La vengeance Raguidel (review)

The entertaining Arthurian verse romance, La vengeance Raguidel, has long stood in need of a modern critical edition prepared according to rigorous scholarly principles. Although Friedwagner's 1909 text (published as volume ii of Raoul de Houdenc's Sämtliche Werke) is by no means a negligible piece of work, the discovery of another full manuscript of the romance since 1909 and much recent progress in the study of post-Chrétien verse romance make Gilles Roussineau's edition particularly welcome. Roussineau's earlier publications (mainly of Arthurian prose romances) are as definitive as editions are likely to be, and the same can surely be said of the book under review here. In the opening pages (pp. 7–37), Roussineau tackles the thorny question of the attribution of the Vengeance to Raoul de Houdenc, author of another Arthurian romance (Meraugis de Portlesguez) and several shorter works. He concludes cautiously that the two romances are probably the work of the same author. Our improved understanding of Arthurian verse romance in the decades after Chrétien de Troyes informs Roussineau's general and perceptive literary study of the Vengeance. After presenting the manuscripts (two complete and two fragments), Roussineau compares the quality of the text in Chantilly, Musée Condé 472 and Nottingham, University Library, Mi. LM. 6, before coming down in favour of the latter as a base manuscript for his edition and explaining his own editorial principles. It is a long time since I have encountered such first-rate analysis of the language of the scribe of the based manuscript and of the author in a scholarly edition. Roussineau's knowledge of the Old French language and its dialects is unsurpassed, and these sections of his introductions could serve as models for future editors. There is a useful narrative summary of the romance, and the introduction concludes with an extensive and up-to-date bibliography of scholarship on La vengeance Raguidel. The four miniatures which accompany the text in the Nottingham manuscript are reproduced in black and white before the critical text itself, with rejected readings at the foot of the page. Variants from the Chantilly manuscript and fragments are listed separately, presumably because some added text and variant passages of half a dozen lines or more would have encumbered the main text. The variants proper are followed by a complete list of the quotations from a now lost manuscript of the Vengeance known to Pétrus Borel, and published in his Trésor de recherches et d'antiquités gauloises et françoises (1655). The generous notes are mainly textual in nature, justifying interventions in the base text, and explaining and discussing cruces and obscurities. An index of proper names is followed by an exemplary glossary, which closes the volume. The text of La vengeance Raguidel produced by Gilles Roussineau constitutes a notable improvement over that of Friedwagner and will surely become standard. The edition is a pleasure to use and one looks forward eagerly to further examples of the work of this distinguished scholar.