the short version which, according to Besamusca (1991, 152), need not be consulted in a comparison with the Dutch translation. There is still work to be done here, but using Sommer (1979) seems the best option at this moment.  Sommer (1979, 251/3) describes the twelve swords found in a hoard (cf. l. 24479), which will later be given to Gawain and his friends by Arthur. This is where Velthem starts his new book, but no such thing is happening in the French narrative.

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Given the etiological nature of cyclical texts (Taylor 1994), it is remarkable that both these signposted subdivisions concern Gawain. Like the Grail, Merlin, and King Arthur, Gawain and his brothers are provided with their chronological “enfances” in the Suite-Vulgate and its translation by Velthem. The appreciation for Gawain in Middle Dutch Arthuriana is well known.²⁵ Did it perhaps also motivate Velthem’s choice to place book-divisions at precisely these points? For the cyclic aspect of the codex, the larger initials marking the transitions are telling, as are the narrator’s structural explanations that these new books/parts belong to the same tale, the “Boeck van Merline” [Book of Merlin] of the epilogue. Uniformity in both the source fiction and the formal switches also creates cohesion in the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. For the source fiction, the combination of texts from two different cycles is less problematic than it could have been, since in the French Estoire de Merlin, the source fiction set up in Robert de Boron’s work is taken over and becomes part of the sequence of source fictions in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. In Robert’s Grail tale, there is no explanation of how the story came to be, but in (the prose version of) his Merlin, this is carefully constructed around the confessor of Merlin’s mother. He is her confidant in the difficult times after Merlin’s birth, when it looks as if she will be executed for having a child out of wedlock. Merlin then uses his knowledge of the past, given to him by his demon father, to set his mother free by proving that the judge himself is a bastard. Merlin not only has knowledge of the past, but also of the future, given to him by God to balance out his demonic nature. This knowledge allows Merlin to have recorded what is happening, and here the confessor pops up again: “Desse blasijs zegge ick iv / Was een harde duer clerck / Vnde he bescreef ons eirst dit werck” (Maerlant 1980, ll. 4011– 4013) [This Blasijs was a great cleric, I tell you, and he first wrote down this work for us]. What we read, then, is what Blasijs wrote down as Merlin dictated it to him. So, Merlin himself is the source for the tale: “Dus visierde merlijn twaren / Dit werck vnde dede dar ombe onderzoek / Dar ombe zo hetet merlijns boeck” (ll. 4125 – 4127) [In this way, Merlin really set up this tale and did research for it. That is why it is called Merlin’s book]. Blasijs is ordered to get some ink and put down on parchment (“perkement”, l. 4098) everything that happened so far. The listing of events conforms to that in the French source, but – highly consistently – the added Mascheroen episode is also referred to (ll. 4113 – 4116).

 Cf. Besamusca and Quinlan (2012, 198 – 208).

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Time and again, in both Maerlant’s and Velthem’s texts, Merlin visits Blasijs and brings the scribal version of the story up to date.²⁶ Several times, it is said that “bij em zo wete wij dat noch” (l. 8395) [through him we still know these things].²⁷ The consistent source fiction solidly unifies the Merlin story, up to l. 28610 when a new construction is introduced which, in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle set-up, connects to the source fiction in the Lancelot. At Arthur’s court, Gawain and the other young knights who have been fighting for Arthur against their own fathers, pay their respects to the queen. They consider themselves her knights and she is so impressed with their deeds that she calls upon four clerks to write down all of their adventures and those of all the knights of the court. This means: Dat men alzo lange als de werlt sal wesen De auenture moge vinden van desen Dus weren vier clerke genomen dar De auenturen to scriuene dar naer Tote noch heuet ze blasijs bescreuen Dat merlijn heuet vt gegeuen Vnde nu voert van deser vren Screuen de clerke de auenturen (Maerlant 1880, ll. 28615 – 28622) [that as long as the world exists, their adventures can be found recorded. Thus, four clerks were employed there to write down the adventures; up to now, Blasijs wrote down what Merlin has said, and from now on, the clerks wrote down the adventures.]

The Dutch translation describes the changeover from one source fiction to another with more attention for Blasijs than the French original.²⁸ The central role Blasijs has played is well remembered here. Since Maerlant’s and Velthem’s tale both repeatedly suggest that they revert to the scribe’s writings and Merlin’s words, they belong together.²⁹

 This happens in ll. 5763 – 5764, 6433 – 6434, 7151– 7153, 8392– 8393 of Maerlant (1980) for the Maerlant section, and ll. 13173 – 13185, 15105 – 15126, 20206 – 20218, 21744– 21749, 21854– 21855, 25174– 25180, 27098 – 27099, 27155 – 27173, 27435 – 27437, 28157– 28158, 33588 – 33593 and 35228 – 35248 of Maerlant (1880) for Velthem’s continuation.  Similar phrases: Maerlant (1880, ll. 21749, 27173, 28158).  Cf. Sommer (1979, 321/41– 3): “& lors furent esleu .iiij. clerc qui mistrent en escrit toutes les auentures si com elles uenoient a court des illuec en auant” [and then four clerks were chosen, who henceforth put down in writing all of the adventures as news of them arrived at the court].  In fact, both the Suite-Vulgate and the translation describe twice after this point in the narrative how Merlin still visits his scribe and makes him record the events: Sommer (1979, 406/42– 407/4) and ll. 33588 – 33593 of Maerlant (1880); Sommer (1979, 451/2– 28) and Maerlant (1880, ll. 35228 – 35248). The latter scene includes the tearful farewell of Merlin and his scribe, as Merlin

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Like the source fiction, the formal switches and the chapter headings create cohesion. They function in a similar way as “signaux cycliques”. The Suite-Vulgate follows the interlace model of the Lancelot-Queste-Mort Artu sections of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in having an elaborate interweaving of narrative threads. The changeover from one thread to another is signalled by a formulaic passage stating that “li contes” will now speak no more of X and talk about Y. Then, usually signposted by an initial, a miniature and/or a rubric, the next section begins with “Or dist li contes” that Y…³⁰ In his translation, Velthem takes over this system. If chapter titles are absent in the French source, he adds them, in the same format used in Maerlant’s diptych. There is no need for formal switches in those first two texts, since the narrative technique of interlace is not employed there, but there are subdivisions or chapters, sometimes called books, as explained above. The chapter headings in the continuation thus double the information of the narrative switch from one thread to the next. In itself, this is not unusual: an earlier Middle Dutch verse translation of the Prose Lancelot, entitled Lantsloot vander Haghedochte [Lancelot of the Cave] also combines the formal switches with (in this case: rhyming) chapter headings.³¹ It is in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript that this format becomes functional as a connective device: the same chapter headings throughout the manuscript suggest cohesion and uniformity. Where in Velthem’s French source the tale tells itself and there is no room for a first-person narrator, an “I” does occur in the Dutch translation, especially in the formulaic phrases that round off the narrative thread that will move into the background. One example suffices here, with the chapter heading given in italics: Van merlijne late ik nv de woert Vnde zecge iu van den keyser voert Van des keysers bruetlocht van rome De auenture zeget […] (Maerlant 1880, ll. 27100 – 27102) [Of Merlin I will let the words be and tell you now about the emperor. About the wedding of the emperor of Rome. The adventure/story says […]]

knows he will next go to his beloved who will imprison him forever. It is not clear whether the changeover to the recording at court by the four scribes is simply forgotten here, or is to be seen as an additional source for the tale, next to Blaise’s/Blasijs’s account.  Kennedy (1986, 156 – 78); Brandsma (2007a and 2007b); Brandsma (2010, 29 – 34).  Gerritsen (1987); cf. Brandsma (2021, 155 – 160).

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Merlin’s narrative thread is set aside for a while, and the “I” will speak about the emperor to the audience (“iu” [you]). This is very typical of the way the first-person narrator addresses the audience in these switches. After the chapter heading, and marked with an initial, the more impersonal “De auenture” picks up the tale.³² The communication with the audience, which is also a salient feature in Maerlant’s sections, is very interesting here.³³ The first-person narrator represents the author/translator and, in the actual reading aloud of the text to an audience, also becomes the performer, speaking to “iu” [you]. “De auenture” is the story, but in the performance situation it is also the book at hand. Sometimes the word “boeck” also appears in the formal switches, both in the closing and in the opening remarks. The text states, for instance, “Nu zwiget dit boeck hier van desen” (l. 21212) [Now the book is silent about them] or “Dit boeck zecht ons nv twaren” (l. 13313) [The book now truly tells us]. It is easy to imagine a reader tapping the manuscript on his knees here, as these words are read aloud. The consistency in the formal switches and chapter headings, combined with the continuous communication with the audience, brings cohesion to the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. The final type of “signaux cycliques”, the references backwards and forwards, is quite similar to the formal switches in the reference to the “boeck” as constituting both the story as it unfolds and the codex as it is being read. These references are the most conspicuous cyclical feature of both the Suite-Vulgate and Velthem’s translation. As “prequel”, written when the Lancelot-QuesteMort Artu was already in place, along with the first section of the Merlin, the Suite is firmly embedded in the larger cycle by means of references to events in the other parts. Most often, these are connected to etiological events that explain how an adventure in, for example, the Lancelot, arose. The magic dance and chess automaton from the final third of the Lancelot, for instance, were, according to the Suite-Vulgate, created by the enchanter Guinebaus, King Ban’s brother (Sommer 1979, 245 – 246). He fell in love with a lady dancing with her friends in the woods and made the dance party go on forever and ensnare anyone who passed. He also created a magic chess set for her, which would only be defeated by Lancelot, who would break the spell of the eternal dance. Velthem

 These formal switches are typical for the Lanceloet-Queeste-Arturs doet texts in the Lancelot Compilation, of which Velthem was the owner (Besamusca 2003, 47).  See for this communication Brandsma (2007a and 2007b), and Faems (2006, 89 – 154), which has an appendix on CD-rom that lists all the narrator’s remarks in her corpus, including those in Maerlant’s and Velthem’s texts discussed here.

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faithfully translates this episode and even adds a promise: “Als gy hier na wal zult verstaen” (l. 24401) [As you will hear properly later]. The French text often uses a kind of formula in these places: “ensi comme li contes vous deuisera cha en avant” (Sommer 1979, 256/25) [thus, as the story will tell you later], which Velthem takes over: “Alze iv dit boek wal zecgen sal / Hier namaels” (ll. 25192 – 25193) [As this book will properly tell you later]. There are more than forty of these references forward (and even more references backwards, but these refer mostly to events just narrated in the Merlin tale), which are sometimes vague (character X will perform great deeds in the future), and sometimes quite specific. The events that are alluded to are, in the order of the later parts: King Claudas’s conquest of King Ban’s lands, the “False Guinevere” episode, Galehaut’s war on Arthur, the coming of the Grail and Galahad, the enmity between Morgan and the queen (in both the Lancelot and Mort Artu), Mordret’s treason and the final battle. In most cases, Velthem took over what the source text stated, but in relation to the Grail events, he enriched the references significantly.³⁴ The text mentions King Pelles’s daughter, Galahad’s mother-to-be, and the Grail adventures to come. Velthem speaks in more detail about the Fisher King and the Wounded King named Broen, mentioning that the Fisher King was keeper of the Grail, “Alze iv de hystorie vor bevroede” (l. 19116) [as the story told you earlier]. He also refers to Galahad “de dat wan / Alze iv dit boek hier namaels dan / Verklaren sal wo die grael nam ende” (ll. 19129 – 19131) [who won the Grail, as this book will explain to you later, speaking of how the Grail adventure ended].³⁵ In these added references, both the communication with the audience (“iv”) and mentioning “die historie”/“dit boek” are typical of Velthem’s modus operandi. He tells his audience what they have learned from this book, the Grail-Merlin tale, so far, and what to expect in what is to come. These events will take place, however, beyond the narrative world of the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript.

How did the Burgsteinfurt manuscript work? The texts in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript feature what Sietz (2017, 24) has called “ein Bündel von Kohärenzprinzipen” [a bundle of cohesive principles]. These dis Cf. also Maerlant (1880, ll. 13499 – 13505) where Velthem refers to Mordret’s betrayal as will be narrated in “this book”.  Sommer (1979, 159/22– 31) speaks of Pelles’s daughter and the Grail kings, but contains no references backwards or forwards.

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tinctive features are both of a visual and a textual nature. The readers see a highly uniform layout (even though the second scribe acted as something of a spoilsport on fols 228 – 229), including nearly standardized initials, rubricated chapter headings and the absence of blank spaces. At the textual level, the subdivision into books, the source fiction (Blasijs), the similar formal switches, and the crossreferences add to this “volenté d’unification et de reformulation homogénéisante” [purposeful unification and homogenising reformulation], as Moran (2014, 552) has put it. In addition, Velthem’s prologue on fol. 62v, which opens the Merlijn Continuation, clearly indicates that the audience is dealing with a narrative cycle, consisting of separate entities, which are in this case written by two authors. In this text collection, the Grail, Arthur, and in particular Merlin, function as the cycle’s “centripetal core”, in the terminology of Hinton (2012, 25). The Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript shows, in accordance with the principles of organic cyclicity (Taylor 1994), a concern for origins. The reader is informed about the “untransgressible commencement” (67) of the Grail, Arthur, and Merlin. The need for “untransgressible closure” (67) is also felt, but only in the case of Merlin.³⁶ His inevitable downfall is described on the last folios of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript, where Velthem assures us, as we have seen, that his source-text had nothing more to say about the enchanter. For the finding of the Grail and the death of Arthur, readers have to reach out beyond the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. In this sense, the Grail and Arthur are part of both the centripetal core and contribute to the cycle’s “centrifugal dynamics” (Hinton 2012, 25). A number of other narrative elements work in the same way. The source fiction of the four clerks, which replaces the idea of Blasijs writing down Merlin’s testimony, looks forward to future eye-witness accounts after the final lines of the Merlin Cycle. Even more remarkable are the references forward to events which will take place in the Lancelot-QuesteMort Artu trilogy. They prove that the end of the Merlin Cycle is, in fact, not the end of the story. One may conclude that the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript cannot stand completely on its own, due to the narrative elements which break the boundaries of the text collection. In that respect, it does not meet the requirements of an organic cycle, which “cannot, by its very nature, leave events in suspension” (Taylor 1994, 70). However, it may well be that the fifteenth-century users of the manuscript at Castle Burgsteinfurt were not troubled by this feature of the Merlin Cycle. For them, the codex may have functioned as part of a larger whole. This suggestion is based on the booklist which is found on the last folio,

 On closure in general in Arthurian literature, see Trachsler (1996).

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229ra, of the Burgsteinfurt manuscript. The books mentioned there were part of the library of Count Everwijn of Bentheim (1397– 1454). The list shows that he owned, amongst other codices, “twe nye boke van lantslotte vnde eyn olt boek van lantslotte” (Maerlant 1980, 425) [two new books of Lancelot and an old book of Lancelot]. The adjectives “nye” and “olt” may reflect the different moments of acquisition of the books, their condition, or the form of the texts, prose or verse (Brandsma 2021, 148). The last of these could imply that in the count’s library a (Low German?) copy of the complete Lancelot-Grail Cycle was present, divided over three different manuscripts, including the Burgsteinfurt manuscript.³⁷ In that case, the “centrifugal dynamics” of the Merlin Cycle in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript would contribute to the idea that this text collection was part of a much larger, and evidently organic, narrative cycle. It is tempting to assume, finally, that the Burgsteinfurt manuscript and the two “new books of Lancelot” are later copies of a Middle Dutch Lancelot-Grail Cycle which was assembled by Velthem in the 1320s. This suggestion is supported by the fact that when he made his Suite-Vulgate translation in 1326, he owned the manuscript of the Lancelot Compilation, containing the final part of the Lanceloet, the Queeste van den Grale, and Arturs doet. This codex, which may have been Velthem’s working copy, was part of a set of (at least) two volumes, of which the first one is now lost. It is feasible, therefore, that Velthem also had the complete Lancelot-Grail Cycle at his disposal and may have thought of his Merlijn Continuation as belonging to the larger cycle. In this respect, a final reference forward is to be discussed here. During a battle against King Amans, two characters called Ginganbrisel and Giromelant are mentioned. Whilst this goes without further mention in the French text (Sommer 1979, 249/35), Velthem adds an intriguing comment: Vnde dit was de selue griromelant Dar men in gawyne aff bescreuen vant Vnde ginganbrisel oek mede Dar he enen camp sint tegen dede (Maerlant 1880, ll. 24655 – 24658) [And this was the same Griromelant, about whom one may find things written in Gawyne, and Ginganbrisel as well, whom he fought later.]

The text in which the two characters mentioned in the reference forward make an appearance as Gauvain’s opponents is Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal. The Middle Dutch translation of that very text was included in the Lancelot Com The French Lancelot-Grail Cycle is often copied in several volumes (Middleton 2006, 45 – 46). An example of a three-volumes set is London, British Library, MS Add. 10292– 10294.

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pilation in a somewhat truncated version, which foregrounds the adventures of Walewein (Gawijn in the Burgsteinfurt manuscript) rather than Perchevael (Hogenbirk and Johnson 2021, 94– 99). Referring to this specific variant of the Conte du Graal-translation with the title Gawyne makes perfect sense if we consider that the Lancelot Compilation manuscript was in Velthem’s possession at the time.³⁸ For him, this text collection and his Merlin book seem to have belonged together, as one big, coherent, chronological narrative. Its apocalyptic ending makes it a prime example of an organic cycle (Taylor 1994, 70). Jane, ad multos annos. What a pleasure it would be to come together in the library of the present Fürst zu Bentheim someday!

References Bastert, Bernd. “Sequentielle und organische Zyklizität. Überlegungen zur deutschen Karlepik des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts.” “Chanson de Roland” und “Rolandslied”. Actes du Colloque du Centre d’Etudes Médiévales de l’Université de Picardie Jules Verne, 11 et 12 Janvier 1996. Greifswald: Reineke, 1997. 1 – 13. Bennett, Philip E. Carnaval héroïque et écriture cyclique dans la geste de Guillaume d’Orange. Paris: Champion, 2006. Besamusca, Bart. The Book of Lancelot. The Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles. Trans. Thea Summerfield. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. Besamusca, Bart, ed. Lanceloet. De Middelnederlandse vertaling van de Lancelot en prose overgeleverd in de Lancelotcompilatie, II. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1991. Besamusca, Bart, and Frank Brandsma. “Jacob de Maerlant, traducteur vigilant, et la valeur didactique de son Graal-Merlijn.” Miscellanea Mediaevalia. Mélanges offerts à Philippe Ménard. Ed. Jean-Claude Faucon, Alain Labbé, and Danielle Quéruel. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1998. I: 121 – 131.

 There is a similar reference connected to the knight Ydiers van Noyors in l. 22715 – 22717: in the future, he will pull five rings from the fingers of a knight in King Arthur’s court “dar iv aff al bloet / Dit boeck sal wonder zecgen groet” [about this the book will tell you wonderful things]. This is a quite specific reference to the beginning of the Vengeance Raguidel and also to its Middle Dutch translation (cf. Hogenbirk and Johnson 2021, 81– 87). The latter is included in the Lancelot Compilation, just like the Conte du Graal translation. This reference, however, is also present in the Suite-Vulgate (Sommer 1979, 218/11– 15) and is even more specific than the translation, since it also mentions that the story about Ydier will concern “vengeance” (218/14). In the French text, the reference is an example of generic intertextuality as reference to the Vengeance Raguidel. In the translation, it does work as a reference forward to the Wrake van Ragisel in the Lancelot Compilation, yet its status as translation gives it a slightly different status than the Gawyne-reference.

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Besamusca, Bart, Willem P. Gerritsen, Corry Hogetoorn, and Orlanda S. H. Lie, ed. Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994. Besamusca, Bart, and Jessica Quinlan. “The Fringes of Arthurian Fiction.” Arthurian Literature 29 (2012): 191 – 242. Besamusca, Bart, Remco Sleiderink, and Geert Warnar, ed. De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering. Hilversum: Verloren, 2009. Brandsma, Frank. “Translations and Adaptations of French Prose Romances, Including the Lancelot Compilation.” The Arthur of the Low Countries: The Arthurian Legend in Dutch and Flemish Literature. Ed. Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021. 147 – 193. Brandsma, Frank. “Middle Dutch Poets and Their Francophone Sources: Respect and Reservations.” Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France. Studies in the Moving Word. Ed. Nicola Morato and Dirk Schoenaers. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. 241 – 263. Brandsma, Frank. The Interlace Structure of the Third Part of the Prose Lancelot. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Brandsma, Frank. “Conte and Avonture: Narration and Communication with the Audience in the French, German and Dutch Lancelot Texts.” Lancelot. Der mittelhochdeutsche Roman im europäischen Kontext. Ed. Klaus Ridder and Christoph Huber. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007a. 121 – 135. Brandsma, Frank. “Degrees of Perceptibility: The Narrator in the French Prose Lancelot, and in Its German, and Dutch Translations.” Arthurian Literature 24 (2007b): 121 – 134. Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and Its Verse Continuations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Busby, Keith. “The Other Grail Cycle.” Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Willem P. Gerritsen, Corry Hogetoorn, and Orlanda S. H. Lie. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994. 176 – 178. Busby, Keith, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, Lori Walters, ed. Les manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes/The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. Combes, Annie. “The Merlin and Its Suite.” A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Ed. Carol Dover. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. 75 – 85. Deschamps, J. Middelnederlandse handschriften uit Europese en Amerikaanse bibliotheken. 2nd rev. edn. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Dietl, Cora. “Une nouvelle réception de la littérature arthurienne française.” La matière arthurienne tardive en Europe 1270 – 1530. Ed. Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2020. 897 – 905. Edlich-Muth, Miriam. Malory and his European Contemporaries: Adapting Late Arthurian Romance Collections. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Engen, Hildo van. “Gerard van Voorne en de Vijfde Partie van de Spiegel historiael.” De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Remco Sleiderink, and Geert Warnar. Hilversum: Verloren, 2009. 31 – 45. Faems, An. Hier namaels seldijt bat verstaen. Vertellerscommentaar in de Middelnederlandse ridderepiek. Ghent: KANTL, 2006.

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Sietz, Fabian. Erzählstrategien im Rappoltsteiner Parzival. Zyklizität als Kohärenzprinzip. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017. Skårup, Povl. “Un cycle de traductions: Karlamagnús saga.” Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Willem P. Gerritsen, Corry Hogetoorn, and Orlanda S. H. Lie. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994. 74 – 81. Sleiderink, Remco. “From Francophile to Francophobe: The Changing Attitude of Medieval Dutch Authors towards French Literature.” Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours. Ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. 127 – 144. Sommer, H. Oskar, ed. The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances. Edited from Manuscripts in the British Museum. II, Lestoire de Merlin. New York, NY: AMS Press, 1979 [1908]. Stallaert, K. F. “De Merlijn van Jacob van Maerlant.” Nederlandsch Museum 7 (1880): 51 – 63. Sturm-Maddox, Sara, and Donald Maddox, ed. Transtextualities: Of Cycles and Cyclicity in Medieval French Literature. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996. Sunderland, Luke. Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between Ethics and Morality. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Sense of a Beginning: Genealogy and Plenitude in Late Medieval Narrative Cycles.” Transtextualities: Of Cycles and Cyclicity in Medieval French Literature. Ed. Sara Sturm-Maddox and Donald Maddox. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996. 93 – 123. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Order from Accident: Cyclic Consciousness at the End of the Middle Ages.” Cyclification: The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Willem P. Gerritsen, Corry Hogetoorn, and Orlanda S. H. Lie. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1994. 59 – 73. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Arthurian Cyclicity: The Construction of History in the Late French Prose Romances.” The Arthurian Yearbook 2 (1992): 209 – 223. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Fourteenth Century: Context, Text and Intertext.” The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987. II: 267 – 332. Tether, Leah. The Continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval: Content and Construction, Extension and Ending. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012. Trachsler, Richard. Clôtures du cycle arthurien. Étude et textes. Geneva: Droz, 1996. Warnar, Geert. “Velthem in de Vierde Partie. De verwerking van de geleerdentraditie in het Middelnederlands.” De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Remco Sleiderink, and Geert Warnar. Hilversum: Verloren, 2009. 119 – 142.

Richard Trachsler

From Verse to Prose, a Matter of Size? Length and lacunae in French mises en prose The phenomenon of the French mise en prose has rightly attracted a great amount of scholarly attention over the last few decades, as the activity of telling in prose a story that originally was in verse is a complex operation. What seemed to be mainly a mechanical manoeuvre to the pioneers of our discipline – dérimer (i. e., ‘making the rhymes go away’) – is in reality a procedure of acculturation concerned not so much with “diction but with re-interpretation”, according to a “largely internalized […] grammar of mise en prose”. A mise en prose is always also a mise à jour, an effort to bring the old text up to date and to “recast in familiar terms” what is unfamiliar from a socio-cultural point of view.¹ This is not to say, of course, that there were not also many concrete obstacles that hindered readers’ access to the older texts in their manuscripts. Pierre Sala, who produces a rejuvenated verse copy of Chrétien’s Yvain, famously states in his prologue that the manuscript he was copying was difficult to read and he is even more explicit in the prologue of his Tristan: ² […] j’ay brefvement Dessus mon nes assises mes lunetes Pour deschiffrer lectres que n’ay leu nectes […] Car les lectres estoient effacees Et les marges du parchemin cassees. (Sala 1996, ll. 2– 4 and 7– 8). [I quickly perched my glasses on my nose as to decipher the faint letters […] for the letters were faded and the margins of the manuscript frayed.] (translation is from Taylor 2014, 210)

 All the quotations are taken from Taylor (2020, 179). The standard work on the subject is Doutrepont (1939) who put the phenomenon of the mise en prose on the map for scholars. Recent work on mises en prose of course includes the Nouveau répertoire de mises en prose (Colombo Timelli et al. 2014a) and the edited volume by the same scholars (2014b), as well as Schoysman and Colombo Timelli (2016). References will be given to the Nouveau répertoire de mises en prose (NRMP).  In the Yvain-prologue Sala says: “Car trop estoit difficil a le lire” [Because it was very difficult to read] (Sala 1996, l. 13). On Sala, see Taylor (2014) with bibliography. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-013

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The old manuscripts are as difficult to read as the old texts are difficult to understand, so the recurring exordial topos in many of the mises en prose goes. Pierre Durand, in his reworking of Guillaume de Palerne, states exactly that: Et je, considerant le langaige qui estoit rommant antique rymoié en sorte non intelligible ne lisible à plusieurs, […] ay traduit et transferé le langage de ceste dicte histoire en langage moderne françoys pour à chascun qui lire le vouldra estre plus intelligible […] (Durand 1552, fol. aivo)³ [And I, considering that the language was ancient romance in verse, and thus unintelligible to many, have translated and transposed the story into modern French so that it may be more understandable to whomever may want to read it […]]

Here we will be concerned less with language than with form or composition. An additional element that also regularly appears in the French prologues is indeed length or its opposite, shortness or brevitas, to use the Latin rhetorical term. The authors of the mises en prose almost invariably claim that their reworking of the original text is somewhat shorter, thus implying that the original version was actually too long. They consequently abbreviated their model and produced a new version which is not only shorter, but better. The implications of that will be noted below. The insistence with which the necessary abridgement is mentioned is objectively remarkable. It is one of the points most regularly stated in the opening paragraphs of the mises en prose. ⁴ The prologue of Anseïs de Carthage offers the “base version” of the topos: Et dist pour entrer en matere, qu’aprez ce qu’il a veu et leu en pluseurs croniques, qu’il a eu son intencion d’exposer brief les fais d’Espaigne […]. Soubz laquelle exposition non prolixe et bonne doctrine rois, ducz, princes et chevaliers se poront regler en leur vie […] (Anseïs de Carthage, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3324, quoted in NRMP, 36; my emphasis.) [And [the author] first says that, considering what he has seen and read in different chronicles, he has set his mind on briefly presenting the events in Spain […]. According to the presentation which is not prolix and the good lesson, kings, dukes, princes, and knights will be able to adjust their lives […]⁵

 The translation and italics are mine. On the editions of Guillaume de Palerne, see Cappello (2014), who has discovered a new version, unknown to Williams (1952).  I have listed and discussed a few examples in Trachsler (2021).  See also the epilogue: “je dis ainsi que les haulz fais abreviés en cel cronique” [And I thus say that the high deeds here abbreviated in this chronicle […]].

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The initial version was “prolixe”; the reworking is brief: a synthesis. There is neither explanation nor aesthetic or moral judgement regarding verse. Nobody uses the arsenal of arguments so common elsewhere reminding us that verse per se is “deceitful” because of its “beauty”, or “false”, because it invents material for the sake of rhyme. The “base version” of the prologue focusses on length. Jean Wauquelin, for instance, is quite direct when he states that he has done his best to “retrenchier et sincoper les prolongacions et motz inutiles qui souvent sont mis et boutez en telles rimes” (La Belle Hélène de Constantinople 2002, 14; NMRP, 56) [to cut and eliminate lengthy passages and useless words which are often tossed into such rhymes], articulating, perhaps, the old maxim that one verse out of two is completely superfluous, because the only reason for its existence is the necessity of the rhyme. But he says “inutiles”, “useless”, not “detrimental”; there is nothing overtly negative in his model. The prologue of Bertrand du Guesclin repeats the same features but adds a new element to the topos, which is the identity of the content. The author insists that even if the form has been modernized and altered, the content has been left untouched: Lequel Romant, sans addicion ou diminucion aucune, sera cy-aprés traictié en prose pour cause de briefté, et extrait d’un autre Romant compilé en paroles rymées; excepté mutacion de paroles pour autres, pour abregier le langage, et euader prolixité. (Bertrand du Guesclin 1618, versions A and AC, quoted from NRMP, 93; my emphasis. I have also added some diacritical marks.) [The Romance, without any addition or omission of any sort, will be written in prose for reasons of shortness, and drawn from another romance composed in rhymed words, exept for substitutions of one expression by another, in order to be briefer and avoid prolixity.]

The author of the mise en prose highlights his effort to render the exact content of the original verse model into modern prose. The only alteration is the elimination of what seems to be an intrinsic formal flaw of the verse compositions: prolixity. Although there is still no explicit judgement of the original version expressed here, the material for criticism is already prepared. Consequently, some texts, such as Theseus de Cologne, will openly articulate what our examples so far have only insinuated: the new version is not only shorter, it is also more entertaining because it is less boring: Et est ladicte hystoire redigee et mise en escript es croniques des roys de Coulongne en bel et aorné latin et moult au long, si n’en ay extrait que la principale et plus seure et vraye substance, sans rien laisser sinon aucun langage superflu, et ce pour cause de briefveté et ate-

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diacion ou ennuy. (Theseus de Cologne, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 15096, quoted from NRMP, 857; italics mine.) [And the said story has been redacted and written down in the Chronicles of the Kings of Cologne in Latin, beautiful, ornate and in extreme detail. I have thus drawn from it just the most important, asserted and true elements, without leaving any superfluous language, in order to be shorter and less tedious or boring.]⁶

There seems to be a remarkable consensus amongst the producers of the mises en prose that their old models need to be shortened in order to become digestible for their contemporary readers.⁷ It feels like reading the same prologue over and over again. However, as Taylor (2014, 21) notes, “we should not dismiss [a conceit] out of hand merely because of its familiarity”. This is sound advice. The affirmation regarding brevitas and abbreviatio might need to be checked against the facts, as any speaker – now and historically – will, of course, be careful not to discourage his audience by announcing that he has just started his topic and is still far from having finished. Most medieval writers draw heavily on the brevitas topos to make their readers or listeners believe that all they are demanding is a small effort. In Old and Middle French, formulas such as pour faire bref, pour abregier, pour cause de brieveté, or, simply, briefment are extremely common.⁸ The frequency of the latter adverb in the works of Evrard de Conty, who is not renowned for being concise, has even been qualified by modern scholars as a purely linguistic tic devoid of any meaning other than a phatic one (Ducos 2006, 222, quoted by Jeay 2011, 105). We also need to verify if the authors of the mises en prose are just claiming they have shortened their model or if they have actually done so. The question is simple: how long does it take to read the verse model in comparison to the supposedly reduced prose rendering? Strangely enough, despite several decades of performance studies, there is no easy answer to this query, since concrete quantitative research is not dominant within the field.⁹ Data regarding the length of

 See Bacquin (2018) on the various versions of the Theseus-Tradition.  For some additional examples see Trachsler (2021).  In addition to the classics by Curtius (1954, 479 – 85), and Lausberg (1990), see, on the concept of brevitas and abbreviatio in the Latin tradition of the Middle Ages, Schmidt (2008) and Henkel (2017); for some interesting observations on the French tradition, see Badel (2011).  The centre for medieval performance studies is New York: see the edited volumes by Vitz, Freeman Regalado, and Lawrence (2005); Doss-Quinby, Krueger, and Burns (2007); Gertsman (2008); Duys, Emer, and Postlewate (2015), and their Youtube Channel on “Medieval Tales in Performance”: , with the showcase “Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video Showcase” and “Arthurian Legend Performed”: .

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actual recitations is still largely lacking, although figures based on empirical research, drawn especially from theatre studies, suggest a rhythm of roughly 1200 to 1500 octosyllables per hour. Accordingly, one can probably assume a lower figure of c. 800 – 1000 per hour for dodecasyllables.¹⁰ For medieval prose, to the best of my knowledge, no work has been done. However, one can probably base estimates on the studies on the tempo of speech and word-count per minute which have been conducted in the field of modern media. Whilst such studies certainly contain precious information, which may also apply to medieval prose, they also reveal a quite impressive range of variation. Certain differences are due to personal factors, as some people just speak more quickly than others, but other parameters, such as a given situation in which a speech is delivered, also seem to be of some importance. The average word flow in modern French media is close to two hundred words per minute, but it can decrease to almost half this number, especially during ceremonial or solemn occasions.¹¹ However, it may also rise, for instance during short reports of sixty to ninety seconds, to almost two hundred and thirty words per minute, after which intelligibility seems to be compromised. We will here assume an average value of one hundred and thirty to forty words per minute, a rather moderate figure that aims to take into account that our texts are Kunstprosa (“literary prose”) rather than the reflection of everyday language. They require a certain effort on the part of both orator and public in order to be successfully delivered and understood. When attempting to compare the duration of a “session” of recitation of a text in verse with one in prose, we also face the problem that we do not always know on which version the prose rendering is based. Sometimes we have several rhymed versions of the same text and sometimes the prose has so little in common with the surviving rhymed version that we wonder if some additional redaction existed that has been lost over the centuries. There is little we can do to work around this intrinsic characteristic of our material, but we do need to keep it in mind. Despite all these caveats, I have endeavoured to establish a few comparisons by using only cases where prose and verse offer fairly comparable material.¹²

 I wish to thank Darwin Smith, specialist of medieval theatre, for this information.  The former president of France, Jacques Chirac, known to be an eloquent, if not speedy, orator, clocks in at barely one hundred words per minute; the figures are from Rist (1999).  I wish to thank my collaborators Claudia Tassone and Stephanie Wittwer, who have calculated on this basis the duration of the recitations mentioned here. For the prose text, the figures have been extrapolated from a sample of words per page or folio.

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At first sight, the method of calculation, however imperfect, appears to prove what is stated by the majority of prologues of the mises en prose. The prose rendering is shorter than the verse model, sometimes significantly, as in the case of Cleomadés by Adenet le Roi, a text transposed twice – and apparently independently – into prose.¹³ For the almost nineteen thousand octosyllables of Adenet’s original version one can assume a recitation that might have lasted around sixteen hours. The first prose rendering (probably Burgundian) which has come down to us in only one manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12561), fits the text into eighty rather small leaves of 295 x 210 mm, and includes chapter headings and page numbering. The second mise en prose, which is also transmitted by a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lyell 48), but which actually seems to have been copied from the printed edition issued in Lyon by Guillaume Leroy in the 1480s, offers a more radical example: the text covers just thirty-four small in-folio leaves, without table of contents and chapter headings, a veritable reader’s digest. The first prose rendering could be recited to an audience in about three hours whereas as the second could most likely be read in little more than ninety minutes. The change from Adenet’s verse model – which had an approximate duration of sixteen hours and which must have been scheduled over more than one day – is striking. The amplitude of the reduction also makes it clear that the procedure is not a simple matter of eliminating rhyme. Entire episodes have been omitted, in the printed edition so hastily that one passage to which it later alludes is actually cut out.¹⁴ Nevertheless, both prose renderings – and the point is methodologically important – contain passages that have no counterpart in the verse model and thus have been invented by the authors of the mise en prose. Notwithstanding all the haste and the urge to shorten, both felt the need to add some details of their own, even leading to a surprising paradox: “le texte le plus concis étant celui qui nomme davantage”.¹⁵ The drastic form of abbreviatio that Adenet’s verse Cleomadés undergoes is exceptional within the corpus of texts under consideration. Whilst other texts present omissions and excisions which lead to a de facto reduction of the duration of recitation and an acceleration in the plot, the figures show that the amount of abbreviatio is far from being identical. In the following cases, the shift from verse to prose systematically produces a shorter text:  See the entries by Fanny Maillet on Cléomadés and Clamadés in the NRMP, 171– 181.  For a comparison between the two versions, see Bohler (2010) and Trachsler (2015).  “The more concise text is the one that gives more names”. The witty formula is that of Fanny Maillet, Le Cheval volant en bois (Maillet and Trachsler 2010, 50)

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Verse Cligés c. 6,800 octosyllables = c. 5 hrs Prose Cligés c. 4 hrs 30 mins Verse Erec c. 6,900 octosyllables = c. 5 hrs Prose Erec c. 3 hrs Verse Floriant et Florette c. 7,300 octosyllables = c. 5 hrs 30 mins Prose Floriant et Florette c. 5 hrs Verse Belle Hélène c. 18,700 octosyllables = c. 17 hrs 30 mins Prose Belle Hélène c. 13 hrs For other texts, the same method of calculation does not reveal much difference, and for certain texts the new prose version is even longer than the verse model. Verse Gilles de Chin c. 5,550 octosyllables = c. 4 hrs Prose Gilles de Chin c. 6 hrs 30 mins Verse Gérard de Nevers c. 6,650 octosyllables = c. 5 hrs Prose Gérard de Nevers c. 5 hrs 30 mins Verse Reine Berte c. 3,500 dodecasyllables = c. 4 hrs Prose Reine Berte c. 5 hrs However uncertain and provisional these results may be due to our empirical method of calculation, the figures show that, intentionally or not, the prose renderings can be shorter than their verse models. Yet even the versions that do claim to have been abbreviated are not systematically shorter than the originals, which makes it safe to assume that the brevitas-topos regularly occurring in the prologues is exactly that: a topos. The figures also show that abbreviatio is not a linear process, since omissions of certain episodes can be balanced out by the inclusion of new material in order to meet the expectations of the audience. It is all about capturing the spirit of the times following the “largely internalized […] grammar of mise en prose”.¹⁶ The hero evolves and needs to develop and demonstrate a new set of skills, and the dialogues and fight scenes need to be adapted in order to avoid looking outdated, like a hat gone out of fashion in an illustration. The interesting feature is that the prologues do not advertise that fact, but instead insist on two very practical factors: language and length, the bare necessities required to make an old story work in more modern times. Only exceptionally does an author mention other criteria, as in the case of Philippe de Vigneulles, who announces he has also altered the layout in the process of translating “Ladicte histoire de ancyenne rime et chansson de geste en prose, par chapitre et au plus brief que j’é

 Taylor (2020, 179).

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peu” (quoted from NRMP, 550) [The story in old rhyme and chanson de geste into prose, in chapters and as concisely as possible],¹⁷ thus introducing a type of segmentation which was the new norm for every form of longer narrative. Also exceptional is Pierre Durand’s claim that he has removed “les choses […] qui m’ont semblé estre absurdes et moins que raisonnables (Durand 1552, fol. aivo) [everything that I deemed absurd or unreasonable] from the werewolf-story he was rendering into prose. Durand did no such thing. His only interventions consist of spoiling the mystery regarding the werewolf’s identity and inserting a few superfluous proverbs.¹⁸ Although it might be rash to make overly general statements on this matter, the prologues of the mises en prose, rather unsurprisingly, seem to function on the basis of publicité mensongère [mendacious advertising]. They make promises on which the actual text does not follow up. Brevitas is amongst them. The real question is why brevitas should make such a good sales argument in an era where many compositions in the late Middle Ages overtly went in the opposite direction, especially in the field of Arthurian literature, and tried to win their public over by sheer size.¹⁹ The essential point here may be that the really long texts such as the Perceforest are new texts whereas the mises en prose are based on old material. The reader needs to be reassured that what s/he will be reading has undergone some kind of overhaul, that a great deal of effort has been made in order to make the text appealing to a modern audience. Craftily, the authors of the mises en prose make the promise nobody can keep, by suggesting an impossible win-win situation: they announce a story that is completely new, but that also adheres closely to the old one, a story that omits nothing, but is shorter, i. e., to put it simply, both identical and better. This is what permits the great variety occurring during the shift from verse to prose: every author adds and omits passages, every author rewrites and embellishes episodes, each one according to his own rhythm and agenda. The interesting point is that not a single one actually admits it. No-one says “I have added highly interesting material”; instead, their strongest argument seems to be “I have removed all the dull content”, and “my new text is shorter, easier, simpler than the old one”. They produce a new kind of text for a new kind of reader, who, given the chance, would not hesitate to use the “fast forward button” on the remote control. The authors of the mises en  On the author Philippe de Vigneulles, see Yonnet de Metz (Herbin 2011) as well as Jones (1998; 2001).  See Trachsler (2012) with additional bibliography.  As Taylor (1988, 292) rightly states: “a patron who commissioned, a reader who selected, in the fourteenth century generally expected size”.

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prose seem to have had a keen sense of their audience’s taste and preferences and may have responded to it by offering, not a unique masterpiece created for a single patron, but a serial product that would suit the emerging market of the printed book.

References Bacquin, Mari. “Théséus de Cologne. En route vers la prose.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 35 (2018): 283 – 329. Badel, Pierre-Yves. “La brièveté au risque de l’obscurité. Poétique médio-latine et comique.” Faire court. L’esthétique de la brièveté dans la littérature du Moyen Âge. Ed. Catherine Croizy-Naquet, Laurence Harf-Lancner, and Michelle Szkilnik. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011. 19 – 33. Bohler, Danielle. “Du roman au récit. La mise en prose de Cleomadès au XVe siècle. Réflexions sur le remaniement par abrégement.” Mettre en prose aux XIVe – XVIe siècles. Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. 77 – 86. Cappello, Sergio. “Le passage à l’imprimé des mises en prose des romans. Giglan et Guillaume de Palerne ‘a l’enseigne de l’escu de France.’” Pour un nouveau répertoire des mises en prose. Roman, chanson de geste, autres genres. Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman. Paris: Garnier, 2014. 69 – 84. Colombo Timelli, Maria, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman, ed. Nouveau répertoire de mises en prose (XIVe–XVIe siècle). Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge 30; Mises en prose 4. Paris: Garnier, 2014a. Colombo Timelli, Maria, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman, ed. Pour un nouveau répertoire des mises en prose. Roman, chanson de geste, autres genres. Paris: Garnier, 2014b. Curtius, Ernst Robert. Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Bern: Francke, 1954. Doss-Quinby, Eglal, Roberta L. Krueger, and E. Jane Burns, ed. Cultural Performances in Medieval France. Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007. Doutrepont, Georges. Les Mises en prose des épopées et des romans chevaleresques du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1939. Ducos, Joëlle. “Lectures et vulgarisation du savoir aristotélicien. Les gloses d’Évrart de Conty (sections XXV – XXVI).” Aristotle’s Problemata in different Times and Tongues. Ed. Pieter de Leemans and Michèle Goyens. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006. 199 – 226. Durand, Pierre. L’hystoire du noble et vaillant chevalier Guillaume de Palerne et de la belle Melior, lequel Guillaume de Palerne fut filz du roy de Cecille et par fortune et merveilleuse adventure devint vacher, et finablement fut empereur de Romme soubz la conduicte d’ung loup garoux, filz au roy d’Espaigne. Rouen: Olivier Arnoullet, 1552. Duys, Kathryn A., Elizabeth Emery, and Laurie Postlewate, ed. Telling the story in the Middle Ages. Essays in honor of Evelyn Birge Vitz. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015. Gertsman, Elina, ed. Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts. Aldershot: Routledge, 2008.

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Henkel, Nikolaus. “Reduktion als poetologisches Prinzip. Verdichtung von Erzählungen im lateinischen und deutschen Hochmittelalter.” Die Kunst der brevitas. Kleine literarische Formen des deutschsprachigen Mittelalters. Rostocker Kolloquium 2014. Ed. Franz-Josef Holznagel and Jan Cölln. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2017. 28 – 55. Herbin, Jean-Charles, ed. Yonnet de Metz. Mise en prose de Philippe de Vigneulles (1515 – 1528) d’après le manuscrit h, avec en regard la version remaniée en vers du manuscrit N (Arsenal 3143 – XIVe siècle). Paris: SATF, 2011. Jean Wauquelin. La Belle Hélène de Constantinople. Mise en prose d’une chanson de geste. Ed. Marie-Claude de Crécy. Geneva: Droz, 2002. Jeay, Madeleine. “‘Pour cause de briefté’. Les formes d’abrègement dans la narration longue.” Faire court. L’esthétique de la brièveté dans la littérature du Moyen Âge. Ed. Catherine Croizy-Naquet, Laurence Harf-Lancner, and Michelle Szkilnik. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011. 105 – 120. Jones, Catherine M. “Autour du ‘nouveau langage’. La Geste des Loherains aux XVIe et XIXe siècles”. L’Épopée romane au Moyen Âge et aux temps modernes. Actes du XIVe Congrès international Rencesvals. Ed. Salvatore Luongo. Naples: Fridericiana Editrice Universitaria, 2001. II: 693 – 704. Jones, Catherine M. “‘Modernizing’ the Epic. Philippe de Vigneulles.” Echoes of the Epic. Studies in Honor of Gerard J. Brault. Ed. David P. Schenck, and Mary Jane Schenck. Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1998. 115 – 132. Lausberg, Heinrich. Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. 3rd edn. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990. Maillet, Fanny, and Richard Trachsler, ed. Le Cheval volant en bois. Édition des deux mises en prose du Cleomadès d’après le manuscrit Paris, BnF fr. 12561 et l’imprimé de Guillaume Leroy (Lyon, c. 1480). Paris: Garnier, 2010. Rist, Colas. “200 mots à la minute. Le débit oral des médias.” Communication et langages. Dossier: Les nouvelles technologies de la communication 119 (1er trimestre 1999): 66 – 75. Sala, Pierre. Tristan. Ed. Chantal Verchère. Paris: Champion, 2008. Sala, Pierre. Le Chevalier au lion. Ed. Pierre Servet. Paris: Champion, 1996. Schmidt, Paul Gerhard. “Die Kunst der Kürze.” Dichten als Stoff-Vermittlung. Formen, Ziele, Wirkungen. Beiträge zur Praxis der Versifikation lateinischer Texte im Mittelalter. Ed. Peter Stotz. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2008. 23 – 40. Schoysman, Anne, and Maria Colombo Timelli, ed. Le roman français dans les premiers imprimés, Paris: Garnier, 2016. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Significance of the Insignificant: Reading Reception in the Burgundian Erec and Cligès.” Poétiques en mouvement pour le Moyen Âge finissant. Paris: Champion, 2020. 177 – 192. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Pierre Sala, Poacher.” Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France. From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. 11 – 37. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Fourteenth Century: Context, Text and Intertext.” The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988. I: 267 – 332. Trachsler, Richard. “Wie lang ist kürzer? Überlegungen zum brevitas-Topos der französischen mises en prose”. Forthcoming 2021.

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Trachsler, Richard. “Du Cleomadés au Clamadés. Les mises en prose du roman d’Adenet le Roi.” Réécritures. Regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Ed. Dorothea Kullmann and Shaun Lalonde. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2015. 73 – 82. Trachsler, Richard. “Du nouveau sur le Garou ? Observations sur le roman de Guillaume de Palerne médiéval et sa mise en prose.” Le Moyen Âge par le Moyen Âge, même. Réception, relectures et réécritures des textes médiévaux dans la littérature française des XIVe et XVe siècles. Ed. Laurent Brun, Silvère Ménégaldo et al. Paris: Champion, 2012. 211 – 221. Vitz, Evelyn Birge, Nancy Freeman Regalado, and Marilyn Lawrence, ed. Performing Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. Williams, Harry F. “Les versions de Guillaume de Palerne.” Romania 73 (1952): 64 – 77.

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Retouching the Hero’s Portrait in the Burgundian Prose Erec: The significance of the insignificant As is well known, the fifteenth-century Burgundian court of Philip the Good was a centre of literary and artistic activity where numerous Old French works in verse were transposed into Middle French prose.¹ These texts were often given new prologues that proposed the hero as a model for the new audience; the prose version of the story about Erec adheres to this convention. The prologue that the adapter substituted for the one that prefaced Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide thus opens with the suggestion that the audience might profit from tales about the deeds of nobles from the past: “Au continuel exercice du racomptement dez histoires contenans les fais des nobles anchians l’en peult asséz profiter par divers moyens.” (Erec, 101)² [It is possible to profit greatly in various ways through the constant practice of telling stories containing the deeds of nobles who lived long ago.] The prosateur then states that he has been presented with just such a story in rhyme, which he will “transmute” (“transmuer”) into prose, that of “Erec le filz du roi Lach” [Erec, the son of King Lac]. The short prologue makes no mention of Enide or the love intrigue, thus focusing uniquely on the hero.³ By suggesting that he is an exemplar whose feats of arms might inspire the Burgundian knights, the author commences the transformation of Erec’s story into one that might appeal to them, one in which Erec himself becomes more like a fifteenthcentury knight. For this is indeed a tale in which Erec’s prowess is showcased. But it is also a marital romance in which Enide plays an important role. Her “disruptive”

 Doutrepont’s magisterial works (1909; 1939) remain the standard reference.  The text survives complete in a single paper manuscript, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 7235; it was composed between 1450 and 1460. All citations are from Colombo Timelli’s (2000) critical edition, L’Histoire d’Erec en prose (henceforth Erec). Translations are my own; see Grimbert and Chase (2011). I have modified my own work at times to better reflect the Middle French.  Chrétien’s prologue does not mention Enide either. I use the Fritz edition, Chrétien de Troyes (1994; henceforth CT). Translations are my own, but I have benefited from Carroll’s translation, Chrétien de Troyes (1991). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-014

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speech,⁴ informing Erec of court talk about his recréantise, prompts his departure with only her at his side for a quest intended to test Enide’s loyalty, a point made clear in the prose version. For the modern critic, the adaptation may give insights into fifteenth-century concepts of knighthood and marriage and what behaviour is expected of spouses. These issues were probably the subject of debate and discussion throughout the Middle Ages.⁵ Although the prose redactor maintains the overall narrative structure of the verse text, divided in three unequal parts – an opening section in which Erec wins and marries Enide, a long middle section in which Erec fights a series of opponents, and a final section featuring the couple’s coronation – he (or she) refashions it in a number of ways. Whilst he shortens the story by about fifty percent, he adds a tournament after Erec and Enide’s coronation as well as a final chapter outlining the couple’s lives and their death; their oldest son inherits the kingdom. Furthermore, the adapter rewrites every episode, updating details for the taste of the fifteenth-century audience. Many of these seemingly insignificant changes work together to create a totally new vision. Thus, the subtitle of this contribution, which is borrowed from Jane Taylor’s (1998) pioneering study of rewriting, “The Significance of the Insignificant: Reading Reception in the Burgundian Erec and Cligès”.⁶ In this important article, Taylor examines the opening episode of the prose Erec, the hunt for the white stag organized by King Arthur. She argues that the prose author reoriented it so that Arthur’s royalty and court were assimilated to the Burgundian model, which was more autocratic. She points out that for the fifteenth-century public, the way the king organized the hunt in Chrétien’s poem would have been a conundrum. The prose writer therefore made Arthur more authoritarian, announcing the hunt in an edict, rather than calling on custom. Furthermore, when the prose Arthur chooses the woman who will receive the kiss that is the “prize” for having taken the stag, he only consults a few of his close circle rather than the entire barony. The organization of the court in the prose is centripetal, with the focus on the ruler, rather than consultative, as in Chrétien (191). Taylor refers to this type of change as acculturation, which she defines as “a process whereby the socio-culturally unfamiliar is recast in familiar terms, so that the reader can understand systems and phenomena in a source text as corresponding to his own ideologies, perceptions and behaviour patterns” (183). In her study, she demonstrates how the prose adapter’s work is a  Burns (1993, Ch. 4) refers to Enide’s words in Chrétien’s poem this way, observing that Enide tells Erec something that none of his knights dared to do.  A number of scholars have attended to this topic; see for example Kaeuper (2000, 99).  Taylor herself reconfigures a title used by Wallen (1982).

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reinterpretation, involving hermeneutic, acculturating, and linguistic permutations. One of the conundrums Taylor considers is Erec’s behaviour at the hunt. In Chrétien, he disobeys the king’s order that all his knights participate in the hunt; indeed, dressed like a dandy, Erec gallops up late and asks the queen if he can join her. For the Burgundian author, Erec’s absence from the hunt must have been unthinkable, Taylor points out, so he omits the description of the hero’s inappropriate clothing and makes him part of the queen’s party (191). The prose adds here that the queen has obtained permission from the king to attend the hunt: “la reyne […] aiant obtenu du roi licence d’aler au deduit” (Erec, 105) [the queen […] having obtained permission from the king to go to the event]. This puzzling note may suggest a change in women’s status, giving them less autonomy in the fifteenth century, or it may explain Guenevere’s presence at the hunt, which is depicted as a knightly sport. For later in the episode the queen occupies an influential position: in both verse and prose she relates her humiliation by an arrogant knight whom Erec is pursuing; she then requests that the king await Erec’s return before deciding on whom to bestow the kiss, a request that is honoured. In the prose, the queen addresses only Arthur, whereas in the source, she speaks to the king before all his barons, who assent to Arthur’s decision. These points may illuminate the prose depiction of Erec and Enide and that of their relationship. The opening episode thus typifies the kinds of transformations the prose adapter makes in rewriting Chrétien’s poem. In this article I propose to study the changes made in Erec’s portrayal, focusing on the series of combats in the middle section of the romance and on his relationship with Enide. I will refer only briefly to the tournaments, which I have analyzed elsewhere (Chase 2015), and to the single combats that take place in the first and last sections. My proposition is thus to answer the following questions. If Erec has been turned into an exemplar of a fifteenth-century knight, how has the prose author proceeded? What strategies does he deploy? What changes have been made in the picture of his relationship with Enide and of Enide herself? Before considering in detail Erec’s combats and his relationship with Enide, it will be useful to consider how our hero is presented. From the start Erec’s social status and lineage are stressed; as mentioned above, the prologue states that this is the story of “Erec le filz du roi Lach”; when he first appears, during the hunt for the white stag, he is identified the same way. Furthermore, when he tells Enide’s father who he is, he emphasizes his patrilineage, stating: “je suis le filz du roy Lach nommé Erec” (Erec, 115)⁷ [I am the son of King Lach, named

 Chrétien’s prologue refers to the hero simply as “Erec, le fil Lac” (CT, l. 19); when he first ap-

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Erec]. The epilogue that has been added shows that Erec has performed his duty as King Lac’s son; he and Enide have produced children to carry on the lineage. The closing lines thus echo one of the major preoccupations of the fifteenth-century aristocracy: the procreation of a son to inherit the land and carry on the lineage. The prose description of Erec when he first appears lists his qualities very briefly: “Avec la reyne avoit ung noble chevalier nommé Erec, et estoit filz du roy Lac, lors jeune et de jour en jour croissant en beaulté, science et vertu.” (Erec, 105) [With the queen was a noble knight named Erec, who was the son of King Lac, at the time young and increasing daily in beauty, sagacity and virtue.] Chrétien’s portrait is much fuller, noting that Erec is a knight of the Round Table, that he is twenty-five, is respected and loved by all at court, and that he is very “beax et prouz et genz” [handsome and valorous and noble], ending with a description of his clothing (CT, ll. 82– 104). Like Chrétien, the prose emphasizes Erec’s beauty, but the prose narrator does not go into detail about Erec’s other qualities in this opening scene, omitting the fact that he is a knight of the Round Table and mentioning only the three traits quoted above, thus making Erec somewhat less heroic at the very beginning of the tale than he is in Chrétien’s poem. Indeed, it is only later in the story, after his first combats, that his qualities will be developed, through Enide’s lamentations, as we shall see. Another detail underscores Erec’s changed status at the beginning of the prose tale: the adapter modifies the list of knights at Arthur’s court at the time of Enide’s arrival.⁸ In the source, the numbered list of the “top ten” found in all the manuscripts places Gauvain first, followed by Erec in the second position (CT, ll. 1687– 1698). The prose eliminates Erec from the list, deleting the numbers as well (Erec, 153).⁹ Since the prose retains the other eight knights at the top of Chrétien’s enumeration, in the same order, this omission seems to be deliberate: the removal of Erec’s name from the list suggests that his reputation as a knight is not yet built; that it will take place in the course of this tale. Indeed, Erec will show his prowess in the wedding tournament that will soon take place. He wins the tournament; in the prose he is evenly matched against Gauvain, fighting against his side, an important change from Chrétien. And in the tournament

pears, he is just “Erec” (CT, l. 82), but when he introduces himself to Enide’s father, he stresses his patrilineage (CT, l. 651).  On the lists in Chrétien manuscripts, consult Carroll (2000).  In a manuscript in which the opening section of Erec is inserted in a compilation of Guiron le courtois (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 363); however, Erec is third on the list, following Gauvain and Lancelot du Lac, undoubtedly because this version is not focused on Erec. Colombo-Timelli has edited it on facing pages (see Erec, 152).

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the prosateur added after Erec and Enide’s coronation, Erec will again fight against Gauvain’s side, this time surpassing him (Chase 2015).

Combat It is thus largely through combat that Erec’s portrait is retouched. Despite the fact that the prose text is shorter than the source and that some fights have been abridged, the amount of space devoted to combat is comparatively greater – an aspect that typifies fifteenth-century romance (Szkilnik 2003, 71). A quantitative analysis shows that the prose author devotes approximately eleven percent of the narrative to Erec’s contests; if we consider the tournaments as well, it is about eighteen percent. (In the verse, combat occupies about seven percent of the narrative; including the tournaments, it is eight and a half percent (see the tables in the appendix)). Greater emphasis is thus placed on Erec’s feats of arms in the prose. Two individual combats frame the middle section: those against Yder, the knight whom Erec fights in the opening section, and Mabonagrain, the knight “imprisoned” in an orchard by Enide’s cousin, in the final part. The central portion features fights against three, then five robber knights; a vain count who wishes to seduce Enide; Guivret le Petit; Keu; two giants who are torturing a knight; the count of Limors, who wishes to marry Enide; and a brief second round against Guivret. For the purpose of this analysis, it will be useful to divide Erec’s combats into two categories: “courteous” or “civil” and “discourteous” or “uncivil”. Erec’s courteous combats are against knights of equal or nearly equal status and valour; they are duels in which Enide is not in danger, and they largely follow the ritualized and stylized “rules” of chivalric encounters in romance, consisting of several basic stages: a challenge, combat on horseback with a lance, then a sword; when the knights are unhorsed, combat on foot.¹⁰ The uncivil combats are those against opponents who put Enide (or another person) in danger; they are fought against multiple opponents whom Erec nevertheless fights successively. In the prose these fights have a more violent outcome than their verse counterparts: Erec kills more of his adversaries. However, the description of the fights is “cleaned up”; it is less gory than in the source, and it is often abridged. Considering first the discourteous combats, thus, we note that in the two fights against brigands, the prose hero kills all three of the first set and four

 Bergeron (2008, 28 – 34, 47); Ferlampin-Acher (1995, 162– 171).

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of the five in the second set, whereas in Chrétien, fewer are killed. Similarly, in the combats with the counts, the prose Erec kills both counts as well as the seneschal of one of them and even some of the men of the count of Limors, whereas in the verse, Erec only kills the count of Limors. In these duels, Erec quickly overcomes his adversaries, usually with a single blow. Occasionally he breaks his lance and has to pull out his sword, but he is never unhorsed, and he emerges uninjured.¹¹ Thus, for example, in the combats against the first set of three robber knights, in Chrétien’s poem, Erec kills only the first of his opponents; he leaves the second lying unconscious on the ground and wounds the third (CT, ll. 2853 – 2899). In the prose, Erec kills all three brigands. The description, which is already quite brief in Chrétien, is slightly shortened: it omits some of the detailed, vivid play-by-play. Erec’s behaviour seems more violent in the prose: when Erec returns to Enide after having killed the fleeing third brigand, he stops to kill the second one, who is lying on the ground with a broken leg. But he is depicted as meting out justice: in describing the killing of the third robber knight, the narrator approvingly adds that Erec has “delivered the world” of this outlaw (“il le abati tout mort et en delivra le monde”, Erec, 174). Both Chrétien and the prose writer legitimize the hero’s violence by emphasizing the malfeasance of his opponents: the greed of the knight robbers, who divide up the booty they will get before attacking; the giants’ cruelty; the counts’ lust. They also emphasize the cowardly nature of the brigands who flee. Indeed, the prose writer embellishes this aspect: the last of the five brigands throws all of his arms afar and begs for mercy: “lorsqu’il voit qu’eschaper ne puelt, il gette sez armez au loingz, escu, heaulme, hauberg et espee, puis descend a pied et a la terre se mest criant merci.” (Erec, 176) [When he sees he cannot escape, he throws his arms far away – shield, helmet, hauberk, and sword – then descends on foot and lies on the ground, crying out for mercy.] The narrator underscores the outlaw’s lack of courage by itemizing the elements of his harness that are thrown and adding that when Erec sees his “cuer failli” [failed courage], he does not deign to strike him. In the fights against the other robber-knights in the second set, the prose Erec kills four of them in rapid succession.¹² In Chrétien’s poem the narrator describes the wounding and death of three of the five, providing bloody details that the prose author omits. But the prose also rewrites in ways that may seem sur-

 Bergeron (2008, 169 – 181) analyzes these combats in Chrétien’s poem.  The rubric-title to the chapter announces mistakenly that Erec kills all five robber-knights (Erec, 174).

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prising. An analysis of the encounter with the five brigands shows that in the first attack, the prose cuts to the essential, stating that “Erec fiert son ennemi et si radement l’abat a terre qu’il lui crieve le cuer au ventre.” [Erec strikes his enemy and throws him to the ground so forcefully that his heart bursts in his gut.] (Erec, 176) In the verse, the fight is more vividly detailed: “Erec si durement le fiert/Que li escuz dou col li vole,/Et si li brise la chanole./Li estrier rompent et cil chiet,/Ne n’a pooir qu’il se reliet,/Car mout fu quassez et bleciez.” (CT, ll. 3010 – 3015) [Erec strikes him so hard that his shield flies off his neck, breaking his collarbone. The stirrups break and the knight falls, unable to get up, for he is badly broken and wounded.] Similarly, the prose writer dispatches the third combat in several lines, whereas the source text describes the watery death of the attacker in the stream at the site. The rewriting of the combat against the second brigand of the five is instructive. Compare: CT, Erec et Enide Uns des autres s’est adreciez,

Si s’entrevienent de randon. Erec li met tot a bandon Desous le menton en la gorge Le fer tranchant de bone forge. Toz tranche les os et les ners, Devers le col en saut li fers, Et li sans chauz vermauz en raie D’ambedeus parz parmi la plaie; L’ame s’en va, li cuers li faut. (CT, ll.  – , my emphasis) [One of the others set forth.

The two come together violently. Erec strikes him under the chin, in the throat, with the sharp well-forged iron. Slicing through the bone and nerves, the iron bursts through the neck, and the hot bright-red blood streams from every part of the wound; his soul departs, his heart fails.]

Prose Erec ung dez IIII bringans qui estoient remains arriere, ci ung la l’aultre, il picque le cheval dez esperons et par grant maltalent vient ferir Erec de telle radeur qu’il rompt la lance contre le hauberg. Erec a ce poindre refiert son adversaire par le costé et l’eslieve dez arçons, si le fait trebuscier le teste desoubz tant qu’il lui descire le col. (Erec, )

[one of the four brigands who had remained behind, here and there, spurs his horse, and with evil intent, comes to strike Erec so hard that he breaks his lance against the hauberk. On this attack Erec strikes his adversary on the side and lifts him out of the saddlehorns, making him fall on his head, so that he breaks his neck.]

The prose writer refashions the episode, cutting the bloody details of the blow to the brigand’s neck that the source text seems to delight in (italicized above) and altering the encounter so that Erec’s opponent dies by falling off his horse on his

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head and breaking his neck. The only aspect the prose writer has retained is the importance of the neck. Similarly, in Erec’s combat against two giants who are beating a knight they carried off, the prose omits some of the gory details. When Erec attacks the first one, his lance pierces the giant’s eye, right through to the brain; the verse details the bloody result: “Li sans et la cervele en saut” (CT, l. 4443) [blood and brains spurt out], a bit of gore that the prose cuts. Indeed, the whole encounter, which is only thirty-one verses long in Chrétien’s version, is abridged by about fifty percent in the prose. The adapter also rewrites some combats so that Erec’s violence is somewhat attenuated. As the last two of the five robber knights flee after seeing their companions’ defeat, the verse Erec strikes one of them in the back so forcefully that he breaks his lance; his opponent falls but gets up; Erec makes him pay for breaking his lance by striking three blows with his sword, which “drinks blood”; finally, he severs the shoulder from the torso so his opponent falls to the ground: Erec mout chierement li vant Sa lance, que sor lui a fraite. Dou fuerre a tost l’espee traite; Cil releva, si fist que fox: Erec li dona tex trois copx Q’ou sanc fit l’espee boivre. L’espaule dou bu li dessoivre, Si qu’a la terre jus cheï. (CT, ll. 3048 – 3055) [Erec makes him pay dearly for his lance, which he broke on him. He drew his sword quickly from the scabbard; his adversary got up, a foolish move: Erec dealt him three such blows that he made his sword drink blood. He severed the shoulder from the trunk so that his adversary fell on the ground.]

The prose author modifies this passage considerably, omitting the broken lance and the ensuing sword-blows. Instead, the adversary’s horse stumbles; Erec advances on him, hitting him so forcefully as he passes by that his opponent falls on a stone, splitting his head open and breaking an arm: “Le cheval […] chope, et Erec s’advance, si le hurte tant ruidement en passant qu’il le fait tresbuchier contre une bise pierre si fort qu’il a le teste enfondree et ung bras rompu” (Erec, 176) [The horse […] stumbles, and Erec advances, striking his adversary so forcefully in passing that he makes him fall so hard on a dark rock that his head is smashed and his arm is broken] The prose redactor thus abridges many of these uncivil encounters; he also eliminates many of the bloody, vivid details in the source text. The treatment of

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the amorous counts is similar: for example, as the vain count and his men pursue Erec and Enide, who have escaped his clutches, the seneschal, then the count, are both killed in the prose. The verse leaves them both wounded, on the ground.¹³ In the prose nearly all of Erec’s discourteous adversaries are killed, yet there is less emphasis on the precise details of the violence, which therefore appears to be more controlled; it is painted as just punishment, “delivering the world” of these outlaws who can be seen as violating many of the codes of chivalry, which was enjoying a revival at the court of the duke of Burgundy. We recall that Philip the Good founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430, at the time of his marriage to Isabel of Portugal, and that his library contained a number of treatises outlining knightly responsibilities and codes.¹⁴ Although I have categorized the above combats as uncivil, Erec’s opponents have the same social status as he does (even though their actions show a rift). By designating the brigands as knights who live by robbery, both verse and prose allow combats on horseback that begin much like courteous duels with charges using lances. The robber knights attack one by one, thus respecting a sort of unwritten code of honour.¹⁵ Erec immediately overcomes his adversaries, who only manage to deal one blow that either misses its mark or lands on Erec’s shield; indeed, after seeing their comrades felled so easily, the last ones flee. The courteous combats are much longer and more developed in both verse and prose than these discourteous attacks: although the adapter rewrites them, he abridges very little and even augments the one involving Guivret. As stated above, the courteous combats pit Erec against a single adversary of equal status and valour. Whilst the knights are often wounded, none is killed. Only one courteous encounter takes place during the test/quest sequence: that against Guivret le Petit.¹⁶ This seemingly needless fight occurs when Guivret sees a knight (Erec) pass by his castle and emerges to challenge him. It has a very different outcome

 There is a short encounter with Keu (CT, ll. 4039 – 4048; Erec, 189), which I will not treat here. In Chrétien’s poem it is a comic interlude; the prose writer makes Keu’s arrogant behaviour even more egregious, since he puts on Gauvain’s armour and deliberately seeks a confrontation with Erec (in Chrétien, he only mounts Gauvain’s horse “por envoiseüre”, CT, ll. 3966 – 3967 [for play/ fun]).  On the duke’s holdings, consult Doutrepont (1909; 1939); De Winter (1995); Barrois (1830). Brown-Grant (2008, 17– 78), demonstrates the links between chivalric treatises and fifteenth-century romance.  In Chrétien’s poem this courtesy is attributed to custom (ll. 2822– 2826); the prose omits these lines.  There is a second short combat with Guivret, see below.

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from that of the uncivil duels: Erec and Guivret become good friends, in a form of homosocial bonding created by their rivalry in the joust.¹⁷ The combat itself lasts a long time, from tierce until none, in both texts; it also takes up a lot of narrative space (about seventy verses; almost double that in the prose). It follows the stylized stages of knightly encounters: the sequence opens with a challenge; the knights then charge each other with lances. This phase is followed by a swordfight. In the verse, Erec and Guivret remain on their horses throughout, whereas in the prose, the two fight on horseback with lances; when the lances break and the men fall, they continue on foot with their swords. In both texts they are equally matched; the series of reflexive verbs used to describe the encounter, along with the repetition of terms meaning “both” (“ambedui” in the verse; “tous les deux” in the prose) emphasizes the reciprocity of their blows and their wounds.¹⁸ The narrator comments in both verse and prose that no one could have said who would have the upper hand: “nuns hons en nule meniere/Certeinnement n’aperceüst/Qui le meillor avoir deüst” (CT, ll. 3814– 3816) [no man could say with any certainty who should have the better part]; “n’est nul qui sace dire lequel a du milleur” (Erec, 186) [there is no one who could say which one has the better part]. It is only suddenly, after a narrative pause that depicts Enide’s reaction (CT, ll. 3803 – 3810; Erec, 186), that Erec gains control and obtains victory over Guivret, who gives up when his sword breaks. After he asks for mercy, the two men exchange information: Guivret is the lord of the land (in Chrétien he is the king of Ireland), thus Erec’s equal. He offers his hospitality, which Erec refuses; then promises his help, should Erec ever need it. The prose retains certain phrasings and the overall organization but retouches the combat in ways that may echo descriptions of jousts in fifteenth-century chronicles and chivalric biographies. The most prominent of these revisions concerns the first part of the combat, using lances. In Chrétien, on the first charge the two knights thrust the iron head of their lances into each other’s entrails; they pull the lances out and throw them on the field, even though they are not broken. They then pull out their swords and continue to fight on horseback. The prose amends the sequence, stating that since the lances were not broken, Erec and Guivret charged each other a second time. This time the lances break, flying into the air dramatically: “se reslongent secondement, et a toute puissance fierent sur cez escus de telle force qu’ilz cassent lez lancez et en font les piescez  Burns (1993, 165 – 166) points out the homosocial bonding linked to Erec’s duels with Yder and Guivret in Chrétien’s romance.  Bergeron (2008, 62 and 83 – 85) and Burns (1993, 166) describe these aspects of duels in Chrétien’s text.

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voller plus de VI lancez de hault.” (Erec, 185) [they draw back a second time, and with all their power strike the shields with such force that they break the lances and make the pieces fly more than six lance-lengths high]. They both fall, draw their swords, and continue the combat on foot, until Guivret’s sword breaks. These changes reflect the more codified type of jousts that are described by chroniclers and biographers at the Burgundian court.¹⁹ However, in a striking addition, the prosateur comments on this combat as follows: “ilz sont entrenavréz, et par leurz plaiez le sang decourt, dont c’est pitié que deux tant noblez hommez se griefvent sans cause et sans raison.” (Erec, 186) [they are both wounded, and the blood flows from their wounds, so it is a pity that two such noble men are harming each other without cause and without reason]. We note first that the emphasis on blood contrasts with the treatment of the wounds in Chrétien (where no blood is mentioned) as well as that in the prose uncivil combats, where the blood and gore are de-emphasized. The prose Erec even ends up wounding Guivret more severely than in Chrétien: “Erec entre sez coupz a son ennemi assiet ung tel descendant sur le heaulme qu’il le casse et entre jusquez au vif” (Erec, 186 – 187) [Among his blows Erec smites downward so hard on his opponent’s helmet that it splits and the sword penetrates into the quick] contrasts with “Erec s’esforce et s’esvertue;/ S’espee li a embatue / En l’iaume jusqu’au chapeler, / Si que tot le fait chanceler” (CT, ll. 3817– 3820) [Erec strives to do his best; his sword strikes downwards on his opponent’s helmet, to the coif of mail, making him reel]. More importantly, the narrator’s commentary, pointing out that there is no reason or cause for this combat, is somewhat surprising in a romance that valourizes prowess. Indeed, several lines above, the prose narrator emphasizes the men’s courage: “nul n’y a qui n’ait ung coeur gouverné d’un hault vouloir” (Erec, 186) [neither one lacked a heart governed by strong determination]. In order to better understand the narrator’s remark, we might compare the duels that frame the middle section, with Yder and Mabonagrain, both of which have a cause: in the first case, Erec avenges the queen’s humiliation on Yder’s part; in the second, he frees Mabonagrain from his “imprisonment” in the orchard. In contrast, the duel between Guivret and Erec is uniquely to test the knights’ prowess. The narrator’s comment may reflect the transformation of jousting in the fifteenth century: it became less like a war game and more like an art or a sport. New modes of combat (the pas d’armes and the emprise) developed, which were strictly regulated and in which theatricality reigned. Jousters

 See, for example, Chastelain (1995, 860 – 862 and 872– 874).

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used special weapons that were less dangerous, and bloodshed was avoided.²⁰ The attitude towards inflicting wounds seems to have changed. In the biography of Jacques de Lalaing, for example, we witness the hero’s dismay at having wounded his adversary in a joust (Beaune 1995, 1240). We also read about Jacques’s travel to Paris to set up a pas d’armes; for political reasons, the king refuses to allow any member of his court to take up the challenge (Ch. XXI). There is a second short combat with Guivret, who has been alerted about the count of Limors’s actions; he meets up with Erec after the couple’s escape, but does not recognize him. Guivret unhorses Erec immediately in the brief duel that follows because Erec is weak after the preceding adventures (CT, ll. 5009 – 5014; Erec, 199). This combat serves to bring the two knights together again, but more importantly, it shows Enide unhesitatingly defending her husband: she rebukes Guivret for attacking a wounded knight (see below). Guivret then takes Erec to his castle, where his sisters tend to his wounds. Erec’s transformation into a knight who is more like those in the new public is complex and, in some ways, incomplete. On the one hand, he seems more violent because he kills more of his adversaries, but since the depiction is much less gory, the violence seems more controlled; he is more like a knight meting out justice. On the other hand, the combat with Guivret, which is bloodier than in Chrétien, is deemed needless by the narrator, and thus condemned. However, in every case Erec is depicted as valorous, full of prowess, thus incarnating the most essential trait of the knightly class (Kaeuper 1999, 66 – 67 and 135 – 140; 2000, 99 – 102).

Erec’s relationship with Enide As mentioned earlier, the prose author clears up the ambiguity found in the source regarding Erec’s motive for departure on the test/quest: when Enide reveals to her husband that the knights at court are muttering because he no longer practices the noble art of arms, Erec decides to “esprouver se Enide sa femme l’amoit bien lealment” (Erec, 171) [to test his wife Enide, to see if she loved him loyally]. As Norris J. Lacy (1994, 274) observes in his study of motivation in the Burgundian text, the prose author makes another important change here: he omits the line in Chrétien’s poem where Erec admits that those who blame him are right (CT, l. 2573). Lacy (1994, 275) concludes that, unlike in the

 Keen (1984, 200 – 215); Barber and Barker (1989, 2– 10 and 107– 125); Flori (1998, 147– 150); Szkilnik (2003, 71– 94).

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source, the prose Erec has nothing to prove. However, the few words he says to his wife suggest the opposite: he tells Enide to prepare to depart, that he will go in her company to “aprendre le mestier d’armez” (Erec, 172) [learn the profession of arms]. He thus states that he will set out as a young untested knight. The adventures that follow are intended to test Enide as well as Erec and resolve the crisis within the couple. Lacy also analyzes Enide’s motivation, pointing out that it is complex. In the prose Enide learns about the rumours from the women at court (the men having conveyed their complaints to them);²¹ she is afraid to tell Erec, fearing his anger. In both verse and prose, Enide reveals the information after Erec finds her in tears one morning. The prose redactor expands on Enide’s words (turning them into indirect discourse) when she adds that she is being blamed for Erec’s abandonment of knightly actions (Lacy 1994, 273 – 274; see CT, ll. 2554– 2561; Erec, 171). Lacy (1994, 277– 279) suggests that she is guided more by self-interest than by concern for Erec, which conflicts with the prose portrayal of Enide as the epitome of perfection; the prose author attempts to resolve this by emphasizing her patient forbearance and love during all the trials. In my own work I more or less agreed with this assessment (2014, 113 – 114); however, if we examine Enide’s laments, we can find some keys to a better understanding of our heroine. As Jonna Kjaer observes, the prose writer expands Enide’s plaints, thus giving them more importance (2006). In her first lament (CT, ll. 2585 – 2606), right after Erec has told Enide to prepare to depart, the source text depicts her blaming her pride for having spoken out; she says she was too well off, loved too much by the best man who ever lived (“Li miaudres hons qui ainz fu nez,” (CT, l. 2597). The prose omits the passage on pride, replacing it with words of regret for having pushed her husband, who loved her so much, into a dangerous enterprise and attacking her mouth for having spoken (a theme that the prose will develop): “‘O malle bouce procureresse et administreresse de ce grant mischief!’” (Erec, 172) [“Oh evil mouth, procurer and administrator of this great mishap!”] The second lament, which takes place in the forest after the combats against the two sets of brigands, as Enide watches over her sleeping husband, depicts Enide again regretting her words. In Chrétien, she again blames her pride, then states she could have known without a doubt that there was no better knight than her husband; now she knows for sure, having seen him fight the  The route the complaints follow suggests they are more like court gossip and intrigue; indeed, the prose narrator hints at this aspect when he presents the matter, qualifying the couple’s love as “true”: the knights “furent desplaisans, et de ceste vraie amour murmurent disans qu’il [Erec] estoit trop feru en enfance” (Erec, 171) [were displeased, and they complained about this true love, saying that Erec was behaving very childishly]; see Chase (2014, 113).

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brigands. She ends by crying out for shame against her tongue (CT, ll. 3104 – 3114). The prose author rewrites this plaint, lengthening it considerably. He omits Enide’s blame of her pride and admission that she doubted Erec, emphasizing, rather, her regret at having listened to Erec’s subjects, who were wrong: “Hellas! pour quoi fus je oncques nee quant il convyent que mon tresamé seigneur seuffre ceste mesaise par moy qui ce peril lui ay pourchassié moiennant le faulz langaige de sez subgés? O lasse, je me doi bien haÿr, car en lui a plus de proesse qu’en nul autre, et estoient sez subjgéz bien abuséz de dire qu’il oublioit le noble exercice du mestier d’armez.” (Erec, 177) [“Alas! Why was I ever born when my beloved lord has to suffer this discomfort through me, who sought this peril for him because of the false language of his subjects? Oh, alas, I should surely hate myself, for in him there is more prowess than in any other, and his subjects were wrong in saying that he forgot the noble exercise of the profession of arms.”]

It is noteworthy that Enide refers to the men and women at court as Erec’s “subjects”, a term that reflects the kind of acculturation that Jane Taylor identified in the article cited at the beginning of this study (1998, 190 – 191): an alignment with a more autocratic model of a court, one in which the ruler’s power is centripetal, similar to that of the duke of Burgundy, rather than consultative (and even somewhat chaotic), as Arthur’s court is depicted in Chrétien’s poem. The passage, which also features Enide’s recognition of Erec’s prowess, is followed by an anti-feminist rant, with Enide stating that Solomon was right: many ills were wrought by women’s words; women cannot keep a secret. The prose thus refocusses Enide’s failing: in Chrétien, she is guilty of the sin of pride and of doubting her husband, whereas in the prose, she was wrong to have listened to Erec’s subjects and therefore wrong to have repeated their complaints. In her longest lament, when she believes Erec to be dead, Enide blames herself for his death, concluding that she too should die. Regretting her words again, she lists Erec’s qualities: “je suis coulpable de la mort de mon propre mari en cui corpulence s’estoit beaulté miree, sience esparce, honneur fischie, proesse logee; chevalerie, bonté, largesse et preudommie l’avoient edifié comme le plus parfait qui jamés sera.” (Erec, 195) [“I am guilty of the death of my own husband in whose body beauty was mirrored, wisdom diffused, honor planted, prowess lodged; chivalry, goodness, generosity and integrity had fashioned him as the most perfect person who will ever exist.”]

The enumeration repeats the list of qualities in Chrétien’s version, but expands it, adding four additional traits. In the verse, Enide addresses the unconscious

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Erec: “‘He! dist ele, con mar i fus,/Sire, cui pareillz n’estoit nus!/En toi s’estoit Beautez miree,/Proece s’i iere esprovee,/Savoirs t’avoit son cuer doné/Largece t’avoit coroné’” (CT, ll. 4631– 4636) [“Oh,” said she, “what misfortune for you! No one was your equal, for beauty was mirrored in you, prowess proved itself in you, wisdom had given its heart to you, generosity had crowned you”]. The prose author imitates Chrétien’s use of noun + verb (rather than qualifying adjectives), reduced to the essential, in order to emphasize how these qualities are “lodged” within Erec. The semantic range of nearly all the additions (“honneur”, “chevalerie”, “bonté”, “preudommie”) overlaps with the concept of “prowess”; the long enumeration, which is typical of the style found in fifteenth-century Burgundian romances and biographies,²² emphasizes Erec’s acquisition of the knightly qualities he set out to test and Enide’s recognition of his prowess, after having witnessed his combats, which is part of her “redemption”. At the end of this long lament, since she considers herself culpable of causing his death, she attempts to kill herself with Erec’s sword but is stopped by the arrival of the count of Limors. In both verse and prose Enide’s laments are complemented by several inner debates during the test/quest, deliberations in which she hesitates to speak out in order to warn Erec of impending danger. For Erec has instructed Enide not to speak, and he chides her each time she does – though of course he pardons her. When she sees the first set of brigands, she hesitates; the prose eliminates the actual inner debate here, stating simply that “Love conquers all”, suggesting she is doing the right thing by speaking (Erec, 173). Similarly, when she spots the second set of robber-knights, she hesitates, but Love urges her to warn Erec (Erec, 175). Again, right before Guivret arrives to challenge Erec, Enide hesitates at length about warning him; again, the prose narrator emphasizes that Love wins out (Erec, 184– 185). In both prose and verse we witness a change in Enide as the quest nears its end: she no longer hesitates to speak. When she sees her husband unhorsed during the second combat with Guivret, Enide springs forward and berates Guivret for fighting against a wounded man (Erec, 199; CT, ll. 5015 – 5040). Furthermore, in her interaction with the amorous counts, both verse and prose depict Enide using her voice to defend herself and Erec. Over the course of the quest/test, Enide is guided by Love as she overcomes her hesitation to speak out. Indeed,

 On the style of the prose Erec, see Colombo Timelli’s introduction (2000, 82– 93). She opens her discussion by pointing out that the author uses all the resources of the “écriture romanesque ‘flamboyante’” that is characteristic of the second half of the fifteenth century.

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the prose author highlights the couple’s mutual love time and again; for example, when the two young people first meet, the prose adds a depiction of them both spending a sleepless night because Love, who had sent a golden arrow deep into their hearts, troubled them (Erec, 121).²³ The prose also further illuminates Erec’s motivation during the test/quest, explaining that he feigns not to see the impending danger. In the episode of the three brigands, Enide looks at “Erec qui faint de non lez [the three brigands] veoir” [Erec who feigns not to see them] (Erec, 173). When the first of the five brigands is about to attack, the narrator is even more explicit: “Erec le voit bien, mais il n’en fait nul samblant, pour esprouver Enide qui ne scet que dire” (Erec, 175) [Erec sees him very well, but he does not show it, in order to test Enide, who does not know what to say]. The narrator emphasizes the test, whilst showing that the hero is aware of the danger and thus will undoubtedly meet it successfully. However, it seems more authoritarian, even controlling, especially when Erec seems to feign death in a later episode, upon his return to Enide after rescuing a knight from two giants. Whilst the rubric-title clearly states that he pretends to be dead (“Comment Erec faindi d’estre mort quant il revint devers Enide”, Erec, 193 [How Erec pretended to be dead when he returned to Enide]), the narrator’s description of Erec’s state is more ambiguous: when he approached Enide, ou sez plaies s’escreverent a saignier pour le chault et paine qu’il avoit eu, ou pour esprouver le leal corage de sa dame, de son cheval descendi et et se laissa choir selon ung petit arbre qui la estoit asséz prés de sa femme, a laquelle il peult sambler bien mal disposé, dont il luy vint ung sueur de destresse parce que Erec faindi d’estre mort ou en grant dangier. (Erec, 194) [either his wounds opened and bled due to the heat and the difficulty he had had, or in order to test the loyal heart of his lady, he got down from his horse and let himself fall next to a small tree that was very near his wife, to whom he can seem to be in bad shape, which made her perspire out of distress because Erec pretended to be dead or in great danger.]

The convoluted prose may reflect the adapter’s hesitation or discomfort about depicting the hero in such a cruel light. Perhaps he realizes how manipulative this behaviour might be, for the narrator hesitates between two explanations in describing the moment of Erec’s awakening, when the count of Limors is about to force Enide into marrying him: “Et atant veci Erec qui ne veult plus con-

 On the theme in Chrétien, see Maddox and Sturm-Maddox (2005, 117).

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trefaire le mort, ou qui revient de pammoison” (Erec, 198) [And now behold Erec, who no longer wishes to feign death, or who comes out of his faint]. In the end, of course, Erec and Enide are reconciled: he has tested her as well as himself, and he has learned that she loves him loyally. The prose narrator even states that everything Erec did was to test Enide, whom he found to be more loyal than any other lady; indeed, he now loves her more than ever (Erec, 200). Erec’s motivation is thus reiterated. But the test seems dangerous, and Erec seems autocratic, especially to a modern reader. What has Enide learned? She has learned that Erec’s subjects were wrong: he is the epitome of prowess. She has therefore also learned that she was wrong to reveal the rumours. In her study of non-Arthurian late romance, Rosalind Brown-Grant (2008, Ch. 3) shows how views on marriage in medieval didactic literature relate to literary texts; she lists the four essential traits expected of women: obedience, discretion, chastity, and sobriety (136). On the matter of discretion, Brown-Grant (137) cites Jean Gerson, who states that women should patiently dissimulate their husbands’ faults, and Gilles de Rome, who suggests that women should regulate their speech. These writers seem at first to align with the prose writer’s view of Enide’s revelation. However, her acts of speech during the test/quest are presented positively, as is her disobedience of Erec’s interdiction. Her inner debates depicting her hesitation show that Love guided her. She uses her voice to resolve a difficult situation with the vain count. And she does not hesitate to defend Erec when Guivret unhorses him in their second encounter. Enide thus learns to use better judgment in speaking out. She is now prepared to act more like Guenevere does in the beginning of the story, when she requests that Arthur wait to bestow the kiss until Erec returns from pursuing Yder – that is, like the queen she will become.

Conclusion The fifteenth-century rewriting of Erec and Enide’s story is much more than a mise en prose. As Taylor (1998, 191) concludes at the end of her study cited earlier, it is a reinterpretation intended to revive the romance; indeed, it is the result of a close analysis on the part of the adapter. Erec is depicted more like a fifteenth-century knight and future king: he is more autocratic, and his power is more centripetal, perhaps even “vertical”, descending downwards, rather than consultative, or “horizontal”, as Arthur’s court is depicted by Chrétien. The men and women at the prose Erec’s court are not his equals; they are his “subjects”. The prose redactor enhances Erec’s knightly qualities by retouching his combats; he acts more violently in the discourteous fights, killing more of his oppo-

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nents, but the bloody, gory descriptions found in the source are largely eliminated. Moreover, he is depicted as meting out justice coldly, an attitude that may align with the “vertical” nature of his power and with fifteenth-century mores. In the one courteous fight that takes place during the test/quest, on the other hand, the narrator condemns needless violence. This view of the encounter seems to be in keeping with the more codified nature of jousts in the fifteenth century. The prose author has also retouched Enide’s portrait: her laments and inner debates show changes in her motivation that reflect fifteenth-century views of how women should behave but at the same time show her disobedience to Erec’s interdiction positively, since she is guided by Love. Indeed, the adapter emphasizes the couple’s mutual love, and this is perhaps the most significant of the seemingly “insignificant” changes made to Chrétien’s story: the conjoining of love and marriage undoubtedly inspired debate in a society in which aristocratic marriage was tied to family interests.

Appendix Table 1: Erec’s Combats Chrétien, Erec et Enide

Prose Erec

Yder

ll.  –  ( verses)

three brigands five brigands the vain count Guivret I Keu the two giants the count of Limors Guivret II Mabonagrain Total no. of verses/lines

ll. ll. ll. ll. ll. ll. ll.

pp. / ( lines = about  verses –  line of prose = about  verses) p.  (. lines = ) p.  ( lines = ) p.  ( lines = ) pp.  –  ( lines = ) p.  ( lines = ) p.  ( lines = ) p.  ( lines = )

 –   –   –   –   –   –   – 

() () () () () () ()

ll.  –  () p.  ( lines = ) ll.  –  () pp.  –  ( lines = )  out of a total of  verses in . (=  verses) out of a total of the Fritz edition ()  lines in Colombo Timelli’s edition ()

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Table 2: Erec’s Tournaments

Wedding tournament Coronation tournament Totals

Chrétien, Erec et Enide

Prose Erec

ll.  –  ( verses) –

pp. /// ( lines = about  verses) pp.  –  ( lines = )

 verses

 lines (=  verses)

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De Winter, Patrick M. La bibliothèque de Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne (1364 – 1404): Etude sur les manuscrits à peinture d’une collection princière à l’époque du “style gothique international”. Paris: Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, 1985. Doutrepont, Georges. Les Mises en prose des époées et des romans chevaleresques du XIV e au XVIe siècle. Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1939; Geneva: Slatkine reprints 1969. Doutrepont, Georges. La Littérature française à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne; Philippe le Hardi, Jean sans Peur, Philippe le Bon, Charles le Téméraire. Paris: Champion, 1909; Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1970. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Les tournois chez Chrétien de Troyes: l’art de l’esquive.” Amour et chevalerie chez Chrétien de Troyes. Actes du colloque de Troyes (27 – 29 mars, 1992). Ed. Danielle Quéruel. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1995. 161 – 189. Flori, Jean. Chevaliers et chevalerie au Moyen Age. Paris: Hachette, 1998. Grimbert, Joan Tasker, and Carol J. Chase, trans. Chrétien de Troyes in Prose. The Burgundian Erec and Cligés. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Kaeuper, Richard W. “The Social Role of Chivalry in Romance: Northwestern Europe.” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. Ed. Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 97 – 114. Kaeuper, Richard W. Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1984. Kjaer, Jonna. “Les complaintes d’Enide dans l’Histoire d’Erec en prose, roman bourguignon.” “Contez me tout”: Mélanges de Langue et de Littérature offerts à Herman Braet. Ed. Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Franck Willaert. Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 2006. 243 – 258. Lacy, Norris J. “Motivation and Method in the Burgundian Erec.” Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly. Ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. 271 – 280. Maddox, Donald, and Sara Sturm-Maddox. “Erec et Enide: The First Arthurian Romance.” A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. 103 – 119. Szkilnik, Michelle. Jean de Saintré. Une carrière chevaleresque du XVe siècle. Geneva: Droz, 2003. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Significance of the Insignificant: Reading Reception in the Burgundian Erec and Cligès.” Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998): 183 – 197. Wallen, Martha. “Significant Variations in the Burgundian Prose Version of Erec et Enide.” Medium Aevum 51 (1982): 187 – 196.

Maria Colombo Timelli

All Around the “Table”, or How to Read Galien Rethoré (Antoine Vérard, 1500) In early printed editions of narrative prose literature, the Table of titles or contents (table des titres), though far from a novelty owing to its pre-existence in medieval manuscripts, becomes a rather standard feature in this new medium; it forms part of the peritextual matter, which can include other elements, such as a title page and/or a prologue, and which together aim to introduce, to a greater or lesser extent, the narrative contained within the book. Located either at the front or back of the volume, the Table can provide, in addition to an enumeration of the titles, two additional pieces of information: page references and chapter numbers.¹ The Table’s primary function appears obvious, and on occasion is explained by the editors of early printed books themselves: it helps the reader to navigate the narrative; but this usefulness is actually greater for our purposes, because, on closer inspection, the Table can reveal other information, too. For example: ‒ in terms of content, the summary-titles listed in the Table do not always map exactly onto those that introduce each chapter: the former are often longer, and seem to be aimed at providing a more complete summary of the content; naturally, there are fewer layout constraints in the Table necessitating the kind of concision required where titles appear at the head of a chapter or section; ‒ linguistically, the variations the titles present in relation to their internal counterparts (such as spelling, amongst other things) can reveal interesting distinctions; ‒ on the material level, the Table provides important information as to whether a given copy is intact: it is this last aspect which, despite its being less common, will occupy us here.

 In this article I will focus on a necessarily reduced corpus, consisting of long narrative texts in prose, without distinction of genre (generic distinctions such as epic or romance had lost most of their relevance in the time period that interests us (late fifteenth to early sixteenth century)). Scholarly attention has been increasingly trained on the peritext in recent years, as part of a renewed critical interest in the shift to print; I will cite as proof only a few recent studies: Antoine Vérard (2011); Schoysman and Colombo Timelli (2016); Devaux et al. (2021); Adam et al. (2020); Mounier and Rabaey (2021); to these we can add, with a more limited topic area (focussing only on the Table of contents), but also a broader chronological, geographical, linguistic, and generic perspective, Matthieu and Arnould (2017). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-015

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Antoine Vérard’s Galien Rethoré The first Parisian book publishers – as Jane Taylor has noted² – were primarily entrepreneurs capable of anticipating the demands and tastes of a wide readership. Antoine Vérard, undoubtedly one of the masters of this new business, knew how to repackage a large number of “medieval” works, transmitted previously in manuscript, of which readers were especially fond; in his shop, all matières were represented: Arthurian romance (to name just his first editions: Lancelot, 1488; Tristan, 1489; Merlin, 1498; Guiron le Courtois, 1503), other romance (Cleriadus et Meliadice, 1495), epic (Ogier le Danois, c. 1498; Galien Rethoré, 1500; Doolin de Maience, 1501; Beuves de Hantonne, 1499 – 1502; Milles et Amys, before 1507), (pseudo‐)historical narrative (Le Jouvencel, 1494), and even some “moral” fiction (Pèlerinage de l’âme, 1499; Pèlerinage de vie humaine, before 25 October 1499) and moralized narrative (the Roman de la rose moralisé of Jean Molinet, c. 1500). Within this vast output, the Romant de Galyen Rethoré (1500), as it is designated in the colophon, deserves greater exploration, which will supplement and complement the work completed in the only modern edition.³ Three copies of Antoine Vérard’s edition are extant:⁴ ‒ Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Rés Y2– 332; lacking fols 117– 118; fols 104v and 107r are blank, but have been restored by a later (sixteenthcentury?) hand. The Keller and Kaltenbach edition (1998), which is based on this copy, filled in the gaps using the corresponding passages in the edition of Veuve Trepperel and Jean Janot (1512– 1519; BnF, Rés Y2– 596) (Cappello 2017, 126 n. 13); ‒ Chantilly, Musée Condé, IV–G–035; in perfect condition, and the source for the quotations in this chapter. It presents a slightly different version from the

 Taylor (2014, 38 – 60). Vérard’s use of paratexts was also commented upon previously by Taylor (2007, 229 – 291, with respect to the Jardin de Plaisance et Fleur de Rhétorique, 1501).  Keller and Kaltenbach (1998); the two prose versions, according to Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1470 and Antoine Vérard’s edition of 12 December 1500, are sufficiently different from each other to have given rise to two separate editions within the same volume (17– 167 and 169 – 379, respectively). The deficiencies of this edition have been commented on in the reviews by Herbin (1999) and Matsumura (2000; only the manuscript version is critiqued). A diplomatic transcription of Vérard’s text accompanies the edition of the Dutch translation, available online (Kuiper 2018).  Despite research in online catalogues, I could not track down the copy attributed to London, Lambeth Palace Library, and reported in GW (“def.”), ISTC (“imperfect”), USTC, but without call number.

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BnF copy; according to a partial collation, numerous variants are found, such as – but not exclusively – in fols 13r–v, 18r–v, 25r, 61r, 75r–v, 76r–v, 106v; London, British Library, C–22–c–9; on vellum. According to the BMC (VIII, 94: I could not access this copy in person), fol. 5v, which contains a woodcut in the paper copies, is left blank; in accordance with Vérard’s custom for his luxury prints, the woodcuts are painted,⁵ whilst capitals and paragraphmarks are illuminated in red and gold or blue and gold.

Primary recipients: early modern readers By publishing Galien, Antoine Vérard inaugurated a publishing success story, one which would extend throughout the sixteenth century, and culminate in the Bibliothèque Bleue;⁶ as a story combining epic intrigue (Charlemagne’s voyage to Constantinople; the birth of Galien, son of Olivier and Jacqueline, daughter of the city emperor; the defeat of Roncevaux and the death of Roland; numerous battles against the Saracens) with romantic episodes (the love between Galien and Guimande, belle sarrasine; Galien’s bringing aid to his mother, who is wrongly accused of murder), it stood the best possible chance of capturing the imagination of its readers at the time.⁷ Even if we do not have Vérard’s manuscript exemplar, comparison with the version in Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1470 is still a fruitful exercise, insofar as it allows us to grasp some differences in the mise en livre, as well as to understand better the attention that our libraire-éditeur paid to his readers.⁸ First, the title page of Vérard’s book soberly announces: “Galien Rethoré, nouvellement imprimé à Paris”; this is immediately followed by the “Table des titres”, which is introduced thus: “S’ensuit la table du noble et hardy chevalier Galyen, filz au vaillant et bien renommé Olivier de Vienne, per de France” [Here follows the table [of titles] of the noble and bold knight Galien, son of the valliant and renowned Olivier de Vienne, peer of France] (fols A2r – A5r); following a large woodcut (fol. A5v: “En-

 “[B]ut without great talent”, according to Winn (1997, 150 n. 58); nevertheless, this volume seems to have been intended for King Henry VII (Winn 1997, 139).  For more information, see Guidot (2014, 290 – 291); Cappello (2011, 69 – 70).  On the literary success of Galien, see Suard (2016).  It is important to remember that the two prose adaptations, despite undeniable resemblances, do not derive from each other; it is likely, however, that they share a common model (in verse, but possibly already in prose). A table of concordances between the two versions is forthcoming in Le Moyen Âge, which could encourage further study.

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trée royale”)⁹ is the “Prologue de l’acteur sur la declaration de ce present romant, contenant l’histoire du noble chevalier Galyen Rethoré, filz du chevalereux et bien renommé Olivier de Vienne, per de France, lequel l’engendra en la fille du roy Hugues à Constantinoble en revenant du saint voyage de Hierusalem” [prologue of the author on the main elucidation of the present romance, containing the story of the noble knight Galien Rethoré, son of the chivalrous and renowned Olivier de Vienne, peer of France, who begat him on the daughter of King Hugh of Constantinople whilst returning from the holy journey to Jerusalem], which occupies fols A6r–v; a second large woodcut follows (fol. A7r: “Scène de dédicace”), below which the story proper begins.¹⁰ Of particular note is the progression in the presentation of the hero: the name and nickname are offered first (“Galien Rethoré”), before being followed, in the incipit of the Table, by the usual descriptors (“noble et hardy chevalier”), after which comes the designation of his parents (his father is a “per de France”, who is “[le] bien renommé Olivier de Vienne”, whilst his mother is “la fille du roy Hugues”). Finally, we learn the exceptional place and occasion of Galien’s conception (the mythical city of Constantinople whilst returning from the holy voyage to Jerusalem). Is this information given out of a pedagogic concern? Or is it to support the reader? Or is it merely the result of a desire to arouse or respond to the reader’s curiosity by making reference to recognizable places and names?¹¹ Whatever the reason, the Table fits into a well-orchestrated package: the eighty titles it lists, and which are edited in Appendix 1, in fact constitute a careful summary which together highlight and articulate all of the main narrative junctures of the story. The presence and utility of the Table are also explicitly mentioned in the conclusion of the “Prologue de l’acteur”: “Et pour ce redigeray ce livre par chapitres ainsi qu’il est escript dessus en la table…” [And for this reason I will arrange this book in chapters, just as are listed in the table above] (fol. 6v); regardless of the identity of the “acteur”, who may be Vérard, one of his collabo-

 The woodcuts legends are those proposed by Bonicoli (2015). I would like to express my warmest thanks to L.-G. Bonicoli, who made his PhD thesis available to me at a time when the libraries were closed to the public.  The manuscript only presents an incipit, found in the upper margin of the first leaf (“Cy commance Galien Restoré”); it has no prologue. The text is divided into paragraphs, but without any titles.  On Perceforest and its peritext as edited by the Parisian Galliot du Pré, see Van Hemelryck (2016, 165), who rightly speaks of a “dynamique d’incitation ou de soutien à la lecture (et donc implicitement à la publicité et à l’achat)” [dynamic of encouraging or supporting reading (and therefore implicitly of advertising and purchasing)].

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rators, or the author of the text –,¹² he assumes responsibility for the internal organization of the content (a book “redig[é] par chapitres”) and indicates the function of the “Table”, “là où on pourra trouver en chacun fueillet la matiere de quoy on vouldra sçavoir” [where we can find on each folio that subject about which we want to know] (fol. 6v).¹³

Second recipients: modern scholarly readers If the main function of chapter titles is to make the structure of a narrative visible by anticipating the content of the section that they introduce, when they are gathered in a Table, they assume a dual role: first, they allow the reader to find a given chapter quickly and, second, offer the reader a summary of the story. In respect of layout, the Table is not subject to any major constraints, with the printer merely needing to distribute the titles across a predefined number of sheets (normally, a quire with its own signature sequence); by contrast, within the main text, the mise en page has far greater influence: the titles will often be centred, possibly offset by line spaces and/or preceded by a paragraph-mark; some of them may also be accompanied by woodcuts. These different conditions help to explain certain variants between the titles as they appear in the Table and in the main body text: as a general rule, the titles of the Table can be longer, and above all contain information that would be less useful if delivered whilst the reader was immersed in the text. Take, for example, this title from Galien: ¹⁴ [26] Comment le traistre Ganelon destourba encores de rechief que le roy [le roy mq] Charlemaigne n’alast secourir son nepveu [son nepveu mq] Rolant; et comment Galyen l’appella traistre devant tous les barons et s’en alla à Roncevaulx pour veoir son pere Olivier [Olivier mq].

 Cf. Taylor (2014, 53 – 56). On the polysemy of acteur, see Doudet (2008, 115); and, on the basis of a more limited corpus, Colombo Timelli (2019b, 286 – 290).  We find the same expressions at the end of the prologue to Doolin de Maience (Vérard, 1501): “[…] comme l’en pourra veoir par ce present romant, redigé et mis par chapitres ainsi qu’il est contenu en la table cy dessus escripte” (fol. a4v, with reference to the BnF copy, Rés. Y2– 78) [[…] as one can see in the present romance, which is edited and organized into chapters just as they are listed in the table inscribed above]. As for Beuve de Hantonne (1499 – 1502), it is also left to Vérard to create, in addition to the title page, the Table (f. a2r–a3, with reference to the Turin, BNU copy, Ris. 24– 6).  The text given here is taken from the Table; I give the variants from the internal title in square brackets.

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[How the treacherous Ganelon once again prevented Charlemagne from helping his nephew, Rolant; and how Galien called him traitor in front of all the barons and went to Roncevaulx to see his father, Olivier.]

This relatively long title, articulated in two segments (Comment… et comment…), each comprising two propositions (main + conjunctive subordinate; main + coordinate + final subordinate), is reduced only minimally within the main text, with the edits focussing on homogeneous elements: for example, the suppression of function (le roy), or of family lineage (son nepveu), or of a given name (Olivier); no information is actually lost. In other cases, the simplification is more stylistic, such as the use of synonymic pairs, which become redundant when the only aim is to summarize a given piece of content: [18] Comment, aprés que Richart fut occist et tué [et tué mq], ceulx qui estoient en embusche sortirent sur Galyen; et comment le roy Hugues lui vint à secours. [How, after Richart was slain and killed, those who were hiding in ambush appeared against Galien; and how King Hugues came to his aid.] [23] Comment, par le consentement de Rolant, nepveu de Charlemaigne, fut envoyé Ganelon en embassade à la ville de Sarragosse vers le souldan Marcille, où il vendit Rolant et Olivier [et O. mq] et les aultres pers qui estoient avec lui et plus de vingt mille chevaliers qui y furent occiz et tuéz [et tuéz mq]. [How, by the consent of Rolant, nephew of Charlemaigne, Ganelon was sent as an ambassador to the city of Zaragoza to Sultan Marcile, where he sold Rolant and Olivier and the other peers who were with him and more than twenty thousand knights, who were slain and killed there.] [31] Comment Galyen, aprés qu’il eut occiz et tué le roy [et tué le roy mq] Pinart, s’en retourna vers les mons de Roncevaulx, où il se combatit à trente et six payens; et comment il trouva son pere le conte [le conte mq] Olivier et Rolant et l’arcevesque Turpin et les autres pers de France [pers de France mq] qui c’estoient mucéz en la roche de Roncevaulx. [How Galyen, after he had slain and killed King Pinart, returned to the mountains of Roncevaulx, where he fought thirty-six peasants; and how he found his father, Count Olivier, and Rolant and Archbishop Turpin and the other peers of France who were hiding in the mountain of Roncevaulx.]

In these three cases, ignoring for a moment the already noted suppression of appositives,¹⁵ it is especially remarkable that the verb that disappears, probably because of its position as second in the pair, is in fact the more “modern” of the  In title 23, Olivier is one of the “aultres pers”; in title 31, the same character is identified by his name, and the “catégorie résiduelle” is expressed only through the indefinite pronoun.

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two: i. e., tuer is selected over occire, which was still in use at the time, but certainly would have felt more archaic.¹⁶ Finally, the following represents a case where layout certainly played a role in the composition of the title: [72] Comment ung messagier arriva à la salle du palais devant toute [toute mq] la baronnie qui venoit de Monsurain, que la royne Guymande, femme de Galyen, lui envoyoit pour avoir secours de lui à l’encontre de la gent Mahon qui avoient [avoit] assiegé le chasteau. [How a messenger arrived at the palace hall in front of the entire barony from Monsurain, whom Queen Guymande, wife of Galyen, sent for help against the people of Mahon who had besieged the castle.]

Only one word has disappeared, a secondary adjective; meanwhile the change of subject in the auxiliary (avoient/avoit) confirms the ambiguous status of collective names. Of particular interest is the number of abbreviations that the typesetter had to use to ensure that the title printed at the bottom of fol. 106r would fit into the remaining space (see Figs 1a and 1b):

Fig. 1: Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly – Musée Condé, IV–G–035, fols A5r and 106r

These lexical remarks give rise to a second point, namely the variants which allow us to observe particular phenomena in progress at this stage in the history

 Note, for completeness, that the pair occist et tua (simple past P3) is found in title 17, both in the Table and on fol. 27v; in titles 42, 48, 49, 67, 74, occire is used alone, whilst tuer is never found alone; a more complete conclusion would require an exhaustive inventory. Cf. Wittlin (1989); this issue of Le Moyen Français gathers the proceedings of a conference organized by Giuseppe Di Stefano (McGill University, Montreal) in 1988: particularly ahead of its time, its subject was Du manuscrit à l’imprimé.

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of the French language. Just one example, albeit one that is simultaneously graphic, phonetic, and morphological, is provided by the equivalents qui / qu’il / qu’ilz: [60] Comment Galyen vint secourir le roy Charlemaigne à moult grant puissance; et comme, quant il yssit du navire, pria [pria à]¹⁷ ses barons qu’ilz [qu’i] lui voulsissent aider à venger la mort de son pere Olivier. [How Galien came to the aid of King Charlemagne with many troops; and how, when he disembarked the ship, he begged his barons to help him avenge the death of his father, Olivier.] [62] Comment, aprés la desconfiture des païens, Galyen pria au roy Charlemaigne qu’il [qu’i] lui tenist compaignie pour aller à Monsurain espouser Guymande, la niepce de Balligant.¹⁸ [How, after the defeat of the pagans, Galien begged King Charlemagne to accompany him to Monsurain to marry Guymande, Balligant’s niece.]

Several factors can explain the form qui: the weakening of the final liquid consonant, the co-existence in the text of the same liquid consonant (lui), and also – perhaps even primarily – the need to respect the justification of the line (fol. 83v; see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly – Musée Condé, IV–G–035, fol. 83v

Whatever the reason, the perfect correspondence between qu’il / qu’ilz and qui (= qu’i) should be of note to anyone attempting a critical edition due to

 The two structures (with direct or indirect object) are widely used in Middle French (DMF, s.v. prier).  In both cases, Keller and Kaltenbach (1998) transcribe these as qu’i[l]: 313 (Ch. 60) and 320 (Ch. 62), respectively.

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the need to avoid, on the one hand, integrating a superfluous [l] and, on the other, to conserve the contraction qui, which is jarring in Modern French.¹⁹ Nonetheless, Vérard’s Galien still offers a further element of reflection. Keller and Kaltenbach (1998), as noted above, do not publish the “Table des titres”, though they do indicate its existence and transcribe the incipit (171). Had they included it, there would have been particular value to the exercise; first, a correction to an aberrant lesson in title 49 could have been made: Comment Galyen fist armer tous ses gens aprés que les dix roys furent occiz, et les mena sur les dix mille païens, lesquelz il desconfit et eut triumphanté de victoire. ²⁰ (fol. 68r, sic in the edition, 284; in the Table: “et eut triumphante victoire”) [How Galien armed all his troops after the ten kings were slain, and led them against the ten thousand pagans, whom he destroyed and he had triumphant victory.]

More significantly, the Table provides an overview of the complete structure of the book as originally conceived: instead of just the remaining seventy-eight chapters in the BnF copy, therefore, we are given the full eighty titles; thus, transcribing the Table might have prompted the editors to track down another copy of the same edition, rather than filling the gap of fols 117– 118 by using a text from twenty years later. Whilst the Musée Condé copy is distinctive in several ways, as described above, its text is unlikely to stray too far from the lost pages of the BnF copy. Indeed, it is with the aim of offering access to the entirety of Vérard’s text that I offer an edition of the Table as an appendix to this article.

How to read Galien? Historians of the book, linguists, literary critics, and critical editors all have an interest in the materiality of old books, but we must be careful to avoid both neglecting non-secondary aspects and falling into anachronism by projecting our modern vision of things onto historical documents, rather than seeing them in their proper production context. Thus it is the work and the responsibility of philologists that are perhaps the most crucial: it is thanks to their editing work, based on deep – but never blind – respect, that today’s readers have access to

 This phenomenon, which was also present in Old French, is confirmed by numerous inverse spellings (e. g., quil or even quilz for qui), and is often “corrected” in modern editions (MarchelloNizia 1997, 108).  Spelling reproduced in the “Glossaire” (387): “triumphanté s.f.”, translated “triomphe” (see also the ghost word in the DMF, recently corrected). Cf. Colombo Timelli (2019a).

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works from the past. Indeed, if the filter that they necessarily impose between text and modern reader is opaque (by virtue of, e. g., erroneous transcriptions, imprecise punctuation, either unwelcome or overly-timid interventions), our reading of the texts will be altered, possibly even faulty. The more an edition is “critique” in the etymological sense of the word, the less visible the philologist will be, and the more certain the interpretation of the text will become. Let the books speak to us, listen to them with respect and modesty: our knowledge of the language and the texts of the past will only be beneficial.

Appendix 1: Transcription of Galien Rethoré, “Table des titres” In square brackets, I signal the variants found in the subheadings, excluding purely orthographic variants; errors in the Table, by contrast, appear in round brackets. [A2r] S’ensuit la table du noble et hardy chevalier Galyen Rethoré, filz au vaillant et bien renommé Olivier de Vienne, per de France. Et premierement Le premier fueillet est blanc.²¹ Prologue de l’acteur sur la declaration de ce present romant. – f. vi [1] Comment il print au roy Charlemaigne devotion d’aller visiter le Saint Sepulcre de Hierusalem. – f. vii [2] Comment le roy Charlemaigne et les douze pers de France, eulx estans dedens les douze chaires, adorerent la couronne de Nostre Seigneur et la lance et autres sainctes reliques lesquelles s’apparurent devant eulx miraculeusement. – fueillet viiiv [3] Comment le roy Charlemaigne receut les sainctes reliques du patriarche de Hierusalem. – fueillet ixv [4] Comment le roy Charlemaigne, aprés qu’il eut prins congié du patriarche, entra dedens ung bois où il trouva six mille Turcz qui le guettoient; et comment ilz furent sauvéz par le moyen des reliques qu’ilz avoient. – fueillet x [5] Comment le roy Charlemaigne se hebergea à ung pavillon qui estoit la porcherie du roy Hugues. – f. xv

 Vérard’s Table simply refers to the folio, regardless of recto / verso: I add (v) where necessary; moreover, Vérard’s number refers to the beginning of the chapter, and not to the title, which can be found on the previous page.

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[6] Comment le roy Charlemaigne trouva le roy Hugues menant la charrue; et de la grant richesse du palais de Constantinoble. – fueillet xiii [7] Comment Olivier fut amoureux de la belle Jaqueline, fille du roy Hugues de Constantinoble [de C. mq]; et comment il en perdit le boire et le menger. – feillet xiiii [8] Comment le roy Charlemaigne commença le premier à gabber, et chacun des douze pers aprés. – f. xiiiiv [9] Comment le roy Hugues fist armer trente mille hommes de la cité de Constantinoble; et comment ilz vindrent assaillir le roy Charlemaigne et les douze pers. – fueillet xviii [A2v] [10] Comment le roy Hugues revint à Charlemaigne et aux douze pers pour leur faire acomplir leurs gabtz; et comment il bailla premier au conte Olivier sa fille pour coucher avecques lui. – f. xixv [11] Comment le roy Hugues couronna Charlemaigne empereur de Constantin le Noble et lui assist la couronne sur son chief et lui fist hommage. – fueillet xxi [12] Comment Jaqueline à ung matin se leva et alla à une fontaine qui estoit derriere la maison de son hostesse, où elle acoucha d’un beau filz [d’un beau filz mq]; et comment deux fees receurent l’enfant, qui lui donnerent le nom de Galyen (ga|galyen) Rethoré [Rethoré mq]; et de l’heur qu’elles lui donnerent. – fueillet xxii [13] Comment l’arcevesque de Constantinoble [de C. mq] baptiza l’enfant de Jaqueline, fille du roy Hugues; et comment il fut nommé Galyen. – f. xxiii [14] Comment le roy Hugues de Constantinoble tint court generale à ung jour d’une Nativité, où il manda le conte de Damas, lequel mena l’enfant [l’enfant mq] Galyen avecques luy. – f. xxiiii [15] Comment Galyen demanda congié au roy d’aller cerchier son pere en France. – f. xxvv [16] Comment Galyen partit atout quatre sommiers chargéz d’or et d’argent de la maison du roy Hugues de Constantinoble [de C. mq] pour s’en venir en France cercher son pere; et de l’empeschement que ses oncles luy firent. – fueillet xxviv [17] Comment Galyen retourna querir sa lance et getta Richart par terre; et comment Girard de Secille le occist et tua. – f. xxviiv [18] Comment, aprés que Richart fut occist et tué [et tué mq], ceulx qui estoient en embusche sortirent sur Galyen; et comment le roy Hugues lui vint à secours. – fueillet xxviii [19] Comment Galyen cuida estre destroussé de Brisebarre et de trente larrons à l’issue d’un bois pres de Gennes, lesquelz il mist à mort excepté cinq qui s’enfuyrent. – fueillet xxixv

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[20] Comment le duc Regnier de Gennes [de G. mq] demanda à Galyen dont il estoit; et comment Galyen lui dist qu’il estoit filz de son filz Olivier. – f. xxxv [21] Comment le duc de Gennes donna son destrier Marchepin à son nepveu Galyen, qui estoit le plus fier et [fiert et | et] le plus merveilleux que jamais homme vit. – fueillet xxxii [A3r] [22] Comment Galyen s’en alla à l’ost de Charlemaigne aprés qu’il eut destruit les huit larrons; et comment il fut fait chevalier. – f. xxxiiiv [23] Comment, par le consentement de Rolant, nepveu de Charlemaigne, fut envoyé Ganelon en embassade à la ville de Sarragosse vers le souldan Marcille, où il vendit Rolant et Olivier [et O. mq] et les aultres pers qui estoient avec lui et plus de vingt mille chevaliers qui y furent occiz et tuéz [et tuéz mq]. – fueillet xxxiiii [24] Comment le roy Marcille vint assaillir Rolant et ses gens [et ses gens mq] jusques à son tref atout cent cinquante mille sarrzins vers la mynuyt. – f. xxxvv [25] Comment Rolant sonna son cor de si grant vertu que la veine du cueur lui rompit, et alla le son jusques au tref du roy Charlemaigne. – fueillet xxxviiv [26] Comment le traistre Ganelon destourba encores de rechief que le roy [le roy mq] Charlemaigne n’alast secourir son nepveu [son nepveu mq] Rolant; et comment Galyen l’appella traistre devant tous les barons et s’en alla à Roncevaulx pour veoir son pere Olivier [Olivier mq]. – fueillet xxxviii [27] Comment le roy Pinart se oingnit d’un oignement precieux par tout le corps, qui lui fist la chair plus dure que fin [fin mq] acier trampé, et puis s’en vint jouster à Galyen. Et comment Galyen s’endormit pres d’un gué où son cheval Marchepin l’esveilla quant il vit Pinart arriver. – f. xlv [28] Comment Pinart donna loisir à Galyen de lacer son heaume en son chief et de monter sur son destrier Marchepin [Marchepin mq]; et comment ilz jousterent l’un contre l’autre. – f. xlii [29] Comment Galyen fut hebergé et bien servy au tref de Pinart, et de la bonne chiere qui lui fut faicte. – f. xliiiiv [30] Comment Galyen couppa ung gros baston de son espee, dont il assomma le roy Pinart. – f. xlvv [31] Comment Galyen, aprés qu’il eut occiz et tué le roy [et tué le roy mq] Pinart, s’en retrouna vers les mons de Roncevaulx, où il se combatit à trente et six payens; et comment il trouva son pere le conte [le conte mq] Olivier et Rolant et l’arcevesque Turpin et les autres pers de France [pers de France mq] qui c’estoient mucéz en la roche de Roncevaulx. – fueillet xlvii [32] Comment le conte [le conte mq] Olivier, ainsi navré qu’il estoit, et Rolant vindrent aider à Galyen; et comment Galyen congneut Olivier son pere aux armes qu’il portoit. – fueillet xlvv [A3v]

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[33] Comment, tandis que Rolant se combatoit aux païens qui là estoient venus, Galyen descendit de dessus son destrier et embrassa son pere Olivier et le porta contre le rochier, et n’en partit jusques à ce qu’il eust l’ame separee du corps. – f. lv [34] Comment le conte Olivier fist ses regretz devant que mourir à son filz Galyen, qui souvent le baisoit en la bouche. – f. lv [35] Comment Rolant vint faire ses regréz au bon conte Olivier qui se mouroit devant Galyen, et du dueil qu’il mena pour lui; et comment, aprés qu’il fut trespassé, l’arcevesque Turpin vint, qui rendit son ame à Dieu auprés de lui. – f. liiv [36] Comment, aprés que Rolant vit qu’il ne pouoit briser son espee sur le marbre, la getta dedens une riviere; et comment Galyen la cuida recouvrer d’une lance; et comment Rolant rendit l’esperit. – f. liiiv [37] Comment Galyen demoura tout seul couché entre Rolant et son pere Olivier la nuyt; et comment il vint ung païen pour avoir l’espee de Rolant, et vint à Galyen qui dormoit et l’esveilla, dont mal lui en print. – f. liiiiv [38] Comment, en la presence de Charlemaigne, le traistre Gannes cheut sur le corps de Rolant, où il faingnit d’estre pasmé, dont Galyen l’appella traistre et lui voulut trencher la teste, se n’eust esté le roy; et comment le roy le fist prendre et le [le mq] bailla en garde à Nenelon et à Thierry et à Huon d’Aubemerles, sur peine de leurs vies. – f. lvi [39] Comment Galyen alla, atout grant armee de chevaliers, avec Girard de Vienne et plusieurs autres, conquester aux Espaignes contre les païens. – fueillet lviv [40] Comment Girard de Vienne advisa ung pavillon où il y avoit plus de vingt mille sarrazins qui seoient au menger; et comment ilz furent desconfitz de par lui et de par Galyen. – f. lviiv [41] Comment Galyen mena ses gens à Monsurain; et comme le chastel fut prins par le moyen du roy Mauprin que Galyen avoit vaincu. – f. lixv [42] Comment, aprés que Galyen fut entré au chastel et les aultres barons, occirent tous ceulx qu’ilz trouverent. – f. lxv [43] Comment Galyen parla à Guymande, et comme elle pria Galyen de l’espouser; et comment ilz promirent l’un à l’autre foy de mariage. – f. lxiv [44] Comment la pucelle Guymande manda vingt des plus haulx princes de la ville de Monsurain pour venir parler à elle; et comment ceulx de la ville vindrent assaillir Galyen et ses compaignons dedens le chasteau. – f. lxii [A4r] [45] Comment Marcille saillit de son tref et s’en vint atout trente mille combatans à Roncevaulx, et demandoit le traistre Ganelon. – f. lxiiiv [46] Comment le roy Marcille s’enfuyt à son tref merveilleusement navré, dont sa femme donna au dieu Mahon par despit plus de cinquante coupz de baston et le foulla aux [au] piéz. – f. lxv

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[47] Comment Galyen et s’amye Guymande se solacioient au plus hault du chasteau quant ilz virent arriver les dix roys païens; et comment Guymande ala parler à eulx à la porte. – f. lxviv [48] Comment Guymande fist entrer ou chastel les dix roys et leur fist laisser leurs armures dehors; et comment Galyen les occist. – f. lxviiv [49] Comment Galyen fist armer tous ses gens aprés que les dix roys furent occiz, et les mena sur les dix mille païens, lesquelz il desconfit et eut triumphante victoire [triumphante de victoire] à l’encontre d’eulx. – f. lxviii [50] Comment Balligant vint atout soixante mille païens assaillir Galyen; et comment Galyen jousta à lui pres de Monsurain sur Brifveille. – f. lxixv [51] Comment Galyen jura que jamais ne beuroit ne ne mengeroit tant que ses oncles et ses barons fussent delivréz hors de prison. – f. lxxiiv [52] Comment Durgant le portier ala dire à Balligant que Guymande luy mandoit qu’il fist pendre les prisonniers qu’il avoit. – f. lxxiii [53] Comment Balligant bailla au roy Mathibee et au roy Malapart deux cens hommes pour aller pendre Girard de Vienne et ses compaignons; et comment Galyen les rescouyt. – f. lxxiiii [54] Comment Balligant fut conseillé de ses barons de laisser Galyen à Monsurain et d’aller secourir le roy Marcille contre le roy Charlemaigne. – f. lxxvi [55] Comment Balligant envoya messagiers devers Charlemaigne pour le venir servir et renyer la loy de Jesu Crist pour croire en Mahon; et de la responce qu’il fist. – f. lxxviv [56] Comment le roy Charlemaigne envoya Girard de Gennevoys à Monsurain pour querir Galyen et les barons qui estoient avec lui pour le venir secourir encontre Balligant. – f. lxxviii [57] Comment Girard de Gennevoys se combatit au filz du roy Pestel qui gardoit le passage; et comment Girard le vainquit. – f. lxxviiiv [58] Comment Galyen et Girard de Vienne et tous les autres barons monterent sur mer avec vingt mille François pour venir secourir Charlemaigne à Roncevaulx à l’encontre de Balligant et de son frere le roy Marcille. – f. lxxixv [59] Comment Balligant vint assaillir l’ost de Charlemaigne, et du grant [A4v] murdre que les François firent des païens. – f. lxxxv [60] Comment Galyen vint secourir le roy Charlemaigne à moult grant puissance; et comme, quant il yssit du navire, pria [pria à] ses barons qu’ilz [qu’i] lui voulsissent aider à venger la mort de son pere Olivier. – f. lxxxiiiv [61] Comment Charlemaigne fist à Dieu une requeste, que le soleil, qui fut presque resconsé, permanast et revint à son premier estat, laquelle requeste lui fut ottroyee pour poursuyvre les païens qui s’enfuyoient. – f. lxxxviv

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[62] Comment, aprés la desconfiture des païens, Galyen pria au roy Charlemaigne qu’il [qu’i] lui tenist compaignie pour aller à Monsurain espouser Guymande, la niepce de Balligant. – f. lxxxviiv [63] Comment Galyen vint au palais où sa mere estoit agenoillee devant les seigneurs pour estre jugee; et comment il fut son champion. – f. xcv [64] Comment Burgalant, aprés qu’il eut juré sur les sainctes reliques, les cuida baiser, mais il n’en sceut oncques aprocher. – f. xciiv [65] Comment Galyen vainquit Burgalant en champ de bataille, dont enaprés fut en grant dengier de mort par les deux traistres ses oncles. – fueillet xciiiv [66] Comment, aprés que Galyen vit ses gens à sauveté, partit secretement d’eulx sans estre apperceu de nul, et yssit hors de la ville pour aller aprés les quatre chevaliers qui menoient sa mere au bois de Bucifal. – f. xcviiv [67] Comment Galyen occist les quatre pautonniers qui menoient sa mere; et comment elle s’enfuyt parmy le bois. – f. c [68] Comment la dame, mere de Galyen, trouva dedens le bois une petite sente laquelle elle suyvit, qui la mena à une belle fontaine, où elle s’endormit; et comment ses deux [deux mq] freres Henry et Thibert la trouverent dormant le lendemain au matin. – f. ci [69] Comment Galyen fut secouru par le moyen d’un jeune garson qui passoit parmy le bois, qui avoit veu la bataille, qui le vint dire en la ville; et comment Henry et Thibert furent prins et menéz à la ville de par Bennes et Savary. – fueillet ciiv [70] Comment les barons et princes et les bourgeois et tout le menu peuple de la cité de Constantinoble yssirent somptueusement de ladicte ville pour venir au devant de Galyen et de sa mere; et comment les deux traistres furent pendus. – f. ciiiiv [71] Comment, par le conseil de tous les princes et barons du royaume, Galyen Rethoré fut couronné roy de Constantinoble; et comment chacun luy [A5v] fist hommage. – f. cvi [72] Comment ung messagier arriva à la salle du palais devant toute [toute mq] la baronnie qui venoit de Monsurain, que la royne Guymande, femme de Galyen, lui envoyoit pour avoir secours de lui à l’encontre de la gent Mahon qui avoient [avoit] assiegé le chasteau. – f. cviv [73] Comment Bennes et Savary rescouyrent leur pere Girard de Vienne et Arnault de Bellande et bien soixante chevaliers que l’amiral avoit prins et les envoyoit en la cité des Cordes pour les faire martyrer. – f. cviii [74] Comment Galien gangna l’estandart Mahon à l’amiral des Cordes; et comment ceulx qui le gardoient furent occiz. – f. cxii [75] Comment l’amiral des Cordes s’enfuyt vers la mer, où il entra en ses navires, et avecques lui trois mille païens. – f. cxiiii

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[76] Comment Galyen, le lendemain au matin, manda tous les bourgeois de la ville qui estoient destruitz pour les restablir et enrichir; et comment il leur donna pour ung denier (dernier) [denir] perdu six; et comment il departit à tous ses princes, barons et gens d’armes tout l’avoir qu’il avoit conquis sur les païens. – fueillet cxv [77] Comment Girard de Vienne et Arnault de Bellande, Bennes et Savary et Aymery prindrent congié de Galyen leur nepveu et de Guymande sa femme; et de l’honneur qui leur fut fait quant ilz partirent de Monsurain. – fueillet cxvv [78] Comment Galyen partit de Monsurain pour aller à son royaume de Constantinoble, où il fist couronner Guymande sa femme à moult grant joye. – fueillet cxviv [79] Comment Charlemaigne fist venir Ganelon devant lui à son palais de Laon, où il le voulut faire juger à mourir; mais il demanda champ de bataille contre le duc d’Anjou, lequel lui accorda le roy; et comment le traistre fist ferrer son cheval à rebours et, quant il fut au champ, s’enfuyt. – fueillet cxvii [80] Comment Pinabel, nepveu de Ganelon, demanda la bataille pour son oncle; et comment il fut vaincu, et Ganelon tiré à quatre chevaulx. – f. cxviiiv Cy fine la table de Galyen Rethoré.

Appendix 2: Chantilly, Musée Condé, IV–G–035, fols 117 – 118 In my edition I follow the usual criteria and practice for Middle French texts; lexical notes are based on the DMF. [116v] [78] Comment Galyen partit de Monsurain pour aler à son royaume de Constantinoble, où il fist couronner Guymande sa femme à moult grant joye. Aprés que Galyen eut mis ordre et prince au royaume de Monsurain, ne voulut plus gueres sejourner là, ains fist appareiller navires pour tout son train, où il se mist, lui et ses barons, et laissa Mauprin roy et seigneur de tout le païs. Mais, ainsi que dit l’histoire, l’amiral des Cordes lui osta depuis et conquesta tout le païs, aprés que le roy Galyen fust allé de ce siecle à l’autre; puis aprés le reconquesta le grant roy Charlemaigne, quant il alla au voyage de Saint Jaques, là où il fut trente et trois ans ains qu’il peust expulser ne mettre les païens hors du païs ne reduire à la foy crestienne. Or retournons au demourant de nostre romant pour en avoir la fin. Le bon roy Galyen chevaucha tant, lui et ses gens, qu’ilz arriverent à la mer, où ilz trouverent les nefz et navires toutes prestes à equipper. Adonc entrerent dedens à grant joye et liesse; puis, sans nul delay, quant chacun

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fut dedns, drecerent les voilles au vent, et tant allerent par mer qu’ilz arriverent par ung samedy matin au jour ajournant²² au bras Saint George. Quant ceulx de la ville de Constantinoble sceurent sa venue, vindrent au devant de lui à procession, aportans corps saintz et reliques avec grant triumphe et appareil des bourgeois, manans et habitans de ladicte ville: oncques homme ne vit si grant solennité ne si grant joye qu’on lui fist ce jour là; tout le monde fut si joyeulx pour la venue de la dame que ce fut merveilles. Moult fut noble et de grant triumphe l’apareil du boire [117r] et menger, et les grans jeux et esbatemens qui furent faitz parmy la ville. Aprés le menger, chacun s’en alla esbatre jusques au souper et, aprés souper, coucher. Le lendemain au matin Galyen manda tous ses barons et les mena à l’eglise ouyr messe; aprés le service fait, fist couronner Guymande sa femme moult noblement: grant honneur lui porterent ceulx du païs; à merveilles fut grant la joye et la feste qui fut faicte pour elle, tellement qu’elle dura ung moys entier. La bonne dame, tandis qu’elle vesquit, fut moult aymee de ung chacun. Mainte proesse fist Galyen en son vivant: maint païen occist et maint sarrazin; si bien regist et gouverna son royaume et ses subjetz que en la fin en acquist perpetuelle louenge. Saincte foy catholique à tout son pouoir defendit et exaulça; le droit de povres femmes, vefves et orphelins, soustint et voulut garder; si bien servit Nostre Seigneur qu’en la fin acquist s’amour et sa grace, laquelle nous vueille donner le Pere et le Filz et le benoist Saint Esperit. Si ne trouve point icy l’an de son definement, par quoy je n’y en metz riens: pour cause vous lairay à parler de lui, mais vous diray de Charlemaigne, comme il fist mourir le traistre Ganellon qui trahit les pers de France à Roncevaulx. [79] Comment Charlemaigne fist venir Ganellon devant lui à son palais de Laon, où il le voulut faire juger à mourir; mais il demanda champ de bataille contre le duc d’Anjou, lequel lui accorda le roy; et comment le traistre fist ferrer son cheval à rebours et, quant il fut au champ, s’enfuyt. Pource qu’il a esté fait mention cy devant de la tres piteuse mort de Rolant et de Olivier et de ceulx que Ganellon vendit aux païens, laquelle chose n’avons point dit cy devant, comment le traistre Gannes fut puny, mais a esté dit paravant que en la fin de ce livre seroit declaré toute la trahison qu’il fist; et pour ceste cause est assavoir que, aprés que Charlemaigne eut vaincu le roy Marcille et l’amiral Balligant et qu’il eut fait enterrer les mors et fait chanter pour leurs ames, ledit roy Charlemaigne s’en retourna en France, et ne cessa oncques de chevaucher tant qu’il parvint à Laon en Lannois. Quant ledit roy fut arrivé en son palais à Laon, manda querir le traistre Gannes pour en faire le jugement. Quant on l’eut amené devant l’empereur Charlemaigne, il lui va dire: “Or

 “au lever du jour”.

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venéz çà, traistre soudart, vous m’avéz bien faulcement trahy, et moy et mes gens. Par Dieu, tout maintenant seréz tourmenté, car [117v] on ne doit point garder traistre longuement.” “Ha! dist Gannes. Sire empereur, à tort vous m’alléz occupant²³: jamais jour de ma vie ne pensay trahison, car oncques ne vendis les nobles pers aux mescreans.” “Par Dieu, dist le duc d’Anjou, vous y mentéz faulcement! Je le veulx prover au trenchant de l’espee. Et veéz là mon gand²⁴ de bataille que je gette pour gaige.” Lors Gannes le leva, et fut prins le jour pour batailler; mais le duc d’Anjou demanda pleiges. Adonc vindrent les parens de Gannes, qui le pleigerent et promirent au roy sur leur vies de le ramener le lendemain au matin quant le soleil seroit levé. Par ceste maniere le champ fut esleu, et le roy bailla Ganelon aux pleiges qui estoient ses parens par tel convenant qu’il le mettroient audit jour ensuyvant dedens le champ. Et aussi firent ilz; mais les maulditz traistres lui baillerent ung destrier qui alloit comme une arondelle, et lui firent ferrer les quatre piéz à rebours. Et quant ce vint le lendemain, ilz le presenterent au champ; mais, quant il fut dedens, il picqua le destrier si roidement des esperons qu’il s’enfuyt devant tous tant qu’il peut. Quant l’empereur le vit fuyr, si se va escriant et dist: “Alléz aprés, François et Allemans, tost! qu’il me soit ramené. Par saint Denis, qui me le ramenera, lui donneray grant loyer.” Alors vont brochant aprés escuiers et chevaliers; mais se fut pour neant, car oncques ne le sceurent avoir, car ilz le perdirent pour l’occasion des²⁵ fers de son cheval qui venoient contre eulx. Quant les François eurent long temps couru aprés ledit Ganellon par l’espace de sept ou huit lieues et ilz virent qu’ilz n’en peurent ouyr ne savoir nouvelles, ilz s’en revindrent devers Charlemaigne, lequel cuida forcener quant il vit qu’il ne l’avoient point ramené. Quant le duc d’Anjou vit ce, si ne fist oncques arrest, ains s’en vient au roy et lui promet que jamais n’arrestera en ville, bourg ne cité tant qu’i l’aura trouvé, et dist qu’il le remenera²⁶ au maistre donjon de son palais. Quant l’empereur l’entendit, le cueur lui rit de joye, et lui promet de faire beaucop de biens; lors lui bailla dix mille hommes pour garder tous les environs du païs, et leur dist que s’ilz le peuent prendre, que tous les fera riches. Atant le duc Thierry d’Anjou print congié du roy et s’en part atout bien douze mille hommes, lesquelz estoient bien arméz et montéz sur bons destriers arragonnois; et s’en vont trespercer²⁷ et cercher par toutes les terres des environs de Laon.

 “accuser”; manuscript translation: “vous m’accuséz” (BnF fr. 1470, fol. 227v).  Attested spelling, albeit unusual.  pour l’occasion de, “à cause de”.  “ramener, reconduire”.  “pénétrer dans qqc, traverser qqc”; manuscript translation: “si traverserent les terres et les boys tout és environs” (BnF fr. 1470, fol. 228v).

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Or dit l’histoire que le traistre Gannes s’en vint tousjours brochant le destrier jusques à ung bois, où il se cacha au plus espés lieu de buissons qu’il peust trouver. Et quant se vint qu’il fut presque nuyt, descendit de dessus le destrier et le lya à ung arbre par sa resne; puis alla monter au [118r] hault d’un rochier qui là estoit, et va monter sur ung hault arbre pour veoir en quel cartier il y avoit tour, maison ou buron²⁸ qui fust pres de là pour soy loger. Mais quant le traistre fut au plus hault monté, il vit plus de dix lieues à la ronde les gens d’armes de l’empereur qui avoient avironné tout le païs, dont il fut bien esbahy et eut au cueur grant frisson. Lors descendit du tertre où il fut monté et s’en vient pensant à par luy que, s’il peut yssir hors du bois atout son destrier, il ne les doubtera la value d’un bouton²⁹. Adonc s’en vint à l’arbre où il avoit lié son destrier, mais il ne le trouva mie, dont il eut le cueur marry, car le bon cheval fuyoit parmy les bois de grant randon, et avoit rompu la resne de quoy il estoit lié et sentoit les autres chevaulx qui hanissoient sur les champs hors le bois, qui alloient et venoient et ne cessoient de courir. Quant Gannes vit ce, si mua couleur et ne savoit que dire. Lors il ouyt sonner trompettes et plusieurs cors de laton qui retentissoient jusques dedens le bois, maint cheval trotter et hannir qui venoit devers le cartier où il estoit, si s’enfuyt tant qu’il peut parmy les buyssons et larriz du bois; et son cheval, qui sentoit les autres, desrompit selle et bride et s’enfuyoit comme se le diable le portast. Et les François venoient devers le bois à grant cource d’esperon, qui rencontrerent le destrier de Gannes, lequel ilz congneurent. Quant le duc d’Anjou vit le cheval, il le fist prendre et lui fist haulser les piéz; donc, quant il advisa les fers qui estoient à reculons, fut bien esbahy, et s’escria à haulte voix et dist: “Seigneurs, certes Gannes est pres d’icy, ou il est mort ou pris, car voicy son cheval arragonnoys.” “Par ma foy, disent³⁰ les François, il est vray, mais il convient exploicter chemin³¹ pour le trouver.” Là eusséz veu courir François parmy le bois de grant roideur, puis vont puis viennent, et ne peurent trouver la voie par où le cheval estoit yssu. Alors le duc commanda cercher les pas du cheval, lesquelz ilz trouverent et les suyvirent; mais, ains qu’ilz les sceussent trouver, y furent trois jours entiers à aller et à venir et à cercher de tous les environs du bois. Et le traistre glouton estoit au bois qui mouroit de fain, dont il avoit la face et le menton moult descoulouree. Quant

 “cabane, chaumière”; baron in Keller and Kaltenbach (1998, 376), but buron in Veuve Trepperel/Janot’s edition, fol. U3va.  Manuscript translation: “il ne doubteroict de riens les François” (BnF fr. 1470, fol. 229r); on figurative expressions of minimum value, cf. Colombo Timelli (2019a, 57– 58).  Simple past (‐r- intervocalic sigmatism).  exploiter chemin: “se mettre en route, marcher”.

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ce vint au troiziesme³² jour, Gannes descendit des larris où il estoit et yssit hors des buyssons pour soy desarmer: là despoilla son haubert et son riche bason, son espee, son heaume et toutes ses armes; puis desira³³ sa jaquette en plus de cent lieux, et prent ung baston en son poing, et chemina toute nuyt en la malle heure³⁴ jusques au point du jour, et s’en vint à trois lieues de là, pres d’un petit village, où il cuidoit que les chevaliers de Charlemaigne ne fussent pas espan[118v]dus jusques là; et lui estoit advis qu’ilz estoient passéz oultre en une aultre region. Ainsi comme il s’en venoit pour repaistre audit villaige, disoit en son cueur que, s’il pouoit une fois gangner quelque maison, qu’il se abilleroit en tel estat que les gens à Charlemaigne ne le recongnoistroient jamais. Le traistre bocheron³⁵ aprocha du villaige, ung baston à son poing; mais, ainsi que Dieu le vouloit, ains qu’il entrast en maison ne buron³⁶, fut rencontré d’un chevalier nommé Gaulthier, natif de Dijon, lequel l’advisa comme il estoit ja pres d’entrer dedens. Incontinent ledit chevalier saillit sur piéz et va regarder la maniere dudit traistre; lors s’en vient à lui l’espee traicte: “Or çà, dist le chevalier, traistre! foy que je doy saint Symon, tres mal estes arrivé. Maintenant vous trenchasse la teste se ne fust Charlemaigne qui vous veult encores veoir, qui mourir vous fera à sa voulenté.” Adonc le print et le lya et le mena au duc d’Anjou, lequel, quant il le vit, loua Dieu et la Vierge Marie. Incontinent le duc le fist enferrer et puis le mena erramment à Laon, où le roy Charlemaigne estoit. [80] Comment Pinabel, nepveu de Ganellon, demanda la bataille pour son oncle; et comment il fut vaincu, et Ganelon tiré à quatre chevaulx. Quant le traistre fut prins, le duc d’Anjou l’amena lié estroictement à Laon et le presenta au roy en son maistre palais. Quant le roy le vit, n’en eust pas voulu tenir tout l’or et l’avoir du monde. Tantost manda ses barons pour en faire le jugement; et quant ilz sceurent ce, ilz y vindrent de grant courage. Quant ilz furent venus, le roy leur dist: “Barons, autre chose ne vous demande fors que incontinent me jugéz Gannes.” Et les barons respondirent que voulentiers; lors le jugerent à mourir à torment. Et quant Gannes l’entendit, du cueur va souspirer et dist au roy: “Sire empereur, vraiement vous me faictes tort, car jamais ne pensay le crime que m’acuséz³⁷: oncques n’euz le vouloir de trahir la baronnie qui mourut à tourment.” “Vous y mentéz, dist le roy: traistre estes prové. Par vous

 trois|ziesme  Attested spelling for dechirer, but very rare.  “pour son malheur”.  Attested spelling.  burc in Keller and Kaltenbach (1998, 377), but buron in Veuve Trepperel/Janot’s edition, fol. U4va.  acuser qqn qqc: “accuser qqn de qqc” (DMF I.A.1.a).

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ay perdu mon plaisir et ma joye et tout mon tresor, sans jamais le recouvrer; par quoy vous feray mourir de la plus griefve mort de quoy je me pourray adviser.” Quant Gannes l’entendit, commença à pleurer tendrement. Atant voicy venir Pinabel, nepveu de Gannes et parent de Guffez, qui dist au roy Charles: “Sire, entendéz à moy. Vraiement on acuse mon oncle à tort et sans [119r] raison, car oncques ne pensa trahison nullement. Et s’il est aucun homme qui vueille dire le contraire, je le combatray au trenchant de l’espee.” Quant Charles l’entendit, si fut tant alumé de ire qu’à peu que le cueur ne lui fent, et dist à Pinabel: “Glouton, Dieu te puisse agraventer³⁸! Le tien oncle est jugé: ja champ de bataille n’auras.” Alors saillirent trente traistres des parens de Gannes, qui tous s’escrierent: “Sire empereur, pour Dieu, faictes nous droit, car le champ doit avoir s’il y a quil le demande.” Quant le roy les entendit, à peu qu’il ne forcena; mais le duc Naymes et Oger le Dannois et Richart de Normandie dirent au roy que hardiment leur ottroyast, affin qu’on ne lui reprochast le temps advenir, “Car, dirent ilz, sire, on pourroit dire que l’auriéz fait mourir par mauvais jugement.” “Voire, dist le duc d’Anjou, sire, puissant empereur, je requiers la bataille.” Adonc lui accorda Charlemaigne, qui en eut le cueur dolent. Lors s’alla richement adouber le duc d’Anjou, et aussi fist Pinabel en sa malle adventure, car mal lui en print. […]

References Adam, Renaud, Jean Devaux, Nadine Henrard, Matthieu Marchal, and Alexandra Velissariou, ed. Les Lettres médiévales à l’aube de l’ère typographique. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2020. Antoine Vérard, special issue of Le Moyen Français 69, 2011. BMC: Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1908 – 2007. Bonicoli, Louis-Gabriel. La production du libraire-éditeur parisien Antoine Vérard (1485 – 1512): nature, fonctions et circulation des images dans les premiers livres imprimés illustrés. PhD thesis, Université Paris-Ouest-Nanterre, 2015. Cappello, Sergio. “L’édition des romans médiévaux à Lyon dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle.” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 71 (2011): 55 – 71. Cappello, Sergio. “Les éditions de romans de Jean II Trepperel.” Raconter en prose (XIV e – XVIe siècle). Ed. Paola Cifarelli, Maria Colombo Timelli, Matteo Milani, and Anne Schoysman. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017. 121 – 145. Colombo Timelli, Maria. “Galien Rethoré, Antoine Verard, 1500.” Le Français Préclassique 21 (2019a): 39 – 58.

 “foudroyer”.

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Colombo Timelli, Maria. “Translateur, traducteur, auteur: quelle terminologie pour quelle(s) identité(s) dans les prologues des mises en prose?” Quand les auteurs étaient des nains. Stratégies auctoriales des traducteurs français de la fin du Moyen Âge. Ed. Olivier Delsaux and Tania Van Hemelryck. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019b. 277 – 293. Devaux, Jean, Matthieu Marcal, and Alexandra Velissariou, ed. Les Premiers imprimés français et la littérature de Bourgogne. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021. Doudet, Estelle. “Par le non conuist an l’ome. Désignations et signatures de l’auteur, du XIIe au XVIe siècle”. Constitution du champ littéraire. Limites-Intersections-Déplacements. Ed. Pierre Chiron and Francis Claudon. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008. 105 – 123. Guidot, Bernard. “Galien le Restoré.” Nouveau Répertoire de mises en prose (XIV e – XVIe siècle). Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, Anne Schoysman, and François Suard. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. 285 – 293. (Updated: http://users2.unimi.it/ lavieenproses/). Herbin, Jean-Charles. Review of Keller and Kaltenbach (1998). Lettres Romanes 53 (1999): 150 – 159. Keller, Hans-Erich, and Nikki L. Kaltenbach. Galien le Restoré en prose. Paris: Champion, 1998. Kuiper, Willem. De historie van Galien Rethore zoals gedrukt door Willem Vorsterman te Antwerpen, circa 1520 – 1525. Amsterdam: Bibliotheek van Middelnederlandse Letterkunde, 2018. Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. La langue française aux XIV e et XV e siècles. Paris: Colin, 1997. Mathieu, Georges, and Jean-Claude Arnould, ed. La Table des matières. Son histoire, ses règles, ses fonctions, son esthétique. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017. Matsumura, Takeshi. Review of Keller and Kaltenbach 1998. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 116 (2000): 335 – 338. Mounier, Pascale, and Hélène Rabaey, ed. Stratégies d’élargissement du lectorat dans la fiction narrative des XV e et XVIe siècles. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. Schoysman, Anne, and Maria Colombo Timelli, ed. Le Roman français dans les premiers imprimés. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016. Suard, François. “Galien le Restoré: coup d’œil sur une œuvre à succès.” Études offertes à Danielle Buschinger. Ed. Florent Gabaude, Jürgen Kühnel, and Mathieu Olivier. Amiens: Presses du Centre d’Études médiévales, 2016. II: 122 – 136. Taylor, Jane H. M. The Making of the Poetry. Late-Medieval French Poetic Anthologies. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Van Hemelryck, Tania. “Du Perceforest manuscrit à l’imprimé de Galliot du Pré (1528). Un long fleuve tranquille?” Le Roman français dans les premiers imprimés. Ed. Anne Schoysman and Maria Colombo Timelli. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016. 159 – 174. Winn, Mary Beth. Anthoine Vérard. Parisian Publisher, 1485 – 1512: Prologues, Poems and Presentations. Geneva: Droz, 1997. Wittlin, Curt J. “Qu’est-ce qui a tué ocire? Observations sur quelques changements lexicaux entre le texte original et l’édition de 1488 de La Mort le Roi Artu.” Le Moyen Français 22 (1989): 51 – 60.

Laura Chuhan Campbell and Leah Tether

Printers’ Prefaces and Rewriting in Arthurian Romance The preface to Galliot du Pré’s 1528 edition of Perceforest is accompanied by a woodcut showing a writer in his study, copying by hand from an exemplar on a stand above his desk (sigs Ñiiv – iiiv; see Fig. 1).¹ The illustration of the writer at work at the beginning of a text is often found accompanying front matter, and some of this type are even found reused across multiple volumes (see Tether 2017, 43 – 44). This stock image originated, of course, in manuscript culture. As Anthony Bale notes, the image recalls the religious iconography of St Luke writing the Gospels, or St Jerome at his desk, both of whom are usually depicted as working in a contemporary study, surrounded by books (Bale 2008, 921– 922). In relation to the image of Marie de Champagne as a writer in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 794, Alexa Sand (2014, 107) writes that the portrait “imbues the text with authority and a visible body. She makes the text – and its production – present in a way it would not otherwise be for the reader.” The author portrait brings not just the author, but the process of writing, to the reader’s attention. It makes the work involved in producing a text visible. In Sand’s example, however, Marie de Champagne is not the author in a holistic sense. As the work’s patron, she is being presented as the origin of the text, the person who supplied the story and subject matter, which were then crafted and shaped by Chrétien de Troyes. Whilst author portraits may give the illusion of a coherent notion of authorship, it was, in practice, often much more fragmented; behind every scribbling author on the first page of a manuscript lies an unknowable number of copyists, compilers, and editors, whose contributions to the mouvance of the text have shaped it in its exact present form (see, for example, Kennedy 1970; Zumthor 1972). If quasi-authorial interventions in manuscripts were uneven in their impact and deliberateness, the preparation of a text for an early printed book further belies the Perceforest’s image of the single author at his desk. Jane H. M. Taylor’s contribution to scholarship on early French print culture in Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France (2014) has highlighted the extensive editorial work that went into preparing a manuscript text for publication in print, which was often carried out by one or more anonymous editors, redactors, and sometimes led by a marchand-libraire  The symbol for the signature is an upright fleur-de-lis – we approximate it here using the nearest available symbol in Wingdings. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-016

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Fig. 1: Writer in his study as depicted in Perceforest (Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1528), sig. Ñiiv; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés Y2 – 28

who played a directorial role in the process. This could involve linguistic interventions (translation – broadly defined – from Old French to Middle French), formal interventions (translating from verse to prose), corrections, and/or the establishment of a new paratext, such as a table of contents, illustration, or other front or end matter (Taylor 2014, 55). These practices, Taylor emphasizes, repre-

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sented a continuation of the quasi-editorial role of scribes and manufacturers of manuscripts; given that transcribing and producing books by hand was still very much the norm in the early days of printing, the printer-publisher tended to adapt existing practices of preparing a text, rather than create new ones from scratch (Rouse and Rouse 1999, I: 329 – 30). It may not be immediately clear whether the image of the scribe at his desk is supposed to represent the author of the Perceforest, Galliot du Pré himself, or an anonymous writer employed to carry out the revisions. However, it is not the function of the image to identify a specific author figure. It serves instead to bring the act of rewriting and revision to the attention of the reader. In this, the image works in tandem with the printer’s preface that is situated immediately beneath it. Taylor (2014, 85) argues that the preliminary material or front-matter, and most specifically, the printer’s preface or prologue, forms “the dialectal centre between the publisher and the reader, the locus where as modern readers we can overhear the ‘conversations’ between the makers of books and their buyers”.² She believes it is especially possible to glean details of a printer’s rewriting strategy for his chosen text, or at least of the way in which this feature has the effect of rewriting the main text by influencing the reader before s/he experiences it. This is demonstrated through her analysis of the evolving preface to the Lancelot en prose (Taylor 2014, 85 – 89) published by a (probable) combination of Antoine Vérard and others between 1488 and c. 1504, in which she detects a particular focus on the chivalry in the text as something that Vérard wishes his readers to take seriously, whilst at the same time burying the moral failings of the main protagonist.³ But these sequential editions of Lancelot are not isolated examples of visible interventions by a printer. There are many other early modern prefaces that provide precisely that window into the commercial decisions that led to both the selection of the text at hand and its chosen packaging, which together offer the modern scholar insight into the needs of audience at whom the product is targeted, at least as they were perceived by the publisher/printer, which fits neatly with Vial’s (1958) description of prologues and prefaces as “formules publicitaires” [publicity formulas]. In some cases, the visibility of the printer can even overshadow that of the original author. One of this study’s two authors has herself argued that the preface of the 1530 edition

 Taylor (2008) comments at greater length and in more general terms on printer prologues and prefaces.  See also Taylor’s more detailed analysis of Vérard’s prefatory work (2007). Vérard’s editions of Lancelot du Lac are: Rouen and Paris: Jean le Bourgeois and Jean du Pré (and Antoine Vérard?), 1488 (USTC 27606), Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1494 (USTC 71230), Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1504 (incorrectly dated 1494, USTC 47285).

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and prosification of Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval and its Continuations provides clear evidence of the deliberately reduced visibility of Chrétien’s authorship and his transformation into “le Chroniqueur” [the chronicler] as forming a keystone in the commercial strategy of its publishers (Tether 2017, 105 – 106; see also Taylor 2013b). Taken together, this suggests that printers could use the work of rewriting and preparing a text as part of their commercial strategy, by making it visible (or indeed invisible) in a preface or prologue. By showing that the text is newly refreshed, that it has been revised with some considerable labour in other words, the reader-consumer is given confidence that the product merits the cost. The implication is that the reader will get more than just a printed version of an old manuscript which, despite typesetting, would have been a lessthan-easy read were it not for the efforts of the hardworking rewriter/printer/ publisher. This study will thus examine a series of early modern French Arthurian prefaces and prologues to scrutinize the spectrum of visibility that is given by printers and their associates to the rewriting process in this space,⁴ and to evaluate how distinct (or not) prefatory matter actually is as a “locus”, to return to Taylor’s term, in which the modern reader can access dialogue between book maker and book consumer.

The printer’s visibility Our study of the printer’s visibility takes as its starting point a concept from Translation Studies: the translator’s invisibility. Lawrence Venuti, who coined the term, argued that the Anglo-American publishing industry tends to favour a style of translation that “domesticates” the source text, concealing its foreignness. This essentially erases the work of the translator, by giving the illusion that

 It is important to note that this study was carried out during the height of the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns, meaning that the case study examples included here are necessarily selective, being the sum total of what was available in digital format, mostly on Gallica , from amongst the extant early printed French Arthurian narratives. Whilst our coverage does ensure that all French Arthurian narratives to have been given treatment in early print (Lancelot, Tristan, Artus de Bretagne, Merlin, Gyron le Courtois, Giglan, Saint Graal, Ysaïe le Triste, Meliadus de Leonnoys, Perceforest, Perceval) have some representation here, we have not been able to include analysis of all editions of them. Montorsi’s (2019, 172– 173) listing would, when physical consultation and travel are once again possible, enable a researcher to be more comprehensive in coverage.

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the text has been conveyed to the target language reader in a direct, unmediated form: A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction, is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text – the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the “originalˮ. The illusion of transparency is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s effort to ensure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning. What is so remarkable here is that this illusory effect conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting with the translator’s crucial intervention in the foreign text. (Venuti 1995, 1– 2)

Paratexts further suppress the translator’s role by featuring only the name of the author on book covers, making the work of cultural mediation implicit (Tether 2017, 63 – 65; Genette 1997, 38). At the heart of the drive to make translation invisible is the assumption that translation is “a second-order representation […]. Only the foreign text can be original, an authentic copy, true to the author’s personality or intention, whereas the translation is derivative, fake, potentially a false copy” (Venuti 1995, 7). Effacing the translator and the act of translation produces “the illusion of authorial presence”, as if the reader had direct and unmediated access to the source text. Late medieval and early modern printers, like translators, played a mediating role in the publication process: they prepared a text linguistically, formally, technologically, and financially for publication in print. The practice of translation was often involved; that is, translation in the expanded sense of updating antiquated language, converting verse to prose, as well as interlingual translation. More broadly, though, printers were responsible for translating the text from one medium to another, making it intelligible and accessible in a new format and for new audiences. And as with the modern translator, the extent to which printers make themselves visible to the reader has a great effect on their relationship with the text. As we have seen, the printer’s visibility can be used as a marketing strategy, in much the same way that a modern translator’s invisibility is thought to be more commercially viable. Where the translator’s invisibility “conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made”, does the printer’s visibility reveal to the reader the conditions under which the printed book is made? The answer to that question is somewhat complicated by the fact that printers may make themselves and the work of rewriting visible without actually offering any accurate information about the rewriting process itself. A good, if per-

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haps overused, Arthurian example – albeit one from the English side of the Channel⁵ – is William Caxton’s prologue for his edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (1485). Here, Caxton makes the now (in)famous claim that [m]any noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes / wherfore that I haue not do made & enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal / and of the moost renomed crysten kyng / Fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and worthy / kyng Arthur […] (Malory 1485, sig. IIr)

At the same time, Caxton assiduously avoids mentioning any detail of Malory’s more dubious past as a “knyght prisoner”, the phrase used by Malory to describe himself (as witnesses the Winchester manuscript)⁶ and which Caxton edits out of the main body of the narrative, thus preserving only the fact that his author is of noble status. Caxton prefers, it seems, to lay far greater, indeed repeated, emphasis on the fact that Malory extracted this tale of quintessential English kingship “oute of certeyn bookes of frensshe and reduced it in to Englysshe” (Malory 1485, sig. IIIr). On the surface, these cumulative claims and careful re-framings seem aimed at persuading Caxton’s audience not only that they will be in illustrious company in reading his book, but also that they will witness both the rescue and the repatriation, both thematically and linguistically, of an “English” hero, King Arthur, the one monarch who can unify the land, at precisely the moment when the divisive Wars of the Roses were reaching their eventual end after thirty years of turmoil, and the desire for national unity would have been great indeed. Scholars have convincingly argued, though, that many of Caxton’s prefatory claims – particularly in respect of the requests to publish from important people – are little more than formulaic tropes or devices aimed at attracting a consumer, revealing far less about real editorial direction than Caxton might have us believe (see, amongst others, Blake 1966, 39 – 41, Kuskin 1999, 512– 513, and Summers 1997, 371). Caxton’s edition of Malory’s romance is, moreover, not his only publishing project to receive this treatment. For instance, if we look to Caxton’s prologue to his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1473/74), another text with French origins and this time translated by Caxton himself, we find much of the same rhetoric. This eventually culminates in the epilogue to Book III, where Caxton claims that, such is the demand for this text, a mere translation in manuscript is not enough, which is why he has responded to the mandate from various

 Translations of medieval French literary texts and their associated translators’ prologues are many in number and have been given detailed scrutiny by Dearnley (2016).  London, British Library, MS Add. 59687, fol. 70v.

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people of status by accordingly turning to print as the right medium to ensure broader dissemination: I have promysid to diverse gentilmen & to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I might this sayd book / therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see/ and is not wreton with penne and ynke as other bokes ben / to thende that every man may have them attones (Lefevre, 1473/74, sig. Tt5v)

Thus, whilst Taylor’s observation of the potential for the printer’s preface or prologue to create a window into the rewriting strategy is borne out by some of the output of printer-publishers such as Vérard, who inject considerable individuality into their front-matter, there is evidence to suggest that some printers opted not to capitalize on the opportunity in quite the same way. Amongst the printers who do compose/include a preface or prologue, what emerges in a number of cases – though certainly not all – is a tendency to resort to known formulae, marketing devices, and tropes that had a track record of persuading a reader to take the leap and buy. Nevertheless, although the details of the prefaces by printers who make themselves visible may rely more on commonplace tropes and advertisements than an accurate account of the rewriting practices that have taken place, the concept of rewriting itself is still brought to the fore and openly advertised to the reader. Moreover, could we consider the way in which prefaces present and contextualize the narrative material as a form of rewriting in itself? Perhaps Caxton’s emphasis on Arthur’s significance for English national unity could act as a lens which re-focuses the reader’s attention onto certain aspects of the text, even if he did not actively rewrite those aspects himself. Does this suggest, then, that a heavily reworked text was more likely to appeal to the reader, in contrast to the illusion, produced by invisible translation, of direct access to the original? The varying extents to which the printer dramatizes the work of rewriting for different texts suggests that the reality is not so clear cut. It would be overly simplistic to think of this merely on the basis of an inversion (i. e., where modern publishing makes the translator invisible, early modern printing made the printer visible). Rather, in the early days of the printing industry, where marchands-libraires were undertaking huge financial risks and had yet to establish a foolproof marketing strategy, the visibility or invisibility of the printer and their revisions seems to be more of a spectrum than a strict opposition. There are, for instance, many examples of printers who do not provide any kind of prefatory matter other than the obligatory title page: in the

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world of printed French Arthurian romance,⁷ which will be our focus in this study, Vérard’s own four successive editions of the Tristan en prose ⁸ provide a case in point, as do the editions published by any and all of the Merlin’s and Artus de Bretagne’s successive printers.⁹ Even the two editions of the Saint Graal ¹⁰ contain no prologue, though the incorporation of a privilège in the 1516 edition (sig. ai), preventing other printers from producing editions of the text for a minimum of three years, does alert the consumer to some fine company amongst the books’ readers (amongst them François Ier; see Tether 2017, 168 – 169), if offering no particular insight into rewriting. In the remainder of this study, we will examine several instances of French Arthurian printed texts whose prefatory material can be situated somewhere on the spectrum from visibility to invisibility, and consider the extent to which the evident presence of the rewriting process, or indeed, rewriting or re-framing within the preface itself, can inform a reader’s reception of the text.

Galliot du Pré’s Perceforest (1528) We start with the vast romance of Perceforest, which was selected for publication first by the prolific publisher, Galliot du Pré, in 1528, before it was reprinted in more or less duplicate form by Gilles de Gourmont, Philippe Le Noir, and François Regnault in 1531– 1532. The prologue and accompanying woodcut are set and reproduced identically in the two editions (sigs Ñiiv – iii), as is the privilège  For a full listing of all French Arthurian texts published by early modern printers in France, see Montorsi (2019, 172– 173). Taylor (2014, 217– 222) also provides a listing in her Appendix, but also includes the printing history of non-Arthurian romans d’aventure.  Printed 1489 (USTC 27596), pre-1496 (USTC 71497), c. 1499 (USTC 71498), and c. 1506 (USTC 8320).  The Merlin editions are: Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1498 (USTC 38121), c. 1503 (no USTC); Paris: Michel Le Noir, 1505 (USTC 26095); Rennes, Caen, Rouen: Jean Macé, Michel Angier, and Richard Massé, between 1507 and 1518 (USTC 55750); Paris: Veuve J. Trepperel and Jean Janot, between 1512 and 1519 (USTC 55694); Paris: Philippe Le Noir, 1526 (USTC 6975) and 1528 (USTC 47146). On rewriting in Vérard’s editio princeps see Taylor (2011). The Artus de Bretagne editions, of which there are seventeen, are listed in Montorsi (2019, 172). Just two of these editions ([Lyon]: Jean de la Fontaine, 1493, USTC 70845 and Paris: Michel Le Noir, 1502, USTC 30255) were available for digital consultation. Their influence on the editions that followed them seems to have been considerable, so we are making an assumption that no prologue or preface was added, but there remains a chance a later printer might have sought to include one – only in-person consultation will enable confirmation.  Paris: Jean Petit, Galliot du Pré, and Michel Le Noir, 1516 (USTC 47273), and Paris: Philippe Le Noir, 1523 (USTC 27595).

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(sig. Ñiir), possibly even using the original formes. As mentioned above, the preface is accompanied by a woodcut depicting an author (or editor?), which visually highlights the editorial work required to bring such a volume to its audience, and creating precisely that sense of the printer-publisher speaking directly to the reader. As such, we might well anticipate learning from the prologue that directly follows it some of the kinds of details that Taylor alerted us to look for. The authorship of the prologue is not entirely clear. Whilst it is possible that it was written by Du Pré himself, Tania van Hemelryck (2016, 167) suggests that it is also likely that it could have been written by someone else in his employ; she points to the fact that in his other editions, Du Pré either preserves earlier prologues found in manuscripts, or commissions other writers to compose new ones.¹¹ Whoever the prologue author may have been, he simply names himself as “le serviteur” (sig. Ñiiiv) at the end, which establishes a relationship of humble deference towards his readership. The prologue starts in exactly this vein, directly addressing the reader as “tresexcellentz belliqueulx invictissimes et insuperables heroes fra[n]coys salut honneur prouesse victoire et triumphe” (sig. Ñiiv) [the very best, warlike, invincible, and unsurpassable French heroes: greetings of honour, prowess, victory, and triumph]. Alongside flattering assumptions of nobility (“seigneurs tresmagnanimes”, ibid.), the heroic register of chivalric literature is extended to the prospective readers themselves, whose worthiness is compared to “les haultz faitz des princes francoys” [the high deeds of the French princes]: “le magnanime Pepin, le conquereur Charlemagne auguste, les chevaleureux pers” (sig. Ñiiir) [the great Pepin, Charlemagne the venerable conqueror, the chivalrous peers]. It is notable that the prologue author takes his frame of reference from the matière de France, as opposed to the Arthurian context of the text at hand; indeed, as Christine Ferlampin-Acher (2017, 40) highlights, “l’e´dition de 1528 ‘de´sarthurianise’ Perceforest” [the edition of 1528 “dearthurianizes” Perceforest], a subject that Ferlampin-Acher (2020) has recently treated in even greater detail. This re-contextualization is also evident towards the end of the prologue, when the prologue author embarks on a sales-pitch style summary of what the reader will encounter in the story, with each episode introduced by “vous verrez” (sig. Ñiiir) [you will see]. The broad themes he mentions largely evoke those of Arthurian romance: we are told we will see tournaments, feasts, lovers experiencing joy and sadness, sons of kings disguising their identities. However, with the exception of Guinevere and Morgan, the majority of the char-

 Van Hemelryck (2016, 167) also points to the fact that Jacques de Mailles, author of another text published by Galliot du Pré in 1527, also refers to himself as “le Loyal serviteur” on the title page.

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acters he names are ones that derive from the Classical tradition: Alexander, Circe, Julius Caesar, “Luces rommain”, and the knights’ deeds are compared to the Labours of Hercules. The prologue, then, relegates the Arthurian character of the text to the level of connotation through references to generic romance motifs, placing both the characters and readers into a literary genealogy that extends from the Classical period to the forefathers of its French readership. Van Hemelryck (2016, 166) argues that the prologue operates “dans le but de s’approprier l’œuvre et de gommer toute contextualisation médiévale” [with the aim of appropriating the text and erasing any trace of its medieval context]. At the same time, it “révèle de l’ambivalence de la stratégie éditoriale de Galliot du Pré (qu’il soit ou non l’auteur du prologue): pour garantir un succès de librairie à ses œuvres, il loue, dans un subtil jeu de miroirs, à la fois son lectorat et sa production.” (Van Hemelryck 2016, 169) [reveals the ambivalence of Galliot du Pré’s editorial strategy (whether or not he is the author of the prologue): in order to guarantee successful sales of his works, he praises his readership and his production using a subtle game of mirrors]. When the prologue author praises the readers by invoking a list of contemporary scholars, including Robert Gaguin, Jean Bouchet, Clément Marot (sig. Ñiiir), Van Hemelryck (2016, 168) notes that Galliot du Pré had previously published works by all of these authors. Not only does the prologue author align the text with the work of these eminent writers, but also enables it to function as an advertisement for Du Pré’s other publications. The “game of mirrors”, then, foregrounds Du Pré’s presence as a publisher and aligns the 1528 edition of Perceforest with his own back-catalogue, at the same time as re-framing the matière of the text in ways that may appeal to his intended customers, and even influence their reading of the text. In this sense, the préfacier makes Du Pré, his work, and the act of publishing in print itself visible to the readers. But whilst the printer and/or prologue author foregrounds his intervention, he presents this explicitly as a form of passive mediation, as opposed to active rewriting. Whilst the readers are praised in the same terms as the text’s ancient heroes, the author of the prologue – much as Caxton does¹² – adopts a corresponding tone of supplication, invoking the rhetorical position of captatio benevolentiae in order to secure the goodwill of his audience: veu que mon debile esprit a peine pourroit fournir stille condecent pour addresser au moindre de vous, parquoy d’entreprendre presenter escriptz a tant de claires et perspicaces

 Caxton (1485, sig. IIIv) makes a direct comparison between himself and his exalted readers by referring to himself, in a moment of contrived false modesty, as a “symple persone” in his preface to the Morte.

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veues pourra vous sembler trop téméraire […] A la verite, seigneurs, je suis assez adverty que mes imbecilles oeuvres ne pourroient desservir destre presentees a voz tresprudens regards. (sig. Ñiiv) [Given that my feeble mind can hardly find a way that is appropriate to addressing even the least of you, which is why it may seem too imprudent of me to present writings to such discerning and observant minds as yours […] In truth, lords, I am well aware that my foolish works are unworthy of being presented to your discerning gaze.]

The relationship between printer and reader that is established here does not only have the effect of flattering the prospective buyer of the text, but also, more subtly, of allowing the printer to position himself clearly in a triangular relationship between the text and reader. The captatio benevolentiae is conventionally a device adopted by the author of the text, and by using it here, the prologue author implicitly places himself in an authorial position. However, the exact nature of this captatio benevolentaie paradoxically marks a clear separation between the author and the printer: he claims that he is not equipped to present his own work, so he must present the work of another author instead: seigneurs tresillustres, que feray je? Si je me tais, je suis ingrat. Si j’escriptz, je ne puis si hault voller que d’attaindre le moindre de vos dignitez en dangier de temerite. Doncques convient il que je evite tous les deux vices s’il m’est possible. A quoy ne puisse autre meilleur moyen trouver que en non pouvant vous presenter du mien j’emprunte l’autruy. Or est venu en mes mains la tresplaisante histoire du tresnoble roy Perceforest […] (sig. Ñiiir) [My celebrated lords, what should I do? If I remain silent, I am ungrateful. If I write, I will never be able to fly high enough to reach the least part of your worthiness, and I risk audacity. Therefore, I must avoid both vices if I can. And so, since I am unable to present my own work to you, I can think of no better solution than borrowing the work of another. Now, the very delight story of the very noble King Perceforest has come into my possession […]]

Whilst the visibility of the printer and his work is evident, he continues to assert that he is unable to present his own writing (“Et m’excusez si n’en pouvant vous offrir oeuvre par moi compillee […]” (sig. Ñiiir) [And excuse me for not being able to present work that I have composed myself]). This, conversely, insists on his invisibility, making himself out to be nothing more than a poor conduit for another author’s writing. In doing so, however, he succeeds in making himself very visible indeed. The frequent references to his inability offer his own work, alongside the absence of any references to rewriting, modernization, or adaptation, suggests to the reader that they will be accessing the text in a direct, unmediated form. At the same time, this protestation of invisibility only serves to make Du Pré’s role more evident; he enacts a clear separation from the original author by insisting that the work is theirs and not his, he replaces the author’s

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voice with his own (or that of the prologue author, if not himself), and brings his role as an intermediary to the fore even as he extensively denies it. The interplay of the visibility and invisibility of rewriting, then, creates a relationship to the original text that is both transparent and heavily mediated, allowing the text to be marketed as both new and classic at the same time. This technique was clearly deemed successful, because the syndicate of three printers who then reprinted his edition in 1531– 1532 kept the prologue in its entirety.

Galliot du Pré’s Meliadus de Leonnoys (1528) Du Pré published his edition of Perceforest in the same year (1528) as another of his Arthurian enterprises, Meliadus de Leonnoys, which was also re-printed a few years later by Denis Janot in 1533. The Roman de Meliadus was reworked in the Middle Ages to become part of Guiron le Courtois in its second redaction, and is not found isolated from other parts of the Guiron compilation in manuscripts. The decision to separate Meliadus out in print seems to be one taken solely by the early modern printer-publishers concerned, rather than one inspired or informed by earlier reading practice or preference, at least as far as the extant manuscript compilation sequencing is able to suggest (Taylor 2014, 92– 94). As well as a fairly standard privilège (printed on the verso of title page), both editions are given a new prologue (textually identical in both, meaning Janot simply took over Du Pré’s into his edition wholesale), which is preceded by another “stock” woodcut of a scribe at work, whom again we are presumably to interpret as representing the printer-publisher responsible for the prologue (sig. ✿iir–v in Du Pré’s edition, and sig. eiir–v in Janot’s).¹³ Even though the text of the prologue is identical in both, the textual layout and accompanying woodcut (albeit not the scene depicted) are different.¹⁴ On the face of it, then, Du Pré employs a strikingly similar treatment for Meliadus as he does for Perceforest, ensuring that the editorial process applied to the material is immediately visible to the reader. However, whereas the author of the Perceforest prologue conspicuously denies any textual intervention, the prologue to Meliadus instead insists on the rewriting that he has undertaken.

 The symbol used for the signature in the Janot edition is a fleur-de-lis turned 90° clockwise. We approximate this using the closest symbol available in Wingdings. Note that the quotations from the Meliadus prologue follow the Du Pré edition; the Janot edition does not differ except insofar as more abbreviation is employed.  The woodcut from Janot’s edition is to be found as the cover image for this book. Du Pré’s is also the very same that he used for his 1528 Perceforest (see Fig. 1).

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This work of rewriting, which he repeatedly highlights as his “labeur”, is described in essentially cosmetic terms. We are informed that the former version, was “plein de vieil langage” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiiv) [full of old language], and that he plans “de le purger de tous les vices qui y abundoient” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiiv) [to purge it of all the vices with which it is replete]. Not only has the language been subjected to improvement, but organizational work has been undertaken in relation to the narrative itself which, according to the préfacier, has been translated “amplement et confusement” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiir) [abundantly and confusedly]. He thus claims that he has done his level best to “[mettre] en ordre quelle nestoit devant” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiir) [put it in an order that it did not have before]. The insistence on the adaptation of the language and organization, then, establishes a distinction between two author figures – the préfacier and Rustichello da Pisa (to whom Du Pré erroneously attributes the entirety of the text’s composition) – which becomes mapped onto a distinction between form and content. The préfacier is concerned that the “nobles faits” (Du Pré ✿iiv , Janot eiir) [noble deeds] of King Meliadus would be lost to posterity if the content of the text were not made available, but he indicates that they must be mediated linguistically and formally by him in order to be acceptable to a modern audience. The distinction is not clear cut, as he accepts that he can only impose so much order on the narrative without having to “destruire ce present volume et en refaire ung tout nouveau qui eust este priver ledit maistre Rusticien de son labeur et donner peine infinye a celluy qui eust ce voulu parfaire” (Du Pré ✿iiv, Janot eiiv) [destroy the present volume and start again from scratch, which would have erased the work of Master Rustichello, and been a huge amount of effort for anyone who decided to undertake it], establishing Rustichello as a limiting factor in his own work of linguistic and formal rewriting. Nevertheless, the presence of Rustichello as a representative of “content” within the prologue becomes a foil used by the préfacier to set up a series of oppositions that frame the visibility of his own formal interventions. The work purported by Du Pré to have been undertaken by Rustichello is valuable, yes, but it is also old, disordered, unintelligible; the préfacier’s interventions, on the other hand, are modern, organized, and intelligible. As with the prologue to Du Pré’s Perceforest, then, the doubling and separation of the authorial figure serves to present the text as all things to all readers – original and authentic, but also modern and user-friendly. Curiously, though, whereas the Perceforest edition seeks to “dearthurianize” the text by re-contextualizing it with Classical references, the prologue to the Meliadus edition foregrounds and elaborates on the text’s place within the broader Arthurian intertext. Meliadus’s genealogy, which, according to the preface, was omitted in error by Rustichello, is briefly outlined here. Although not all of these ancestors

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are Arthurian in origin, the protagonist’s lineage begins with Bron, brother-inlaw of Joseph of Arimathea in the Estoire del saint graal, which draws a connection to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle (Du Pré ✿iiv, Janot eiiv). More importantly, though, the préfacier uses this Arthurian intertext as another pretext to justify the work of formal revision that he seeks to make visible. He defends his redaction of some of the longer episodes by explaining that they are “bien au long declairees es livres faitz de la table ronde” (Du Pré ✿iiv, Janot eiiv) [extensively explained in other books that have been written about the Round Table], and that there is “rien inparfaict dedans ce present volume qui ne soit parfaict aux autres volume de la table ronde” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiiv) [nothing incomplete in the present volume that is not complete in other volumes about the Round Table]. In actual fact, this printed edition does the opposite by borrowing Tristan’s death scene from the Prose Tristan as an apparent means of creating closure (Taylor 2014, 95 – 96). Nevertheless, the prologue’s claims serve not only to highlight the rationalization and modernization of the printed text, but they also provide the reader with a specific frame through which to read the preface, situating the text both chronologically and generically within the Arthurian universe. By referring readers to the “premier volume de Tristan” (Du Pré ✿iiv; Janot eiiv) [the first volume of Tristan] for more information about Meliadus’s lineage, the prologue strengthens the intertextual connections that Du Pré had downplayed in his Perceforest. This strategy had an additional commercial benefit for Denis Janot who, as noted above, reprinted the Meliadus in 1533 following Du Pré’s model very closely (albeit with reset text), alongside an edition of the Prose Tristan as a companion volume.¹⁵ The direct references to the story of Tristan are converted, in this new context, to an advertisement for Janot’s companion edition. As Taylor (2014, 93 – 94) has noted, the preface to Du Pré’s edition is misleading in its claims to have “rationalized” and “re-ordered” the text on a formal level. Its effect, however, is to create a frame through which to read the narrative, rather than to provide an index of the actual rewriting practice in the main text. The préfacier separates himself clearly from the supposed author, Rustichello, in order to make his own editorial interventions visible, producing a paratext that offers a filter through which the reader receives the text. This paratext presents the text as a thoroughly Arthurian narrative, but one which has been purged of

 The Tristan was not published by Du Pré. Prior to his 1528 edition of Meliadus, it had been printed by Vérard (1489, before 1496, c. 1499 and c. 1506), Michel Le Noir and Jean Petit (1514), and Michel Le Noir (1520).

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the disorder and linguistic alterity that could make this genre less appealing to a contemporary reader.

Galliot du Pré and Pierre Vidoue’s Ysaïe le Triste (c. 1522) In collaboration with Pierre Vidoue, Du Pré takes a similar approach to prefacing, or having prefaced, his Ysaïe le Triste, which appeared around six years prior to his Perceforest and Meliadus. However, and perhaps unsurprisingly given that it is the first of his Arthurian volumes to be published with a prologue, Du Pré’s approach appears a little less developed than in his later publications. There is no accompanying woodcut on this occasion, for instance, though there is a privilège protecting the work for three years (sig. a.iv) and a prologue or, as it is called here, a “proesme” of good length (sigs a.iir–a.iiir). This prologue is also to be found re-used in a later edition published 1547– 1566 by Jean Bonfons (sigs a.iv–a.iiv). In this prologue, Du Pré (or his préfacier) spends far less time extolling the virtues and high status of his reader than in his later Arthurian publications, though he does at least make sure of referring to him twice as “mon treshonnore et redoubte seigneur” (Du Pré, sigs a.iir and a.iiv; Bonfons, sigs a.ir and a.iiv) [my most honoured and revered lord]. The préfacier of Ysaïe highlights his own textual interventions much more explicitly than the authors of the other Arthurian prologues, too. In his mind, there is little that is more instructive than “cognoissance des hystoyres / cronicques / faictz / et tresglorieuses prouesses et vaillance de chevalerie”¹⁶ (Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv) [knowledge of the (hi)stories, chronicles, deeds, and glorious chivalric feats and valiance], and it is for this reason that he has taken it upon himself to “rediger par escript et reformer en commu[n] langaige vulgaire / lhystoire du tresvaillant et preux chevalier Isaye le triste / filz de Tristan de leonnoys / iadis chevalier de la table ro[n]de” (Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv) [record in writing, and reformulate in the common vulgar language, the story of the valiant and brave knight, Isaïe the Sad, son of Tristan of Lyonesse, once knight of the Round Table]. Whilst expressing modesty with regards to the limits of his knowledge (“linsuffisance de mon scavoir”, Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv), he states more than once that he has proverbially “taken pen in hand” (“mettre la main a la plume”, Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv), di Transcriptions are given according to the Du Pré/Vidoue edition of Ysaïe. The Bonfons edition is textually identical, save for some minor orthographical and abbreviation differences.

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rectly suggesting that the text has undergone rewriting or editorial work. As in the examples above, he clearly separates himself from the author (described here as the “premier hystoriographe”, Du Pré, sig. a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iiv) [the original historiographer]), whilst also claiming to have striven to reproduce “la verite des sentences” (Du Pré, sig. a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iiv) [the truth of the meaning]. This separation is similarly underlined by a juxtaposition between old and new, which, in this case, is superimposed more broadly onto a distinction between the present text and “other books” which may appear old and antiquated (“vieulx et anciens”) in comparison to this one, which will seem “du tout nouvelle” (Du Pré, sig. a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iiv) [completely new]. In this sense, the préfacier adopts the same tropes as those discussed above, but he does so without cultivating an ambiguous visibility that both highlights and plays down his own work. Instead, his own interventions seem to eclipse more or less that of the author, making the work of rewriting and mediation very clear. As we have seen with Meliadus, though, the extent of Du Pré’s planned rewriting (or reordering) of the narrative content is relatively limited, thus creating something of a mirage where rewriting serves as a lens through which the reader should consume and appreciate not only the narrative, but also – and importantly – the labour of the rewriter/printer/publisher. And, as in the previous examples, the printer’s labour is framed through the re-contextualization of the text, which acts as a filter for the reader’s reception. In this case, the préfacier presents the text not just for the purposes of entertainment, but also for the sake of moral edification. He suggests that the story would be useful for “linstitution de tous ieunes princes desirans et ayans le cueur instigue a veoir choses nouvelles touchant le noble faict des armes” (Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv) [the instruction of all young princes who desire and are eager to see new things related to noble deeds of arms], which might lead them to “tout honneur et gloyre” (Du Pré, sig. a.iir; Bonfons, sig. a.iv) [complete honour and glory]. Whilst the prologue largely plays down the Arthurian context in favour of a more Classical framing, which references Socrates and Aristotle, he argues that the deeds of Ysaïe exceed those of the Romans and “plusieurs aultres princes et chevaliers du temps passe” (Du Pré, sig. a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iir) [many other princes and knights of times past] because Ysaïe’s Christianity makes him a more appropriate moral example: “car son intention estoit stimulee de charite/ si quil a faictes ses nobles proesses vertueuses pour l’honneur de Jesucrist […]” (Du Pré, sig. a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iir) [Because his intentions were motivated by charity, as far as his noble and virtuous deeds of prowess were done for the honour of Jesus Christ.] In doing this, the préfacier draws a conventional distinction between the old and the new that serves to validate the modernity of the present text, but in this

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case, it is articulated through the moralized opposition between the paganism of the ancients and the Christianity of more recent heroes. This distinction is then integrated into the préfacier’s description of his own rewriting practices, and his conventional claims to have modernized the antiquated language of the original. The préfacier explains that he wishes to preserve the story of Ysaïe for posterity, and in a form that is up-to-date and accessible. He is guided, he claims, [p]ar le conduyt et souveraine guyde des livres et hystoires […] qui a faict prendre le labeur et peine a Julles Cesar empereur de Romme / de vouloir rediger par escript / et lesser a ses successeurs / les commentaires […] cest doncques la cause principalle qui a dressee ma main et mis ma plume sur le papier / pour ourdir et tistre la matiere et hystoire presente / non pas en petit de labeur / car loriginal estoit en si estrange et mausvais langaige mis et couche que a grant peine en ay peu entendre le sens / et elucider la forme de la matiere. (Du Pré, sig a.iiv; Bonfons, sig. a.iiv) [by the superior example of books and (hi)stories […] that have seized upon the labours and efforts of Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome, to wish to set down in writing and leave to his successors his commentaries […] This is thus the main cause that has directed my hand and put quill to paper: to warp and weave the present story, and not without considerable labour, for the original was set down in such a strange and terrible language that I could barely understand the meaning and grasp the form of the material.]

The visibility that Du Pré gives to the editorial task at hand, then, once again revolves around the modernization of language and the notion of creating “order”; however, in this case, the order and modernization is validated by the aforementioned distinction between Julius Caesar – ancient and pagan – and Ysaïe, who represents virtue through the contemporary frame of Christianity. Even without a woodcut to depict it, the emphasis on the importance of the editorial task – its visibility, in other words – if anything, is lent even more weight by the préfacier’s use of this conventional juxtaposition. This reworked, modernized text, then, is presented to the reader as a form of worthy instruction, which acts both as an advertisement for potential buyers and a paratextual re-framing of the text as a whole for potential readers.

Antoine Vérard’s Gyron le Courtois (c. 1503) and Claude Nourry’s Giglan (1512 – 1530) As we have seen in the previous case studies, the printer and/or prologue author often treads a fine line between visibility and invisibility, frequently making their interventions visible whilst still appearing to offer unmediated access to the text. In all cases so far, this ambiguous visibility has been negotiated by enacting a

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clear separation between the author and printer. The final two examples, on the other hand, provide instances of prologues where the printers do not separate themselves from the author, and instead exploit the enigmatic identity of the authorial voice. To begin with, in his edition of Gyron le Courtois of c. 1503,¹⁷ Antoine Vérard’s does not compose a printer’s prologue. Rather, he leaves the text’s original prologue, relatively unchanged (albeit prefixed by a few summary sentences explaining the general subject of the narrative and slightly abbreviated; cf. that found on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1463, fol. 1r) to introduce the text on his behalf.¹⁸ As we have seen, Vérard’s edition of Lancelot was prefixed by an evolving, highly developed preface across its subsequent editions, whereas his various reprints of Tristan were endowed with no such prefatory matter whatsoever. Interestingly, his Gyron occupies a kind of middle ground between these two extremes. Upon reading it, this is perhaps not surprising, because the style and content of the prologue happens to align, already, with the gradually accruing conventions of print, covering many of the key features alluded to above as “must haves” for an early modern preface or prologue. For instance, it opens with a laudatory address to “Seigneurs / Empereurs / Roys / princes / ducz / contes / Barons / Chevaliers / Vicontes / Bourgeois et tous les preudhommes de cestuy monde qui talent avez de vous delecter en romans” (sig. aiv) [Lords, Emperors, Kings, princes, dukes, counts, Barons, Knights, Viscounts, Bourgeois, and all gentlemen of this world who have a wish to enjoy romance]: an audience made up of just the kinds of noble and important people an early modern printer would wish to be amongst his named readership, in other words. We are also introduced to the translator, “rusticiens de puise” [Rustichello da Pisa] who, it states, “compila” [compiled] and “translata” [translated] the text “du livre de Monseigneur Edouart le roy dangleterre” (sig. air) [from the book belonging to Edward, king of England]. We might of course question whether this book existed at all, given the commonplace of claiming the existence of an authoritative source in medieval literature. There then follows an enumeration of all the topics that Rustichello ensures to translate, summed up as follows: “Et saicchez que il traictera en ce present livre de plusieurs nobles vaillantises dignes de memoire a tous nobles roys / ducz / contes et chevaliers et a tous ceulx que prendront plaisir a lire cy dedans.” (sig. aiv) [And know that in the present book he will treat several noble acts of valiance worthy of memory by all noble kings, dukes, counts, and knights, and all those who take pleasure in read Gyron was also published in a later edition by Jean Petit and Michel Le Noir in c. 1516 (USTC 26336), which Michel Le Noir then reprinted in 1519 (USTC 26394).  The prologue can be found in the printed book on sig. air–v. On this prologue, see Cigni (2014, 24– 26).

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ing what is within]. In other words, this prologue uses so many of the key devices that Vérard may have felt it unnecessary to make his own interventions visible. He may also, however, have been exploiting the ambiguity that is already present in the prologue as to whose voice it is that the readers are hearing. The fact that Rustichello is referred to in the third person means that the speaker could plausibly be either Rustichello himself, or a third party – perhaps Vérard, the public face of the printing enterprise. Whereas in Du Pré’s edition of the Meliadus part of the Guiron compilation, the préfacier clearly separates himself from Rustichello and sets the latter up as the scapegoat for anything that might be considered antiquated, Vérard’s invisibility here allows him to share agency with both Rustichello and the supposed original author (who may have been Hélie de Boron).¹⁹ Why Vérard oscillates so significantly between visibility and invisibility in the prefatory matter to his different editions is hard to say, but perhaps he relied on a kind of gut instinct (like many of his contemporaries, since there was little else to inform printers’ business acumen at the time) as to which texts required his profile to sell whatever it was that the edition sought to achieve. Perhaps the content of this particular prologue allowed him to maintain the same ambiguous visibility cultivated by the prologues to Perceforest and Meliadus, which offer both direct and mediated access to an older text. Vérard’s conflation of the authorial and editorial voice is reflected in the prologue to Claude Nourry’s Giglan (1512– 1530) which, interestingly, adopts the same conventional topos of the mysterious source text that Rustichello uses to explain the composition of his narrative. Where Vérard uses a pre-existing prologue, Giglan’s publisher composes (or has composed) a new prologue that merely resembles the sort of preface found in older Arthurian manuscripts. Rather than a straightforward case of an Arthurian narrative simply being transmuted from manuscript to printed book with some rewriting as part of the process, Giglan is in fact an example of rewriting almost from scratch, since it represents an amalgamation (albeit rather hamfisted) of sections from Le Bel Inconnu by Renaut de Beaujeu and the Occitan Jaufré. Giglan’s printing history remains rather obscure; whilst the Lyon-based printer Claude Nourry is perhaps best known as the text’s publisher, there is some evidence that an earlier edition might have been produced between c. 1512 and 1519 in Paris by Veuve J. Trepperel and Jean Janot, the sole surviving example of which is to be found in the Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. However, the Göttingen book has no date and no  This is how the narrator refers to himself in the prologue to the Roman de Meliadus, the oldest part of the Guiron le Courtois compilation in its second redaction, but there is much speculation as to whether Hélie de Boron is in fact a literary fiction or device; see Lathuillère (1966) and Morato (2010).

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named printers, so its exact production history remains opaque (see Mortorsi 2019, 171– 173; Cappello 2014, n. 3). Even Nourry’s first edition of the text is difficult to pinpoint, since an undated copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France may date to between 1512 and 1530, whilst examples of a close comparator in other repositories such as the British Library are definitively dated to 1530 (Taylor 2014, 120). The Göttingen book also contains no prologue, so it is that found in Nourry’s edition(s) and later taken over in its entirety by fellow Lyon printers Gilles and Jacques Huguetan in their edition of 1539 upon which we focus on here. Given the confusion around the text’s publication, it is especially interesting that this comparatively short prologue (just half a page in length and printed on the verso of the title page in both the Nourry and Huguetan editions) should forego the usual extended laudations in respect of the reader and instead give a detailed account of how the book came into being. As alluded to above, the first curiosity is that Nourry is apparently not the author, rather this is a “translator’s prologue”, and the translator names himself as one Claude Platin, “humble religieux de lordre monseigneur sainct Anthoine”²⁰ [humble monk of the Order of St Anthony]. Platin, a genuine historical figure who is known to have been active c. 1515–c. 1540, claims that one day, in “ung petite librarye” [a small bookshop], he happened upon “ung gros livre de parchemin bien vieil escript en rime espaignolle assez difficile a entendre” [a large, very old parchment book, written in difficult-to-understand Spanish rhyme]. Inside this volume, he continues, he discovered a little story about two noble knights of the Round Table, which is what is now found translated into French prose here. Given what we know about the sources of Giglan, this seems an unlikely tale at best, and may be playing up to the growing taste for so-called sentimental romances derived from Spanish and Italian (Taylor 2014, 124). The story, as noted above, also recalls the conventional reference to a “mysterious source” often found in medieval narratives, which is perhaps designed to lend an air of authenticity and historicity to what is, in effect, probably a new compilation. Whilst it appears entirely likely that Platin was himself responsible for combining and rewriting Jaufré and Le Bel Inconnu into the present tale, the notion that he translated and prosified Giglan from Spanish seems a remote possibility.²¹ By including this prologue, Nour-

 Transcriptions follow the Nourry edition, but the Huguetan edition is identical save for slight differences in the use of abbreviation. Since in both editions the prologue is wholly on the verso of the title page, signature references are not given after every quotation.  If Platin undertook any translation out of Spanish, it is more probable that the source might have been, for instance, the Spanish edition of Jaufré first published by Juan de Varela de Salamanca in Toledo in 1513 under the title La coronica [sic] de los nobles caualleros Tablante de

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ry thus shines a light on an editorial process, even if not the editorial process, making it visible for all to see; the fact that the account of that process is likely inaccurate seems not to matter. And just as elsewhere, we find some of the usual devices to which we have become accustomed, such as an apparent anxiety to avoid appearing anything less than modest: “ie prie que les faultes qui y seront trouvees ilz veueille[n]t corriger: et excuser mon ignora[n]ce laquelle ne pas petite. Et aussi de ne se arrester pas audictes faultes.” [I pray that in respect of the faults that will be found here, they [the readers] should please correct them and excuse my ignorance, which is not small. And please do not dwell on the said faults.] This is, in other words, a further example of the kind of self-protection trope that we have seen elsewhere. Even in this short prologue, then, by including Platin’s account of his work, Nourry gives his reader ample opportunity to note and appreciate the work that has been undertaken in bringing the text to print. There is little focus on what is rewritten in the narrative – indeed, the extensiveness of the rewriting whereby two separate texts have been combined is actually purposefully obscured in favour of the familiar tale of rescuing the narrative from an old, difficult language, and of providing a romanticized version of events presumably to achieve a more marketable effect. This romanticized version essentially relies on the vagueness in authorship that is implied by the discovery of a mysterious source; it is a convention that continually defers responsibility for the matter of the text back to a shadowy author figure who is lost in the mists of time. Other prologues tend to highlight and exploit the author’s identity, in order to project onto the original author aspects that they wish to appropriate or reject. In this case, the prologue absorbs and conflates the work of the author, translator, and printer in much the same way as Vérard’s Gyron, hiding the editorial work behind a familiar trope.

Conclusion Lawrence Venuti’s work on the invisibility of the translator reveals that, when it comes to marketing, the perception of translation practices is more important than the practices themselves; in other words, giving a translated text the appearance of transparency, originality, and unmediated authorship is more crucial to the reader-facing publication process than the actual work that goes Ricamonte y de Jofre hijo del conde Donason). It was not uncommon for French printers to use as exemplars recent publications in “modern” foreign vernaculars over old manuscripts written in archaic language, such as has been shown for the French language printed versions of Floire et Blanchefleur, which were translated from a Spanish printed source; see Tether (2020, 371).

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into the translation. For the early modern printer, similarly, it seems that the level of reader-facing visibility and the presentation of rewriting practices and/ or editorial interventions was more commercially valuable than the genuine interventions themselves. The presentation of these practices – whether it be the modernization of antiquated language, the rationalization and redaction of the story, or indeed the absence of any interventions – provides a paratextual frame that guides reading. In our study of Arthurian examples, we have seen total invisibility, where no preliminary material is included at all, whereas in others various types, and even levels, of visibility were employed to differing effect. Some prologues allowed the reader to glean a clear view of both the publisher and the process – and importantly the labour – of reshaping the text for modern needs, in the sense of adapting and renewing language (such as in Galliot du Pré’s Meliadus). Others, meanwhile, rewrote and reframed the narrative by placing emphasis on particular content and extra-textual connections that were not necessarily subject to associated heavy rewriting or foregrounding within the main text itself, in which cases the publisher gains visibility, but the process does not (such as, for example, in Du Pré’s Perceforest and Du Pré and Vidoue’s Ysaïe). Equally, some publishers opted to remediate the process and/or the content through an “older” authority, either by retaining an existing prologue from the medieval original, subtly adapted (as in Antoine Vérard’s Gyron le Courtois), or by inventing one, but giving it the appearance of having preceded the current enterprise (such as in Claude Nourry’s Giglan). And indeed, several of these préfaciers adopted a combination of these tactics. What is striking is how often certain similarities emerge in these prefaces and prologues, even where different levels of visibility of printer and process are used. With the exception of Giglan and Gyron, préfaciers tended to enact a clear separation between themselves and the text’s named author, which allowed them to project onto that author various attributes and values that they either wanted to reject or exploit. For the préfacier of Perceforest, the original author is the guarantor of the text’s quality and authenticity; for that of Meliadus, Rustichello is used to represent the outdated, disordered, and linguistically difficult aspects that must be purged from the present edition. Moreover, alongside flattery of the reader and, in several cases, emphasis of key content that might attract a consumer (most usually focusing on chivalric episodes for the benefit of “noble” readers), it is most frequently the updating, or translation, of language that is highlighted as the focus of the printer-publisher’s enterprise. Amongst our case studies, indeed, only one – Perceforest – avoided this trope, preferring instead to focus on reframing the matière within the Classical world. Even within this, “translation” appears to cover a range of practice; on

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the one hand, as well as translation from one vernacular to another (as alluded to in Giglan, for example), some printer-publishers present it as dragging the text into modernized language by purging it of old language (see Delsaux/Van Hemelryck 2019, 218 – 219 on Du Pré). On the other hand, the focus for some is more about facilitating the comprehension of difficult, as opposed to just old, language, such as transforming poetry into prose, which Colombo Timelli (2007, 145) refers to as a kind of “traduction intralinguale” [intralingual translation].²² The prose Perceval printed in Paris by the syndicate of Jean Longis, Jean Saint Denis, and Galliot du Pré in 1530 provides perhaps the clearest example of this. Here the prologue is intriguingly entitled “Le prologue de l’acteur” (fol. 1r/ sig. air) [the prologue of the actor/agent], thus blurring the visibility of who is responsible for it, just as we have seen elsewhere, but perhaps even more explicitly so; as Colombo Timelli (2008, 10 – 11) has argued, there are implicit shades of Chrétien here (thanks to subtle intertextual citation of his original prologue), and more explicit ones of the “translator/prosifier” and the printer-publisher (see also Tether 2017, 43 – 44). However opaque the prologue’s authorship is, though, the process is certainly visible, as we are told that the job of “traduire et mectre [the narrative] de Rithme en prose familiere” (fol. 1v/ sig. aiv) [translating and to putting [the narrative] from rhyme into common prose] is undertaken specifically “pour satisfaire aux desirs, plaisirs et uolontez des Pri[n]ces, seigneurs et aultres suyuans la maternelle langue de France” (fol. 1v/ sig. aiv) [to satisfy the desires, pleasures and wishes of the princes, lords, and others speaking the maternal language of France]. This sense of a readerly need being satisfied in itself goes some way to explaining why so many printer-publishers opt to showcase that aspect of their rewriting work in prefaces and prologues. On the surface, such prefatory references may seem generic, even indistinct from one another; they are tropes in a sense. But there are also subtle distinctions to be made. As Taylor (2015, 290) puts it: “Translation and ré-écriture have, of course, always been about the power relation between source culture and target culture: the adaptor or translator has always as his first preoccupation to appropriate and thus refract – sometimes to rewrite – a source text in order to ensure that it can remain alive and functioning in a new cultural context.” To make sales, in other words, translation and modernization are powerful marketing devices and even the briefest, most generic mention should cement the “power relation” required; but as we have seen, it is also an umbrella term, underneath which a broad range of practice is housed. As

 See also Taylor’s (2017, 169 – 170) taxonomy of translation as rewriting.

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such, the préfacier’s art lies less in the adoption of the trope than it does in the level of visibility he gives to it.

References Bale, Anthony. “From Translator to Laureate: Imagining the Medieval Author.” Literature Compass 5 (2008): 918 – 934. Blake, N. F. “Investigations into the Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49 (1966): 17 – 46. Cappello, Sergio. “Le passage à l’imprimé des mises en prose de roman: Giglan et Guillaume de Palerne ‘a l’enseigne de l’escu de France.’” Pour un nouveau repertoire des mises en prose: Romans, chansons de geste, autres genres. Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, Anne Schoysman. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. 69 – 84. Colombo Timelli, Maria. “Le Perceval en prose de 1530: langage figure et proverbs.” Le Moyen Français 60 – 61 (2007): 141 – 163. Dearnley, Elizabeth. Translators and Their Prologues in Medieval England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Delsaux, Olivier, and Tania Van Hemelryck. “L’édition imprimée des textes médiévaux en langue française au début du seizième siècle. Le cas de Galliot du Pré (1512 – 1560). Early Printed Narrative Literature in Western Europe. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Elisabeth de Bruijn, and Frank Willaert. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. 189 – 237. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “L’édition de 1528 de Perceforest ‘O magnifiques seigneurs […]. Lisez et perlisez les chevaleureux gestes […]’” Les Lettres médiévales à l’aube de l’ère typographique. Ed. Renaud Adam, Jean Devaux, Nadine Henrard, Matthieu Marchal, Alexandra Velissariou. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2020. 167 – 196. Ferlampin-Acher, Christine. “Artus de Bretagne et ses suites, Perceforest, Isaië le Triste, Le Conte du Papegaut: les romans ne´o-arthuriens en prose français constituent-ils un corpus?” Studi sulla Letteratura Cavalleresca in Francia e in Italia (secoli XIII-XVI). Ed. Margherita Lecco. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso (Studi e Ricerche), 2017. 9 – 44. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Giglan. Lyon: Charles Nourry, between 1512 and 1530 (USTC 88797); Lyon: Gilles and Jacques Huguetan, 1539 (USTC 79974). Gyron le Courtois. Paris: Antoine Vérard, c. 1503 (USTC 26047). Kennedy, Elspeth. “The Scribe as Editor.” Mélanges de langue et de littérature du moyen âge et de la renaissance offerts à Jean Frappier. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1970, I: 523 – 31. Kuskin, William. “Caxton’s Worthies Series: The Production of Literary Culture.” ELH 66 (1999): 511 – 551. Lancelot du Lac. Rouen and Paris: Jean le Bourgeois and Jean Du Pré (and Antoine Vérard?), 1488 (USTC 27606); Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1494 (USTC 71230); Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1504 (incorrectly dated 1494, USTC 47285). Lathuillère, Roger. Guiron le Courtois: Étude de la tradition manuscrite et analyse critique. Geneva: Droz, 1966. Lefevre, Raoul. Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. Bruges/Ghent?: William Caxton, 1473/74 (USTC 438831, ISTC il00117000).

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Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur. Westminster: William Caxton, 1485 (USTC 500105, ISTC im00103000). Digital facsimile of the John Rylands Library copy available at . Meliadus de Leonnoys. Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1528 (USTC 27701); Paris: Denis Janot, 1533 (USTC 31119). Merlin. Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1498 (USTC 38121), c. 1503 (no USTC); Paris: Michel Le Noir, 1505 (USTC 26095); Rennes, Caen, Rouen: Jean Macé, Michel Angier, and Richard Massé, between 1507 and 1518 (USTC 55750); Paris: Veuve J. Trepperel and Jean Janot, between 1512 and 1519 (USTC 55694); Paris: Philippe Le Noir, 1526 (USTC 6975) and 1528 (USTC 47146). Montorsi, Francesco. “Production éditoriale et diffusion des récits arthuriens en France (XVe– XVIe siècles). Early Printed Narrative Literature in Western Europe. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Elisabeth de Bruijn, and Frank Willaert. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. 167 – 188. Morato, Nicola. Il ciclo di Guiron le Courtois: strutture e testi nella tradizione manoscritta. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010. Perceforest. Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1528 (USTC 372); Paris: Gilles de Gourmont, Philippe Le Noir, and François Regnault, 1531 – 1532 (USTC 47140). Perceval le Gallois. Paris: Jean Logis, Jean Saint Denis, and Galliot du Pré, 1530 (USTC 27598). Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200 – 1500, 2 vols. Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 1999. Sand, Alexa. Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Saint Graal. Paris: Jean Petit, Galliot du Pré, and Michel Noir, 1516 (USTC 47273); Paris: Philippe Le Noir, 1523 (USTC 27595). Summers, David A. “Re-fashioning Arthur in the Tudor Era.” Exemplaria 9 (1997): 371 – 392. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting: Translation, Continuation and Adaptation.” Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature. Ed. Leah Tether and Johnny McFadyen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 167 – 182. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Experiments in Fiction: Framing and reframing romance at the end of the Middle Ages, and beyond.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 30 (2015): 287 – 295. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Literature in Renaissance France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Arthur in Manuscript in Renaissance France: The case of Ysaïe le Triste, Gotha, MS A 688.” Journal of the International Arthurian Society 1 (2013a): 140 – 160. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Rewriting Chrétien Three Centuries Later or More…” Chrétien de Troyes et la tradition du roman arthurien en vers. Ed. Annie Combes, Patrizia Serra, Richard Trachsler, Maurizio Virdis. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013b. 329 – 341. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Les Prophéties de Merlin: faire lire un texte illisible…”. Le Moyen Français 69 (2011): 99 – 114. Taylor, Jane H. M. “‘Minds of the Vulgar Sort’: The Arthur of the Renaissance and the Anxiety of Reception.” (2008) . Taylor, Jane H. M. “Antiquarian Arthur: Publishing the Round Table in Sixteenth-Century France.” L’Héritage de Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. William W. Kibler. Cahiers de recherche médiévales et humanistes 14 (2007): 127 – 42.

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Tether, Leah. “The “Un-publication” of Floris and Blancheflour in Early-Modern England.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 38 (2020): 367 – 386. Tether, Leah. Publishing the Grail in Medieval and Renaissance France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Tristan en prose. Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1489 (USTC 27596), pre-1496 (USTC 71497), c. 1499 (USTC 71498), and c. 1506 (USTC 8320). Van Hemelryck, Tania. “Du Perceforest manuscrit à l’imprimé de Galliot du Pré (1528) Un long fleuve tranquille?” Le Roman français dans les premiers imprimés. Ed. Anne Schoysman and Maria Colombo Timelli. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017. 159 – 174. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1995. Vial, Jean. “Formules publicitaires dans les premiers livres français.” Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1958): 149 – 54. Ysaïe le Triste. Paris: Pierre Vidoue and Galliot du Pré, c. 1522 (USTC 26469); Paris: Jean Bonfons, between 1547 and 1566 (USTC 55821). Zumthor, Paul. Essai de poétique médiévale. Paris: Seuil, 1972.

Joan Tasker Grimbert

Passionate Friendship in Pierre Sala’s Chevalier au lion (Yvain, Lunete, and the Lion) Pierre Sala’s Chevalier au lion (c. 1522) has often been seen as little more than a menial translation of Chrétien de Troyes’s twelfth-century romance.¹ Indeed, as Jane Taylor reminds us, Sala used to be considered an unscrupulous plagiarist who produced a more or less verbatim copy of Chrétien’s Yvain, “with only a scattering of meschans vers de sa façon” [wretched verses of his own composition] (2009, 7).² Sala’s Yvain was long disdained as a work of juvenilia, one in which the adapter was seen as trying to pass off Chrétien’s romance as his own, but in 1970, François Suard published the results of his restoration of two fragments of the preamble, in which the Lyonnais antiquarian made clear his debt to the unidentified author of a text he had found in an old manuscript that had been ignored because it was difficult to read, though not without merit. Amongst those who have sought, subsequently, to rehabilitate this sixteenth-century rewriting of Yvain, Pierre Servet deserves considerable credit. In his excellent 1996 edition, he showed that Sala, far from producing a slavish translation, made substantial changes, adding and deleting numerous details as he sought to produce what to his mind was a more logical narrative and a more realistic cast of characters.³ Yet Sala did more, as Taylor rightly states. In Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France, she proposes that he was engaged in “a rhetorical and ideological enterprise” seeking “to affirm the nostalgic values assigned to Arthurian romance” (2014, 6). If, as Taylor (2014, 16) surmises, Sala recognized in the romance he was translating a critical questioning of the medieval concepts of prouesse and cour-

 There exist eleven manuscripts of Chrétien’s Yvain (seven of which are complete) dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth century (Sala 1996, 21– 24). We cannot determine which manuscript Sala used, but all my references to Chrétien’s text are to Hult’s critical edition (1994), based on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1433. Translations are my own, although I have benefited from Kibler’s translation (1991).  Taylor is citing Paris (1842, V: 91).  Servet’s introduction (Sala 1991, 24– 75) includes a remarkably extensive literary study. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-017

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toisie ⁴ and sought to attenuate that critique for his contemporaries, I believe he also noted a predominant theme that chimed with the Renaissance ideal of the perfect friendship.⁵ The importance of keeping faith by aligning one’s acts on one’s professed feelings pervades Chrétien’s Chevalier au lion,⁶ and, as I hope to demonstrate, Sala appreciated the bonds of mutual obligation and care that develop between Yvain and both Lunete and his lion, and he chose to underscore them as he reshaped the romance. Several scholars, including Taylor, have recognized the role played by the Humanist ideal of friendship in Sala’s Tristan (composed between 1525 and 1529), where the passion that links Tristan and Lancelot to their lovers pales in comparison to the fervent compagnonnage the two knights share. Alfred Adler was the first to point out the importance of friendship in Sala’s Tristan. In his review of Lynette Muir’s edition (Sala 1958), Tristan, roman d’aventures, Adler (1959, 521) calls Tristan and Lancelot “nobly pathetic sinners” but “devoted friends,” claiming that the obligation of friends toward each other appears stronger at times than that of lovers. Adler believed that Sala may have been inspired by Erasmus’s concept of the perfect Christian friendship, but it was Jacqueline Thibault Schaefer who identified an even closer model of friendship to which the Tristan could allude, namely that described in Sala’s Epistre sur l’amytié, his anthology of quotations culled from Classical and contemporary authors.⁷ Reading the Tristan through the lens of this work, Thibault Schaefer (1995, 377) has proposed that in describing the close friendship between Tristan and Lancelot, Sala essentially poeticized the qualities enumerated in the Epistre. She observes that in speaking of Socrates Sala states that classical authors felt that one should test one’s friend, for it is in adversity that “true” friendship is revealed by its constancy and steadfastness. She adds that the two knights’ joyful compagnonnage occupies over three-quarters of the story and is organized on the principle of parallelism and parity, with

 On this point, see Hunt (1986) and Grimbert (1988). Hunt has published widely on Chrétien’s Yvain. In Hunt (2005), he presents an update and revision of the consensus reached in the mid1980s regarding Chrétien’s “pervasive irony and apparent critical detachment” (157).  See Hyatte (1994) for an analysis of this theme in selected texts from the twelfth through midfifteenth century. Although he does not cover Sala, he does discuss the availability, already in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, of translations of treatises by classical authorities celebrating friendship (163 – 172). See also Taylor (2014, 26 – 27).  I argue in Yvain dans le miroir (1988) that this is the major lesson Yvain must learn on his quest for redemption. See especially Ch. 6, “Le Sens de l’aventure: la recherche de la perspicacité,” where I discuss the various meanings of reconnaissance (recognition, gratitude, etc.)  This work, which is preserved in two manuscripts, has been edited by Georges Guigue (Sala 1884).

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each alternately helping the other (373). Taylor (2014), for her part, goes even further. After noting that Sala shifts the emphasis of the Tristan legend “from erotic love to passionate friendship and mischievous complicity” (6), she suggests that he actually rewrites that legend “according to his own, renewed, intelligibilities and interests: a distrust of romantic love, on the one hand, and an admiration, on the other, for male camaraderie and the chivalric excellence it generates” (27). Neither Thibault Schaefer nor Taylor mentions Sala’s Yvain in the context of friendship, but it is striking how much of their respective analyses of his Tristan could apply to the earlier romance. In his Yvain, as in his Tristan, Sala seems considerably more interested in amicitia than in eros. If love trumps friendship in the version of the Tristan legend that Sala doubtless knew best (the prose Tristan), it is just the opposite in the source text for his Yvain, where friendship arguably “sustains the most successful relationships of the romance, namely between Yvain and Lunete, Yvain and the lion, and Yvain and Gauvain” (Hunt 1996, 24). Although Chrétien will cause us to question the quality of Gauvain’s friendship, the friendships linking Yvain to Lunete and to his lion are shown to be rock solid. Sala surely recognized the predominance of this theme in his source text at a time when he was compiling his little book on friendship. Suard (1970) has shown that the dedicatee of his Chevalier au lion, which he addresses as “hault empereur” [noble emperor], was François 1er, who came to the throne in 1515 and had imperial pretentions.⁸ Since the manuscript was in the Royal Library, Sala must have presented it to him, no doubt during the king’s long stay in Lyon in 1522, the same year that he apparently completed his Epistre sur l’amytié. I would suggest, therefore, that when Sala was translating and adapting his Yvain, he had the concept of perfect friendship on his mind (if not in mind). Of course, since the Humanists thought of perfect friendship as existing between two men who are social equals, it seems unlikely that he saw the relations of reciprocal aid and concern that he describes in his Yvain as embodying that ideal. Nevertheless, as we shall see, in his hands, these passionate friendships come remarkably close. Sala makes his priorities clear from the outset. Although Chrétien’s Yvain lacks a traditional prologue and begins ex abrupto with Arthur holding court at Pentecost,⁹ Sala prefaces his adaptation with a dedication and a little summa-

 Suard’s findings revised the theory espoused by earlier scholars such as Guigue (Sala 1884), Paris (1842), and Philippe Fabia (1934) who, believing Sala’s Yvain to be an early effort, thought the reference was to Charles VIII. See Sala (1996, 18 – 21).  See Hunt (1970) and n. 15, infra.

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ry of the story he found in the manuscript – which he calls a “lyvre” [book] – that he has reworked: C’estoit du filz au bon roy Urïen, Messire Yvein, le viste comme arond(de), Qui chevalier fut de la Table Ronde. […]¹⁰ Dont le lion suivit en despuis, Et ce, fut il dessendu en des puits; Trois chevalliers getta morts hors de celle Pour soustenir l’onneur et droit de celle Qui, par l’annel, le fist estre invisible En ung dangier dont il fust invincible; Puis, par moien de son subtil messaige, Elle qui point n’estoit sotte, més saige, Le retourna es amoreux solas Et ne fut plus en travail ne soubz las. (Pierre Sala, hereafter PS, ll. 16 – 28) [It was about the son of the good king Urien, Sir Yvain, agile as a swallow, who was a knight of the Round Table. […] on account of which the lion would follow him ever after, even if he were to descend into a well; he slew three knights outside the prison cell to uphold the honor and right of the woman who, with a ring, made him invisible and invincible when he was in peril; then, by means of her clever language, she, who was not foolish but shrewd, ended his ordeal and restored him to a place where he enjoyed amorous pleasure.]

Now, if this were simply a summary of the text that Sala purports to translate (Chrétien’s Yvain), it would seem peculiar indeed, but it relates specifically to his adaptation, and it tells us two things. First, Sala clearly seeks to focus his readers’ attention squarely on the relations of mutual service that Yvain enjoys with his lion and with Lunete, which are defined in each case as symbiotic bonds. Second, if the adapter allows himself the luxury of singling out the elements of Chrétien’s plot that serve his own purposes, he is no doubt confident that his audience knows the story of the Knight with the Lion, which had been kept alive in Western Europe and Scandinavia “from one ‘Renaissance’ to another.”¹¹ Indeed the various medieval reworkings of Chrétien’s Yvain that have come down to us start with Hartmann von Aue’s (end of the twelfth/beginning of the thirteenth century) and appear at regular intervals up to the end of the fourteenth; all in all, there are two in German and one each in Middle Welsh,

 The missing verses no doubt describe how Yvain rescued the lion, which provoked the lion’s everlasting gratitude mentioned in the following two lines.  This is how Hunt (1981, 209) concludes his article on the various adaptations of Yvain.

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Old Norse, Swedish, and Middle English. Sala’s Middle French adaptation closes the series that originated with Chrétien’s Old French text. Sala’s plot summary is framed by remarks about the pleasure he believes his work will give, on the one hand, to his “souverein seigneur” (PS, l. 1) [sovereign lord] (and, on the other, to young readers who, unlike him, are still of an age to put their hope in “Amour ne Venus” (PS, l. 33) [Love or Venus]. Now, despite this attempt to spin his adaptation as a love story, Sala, who refers to himself as viellart (PS, l. 32) [old], seems personally to have been attracted more to the text’s emphasis on friendship, as the plot summary in his prologue indicates.¹² In the pages that follow, I propose to analyze the episodes of the romance in which Yvain’s relations with Lunete and with the lion are in the forefront, noting the major changes that Sala makes to emphasize the close bonds of reciprocal aid and concern that the hero establishes with both. As a corollary, I will also – following Taylor’s lead – consider how Sala downplays Chrétien’s implicit critique of Gauvain, who presents himself in the first part of the source text as Yvain’s true friend and companion but whose subsequent conduct belies his claim. For the sake of clarity, I have divided the romance into ten sections, beginning each with a brief summary (in italics) before proceeding to my analysis. Note that Sala follows Chrétien’s plot quite faithfully until he decides to omit the last episodes of Yvain’s quest for redemption (which, in the adapter’s source, take place between sections 7 and 8 below). 1. Yvain sets out from King Arthur’s court, vowing to avenge the shame of his cousin Calogrenant, who failed seven years previously to triumph over Esclados le Roux, defender of the fountain belonging to the lady of Landuc (Laudine). ¹³ Yvain mortally wounds Esclados and pursues him into his castle, becoming trapped therein. Lunete, Laudine’s handmaiden and confidant, recognizing him as the only one who treated her courteously on a visit she had once made to Arthur’s court, promises to aid him. First, she gives him a ring to make him invisible to Esclados’s avenging barons, then, realizing that Yvain has fallen in love with Laudine, she persuades her lady to marry her husband’s murderer, and she coaches

 As Deschepper (2008, 106) notes, it would appear, based on Sala’s summary that it is Lunete’s intercession alone that assures the knight’s happiness. However, she believes Sala’s motivation for underscoring Lunete’s role here is linked to these personal musings with which he ends his prologue.  Servet (Sala 1996, 22) states that Sala follows the majority of the manuscripts in referring to her as “the lady of Landuc”– and it is only at the point that Yvain weds her. She is called Laudine in only three of the manuscripts containing Chrétien’s Yvain, but for the sake of convenience, most scholars refer to her as Laudine.

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Yvain on how to act in his interview with Laudine in order to assure her adherence to Lunete’s plan. When Lunete offers to help Yvain, she explains that she is simply returning a favour that he granted her previously. Thus, the first link in the remarkable chain of mutual aid that will develop as the plot unfolds was forged previously – hors texte. Recognizing the importance of this encounter, which introduces the theme of reciprocal service, Sala makes Lunete’s expression of gratitude longer and more elaborate than Chrétien’s. He also has her vow more vehemently to do everything in her power to help Yvain win her lady’s love. Finally, he translates faithfully Lunete’s masterful manipulation of her lady, of Yvain, and of Esclados’s barons to achieve an end that promises to redound to the benefit of all parties concerned. On the other hand, Sala condenses the passage where Laudine forges arguments to convince herself that Lunete is right that she should pardon her husband’s murderer; in doing so, she actually stokes the flame of love in her heart. Taylor (2014, 14– 17), in her fine analysis of this passage, suggests that Sala, unlike Chrétien, did not want his readers to see fin’amor [true love] in an ironic light. For the same reason, Sala will also shorten Laudine’s subsequent interview with Yvain, where, following Lunete’s specific instructions to be humble, he presents himself as a fin’amant [true lover] and swears ardent and eternal love. Clearly, Sala is much less interested in the unfolding of Laudine’s passion for Yvain and in the dictates of fin’amor in general than he is in the developing friendship between Yvain and Lunete (and the latter’s thoroughly entertaining antics). Indeed, Sala underscores this theme in the rubric introducing the episode, which describes how Lunete, upon learning that she has convinced her lady to marry Yvain, rushes off to tell him the good news.¹⁴ 2. A short time later, Arthur and his knights arrive at the fountain to attempt the adventure and discover that Yvain has not only fulfilled his vow to defeat Esclados but has also wed his widow! They celebrate Yvain’s chivalric and amatory success. Gauvain, upon learning the indispensable role that Lunete played, offers her his service, but he also talks Yvain into leaving his wife to accompany him on the tournament circuit. Laudine grants him a year’s leave, warning him sternly that her love will turn to hate if he does not return on time. As the narrator had predicted, Yvain will miss Laudine’s deadline and suffer the consequences. Sala makes numerous changes to this part of the romance where Chrétien seems intent on underscoring the importance of interpreting correctly another’s words and actions, describing how Laudine’s courteous hospitality is miscon-

 Sala’s use of rubrics is very inconsistent. See Servet’s discussion in Sala (1996, 29 – 30).

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strued by some who believe it to be a genuine expression of love on her part. Chrétien’s narrator concludes with a warning that one should not be duped by seductive language: “Faux est liés de bele parole” (Chrétien’s Yvain, hereafter CT, l. 2464) [A fool is made happy by beautiful words].¹⁵ Significantly, as the wedding reception unfolds, Lunete, Yvain, and Laudine are all given solemn promises couched in “bele parole” that will eventually prove hollow: Gauvain promises Lunete to succour her if she is ever in distress; Gauvain convinces Yvain that it is in his interests to leave his wife to accompany him on the tournament circuit; and Yvain swears to Laudine not only that he will respect her deadline, but also that he will be thinking of her constantly whilst they are apart. Now, Sala omits the narrator’s warning about deceptive language and, in recounting these three seductions, departs from his source text in striking ways. The first major change he makes is in the tone of the acointance between Gauvain and Lunete, which Chrétien had lyrically termed a meeting of the sun and the moon. Sala rejects the metaphor, replacing it with the following description: Quoy qu’on fit, messire Gauveyn Ne perdit pas son temps en vein, Car il prïa d’amours Lunecte, La gente¹⁶ pucelle brunecte, Qui avoit tousjours tenu main Pour avancer messire Yvein, Dont il fut en la fin aymé Et en son cueur tant extimé, Quë avant passé les huit jours, Il eust joy de ses amours. (PS, ll. 1996 – 2005)

 In Chrétien’s romance, this warning echoes Calogrenant’s admonition to his listeners to reflect conscientiously on what he has to say as he begins the account of his failed adventure at the fountain seven years previously (CT, ll. 150 – 174). Hunt (1970) shows that Chrétien, having begun his romance without providing a traditional prologue (insinuatio) has put this captatio benevolentiae in Calogrenant’s mouth. Not surprisingly, Sala omits this part of Calogrenant’s tale, just as he omits the comment that Chrétien’s narrator makes regarding how Laudine’s guests misinterpret her hospitality.  Sala often uses the adjectives “gent(e)” and “gentil(le)” to describe Lunete, as well as Yvain and his lion. In their Dictionnaire du moyen français, Greimas and Keane (2001, 325) list “noble” as the first definition. Servet uses that translation when the text refers to Yvain, Gauvain, or the lion but regularly glosses it as “aimable” [kind] when it refers to Lunete. I believe, though, that Sala meant to depict her as noble. As Servet (Sala 1996, 51) himself observes, her status as “demoiselle de compagnie bien née” [a well born female companion] puts her on an equal footing with Laudine. I would suggest that it also puts her on an equal footing with Yvain.

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[Whatever the others did, Sir Gauvain did not waste his time, for he courted the noble brunette who had always worked to advance Sir Yvain’s cause, such that he was eventually loved and esteemed so much by her that before the week was out, he had seduced her.]

It is telling that Sala describes Lunete as a “noble” brunette and goes on to characterize her solely in terms of the aid that she proffered Yvain. In this, the adapter takes his cue from Chrétien, who states that Gauvain and Lunete talked mostly about how she had rescued Yvain and helped him obtain favour with her lady and that out of gratitude Gauvain offered her his service. However, by using Lunete’s account simply to characterize her rather than to provide the reason for Gauvain’s offer of service and also by transforming that offer into a seduction, Sala seems to confirm Gauvain’s success with the ladies. As the wistful vieillart that he had become in 1522, did he admire that trait?¹⁷ Of course, Gauvain exercises his seductive powers not only on Lunete, but on Yvain as well. In Chrétien’s romance, Gauvain’s speech is a magisterial display of bad faith that is transparent to the attentive reader, who knows Gauvain’s reputation as a beau parleur, someone who uses manipulative language to suit his own selfish interests. Taylor (2014, 17– 20) wittily characterizes him as a “silkytongued master of what would now be called spin” and demonstrates how Sala transforms the speech into a more straightforward plea for Yvain to prolong their storied compagnonnage. In Sala’s hands, Gauvain adds to the old saw that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” the argument that Yvain would be foolish to remain at the fountain waiting for an elusive challenger when he could be increasing his prowess on the tournament circuit. It is also significant that Sala attributes this speech of friendly persuasion not just to Gauvain, but to Arthur as well, as though he were trying to avoid singling out the king’s famous nephew for Yvain’s subsequent failure to respect his wife’s deadline. Similarly, whereas Chrétien’s narrator expresses his “fear” that Yvain will miss the deadline because Gauvain will not let him leave, Sala omits this line. He does mention both in the rubric and at the end of this episode that Yvain will fail to fulfil his promise, but he lays no blame on Gauvain; rather he again cites Arthur’s role, saying that the king will honour him so much that he will miss his deadline. The last major change that Sala makes in his description of Laudine’s cordial reception of Arthur and his knights relates to Yvain’s request for leave with Gauvain to participate in the tournament circuit. In Chrétien’s text, Yvain protests loudly about the length of the absence granted by Laudine, first moaning that it is too long and then – suddenly the pragmatist – envisaging how some peril might impede his timely return, which causes his wife to lend him her  For Servet’s take on this seduction, see n. 30, infra.

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ring to protect him. Chrétien also has the narrator elaborate on the fin’amor paradox of Yvain’s heart remaining with her whilst he is physically removed from her. Sala reduces by half the length of Yvain’s protests and the narrator’s commentary, no doubt because he was more interested in painting his hero as a great knight than as a great lover. However, he may also have calculated that if he diminished the intensity of this amorous display, Yvain’s subsequent behaviour would seem a little less faithless. Indeed, Sala will also reduce by half the diatribe emitted by Laudine’s messenger when she comes to Arthur’s court to denounce Yvain for his reckless conduct, and he leaves out most of the insulting epithets she uses to describe his behaviour. 3. Upon realizing that he has failed to keep his promise, thus forfeiting his wife’s love, Yvain becomes insane with grief and lives like a wild man in the woods, where he eventually receives help from a hermit and then is cured of his madness by the Lady of Noroison. When, in gratitude to his hostess for her kindness, Yvain defeats her enemy, he has effectively embarked on his quest for redemption. This path becomes even clearer when he rescues a lion from the clutches of a serpent and gains a new companion, who swears to serve him faithfully henceforth. The most important of the three relationships of mutual aid that Yvain enjoys in this section is, of course, the one he establishes with the lion, and here, Sala follows his source text closely, but he does add a few telling details. He has the lion express his gratitude not only by bowing humbly before Yvain but also by raising his right paw, as if to swear homage. The knight realizes that this show of humility means the lion is expressing his gratitude and – adds Sala – that “le lÿon s’alie / A luy” (PS, ll. 2781– 2782) [the lion is allying himself with him].¹⁸ The lion, whom Sala describes as “gentil et debonnaire” (PS, l. 2771) [noble and of noble race] is destined to become not only the hero’s faithful companion, but also an integral part of his identity. 4. One day, Yvain, accompanied by his lion, finds himself by chance back at the fountain. Recalling his former happiness there, he bitterly laments his loss, only to discover that his faithlessness has led to Lunete’s being charged with treason, imprisoned in the chapel, and condemned to be burned at the stake the next

 Whereas Servet (Sala 1996, 58, 68) states that in the adapter’s hands, the lion becomes just an animal, I believe that the details Sala adds raise him to the status of a noble vassal and faithful male companion. We should note, too, that since the lion cannot speak, he can express himself only by his actions, which he will show to be consistent with his desire to follow Yvain wherever he goes. In this episode as in his prologue, Sala emphasizes the lion’s firm intention of doing so.

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day. In view of how much he owes this faithful friend, he swears to be there to defend her against her three accusers. This episode is crucially important, and Sala reproduces Chrétien’s text quite closely: Yvain mourns his loss, and when the lion thinks (erroneously) his beloved companion has tried to commit suicide, he is thrown into despair and attempts to follow suit. Yvain’s concentration on his own misery is interrupted when he hears a prisoner in the chapel bemoaning her own fate. Chrétien does not reveal her identity immediately, for he seems to enjoy keeping his readers in suspense until Yvain himself learns that his interlocutor is Lunete. Sala, for his part, adopts a more straightforward approach: not only does he name her, but also, as he has done before,¹⁹ he identifies her as “la gente pucellecte” (PS, l. 2935) [the noble maiden] who saved Yvain’s life when she found him trapped in the castle. Another link is about to be forged in the chain of mutual service and care that is the basis of this friendship. In Sala’s adaptation as in his source text, Yvain and Lunete next engage in a humorous contest to claim the title of the more ill-fated party. Lunete feels that her misfortune is greater because she is condemned to death (for a sin she did not even commit) whereas Yvain claims that his unhappiness is greater because the sublime joy he once experienced had turned to intense grief. To help Yvain bolster his case, Sala makes a remarkable addition to his speech: “N’est il vray que celluy ou celle, Soit chevallier, dame ou pucelle, Qui a heu ce bien de Fourtune D’avoir rancontré ung ou une Dont il est aymé ou aymee Et extimé ou extimee Plus que nulle rien de ce monde, Et puys par sa folle faconde Il laisse celle vraye amour, Sans que[re]lle ne sans rumour, Et ment sa foy et sa promesse, Dont il fault quë Amour le laisse, A bon droit n’est il maleureux Et plus quë autre doloreux?” (PS, ll. 2967– 2980) [“Is it not true that a man or a woman, be it a knight, lady, or maiden, who has had the good fortune to have met a person by whom he or she is loved and esteemed more than anything in the world, and who then by his or her foolish behaviour deserts this true love without cause or provocation, failing to keep his or her word or promise and so is nec-

 See my commentary in section 2, supra, on the passage where Gauvain and Lunete become acquainted.

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essarily abandoned by Love, is not that person rightly more wretched and miserable than any other?”]

Although Yvain goes on to describe his particular case, it is significant that Sala has him begin by universalizing his proposition: the sin that he underscores is the failure to keep one’s word, to keep faith, and it can apply to anyone – knight, lady, or maiden. Thibault Schaefer (1995, 377 n. 18) points out that Sala, in the dedication of his little book on friendship, associates love with friendship, saying “Que c’est d’amour et de parfait amys” [It is about love and the perfect friend], and Taylor (2014, 26) notes that Sala, citing his classical authorities, states that ideal friendship is the greatest of goods”. Although Yvain goes on to make clear that his own transgression is his failure to keep his promise to Laudine, he surely realizes what a grievous wrong he would commit if he did not fulfil his obligation toward Lunete by coming to her aid, especially since, if she finds herself in such dire straits, it is owing to his grievous failure to keep faith with her mistress. In both Chrétien’s and Sala’s account, Lunete, when looking for a champion, naturally searched for Yvain but also remembered how Gauvain had promised to serve her if she ever needed him. Thus, upon failing to locate Yvain, she goes to seek Gauvain at Arthur’s court, only to be told that he is off on a quest to rescue the queen, who has been kidnapped. The allusion is, of course, to the plot of Le Chevalier de la charrette. Since Chrétien apparently composed a large part of this romance just before he began Le Chevalier au lion,²⁰ he had every right to expect the attentive reader to remember how miserably Gauvain fails early on at this mission and that it is Lancelot who brings it to a successful conclusion. In other words, a circumstance that Lunete uses to excuse Gauvain’s failure to come to her aid only tarnishes his reputation in the eyes of Chrétien’s audience. Sala, however, who shows no interest in Chrétien’s implicit criticism of Arthur’s nephew – and has no reason to publicize the Charrette – seems intent on rehabilitating not just Gauvain but his fellow knights as well. In his version, Lunete says that she could not find Gauvain and that Arthur was greatly perturbed because a knight had kidnapped the queen and the entire court had set off on the quest to recover her. 5. Yvain and his lion seek lodging at the castle of Gauvain’s relatives, who are terrorized by Harpin of the Mountain: the giant is holding their sons hostage and will kill them if Yvain’s host does not do battle or hand over his daughter. Unable to

 Shirt (1977).

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secure Gauvain’s aid, they plead with Yvain to defend them. He agrees whilst warning them that he has a prior commitment to fulfil the following day. This episode is important mostly for Yvain’s fear that if he agrees to defend Gauvain’s niece and nephews, Harpin may not appear in time for him to fulfil his solemn obligation to rescue Lunete. When Yvain asks his host why he has not sought help from the valiant knights at Arthur’s court, he is told that Gauvain would certainly have come to their aid were he not on a quest to rescue the queen. In Chrétien’s version, the host goes on to criticize Kay bitterly for having foolishly misled the king into entrusting him with the queen. Sala, though, seems intent on protecting not just Gauvain, but all of Arthur’s knights: he excises Chrétien’s criticism of Kay and has the host report that the entire court is engaged in the rescue mission.²¹ 6. Arriving back at the fountain just in time to save Lunete from the stake, Yvain solemnly swears she has been wrongly accused and that he will prove her innocence by defeating her three accusers, because he has God and Right on his side. He does so with the help of his lion and in saving Lunete’s life he assures her reconciliation with her mistress. Laudine invites Yvain to stay with her until his wounds and those of his lion are healed, but he says he cannot tarry until he has earned his lady’s pardon for a grievous sin. When she asks his name, he tells her only that he is called the Knight with the Lion. Sala clearly appreciates the allure of this exciting episode and its importance as a crucial moment in Yvain’s friendship with Lunete and his compagnonnage with the lion. Before Yvain begins the combat, he has his lion retreat. As Lunete’s attendants beseech God to help Yvain, the lion remains on high alert, ready to jump into the fray when needed; it is a synchronicity that reinforces the idea that in this judicial combat the lion symbolizes Right. It is a bloody battle indeed, and it is touching that Sala actually exaggerates the lion’s injuries, stating that one attacker nearly cut off his ear down to the brain, which infuriated Yvain so much that he threw the man into the fire, followed by the other two. Chrétien, more respectful of judicial procedures, has Yvain wait to throw the three attackers into the fire until he has proven that they bore false witness against Lunete, and the narrator explains that it is right that her accusers should suffer the same fate that they had reserved for her.

 Ulrich Fuetrer, who adapted Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein (Iban c. 1480s) went much further in his attempt to rehabilitate Gauvain. When Gawain’s relatives explain his inability to succour them, they recount how Gawain – not Lancelot – rescued Guinevere, saved Kay, and killed Meleagant. I am most grateful to Joe Sullivan for letting me read his 2019 conference paper, comparing Fuetrer’s and Sala’s adaptations, as well as his English translation of Fuetrer’s invented episode.

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Chrétien observes that the outcome of the battle fills Lunete with joy, and Sala adds a noteworthy detail: Yvain takes her hand and leads her to her mistress, who receives her warmly and recognizes that she has always served her loyally. The adapter seems intent on emphasizing that by proving that Lunete had not wronged Laudine, Yvain has made peace between them and is, perhaps, one step closer to being restored to his wife’s good graces. Sala preserves Chrétien’s conclusion to this episode, which is crucial to the stratagem Lunete will adopt to reconcile the couple. Yvain politely declines Laudine’s offer to remain until his wounds and those of his lion are healed, explaining that he cannot rest until he has obtained his lady’s forgiveness. She says that if he will at least tell her his name, he can go without obligation, a statement he denies, saying that he owes more than he can pay, but he does reveal that he is known as the Knight with the Lion. As he leaves, Lunete accompanies him part of the way. He begs her to remember him and speak a good word to her lady if the occasion arises, and she promises never to forget him or be unfaithful or idle. 7. Yvain is in great distress because his lion is too badly wounded to follow on foot, so he fashions a little bed of moss, leaves, and ferns for him inside his shield, which he places in front of his saddle. They arrive at a chateau where their hosts welcome them warmly and tend to their wounds. This episode is very short, although Yvain and his lion remain there until their wounds are completely healed. In Chrétien’s romance, it is basically a transition between Yvain’s successful combat at the fountain and the introduction of the inheritance quarrel between the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine (which Sala will pass over). Chrétien’s narrator says, “Jourz il sejourna ne sai quanz” (CT l. 4694) [They remained I don’t know how many days], which gives the younger sister of Noire Espine plenty of time to find a champion. Although Sala chooses to omit the inheritance quarrel (which will be settled when Yvain and Gauvain meet in judicial combat), as well as Yvain’s intervening triumph at the Château de Pesme Aventure,²² he retains this little transitional episode that he found in his source, using it mostly to underscore the close relationship between the hero and his lion. Yvain, grateful for the lion’s indispensable help in combating Lunete’s three accusers, shows his tender concern for his maimed companion. The adapter emphasizes Yvain’s distress by mentioning it both at the end of the previous episode (as he leaves the fountain) and at the beginning of the rubric introducing this episode. Sala then invents a transition to suit his own purposes. Feeling no doubt that he has to make up for excising the hero’s last adventures contained in his

 I discuss this lengthy omission in my conclusion, infra.

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source text, he tells us that Yvain has been thinking incessantly about “Amours” [Love], who presses him day and night to seek without delay a reconciliation with his lady, lest he die. Sala even has “Amours” – whom he equates with Venus in his prologue – speak to him, saying she will support him if he takes action: “Eyde toy et je t’eyderey” (PS, l. 3987) [Help yourself, and I will help you]. 8. Lovesick and unable to go on, Yvain returns to the fountain and precipitates a storm so as to force a reconciliation. Lunete convinces Laudine of the need to engage a new defender for the fountain and promises to search for the Knight with the Lion, if Laudine will swear to do her utmost to reconcile him with his lady. Laudine agrees to swear on relics. Sala reproduces this important episode faithfully, for he finds in his source text a very lively exchange between the two women in which Lunete again proves how clever she is with words. 9. Finding Yvain nearby, Lunete tells him how she has engineered his forthcoming meeting with Laudine (who does not know the identity of the Knight with the Lion). As Lunete had done when she first brought Yvain into her lady’s presence, she instructs him to let her bring this reunion to a successful end. Both Chrétien and Sala describe the meeting between the two friends as exceedingly joyful. Lunete claims that she is happier than she has ever been in her life because she has figured out how to reconcile Yvain with her lady. Yvain is also overjoyed. Chrétien describes how Yvain kisses Lunete’s eyes and face, swearing he will never be able to repay her, never have strength or time enough to pay her for all the honour and service due. However, Lunete reassures him that he will in fact have strength and time enough to help both her and others, adding that if she has rendered her dues, then she is owed no more gratitude than the person who borrows another’s goods and then repays him. She claims that even now she does not feel she has paid back all she owed, but Yvain assures her that she has, abundantly. Just as this chain of mutual aid began hors texte – before the romance began – it promises to extend beyond the bounds of the text. Sala appreciates the importance of this exchange, which underscores for the last time in the romance the sense of mutual obligation that the two friends feel. He reproduces a good part of it but prefers a more tangible debate: when Yvain claims he could never repay Lunete for all she has done, she tells him that if she feels so obligated toward him and has found a way to repay him by reconciling him with her mistress, it is because he had saved her life by defeating her three accusers. 10. Lunete leads Yvain back to the fountain to be reconciled with Laudine. When the hero, unrecognizable in his armour but accompanied by his lion, appears before Laudine, she dutifully promises to do her utmost to reconcile him with his

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lady, only to learn that she herself is the object of his desire. Furious that Lunete has tricked her, but realizing she must not perjure herself, she agrees to take him back. The narrator assures us that the two lovers are reconciled and that Lunete is pleased with what she has accomplished. Sala departs somewhat from his source text in recording the interview between the two spouses that is so ably choreographed and directed by Lunete with Yvain’s mischievous complicity. Chrétien’s version is longer, for he revels in demonstrating one more time Lunete’s linguistic agility and the preponderant role she plays in the reconciliation, so similar to her role in uniting them in marriage.²³ Laudine certainly realizes it and is outraged, but she knows she is trapped: she must avoid committing perjury at all costs. She agrees to be reconciled with Yvain because perjury is “trop laide chose et trop vilaine” (CT, l. 6759) [too ugly and vile a thing]; otherwise, she would have preferred (she says) to endure the storms and winds all her life, and every day she would have harboured her pain, as fire smoulders under the ashes. Sala, who has shown that he is much less interested in the manipulative power of language, condenses his source text considerably. He has Laudine raise the question of perjury but gives it an entirely different twist: she claims she would have preferred to endure the winds and storms all her life, “Et je m’ozasse parjurer, / Car tropt layde chouse et villayne / Est d’aymer homme qui point n’eyme” (PS, ll. 4235 – 4237) [And I would have dared to perjure myself, since it is too ugly and vile a thing to love a man who is incapable of love]. It is an odd statement, but one that echoes the one Sala inserts into the speech Yvain makes at the fountain when he claims he is more miserable than Lunete (PS, ll. 2966 – 2980).²⁴ Laudine goes on to say that since she knows she must be reconciled with him, she does not want to remember the displeasure and grief she has suffered. Just as Laudine’s speech is longer and more elaborate in Chrétien’s text, so is Yvain’s response: he is extremely humble: presenting himself as a repentant sinner who has paid for his folly, he promises never to wrong her again, and Laudine repeats that she would commit perjury if she did not do everything in her power to make peace between them. Sala condenses this speech drastically, having Yvain say simply that since she is willing to be merciful, he will obey her totally henceforth.  The similarity is problematic (purposefully so in Chrétien’s text). Indeed, the reader is left to wonder what the point of all Yvain’s “redemptive” adventures was, although, of course, if he had not remade his reputation as the Knight with the Lion, Lunete would have had to think of a different scheme to reconcile him with her lady.  See my discussion of this moment in section 4, supra.

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What is particularly striking about the changes Sala makes in this reunion is that the tone is considerably more positive than in Chrétien’s version, where the reader is left with the feeling that although Laudine is obliged to take Yvain back, her heart is not in it, despite the narrator’s assurances that Lunete has established eternal peace “de Yvain le fin / Et de s’amie chiere et fine” (CT, ll. 6802– 6803) [between Yvain the true / and his dear and true friend].²⁵ In Sala’s adaptation, on the other hand, Laudine gets over her anger quickly and seems pleased to be back with Yvain: they even seal their reunion with a kiss, and the adapter actually inserts a couple of verses that describe their delight at being back together: “Leur deduyt est a folasser, / Parler et beyser et embrasser” (PS, ll. 4264– 4265) [They indulge in sensual pleasure, and in talking, kissing, and embracing]. He adds that Lunete has obtained her wish, seeing delivered of pain and torment both Yvain and her lady “Qui tant s’entr’eyment maintenant / De bon cueur tresloyal et fin” (PS, ll. 4266 – 4270) [who now love each other so much with hearts both faithful and true]. It is noteworthy that Sala introduces the last two episodes of his adaptation with a rubric that highlights Lunete’s cleverness and appears to emphasize Yvain’s relationship with her more than with Laudine.²⁶ It states that Lunete rides through the woods but does not have far to go because she knows Yvain’s location. “Si l’amena a sa maistresse, / Dont au cueur receut grant lïesse” (PS, ll. 4114– 4115) [So she led him to her mistress, which gave him (or her?) great happiness]. The last line of the rubric is delightfully ambiguous because it is uncertain who the recipient of “great happiness” is – Yvain? Laudine? Lunete? For my part, I believe it is Lunete, who seems delighted with her role as artisan of Yvain and Laudine’s renewed bliss. Perhaps it does not matter, though, because, given the positive spin Sala gives to his source text’s indeterminate conclusion, we can believe that Lunete’s actions procure great happiness for all three of the main characters. The foregoing analysis should provide ample confirmation that Sala’s Chevalier au lion is far from a slavish production. The numerous omissions and additions the adapter makes are hardly insignificant, and I have yet to address the

 See my discussion of the disturbing ambiguity of this reconciliation (Grimbert 1988, 171– 181). As Hunt (1984, 102– 104) observes, nowhere in this paradoxical reconciliation is the word “love” mentioned with regard to Laudine’s feelings, and Chrétien’s indeterminate conclusion caused discomfort in his adapters, who generally rewrote it to sound more positive.  In his discussion of how Sala modified Chrétien’s characters, Servet (Sala 1996, 50 – 55) states that of the two female protagonists one would have feared most seeing Lunete stripped of her charm, freshness, vivacious wit, and generosity for the sake of narrative economy, but that Sala left her essentially intact, whilst toning down Laudine’s temperamental extremes.

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most stunning departure he makes from his source text. I would like to do so now in the guise of a rather unconventional conclusion in which I will underscore some of the key points touched on in my running commentary. As mentioned in my discussion of section 7, supra, Sala omits the final episodes in Yvain’s quest for redemption, which happen to be interlaced. The inheritance quarrel between the two daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine unfolds in two parts. It begins with the younger daughter’s desperate search for the Knight with the Lion to defend her after finding no one at Arthur’s court willing to help her; it is interrupted by Yvain’s combat against two sons of a demon in order to free three hundred cruelly exploited young women weavers at the Château de Pesme Aventure; and it concludes with the incognito combat between Gauvain and Yvain, champions of the elder and younger daughter, respectively, which King Arthur settles in favour of the younger sister by tricking the elder into admitting her heartless intention to disinherit her sibling. The omission of these episodes has long puzzled scholars. Servet (Sala 1996, 24– 25) notes that the entire block of thirteen hundred lines, or nearly one-fifth of the romance, disappears in one fell swoop, whereas of the four thousand seven hundred preceding lines, the adapter had only eliminated about seven hundred. However, he does not think Sala omitted these episodes because he became weary of his task or was concerned about the length of the romance, but rather because he considered them superfluous to the story or contrary to how he conceived of his version aesthetically.²⁷ For Chrétien’s purposes, the inclusion of these adventures is important for demonstrating that Yvain has worked diligently to earn his wife’s forgiveness and has proved, not only that he has reached a level of prowess equal to Gauvain’s, but also that he is morally superior to him. The younger sister’s determined search for the Knight with the Lion by following in his footsteps shows that he has become famous for protecting victims of injustice. (It is also an excellent review of the hero’s adventures for Chrétien’s audience, especially his auditors.) Yvain’s reputation is confirmed again by his championship of the younger sister’s (just) cause and, most dramatically, by Pesme Aventure, the climactic episode of his quest. For Sala, though, these episodes (in which Lunete plays no role) may have seemed not only superfluous but also counter-productive, distracting from the theme that permeates his restructuration of the Chevalier au lion – that of passionate friendship. Sala must have recognized in the old text he discovered

 Although I subscribe to Servet’s theory, I offer in what follows a different set of justifications for the omission of these episodes.

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not only a “good story” but also one that illustrated a concept that was clearly on his mind at a time when he was also working on his Epistre sur l’amytié. Fortunately, the theme of amicitia was already predominant in Chrétien’s Chevalier au lion; Sala needed only to find ways to underscore it in the episodes that highlight Yvain’s friendship with Lunete and his compagnonnage with his lion. The omission of the last episodes in Yvain’s quest for redemption likely served this purpose, but it may have been motivated by other concerns, both aesthetic and ethical. Servet has suggested that Sala was drawn to the genre of the nouvelle when he composed his Tristan just a few years after completing his Yvain. ²⁸ By omitting the thirteen-hundred-line interval between the judicial combat that Yvain wages to prove Lunete’s innocence and the final reconciliation with Laudine, Sala may have been guided in part by his attraction to the shorter form of the nouvelle. After all, this decision to emphasize the theme of ideal friendship concentrates the action in a way that departs from the form of the chivalric romance, which, unlike the nouvelle, presents itself as a series of episodes that can be endlessly “continued”.²⁹ Moreover, Lunete’s unique flair for schemes designed to serve the interests of all whilst fulfilling her obligation to Yvain make for the kind of lively dialogue that often characterizes the nouvelle. Finally, Sala’s attraction to this popular form may also account for the prurient interest he shows in the sexual aspect of love, by adding bawdy or titillating details in various places where Chrétien discreetly leaves to the reader’s imagination the nature of the pleasure in which a couple is engaging.³⁰ As for the “ethical” concerns to which Servet alludes to explain Sala’s omission of the inheritance quarrel, it seems likely that they involve an attempt to paint a more positive picture of Gauvain than the one he found in his source. We have seen how Sala tones down Gauvain’s argument designed to persuade Yvain to accompany him on the tournament circuit, and how he associates Arthur both with that speech and the subsequent effort to retain Yvain at the Arthurian court. Moreover, in Sala’s hands, Gauvain’s failure to come to the aid  See his article (Servet 1996) in which he situates Sala’s Tristan between the chivalric romance and the nouvelle.  The Continuations of the romances of Chrétien and the long prose narratives of the preceding centuries offer sufficient proof of that trend.  I have already mentioned in my analysis, supra, how Sala transforms Gauvain’s meeting with Lunete into a seduction and how Yvain and Laudine indulge in sexual pleasure at the end of the romance. Other instances of this tendency can be found in the way he modifies the opening scene (PS, ll. 60 – 61, 82– 88, 99 – 106) and the crude wording he uses in Gauvain’s warning to Yvain not to act like a jaloux [jealous husband or cuckold] (PS, ll. 2047– 2049). See Servet’s discussion in Sala (1996, 69 – 74). For an analysis of the love intrigues in Sala’s Tristan, especially Guinevere’s “joyously immodest frankness”, see Corbellari (2009, 17).

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of Lunete and his relatives seems less egregious than in Chrétien’s text because Arthur’s entire court engages in the attempt to rescue Guinevere. Finally, by omitting the episode of the incognito duel between Gauvain and Yvain, Sala avoids highlighting the former’s poor judgment in agreeing to support the cause of the elder sister, whom Arthur cleverly manipulates into admitting that she was in the wrong. Clearly, although Sala is pleased to demonstrate what a faithful companion Yvain’s lion is, he does not choose to follow Chrétien’s lead in diminishing Gauvain’s stature.³¹ In analyzing Sala’s Chevalier au lion as I have done in this essay, we can see that it does not rise to the sophisticated level of his source text – and that it is considerably less original that his Tristan. Yet, as a translation/adaptation of Chrétien’s romance, it is a valuable document because the modifications the adapter made suggest where his attitude toward the Arthurian romance material he inherited differed from that of his medieval predecessor and how at least one of the predominant themes in his source – passionate friendship – resonated with him.

References Adler, Alfred. “Pierre Sala, ‘Tristan’, roman d’aventures du XVIe siècle, ed. L. Muir.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 21 (1959): 261 – 268. Chrétien de Troyes. Le Chevalier au lion ou Le Roman d’Yvain. Ed. and trans. David F. Hult. Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1994. Chre´tien de Troyes. The Knight with the Lion (Yvain). Arthurian Romances. Trans. William W. Kibler. London and New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1991. Corbellari, Alain. “Love’s Ruses and Traps in Late Arthurian Literature: A Reading of Pierre Sala’s Tristan and Lancelot.” Vendanges Tardives. Ed. Carol J. Chase and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Arthuriana 19.1 (2009): 20 – 31. Deschepper, Corinne. “Dédicace, prologue, résumé – Considérations sur les premières pages du Chevalier au lion de Pierre Sala.” Quant l’ung amy pour l’autre veille. Mélanges de moyen français offerts à Claude Thiry. Ed. Tania Van Hemelryck and Maria Colombo Timelli. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. 101 – 111. Fabia, Philippe. Pierre Sala, sa vie et son œuvre, avec la le´gende de l’Antiquaille. Lyon: Audin, 1934.

 Servet expresses a totally different view. He states that Sala reduced Gauvain’s emblematic character to a “simple silhouette”. He observes that we never see him in combat and that it is only in his seduction of Lunete that he retains some of his former lustre. Yet – Servet (Sala 1996, 60) asks – is it not absurd to allow Gauvain to triumph in his amatory enterprises whilst depriving him of any chance to shine in combat?

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Greimas, Algirdas Julien, and Teresa Mary Keane. Dictionnaire du moyen français. Paris: Larousse, 2001. Grimbert, Joan Tasker. Yvain dans le miroir: une poe´tique de la re´flexion dans le Chevalier au lion de Chre´tien de Troyes. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 1988. Hunt, Tony. “Le Chevalier au lion: Yvain Lionheart.” A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995. 156 – 168. Hunt, Tony. Chre´tien de Troyes: Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion). London: Grant & Cutler, 1986. Hunt, Tony. “Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Some Interpretive Problems in Chrétien’s Yvain and Its Medieval Adaptations.” The Craft of Fiction: Essays on Medieval Poetics. Ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon. Rochester, NY: Solaris Press, 1984. 83 – 117. Hunt, Tony. “The Medieval Adaptations of Chrétien’s Yvain: A Bibliographical Essay.” An Arthurian Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Lewis Thorpe. Ed. Kenneth Varty. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1981. 203 – 213. Hunt, Tony. “The Rhetorical Background to the Arthurian Prologue.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 6 (1970): 1 – 23. Hyatte, Reginald. The Arts of Friendship: The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Paris, Paulin. Les Manuscrits françois de la Bibliothèque du roi. 7 vols. Paris: Techener, 1835 – 1848. Sala, Pierre. Le Chevalier au lion. Ed. Pierre Servet. Paris: Champion, 1996. Sala, Pierre. Tristan, roman d’aventures du XVIe siècle. Ed. Lynette Muir. Geneva: Droz/Paris: Minard, 1958. Sala, Pierre. Le Livre d’amitie´, de´die´ a` Jehan de Paris par l’escuyer Pierre Sala, Lyonnois. Ed. Georges Guigue. Lyon: Librairie Générale Henri Georg, 1884. Servet, Pierre. “Le Tristan de Pierre Sala: entre roman chevaleresque et nouvelle.” Études françaises 32.1 (1996): 56 – 69. Shirt, David J. “How Much of the Lion Can We Put Before the Cart? Further Light on the Chronological Relationship of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot and Yvain.” French Studies 31 (1977): 1 – 15. Suard, François. “Notice sur le manuscrit B. N. fr. 1638. Pierre Sala et le Chevalier au lion.” Romania 91 (1970): 406 – 415. Sullivan, Joseph M. “Yvain in Autumn: Ulrich Fuetrer’s Iban (circa 1480) and Pierre Sala’s Chevalier au lion (1522).” XVIth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Exeter, UK. 25 July 2019. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France. From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Hungrie shadows: Pierre Sala and his Yvain.” Vendanges Tardives. Ed. Carol J. Chase and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Arthuriana, 19:1 (2009): 7 – 19. Thibault Schaefer, Jacqueline. “Lancelot, Tristan et Pierre Sala ou ‘qu’un ami véritable est une douce chose’.” Lancelot–Lanzelet, hier et aujourd’hui. Recueil d’articles assemblés par Danielle Buschinger et Michel Zink pour fêter les 90 ans de Alexandre Micha. Greifswald: Reineke, 1995. 371 – 379.

Jean-Claude Mühlethaler

From Rewriting to Recycling: Medieval material in Pierre Sala and Jeanne Flore Je me souviens n’est pas un livre nostalgique: c’est un théâtre de mémoire, une œuvre vivante qui ne peut rester figée pour la postérité. (François Caradec)¹ [I remember is not a nostalgic book: it is a theatre of memory, a living work which cannot remain immovable for posterity.]

Rewriting, wrote Daniel Poirion in a milestone article, “est la trace d’une culture dans l’écriture” (1981, 117). This definition echoes the “trace de l’intertexte”, the “grammaticalité” which, according to Michael Riffaterre (1981, 5), arouses the reader’s attention and stimulates the activity of memory. A single detail may be enough to create a link between two (or several) texts: in the Cligès of Chrétien de Troyes, a blonde hair of Soredamors woven into Alexandre’s shirt causes the audience to visualize the image of Iseut, “la belle aux cheveux d’or” (Bédier 2012, Ch. III). “Dans la texture narrative”, Poirion (1981, 115) observes, “la symbolisation brode des motifs empruntés à des œuvres supposées connues” [In narrative texture, symbolization embroiders motifs borrowed from works supposedly known]. Yet rewriting is not only a matter of inserting evocative details which can be identified by the reader. It can affect an entire work to the extent of penetrating its “fonctionnemants narratifs” (Combes 2001, 15) [narrative functions]. In Antoine de la Sale’s Jean de Saintré, there is, Poirion notes, “contamination entre le genre de la chronique”, “la compilation pédagogique”, and the nouvelle (1981, 110) [contamination between the chronicle, the pedagogical compilation, and the nouvelle]. Rewriting, in this case, is “réinvestir” [to reinvest] other texts whilst exploiting their “capital d’autorité” (Naccach 2017) [authoritative capital]. This broad definition reminds us that no work is born ex nihilo in whatever period. It has nevertheless enjoyed particular success amongst medievalists, for they recognize in rewriting a dominant feature of literary creation in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the more recent notion of cultural recycling, formulated by scholars to describe procedures common amongst contemporary artists, has scarcely attracted their attention.² This is easily explained, for the notion – which encompasses different forms of pick-up and recovery – overlaps a good  Caradec (1997, 195).  See, for example, Dika (2003). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-018

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deal with the notion of rewriting.³ For Georges Roque (2013), it is a critical reuse of preexisting material: certain painters borrow from their predecessors one, or sometimes several, elements to insert into their own work, diverting it from its initial use. Others recycle different images which they combine into a new whole, sometimes going as far as fusion. This is not far from Jean de Saintré. Rewriting and creative recycling are “écritures doubles” [double writings] which imply acknowledgement on the reader’s part, to the point that the latter becomes, according to Frank Wagner (2002, 302– 303 and 312), a “co-énonciateur”. This operation is redolent of bricolage, and initially it is a matter of lecture-écriture (considering, to put it simply, the act of painting or sculpting as forms of writing). In rewriting as in recycling, it is a matter of creating the new from the old whilst appropriating the creations of another in order to nourish one’s own. Finally, if originality – viewed as coming from a “singularité individuelle” (Madureira 2011, 97) – is a largely unknown concept in the Middle Ages, it is seriously called into question in the age of the internet, at the same time that the notion of genius, inherited from the Romantics, can be seen to waver. These two notions therefore overlap, but without overlaying each other entirely. First, rewriting and recycling are distinct in the use to which they are put. Roques, an art historian, avoids the term “rewriting”, ill-suited to the plastic arts. Wagner, on the contrary, sees in recycling a form of hypertextuality that resembles techniques of writing found in the members of Oulipo.⁴ Must we consequently restrict the concept, if not to the visual arts, then at least to the contemporary period alone? In other words: is the concept of recycling without interest when describing the mechanisms at work in texts moving between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from a manuscript culture to the age of printing? I do not think so, as long as we define more precisely the respective areas of application in recycling and rewriting. Firstly, let us remember that rewriting is a loaded term insofar as it underscores the activity of a writer. We focus on an author who chooses one or more passages to rework in his own way. His procedure is revealed at the first step, that of prélèvement, which characterizes recycling according to Walter Moser (1998, 525 – 528); this, combined with (creative) transfert, should in my view be termed “rewriting”. If the transfer depends on the author alone, such is not the case with réinsertion: it is not sufficient that the borrowing has been relocated in a new work, but the reader must identify it in order to in See Martin (2008); Jakubczuk and Maziarczyk (2013).  The distinction between (modern) recycling and (medieval) rewriting turns out to be relevant for Leticia Ding (2019, 40 – 44), whose dissertation (Diverse et unifiante. La réécriture arthurienne de Jacques Roubaud deals with the appropriation and transformation of Arthurian material in the work of Roubaud.

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tegrate it in his turn into a network of new relationships. I reserve the term recycling here for reinsertion. In daily use, recycling in fact does indicate the insertion of an object (transformed or not) into a new life-cycle. In literature, the element borrowed from an older text is reborn with new functions, acquired unexpected meanings from the moment it begins a dialogue with elements alien to its original context. That is one of the key mechanisms that allow the updating of an old work (or a selected part of it) by adapting it to the tastes of the time and public, which appropriates it by offering “un pont […] vers le passé” [a bridge […] to the past] beginning in their own present. Rewriting and recycling are the foundations of the transhistoricity: they authorize a subjective reading of texts which, in the first instance, were not meant for us.⁵ Let us not delude ourselves: the three operations described by Moser are difficult to tell apart, because rewriting and recycling are often intrinsically connected. It is the scholar’s job to separate them, to some degree artificially, for the purposes of analysis. They offer a reading grid whose efficiency can be measured against the reality of the texts. It is in this spirit that I approach the work of Pierre Sala, which is firmly rooted in medieval literature, whether it concerns Arthurian material (Le Chevalier au lion, 1522) or Tristanian (Tristan, between 1526 and 1529).

Pierre Sala, an antiquarian in his study In a period when the “romans de chevalerie” were privileged by printers and were winning new audiences,⁶ Pierre Sala stands out as an exception, especially in Lyon, one of the principal centres for the dissemination of the printed book. “He seems”, Jane Taylor (2013, 153) notes, “to have refused even to contemplate the printing press”. Pierre Sala indeed systematically chooses the medium of manuscript and conceives his works as gifts made to a privileged reader, with whom he maintains personal links: the Epistre sur l’amytié is addressed to Claude Laurencin, his brother-in-law, Le petit livre d’amour is conceived for Marguerite Bulliouys, his second wife, and his Tristan and Le Chevalier au lion are dedicated to François Ier (whom he had the honour of welcoming in his house, L’Antiquaille).⁷ Sala’s work on material inherited from the Middle Ages thus bears the stamp of its author. When he blows the dust off of Chrétien de Troyes’s Le Chevalier au lion, he proposes in his prologue the “mise en scène d’une relation personnelle”  On this notion, see Hélène Merlin-Kajman (2019).  See Francesco Montorsi (2015, 43 – 85) on the dissemination of chivalric romances and the expansion of their public thanks to printing.  For an overview, see Chantal Verchère’s introduction to her edition of Tristan (Sala 2008, 26–31).

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(Scherbakova 2006, 130) [representation of a personal relationship] with both the reader and the material he is treating. Sala, who says he is “trop vielliart” [too much of an old man], incapable henceforth of serving “Amour ne Venus” [neither Love nor Venus], undertakes to “rememorer” [commemorate] for the king of France the adventures of a “chevalier plaisant” [agreeable knight] (Sala 1996, 99 – 100). Whether we take the adjective in the sense of “who pleases” or of “becoming, agreeable”, it is astonishing since one would have expected “vaillant”, “bon”, or some other term capable of displaying the exceptional character of a knight of “grant loz” (l. 6) [great esteem]. “Plaisant” immediately reorientates the meaning of Chrétien’s tale. Reading is now a pastime dedicated to pleasure: it no longer implies the search for a senefiance to be “de cuer entandue” (Chrétien de Troyes 1994, 342, l. 152) [understood by the heart], revealed by a reader (or listener) capable of discerning truth beneath the veil of fiction. In short, Sala creates “un usage ludique de ses lectures” (Verchère 2015, 81) [a playful use of his reading], because the romance belongs in his view to the realm of leisure. The rewriting of the Chevalier au lion smacks of this, even if Pierre Sala – as a humanist, or rather, an antiquaire – envisages the restoration of an old text which “trop estoit difficile a lire” (l. 13) [was too hard to read]. He nevertheless admits to having made choices, working on the text “tant que ung comp[te] / En extrahy” (ll. 11– 12) [until I drew a story from it]. The verb extraire is significant: Sala has adapted the text to the taste of a public wanting to spend a moment of leisure. On the one hand, he abbreviates the text of Chrétien de Troyes considerably; on the other, he introduces winks with erotic innuendos, (Taylor 2014, 19), such as when Arthur retires to the queen’s bedchamber at the beginning of the tale. In contrast, it would be futile to look in Sala for any traces of Chrétien’s irony, which would have undermined an idealizing vision of chivalry, more flattering for an aristocratic public (Taylor 2009, 15 – 16). One can imagine the reasons behind this procedure chosen by an author who is also a courtier, but one can also understand why scholars have deemed Pierre Sala’s text to be inferior to his model (Clément 2015). In the chapter (“Pierre Sala, Poacher”) devoted by Taylor to the author in the important monograph cited above, she still speaks of rewriting, never of recycling. I cannot say she is wrong: Sala tells the same story as Chrétien de Troyes, whose diegetic material (characters, places, sequence of events) he respects. His Chevalier au lion offers a new “version” of the twelfth-century work that it supplants.⁸ The different operations which, according to Moser, characterize recycling are difficult to apply here: there is no prélèvement [withdrawal], since Sala does not isolate se-

 “Version” in the sense intended by Richard Saint-Gelais (2011, 139 – 141).

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lected elements of his source in order to insert them (transfert) in a new whole. But for all that, he does not take up the totality of Le Chevalier au lion, omitting, for example, the episode of the sisters of the Black Thorn. The inner balance of the hypotext is upset insofar as the encounter with the lion no longer occurs in the middle of the narrative, as it does in Chrétien. From this point of view, we may nevertheless envisage relating Pierre Sala’s rewriting to what Moser calls prélèvement. On the other hand, we cannot speak of réinsertion and, consequently, of recycling, and this despite the efforts undertaken by Sala to make Chrétien’s work accessible to his own public. The changes he introduces – fashionable clothing, Arthur’s court seen through the prism of that of François Ier – are redolent of a movement of acculturation already common in mises en prose of romances from the fifteenth century.⁹ Such an “habillage” [packaging] of the tale is not entirely without consequences, even if it is only evident on the level of detail, for the presence of modernizing elements makes it easy for the reader to establish links with the world in which he lives. Any work that crosses centuries, wrote Malraux, “nous atteint dans un double temps qui n’appartient qu’à elle: celui de son auteur et le nôtre” (2014, 54) [reaches us in a double time which belongs only to itself: that of its author and of us]. Even an older work which includes no modernizing feature, is of necessity read in the light of a personal horizon of expectation, deriving from the socio-cultural environment of each reader. Borgès masterfully illustrated this mechanism in a famous story, “Pierre Ménard, auteur du Quichotte”, in which the author ends up transcribing word for word Cervantes’s masterpiece, considering each phrase so modern that nothing needs changing. Updating is a conditio sine qua non of the survival of works, of their transhistoricity. Pierre Ménard saw a “plaisir plébéien” (Borges 2004, 45) in anachronism, a simple device to which a writer should not give in, but painters and writers have had constant recourse to it, from medieval miniatures to comic strips, from Pierre Sala to Jacques Roubaud.¹⁰ When the latter, with Florence Delay, rewrites the encounter of Yvain and the weavers of the castle of Pesme Aventure, borrowed from Chrétien de Troyes, he refuses (via the gatekeeper’s voice) to speak of “demoiselles”: they are “ouvières du textile” [textile workers] working in a “fabrique” [factory] at the command of a “contremaître” [supervisor]. The

 This is what Annie Combes (2012, 136), calls the “transposition”; see also Chase (2014).  See Marie Jacob (2012, 107– 148), who retraces in miniatures the marks of Classical alterity, starting from the observation that around 1470 “on ne représente plus systématiquement Troie et la Rome de Jules César comme une ville française contemporaine” (107) [Troy and Caesar’s Rome are no longer represented systematically like a contemporary French city]. See also Mühlethaler (2016, 225 – 227 and 325 – 330).

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“déléguée de l’atelier no 7” [delegate from workshop no. 7], then the “chœur des tisseuses” [chorus of female weavers] (who speak in octosyllabic rhyming couplets) explain to Yvain the conditions of their captivity.¹¹ The vocabulary, incongruous in the chivalric universe, introduces a fracture in the narrative so that the reader feels authorized to see in the episode a metaphor of the contemporary industrial world. Delay and Roubaud’s ploy, which puts Chrétien’s narrative in a new, modernizing, light is not without similarities to that of Pierre Sala four centuries earlier. Falling back on octosyllabic rhyming couplets, the antiquarian shows respect for the entire narrative of the hypotext from a formal point of view. It is an archaizing feature during the triumph of prose romance, which calls up anachronisms inviting the reader to evaluate Yvain’s aventures according to criteria familiar to the public of the early Renaissance. In Pierre Sala’s Le Chevalier au lion, there is a double, seemingly contradictory, tendency. Past and present mingle: on the one hand, this is a narrative that claims to be based on a work slumbering under the dust of centuries; on the other, there are nods and winks to contemporary readers. As Chantal Verchère (2015, 82) remarks, Sala produces: “des variations inévitablement imprégnées de son époque” [variations inevitably steeped in his own time]. He nevertheless manages to distance himself from courtly and chivalric codes. Here, the narrator is astonished by the sudden and unconditional love that Yvain feels for the beautiful lady of the castle, whilst being held captive by her. Confronted by the absolute nature of fin’amor, which pays no heed to outside danger and leads the hero to risk his own safety, Sala expresses his incomprehension. He reacts like a reader, for whom such behaviour is incompatible with his experience of the world and men: Més je m’esbahis fort en somme Comme peult devenir ung homme Amoreux et en prandre envie, Qui en tel danger est de vie. (Sala 1996, ll. 1199 – 1202) [But in fact I am as astonished as can be a man in love and desirous of it, who is in mortal danger.]

The narrator’s commentary creates a critical distance at the same time as the choice of the octosyllable sets up an aesthetic distance, by means of which Sala’s narrative distinguishes itself from the “old” chivalric prose romances.¹²

 Delay and Roubaud (2005, 189). For a more detailed analysis of the procedures at work in this scene, see Ding (2019, 90 – 91).  The term is that of François de La Noue; the quotation and commentary are in Montorsi (2015, 46 – 48).

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The modernization and resulting recycling of Chrétien’s work are held back. The notion of rewriting is quite sufficient to describe the mechanisms at work in Le Chevalier au lion. If there is recycling, it remains potential, left up to the understanding of a reader who may also be glad to see fiction reemerge from the past, without links to the present. However, nothing prevents him from exploiting familiar elements (anachronisms) and judging the tale in the light of his own experience (socio-cultural recycling) or assigning it to a place in his own library (literary recycling). Recycling is here a mechanism external to the work that generates it (if it ever does) in an allusive and ad hoc manner. This observation is equally valid for the “vieil” (l. 5) [old] Tristan of Pierre Sala, although the hard work of rewriting – “qui m’a souvent de nuyt bien faict bailler” (l. 6) [which often made me yawn much at night] – manifests itself in quite a different way. This work is a true recreation: the antiquarian from Lyon draws broadly on the Tristan en prose which he combines with other sources, both French and Italian, creating a new narrative by copying, translating or summarizing the hypotexts.¹³ We are there, in Moser’s terms, dealing with the prélèvement and transfert of selected elements which, when combined in a novel manner, are réinsérés into a new whole. However, the effect of (internal) recycling recedes insofar as Sala offers an apparently coherent narrative, constructed from a “tissue of familiar and half-familiar episodes and motifs” (Taylor 2014, 21), including characters inherited from tradition and topoi of adventure (the forest, the spring, etc.) It is all done so that the public fond of chivalric romance is not disturbed by the narrative (in prose, like its sources) of Pierre Sala. Rather than leaning towards the weaving together that underlies the work, seeking to reveal a “mish-mash of exotic but disconnected reminiscences, or a collection of nouvelles” (Taylor 2014, 22), the reader will have given in to the temptation of placing Sala’s Tristan at the heart of the Arthurian-Tristanian galaxy familiar through the printed book. This is the level at which (external) recycling of the tale occurs, just as in Le Chevalier au lion. If the public of this period was struck by anything, it was the importance that Pierre Sala attributes to the friendship between Tristan and Lancelot. The former’s love for Iseut, the latter’s for Guenièvre, plays a marginal role in the narrative. It is nevertheless condemned by an angel who reproaches both with persisting in the “peché de luxure et adultere” (60) [sin of lust and adultery], at the risk of damnation. Redemption is through prowess and friendship, this “tres The narrator refers to his source following an allusion to past events: “Et qui ce compte vouldra veoir au long, regarde le livre de Tristan quant il menna la royne Yseut devers le roy Marc en Cornouaille” (Sala 2008, 169) [And whoever wants to see all of this tale, let him look at the book of Tristan when he delivered Queen Yseut to King Mark in Cornwall].

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grande rage d’amour” (142) [extreme passion of love], which unites the two heroes during the whole romance. Some scholars have not failed to recall to what degree the question of friendship – from Rabelais (with the couple Pantagruel/ Panurge) to Montaigne (Essais I: 27) – occupies a central place in the Renaissance. As for Pierre Sala: he put together a Livre d’amitié addressed to “son amy Maistre Jehan de Paris” (Sala 1884, 56) [his friend, Master John of Paris]. The work consists of a compilation of thoughts on friendship, borrowed either from Classical authors (Cicero, Aristotle, etc.) or from the Church Fathers (Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, etc.) “L’amy”, it is written, “est ung aultre soy-mesmes” (1884, 58) [A friend is another one’s self]. We feel affection for him beyond death, illustrated by an anecdote borrowed from Valerius Maximus:¹⁴ Blosius, interviewed by the consul who has condemned his friend, prefers to die rather than tarnish his memory by betraying his friendship. He was, writes Sala, “ardant en l’amour de son amy Gracus” (1884, 78) [burning with love for his friend Gracus]. The formula has no equivalent in the Latin source: with the adjective ardant [burning], Sala expresses the strength of the ties between the two noble Romans. Similarly, the “tresgrande rage d’amour” [extreme passion of love] of Tristan and Lancelot marks the intensity of feeling the two knights have for each other. Their friendship – in some ways more powerful than their passion for Iseut and Guenièvre – locates Sala’s romance in a cycle of fresh associations that distance it from its sources. His Tristan resonates with the preoccupations of its readers; more than Le Chevalier au lion, which scarcely encourages (external) recycling, Tristan is born of its time, pervaded by its Zeitgeist.

From Marguerite de Navarre to Jeanne Flore, or the aesthetics of the nouvelle Divided into chapters that punctuate the sequence of adventure and chance encounters (like Le Chevalier au lion), Sala’s Tristan, Taylor (2014, 57) suggests, can be read as a collection of nouvelles interconnected by an ill-defined narrative framework. From the moment the reader fragments the text by isolating its components, s/he may come to wonder about the origin of Sala’s fascination for the merveilleux, which leads up to the “curieux et attachant” chapter XXV.¹⁵ Having

 Facta dictaque memorabilia, IV: vii, 1. Book IV is devoted to friendship.  Danielle Quéruel (1998, 1079) offers a detailed analysis of the scene, to which I refer for the remarks that follow.

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set out to hunt, Tristan encounters near a “belle fontaine” a lady “plaine de moult grand beauté”, beside whom lays “ung elicorne de merveilleuse grandeur” (328) [full of great beauty; a wonderfully large unicorn]. The unicorn, with its symbolism inherited from the bestiary, is more or less absent from earlier Arthurian stories.¹⁶ It is an unexpected companion for the Lady of the Lake (this concerns her) which calls together lyric tradition (Thibaut de Champagne) and the famous Dame à la licorne tapestries (Paris, Musée Cluny), produced c. 1500). The wondrous animal opens the path to a game of association. Beyond that, it invites us to question the reasons for its presence at the closure of the Tristan. The notion of recycling is now at work: Pierre Sala combines elements of different origins which, in a novel context, acquire a new function, namely that of providing – with a smile – the end of the narrative. The Lady of the Lake, toying with Tristan, represents the double of an all-powerful narrator, permitted quietly to interrupt the sequence of adventures at any moment. The fairy and the unicorn are the emblems of a playful and random aesthetic: the romance as a whole invites a “lecture recréative” [recreational reading].¹⁷ In a collection of nouvelles, each tale is autonomous. At the same time, it has its place in a whole, which directs the way in which it is read. The existence of the frame-narrative, from Boccaccio to Marguerite de Navarre, illustrates the desire to structure the sequence of tales, to encourage the reader to weave cross-links.¹⁸ It nevertheless happens that one nouvelle – somewhat like Sala’s lady of the unicorn – is discordant, to the extent of making us wonder about the reasons for its presence in the collection. Such is the case for the famous nouvelle 70 of the Heptaméron, which, as we know,¹⁹ rewrites the story of La Châtelainde de Vergy. The narrator, Oisille, hesitates to tell the story because it breaks two rules which the little group had established for themselves: the adventure related should be brief, recent, and should not have been written down before. However, answers Parlamente: “‘Il a esté escrit en si vieux langage que […] il n’y a icy homme ne femme, qui en ayt ouy parler: parquoy il sera tenu pour nouveau’” (Marguerite de Navarre 2007, 559) [“It was written in such old language that […] there is not a man or woman here who has heard of it: wherefore it will be considered new”].

 Le Conte du papegau (Charpentier and Victorin 2004, 236 – 242) constitutes a notable exception. On the subject of the playful vein that runs through this narrative (and also defines the portrait of the unicorn), see Taylor (1994, 529 – 544).  On this key notion, see Mounier (2015, 104).  On the effects of echo in a collection which necessitates a retroactive reading, see Winn (1993, 158 – 170).  See Frappier (1976) and Tetel (1990).

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Paradoxically, it is because it is unknown that the old tale from the thirteenth century (or the prose version from the fifteenth) can be retold without the majority of the public being aware that it has been recycled. Some literary competence is necessary for identifying the source and, above all, to evaluate the effort of rewriting that permitted its insertion into the cycle of nouvelles. The system of courtly values is abandoned in Oisille’s version, which makes of the story a parable in which true love (of God) is in opposition to the vain love of man (Ferguson 2005), and in particular to the bestiality of the duchess of Burgundy in the grip of her senses. Sensitive to the teachings of the evangelists,²⁰ Marguerite de Navarre in this nouvelle – and more generally in the Heptaméron – casts an eye on the world that reflects the questions being asked by her own epoch. An old tale employed for ends other than those of its source, Oisille’s story hits the mark: it evokes amongst the participants a lively exchange with personal issues at stake – Parlamente is concerned that the debate is taking place “à ses despens” (Marguerite de Navarre 2007, 584) [at her expense] – as well as ideological ones (the respective nature of men and women). The modernization of the medieval tale is at the root of a subjective appreciation of the story and its socio-cultural (external) recycling by the interlocutors. Oisille’s hesitations relate to the insertion of old material into a new whole. From a literary perspective, this metapoetic transition justifies the proposed distinction between recycling and rewriting: Oisille and Parlamente debate the legitimacy of internal recycling. The rewriting of the old tale is the consequence of the decision to integrate it into the collection. It is a condition of recycling, just as it is in other collections, although the two complementary approaches rarely differ from each other quite as clearly as in the Heptaméron. The first nouvelle in the Contes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore (c. 1539)²¹ provides an interesting example. The tale of Madame Mélibée is a complex assembly “d’hypotextes superposés, synthèse de genres et de matières distincts, adaptée à un format nouveau” (Polizzi, 2008, 224) [superimposed hypotexts, synthesis of genres and distinct subject-matters, adapted to a new format] – the nouvelle. Of the two main sources – the Mambriano and Ysaïe le Triste ²² – which inform this story of a malmariée, I will treat only the second.

 See the classic study of Lucien Febvre (1971, 90 – 131, Ch. IV: “Marguerite et les leçons pauliniennes de Briçonnet”).  Reynolds-Cornell (2005). I will not discuss the problems of the order of the tales and of multiple authors of the collection as they are not directly relevant to my purpose here.  See Cappello (2001). As well as identifying Ysaïe le Triste as source of the story, Capello analyzes in detail the rewriting to which the two hypotexts have been subjected.

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Ysaïe le Triste, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, had the privilege of being printed (Bianciotto 1996 and Taylor 2013). This late prose romance, which combines elements inherited from both Arthurian tradition and chanson de geste, relates the struggles of a father (Ysaïe), then of his son, Marc, to reestablish order in a kingdom corrupted by evil customs since the death of King Arthur. The episode that interests me here is in the second part of the romance and is inserted into the adventures of the son. After Marc, in the company of the dwarf, Tronc, has left the fairies’ grove, he confronts one after the other in their respective castles three brothers (and their acolytes). He manages to kill Trandail, the eldest, to the great pleasure of his wife and subjects, exceedingly happy that “le maise coustume fust hostee” (Ysaïe le Triste 1989, 403) [the evil custom was undone]. The scene is repeated in the castles of the younger brothers: each time, Marc appears as a civilizing hero fighting “pour le bien commun” (405) [for common good] and freeing the populations from a tyrannical regime. The same is true of the “Chastel des Haulx Murs” (411) [Castle of the High Walls], where Marc kills the giants ravaging the country, those of the “Lyeux sans Pité” [Pitiless Places] (429), where he confronts six rogue knights. This is the series to which are added the adventures at the castle of “Piralius ly Jaloux” (430) [Pyralius the Jealous] and which attracted the attention of Jeanne Flore (that is, the authors who hide behind this nom de plume). But why draw on this episode to make a nouvelle rather than another? The adjective “jaloux” provides the key: love plays a decisive role, so that our attention is deflected from the violence with which Marc and the faithful Tronc force a new order in the course of the adventures. In the medieval romance, Marc already claims that he wants to confront the custom of the castle for love of its lady rather than out of a desire for knightly glory. When Yrienne asks how he succeeded in defeating the giant, lion, and serpent –the fearsome guardians of the castle –, the hero replies: “‘Dame, Dieux et Amors me donnent poissanche et hardement’” (436) [“Lady, God and Love give me strength and courage”]. It is hardly surprising to note that the adventure related by Madame Mélibée has been subjected to radical rewriting, thanks to which the tale is transformed into a love story aimed at a feminine public.²³ The female narrator removes the moral and political issues which justify resorting to bloody violence in Ysaïe le Triste,²⁴ the effects of which are much reduced in the tale. The disturbing figure  On the feminization of the tale, see Polizzi (2008).  On this subject, see Blons-Pierre (1994), as well as Szkilnik (1997), who thinks that the “méthodes énergiques d’Ysaÿe, Marc et Tronc” must have seemed “séduisantes” (121) to a public traumatized by the Hundred Years’ War, dreaming of order and peace.

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of Tronc,²⁵ who happily practises cruelty on defeated enemies, gives way to a featureless and nameless dwarf, “esmerveillé et mary de l’entreprinse de son maistre” (61) [amazed and dismayed at his master’s undertaking] when he is asked to carry a message to Pyralius. Tronc is not the only one to pay the price of reorienting the tale: for Yrienne (phonetically too close to ire, but also to Pyralius), the substitute is the unfortunate “Damoiselle Rosemonde” (60) with a more agreeable name. As for Marc, he gives way to the handsome “messire Jean Andro Lyonnois” (55), whose name, redolent of Homer and fecundity, contrasts with the sterility and impotence embodied in Pyralius.²⁶ The name Pyralius, the only one retained, works as a signal to the attentive reader who knows Ysaÿe le Triste, and who will see in the “Chastel Jaloux” (50) – so called by lovers – an avatar of the “chastealx du Pont de Dolleur” (440) [castles of the Bridge of Sorrow] with its triple entry. Like Marc, Andro confronts in turn a “cruel et horrible gean” (51) [cruel and horrible giant], an “espoventable et affamé lyon” [terrifying and ravenous lion], and a “venimeux et horrible dragon” (52) [venimous and horrible dragon]. The narrative frame is therefore left intact and, like Marc, Andro proves his bravery by killing the giant with a blow of his sword after a furious combat. Yet the hero is accompanied by Apollo and Hercules, who, “attentif à la bataille, le loue fort de prouesse” (72) [paying attention to the battle, much praises his valour]. The intrusion of figures from mythology in the medieval imagination is one of the indications which illustrate the redirecting of the discourse.²⁷ Andro is first an amorous protégé of Venus and Cupid; it is not he, but Hercules who conquers the lion, an avatar of the Nemean lion he once defeated. Finally, it is Apollo who kills the dragon with his arrows just as he had killed Phython (Metam. I: 438 – 443). The intertexts mingle, an expression of the littérarité of a tale which draws the female reader (or listener) into a tracking game, arousing her curiosity and teasing out her cultural baggage. In the tale of Mélibée, the warrior’s heroism gives way to the triumph of love. If Hercules and Apollo come to the aid of Andro, it is because that they themselves have been victims of Cupid. All-powerful Venus, aided and abetted by her son, appears as a doublet of the author, drawing the threads of a story under her aegis: she comes to pity the unfortunate Rosemonde, arms Andro, and orders Hercules and Apollo to support him in his undertaking. Finally, she constructs “une couche nuptialle” (76) [marriage bed] where the “heureux  Barbara Wahlen (2002, 91– 112), rightly recognizes Tronc as a trickster. Patricia Victorin (2002, 362– 372) underlines the chronic dimension of Tronc, who assumes “le tabou du sang en lieu et place de ses maîtres” (362) [blood taboo in the place and stead of his masters].  On the senefiance of names, see Incardona (2008, 211– 222; for Andro, 217).  Frequent comparisons with the ancient world also contribute.

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amant” [fortunate lover], enthralled by Rosemonde’s beauty (as she is by his!), will make “ses approches de la forteresse amoureuse” (81) [his approach to love’s fortress] after having thanked Venus for her kindness. For my purposes here, it is pointless to push any further the analysis of this complex tale. The combination of material from normally distinct traditions is the most striking manifestation of the rewriting to which the episode borrowed from Ysaïe le Triste has been subjected.²⁸ At the same time, the importance of mythology in general (the cultural background shared by authors and their publics), of Venus and Cupid in particular, serve to weave strong links between the tale of Mélibée and the following nouvelles. These all illustrate the power of “sainct Amour” (192) [holy Love]²⁹ that punishes the proud women (Méridienne) and men (Narcisse) who resist its laws,³⁰ but generously rewards its faithful servants like Andro and Rosemonde. When Venus appears in the tale of Mélibée (63 – 65) – she arrives on a chariot forged by Vulcan, worthy of Petrarch’s Trionfi ³¹ – the power is established of a goddess who reigns over the whole of the collection. As for the shameful death of cowardly Pyralius, driven to suicide by the Furies, Madame Cassandre recalls at the beginning of the sixth tale: “‘Vrayement digne fut la punition du vilain jaloux Pyralius, et des aultres dont vous avez tenus vos comptes, mesdames’” (162) [“Truly worthy was the punishment of the wicked old jealous Pyralius, and others of whom you have told your tales, ladies.”]. Yet in Ysaïe le Triste, Pyralius is neither old nor cowardly and he confronts Marc in a final combat. The radical transformation of the character was required: without the metamorphosis of the husband, whose repulsive ugliness contrasts with Andro’s radiant beauty, the insertion of the medieval tale into a collection destined for “nobles Dames amoureuses” [noble amorous ladies] would have been hard to imagine.³² By weaving links between her own story and the earlier ones, Madame Cassandre points to the successful recycling of the episode drawn from Ysaïe le Triste. The notion of recycling has the virtue of revealing the reinsertion of material into a new network whilst distinguishing it from the requisite work involved in rewriting (which facilitates recycling). From the reader’s point of view, recycling is located on two different levels. What I have called recyclage externe (socio-cul-

 For a detailed analysis, I refer to Cappello (2001) and Polizzi (2008).  So named by Madame Briolayne Fusque at the end of the story (which offers a version of the celebrated legend of the eaten heart, inspired by Boccaccio), which brings the collection to a close.  Stories II and IV.  Translated c. 1500; see Petrarch (2012).  The opening verse “Épître” of Madame Egine Minerve (Reynolds-Cornell (2005), 44), addressed to the “nobles Dames amoureuses”, glorifies true love and condemns cruelty

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tural) corresponds to the modernization of an old work by a new public which “reinterprets” it³³ according to its horizon of expectation, by deploying its own reading and/or actual experience. Since the meaning of a work necessarily fluctuates from period to period, I consider Pierre Sala’s texts as rewritings. Recyclage externe is the product of the interpretative freedom of the reader, enabled by the presence of modernizing elements in a text. Recyclage interne, on the other hand, springs from collaboration between the author, who works it into a new whole, and readers who, with a keen interest in literature, take part in a game of memory, identifying older material which they enjoy seeing in a new light, more compatible with their own ideas (ethical and/or aesthetic). This is illustrated by the Contes amoureux of Jeanne Flore, and particularly by the seventieth nouvelle of the Heptaméron. It is notable that the reflections of Oisille and Parlamente are echoed in the “Préface” to the second part of the Contes et nouvelles (1674) of La Fontaine. The poet takes the liberty of expanding or cutting in the tales he borrows from Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, or the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, to the extent that, he says, of making from them “proprement une nouvelle nouvelle” [truly a new tale].³⁴ At the beginning of La Servante justifiée (II, 6), La Fontaine asserts his freedom to seek his material in one “boutique” [store] and then another, so as to put “du mien selon les occurrences” [my own contribution, as the case may be] (418). By mixing the old and the personal, the poet rejuvenates stories known to his public: he rewrites them with the freedom of the storyteller, which he asserts.³⁵ By drawing his readers’ attention to the variety of sources that form the basis of his collection, he encourages them, like himself, to follow path of eclecticism: let them likewise weave new links, enjoying the pleasure of recyclage! Why the nod in La Fontaine’s direction? My reasons are twofold: the first is the possible comparison with the words of the participants concerning the seventieth nouvelle of the Heptaméron: together, the two texts resonate in an invitation to seek out other passages of a metapoetic nature which might touch on recycling. The second is the link woven between recycling and collections of nouvelles from the end of the Middle Ages to (the dawn of) modernity (and between recycling and collections of lyric poetry). Consider, for example, the Amant Parfait who, in La Chasse et le Départ d’Amours (published by Antoine

 Jauß (1978, 99).  La Fontaine (1954, 386).  La Fontaine (1954, 637): “Voyons si dans mes vers je l’aurai rajeunie” [Let us see if I have rejuvenated it in my my verses] (La Matrone d’Éphèse, V: vi); cf. also La Servante justifiée, ll. 15 – 16: “Sans telles licences, / Je quitterais la charge du conteur” (418) [Without such freedom, I would abandon the burden of storyteller].

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Vérard in 1509), gives new life to the memory of celebrated lovers, more fortunate than him, since death deigned to put an end to their suffering: Car ma passion ainsi eusse finee. D’autres en y a / qui eurent tel destinee Plus de cent mille. (La Chasse et le Départ d’Amours 1509, fol. aavo) [For I would have concluded my passion thus. There are a hundred thousand others who would have had such a destiny.]

The dizzying list of Amour’s victims mixes Classical and Arthurian figures, and others which the Amant Parfait borrows from stories of the late Middle Ages, such as Mélusine by Jean d’Arras. An avid reader, the Amant Parfait recycles literary material from various traditions which he combines into a fresh list. He takes it over by deeply subjective reading: the examples called upon serve to celebrate his inexpressible sorrow at still being alive after the death of his lady. Stamped with the seal of littérarité, the lyric lament feeds on romances known to the customers of Antoine Vérard who silently publicizes works produced by his presses.³⁶ Recycling is an issue in practically every genre because it is likely to come into play everywhere new is made from old. Romance, nouvelle, lyric, and satire, too:³⁷ the shades of the past haunt literature’s palace.

References Bédier, Joseph. Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut. Ed. Alain Corbellari. Geneva: Droz, 2012. Bianciotto, Gabriel. “Le Roman d’Isaïe le Triste: les imprimés.” Ensi firent li ancessor. Mélanges de philologie médiévale offerts à Marc-René Jung. 2 vols. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1996. II: 623 – 639. Blons-Pierre, Catherine. “Jeux et enjeux de la violence dans un roman arthurien du Moyen Âge tardif: Ysaÿe le Triste.” La Violence dans le monde médiéval. Senefiance, 36 (1994): 39 – 53. Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Ménard, auteur du Quichotte.” Fictions. Trans. P. Verdevoye. Paris: Gallimard, 2004. Cappello, Sergio. “Le Corps dans les Comptes amoureux: Pyralius le Jaloux.” Studi offerti a Alexandru Niculescu dagli amici e allievi di Udine. Ed. Sergio Vatteroni. Udine: Forum, 2001. 23 – 42. Caradec, François. “105 Proverbes liftés suivis de quelques proverbes soldés.” La Bibliothèque Oulipienne, IV. Bègles: Le Castor Astral, 1997.

 For the above remarks, see Mühlethaler (2017) and Mühlethaler (2020).  See Mühlethaler (2019, 259 – 276).

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Charpentier, Hélène, and Patricia Victorin, ed. and trans. Le Conte du papegau. Paris, Champion Classiques, 2004. Chase, Carol J. “Le Diable est dans les détails. Les vêtements d’Énide dans l’Erec en prose du XVe siècle.” Pour un nouveau répertoire des mises en proses. Roman, chanson de geste, autres genres. Ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. 101 – 115. La Chasse et le Départ d’Amours. Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1509. Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Daniel Poirion. Paris: Gallimard (La Pléiade), 1994. Clément, Michèle. “Pierre Sala, ‘attardé’ ou précurseur?” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 81 (2015): 11 – 24. Combes, Annie. “L’Emprise du vers dans les mises en prose romanesques.” Le Moyen Âge par le Moyen Âge, même. Ed. Laurent Brun and Silvère Menegaldo, with Anders Bengtsson and Dominique Boutet. Paris: Champion, 2012. 115 – 140. Combes, Annie. Les Voies de l’aventure. Réécriture et composition romanesque dans le Lancelot en prose. Paris, Champion, 2001. Delay, Françoise, and Jacques Roubaud. Graal théâtre. Paris: Gallimard, 2005. Dika, Vera. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film. The Uses of Nostalgia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Ding, Leticia. Diverse et unifiante. La réécriture arthurienne de Jacques Roubaud. PhD thesis, University of Lausanne, 2019. Febvre, Lucien. Amour sacré, amour profane. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. Ferguson, Gary. “Paroles d’hommes, de femmes et de Dieu. Langage, genre et transcendance dans la Nouvelle 70.” Lire L’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Ed. Dominique Bertrand. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2005. 206 – 210. Frappier, Jean. “La Chastelaine de Vergi, Marguerite de Navarre et Bandello.” Du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Études d’histoire et de critique littéraire. Paris, Champion, 1976. 393 – 473. Grünberg Tröge, Monika. “Pierre Sala – antiquaire, humaniste et homme de lettres lyonnais du XVIe siècle.” Aspects du XVIe siècle à Lyon 16 (1993): 3 – 33. Incardona, Janine. “‘Impareil mariage’ et parcours onomastique dans les Comptes amoureux de Jeanne Flore.” L’Émergence littéraire des femmes à Lyon à la Renaissance, 1520 – 1560. Ed. Michèle Clément and Janine Incardona. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université, 2008. 211 – 222. Jacob, Marie. Dans l’atelier des Colombe. La représentation de l’Antiquité en France à la fin du XVe siècle. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012. Jakubczuk, Renata, and Anna Maziarczyk, ed. Recyclage et décalage. Esthétique de la reprise dans les littératures francophones. Ljubljana: Éditions de l’Université Marie CurieSklodowska, 2013. Jauß, Hans Robert. Pour une esthétique de la réception. Trans. Claude Maillard. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. La Fontaine, Jean. Œuvres complètes. Ed. René Gros and Jacques Schiffrin. Paris: Gallimard (Pléiade), 1954. Madureira, Margarida. “Le Prince-écrivain: individu et originalité à la fin du Moyen Âge.” Original et originalité. Aspects historiques, philologiques et littéraires. Ed. Olivier Delsaux and Hélène Haug. Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2011. 97 – 110.

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Malraux, André. L’Homme précaire et la littérature. Paris: Gallimard, 2014. Marguerite de Navarre. L’Heptaméron. Ed. Nicole Cazauran. Paris: Gallimard, 2007. Martin, Sara, ed. Recycling Culture(s). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Merlin-Kajman, Hélène. “(Trans‐)historicité, transhistoricité et transitionnalité (de la littérature).” Fabula-LhT 23 (décembre 2019). . Moser, Walter. “Recyclages culturels. Élaboration d’une problématique.” La Recherche littéraire: objets, méthodes. Ed. Claude Duchet and Stéphane Vachon. Montréal: XYZ, 1998. 519 – 532. Montorsi, Francesco. L’Apport des traductions italiennes dans la dynamique du récit de chevalerie (1490 – 1550). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015. Mounier, Pascale. “Le Chevalier au lyon et Tristan: des romans à ‘pren[dre] en gré’.” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 81 (2015): 85 – 104. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. “Victimes de Fortune, victimes d’Amour: la liste entre littérarité et subjectivité.” Le Pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge II. Ed. Pierre Chastang and Laurent Feller. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020. 205 – 224. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. “Satire et recyclage littéraire: la fureur de Mégère, de Regnaud Le Queux à Antitus Favre.” L’Écrivain face aux puissants au Moyen Âge. De la satire à l’engagement. Paris: Champion, 2019. 259 – 276. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. “Lyrisme courtois et mémoire arthurienne. La bibliothèque de l’Amant Parfait dans La Chasse et Le Départ d’Amours, publié par Antoine Vérard en 1509.” Arthur après Arthur. Ed. Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017. 443 – 462. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. Énée le mal-aimé. Du roman médiéval à la bande dessinée. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2016. Naccach, Nessrine. “Se baigner deux fois dans le même fleuve. Enjeux et défis de la réécriture: des écrivains à l’épreuve.” Acta Fabula 18/9 (2017). . Rebai, Moez, and Makki Rebai Midi, ed. Pratiques & enjeux de la réécriture dans la littérature. Littératures 74 (2016). Petrarch. Les Triomphes, traduction française de Simon Bourgouin. Ed. Gabriella Parussa and Elina Suomela Härmä. Geneva: Droz, 2012. Poirion, Daniel. “Écriture et réécriture au Moyen Âge.” Intertextualités médiévales. Littérature 41 (1981): 109 – 118. Polizzi, Gilles. “La Fable réifiée: la mise au féminin dans l’écriture des trois premiers Contes amoureux de Jeanne Flore.” L’Émergence littéraire des femmes à Lyon à la Renaissance, 1520 – 1560. Ed. Michèle Clément and Janine Incardona. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université, 2008. 223 – 238. Quéruel, Danielle. “Tristan au bord de la fontaine: quelques motifs arthuriens dans le roman de Tristan de Pierre Sala.” Miscellanea Mediaevalia. Mélanges offerts à Philippe Ménard. Ed. Jean-Claude Faucon, Alain Labbé, and Danielle Quéruel. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1998, II: 1079 – 1083. Reynolds-Cornell, Régine, ed. Contes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université, 2005. Riffaterre, Michael. “L’intertexte inconnu.” Intertextualités médiévales. Littérature 41 (1981): 4 – 7.

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Roque, Georges. “Recyclage: terminologie et opérations.” L’Image recyclée. Figures de l’Art, 23 (2013), 37 – 55. Saint-Gelais, Richard. Fictions transfuges. La transfictionnalité et ses enjeux. Paris: Seuil, 2011. Sala, Pierre. Tristan. Ed. Chantal Verchère. Paris: Champion, 2008. Sala, Pierre. Le Chevalier au lion. Ed. Pierre Servet. Paris: Champion, 1996. Sala, Pierre. Le Livre d’amitié. Ed. Georges Guigue. Lyon: Henri Georg, 1884. Schaefer, Jacqueline Thibault. “Lancelot, Tristan et Pierre Sala (1457 – 1529) ou ‘qu’un ami veritable est une douce chose’.” Lancelot–Lanzelet, hier et aujourd’hui. Ed. Danielle Buschinger and Michel Zink. Greifswald: Reineke-Verlag, 1995. 371 – 379. Shcherbakova, Olga. “Le Chevalier au lion de Pierre Sala: du prologue aux enjeux d’une récriture.” Le Moyen Français 59 (2006): 125 – 137. Suard, François. “La Réécriture du Chevalier au lion par Pierre Sala.” Amour et chevalerie dans les romans de Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Danielle Quéruel. Besançon: Annales Littéraires de l’Université, 1995: 329 – 341. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Justice et violence dans Ysaÿe le Triste.” Tolérance et intolérance au Moyen Âge. Ed. Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok. Greifswald: Reineke, 1997. 111 – 121. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Taylor, Jane H. M. “Arthur in Manuscript in Renaissance France: the Case of Ysaïe le Triste, Gotha, MS A 688.” Journal of the International Arthurian Society 1 (2013): 140 – 160. Taylor, Jane H. M. . “Hungrie Shadows: Pierre Sala and His Yvain.” Arthuriana 19 (2009). 7 – 19. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Parrot, the Knight and the Decline of Chivalry.” Conjunctures. Medieval Studies in Honour of Douglas Kelly. Ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. 529 – 544. Tetel, Marcel. “De la Châtelaine de Vergy à l’Heptaméron 70, à Bandello (iv, 5): une réécriture.” Du Pô à la Garonne. Recherches sur les échanges culturels entre l’Italie et la France à la Renaissance. Ed. Jean Cubelier and Michel Simonin. Agen: Centre Matteo Bandello, 1990. 253 – 264. Verchère, Chantal. “(R)écrire ses lectures: Pierre Sala et l’horizontalité dans Le Chevalier au lion et Tristan.” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 81 (2015): 65 – 83. Victorin, Patricia. Ysaÿe le Triste, une esthétique de la confluence. Paris: Champion, 2002. Ysaÿe le Triste, roman arthurien du Moyen Âge tardif. Ed. André Giacchetti. Rouen: Publications de l’Université, 1989. Wagner, Frank. “Les Hypertextes en question.” Études littéraires 34 (2002): 297 – 314. . Wahlen, Barbara. ‘Je n’en feray que che que j’en ay empensé!’. Le nain Tronc dans Ysaÿe le Triste. Lausanne: Archipel, 2002. Winn, Colette H. L’Esthétique du jeu dans l’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Montréal/Paris: Institut d’Études Médiévales/Vrin, 1993.

Michelle Szkilnik

Guinglain in Arcadia “Une cite gaste, Fait qu’une ame agitee Retourne à son bon sens: C’est pourquoy je consens Que tu y prenne voye, Pour en rapporter joye” (Paradis d’amour, 33r).¹ [A deserted city makes a troubled soul regain its good sense. This is why I agree that you go there to bring back joy.]

A shepherd, narrating his own story, is injured by Cupid’s arrow and falls in love with Magdeleine, a woman still too young to accept his affection. He then meets a nymph who offers herself to him. When rejected, she cries so much that she is transformed into a fountain. The shepherd drinks its water and falls asleep. In his dream, he is bewitched by the enchantress Circe, who makes him fall in love with the nymph she has brought back to life. But now in turn the nymph rebuffs the poet. He will accomplish many glorious feats to win her over: dragon-slaying, fights against fearsome knights in an abandoned city. When he finally wakes up, he is convinced that he has offended his Magdeleine, who indeed blames him harshly for his infidelity, albeit in a dream. Will he ever regain her love? New adventures take him far away to the northern seas and to the Elysian Fields. Here, greatly simplified, is the plot of an anonymous tale entitled Le Paradis d’amour ou la chaste matinée du fidell’amant, published in 1606 by Claude Le Villain in Rouen. This baroque text, which enjoyed some success – Claude Le Villain reprinted it in 1610 – shows typical elements fashionable at the time of its composition: the characters, the scenery, reliance on Greek mythology, play on reality and illusion, mixture of prose and verse, even the disjointed structure, all of these aspects can be found in many of the narratives written at the end

 Le Paradis d’amour ou la chaste matinée du fidell’amant (Rouen: Claude Le Villain, 1606). The text is available on Gallica: . https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-019

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of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, such as Les Bergeries de Julliette, the first book of which Nicolas de Montreux published in 1592.² Yet, as we shall see, the anonymous poet was also acquainted with medieval motifs, which he wove into his tale, turning it into a curious and at times frankly comical hodgepodge. The Paradis raises questions about the use of older motifs: does their inclusion suggest some nostalgia, a willingness to bring them back to life? Or does it, on the contrary, irremediably consign them to an outdated past? If they play a part in the poet’s humorous intent, is it because they have become a laughing matter? The second hypothesis could account for the anonymous publication: the poet seems to make fun of sixteenth-century readers addicted to fantastic and convoluted stories. In the guise of a banal sentimental fiction, the Paradis d’amour might well be a facetious tale drawing on Renaissance texts as well as on medieval ones in order to deride contemporary literary fads. Pastoral life is a favoured topic at the time of the Paradis d’amour. The success of Virgil’s Bucolics in the Renaissance prompted many authors to set their fictions in a reimagined Arcadia inhabited by beautiful shepherds and shepherdesses, more preoccupied with love and poetry than with their flocks. Jacopo Sannazaro published his Arcadia in 1504 and Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia in 1590, a book that had a major influence on the development of the theme (see Lavocat 1998). This interest was no doubt stimulated by Virgil, yet can also be traced to medieval literature. Rural idylls had been sung since the thirteenth century in pastourelles and, at the end of the Middle Ages, perhaps as a reaction to the horrors of war, the lure of rustic life, closer to nature, became stronger (though François Villon is an exception to this trend). Christine de Pizan’s Dit de la Pastoure and Eustache Deschamps’s Lai de Franchise show how the courtly discourse inherited from Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la rose is modified and even called into question when displaced in a countryside setting (see Blanchard 1983; Mühlethaler 2010; Lacassagne 2010). The best example of the value conferred on a simpler life is undoubtedly René d’Anjou’s Regnault et Jehanneton. Such texts assimilated motifs from the Roman de la rose, therefore assuring their afterlife well beyond the Middle Ages (see Szkilnik 2015; Swift 2013). The anonymous author of the Paradis d’amour might have been using contemporary stories and was no doubt surfing on the success of pastoral texts. Yet the title he chose recalls Jean Froissart’s own Paradis d’amour. Froissart’s dit tells how in a dream, the lover and poet visits Amour’s garden in May. There he meets

 Four more would follow before 1598. This popular text was translated into German in 1610 and republished in an abridged and modified form in 1625. See Lavocat in Greiner (2007, 181– 222).

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the god himself, who teaches him how to serve him properly, then he sees his lady, who promises to be more amenable. This short verse narrative (1723 lines, with lyric insertions) is no doubt different from the anonymous Paradis, but shares with it important motifs, namely the dream and the inflexibility of the lady. Could the seventeenth-century poet have known Froissart’s dit? Preserved in two manuscripts only, it was not printed during the sixteenth century. It is therefore doubtful, although not impossible, that the anonymous writer ever came across this work. Another possibility is that he borrowed the title from Guy de Tours (1562?–1611?). This friend of Ronsard also composed a Paradis d’amour, published in 1598: summoned by Amour, who has built a temple to his own glory in Tours, Guy is ordered to celebrate the local beauties, each being called forward in turn to sit on a throne of honour.³ Praising historical women, the poem, however, bears no resemblance to Froissart’s dit nor to the anonymous poet’s tale, apart from the title. The anonymous Paradis d’amour might have been inspired by yet another contemporary fiction, L’Enfer d’Amour,⁴ by Jean Baptiste Du Pont, published in Lyon in 1603. In three horrific tales devoid of any irony, Du Pont warns young people against the perils of amorous passion. Did the anonymous poet want to promote his Paradis as an anti-Enfer capable of assuaging lovers’ worries? In any case, his choice of title is opportunistic on the one hand, and antiphrastic on the other, as the narrator experiences the pangs of love, first for Magdaleine, then, in his dream, for an unyielding nymph, and finally for Magdeleine again. He does visit the Elysean Fields at the end, but this is not Amour’s paradise. The secondary title, la matinée du fidell’amant is equally unsuitable: the numerous adventures seem to develop on many days (especially the final trip) and the poet is not exactly faithful, despite himself. These discrepancies might suggest the poet’s playful intent. Before examining in detail the most obvious borrowing from a medieval romance, the episode of the Gaste cité, I would like to give a sense of the consciously absurd way the Paradis makes use of motifs gathered from various narrative genres. When at the beginning of part II, the nymph rejects the poet, he is so distressed that he first faints. Circe revives him with a mixture of seeds, leaves from trees seven times stricken by lightning in seven consecutive years, and the liver of Cannibals, a nation, the poet explains, “qui mange les hommes & femmes” (fol. 25r) [eats men and women]. An enchantress from Antiquity, well  Guy de Tours, Le paradis d’amour. Les mignardises amoureuses. Meslanges et épitaphes. This anthology was printed by Jean du Carroy in 1598. Note the privilège granted to the publisher Nicolas de Louvain.  The full title is L’Enfer d’Amour où par trois histoires est monstré à combien de malheurs les amans sont subjectz. See Closson (2007, 337– 340).

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known at the end of the Middle Ages thanks to Boccacio’s De Claris mulieribus ⁵ and the use writers such as Christine de Pizan made of Boccacio’s treatise, Circe is the ideal character to bridge not only time, but also space: the Brazil of the Cannibals and the Arcadia of the poet. This passing reference to a people recently encountered by Western explorers and popularized by writers such as Rabelais and Montaigne, was probably meant to amuse the audience, for the flesheaters (their livers at least) are in turn consumed in a recipe brewed by a Greek witch. Yet the poet, unhappy to have regained consciousness, turns against his own body. Taking his cue from ancient characters such as Tarquinus, he first attempts to eat his fingers, but they grow back, non point comme cest animal, auquel renaissoient sept testes quand on luy en couppoit une: car ma main eust esté un monstre de nature, pour avoir si grand nombre de doigts, ains seulement les mesmes me renaissoient. (fol. 26r) [not like this animal who grew seven heads when one was cut off, for my hand would have been a natural wonder if it had had so many fingers, but only the original ones grew back.]⁶

His audience will appreciate his effort to stay within the limits of verisimilitude when he mentions that only his own fingers sprout back. In the Roman de Cassidorus, composed in the second half of the thirteenth century, the hermit Ydoine, in order to resist carnal temptation, burns his fingers which will eventually grow back when Helcanor (also known as the empress Helcana), the object of his sinful desire, prays to God (see Palermo 1963, 340 – 351). It is difficult to assert whether this text was known in the sixteenth century, but it is worth recalling that the Roman de Giglan, from which the anonymous author of Paradis very likely borrowed the Gaste Cité episode, as I will show later, used the Roman de Laurin, which belongs to the well-known Sept Sages de Rome cycle, of which Cassidorus is also part. The desperate shepherd then tries to kill himself with a dagger, but his wounds heal instantly. He cuts his hands and his head with a penknife, throws them far away and collapses on the ground waiting for death, but a shepherd friend retrieves the hands and sews them back on with waxed hemp thread (“un chigros de chanvre tout ciré”, fol. 26v), a material indeed available to peasants. And lo, they fit back perfectly. Encouraged by this success, the friend fetch-

 Boccacio’s treaty was translated into French by an Anonymous writer (Des Cleres et nobles Dames) and was used by Christine de Pizan in her Cité des Dames, as well as Antoine Dufour, Vie des femmes célèbres. On the use of Bocaccio’s treaty, see Szkilnik (2010).  All translations are mine unless otherwise stated.

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es the head that the poet had flung “plus de demy lieu de moi” (fol. 26v) [“more than half a league from me”] in order to prevent any possible rejoining with his body, and stitches it back, despite the poet’s protest and the physical pain induced by the coarse needle (actually “une allesne”, i. e., an awl) used by his rustic friend. What makes the whole scene ridiculous is the mixture of realism (the tools used to cut and then sew the body parts, although one may wonder whether a penknife would suffice to cut off a hand), the effort to justify its implausibility (the poet claims that Circe is responsible for these wondrous events and that, in any case, he is just dreaming), and the connotations of the tortures he imposes on himself. He is truly a martyr of love: punishments such as beheading, finger- and hand-chopping, figure prominently in the lives of saints. The scene might also recall the beheading game found in numerous Arthurian romances: a character (usually a magician) demands to be beheaded, manages to put his head back on, and declares that at a given time, he will inflict the same on the knight who decapitated him. In Hunbaut, a thirteenth-century verse romance, Gauvain grabs the clothes of the unsavoury peasant (villain) who insisted on playing the game with him, with the result that the villain, unable to catch his head, dies on the spot (Winters 1984, ll. 1484– 1539). The narrator of the Paradis, when kicking his head as far away from himself as possible, might have met the same fate if not for his friend’s earnest action. Other details reveal the poet’s taste for mixing, Circe-like, motifs borrowed from well-known medieval and/or sixteenth-century works. The last part of the Paradis almost feels like a catalogue of loose and slightly askew reminiscences. For instance, sailing north towards the Pole, the poet and his accompanying muse reach seas as white as milk: nous navigeons sor une mer de laict, ou au moins l’eau estoit blanche comme laict, & les poissons qu’on y peschoit, estoient tous cuits & assaisonnez: qui fut cause que nous appellions ceste mer, la mer laictee. (fol. 56v) [We were sailing on a sea of milk, or at least the water was as white as milk and the fish caught in it were fully cooked and seasoned; which is why we called this sea the milky sea.]

Does the poet have in mind the phrase: “mer bectee” [frozen sea], which would make sense since the travelers are far north? In any case, this strange phenomenon⁷ would not be out of place in Rabelais’s Quart Livre, alongside the episode

 Strange unless the poet has heard of a natural, but very rare, phenomenon, already documented in Antiquity, caused by trillions of bacteria that indeed give the sea a milky appearance. It occurs more frequently in the Indian Ocean. Jules Verne describes it in Vingt mille lieux sous les mers. See .

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of the paroles gelées [frozen words]. As for the detail of the fish naturally cooked and seasoned, it evokes the Land of Cokayne,⁸ although the poet does not elaborate. A little later, their ship reaches a dangerous harbour, the towers of which are made of powerful magnets that attract boats and cause them to crash on the shore. Fortunately, the poet’s vessel is entirely made of wooden planks bound with fish bones (“tout estoit joint, ou sellé avec des os de poisson”, fol. 57v). Magnetic islands are fairly common in medieval fictions such as the Estoire del Saint Graal or the fourteenth-century Roman de Berinus, which is also part of the Roman des Sept Sages. ⁹ The poet is then warmly welcomed in the city adjoining the port and, to show their joy, the inhabitants fire precious guns powdered with a mixture of balm, cinnamon, and musk, in order to perfume the air. This is the entrance to the Elysian Fields. The poet’s peregrination through utopian lands and seas is in itself a common feature in medieval (Saint Brendan’s odyssey) or sixteenth-century fictions (Pantagruel’s sea voyage in the Quart and Cinquième Livre). It is difficult to assert whether the anonymous writer was borrowing from specific texts, yet he was consciously playing with popular motifs, and ones which harked back to medieval times. Let us turn now to the episode of the Gaste Cité, a clear rewriting of the central event of the Bel Inconnu by Renaut de Beaujeu (Bâgé). Renaut’s romance survives in only one manuscript and a recently discovered fragment (Busby 2014). It nevertheless enjoyed some success: it was adapted into English in the fourteenth century, and more important for my purpose, it was turned into prose early in the sixteenth century by Claude Platin and printed three times by Claude Nourry in Lyon, as late as 1539. It is very likely this prose version, and not the original romance, that was known to the anonymous poet, although one cannot rule out another channel of transmission. In Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France, Jane H. M. Taylor (2014) devotes half a chapter to the Roman de Giglan. She shows that the conscious or unconscious transpositions imposed on the original romance constitute “a rough barometer of a reviser’s sensibility and an audience’s expectation” (120). The Roman de Giglan is actually also the Roman de Geoffroy de Maience, an adaptation of Jaufré, and Platin made use of yet a third romance, Laurin, part of the Sept Sages de Rome cycle, as shown by Taylor. This complex amalgam reflects the audience’s taste for fast-paced narratives replete with adventures, but devoid of ambiguity and irony.  See the description of this utopian country in the Fabliau de Coquaigne, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 837, fols 167– 168, where geese roast by themselves in the streets and, three times a week, it rains custard!  On the episode of the Montagne d’Aimant, see Szkilnik (1990).

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The Paradis d’amour, on the contrary, provides a somewhat witty rewriting of the episode of the Gaste Cité. In the second part of the tale, the poet, now dreaming after having tasted the water from the nymph-turned-into-fountain, is desperate because his new love has rejected him. Walking through the countryside, he arrives at a reposoir, i. e., a small but beautiful construction, on the pillars of which he finds engraved the story of Alba, of Rome, as well as Greek and Latin verses that he translates with difficulty for his audience (he humorously invites his readers to check the accuracy of his translation). He then notices a little cord hanging from the roof and pulls on it, setting all the bells of the building in motion. Their ringing attracts all kinds of birds, which settle on the bells and start singing. Charmed by the beautiful melody, the poet “pens[e] tomber tout endormy” (fol. 31v) [thinks he is falling asleep] when there appears a wrinkled old woman who leads him to the garden of the Hesperides. Did the poet fall asleep in his dream? Are the adventures that will happen next at two removes from the shepherd’s reality? In any case, the old woman who, as we will learn, is a powerful witch, tells the poet that she knows of his torment and will assuage his pain by sending him to a cité gastee, an avatar of Giglan (Guinglain)’s Gaste Cité. ¹⁰ She then explains that this city used to be as big as Constantinople, but is now uninhabited. Although it looks sound, when the poet enters it, the whole place will shake. The poet must go to the principal palace, where he will find a large room with eighty windows (there are five hundred in Giglan). In each window there is a stone statue holding a lute. All the musicians will strum their instrument when the poet enters. He should not be afraid, but go down eighty steps to a cave, and eighty more leading to another room where he will have to fight. He should be confident that he will win and regain the love of the nymph. The witch then gives him a black horse and a full set of armour. Her forewarning and recommendations recall Lampatris’s description and advice to Giglan in Platin’s romance, where Lampatris also gives Giglan a full set of armour. The Paradis d’amour thus preserves the structure of the original episode, that is, an account of what to expect in the Gaste Cité, followed by the actual adventure. The poet sets out for the Cité, and on his way slays two terrible monsters. He arrives at the Cité, which is exactly as the witch described it: deserted, yet beautiful. The visitor is unnerved by the impression that the town has just been emptied of its occupants: Tantost je voyoy une belle entrée; tantost un beau portail de maison, au dessus duquel y avoit un escriteau en vieux caracteres, comme font les escriteaux des grands hostels de la France, et principalement de Paris. Et en plusieurs endroits je voyoy les portes & fenes-

 See my opening quotation above.

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tres ouvertes, avec forces mesnages, utensils & meubles dans les maisons; et autres, je voyoy les portes & fenestres fermees, qu’il sembloit que ceux de la maison s’estoient allez promener: Car encor’ tout y estoit entier. Es autres lieux on voyoit des grandes mazures, sans portes ni fenestres, ainsi comme un corps sans ame: bref, comme une ville inhabitee. (fols 37v–38r) [Sometimes I saw a beautiful entrance, sometimes a beautiful house door, above which there was a sign written in ancient letters, similar to the signs of the grand mansions in France, particularly in Paris. In several places, I saw doors and windows open, with much furniture, gear and equipment in houses; elsewhere I saw doors and windows closed, as if the occupants had gone on a walk, for everything was intact; in other places, one could see large abodes with no doors nor windows, like a body devoid of soul, in short like an empty city.]

With its signs reminding the poet of the ones he has seen in Paris, the city looks strangely familiar, although this detail is also puzzling: is the poet not a shepherd living in some distant Arcadia? How does he know Paris? The nod to the actual audience of the Paradis d’amour is clearly intended to elicit a smile, or at least to call into question the reality of the whole narrative. Although here and there battlements have collapsed, for the most part the walls are still standing and the pavement is undamaged: “Au reste le pavé des ruës tout entier, les murailles toutes droites, ou seroit en quelques endroits que les carneaux sont cheus” (fol. 38r) [Otherwise the pavement in the streets was intact, the city walls upright, except that in some places crenels had collapsed]. In comparison, the Gaste Cité in Giglan is in poor shape: Il veit que les portes avoient esté moult belles mais elles estoient abatues. Il entra dedens la ville et alla tousjors la grant rue et veit les beaulx palais tous de marbre de diverses couleurs et les belles maisons qui tout estoit destruit, car il n’y avoit ne porte ne fenestre qui ne fust mise par terre. En la cite ne demouroit homme ne femme. Aussi il veit les belles et grandes eglises avec les grans clochiers qui tout estoit desolé. (sigs Nvi–Oi).¹¹ [He saw that the gates used to be beautiful, but they had been torn down. He entered the city and went along the main street, and saw the beautiful palaces all made of multicoloured marble and the beautiful dwellings that were all ruined, for there was neither door nor window that was not wrecked. Neither man nor woman remained in the city. He also saw the beautiful and large churches with their high steeples, all smashed.]

In both texts, gates and windows are objects of special concern, an element that suggests a careful reading of the sequence in Giglan. As for the battlement and high walls, they feature in Lampatris’s first description: “Vous entrerez dedens la  In the sixteenth-century edition of Giglan, as usual, there are no page numbers; quires are identified by letters followed by Roman numerals.

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court du palais, vous verrez les grandes murailles et les beaulx creneaulx qui sont audessus, c’est le plus beau ou vous fustes oncques” (sig. Nvi) [You will enter the palace courtyard, and will see the high city walls and their handsome crenellation, the most beautiful you have ever seen]. In the Paradis, the poet finds a sign explaining that the place had been the site of the utmost bawdiness (“un si grand desbordement de paillardise”, fol. 37r [such an excess of bawdiness]) in the past so that the gods let the witch destroy the city and its inhabitants. In Giglan, a wicked enchanter is responsible for the abandonment and the destruction of the town. The original occupants are not blamed for any improper behavior. The witch is the instrument of gods whilst the enchanter is such a devilish creature that the city, at the end of the episode, needs to be purified with holy water “pour chasser les maulvais esperitz” (sig. Oiv) [“to banish evil spirits”]. In the palace, the poet enters the main room and the statues immediately start playing music as the witch had told him they would. Lampatris had advised Giglan to answer their welcoming salute with a curse: “Dieu vous mauldie” (sig. N) [“God curse you”]. The witch had not given any such advice, and the poet addresses one of the musicians, who tells him his story, ominously similar to that of the poet: he had come to the Cité, urged on by a cunning witch (very likely the same one), in order to regain the love of his mistress, but his fear prevented him from succeeding: Moy coüard effeminé, Je n’eus jamais la constance De voir un monstre animé Qui m’a rendu en souffrance. (fol. 83r) [I, an effeminate coward, never had the strength to look at a living monster; that caused my suffering.]

Frightened by the destiny of the man-turned-statue, a future that could well befall him, the poet nonetheless continues his exploration of the palace. As instructed by the witch, he descends what feels to him like the longest and most dangerous staircase (“il me sembloit que je deusse aller aux Antipodes”, fol. 41r) [“it felt as if I was going down to the Antipodes”] before reaching the second room, which is almost identical to the first one. There he finds a knight on a big black horse who challenges him. With one blow, the poet unhorses and kills him. Four more adversaries meet the same fate. However, he then faces a formidable opponent on a horse so big that he (the poet) rides under the belly of the creature without touching it. The horse rears up and blows fire through its nostrils, ears, and mouth, completely plunging the room into darkness. This last op-

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ponent recalls the second knight Giglan finds in the palace, whose horse “avoit une grande corne au frond et jettoit feu et flambe par la gueule” (sig. Oii), [had a large horn on its forehead and spewed fire and flames through its maw]. This is the enchanter Mabon himself, whom Giglan manages to kill. Yet the poet of the Paradis does not fare as well as he did earlier: he cowers in a corner and his foe gives him such a blow that the poet wakes up from his dream. This ends the second part of the book. I have so far insisted on the similarities between Giglan and the Paradis d’Amour, yet there is one immediately obvious difference: the central adventure, the one the medieval knight has set out to accomplish, the fier baiser, is missing. This exploit is recounted both in Bel Inconnu and Giglan, albeit with a very different tone: Giglan is repelled by the kiss he receives from the enormous serpent and wipes his mouth in disgust, whilst the Bel Inconnu is merely “pensis” (l. 3203) [pensive]. Taylor (2014, 130 – 131) has underlined the erotic appearance of the guivre, which prepares its metamorphosis into a beautiful princess, in contrast to the ugly monster described in Giglan. Although modified, the adventure nonetheless figures in Giglan, whilst the Paradis d’amour imagines a very different ending to the poet’s visit to the Gaste Cité, a rather dystopian one, as we have just seen. Yet did the author really write out the fier baiser or did he displace and modify it to such an extent that it becomes barely noticeable? I have mentioned that before reaching the Gaste Cité, the poet comes across two dragons: “Là vey deux gros monstres horribles & espouventables, qui s’entre-luitoient: la proportion, le geste, la façon, & le corage, en estoit si horrible à voir, que je ne l’ose raconter” (fol. 33r) [There I saw two horrible and terrifying monsters fighting each other. Their size, behaviour, aspect, and strength were such a horrific sight that I dare not recount it]. The fight between the monsters recalls a famous Arthurian episode connected with Merlin: the combat between the red and the white dragons that prevent Vortigern from building his tower. Merlin’s story was well known in the sixteenth century: numerous printers, amongst whom Antoine Vérard, edited and published versions of his life and the anonymous author could easily have had access to some of these (see Taylor (2014, 91– 118). The poet then decides to attack the monsters and one of them all but swallows him alive: L’un de ces monstres, la gueule ouverte vint droit contre moy, & avoit desja englouty la moitié de mon cheval, & partie de moy. Et se je n’eusse esté bien armé je fusse mort: car il donna un tel coup de sa dent, qu’il perça du plastron, de mon casque, jusques aux cuissars, traversant la cuirasse sans m’offenser. Et soudain, me voyant englouty dans son ventre, comme autrefois Jonas dans celuy du poisson, je luy tiray un coup de poitrinal dans le gosier, dont la bale luy frappe droit au coeur. Qui fit que ceste mauvaise & horrible beste en halenant me jette moy & mon cheval cinquante pas loin d’elle. (fols 33v–34r)

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[One of these monsters came towards me with its maw wide open, and it had already half swallowed my horse and part of me. Had I not been well armed, I would have been dead, for it bit me so hard that it perforated my breastplate, my helmet, and even my chausses, cutting through my cuirass without injuring me. And suddenly, seeing myself engulfed in its stomach, like Jonas formerly in the fish’s belly, I fired my pistol in its throat and the bullet went straight to its heart. In consequence, this evil and horrible beast on expiring threw me and my horse fifty steps away.]

Could the monster coming straight to the knight with its maw wide open be a reincarnation of Giglan’s serpent “gett[ant] feu par la gueulle” (sig. Oii) [spewing fire through its maw]? Could the swallowing be a humorous rendering of the kiss as an echo of Giglan’s repulsion? The poet after all succeeds in doing what the knight was tempted to do: he kills the monster. He also kills the second dragon and cuts off one of its claws, but the blood runs onto his arm and by magic he is transported in “un lieu coy & […] obscur” (fol. 36r) [a place quiet and […] obscure], recalling the situation of Giglan after the fier baiser: alone in a darkened room. The poet then addresses a prayer to Heaven like the Bel Inconnu (but not Giglan), in which he not only reveals his name (“Moy noble Gadailiers”), but also boasts of his poetic accomplishments: he is a famous tragedian and poet, “celuy que la France/ Advouë son enfant, & pour sa vraye engeance” (fol. 36r) [the one that France acknowledges as her child and true kin]. Whilst the Bel Inconnu learns his name and his parentage after giving the fier baiser, the poet has known his all along, but only then do readers discover that the talented shepherd, named Laudes up to this point, is actually a famous writer.¹² Or is he? In another comical twist, the poet confesses that he has overstated his credentials in order to extricate himself from his perilous situation: “& cogneu bien que ma harangue m’avoit servy de beaucoup: car pour dire au vray, il faut qu’un homme qui est en peine se face tousjours mieux valoir qu’il n’est. Ce que j’observay bien en cet endroit” (fol. 36v) [and I realized that my prayer had served me well: for, to tell the truth, a man in distress must always cast a more favourable light on himself than he is worth, a truth I clearly perceived in this situation]. In any case, his prayer is answered and he finds himself where he had started: on his way to the Gaste Cité. If the combat with the dragons is indeed a comical rewriting of the fier baiser, placing it before the visit to the Cité not only changes its meaning but also disconnects it from what is at stake in the Bel Inconnu and Giglan: the conquest of a wife and a kingdom. There will be no rescue of a beautiful enchanted prin-

 The opposite is true in Giglan: the readers know the hero’s identity from the beginning, but he himself does not know his name.

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cess to be married later. In truth, one might say that the poet does not need yet another lady: is he not already entangled in two relationships? On the one hand, he is in love with Magdaleine, on the other (in his dream), he woos an obstinate nymph. His situation is actually similar to Giglan’s, who is captivated by Helayne and yet will marry Emerie, queen of Wales. Perhaps this is the reason why the whole episode seems devoid of any purpose. Whilst Giglan has still to meet the second woman and find out who he is himself, the poet already knows his identity, his lineage, and both the women he is in love with. Yet something was at stake: the witch had sent the poet to the Gaste Cité on the promise that if he proved himself courageous, he would enjoy his love: “‘Mais que tu n’ayes point de peur, tu vaincras tout & jouyras de tes amours’” (fol. 34r) [“If you are not afraid, you will win and enjoy your love”]. Which love did she have in mind? The one for the nymph or the one for Magdaleine, or both? In any event, the poet fails miserably for want of courage, presumably. And if he is not turned into a statue condemned to play music in a window, he is as distressed by love as earlier, if not for the same woman. This conclusion, however, constitutes an implicit comment on the plot devised by Renaut de Beaujeu. Giglan already conveys an ideological bias indicative of a change of taste (Taylor 2014, 134). The prose romance is much less ambivalent than the Bel Inconnu: Helayne is clearly a fairy intent on keeping the knight away from Arthur’s court, and staying forever with her is not a desirable outcome. Indeed, Claude Platin rages against women who deter knights from heroic achievements.¹³ After the final tournament, Giglan seems to have wholly forgotten Helayne. His marriage with Emerie is happy and fruitful: “Il ayma sa femme et luy porta honneur, foy et loyaulté. Ilz vesquirent ensemble en grant amour et dilection et eurent belle generation” (sig. Tv) [He loved his wife, respected her, and was faithful to her. They lived together bound by a deep love and affection and they had a handsome family]. We shall never hear about Helayne again, just as we shall never hear about Chelidoine, the fairy who had enchanted Geoffroy, and had been presented as a darker version of Helayne. Renaut de Beaujeu, unlike Claude Platin, had left open the possibility of a different ending. Guinglain, having abandoned for the second time the Pucelle aux Blanches Mains, is pressed by Arthur into marrying Esmerée. Renaut, however, offers to alter this conclusion if his own lady is good to him. The Pucelle aux Blanches Mains remains a more desirable match than Esmerée. As for the poet of the Paradis, on waking up, he realizes that he was victim of a spell

 This outburst is actually prompted by Burnichulde’s preventing Geoffroy from attending the final tournament at Arthur’s court (Taylor 2014, 135).

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and reverts to loving only Magdaleine. Although the fier baiser adventure is absent per se, the conclusion of the sequence is comparable to the end of Giglan, and not surprisingly, much less ambivalent than the Bel Inconnu’s episode. Moreover, the nymph of the Paradis is seen as manipulative, and her scheme has imperilled the poet’s relation with Magdaleine. If her haughty rebuff of the poet recalls the severity of the Pucelle aux Blanches Mains after Guinglain’s first betrayal, she never acquiesces to him, and her disappearance altogether is a blessing for the poet who is eager to apologize to his true love, arguing that he was bewitched and deceived, the innocent victim of “la tromperie/D’une sorcellerie” (fol. 43v) [a deceit of sorcery], and that in any case the whole adventure was only a dream (“Ce n’estoit qu’en songeant”). His most ardent prayers are directed at Magdaleine whilst Guinglain addressed his to the Pucelle. The anonymous writer thus seems to intensify Claude Platin’s dismissal of the fairy world and its seductions. This complex rewriting of the fier baiser adventure ends, as I have said, with the poet awaking from his dream (or dreams, if he had indeed fallen asleep after hearing the birds). Whether there is only one dream or a dream within a dream, the Gaste Cité episode is clearly consigned to a world of fantasy. Does it mean that medieval motifs can only be objects of a playful pastiche? Whilst the third part of the story recounts the poet’s desperate attempts to win back Magdaleine’s love, the brief fourth part brings about a complete change of scenery and even of concern. The poet, alone in hostile surroundings, receives a letter from his friend Philon announcing that he is dying of a fever. The poet falls into madness and wanders through the woods calling for death and martyrdom. He is rescued by Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, the very one who, according to the poet, had watched over his youth and put him on the French stage (a reminder that he is a tragedian). She takes him on a long maritime voyage, eventually leading to the Elysian Fields. Their final destination mirrors the journey through the Gaste Cité and its surroundings. Melpomene takes the place of the witch and promises the poet a good end (“‘vous ne pouvez venir qu’à bonne fin’”, fol. 56r [“you can only come to a good end”]). As I have already mentioned, they arrive safely at a port where the inhabitants welcome them joyfully. These are the Elysian Fields, an echo of the garden of the Hesperides where the witch had taken the poet in his dream. Melpomene and Laudes/Gadailiers visit beautiful cities surrounded by lovely woods where peaceful shadows stroll two by two, a happy change from the dragons’ fight. Did the poet find peace in this better Arcadia, reminiscent of the one described by Sannazaro (see Lavocat 1998)? Will he retreat forever into this celestial place where he will be cured of his unfortunate passion and spend a blissful eternity in the company of Philon, who will no doubt join him upon his imminent death? The conclusion is ambig-

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uous. On the one hand, the poet sends a prose letter to Philon in which he states his deep love for his friend, laments Philon’s suffering, and threatens to leave “ce champ Elisien” [this Elysian field] for eternal night. On the other hand, he composes a long poem (“chanson”), presumably for his lady, first blaming her for her unfaithfulness and boasting that he can break free of her love, but then, in a reversal recalling the end of the Bel Inconnu, he claims that if she returns to her former behaviour, he will love her more than ever. In Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France, Taylor showed how sixteenth-century publishers repackaged medieval tales both to satisfy a new and avid readership and to form its tastes, “guiding the reception of exemplary texts for a new and socially diverse reading public” (Taylor 2014, 118). Arthurian literature could be put to good use as long as editors adapted it to their audience, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century, medieval literature survives as mere vestiges not even worth acknowledging as such. In his Dialogue de la lecture des vieux romans, dating from 1646, Jean Chapelain does his best to save Lancelot from Ménage’s biting sarcasms. Medieval (old) romances are blamed mainly for their lack of refinement; their characters are naïve and rustic; knights are brutal and devoid of urbanitas: they are “d’honnêtes barbares et d’estimables lourdauds” (Chapelain 1646, 28) [honest barbarians and honourable dullards]. If these romances cannot teach their readers how to behave in good society (“bonne compagnie” (Chapelain 1646, 26)), according to Chapelain, they offer an accurate depiction of medieval mores, and on that account, they are valuable. Moreover, the honest virtues displayed by medieval knights (faithfulness, a profound sense of honour) can still be a model for Chapelain and Ménage’s contemporaries. They possessed natural qualities now corrupted by society. What Chapelain is looking for in medieval romances are moral examples still relevant for his time. He agrees with Ménage that old romances are artless, aesthetically deficient, “entièrement dépourvu(s) de grâce” (Chapelain 1646, 30) [totally lacking in charm], yet he argues that tastes vary, and is aware that ways valued today might be ridiculed tomorrow. As Taylor (2014, 215) asserts (translating Chapelain’s own statement), the ambiguity of his position rests on the double meaning he gives to a notion central to his argument: galanterie, which can mean “strategy or artifice, a literary or linguistic facility” and “love for (ladies), uncomplicated by method or style” (see Chapelain 1646, 30). Since Chapelain leaves it up to Ménage to judge which of the two meanings is more relevant, Taylor concludes that, by the middle of the seventeenth century, Arthurian romances “are not longer to be worked, no longer to be poached – no longer even a curiosity, no longer even something for the popular market.” (216). Forty years earlier, poaching them was still envisioned. Yet what was actually poached was not medieval romances themselves but their repackaging by sixteenth-century editors and print-

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ers: what the narrator experiences in the fiction when dreaming, and perhaps even when dreaming within his dream, is emblematic of the increasing distance from medieval romances. Furthermore, the poaching process was not aimed at a popular audience, but very likely a sophisticated one able to appreciate the absurd and comical rewriting of varied motifs. The anonymous poet ridiculed contemporary readers’ taste for pastoral tales and wondrous fictions, some of them of medieval origin, but was he fully conscious of their sources? Or more to the point, did he care about distinguishing between what he borrowed from recent writers and from older texts? To his eyes, cannibals and dragon-slaying knights very likely belonged to the same world of fantasy. Yet it is arresting to discover old medieval tales in a new guise, and testimony to their enduring attraction.

References Blanchard, Joël. La pastorale en France aux XIVe et XVe siècles: Recherches sur les structures de l’imaginaire médiéval. Paris: Champion, 1983. Busby, Keith. “New Fragments of Le bel inconnu.” Journal of the International Arthurian Society 2 (2014): 70 – 79. Chapelain, Jean. De la lecture des vieux romans, publié pour la première fois avec des notes par Alphonse Feillet. Paris: Auguste Aubry, 1870. Closson, Marianne. “L’Enfer d’Amour.” Fictions narratives en prose de l’âge baroque. Répertoire analytique, première partie (1585 – 1610). Ed. Frank Greiner et al. Paris: Classiques Garniers, 2018. 337 – 340. Greiner, Frank, et al., ed. Fictions narratives en prose de l’âge baroque. Répertoire analytique, première partie (1585 – 1610). Paris: Champion, 2007. Guy de Tours. Le paradis d’amour; Les mignardises amoureuses; Meslanges et épitaphes; avec préface et notes par Prosper Blanchemain. Paris: L. Willem, 1878. Lacassagne, Miren. “Le Lai de Franchise d’Eustache Deschamps ou de l’autre côté du miroir.” Le Moyen Âge 116 (2010): 645 – 656. Lavocat, Françoise. Arcadies malheureuses, aux origines du roman moderne. Paris: Champion, 1998 Lavocat, Françoise. “Les Bergeries de Juliette.” Fictions narratives en prose de l’âge baroque. Répertoire analytique, première partie (1585 – 1610). Ed. Frank Greiner et al. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2008. 181 – 222. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. “Du rêve idyllique au leurre courtois. Mirages littéraires dans Le Dit de la Pastoure de Christine de Pizan.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 20 (2010): 43 – 58. Le Paradis d’amour ou la chaste matinée du fidell’amant. Rouen: Claude Le Villain, 1606. Platin, Claude(?). L’hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles. Et de Geoffroy de Maïence son compaignon tous deux chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Lesquelz feirent plusieurs et merveilleuses entreprises… comme on pourra veoir en ce present livre. Lyon: Claude Nourry, n. d.

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Renaut de Beaujeu, Le Bel Inconnu. Ed. Michèle Perret. Trans. Michèle Perret and Isabelle Weill. Paris: Champion, 2003. Palermo, Joseph, ed. Le Roman de Cassidorus. 2 vols. Paris: Picard, 1963. Swift, Helen. “Résister à la Rose, ou comment défendre les femmes face au spectre de Jean de Meun.” Revisiter la Querelle des Femmes, vol. 3, Discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des sexes en Europe, de 1400 à 1600. Ed. Armel Dubois-Nayt, Nicole Dufournaud, and Anne Paupert. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2013. 49 – 61. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Le Paradis d’amour ou la chaste matinée du fidell’amant.” Fictions narratives en prose de l’âge baroque. Répertoire analytique, première partie (1585 – 1610). Ed. Frank Greiner et al. Paris: Classiques Garniers, 2018. 617 – 621. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Des bergers au verger de déduit: le jeu littéraire dans Regnault et Janneton.” Sens, Rhétorique et Musique, études réunies en hommage à Jacqueline Cerquiglini. Ed. Sophie Albert, Mireille Demaules, Estelle Doudet, Sylvie Lefèvre, Christopher Lucken, and Agathe Sultan. Paris: Champion, 2015. 203 – 216. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Mentoring Noble Ladies: Antoine Dufour’s Vies des femmes célèbres.” The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne. Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents. Ed. Cynthia J. Brown. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010. 65 – 80. Szkilnik, Michelle. “Magie et sagesse dans Berinus,” Romania, 111 (1990): 179 – 199. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Winters, Margaret, ed. The Romance of Hunbaut: An Arthurian Poem of the Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1984.

Thomas Hinton

Rewriting Renart: Medieval obscenity for modern children The Roman de Renart, a twelfth- and thirteenth-century collection of short narratives featuring the tricks and exploits of Renart the fox, has a substantial legacy in modern culture, with its titular hero having become part of the canon of children’s literature in French.¹ The material’s co-option into the institution of patrimoine is signalled by its inclusion on the French educational curriculum at various levels from CP (six years old) up to 5ème (twelve years old). Similarly, a 2003 CD recording of seventeen Renart tales narrated by the actor Jean Rochefort advertises itself as “recommandé par toute la presse pédagogique” [recommended by educational publishers], with one reviewer describing the Renart as “cet incontournable oeuvre destinée à la jeunesse” [that essential work written for children].² Yet this privileged position within the sphere of educational literature sits rather awkwardly for any medievalist familiar with the original narratives. The medieval Renart is a transgressive, dangerous beast of a text, which revels in the immorality of its anti-hero. It portrays a world where superior intelligence allows characters to manipulate and exploit others, and where good intentions seldom go unpunished. A number of the narratives (known individually as branches) revolve around the rape by Renart of the wolf Hersent, wife of his uncle, recurring antagonist and favourite victim Ysengrin. One branch narrates the event itself, whilst others stage trial scenes in which Ysengrin, the king (a lion named Noble) and others attempt to bring Renart to justice. The incorporation of the Roman de Renart into the heart of the French cultural establishment can therefore feel a little like one more of the fox’s tricks. The misfit between the medieval and modern Renart made it imperative to reshape the literary material if it were to serve as children’s literature. This article focuses on what might be considered the founding act of this process of adaptation, a translation of the text into modern French by the medievalist Paulin Paris

 All quotations of the Renart are taken from the partial and accessible edition by Dufournet and Méline (1985, 2 vols) unless specified otherwise, and formulated as branch number (in Roman) followed by line numbers (in Arabic). References to branch numbers and titles use the terminology of Varty (1988 – 1991, I, ll. 7– 12).  Review from L’Enseignement, cited at . https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-020

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in 1861. It is worth noting that this first popularization for modern audiences of Renart is also part of the early story of the establishment of Medieval Studies as a legitimate academic discipline: Paulin Paris was appointed the inaugural professor of medieval literature at the Collège de France in 1853, and his publication record embraces editions of and scholarship on original texts alongside modernizations like his Renart. There is thus, at the inception of Medieval Studies as a discipline, a to-ing and fro-ing between the amateur and the professional, the popular and the institutional (Amoss 1993; Biu 2007). Indeed, Paris’s Renart expresses this duality; the full title gives a sense of the work’s mixed scope and purpose: Les Aventures de maître Renart et d’Ysengrin son compère, mises en nouveau langage, racontées dans un nouvel ordre et suivies de nouvelles recherches sur le roman de Renart (Paris 1861) [The Adventures of master Renart and of his companion Ysengrin, put into new language, told in a new order, and followed by new research on the Roman de Renart]. The main body of the book is a linguistic and structural reworking of the original, followed by “new research”, a contribution to mid-nineteenth-century scholarship on the medieval material. For the reasons outlined above, the modern transmission of the Renart represents an attractive case study for tracing the workings of adaptation at multiple, simultaneous levels. As a borderline case, whose content would not on the face of it appear ideally suited for institutionalization, it confronts adapters and readers with questions about what may be gained and lost in the process, and what values we might attach to the sometimes-conflicting dynamics involved. This study therefore takes up questions germane to those influentially explored by Jane Taylor in a series of illuminating analyses on the early modern rewriting of medieval Arthurian romance (notably Taylor 2014). Specifically, I argue that adaptation leaves behind a remainder, an unruly element that refuses co-option and whose latent potential to disrupt can never be eradicated fully. My use of the term “remainder” here is inspired by Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s (1990) conception of grammar in The Violence of Language. Lecercle contends that “rules of grammar are comparable not to the laws of physics, but rather to frontiers […] There is no chaos out there, only parts of language that are no longer or not yet acceptable – but that are potentially acceptable” (28). The remainder is that language which is excluded by the rules of linguistic correctness; like the barbarians at the gates, it has the potential to burst into discourse and destabilize the distinctions between “relevant” and “irrelevant” language through which grammar is constituted. Lecercle views this remainder as potentially the most creative part of language use, suggesting that it “emerges in nonsensical and poetic texts, in the illuminations of mystics and the delirium of logophiliacs or mental patients” (6). Numerous scholars of the Renart have noted its delirious or subversive attitude to the authority of institutions, anchored in questions of language mastery.

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Thus, in the phrasing of James Simpson (1996, 14), “Where one strand in the ‘official culture’ of the Middle Ages built cathedrals as an expression of a divine order, the Renart piled up a tower of Babel.” What makes the Renart especially interesting with regard to these questions is that its modern legacy places it at the meeting-point between at least three simultaneous forms of institutionalization, each with its own parameters and counter-currents. The medieval narratives themselves appeared in the context of a general coming-into-being of French as a legitimate language of culture in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As Keith Busby (2002, I: 226) notes, “the matière de Renart has popularoral as well as learned-written origins”, and the narratives frequently display an acute awareness of their mixed vernacular and learned inheritance, as well as revelling in the vexed relationship between their scurrilous subject-matter and the inherent respectability which medieval writing could command. The primary material thus already bears a conflicted relationship to cultural authority. Its mediation into modernity then stages a repeat performance – along different lines – of the same struggle to define a legitimate place at the table of culture. Paris’s publication strategy, as exemplified in his Aventures de maître Renart, speaks of a desire both to make the literature of the past available to an educated general public and to establish its legitimacy as an object of scholarly endeavour. On this second point, his very appointment as the first Professor of Medieval Literature at the Collège de France demonstrates changing conceptions of what counts as an academic discipline; the literature of Europe’s past was beginning to storm the bastion of academia, an advance party for the intellectual legitimisation of literature in general. The second process of institutionalization involved in the transmission of the Renart material, then, is the incorporation of past cultural materials into the cultural present. That this is not a straightforward teleological narrative is indicated by the ongoing culture wars today around what constitutes worthwhile study, with Medieval Studies often finding itself cast as the archetypal form of “useless knowledge”, a luxury indulgence needing to be sacrificed in times of famine.³ The third type of institutionalization that I will consider here concerns less the Renart material in itself than its intended use: as a stepping-stone in the enculturation of children. Whilst the Renart has been integrated into French children’s literature, the originals were written for adult consumption, with themes and storylines (most notably the rape of Hersent) that it is hard to see as a good fit for a didactic goal. Successive adaptors of the material for children

 See for instance Dinshaw (1999, 173 – 182) on perceptions of Medieval Studies in the sphere of US politics.

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have therefore had to decide how to deal with this aspect of the medieval narratives. As Lecercle suggests, suppression of the remainder can never be absolute, all the more so when working with an original text whose hero’s exploits invite the reader to “side with chaos against order” (Sunderland 2010, 174 n. 123). Moreover, there is reason to think that adaptations destined for children may generate an especially potent remainder, in that element that the adaptor cannot control: the child’s own response. Reviewing Lecercle’s book, linguists Richard Ely and Jean Berko Gleason (1992, 404) suggest that “children’s use of language comes closer to Lecercle’s notion of the ‘remainder’ than some might wish. Children have a disposition to treat language as a playground on which a variety of sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, experiences unfold.” Children’s literature can choose to call on either side of this “unspoken struggle” between “language proper” and the disruptive remainder. In examining adaptations that treat the Renart as an “oeuvre de jeunesse”, we therefore find ourselves having to account for a conflict between two institutionalizing aims: the taming of the disruptive source material into something that accords with conventional ideas of children’s literature is likely to come into conflict with ideals of authentic transmission which legitimate the adaptation as part of a recognized textual tradition. The three processes I have outlined above can be usefully brought together under the heading of translation: interlingual translation of the medieval material from Latin to French, along with cultural translation of popular tales into written culture; translation of the past into the present; and translation of adult themes into the language of children’s literature. The benefit of bringing the different strands of analysis together like this is to underline their commonalities and interactions. It also allows the Renart tradition to stand as a case study for broader considerations about the work of translation, adaptation and cultural communication in general – its mechanisms, limitations, and compromises.

Translatio reinardi A logical place to start when considering the Renart tradition from a translational perspective is what the medieval narratives themselves have to say about their own conception. Textual repetition, or récriture as Jean Scheidegger (1989, esp. 63 – 116) terms it, is the lifeblood of the corpus, so we might expect some discussion of the process of adaptation. And yet on the matter of origins, the tales confront us with a palpable silence: given a cultural context in which translation claims often operated as a means of authorial self-affirmation, it is striking that the French texts refuse to acknowledge their own Latin antecedents.

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Indeed, despite the clear genealogy linking the Renart to a pre-existing tradition of Latin beast poetry (with the Ysengrimus in particular providing the names of the two main protagonists) it is notable that none of the branches deign to avail themselves of the “translated source” motif found so widely in twelfth- and thirteenth-century literature. They prefer instead to open in medias res with Renart slinking through the landscape, or by insisting on oral performance (“Se or vos volïez taisir, / Seignor, ja porïez oïr”, IX, ll. 1– 2 [If you will be quiet, lords, you will hear]) or oral provenance (“Celui oï conter le conte / Qui tos les conteors sormonte / Qui soient de ci jusqu’en Puille”, X, ll. 9 – 11 [I heard the tale told by he who surpasses all other storytellers from here to Puglia]). If, as Jan Ziolkowski (1993, 6) posits with reference to its Latin representatives, medieval beast narrative is informed at once by a literate tradition of schoolroom exercises and a vernacular tradition of oral storytelling whose imbrication is too subtle to disentangle, these narratorial interventions appear designed to foreground the oral component at the expense of any mention of writing.⁴ Significantly, even the Biblical tale of Balaam’s donkey (Numbers 22: 20 – 35) is staged as a fiction of orality: Car ce content nostre voisin Que une anesse parla ja Que .I. prophete chevaucha. Balaam l’oï apeler, Por ce le sai ici nomer. (Bianciotto 2005, episode 1, ll. 168 – 172) [Our neighbours tell that a donkey ridden by a prophet once spoke. I heard him called Balaam; this is why I know how to name him here.]

This aspect of the Roman de Renart is rather paradoxical: that a text with so much to say about writing – about the precarious authority of the sacred Word – should have so little to say about writing. The speaking body acts, I would suggest, as a proxy, a scapegoat for text-based authority; and the many mutilated animal bodies found in the Renart tales function as a kind of translation of the inability of written authority to impose its discipline fully upon autonomous subjects. As Simpson (1996, 204) argues:

 The one exception is the mention of a manuscript, identified as “Aucupre”, as the source for the account of Renart’s creation by Eve in branch XXIV. The fact that this alternative account of Genesis is apocryphal in both sacred and secular senses leaves this mention of the written “letre” reading more like a subversion of than an appeal to the authority of writing. On this branch, see Levy (2010 – 2011).

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The Renart […] takes the despised body and places it centre-stage as an object of uncertainty that can no longer be confidently used to ground any sort of representational or political system: one cannot speak from the body about a hierarchy of the non-bodily over the bodily.

The diegetic world of the Renart is one without an authoritative ground, one in which “wisdom and folly are frequently indistinguishable” (Simpson 1996, 204). Emblematic of this instability – which the text’s kaleidoscope of discourses suggests can be brought out in any utterance – is the frequent appearance in these narratives of the proverb, a figure of speech that, like the animal tales themselves, is found in both learned and lay moral traditions. The proverb thus bridges the divide between these two categories, even as it is partly constitutive of the category of learned culture which relies on a range of rhetorical strategies to define and valorize itself against its abjected Other (illiteratus). The potential to short-circuit such a crucial classificatory division becomes a part of the proverb’s functional charge, one which exceeds its strategic deployment in the production of cultural norms. The proverb belongs strictly to neither learned nor lay camp, and thus in its indeterminacy forms a natural association with Renart, the fox whose creation (as recounted in branch XXIV, the “Naissance”) is entirely surplus to the requirements of the domestic/wild animal binary embodied in that tale by the dog (brought into being by Adam) and the wolf (created by Eve).⁵ The narrator of “Le Puits” exploits the ambivalence of proverbial wisdom in a glorious piece of circular reasoning that exemplifies the thorough-going hermeneutic suspicion of the text: “Si me selt em por fol tenir, / Mes j’ai oï dire en escole: / De fol ome sage parole” (IV, ll. 14– 16) [I have often been considered foolish, but I have heard tell in school that wise words come from foolish men]. The legitimacy of formal education derives in large part from the recognition of its professional status, in opposition to other ways of learning that bypass the institutional; amongst other things, the power to control the distinction between “fol” and “sage” would appear crucial to any such project. The “wisdom of fools” trope thus always has the potential to threaten the stability of educational discipline, by its introduction of the possibility that knowledge might be attained through unconventional, unprescribed (heretical?) means. In this prologue, the

 My argument here is indebted to Simpson’s (1996, 28) reading of this episode: “La Création argues that woman creates trouble and so must be controlled, but then there is the fox, an apparition that confounds and dissolves the attempt to create a narrative taxonomy organised around the binary oppositions of wild and tame, masculine and feminine. In spite of itself, the branch reveals how the unfixed element, having at its disposal a multitude of positional strategies, can trouble the system of natural oppositions.”

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content of the narrator’s appeal to the lesson overheard in “escole” (from a teacher or from a pupil?) – that supposed fools can speak wisdom – undermines its structural grounding in the authority of institutional education. There are striking points of contact between the Renardian destabilizing of the authoritative grounding of the utterance and recent attempts in translation theory to challenge the primacy generally accorded to the “original”, with the translational act viewed as a secondary mediation. Emily Apter (2005, 160), examining the phenomenon of so-called “pseudotranslation” (self-avowed “translations” that correspond to no specific source text), asks: “if a translation is not a form of textual predicate, indexically pointing to a primary text, then what is it?” This question is already a familiar one to medievalists accustomed to dealing with prologues that refer to a book from which the author claims to have translaté his text. Recent decades have seen a move away from attempts at source identification towards a recognition of the translation-claim’s strategic and rhetorical function, regardless of its truth-value. To Apter’s question, a medievalist might be inclined to answer that translation is a mode of lending authority to the act of composition. But pushing further through the Renart’s cynical take on textual authority, an additional answer might be that translation is the experience that meaning is produced through an active engagement with another speaking instance; that the meaning of an utterance (and, a fortiori, of a text) thus produced is only ever provisionally stable, always threatened by the return of those elements discarded in the process of meaning-construction; that “every choice to speak one way is a choice not to speak otherwise; every utterance is not only dialogized internally but haunted by its other” (Stein 2007, 189). In translation, the wisdom of sages can sound like folly; in the mouth of a fox, the bestise of courtoisie bares its teeth.

Paulin, Paula, and Maître Renart Paulin Paris, one of the first translators of the Roman de Renart into modern French, has a better claim than most to be called a founding father of Medieval Studies. He was the first incumbent of a chair in Medieval Literature at the Collège de France (from 1853), an office in which he was later succeeded by his son Gaston. Paulin Paris’s professional trajectory mirrors the accession of Medieval Studies to the inner circle of higher learning: whilst studying law, he published articles on Byron and medieval art in his spare time and translated Byron’s complete works. He then worked his way up from a clerkship in the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque Royale to a position from which he could pursue the private study on medieval literature that was to lead to the mutual consecra-

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tion of the subject as worthy of investigation and of his talents as a teacher and researcher. Paris’s career thus led him from a Romantically-tinged amateur medievalism to a professional post and professorial chair. Paris’s translation of the Renart was published in 1861. It thus appeared at a time when the study of medieval French texts was just beginning to assert itself as a respectable professional endeavour. One is all the more tempted to speak of a coming-of-age when one glances at the opening pages of Paris’s text. Via an untitled preface, the author addresses his grand-daughter Paula, reminding her of a conversation they had had two years previously, when she was five. Ignoring Paulin’s repeated requests for her to respect the sanctity of the study into which she has burst (“laisse-moi” is repeated three times), Paula asks him to make her a book: “un livre à moi, comme Lydie de Gersin, les Contes de fées, les Fables de la Fontaine” (Paris 1861, iv) [a book of my own, like Lydie de Gersin, the Fairy Tales, La Fontaine’s Fables]. It is worth pausing to consider what kind of horizon of expectation Paris is implicitly suggesting for his Renart reader. The immediately obvious connection is with La Fontaine. Indeed, the assimilation of Renart to a generic domain of animal fables dominated by the moralizing fables of La Fontaine is a key mechanism for their domestication into a form acceptable for approved transmission as patrimoine. Paula herself conflates the two traditions into one: “Maître Renart? oh! je le connois aussi celui-là. C’est lui qui a mangé le fromage au Corbeau; qui invita à dîner commère la Cigogne […] Mais Ysengrin […] je ne sais pas.” (Paris 1861, iv) [Master Renart? Oh, I know him too! He’s the one who ate the Crow’s cheese, and who invited Dame Stork to dinner […] But I don’t know Ysengrin]. This reaction to Paulin’s offer to initiate her into Renart’s escapades sets them up as a “safe” continuation of a morally improving textual tradition. Perrault’s fairy tales, like the medieval texts edited in this period, had recently gained a measure of respectability as an academic topic through the work of the Grimm brothers, who had identified thematic and structural parallels with Greek and Latin fables (see Sudre 1974 [1893], 11). Lydie de Gersin, finally, is a pedagogical narrative first published in 1789 that was apparently still an automatic selection for a young girl’s bookshelf in the second half of the nineteenth century. Like Paris’s text, it opens with a young girl whose early experiences with books prompt the desire to read new books; thus the nineteenth-century reader might be able to agree with modern Renart scholars that textual engagement (whether through reading or writing) leads to its own inexhaustible proliferation. The rest of the narrative recounts how Lydie’s mother harnesses this bibliophilia to perfect the behaviour of her daughter: her good and bad actions are written into a book at the end of each day and read aloud to the entire family the following lunchtime (Lydie de Gersin 1803 [1789]). The general tenor of Paris’s selection (to which Paula adds her “grammaire’) is

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strongly educational, with a striking intermarriage of linguistic and moral education. The efforts of repetition and memorization required to master grammar (“j’apprends mes verbes” [I am learning my verbs], says Paula (Paris 1861, v)) echo the reiteration inherent in the daily exhibition of Lydie’s moral errors. Such repetition is presented as the stuff of human improvement, and the perfect adequation of the two is found in the rote learning of La Fontaine’s fables: “Tu sais par coeur maître Corbeau” (Paris 1861, iv) [You know the fable of Master Crow by heart], Paulin reminds his granddaughter. In a similar manner, Théophile Gautier claimed to have learned to read with Lydie de Gersin; but here, an ambiguity creeps in, a sign of the potential for the receiver to resist or re-encode the textual message: un jour de l’an le chevalier de Port de Guy […] me fit cadeau d’un livre fort proprement relié et doré sur tranche, et me dit: “Garde-le pour l’année prochaine, puisque tu ne sais pas encore lire. – Je sais lire,” répondis-je, pâle de colère et bouffi d’orgueil. J’emportai rageusement le volume dans un coin, et je fis de tels efforts de volonté et d’intelligence que je le déchiffrai d’un bout à l’autre et que je racontai le sujet au chevalier à sa première visite. Ce livre, c’était Lydie de Gersin. Le sceau mystérieux qui fermait pour moi les bibliothèques était rompu. (Gautier 1874, 3) [One New Year’s Day the knight of Port de Guy […] presented me with a book beautifully bound with gilded edges, and told me: “Keep it for next year, since you don’t know how to read yet.” “I know how to read,” I replied, pale with anger and puffed up with pride. I angrily took the volume off to a corner, and I made such efforts of will and intelligence that I eventually deciphered it from start to finish, and was able to retell the story to the knight on his next visit. That book was Lydie de Gersin. The seal of mystery that had kept libraries from me had been broken.]

In Gautier’s account, we learn nothing of what he learned of the book’s content; he speaks only of its beauty, and of the effort of will that allowed him to exceed his adult interlocutor’s expectations. How he went about using the book to teach himself to read remains shrouded in mystery. Did Lydie de Gersin make young Théophile into the perfect son? Apparently not. On the contrary, the mention of mysterious and broken seals presents this feat of learning as an act of transgression, a different kind of coming-of-age: the library as Tree of Knowledge. Even Lydie de Gersin can generate a remainder, to the right kind of reader. Gautier goes on to suggest that children are precisely that kind of reader: “Deux choses m’ont toujours épouvanté, c’est qu’un enfant apprît à parler et à lire; avec ces deux clefs qui ouvrent tout, le reste n’est rien” (3) [Two things have always terrified me: that a child should learn to speak and to read. With these two keys that open everything, nothing else matters]. Books, for Lydie’s mother, are the tools with which to mould her daughter’s character; for Gautier, they are the child’s means of escape from the control of parents and society.

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What kind of book will Paulin Paris offer to his granddaughter, then? The one we are reading, of course – full of stories of Renart the fox and Ysengrin the wolf, that entertained the children of the distant past: [des histoires] qui ont amusé, il y a longtemps longtemps, des enfans, je ne dis pas plus sages, mais plus grands que toi. – Pourquoi qu’elles ne les amusent plus maintenant? – Oh! parce que celui qui a fait le livre ne parloit pas comme on parle aujourd’hui, et qu’on n’entendroit plus ce qu’il disoit. Mais vois-tu, mon enfant, je comprends un peu ce qu’il a voulu dire, et, pour te faire plaisir, je changerai les anciens mots qu’il écrivoit, pour en faire des histoires nouvelles que tout le monde pourra lire. (Paris 1861, iv – v) [stories that were enjoyed long, long ago by children – I won’t say better behaved, but older than you are now. – Why don’t children enjoy them anymore? – Oh, because the person who made the book did not speak as we do today, so no one would be able to understand what he said. But you see, my child, I have some understanding of what he meant, and in order to please you I will change the ancient words that he used, in order to make new stories that everyone will be able to read.]

Paris perceives the need to translate the medieval text to make it fit for the purposes of a nineteenth-century author and his audience; and he proposes himself as the mediator who will accomplish this task, one who “comprend un peu ce qu’il [the medieval author] a voulu dire” [understands a little what the author meant]. Paris’s definition of translation (changing “les anciens mots […] pour en faire des histoires nouvelles” [the old words to make new stories of them]) predictably produces a text with significant divergences from the medieval material. Indeed, the avowed intention to “faire des histoires nouvelles” is well accomplished: the often-rambling accumulation of events found in many Renart branches is here regularized into a series of “Aventures”, each concerning a single confrontation or deception. Episodes involving the same characters are arranged into mini sections: thus Tybert is Renart’s chief antagonist from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Adventure, presented as “les faits et gestes de maître Tybert le chat, héros digne de disputer à Renart le prix de la ruse et de la malice” (Paris 1861, 95) [the acts and deeds of Master Tybert the cat, a worthy challenger to Renart’s supremacy in cunning and malice]. A conviction that the judicial branches represented a later and more sophisticated development of the more fabular “trickster” adventure led Paris to organize his work into two “livres”: the first narrating tales that he saw as closely related to popular Aesopic tradition, the second entitled “Le Procès” and offering a window onto the medieval

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court through the depiction of King Noble and his entourage.⁶ The adventures of Livre II are linked by characters’ various attempts to have Renart answer for his crimes at the royal court. Paris’s bipartite structure, which begins with a Prologue relating the divine creation of the fox and the wolf and ends with Renart’s confession before execution (and eventual escape) shapes the material into a diegetic coherence not found in the medieval manuscripts. Elsewhere, Paris appears to have worried that the repetitive nature of some of the material might not be to the taste of his contemporary readership. When he wishes to guide the reader’s understanding of what she is about to read, Paris makes use of a mediatory voice he calls “Le Translateur”, whom we encounter a number of times in the interstices of episodes. This voice’s first appearance comes before the Third Adventure, to warn the reader that Renart’s run-in with Noiret at the farm of Berton le Maire is strongly reminiscent of the story of Renart and Chantecler told in the Second Adventure: C’est à mon avis, la même affaire différemment racontée, comme celà se voit toujours dès qu’il y a deux historiens plus ou moins oculaires. J’espère que la deuxième relation, apportée par Pierre de Saint-Cloud, vous amusera pour le moins autant que l’autre. Écoutez. (Paris 1861, 22) [In my opinion these are the same events told differently, as one always sees when there are two different more-or-less eyewitness accounts. I hope that you will enjoy the second narration, supplied by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, at least as much as you did the first. Now listen.]

The same logic is used to justify the inclusion of two episodes featuring Renart, Tybert, and an andouille sausage (the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Adventures); again, these are presented by the Translateur as competing accounts of the same incident: La justice nous oblige à déclarer que l’aventure de l’Andouille partagée n’est pas racontée par tous les historiens à l’avantage de Tybert […] Je ne veux être ici que le rapporteur. Ceux donc qui nous représentent Tybert comme la victime de Renart racontent l’histoire de l’Andouille comme vous allez voir. (Paris 1861, 112– 113) [It is only fair to acknowledge that the ‘shared andouille’ adventure is not told to Tybert’s advantage by all historians […] I only wish to be the message-bearer. Those who claim that Tybert was Renart’s victim tell the story of the andouille as follows.]

 See Paris (1861, 177– 181), for discussion of this at the start of Livre II: “Le Procès de Renart va présenter un autre caractère que les aventures dont il devoit être l’expiation” (177) [The Trial of Renart has a different feel to the adventures for which it is supposed to atone].

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The Translateur intervenes again before the Tenth Adventure, to warn the reader that its representation of Primaut becoming a priest will recall Ysengrin’s ordination as a monk in the Eighth Adventure; he also mentions a third iteration of this formula, with Tibert the character concerned, which he has decided to leave out of his text altogether: “Mais de [cette histoire] nous nous en tairons” (Paris 1861, 59) [but we will not speak of this story]. The selection of material to include, the order it is given, and the running commentary of the Translateur, allow Paris to adapt the medieval text to the norms of his readership, thereby becoming an “official interpreter” whose role is to “attempt when necessary to assimilate the sometimes perplexing otherness, the ‘alterity’, of [his source] into nicely comprehensible texts accessible to and reassuring for the readers of the [nineteenth century]”.⁷ On the level of detail, one intriguing feature is the prominence afforded to proverbs, which are often italicized and flagged explicitly in the modern text: Veez con est vert et floris! Ainsi m’aït Sains Esperis, Que moult volentiers m’i geüsse, Se je si grant besoing n’eüsse. Mais besoing fet vieille troter. (XVI, ll. 51– 55) [See how green it is and covered in flowers! By the Holy Spirit, I would have loved to lie there if I were not in such great need; but need makes the old wife trot.] Mais les champs les plus verts, les fleurs les plus odorantes n’empêchent pas ce proverbe d’être vrai: le besoin fait vielles trotter. (Paris 1861, 24) [But the greenest fields, the sweetest-smelling flowers, cannot countermand the proverb: need makes the old wife trot.]

The explicit flagging of proverbs, combined with the breaking up of branches into episodes that each cover one single trick, works to bring out the parentage between the Renart material and the more expressly didactic Fables de La Fontaine that had been mooted in the translation’s preface by Paula’s conflation of the medieval hero with “Maître Renard” from the Fables. Throughout, Paris’s translation is guided by general unease with the obscenity and irreverence of the medieval text. A striking instance of this is provided in the episode of the “ordination” of the wolf Primaut. In the medieval Renart, Primaut finds himself in a church with our anti-hero, consuming the bread, meat

 I borrow this formulation from Taylor (2014, 13), who uses it to describe the role of early modern rewriters of Arthurian romance like Pierre Sala. As Taylor notes, the term “official interpreter” derives from Certeau (2006).

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and wine left there by the priest. Drunk on wine, Primaut expresses the desire to sing mass, and Renart convinces him that he must first be ordained priest; he pisses in a basin whilst the wolf is not looking and then pours this “water” over his head before tonsuring him. Paris’s Tenth Adventure follows this narrative up to the point when Primaut agrees to be ordained by Renart; at this point, Renart goes to fetch water from the baptismal font, and uses this to tonsure the wolf. The moral smoothing undertaken in such attenuation of the Renart’s obscenities is paralleled by the standardization of the language according to nineteenth-century standards; translation operates simultaneously at the level of language and of morality, to keep the text on the right side of acceptability. It will come as no surprise, then, that a key episode of the Renart saga, the rape of Hersent, is treated by Paris with extreme caution. As we have seen, he organized the adventures into two livres, with the second focusing on the animals’ attempts to make Renart answer for his crimes, amongst which the rape occupies a much-narrated pride of place. The final adventure of “livre premier”, which Paris (1861, 168) titled “De la nouvelle infortune arrivée à dame Hersent, et de la résolution d’Ysengrin d’aller porter plainte à la cour du Roi” [Of the further misfortune suffered by Dame Hersent, and of Ysengrin’s decision to make a complaint at the king’s court], sets up the judicial conflicts of the second “livre” like the final lines of a chapter in a Victorian serialized novel. Meanwhile, an earlier episode in which Renart and Hersent commit adultery – and which is narrated immediately before the rape in most Renart manuscripts – is titled “De l’arrivée de Renart chez dame Hersent durant l’absence d’Ysengrin, et comment la guerre prit commencement entre les deux barons” (Paris 1861, 122) [Of Renart’s arrival at Dame Hersent’s house whilst Ysengrin was away, and how the war between the two barons began]. This title, presenting the Renart-Hersent relationship as the root of the ongoing conflict between the fox and his uncle, is modelled on the phrasing of the twelve-line prologue to the medieval text, which announces: Mes onques n’oïstes la guerre, Qui tant fu dure de grant fin, Entre Renart et Ysengrin […] Or oëz le commencement Et de la noise et du content, Par qoi et por quel mesestance Fu entr’eus deus la desfiance. (II, ll. 10 – 12; 19 – 22) [But you have never heard about the long and hard-fought war between Renart and Ysengrin […] Now listen to the origin of their discord and dispute, and what mishap caused the conflict between them.]

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Within the episode itself, the narrator warns us (of the “aventure” he is about to relate) that “par ce commença la noise / Par mal pechié et par dyable / Vers Ysengrin le connestable” (II, ll. 1034– 1036) [this is how, through sin and evil, his discord with Ysengrin the Constable began]. Paris’s decision to maintain the sexual politics between Renart, Ysengrin, and Hersent as the structural key of a narrative supposedly aimed at children speaks of an impulse toward fidelity, which is balanced by a consistent attempt to mitigate or euphemize the material. The first encounter between Renart and Hersent is thus rewritten in a courtly register, and reoriented toward discursive rather than sexual intercourse: Renars en demaine grant joie Et vient avant, si l’a baisiee. Hersens a la cuisse haussiee, Qui moult plaisoit itel atour. Puis s’est Renars mis ou retour Qui crient que Ysengrins ne viengne. (II, ll. 1114– 1119) [Renart is overjoyed and comes forward to kiss her. Hersent opened her thighs, taking pleasure in the exchange. Then Renart set off home, fearing that Ysengrin might arrive.] Il s’approcha de dame Hersent, la pressa dans ses bras, et les nouveaux amans firent échange des promesses les plus tendres. Mais les longs propos d’amour n’étoient pas au goût de damp Renart; il parla bientôt de séparation et de la nécessité de prévenir le retour d’Ysengrin. (Paris 1861, 124) [He approached Dame Hersent, took her in his arms, and the new lovers exchanged tender promises. But lengthy pillow talk was not to Sir Renart’s tastes; soon after, he talked of leaving and the need to plan for Ysengrin’s return.]

Paris’s account of the rape is similarly revisionist. In both versions, having chased Renart back to his den, Hersent suffers the indignity of becoming stuck in the entrance and is subjected to the fox’s mockery. Her medieval avatar is then raped by Renart just as her husband arrives on the scene, with the fox’s final rhetorical flourish being to deny the reality of what Ysengrin is witnessing – he is, he protests, merely trying to help release Hersent from her situation. For the benefit of his modern audience, Paris’s narrator elects to accept Renart’s version of events, ultimately portraying him as a gallant gentleman: La pauvre Hersent, plus confuse qu’on ne sauroit dire, répondit en priant le méchant roux d’avoir compassion d’elle et de la tirer du mauvais pas où elle se trouvoit; Ysengrin arriva comme Renart essayoit en effet de lui porter secours. Quelle ne fut pas alors sa rage! (Paris 1861, 170)

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[Poor Hersent, more embarrassed than one could say, responded by begging the cruel redhead to take pity on her and free her from the trouble she found herself in; Ysengrin arrived just as Renart was indeed trying to help her. How angry he was!]

As in the earlier episode of Primaut’s ordination, Paris finds that the simplest solution is to adopt as narrative truth the false version of reality peddled by Renart. Livre I ends with Ysengrin vowing to take the matter to Noble’s court to obtain satisfaction. As we have seen, Livre II is titled “Le Procès” [The Trial] and opens on Hersent and her husband making good on their vow and accusing Renart before the king. Indeed, the various judicial branches from which Paris builds a good percentage of Livre II (I, Va and VI) narrate the rape of Hersent several times, and at length, as Ysengrin returns repeatedly to court to seek justice. Paris appears to have viewed the duel judiciaire between Renart and Ysengrin as the logical culmination of these appeals, and accordingly makes it the final confrontation of his Livre II. Renart’s defeat thus appears as God’s ultimate verdict on all the suffering he has inflicted on others throughout the book, a climactic reckoning intimated by Paris’s cliff-hanger chapter title: “Du grand et memorable combat de damp Renart et de messire Ysengrin; et comment le jugement de Dieu donna gain de cause à qui avoit le droit” (Paris 1861, 312) [Of the great and memorable combat between Sir Renart and Sir Ysengrin; and how God’s judgment gave victory to the one who was in the right]. Following his defeat, Renart manages to escape execution by entering holy orders, and (perhaps inspired by the epic model of the moniage as conclusion to and remediation for a life of action) Paris ends his text here, offering the reader a choice of endings for his tale. According to some, he spent the rest of his days in the abbey, fooling his fellow monks into believing his outwardly pious behaviour; others, however, claim that he soon grew bored with monachal life and escaped back to Maupertuis. A shift into the conditional here underlines the narrator’s affected scepticism about his sources (“C’est ainsi qu’il auroit repris le chemin de Maupertuis et qu’après une longue absence il seroit rentré dans ses domaines” (Paris 1861, 320) [Thus it is said that he headed back to Maupertuis, returning to his lands after a long absence], a move that we have already seen him make when framing repetitive material as competing testimonies recounted by “témoins plus ou moins oculaires” [more or less eyewitnesses]. In the medieval manuscripts, by contrast, the duel judiciaire never appears as one of the closing branches. Even in the gamma family manuscripts, which order the material as a kind of biographical cycle, and where this episode appears as branch 26 of 31, it is followed in branch 27 by an episode in which Renart and Ysengrin come together with other characters to plant a field, whilst in branch 30 Ysengrin and Hersent

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nurse Renart back to health after he has been mauled by the dog Morhout. The medieval moniage Renart thus has none of the finality lent the episode by Paris’s structure, serving rather to highlight the circularity we have seen is constitutive of the medieval experience of reading Renart: the fox is not for ending.⁸ Paris’s challenge, then, is to stay faithful to the central place of Hersent’s rape in his conception of the judicial material without indulging the verbal violence and sexual crudeness of its medieval re-narrations. The answer lies in the methods we have already seen him employ above. Adventure 31 picks up directly from the end of the first Livre, with the wolves arriving at the court and immediately registering their accusation before the king. Here, the medieval text offers Paris a helping hand, since it deliberately constructs the language of the protagonists within a formal register of legal and courtly expression. The appeals to royal authority in both texts are therefore almost identical: Vos feïstes le ban roial Que ja mariage par mal N’osast en freindre ne brisier: Renars ne vos velt tant prisier N’onques ne tint por contredit Ne vostre ban ne vostre dit. Renars est cil qui toz mals seme, Que m’a honi de ma feme. Renars ne dote marïage Ne parenté ne cosinnage; Il est pire que ne puis dire. Ne cuidiez mie, baux doz sire, Que jel die por li reter Ne por blame sor li jeter! Rien que je die n’est mençoigne: Veis ci Hersent qui tot temoigne. (V, ll. 319 – 334) [You issued a royal decree that no one should ever be sold bold as to break the bonds of marriage; Renart holds you in low regard and has never taken your decree or your words seriously. Renart, the sower of all ills, has shamed me with my wife. Renart respects neither marriage nor kinship ties; he is worse than I can put into words. Do not think, dear sire, that I say this out of spite or to soil his reputation! None of what I say is a lie – see Hersent here, who will bear witness to everything.] Vous aviez fait publier à son de trompes que nul à l’avenir ne fût si hardi que de violer la loi de mariage; Renart n’a pris souci de vos vœux ni de vos ordres: Renart, origine de tous les discorts, assemblage de tous les genres de malice, sans respect pour les liens d’amitié et de

 The gamma family of manuscripts are Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1579 (C) and Turin, Biblioteca Reale, cod. varia 151 (M). See Sunderland (2010, Ch. 4) for a reading of this version of Renart as a biographical cycle.

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compérage, m’a deshonoré dans la personne de ma chère femme. Et ne croyez pas, sire, qu’une aveugle pensée de haine et de rancune me conduise auprès de vous: la clameur que je porte à votre cour n’est hélas! que trop juste, et dame Hersent va l’appuyer de son témoignage. (Paris 1861, 184) [You had it decreed to the sound of trumpets that no one in future should be so bold as to break the law of marriage; Renart disregarded your orders and your wishes. Renart, source of all discord, sum of all types of malice, has shamed me in the person of my wife, without respect for the ties of friendship or kinship. And do not think, sire, that I am brought to you by a blind hatred or desire for vengeance: alas! the grievance that I bring to your court is all too true, as Dame Hersent will bear witness.]

However, the similarity between these passages masks their very different effects on the reader. In the medieval text, the branch opens with Ysengrin remembering the rape, some time after the incident, and charging off to find Hersent in a fit of rage; the idea of petitioning the king is her suggestion, which allows her to deflect his anger back onto Renart. The explicit language and physical violence with which Ysengrin targets his wife, full of “hatred and desire for vengeance”, flags up the subsequent high register of his speech to Noble as a public performance: Maintenant la va lendenjant: Del pié la fiert con s’il fust ivre. “Haï, fait il, pute chaitive, Pute vix orde et chaude d’ovre, Bien ai veüe tote l’ovre, Bien me set Renars acopir. Jei le vis sor vos braz cropir: Ne vos en poëz escondire.” (V, ll. 258 – 263) [Immediately, he goes off to curse her; he kicks her as if he were drunk. “Ha,” says he, “you wretched whore! I saw everything, you dirty old sex-crazed whore! Renart certainly knows how to cuckold me. I saw him bent over you: you cannot deny it.”]

Moreover, over the course of their address to the king, Ysengrin, and Hersent struggle to maintain the decorum with which the appeal began and to suppress the violence of language, here generated by the sexual assault at the heart of the accusation. Hersent begins by claiming that “‘puis cele ore qui fui pucele, / M’ama Renars et porsivi’” (V, ll. 336 – 337) [“Renart has loved and pursued me since I was a maiden”], invoking the familiar model of the courtly suitor, but in recounting the incident her register is destabilized by more concrete, physical language:

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“Des q’a l’autrer en une fosse, Que j’estoie et crasse et grosse. Tant qu’il me vit en cel pertuis, Il sailli fors tres parmi l’uis, Et vint derers, si me honi Tant que li jeus li enbeli.” (V, ll. 345 – 350) [“Until the other day when I was stuck in a hole, big and fat as I am. When he saw me in that hole, he came right out of the door and went behind me, and shamed me for as long as it pleased him.”]

Ysengrin similarly struggles to maintain an abstract register when describing the rape, telling Noble that “‘je les sorpris a la montee’” (V, l. 378) [“I caught them at it”] and relating that Renart had humiliated his children by telling them “que cox estoit lor pere, / Qu’il avoit foutue lor mere” (V, ll. 369 – 370) [that their father was a cuckold since he had fucked their mother]. Unsurprisingly, none of these more explicit formulations make their way into Paris’s text. He avoids Ysengrin’s initial verbal assault of his wife by having the petition follow immediately after the rape itself: “Ysengrin n’avoit pas perdu de temps pour se rendre à la Cour, en compagnie de madame Hersent” (Paris 1861, 183) [Ysengrin had wasted no time in coming to court along with Dame Hersent]. Where the medieval Hersent describes herself as “et crasse et grosse”, Paris’s version laments “‘mon embonpoint [qui] m’ôtoit la liberté de me dégager’” (Paris 1861, 185) [“my plumpness prevented me from freeing myself”] and describes how “‘damp Renart put me frapper, m’outrager et m’accabler des injures les moins méritées’” (Paris 1861, 185) [“Sir Renart was able to hit, outrage and insult me in the most unfair way”]. Ysengrin similarly lambasts Renart for “son odieuse conduite” [his despicable behaviour] and accuses him of calling his children “bâtards” and “fils d’abandonnée” [sons of a tramp]. Where the high register of the petition in the medieval text clashes comically with the lapses into crudeness the wolves seem unable to avoid, their counterparts in the nineteenth-century text maintain an impeccable formality throughout, despite the delicate nature of their grievance. Subsequent recollections of the rape in the judicial material of the medieval Renart (of which there are many) are similarly attenuated, though Paris at times shows a surprising keenness to preserve as much as possible of what he is suppressing (as we have seen above in his treatment of narrative repetition, often preferring to reinterpret rather than eliminate similar episodes). In adventure 43, which corresponds to material from Branch I, Renart confesses his past sins to his cousin Grimbert the badger. The medieval Renart recalls “‘que voirement l’a je fotue. / Or m’en repent, Dex! moie cope! / Meinte fois li bati la crope’” (I, ll. 1034– 1036) [“indeed, I did fuck her; Lord, now I repent, mea culpa! I smacked her arse over and over”]. Paris’s equivalent scene has him confess:

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“‘elle me fut toujours excellente amie, et je n’eus jamais à me plaindre de ses cruautés. […] J’en bats ma coulpe; c’est ma très-grande faute.’” (Paris 1861, 244) [“She was always an excellent friend to me, and I never had cause to complain of cruelty at her hands […] I confess my guilt, mea maxima culpa!”]. In this final aside, the exclamation “‘j’en bats ma coulpe’” in Renart’s outwardly virtuous words contains a clear echo of the Old French “battre [sa] crope” and the “cope/crope” rhyme. The remainder lurks on the phonic surface of the words written by Paris, retaining a faint echo of the explicit language of the original. These acts of censorship may make us uncomfortable about how much has been lost in translation in the modern Renart tradition. Indeed, Paris’s willingness to sneak transgressive echoes into his text suggests that he himself was not entirely comfortable with the changes he was making. Nevertheless, the interventions in his adaptation appear to have cast a long shadow on the popular transmission of the tales, as well as on some strands of academic discourse (Schenck 2005). Simpson (1996, 2) refers darkly to “bowdlerised collections of children’s stories”, noting also “that serious scholarly treatments are [not] entirely free of this tendency towards well-intentioned but ill-judged intervention”. As these comments suggest, the expurgation of the sexual and linguistic violence of the tales has become the norm in their modern adaptations into children’s literature. In 2002, Hatier released a modern translation in their “Oeuvres & themes” series aimed at secondary-age children, with each tale followed by a series of questions for readers to ponder, turning the Renart into a series of pedagogical exercises. For this volume a different solution is found to the uncomfortable question of how to treat the rape of Hersent – it is simply excluded from the text, a decision no doubt facilitated by the slimness of the volume, which has the effect of further strengthening the impression of the Renart as a proto-Fables de la Fontaine. As a result, none of the trial material is included either, barring a passing reference used to tee up the tale in which he escapes the death penalty: Après un long procès, Renart est cependant parvenu à échapper à la justice royale et s’est réfugié dans son château de Maupertuis. Mais, après six mois de siège, il a finalement été capturé par Tardif le limaçon. (Amon 2002, 60) [After a long trial, Renart nevertheless managed to evade royal justice and took refuge in his castle of Maupertuis. But after a siege of six months, he was finally captured by Tardif the snail.]

The trial is glossed over, relegated to four words in the paratextual summary, whilst its cause is not even evoked. We have seen how Paulin Paris restructures the material to fit the contours of La Fontaine’s fox fables, and the Hatier version follows his lead in this regard. Each of its individual “textes” relates a single ep-

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isode. Textes 1 and 2 are taken from Branche III of the medieval tradition, but the middle part of that branch, “Ysengrin fait moine”, is not retained; textes 4 to 6 are all excerpted from Branch II. Meanwhile, the connection with La Fontaine is strengthened in two ways. The pedagogical dossier at the end of the episode involving the crow Tiecelin invites readers to compare it with “Le Corbeau et le Renard” from the Fables, reproduced for this purpose (Paris 1861, 59). A selection of “fiction animale” reprinted at the end of the book (Paris 1861, 108 – 111), which includes La Fontaine’s “L’Âne et le Chien”, further suggests a generic continuity between the two collections.

Conclusion Scheidegger (1989, 389) argues that repetition and fragmentation are “partie intégrante et structurante de la matière renardienne” [an essential structural element of the Renardian corpus], noting further that “l’idée du progrès lui est étrangère” [the idea of progress is foreign to it]. Sunderland (2010, 139) similarly describes the elaboration of the corpus as “an open-ended, rhizomatic process” and the world which Renart’s actions create as “one of repetition, destruction and excess”. Whilst the medieval corpus thus promotes repetition as a motor for wanton, unbridled narrative proliferation, we saw above that in other contexts it can play a disciplinary role, as in the rote learning of La Fontaine’s Fables and in Lydie de Gersin’s morally improving retellings of her daily actions. In the “Nouvelle étude” section of his adaptation, Paulin Paris (1861, 323) offers a third perspective on repetition, as Paris-the-scholar worries about his ability to break new ground in the wake of “les savantes, ingénieuses ou profondes recherches” [the learned, ingenious and rigorous research] of his predecessors, declaring “je ne veux pas m’exposer à mal redire ce qui a déjà été bien dit” [I do not wish to risk restating badly what has already been said well]. Within a scholarly context, repetition is a flaw to be avoided. Paris reassures himself with the observation that “le sujet n’est pas épuisé: les questions d’origine ne sont pas encore résolues” [the subject has not been exhausted; the question of origins has not yet been resolved]. Implicit in the word “encore” here (and in the “Nouvelle étude” overall) is the ideal of providing a final word, a definitive understanding of the text; on this account even a text as viscerally incomplete as the Renart can be caught, weighed and “resolved” by the voice of scholarly authority.⁹

 A footnote to the “Nouvelle Étude” section title (Paris 1861, 323) highlights the scholarly credentials of the analysis, noting that it was “Lue à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres,

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Paulin Paris’s translation allows little Paula to act as a disruptive presence in the liminal stages of the text, as she bursts into her grandfather’s study and interrupts his work to demand a new story, but once the narrative proper is under way she disappears from the scene. The final episode ends on a playful note as the Translateur explains that: dans notre France, on n’entend plus jamais parler de Renart […] Si pourtant quelqu’un venoit à découvrir sa retraite, nous le prions très-instamment de nous en avertir, pour nous donner les moyens d’ajouter de nouvelles aventures à celles que nous venons de raconter. (Paris 1861, 322) [In our country of France, one no longer hears people speak of Renart […] However, if someone were to discover his hiding-place, we beseech them to alert us immediately, to allow us to add new adventures to those we have just related.]

Paris acknowledges the inexhaustible nature of Renart’s narrative motor, which his own translation is likely to stimulate by reviving the character in the popular imaginary. However, in inviting readers to contact him with news so that he can write it up, the Translateur still affects to retain control over the dissemination of the Renardian narrative. In similar fashion, Paris’s prefatory address to Paula ends by describing his text as an act of love for his granddaughter, casting her as the catalyst, but himself as the agent, of what he calls “ce livre des Aventures de Maître Renart, que j’aurais fait pour toi, et que, sans toi, chère petite Paula, je n’aurois jamais eu la pensée de faire” (Paris 1861, viii) [this book of the Adventures of Master Renart, which I will have written for you, and which I would never have thought to write without you, dear little Paula]. And as he warns Paula earlier in the same paragraph, whilst the Aventures are written for her and other children, the academic studies that follow on are intended as a child-free zone: “tu laisseras les dernières pages; parce qu’à l’âge de sept ans on ne s’amuse pas aux histoires de vieux livres” [you should ignore the final pages, because stories about old books are no fun for seven-year-olds]. There is, of course, no evidence of whether Paula obeyed this instruction or not, though Théophile Gautier’s anecdote about learning to read with Lydie de Gersin – despite having been told to wait until he was old enough to do so – shows how productive childish transgression can be. Indeed, in the “Nouvelle Étude” section of his Renart, Paris himself offers a tentative origin story for the narratives

dans la séance du 25 novembre 1860”. The precision over location and date lends the analysis a permanency and singularity in notable contrast to the repetitive and unstable nature of the medieval Renart.

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which suggests powerfully how the repetition imposed on children for the purposes of study can be diverted to serve the creation of new narratives: Les fables æsopiques furent un des premiers, des plus faciles et des plus agréables exercices des maîtres qui enseignoient, et des écoliers qui apprenoient les secrets de la langue dite grammaticale […] Ces exercices, on le pense bien, ne se bornoient pas à réduire les anciens apologues en mauvaise prose ou en vers plus méchans encore. On ajoutoit aux premiers récits des incidens particuliers, des réflexions, des moralités nouvelles: et quand le sujet s’y prêtoit, on le retournoit de cent façons, quelquefois au point de le rendre méconnoissable. (Paris 1861, 324– 325) [The Aesopic fables were one of the first, the simplest and the most enjoyable exercises of the masters who taught and the pupils who learned the secrets of grammatica […] These exercises, one can well imagine, were not limited to traducing the ancient texts into bad prose, or even worse verse. The original tales would be enhanced with particular anecdotes, reflections, or new moral interpretations; and when the subject warranted it, it was rewritten a hundred different ways, sometimes rendering the original unrecognizable.]

References Amon, Évelyne. Le Roman de Renart. Trans. Micheline Combarieu de Grès and Jean Subrenat. Paris: Hatier, 2002. Amoss, B. McRae. “Nineteenth-Century Medievalism: The Polemic of Paulin Paris.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 21 (1993): 292 – 304. Apter, Emily. “Translation with No Original: Scandals of Textual Reproduction.” Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation. Ed. Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 159 – 174. Bianciotto, Gabriel. Le Roman de Renart. Ed. Naoyuki Fukumoto, Noboru Harano, and Satoru Suzuki. Rev. and trans. Gabriel Bianciotto. Paris: Livre de Poche, 2005. Biu, Hélène. “Paulin Paris et la redécouverte de la littérature médiévale.” Mémoire des chevaliers: Édition, diffusion et réception des romans de chevalerie du XVIIe au XXe siècle. Ed. Isabelle Diu, Élisabeth Parinet, and Françoise Vieillard. Paris: Publications de l’École nationale des chartes, 2007. 75 – 90. Busby, Keith. Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Randall. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Dinshaw, Carolyn. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Dufournet, Jean, and Andrée Méline, ed. Le Roman de Renart. 2 vols. Paris: Flammarion, 1985. Ely, Richard, and Jean Berko Gleason. Review of Jean-Jacques Lecercle. The Violence of Language. Applied Psycholinguistics 13 (1992): 400 – 404.

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Gaunt, Simon. “Fictions of Orality in Troubadour Poetry.” Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D.H. Green. Ed. Mark Chinca and Christopher Young. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 117 – 136. Gautier, Théophile. Portraits contemporains. Littérateurs, peintres, sculpteurs, artistes dramatiques. Paris: Charpentier, 1874. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. The Violence of Language. London: Routledge, 1990. Levy, John F. “The Gospel According to Aucupre or Réécriture on the Cheap.” Reinardus 21 (2010 – 2011): 104 – 125. Lydie de Gersin, ou, Histoire d’une jeune Angloise de huit ans; pour servir à l’instruction et à l’amusement des jeunes Françoises du même âge. Paris: A. A. Renouard, 1803 (1789). Available online at . Paris, Paulin. Les Aventures de maître Renart et d’Ysengrin son compère. Paris: Techener, 1861. Scheidegger, Jean. Le Roman de Renart, ou, Le Texte de la dérision. Geneva: Droz, 1989. Schenck, Mary Jane Schenck. “Paulin Paris’ Influence on Writing about the Feudal Trial in the Roman de Renart.” Reinardus 18 (2005): 117 – 130. Simpson, J. R. Animal Body, Literary Corpus: The Old French ‘Roman de Renart’. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. Stein, Robert. “Acts of Translation.” New Medieval Literatures 9 (2007): 185 – 190. Sudre, Léopold. Les sources du Roman de Renart. Geneva: Slatkine, 1974 (1893). Sunderland, Luke. Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism Between Ethics and Morality. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Taylor, Jane H. M. Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Book. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Varty, Kenneth. A la recherche du ‘Roman de Renart’. 2 vols. New Alyth: Lochee Publications, 1988 – 1991. Ziolkowski, Jan. Talking Animals. Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

Elizabeth Archibald

Afterword

The range of the topics covered in this volume, from Chrétien de Troyes to modern children’s literature, is in itself a tribute to Jane Taylor’s many contributions to the field of medieval and post-medieval literature, and the list of contributors makes clear her impact on generations of scholars on both sides of the Channel and in America. Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary field, and this is particularly true of Arthurian studies: the legend evolved from Welsh beginnings through Latin “histories” and French romances to spread all over medieval and early modern Europe, and further afield since then. Arthurian literature is a constantly evolving form of rewriting, and this is an area in which Jane has written many important studies, making us aware of the continuities from the fifteenth century to the sixteenth in the popularity of Arthurian and other romances, but also of the ways in which early modern writers reshaped them. Few scholars are truly at ease in dealing with both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; Jane is one of them. For many decades Jane has participated in Arthurian conferences and workshops in Britain and numerous other countries; this is how I first met her, and how I have come to know and admire her. It is always a pleasure to discuss ideas with her, whether in a lecture hall or a conference sightseeing bus, and she is also an excellent dinner companion. Approachable, charming, and entirely without “sideˮ, she is truly interested in younger scholars and their work, and is always generously helpful and supportive. This helpfulness can take the form of questions and challenges, of course, phrased with kindness but often pointing out crucial weaknesses in an argument. I always come away from conversations with her feeling better informed and greatly encouraged. Another way in which she supports Arthurian scholars is through her efficient and fair-minded chairing of the Vinaver Trust, which awards subventions for Arthurian publications, and bursaries for postgraduate research on Arthurian topics. Many were surprised when Jane left Oxford in 2001 to become the Principal of Collingwood College at Durham University, but the requirements of the role suited her very well: stimulating intellectual curiosity among the students, helping them to develop personally and socially, supporting and advising the Junior and Middle Common Rooms without overshadowing the student leaders, and working with her staff to ensure the smooth running of the college. Jane was very good at all of this, and enjoyed it enormously; her contribution to the college and the standards she set were impressive (she once gave a speech in Elvish at a formal dinner with a Tolkien theme). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-021

340

Elizabeth Archibald

In retirement Jane has been free to indulge her love of travelling, but she has also continued to publish at an awesome rate, and returns frequently to Durham for library books, workshops, and informal meetings with colleagues, ex-pupils and friends. Her reaction to the first pandemic lockdown was annoyance that she could not come over to collect some urgently needed Inter-Library Loan books. As an inspiring colleague and much-loved friend, she is always very welcome.

Index Note: This index provides references to names of people/characters, place names, manuscript shelfmarks, and titles of primary texts. The names of editors of primary texts and scholars are included only where their works are included as core subject in a discussion (rather than as supporting criticism). In the interests of navigational ease, text titles commencing with an article are indexed by the first proper word, with the article transposed to the end of the entry. The same is true of honorifics/personal titles (e. g. “Sir”), except where that title is the first word of a primary text’s title. Character names with different spellings (e. g. Gawain, Gauvain, Gawyne, Walewein, and so on) are maintained and given as separate entries to aid navigation to particular texts of sets of texts.

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 11 117 Acelin 12, 21 f. Achilles 126 f., 135, 137 – 139 Actuarius 133 Adam 89, 213, 320 Adenet le Roi 186 – Cleomadés 186 Aemilius Lepidus 129 Aeneas 138 Agamemnon 127, 136, 138 Aguisel, king of Scotland 95 Aix-la-Chapelle 21 f. Alba 305 Albrecht van Voorne 160 Alein 164 Alexander the Great 54, 69, 72, 75 – 80, 244 Alexander the Macedonian 68 Alexandre de Bernay 77 Alexandre de Maillogres 78 Alexandre 67, 72, 74 – 80, 281 Alexandre, king of Majorca 67, 74 – 80, 281 Alix, Duchess 75, 80 Amans, King 175, 301, 328 Amant Parfait 294 f. Anseïs de Carthage 182 Antenor 138 Antoine de la Sale 281 – Jean de Saintré 281 f. Apollo 292 Apollo, Temple of 137 f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639032-022

Arcadia (1504) see under Sannazaro, Jacques Arcadia 77, 299 f., 302, 306, 311 Aristotle 63, 250, 288 Arnold, Thomas 93 Aroés 58 Arthur II of Brittany 57, 75, 82 Arthur I, Plantagenêt 75, 80 Arthur, King 9, 12, 31, 33, 37 – 39, 45 – 49, 54 f., 57, 61 f., 65 f., 72, 74 – 76, 78 – 80, 86, 88 – 90, 93 – 95, 98, 100 f., 109 – 111, 121, 159 – 161, 164 – 170, 173 f., 176, 194 – 196, 206, 209, 240 f., 263, 265 f., 268 f., 271 f., 277 – 279, 284 f., 291, 310 Arturs doet 172, 175 Artus de Bretagne (1493) 242 Artus de Bretagne (1502) see under Le Noir, Michel Artus de Bretagne 53 – 81, 238, 242 Artus of Brittany 54 – 81 Arundell, Thomas 118 f. Âtre Périlleux 94 f. Aubéron 70 f., 73, 78 Aubert de Longueval 93 Aubert, Saint 70, 73 f. Augustine, Saint 93, 108 – 110, 120, 288 Augustus 131, 133 Aulis 138 Aymeri of Narbonne 9, 15, 16, 20, 28 Back to the Future 31 Balaam’s donkey 319

342

Index

Ban de Benuic, King 57, 163, 172, 173 Ban of Ganeret, King 95 Barbour, John 77 Beau Chevalier 147 Bel Inconnu 308 – 309 Bel Inconnu. Le see under Renaut de Beaujeu (Bâgé) Bellande 68, 227 f. Belle Hélène de Constantinople, La see under Jean Wauquelin Benuic 68 Bergeries de Julliette, Les (1592) 300 Béroul 13 Berton le Maire 325 Bertrand 13, 21, 23 f., 27, 72 f. Bertrand du Guesclin 183 Betides 58, 68 Betis 59, 68 f., 78 Betoine 68 Beuves de Hantonne (1499 – 1502) see under Vérard, Antoine Bibliothèque Bleue 215 Bibliothèque Royale 321 Biblis, king of the Antipodes 95 Bigorre, Duke of 59 Black Thorn, sisters of the 285 Blanche 73 f. Blanche de Navarre 146, 151, 153, 154 Blancheflour 20 Blasijs 164, 169 – 171, 174 Bliant 95 Bliocadran 34, 36 – 41, 44 Bliocadran 31 – 41, 43 – 50, 102 Blois, count of 59 Blosius 288 Boccaccio, Giovanni 289, 293 f. – De Claris mulieribus 302 Boek van Merline see under Jacob van Maerlant Bohort de Gaunes, King 57 Bonfons, Jean 249 – 251 – Ysaïe le Triste (1547 – 1566) 249 Bonne of Luxembourg 146 Bonn, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 526 168 Bouchet, Jean 244 Boulogne 71, 73 Bourgeois, Jean le 237

Brandalis 56, 69 Bran de Lis 49, 99 f. Brandles, Sir 100 Brandor de Gaunes 69 Branghien 62 f. Breviarium historiæ romanæ ab urbe condita see under Eutropius Brian of the Isles 86 Brian of Wallingford 86 Brittany 54, 67, 75, 80 f. Broen 164, 173 Bron 248 Brun de Branlant 37 f. Bruneaux 71 Brun sans Merci 71 Brun sans Pitié 71 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 7235 193 Bucephalus 76, 78 Buch der Abenteur see under Fuetrer, Ulrich Bucolics (Virgil) 300 Bulliouys, Marguerite 283 Burgsteinfurt Castle 174 Burgsteinfurt manuscript 157 f., 160, 162 f., 165 – 167, 169, 171 – 176 Burley, Simon 93 Bury St Edmunds, Abbey of 95 Byron, Lord 321 Cahus 121 Calboie 42 Calchas 138 Caligula 136 Calogrenant 265, 267 Cambenijc 168 Camillus 128 Capoir 56 Caradoc 49, 98 Carados, King 71 Cardigan 90, 95 Carduel 90 Caredol 165 Cassandre, Madame 293 Cassel 68 f. Cassidorus 68 Cassidorus 302 Cassiel 68

Index

Cassiporus 68 f. Castor 126, 128 Caxton, William 240 f., 244 – Morte Darthur, Le (1485) 240, 244 – Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1473/ 74) 240 Cent Nouvelles nouvelles 294 Cersés 58 Cervantes 285 Chantilly, Musée Condé, IV–G–035 214, 219 f., 228 Chapelain, Jean 312 – Dialogue de la lecture des vieux romans 312 Chapel of Saint Augustine 108 – 111, 118, 120 – 122 Charlemagne 9 – 11, 21 f., 218, 220, 243 Charles le Mauvais 153 Charles le Sage 146, 149 Charles VIII, King 233, 263 Charroi de Nîmes, Le 9 – 12, 15, 18, 23 – 26, 28 Chasse et le Départ d’Amours, La (1509) see under Vérard, Antoine Chastel des Haulx Murs 291 Chastel Jaloux 292 Château de la Roche de Changuin 41 f. Château de Pesme Aventure 273, 277 Château Orgueilleux 37 Châtelainde de Vergy, La 289 Chaucer, Geoffrey 96 Chelidoine 310 Chester Cathedral 97 Chevalier à la Cornemuse 150 Chevalier au Chef d’or 150, 153 Chevalier au Grillon 150 Chevalier au lion (Sala) see under Sala, Pierre Chevalier au lion see under Chrétien de Troyes Chevalier de la charrette see under Chrétien de Troyes Chrétien de Troyes 13, 53 f., 85 f., 88, 91, 94 – 96, 107, 147 f., 153, 175, 193, 235, 238, 261, 281, 283 – 285, 339 – Chevalier au lion 85, 89, 90, 92 – 93, 94, 96, 147, 153, 181, 261 – 279, 283 – 288

343

– Chevalier de la charrette 87, 94, 271 – Cligés 86, 87, 88, 89, 187, 281 – Conte du Graal, Le 31 – 36, 40 – 43, 45 – 47, 49 f., 85, 87 – 94, 95, 96, 97 f., 101, 102, 107, 157, 158, 175 f., 238 – Erec et Enide 86 – 90, 95, 187, 193, 194 – 211 Christine de Pizan 300, 302 – Cité des Dames 302 – Dit de la Pastoure 300 Church of the Holy Sepulchre 26 Circe 244, 299, 301 – 303 Cité des Dames see under Christine de Pizan Clamados 59 Clare, the lady of the Château Mal Assis 71, 325 Clarins de Trigan 71 Clarisse 71 Claronne the fairy 71 Claudas, King 163, 173 Claude Le Villain 299 Cleomadés see under Adenet le Roi Cleopatra 132 Cleriadus et Meliadice (1495) see under Vérard, Antoine Cliçon 78 Cligés (prose) 187 Cligés (verse) see under Chrétien de Troyes Clin 78 Clisson 79 Cokayne, Land of 304 Colosseum 131 Conan IV 75 Constance, Duchess 75, 86, 307 Constantine 129 f. Constantinople 67, 75, 215 f., 305 Constantius 129, 131 Conte du Graal, Le see under Chrétien de Troyes Conte du Papegau, Le 53 f., 289 Contes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore (1531) 290, 294 Continuation of Gerbert de Montreuil 32, 99

344

Index

Continuation of Manessier 49, 102 Continuations of Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval 32, 33, 34, 46 – 47, 85 – 102, 157 – 158, 238, 278 Copale, Servais 125 Corbault see Corsolt Corsolt 11, 19 – 21 Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, The see under Sidney, Sir Philip Couronnement de Louis, Le 9 – 12, 15, 17 – 21, 23 f., 26, 28 Craventor 59 Crécy, Battle of 146, 149 Credenhill 87 Cremera, Battle of 134 Cressus 61 Crusades 10, 14 Cupid 292 f., 299 Curio 129

Diomedes 127 Dit de la Chaîne 144, 150, 153 Dit de la Pastoure see under Christine de Pizan Doolin de Maience (1501) see under Vérard, Antoine Dorine 68 Dreux 75 Drusus 133 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 496 94 Dufour, Antoine 302 – Vie des femmes célèbres 302 Du Pont, Jean Baptiste 301 – Enfer d’Amour, L’ 301 Du Pré, Galliot 108, 216, 235 – 237, 242 – 251, 253, 256 f. – Meliadus de Leonnoys (1528) 246 – 249, 250, 253, 256 – Perceforest (1528) 235 – 238, 242 – 249, 253, 256

Dalmatius 132 Dame à la licorne tapestries 289 Dame à la Pie 151 Dares Phrygius 125 – De excidio Troiæ 125 Darnant 58, 69 Day, Elizabeth 93 De Claris mulieribus see under Bocaccio, Giovanni Dedalus li Vis 64 De excidio Troiæ see under Dares Phrygius Delay, Florence 285 f. Demoiselle de Lis 39, 45 f., 48 f. Deschamps, Eustache 300 – Lai de Franchise 300 Des Cleres et nobles Dames 302 Desraés 71 Dialogue de la lecture des vieux romans see under Chapelain, Jean Diana 138 Didot Perceval 160, 166 Diguellus 56 Dimustra 64 Dinadan 37, 56 Diocletian 131, 137

Edmund of Lancaster 57 Enfer d’Amour, L’ see under Du Pont, Jean Baptiste England 57, 85 – 102, 108, 117 f., 120, 141, 143 Enide 86, 95, 193 – 198, 201 f., 204 – 210 Epistre sur l’amytié see under Sala, Pierre Erec 86, 95, 193 – 211 Erec et Enide see under Chrétien de Troyes Erec (prose) 187, 193 – 211 Esclados le Roux 265 Esmerée 310 Estienne 59, 65, 72, 74, 79 f. Estoire del Saint Graal 55, 68 f., 108, 166, 238, 242, 248, 304 Estoire de Merlin 55, 166, 168, 169, 238, 242 Estonné 69, 73 Éternel retour, L’ (1943) 9 – Nathalie 9, 53, 141 – Patrice 9 Eutropius 125, 128 – 132, 134 f., 137, 139 – Breviarium historiæ romanæ ab urbe condita 125

Index

Eve 319, 320 Everwijn of Bentheim, Count Evrard de Conty 184

175

Fables (La Fontaine) see under La Fontaine, Michel Fabliau de Coquaigne 304 Fairies’ Orchard 62, 64 Fairy Queen 58 f. Fait des Romains, Li 139 Faukerk, Battle of 94 Felicissimus 130 Fergus 90, 91 Fergus 89 – 91, 101 First Continuation, The 31 f., 34 – 37, 39, 41, 45 – 50, 88, 97 – 102 Fisher King 90, 164, 173 FitzAlan, Henry, earl of Arundel 114 FitzAlan, Richard, earl of Arundel 116, 118 FitzAlan, Sir Brian, Lord of Bedale 118 Fitzalans of Oswestry 118 f. FitzWarins 111, 113 f., 116 Flore, Jeanne 281, 288, 291, 294 Florence 58 f., 73 – 76, 80 Floriant et Florette (prose) 187 Floriant et Florette (verse) 187 Floripas 59 Fontaine, Jean de la 242, 294 – Matrone d’Éphèse, La 294 – Servante justifiée, La 294 Fouke Fitz Warin 107 – 122 Fouke III 116 Fouke IV 116 François Ier 242, 283, 285 Froissart, Jean 53, 300 f. – Meliador 53 f. – Paradis d’Amour 308 Fromont de la Roce 59 Fuerre de Gadres 77, 79, 81 Fuetrer, Ulrich 158, 272 – Buch der Abenteur 158 – Iban 272 Fulk 110, 113 f., 116, 121 Furies 293 Fusque, Madame Briolayne 293

345

Gadailiers 309, 311 Gadifer 59, 68 f., 78 Gaguin, Robert 244 Gaimar 95 – Histoire des Engleis 95 Galaad 57, 68 Galafort 68 Galafur 68 Galahad 173 Galerius 131 Galien 215 – 218, 220 f., 227 Galien Rethoré (1500) see under Vérard, Antoine Galien Rethoré (1512 – 1519) see under Veuve Trepperel and Jean Janot Garin of Monglane 9 Gautier, Theophile 323, 335 Gauvain 34, 37 – 39, 41 f., 45 f., 48 f., 55, 66, 88, 94 f., 99, 161, 175, 196 f., 201, 263, 265 – 268, 270 – 273, 277 – 279, 303 Gawain 39, 65, 85, 88 f., 91, 97 – 102, 168 – 170, 272 Gawain-poet 99 Gawyn 93, 161, 175 f. Gawyne 175 – 176 Generides 96 Geoffrey of Monmouth 56, 94 f. – Historia regum Britanniae 61 – Prophecies of Merlin 94 Geoffroy 310 Geoffroy II Plantagenêt 75 Gérard de Nevers (prose) 187 Gérard de Nevers (verse) 187 Gerard van Voorne 160 Gerbert de Montreuil see Continuation of Gerbert de Montreuil Gerre de Troi see under Jofroi de Waterford Gerson, Jean 209 Geste de Guillaume d’Orange 9 – 29, 157 Geste des Narbonnais see Geste de Guillaume d’Orange Giant with Golden Hair 58 Giglan (1512 – 1530) see under Nourry, Claude

346

Index

Giglan (1539) see under Huguetan, Gilles and Jacques Gilbert of Lenu 26 Gilles de Chin (prose) 187 Gilles de Chin (verse) 187 Gilles de Rome 209 Ginganbrisel 175 Giromelant 175 Glastonbury 57, 118, 120 Glastonbury Abbey 107, 118 f. Gloriette 13, 25 Golagros 100 f. Golagros and Gawane 98, 100 – 102 Gonnot, Micheau 158 Gordian 129, 133 Gouvernau 63, 72, 76, 80 Grail 4, 35, 50, 56 f., 62, 92 f., 97, 107, 159, 164, 166, 169, 173 f. Grail Castle 34, 39, 90 Grimbert 332 Grimm Brothers 322 Guenevere 195, 209 Guenièvre 287 f. Guibourc 13, 25, 27 Gui de Cambrai 78 – Vengement d‘Alixandre 78 Gui de Warewic 89, 101 Guillaume au Cort Nes 10 f. Guillaume de Lorris 142, 150, 300 – Roman de la rose 142, 149 f., 152, 300 Guillaume de Machaut 149, 153 f. – Dit du Lion 153 Guillaume de Palerne see under Durand, Pierre Guillaume d’Orange Cycle 9 – 29, 157 Guillaume Fierebrace 10 f. Guillaume le Clerc 90 Guimande 215 Guinevere, Queen 9, 57, 93, 111, 153, 167 f., 173, 243, 272, 278 f. Guinglain 299, 305, 310 Guiromelant 37, 41 Guiron (Gyron) le Courtois (c. 1503) see under Vérard, Antoine Guiron le Courtois (Cycle) see under Rustichello da Pisa Guivret le Petit 197, 201

Guy de Beauchamp, Count of Warwick Guy de Tours 301 – Paradis d’Amour 308 Guy of Warwick 89, 96 Guy the German 12 Hannibal 129, 133 Harley scribe 112 – 114, 116 Harpin of the Mountain 271 Hartmann von Aue 264, 272 – Iwein 272 Haveloc 96 Hebbeden, Thomas 93 Hector 59, 72, 126 f. Hecuba 136, 138 Helayne 310 Helcanor 302 Hélie de Boron 253 Henry II, King 86 f. Henry VII, King 215 Heptaméron 289 f., 294 Hercules 126, 244, 292 Hereford 87 Hereford Cathedral 87, 93 Hernaïs 22 Hernau(l)t of Orléans 11, 18, 21, 22 Hersent 315, 317, 327 – 333 Hesione 135 Historia regum Britaniae see under Geoffrey of Monmouth Historia romana see under Paulus Diaconus Historie vanden Grale see under Jacob van Maerlant Hodnet, Baldwin de 113 f. Hodnet, Maud de 113 f. Holland 159 Holofernes 68 Homer 292 Hostilian 129 Hostilius Mancinus 130 Hours of Bonne de Luxembourg 149 Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux 149 Huart de Bazentin 93 Hue de Rotelande 85, 87 f. Hugh of Constantinople, King 216 Hugh of Hungary 87

93

Index

Huguetan, Gilles and Jacques 254 – Giglan (1539) 254 – 255, 256 – 257 Hunbaut 303 Hundred Years’ War 14, 142, 150, 291 Huon de Bordeaux 70 Hystoire du Sainct Greaal, L’ see Saint Graal (1516) Iban see under Fuetrer, Ulrich Illyria 132 Ipomedon 87 f., 101 Ireland 139 Isabella of Castille, Duchess of York 93 Isabel of Portugal 201 Iseult 13, 54, 56 f., 59 f., 63, 69, 153 Iseut 281, 287 f. Isolde 9 Iwein see under Hartmann von Aue Jacob van Maerlant 159, 166 – Boek van Merline 159 – 161, 163, 167 – Historie vanden Grale 159 – 161 – Spiegel Historiael 92 Jacqueline 215, 262 Jacques de Lalaing 204 Jacques de Longuyon 77 – Restor du Paon, Le 77, 79 – Voeux du Paon. Les 77, 79, 81 Jacques de Mailles 243 Janot, Denis 231 f., 242, 246 – 248, 253 – Meliadus de Leonnoys (1533) 246 – 249 Janus Geminus 133 Jaufré 253 f., 304 Jean Andro Lyonnois 292 Jean d’Arras 295 – Mélusine 295 Jean de Bretagne, Duke see John, Duke Jean de Flixecourt 125, 139 Jean de Saintré see under Antoine de la Sale Jean II, duke of Brittany 57, 72, 75, 80 Jean le Bon 146, 149 Jeanne 49, 53, 72, 151 Jeanne de France 146

347

Jean Wauquelin 183 – Belle Hélène de Constantinople, La (prose) 183 – Belle Hélène de Constantinople, La (verse) 183 Jeaste of Sir Gawain, The 98 – 100 Jehan le Nevelon 78 – Venjance Alixandre 78 Jerome, Saint 235 Jetée, La 31 Jofroi de Waterford 125 – 139 – Gerre de Troi 125 – 139 – Regne des romains 125 – 139 John, Duke 57, 66 John, Lord Lumley 114 John of Glastonbury 108, 111, 118, 120, 122 – Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey 108, 111, 118, 122 John of Howden 91 Joseph d’Arimathie see under Robert de Boron Joseph of Arimathea 248 Jouvencel, Le (1494) see under Vérard, Antoine Joyeuse Garde 61 Juba, king of Mauretania 130 Jugurthine War 137 Julius Caesar 244, 251 Karlamagnús saga 158 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Donaueschingen 158 Kay 88 f., 100, 272 Kerrin of Orcel, King 95 Keu 36 f., 88, 197, 201, 210 Knight of the Cart 66 Lac, King 61, 94 f., 193, 195 f., 224, 237 Lady of the Lake 62, 289 La Fontaine, Michel 322 f., 326, 333 f. – Fables 322 f., 326, 333 f., 336 – L’Âne et le Chien 334 – Le Corbeau et le Renard 334 Lai de Franchise see under Deschamps, Eustache Lampatris 305 – 307 Lanceloet 172, 175

348

Index

Lancelot (1488) see under Vérard, Antoine Lancelot (1494) see under Vérard, Antoine Lancelot (1504) see under Vérard, Antoine Lancelot Compilation 158, 172, 175 f. Lancelot 9, 54 – 58, 60 – 62, 65 f., 91, 93 – 94, 147, 153, 172, 175, 196, 262, 271 f., 287 f. Lancelot-Grail Cycle 13, 86, 88, 93, 98, 107 f., 117, 120 – 122, 157, 162, 166, 169 – 171, 175, 248 Lancelot (prose) 71, 95 Langtoft 96 – Chroniques 96 Lantsloot vander Haghedochte 171 Lanval see under Marie de France Laomedon 135 Laudes 309, 311 Laudine 97, 265 – 269, 271 – 276, 278 Laurencin, Claude 283 Legier Fil 71 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Ltk. 1107 163 Leland, John 114 – 116 – Collectanea 114 Le Noir, Michel 108, 242, 248, 252 – Artus de Bretagne (1502) 238, 242 – Merlin (1505) 242 Le Noir, Philippe 242 – Merlin (1526/1528) 242 Leroy, Guillaume 186 Le Viste family 143 Limors, count of 197 f., 204, 207 f., 210 Lincoln Cathedral 97 Lion (Yvain) 92, 93, 96, 147, 261 – 279, 285, 291 f. Loathly Lady 92 Lodewijc/k van Velthem 92, 159, 160, 165, 166 – Merlijn Continuation 160 f., 163, 165, 174 f. London, British Library, C–22–c–9 215 London, British Library, MS Add. 10292 – 10294 175

London, British Library, MS Add. 36614 33 London, British Library, MS Add. 59687 240 London, British Library, MS Harley 273 120 London, British Library, MS Harley 2253 112 London, British Library, MS Harley 4971 95 London, British Library, MS Royal 10 E IV 96 London, British Library, MS Royal 12 C XII 112, 113, 116 London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XIV 95, 101 London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 101 125 Longis, Jean 257 Louis the Pious 10 Louis X, King 146, 151 Love Eternal (1943) see Éternel retour, L’ (1943) Luces rommain 244 Lucius 129, 135 Lucius Scrinius 133 Ludlow, Maud Hodnet see Hodnet, Maud de Ludlow scribe see Harley scribe Ludlow, Sir Laurence 113 Ludlows of Stokesay 113 – 116 Luke, Saint 157, 235 Lunete 181, 261 – 279 Lybeaus Desconus 96 Lydie de Gersin 322 f., 334 f. Lydie de Gersin 322 f., 334 f. Lyeux sans Pité 291 Lyon 186, 242, 253 f., 263, 283, 287, 292, 301, 304 Lyonnel 68 Mabonagrain 197, 203, 210 Macan le Brun de Cornouaille 71 Macan le Rouge 71 Macedonia 68, 75 f., 129, 132 Magdeleine 299, 301 Malory. Sir Thomas 96, 240 – Morte Darthur, Le 31, 158, 240, 244 Mambriano 290

Index

Map, Walter 87, 181, 213 Marc 62 – 71, 74, 80 Marcellus 130 Marc, King 70, 287, 291 – 293 Marcus Atilius Regulus 132 Marcus Aurelius 131, 134 Marcus Claudius Mercellus 137 Marguerite 72 f., 80 Marguerite de Bourgogne 151 Marguerite de Navarre 288 – 290, 294 Marie de France 12, 88 – Lanval 12, 88 Marie of (de) Champagne, Countess 87, 235 Marot, Clément 244 Martha 58, 70 Matrone d’Éphèse, La see under Fontaine, Jean de la Matrosne 20 f. Mauclerc, Pierre 75 Maupertuis 329, 333 Maximian 131, 137 Meleagant 272 Meleager, King 87 f. Meliador see under Froissart, Jean Meliadus de Leonnoys (1528) see under Du Pré, Galliot Meliadus de Leonnoys (1533) see under Janot, Denis Meliadus, King 247, 248 Meliadus see under Rustichello da Pisa Mélibée, Madame 290, 292 f. Melpomene 311 Mélusine see under Jean d’Arras Ménage 312 Ménard, Pierre 285 – Quichotte 285 Méridienne 293 Merlijn Continuation see under Lodewijc/k van Velthem Merlin (1498/c. 1503) see under Vérard, Antoine Merlin (1505) see under Le Noir, Michel

349

Merlin (1526/1528) see under Le Noir, Philippe Merlin 61, 101, 109 f., 159 f., 164 – 176, 308 Merlin see under Robert de Boron Milan 137 Milles et Amys (before 1507) see under Vérard, Antoine Minerve, Madam Egine 293 Moniage Guillaume, Le 28 Mons, Université de Mons-Hainaut, MS 331/ 206 33 Montaigne, Michel de 288, 302 Mordret 173 Morgadour 89, 96 Morgan le Fay 98, 173, 243 Morholt 68 Morhout 330 Morte Darthur, Le (1485) see under Caxton, William Morte Darthur, Le see under Malory, Sir Thomas Mort le roi Artu, La 171 – 174 Moyses 164 Münster, Staatsarchiv, Depositum LandbergVelen, n.s. 163 Musée Cluny see Musée national du Moyen Âge Musée national du Moyen Âge 143, 146, 289 Narbonne 16, 21, 23, 27, 129 Narcisse 293 Neoptolemus 136 Nero 68, 130, 134, 136 Neronés 68 Nestor 68 f., 126 New College, Oxford 97 Nicolas de Montreux 300 Nîmes 12 f., 18 f., 23 f. Noble 315, 325, 329, 331 f. Noire Espine, Lord of 273, 277 Noiret 325 Norhot 68 f. Noroison, Lady of 269 Northumberland 68 f. Nota Emilianense 10

350

Index

Nourry, Claude 251, 253 – 256, 304 – Giglan (1512 – 1530) 251 – 256, 257 Ogier le Danois (c. 1498) see under Vérard, Antoine Oisille 289 f., 294 Oliver of Cologne 94 – Historia Damiatina 94 Olivier de Vienne 10, 72, 215 – 218, 220, 222 – 226, 229 Olofer 68 Orable, Queen 13, 18 f., 21, 24 – 29 Orcanie 59 Order of St Anthony 254 Order of the Golden Fleece 201 Orimonde 64 Orosius 79 Oulipo 282 Ourseau 59, 74 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 82 117 – 118 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lyell 48 186 Oxford 3, 86 Paeonia 126 Palamedes 56, 136, 138 Pandragoen 164 Pantagruel 288, 304 Panurge 288 Paradis d’amour (Froissart) see under Froissart, Jean Paradis d’amour (Guy de Tours) see under Guy de Tours Paradis d’amour ou la chaste matinée du fidell’amant, Le (1606) 299 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3479 – 3480 162 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5203 149 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 98 162 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 110 168 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 112 158, 162 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 113 – 116 162

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 117 – 120 108, 162 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 363 196 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 794 164, 265 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 796 15 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 837 304 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1433 261 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1450 162 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1463 252 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1470 214, 215, 230, 231 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1497 15 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1565 149 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1567 149 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1579 330 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1822 125, 133 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12561 186 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12562 141, 145 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Y2 – 28 236 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Y2 – 332 214 Paris, Paula 321 – 323, 335 Paris, Paulin 315 f., 321, 323, 324, 333 – 335 – Aventures de maître Renart 315 – 336 Parlamente 289 f., 294 Partenopeus de Blois 88 Parzival see under Wolfram von Eschenbach Passelion 69, 73 Patroclus 126 f., 135

Index

Paulus Diaconus 125 – Historia romana 125, 139 Pèlerinage de l’âme (1499) see under Vérard, Antoine Pèlerinage de vie humaine (before 25 October 1499) see under Vérard, Antoine Pelles, King 173 Pelleus 126 Penthièvre 75 Perceforest 69 Perceforest (1528) see under Du Pré, Galliot Perceforest (1531 – 1532) 242 Perceforest 53 – 56, 58 – 62, 64 f., 67 – 71, 73 – 80, 157 f., 188, 216, 235 – 238, 242 – 249, 253, 256 Perceval 34, 41 – 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 69, 71, 85, 89 – 92, 97, 101 f. Perceval see Conte du Graal, Le under Chrétien de Troyes Perceval (1530) 257 Perchevael 92, 176 Pergamon 59, 68 Perilous Bed 66 Perlesvaus 71 Perlesvaus 107 – 112, 114, 117 – 122 Perlus 71 Permenio 79 Peronne 72 Perrault, Charles 322 Peter 164 Petit Affilé 148 Petit, Jean 108, 242, 248, 252 Petit livre d’amour, Le see under Sala, Pierre Petrarch 143, 293 – Trionfi 143, 293 Philip, King 78, 129, 146, 157 Philippe de Flandres 34 Philippe de Vigneulles 13 f., 187 f. Philippe d’Evreux 146 Philip the Good 193, 201 Philip VI, King 146 Philon 311 f. Piralius ly Jaloux 291

351

Plaisance 69, 214 Plantagenêt 75 Platin, Claude 254 f., 304 f., 310 f. Polixena 135 f., 138 Pollux 126, 128 Pompeia Plotina 134 Pompey 129, 137 Pontefract 89 Porrus 68 f. Post-Vulgate Cycle 93 Priam 68, 126 f., 138 Priande 68 Primaut 326 f., 329 Prise d’Orange, La 9 – 12, 15 f., 18 f., 21, 24, 26 – 29 Privé Danger 151 Probus 129 Prophecies of Merlin see under Geoffrey of Monmouth Proserpine 72 – 74 Publius Servilius 137 Pucelle aux Blanches Mains 310 f. Pucelle de Lis 99 Pucelle, Jean 148 Quart Livre see under Rabelais, François Queeste van den Grale 172, 175 Queste del saint Graal 108, 171, 172, 174 Quinctius Cincinnatus (Lucius) 129, 131, 135 Quintus Cecilius Metellus 137 Quintus Fabius 133 Quintus Fabius Vibulanus 134 Quintus Pompeius 130 Rabelais, François 288, 302 f. – Quart Livre 303 Rainouart 26 Rappoltsteiner Parzival 158 f. Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1473/74) see under Caxton, William Red Knight 97 Regnault et Jehanneton see under René d’Anjou Regne des romains see under Jofroi de Waterford

352

Index

Reine Berte (prose) 187 Reine Berte (verse) 187 Renart, Jean 152, 315 – 336 Renart (the fox) 315, 320, 321, 324, 325, 327, 328, 330, 333 Renaut de Beaujeu (Bâgé) 88, 253, 304, 310 – Bel Inconnu, Le 55, 88, 94, 253, 254, 304, 308 – 312 René d’Anjou 300 – Regnault et Jehanneton 300 Restor du Paon, Le see under Jacques de Longuyon Rhuddlan 87 Richard de Fournival 142 – Bestiaire d’amour 142 Richard II, King 93, 116 Richard of Normandy 12, 22 Richard of Rouen 21 f. Riche Soudoyer 37 f., 45 Rion, King 68, 168 Robert, count of Artois 93 Robert de Boron 13, 107, 159 f., 164 – 166, 169 – Joseph d’Arimathie 159 f., 166 – Merlin 159 f., 164 – 169 Rochefort, Jean 315 Roger 59 Roger Mortimer of Wigmore 113 Roland 9 f., 215 Roman d’Alexandre 76 f. Roman de Berinus 304 Roman de Brut see under Wace Roman de Cassidorus 302 Roman de Fauvel 154 Roman de Geoffroy de Maience 304 Roman de Giglan 238, 253 – 257, 302 – 311 Roman de Guillaume d’Orange (prose) 11, 13 – 16, 18, 26, 28 Roman de la Dame à la Licorne et du Beau Chevalier 141 – 154 Roman de la rose moralisé (c. 1500) see under Vérard, Antoine Roman de la rose see under Guillaume de Lorris Roman de Laurin 302

Roman de Renart 157, 315 f., 319, 321 Roman de Renart (Paulin Paris) see Aventures de maître Renart under Paris, Paulin Rome 11 f., 19, 23, 55, 76, 125, 129 f., 133 – 135, 137, 139, 171, 285, 305 Roncevaux 215 Ronsard, Pierre de 301 Rosemonde, Damoiselle 292 f. Rossignos 91, 101 Roubaud, Jacques 282, 285, 286 Rouen 299 Round Table 65 f., 92, 94 f., 101, 196, 248 f., 254, 264 Roux de le Verde Montaigne 71 Rustichello da Pisa 247, 252 – Guiron le Courtois Cycle 53, 107, 196, 214, 246, 253 – Meliadus, Roman de 238, 246 – 250, 253, 256 Sagremor le Desréé 71, 88 Saint Denis, Jean 230, 257 Saint Graal (1516/1523) 108, 238, 242 Saint Landelin, Abbey of 61 Saint Mary of Bekery 120 Sala, Pierre 85, 181, 261 – 279, 281 – 295 – Chevalier au lion 261 – 279, 283 – 280 – Epistre sur l’amytié 262 f., 278, 283 – Livre d’amitié 288 – Petit livre d’amour, Le 283 – Tristan 85, 181, 252, 262 f., 278 f., 283, 287 – 289 Salesbières 62 Sannazaro, Jacques 300, 311 – Arcadia (1504) 300, 311 Saracens 10, 12 f., 16, 28, 215 Sarban 69 Scipio Africanus 129 Scotland 85 f., 90, 93, 100 – 102, 119, 143 Sebeu, king of Brittany 64 Sebille 68 Second Continuation, The 50, 91, 99 Secré de secrés 126 f., 137 Secretum secretorum 125 Sept Sages de Rome, Les 68, 302, 304

Index

Servante justifiée, La see under Fontaine, Jean de la Servius Tullius 131 Severus Aurelius Alexander 133 Short-Nosed William see Guillaume au Cort Nes Shropshire 111, 116, 118 f. Sidney, Sir Philip 300 – Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, The 300 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 98 – 102 Sir Percyvell of Gales 97 f. Socrates 250, 262 Solomon 206 Soredamors 281 Spiegel Historiael see under Jacob van Maerlant St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury 94, 101 St Botolph’s, Boston 97 Stirling Bridge, Battle of 94 St Mary’s Enville 97 Suite-Vulgate du Merlin 160, 166, 168 – 172, 175, 176 Sulla 137 Tanree 99 Tarquin 130 f., 135 Tarquinus 302 Tavola Ritonda 158 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 129 A 10 158 Thelamon 126 Theseus de Cologne 183 f. Thibaut de Champagne 142, 289 Third Continuation see Continuation of Manessier Thomas 71, 73 Thomas d’Angleterre 13 Thomas of Lexham 93 Thomas (of Woodstock), Duke of Gloucester 93, 116 Thouars 75 Tibaut, King 25 Tiberius 133, 136 Tiecelin 334 Tom 71 Tor 68 f., 160, 306

353

Tours 12, 21 – 23, 301 Trajan 134 f. Tranquillina 133 Trèbes, Battle of 168 Tristan (1489/pre-1496/c. 1499/c. 1506) see under Vérard, Antoine Tristan 9, 13, 54, 56 – 61, 63 f., 70, 153, 248 f., 262 f., 287 – 289 Tristan (prose) 13, 37, 85, 107, 141, 157, 181, 214, 238, 242, 248 f., 252, 262 f., 278 f., 283, 287 – 289 Tristan (Sala) see under Sala, Pierre Troilus 127, 136 Trojan War 68 Tronc 56, 64, 70 f., 291 f. Troy 125 – 127, 138 f., 285 Turin, Biblioteca Reale, cod. varia 151 330 Tybert, Master 324 f. Ulpian 133 Urien 68, 264 Urpin 99 Uter 164 Uterpandragon, King

35, 42

Valerius Maximus 288 Valfondée, king of 59, 79 Vegetius 127 – De re militari 127 Veientine War 134 Vengeance Raguidel 176 Vengement d’Alixandre see under Gui de Cambrai Venjance Alixandre see under Jehan le Nevelon Venus 66, 224, 232, 265, 274, 284, 292 f. Vérard, Antoine 213 – 217, 221 f., 237, 241 f., 248, 251 – 253, 255 f., 295, 308 – Beuves de Hantonne (1499 – 1502) 214 – Chasse et le Départ d’Amours, La (1509) 294 f. – Cleriadus et Meliadice (1495) 214 – Doolin de Maience (1501) 214, 217 – Galien Rethoré (1500) 213 – 233 – Guiron (Gyron) le Courtois (c. 1503) 238, 251, 252, 255, 256

354

Index

– Jouvencel, Le (1494) 214 – Lancelot (1488) 214, 237 – Lancelot (1494) 237 – Lancelot (1504) 237 – Merlin (1498/c. 1503) 214, 242 – Milles et Amys (before 1507) 214 – Ogier le Danois (c. 1498) 214 – Pèlerinage de l’âme (1499) 214 – Pèlerinage de vie humaine (before 25 October 1499) 214 – Roman de la rose moralisé (c. 1500) 214 – Tristan (1489/pre-1496/c. 1499/c. 1506) 214, 242, 248 Verne, Jules 303 Verona 129 Vertegier 164 Vespasian 131 f., 135, 137 Vesterduriex 71 Veuve Dame 36, 47 Veuve Trepperel and Jean Janot 214, 231, 232, 242, 253 – Galien Rethoré (1512 – 1519) 214, 231, 232 Vidoue, Pierre 249, 256 Vie des femmes célèbres see under Dufour, Antoine Villon, François 3, 300 Vita sancti Wilhelmi 10 Vitellius 132, 134 Voeux de l’Épervier, Les 81 Voeux du Paon, Les see under Jacques de Longuyon Volusianus 129 Voorne, Court of 159 f. Vulcan 293 Vulgate Cycle see Lancelot-Grail Cycle Wace 95 – Roman de Brut 95 Wales 87, 108, 111, 117 f., 120 Walewein 92, 176 Walewijn 161 Walter of Henley 95 – Housebonderie 95 Wars of the Roses 240

Waterford 125 Welsh Marches 117, 119 f. William de Beauchamp 93 William of Malveisin 90 William of Orange 9 – 29 William the Lion, king of Scotland Wolfram von Eschenbach 158 – Parzival 158 Wortimer, Abbey of 61 Wrake van Ragisel 176 Wymondham, Abbey of 94 f.

90

Yder 197, 202 f., 209 f. Yder 89, 101, 197, 202 f., 209 f. Ydiers van Noyors 176 Ydoine 302 Yrienne 64, 291 f. Ysaïe 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 71, 73, 74, 80, 249 – 251, 256, 291 Ysaïe le Triste 53 – 81, 157 f., 238, 249 – 256, 290 f., 293 Ysaïe le Triste (1547 – 1566) see under Bonfons, Jean Ysaïe le Triste (c. 1522) see under Du Pré, Galliot Ysembart 59 Ysengrimus 319 Ysengrin 315 f., 322, 324, 326 – 329, 331 f., 334 Yseut 56, 63, 70, 287 Ystoryeaeu Seint Greal 108 Yvain 39, 45 f., 89 f., 92 f., 96 f., 147, 153, 181, 261 – 279, 285 f. Yvain (prose) 92 Yvain (Sala) see Chevalier au lion under Sala, Pierre Yvain see Chevalier au lion under Chrétien de Troyes Ywain and Gawain 97, 100 Zeeland 69, 159 Zélandine 69 Zemeckis, Robert 31 Zephir 56 Zouche, Elizabeth la 93