La Geste Francor: Edition of the Chansons de geste of MS. Marc. Fr. XIII (=256) (review)

This publication is the result of an ambitious project: to produce an edition of the complete codex Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciano, MS fondo francese XIII (=256), or V13, that will enable the modern scholar to read each of its chansons de geste in the context the compiler intended. The Introduction opens with a thorough description of the manuscript, but the inclusion of plates of the illuminations described would have been helpful. The chapter on language begins with a useful overview of Franco-Italian, supported by a map of the Italian peninsula. To contain the size of the project, the editor has limited herself to surveying and commenting on existing analyses of the language of the text; yet even that requires thirty pages. The versification is described as 'primarily rhymed decasyllables', while the analysis and table of rhymes indicate the truth of the added phrase 'with much variation' (p. 57). The contents of the codex (and edition) are as follows: Bovo d'Antona, Enfances; Berta da li pe grant; Bovo d'Antona, chevalerie; Karleto; Berta e Milone; Uggieri il Danese, Enfances; Orlandino; Uggieri il Danese, chevalerie; Macario. Family trees of Charlemagne and other families help to clarify this cycle du roi. Each text is analysed in turn and placed in a European context as the editor considers its relationship with other Italian, and then other European, versions of the same or related narrative. Given the spread of Charlemagne texts across Europe, this wider contextualization of the Franco-Italian material is useful, and significant, too, for those working on the cognate texts. These analyses also bring out the narrative patterns developed through the codex, which gives us a chronology of Charlemagne's life (Bovo being pulled in via a marriage link). The Bibliography is a little patchy (maybe a consequence of the length of time such an undertaking involves), with some recent publications missing; for example, in the analysis of Bovo there is no mention of the volume edited by Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjevic´, Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008). Overall, the range of secondary material consulted, both literary and historical, in English, French, German, and Italian, is impressive; indeed, the erudition underlying the whole discussion is considerable. The edition has been carried out along conservative principles, with minimal emendation. While the chansons de geste in the original manuscript have neither individual titles nor divisions, Morgan has made the edition more reader-friendly by starting each chanson on a new page and providing a title; continuous line-numbering reminds us that the text was written as one. Manuscript rubrics are included and any errors in their original positioning corrected. The pages are uncluttered, with only alternative readings given at the foot of the page; all other notes appear as endnotes. The edition ends with an extensive glossary, and indexes of proper names, subjects, and titles. There are always details to be criticized in such a monumental publication — the occasional typographical error, the use of the word 'novel' for a Middle English romance (p. 96), for instance — but these are trifles. This will be the standard edition of this text (or texts) for several generations, offering a major tool to scholars working in this and related fields.