The old French Tristan poems: a bibliographical guide 0729300889, 8449945070, 9780729300889

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The Old French Tristan poems: a bibliographical guide

RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHIES & CHECKLISTS

RB General editors

A.D.Deyermond, J.R.Little and J.E. Varey

THE

OLD FRENCH

TRISTAN POEMS

a bibliographical guide

by DAVID J. SHIRT

Grant & Cutler Ltd

1980

© Grant & Cutler Ltd 1980

ISBN 0 7293 0088 9

1.S.B.N.

DEPOSITO

84-499-4507-0

LEGAL:

v.

739-1981

Printed in Spain by Artes Graficas Soler, S.A., Valencia for

GRANT & CUTLER LTD 11, BUCKINGHAM STREET, LONDON, W.C.2

Frederick Whitehead Scholar and Friend In Memoriam

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction

11

Abbreviations

19

I.

Bibliographies and Critical Surveys of Scholarship (Bibl)

a: b: c: d: e: f: II. a: b: c: d: e: f: g: h: i: III.

The Beroul Fragment (B) Manuscript and Critical Editions Translations Textual Comment and Exegesis Authorship The Literary Context The Feudal Context The Moral Context Narrative Structure Style

General Medieval Arthurian Literature

23 24 2) 26 Zi

and Critical Reviews of

28 35 oo 41 50 54 65 67 Wd ae

The Thomas Fragments (T) Manuscripts and Critical Editions Translations Textual Comment and Exegesis Authorship The Literary Context The Feudal Context The Moral Context Narrative Structure Style

73 75 77 78 80 98 99 100 100

The Berne Folie (BF) a: Manuscripts and Critical Editions

103

a: b: c: d: e: f: g: h: i:

IV.

Annual, Serial and Other Bibliographies — Annual, Serial and Other Bibliographies — Bibliographies of Old French Literature Annual, Serial and Other Bibliographies — Bibliographies of Tristan Literature Introductory Surveys of Tristan Literature Scholarship

The Old French Tristan poems

104 104 105 105 107 107 107

: Translations : Textual Comment and Exegesis : Authorship The Literary Context : The Feudal Context : The Moral Context : Narrative Structure

The Oxford (Douce) Folie (OF) : Manuscript and Critical Editions : Translations : Textual Comment and Exegesis

109 110 rid 111 tit 112 112 112 112

: Authorship : The Literary Context The Feudal Context : The Moral Context : Narrative Stucture hoe o 0a em o& Adc so ae @ho Style

Marie de France — Chevrefoil (Ch)

VI. : : : : :

113 116 118 120 122 126 126 Ze 128

Manuscripts and Critical Editions Translations Textual Comment and Exegesis Authorship The Literary Context

The Feudal Context : The Moral Context : Narrative Structure

0a - Style ow ao ho VIL.

: : : :

Tristan Ménestrel — Gerbert de Montreuil, Perceval (TM) Manuscripts and Critical Editions Translation Textual Comment and Exegesis Authorship

: The Literary Context oe “oOo BB Style

Vill. Tristan Rossignol in Le Donnei des Amants : Manuscript and Critical Editions : Translations : Textual Comment and Exegesis : Authorship S Oa : The Literary Context

129 130 130 130 131 131

(TR)

133 134 134 134 134

Table of Contents

IX.

The Lost Tristans? (LT) a: Chrétien de Troyes b: La Chievre c: Breri

X.

135 138 140

The Literary Prototype (LP) a: The Theory of the Literary Prototype o : The Reconstitution of the Prototype

XI.

Legendary Prehistory (Leg) : Celtic Sources and Analogues : Oriental Sources and Analogues : Germanic Sources and Analogues : Classical Sources and Analogues : Folk Myth Sources & moon : The Rougemont Thesis g: Problems of Transmission

Index of Authors and Literary Works (excluding extant O.F. Tristan Poems) Index of Scholars, Editors and Translators

146 148 154 164 167 168 168 169 170 173 a)

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INTRODUCTION Il y a encore beaucoup 4faire pour débrouiller Vhistoire poétique de Tristan (GASTON PARIS)

Since the twelfth century at least the story of Tristan and Iseut 1 has had a bewitching effect on some of the greatest European writers and artists. The course of Tristan and Iseut’s mutual passion rests on a simple paradox — the lovers become enmeshed in a calamitously irregular situation which fascinates them as much as it frustrates them, and they are fated to remain spellbound by an illicit love from which they can derive no lasting gratification, there being no earthly solution to their hapless predicament. In a curious sort of way, a similar combination of fascination and frustration is what many scholars and critics seem to have experienced when confronted with the earliest extant literary manifestations of the Tristan story in twelfth-century France. Scholars cannot help but be attracted by the compellingly enigmatic charms of the Old French Tristan poems, but the moment they start their investigations into these works they find themselves beset by a series of complex problems to which over the years there appear to have been as many possible answers as there are critics. Indeed, practically every aspect of these Old French poems has sparked off scholarly controversy at some time or other, and some of the most spectacular and acrimonious battles in the history of medieval scholarship have been occasioned by them: Nonetheless, the allure of these poems is as great today as it ever was, and criticism pours forth at an ever-increasing rate. Many of the problems by which Tristan scholars are tantalized 1For consistency, throughout this work, the spellings Tristan and Iseut are used when referring to the names of the hero and heroine of the various Old French Tristan poems although in the poems themselves there is a good deal of variation: Tristan (s) (z): T, BF; Tristrain: B; Tristram: T, Ch; Tristran (s) (z): B, T, OF, TM, TR; Tristrant: TM; other Old French works have Tristant and Tristenz. Iseut (us) (uz): B; Yseut (us) (uz): B,T, BF, TM, TR; Isode: T; Isol: T; Isolt (iz): T, OF; Isiaut: BF; Ysode: T; Ysod: T; Ysodt: T; Ysolt: T, OF; Ysoud: TR; other Old French poems have Isseut, Ysalt, Yseuls, Yseult and Isexs.

11

The Old French Tristan poems

have arisen undoubtedly because the extant Old French poems have survived in somewhat paltry manuscript conditions; in the case of Beroul and Thomas, fragments only of the original work have come down to us. The Beroul fragment, preserved in B.N.fr.2171, is notorious for the textual problems it presents, whereas the reconstruction of the ten known fragments of Thomas’s poem involves a task something akin to solving a jig-saw puzzle where more than three-quarters of the pieces are missing. Other Old French Tristan poems have been slightly more fortunate in that they have at least survived in toto although for the two Folie poems there is again only one known MS for each plus a recently-discovered fragment of the Berne poem. Even a poem as celebrated as Marie de France’s Chevrefoil has survived in only two MSS. Two other Tristan poems owe their survival to the fact that they were incorporated into other literary compositions: the episode relating the exploits of Tristan Ménestrel is found only in Gerbert de Montreuil’s continuation of Chrétien de Troyes’s Grail romance, whereas Tristan Rossignol, another episodic poem, appears in the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman poem Le Donnei des Amants. Regrettably, some Old French Tristan poems have not enjoyed even this sort of precarious survival, and one of the greatest losses to medieval literature must surely be Chrétien de Troyes’s Tristan poem. Ironically enough, very few of the extant Old French Tristan MSS are to be located in France itself. Indeed, the only MSS still in the country which seems to have put the literary seal on the fortunes of the Tristan and Iseut tale are the Beroul fragment, one MS of Chevrefoil and both MSS containing Tristan Ménestrel. The remainder of the MSS are now housed in libraries and research institutions in other countries, notably England and Switzerland. The present final resting place of many of the Old French Tristan MSS is the result of mere accident, and yet, their repartition serves to remind Tristan scholars that in the Middle Ages, the spread of the Old French poems into most countries of Medieval Europe, and the appearance of many adaptations and analogues in languages other than Old French, were an important and integral part of our European cultural evolution. At the same time, the existence in other medieval languages

of many versions of Tristan stories based on Old French originals obliges the Tristan scholar to adopt a less isolationist approach to his subject; ultimately, the Old French Tristan scholar must take a

12

Introduction

broader view of the field which transcends the confines of his own specialization. The study of the Old French Tristan poems offers an exciting and enjoyable challenge, and the prime aim of this Guide is to present in as concise, clear and easily accessible a manner as possible, an introductory guide to the vast and complex critical literature which has snowballed around these works. The desire has also been to make the bibliography comprehensive, and yet remain within the constraints imposed by strictly utilitarian considerations. As such, it is hoped that the Guide will be of use to the established scholar in the field, as well as to the researcher embarking on his career, although clearly, it is not always possible to cater for the interests of these two groups simultaneously. The history of modern Tristan scholarship could be said to begin in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In 1785 Myller published his edition of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan und Isolde, although almost a decade before this, in 1776, the appearance of

the Comte de Tressan’s Histoire de Tristan de Léonois et de la reine Iseult, an abridged and modernized version of the Tristan romance based on a 1589 printed prose compilation, seems to have launched the vogue for the Tristan stories in fashionable society. The Tristan cause was quickly taken up on this side of the Channel by Sir Walter

Scott who published his edition of Sir Tristrem in 1804. But critical awareness of and interest in the Old French poems which had originally inspired the Middie High German and Middle English derivatives did not develop so much at this period. It was not until 1835-8 that Francisque Michel made many of the Old French Tristan poems available in his Recueil, and an even longer wait was required before anything remotely resembling a reliable critical edition of the various Old French romances appeared at the beginning of this century (Bédier’s Thomas, 1902, Muret’s Beroul, 1903, Bédier and Weston’s Tristan Ménestrel, 1906, Bédier’s Folies, 1907). The first decade of the twentieth century is especially exciting and fruitful for Tristan studies. Scholars publishing during this time, the giants of Tristan scholarship, Gaston Paris, Wolfgang Golther, Joseph Bédier and Gertrude Schoepperle, have left an indelible mark. Nowadays, it is fashionable in some critical circles to dismiss much late nineteenthand early twentieth-century criticism of medieval literature as being ‘positivist’ and therefore rather quaint, but, in the case of Tristan studies, such an attitude would be quite unjustified. The impact of

13

The Old French Tristan poems

these pioneer researchers into the Old French Tristan poems has been so fundamental and extensive that it would give a seriously distorted image of the situation if they were to be excluded from a work such as this simply on grounds of age. What is more, it has become apparent that many of the hypotheses which have been advanced during the last few years, concerning in particular the legendary prehistory of the Tristan romances, owe their inspiration in part to ideas already promulgated in the second half of the nineteenth century. In some areas, Tristan scholarship is experiencing a sort of cyclical phenomenon. In order to be able to include as many entries as possible in this bibliography, marginal comments on individual items have been deliberately kept to a minimum; in any case, it seems superfluous to repeat what, in many instances, is already available in other standard reference works. Wherever possible entries are accompanied

by references to the Bibliographies of Old French Literature of Holmes (Bibl.cl) and Bossuat (Bibl.c2), as well as to the invaluable BBSIA (Bibl.d4). It is only when these reference sources fail, or are in some way inadequate, that it has been felt necessary to append any marginal remarks. The guiding principle in arranging the bibliography has been to proceed from the known, i.e. the texts, to the unknown, i.e. hypothetical reconstructions of the Tristan romance and source studies. This not only seems a perfectly logical way of presenting the material but is also intended to suggest where, in my opinion, the emphasis in Tristan studies should first and foremost really be. One of the serious flaws in the welter of critical writings which are concerned with the literary prototype (Chapter X), and legendary prehistory (Chapter XI), is that such studies are not always based on a careful

examination of the extant textual evidence preserved in the Old French poems. There are exceptions, of course, and Bédier is certainly one, but many critics investigating the problem of origins still have a tendency very often to base their work on impressionistic notions of what they think the text means or should mean. Such critics should be constantly reminded of the late Professor Frappier’s axiom: “Rien que le texte et tout le texte’. The order in which the separate Old French Tristan poems are treated in Chapters II-IX is not, however, intended to have any special implications on either a chronological or aesthetic level. The romances which have survived as separate entities (B, T, BF, OF, Ch) are dealt

14

Introduction

with before those which have survived only in other literary works (TM and TR); the chapter devoted to the lost Tristan poems (LT) is placed naturally last of all; the decision to place the chapter dealing with Beroul before Thomas was based on what was considered to be one of the less contentious aspects in the never-ending debate about the relative merits of these two authors, that of length. In Chapters II-VIII, the material is divided into several subsections, some of which may require justification and explanation: a:

b:

particulars concerning (i) the MS tradition are followed by a listing of critical editions (ii) complete and (iii) partial; a listing of translations into modern vernaculars, (i) complete and (ii) partial; contains critical works devoted to textual commentary and exegesis; in the case of Beroul where so much of this type of critical work is encountered, the listing of critical works (i) is followed by (ii) a separate line-by-line index; problems of authorship: (i) dialect (ii) date (iii) attribution; The Literary Context — material dealt with in this subsection includes studies dealing with (i) the literary sources of a given work either vernacular or Classical/Biblical/ Medieval Latin, (ii) analogues, (iii) influences, on other Old French versions, on other Old French literary works and on the plastic arts, (iv) derivatives; The Feudal Context — this sub-section includes material which deals with the question of how much a particular author reflects and is influenced in his work by contemporary social, political and material actuality, and how far this sort of realism is accompanied byarealistic portrayal of characters’ behaviour and interaction; The Moral Context — listed in this sub-section is material devoted to the study of how aparticular author depicts and analyses love, the author’s own attitude to the love affair, and how far the author’s moral preoccupations

h:

determine the aesthetic of the work; lists works in which the narrative structure of a particular poem is submitted to a critical investigation;

i:

lists works devoted to a study of style.

The overriding aim in the arrangement of the material in Chapters II-VIII is to be informative without being controversial, although it

15

The Old French Tristan poems

is realized that occasionally there is a certain amount of overlap between sections f and g; should any critics feel that their work has been either unfairly or unjustly treated by being assigned to what is thought to be an inappropriate sub-section, I can only offer my apologies. The arrangement of the entries in Chapters I, IX, X, and XI is different, and in these cases, each individual chapter is prefaced by a brief account of how the material has been analysed. Within the separate sub-sections in all chapters, the entries are in chronological order, and where two or more works in any particular sub-section belong to the same year, their order is alphabetical. A chronological method of listing has been preferred to any other since, in a work like this, it enables the user to assess fairly easily how critical trends have evolved over the years, and also to determine where critical gaps and deficiencies lie, thus stimulating new lines of enquiry. To avoid encumbering the work with numerous indices, it has been thought preferable to include, wherever appropriate, crossreferences at the end of the sub-sections in each chapter, and occasionally with individual entries. Each cross-reference is prefaced by the name of the author which is followed by an abbreviated chapter reference, by a reference to the sub-section within the chapter, and finally by a number. For example, Jonin, B.e9, refers to P. Jonin, Les Personnages féminins dans les romans francais de Tristan.... listed in full in B (=Chapter II), sub-section e (The Literary Context), item 9. To facilitate the task of locating crossreferences, the chapter and sub-section abbreviations are given in the top corner of every page.

The bibliography covers material published up to the beginning of 1978. Items which I have not seen are marked with an asterisk. The compilation of a work such as this would not have been possible without help and encouragement from many scholars and friends. In particular, I should like to acknowledge the financial assistance which I received from the British Academy in the form of a grant from the Research Fund in the Humanities. I have also benefitted from a grant from the Research Fund of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne which enabled me to consult items in other libraries in the United Kingdom. Among the individuals I should like to thank is Madame Pelou of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris who very kindly allowed me unlimited access to that library’s

16

Introduction

facilities. The staff of the Library of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and particularly Mrs L. Appiah and the Inter-Library Loan Section deserve my thanks for the patient and unflagging way in which my many enquiries were dealt with. My colleagues Miss Jean Rogers and Mr P. J. Frankis of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Dr G. N. Bromiley of the University of Durham have very kindly looked through the work and given me the benefit of their advice and experience. To Professor A. D. Deyermond I owe a special debt of gratitude for his invaluable help and guidance in the preparation of this work for publication.

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