Li Romans d'Athis et Procelias (review)

Athis et Prophilias survives as two related but independent romances, a short version edited in the volume under review, and a long one. Alfons Hilka edited both near the beginning of the twentieth century, but his two-volume edition is incomplete. It is a more interventionist edition but the third volume that was to contain the philological and literary discussion as well as the glossary and catalogue of names was never published. The short version survives only in the Tours manuscript and one recently discovered fragment. The edition is followed by a list of rejected readings, half of which are explained in extensive notes on philological, codicological and interpretative matters. A glossary and index of proper names completes the volume. The introduction is a virtual monograph, including comparisons with the long version (also found in the notes). It contains descriptions of all known manuscripts of the two versions and editions. A plot summary completes lacunae in the Tours manuscript using the long version and the recently discovered fragment while noting divergences between the two. There follow detailed description of the language in the Tours manuscript and of the author, whom Professor Castellani locates in the eastern part of France, an analysis of the versification, and an extensive literary analysis. The latter argues for the 'orientation antiquisante du récit' (p. 74). It does so under the general headings of composition, especially how the two versions differ; authorship and date of both versions, including the short version's influence on Chrétien's Cligés and the identity of the 'Alixandre' whom both versions identify as author but whom Professor Castellani believes to be two different persons (she also rejects attribution to Alexandre de Bernay, author of the dodecasyllabic Roman d'Alexandre); sources of the ideal friendship and virtual twinning, or 'gémellité', of Athis and Procelias (the name in the short version), of the relation between friendship and love in the romances (including the 'wife swapping' motif), and of the translatio imperii et studii illustrated by the alliance with and rivalry between Rome and Athens in the plot. A select bibliography of editions and other works on the two versions concludes the introduction. This is a well-prepared edition that should incite interest in the matter of Greece and Rome written after the better-known triad Thèbes, Eneas and Troie. May we look forward to an edition of the longer version of this romance?