Perceforest: Première Partie (review)

This new edition of the first part of Perceforest continues the edition of the romance undertaken by Gilles Roussineau since the 1980s. More importantly it replaces the partial edition of the first part of the romance published by Jane Taylor in 1979, because, as Roussineau explains, his conception of the origin and development of Perceforest into its current form is quite different from that of his predecessor. This does not prevent his expressing admiration for, or his abundant use of, Taylor’s work in his edition. The essential difference to be noted is that while Taylor saw the work as we have it as a product of the mid-fourteenth century, Roussineau views the extant version as a redaction made in the mid-fifteenth century for the court of Burgundy, of an earlier work, now lost to us except in the modernized version. His main arguments for this revised view of the work rest not on internal linguistic evidence, but on archaeological, historical and intertextual references. However, he does offer some linguistic arguments, the main one being that the work contains a number of neologisms and first attestations of words, mostly the product of translations from Latin, unacceptable in a text earlier than the fifteenth century. Many of the analogies and comparisons he deploys for situating the revision of the text in the first half of the fifteenth century at the court of Philippe le Bon of Burgundy are at least partially subjective: the parallel drawn between the ‘Compagnie du Franc Palais’ and the Order of the Golden Fleece, the use of Wild Men and Women as heraldic supporters, the analogy between the lands in the Low Countries over which Alexander the Great establishes sovereignty and those annexed by Philippe le Bon between 1425 and 1450. However, the accumulation of evidence becomes compelling and the editor has one telling archaeological argument for a revision of the text in the early fifteenth century in the persistent references to the use of the lance rest (‘arrêt de cuirasse’) added regularly to plate armour only from ca. 1400. The lengthy introduction is predominantly literary: pages LVI to CXVI offer a continuous commentary on the composition and literary qualities of the work, while pages CXLIX to CCXI present the traditional résumé of narrative content. Much of the earlier section is concerned with intertextuality linking the composition of Perceforest to both the Vulgate cycle of Arthurian romances and the fourteenth-century continuations of the Alexander romances, Les Vœux du paon and Le Restor du paon. In this context it is notable that Roussineau’s comment on the anachronistic attribution of latent Christian beliefs to Alexander fails to mention that this is already present in the ‘Paon’ cycle, and is a major feature of Wauquelin’s mid-fifteenth-century Burgundian prose adaptation of the Alexander legend. One should also note, as Michelle Szkilnik has done, the important influence of the Prose Tristan, evident in the current volumes in the reuse of the toponym Louvezerp as a personal name. In one other respect Roussineau follows Szkilnik and Taylor when he insists (pp. XXVI–XXVII) that unlike placenames from Hainault, which he seems to know at first hand, the author takes placenames in Britain at second-hand, mostly from Geoffrey of Monmouth. However, two castles chosen as sites for a tournament (§ 617), Tantalon and Scidrac, suggest local and contemporary knowledge. Although not identified by Roussineau, the former is almost certainly Tantallon Castle near North Berwick; the description of the relationship of the two castles suggests that the other would be Dirleton. Significantly both were rebuilt in palatial style at the end of the fourteenth century, so that the allusions could help fix a terminus post quem for the revision of Perceforest. The linguistic study, divided between the language of the original author in the verse sections and that of the text in the prose sections, is detailed and helpful. The edition is as competent as one expects from Roussineau, and...