'Doon' and 'Tyolet': Two Old French Narrative Lays (review)

The Liverpool Online Series presents critical editions and translations of French texts in electronic form, supported by the publication of paper copies that are designed to be exact reproductions of the electronic versions, including pagination and formatting. The texts are available in PDF, requiring the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free from the Liverpool Online Series website at the following URL: www.liv.ac.uk/sml/los/. Here, one will find a list of current titles (eleven at the time of this review), those that are in preparation, and detailed instructions for navigating the site and using the editions. The obvious advantage to this publication in tandem format lies in the convenience of availability: at any given time the reader may have access to the internet, but not to the stacks of a library, or vice versa, and in either format one is assured of having the same information on the same page, a particularly useful tool when citing the text in one's own research. Burgess and Brook present the Old French narrative lays, Doon and Tyolet, with parallel English translation, followed by notes to the text and notes to the translation. In addition to their own translation of the Old French Doon, the editors offer Andrew Hamer's English prose translation (pp. 44-47) of a Norse version of the tale found in the thirteenth-century Strengleikar collection. They see Doon and Tyolet as a sequel to their previous edition of three other Old French narrative lays in the same online series, Trot, Lecheor and Nabaret (1999), all linked by the theme of a quest on the part of their heroes. After a brief general introduction that clearly outlines editorial procedures, the editors divide the book into two parts, one for Doon, the other for Tyolet. For each tale they offer a well-organized and thorough introduction that discusses its manuscript tradition, dating, authorship, structure, themes and characters, sources, and symbols and objects. This opening section also includes a helpful summary of the story. Since these texts were last edited by Prudence Mary O'Hara Tobin in Les Lais anonymes des XII^e et XIII^e siècles (1976), it would have been helpful for the reader if Burgess and Brook had been more specific about their justification for a new edition; they only mention in their General Introduction that their own editing of the single manuscript containing the lays allowed them 'either to make adjustments to the published editions or to confirm their readings'. One of the editors' most original contributions is their challenge to the traditional view that Tyolet lacks unity; Burgess and Brook show that 'the author has combined the various traditions on which he has drawn into a harmonious and effective whole'. While not exhaustive, the bibliography at the end none the less presents the most important primary and secondary sources, and refers the reader to the essential analytical bibliography on the Old French narrative lays (Burgess, 1995). The universal availability of this solid, scholarly bilingual edition in both electronic and print format significantly broadens the readership of these thirteenth-century texts.