The Art of Medieval French Romance

Preface

Preface ]eder Archetypus ist unendlicher Entwicklung und Differenzierung fiihig. [Every archetype is susceptible of endless development and differentiation.} -cc. lung How would or could medieval authors have addressed the problems we perceive in their works? Problems like those of source and intertextuality, of structure in its manifold modern meanings, of character psychology and individuality ? Did those problems exist for them? The answers to these questions may not be essential to modern readings of medieval works, but they are essential to historically valid readings. They may also offer a useful corrective or complement to those which are not. Romance is usually defined by reference to Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France. Although these authors are central to the art of romance, that art is comprehensible only if one draws on the other available sources, including prose romance, non-Arthurian romance, thirteenth-century verse romance , and variant versions, especially from the later Middle Ages. Deepening the context of romance as this study seeks to do, it functions not as an introduction but as a disquisition on the historically obvious and critically identifiable art of romance as it was presented to French-speaking audiences in the medieval period. To describe the art of romance as French romancers and their contemporaries do, one must rely on so-called authorial interventions. Taken together , these interventions reveal a paradigm for invention adopted and adapted principally from medieval Latin traditions. The romancers fitted the paradigm to narrative material derived from heterogeneous sources. This is especially obvious in the earlier romances. The seminal achievements of the great twelfth-century writers established romance as a recognizable genre. In the thirteenth century and after, romancers consolidated, built on, and adapted the achievements of their predecessors. I shall concentrate here on French romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Xtit Copyrighted Material x/v Preface Those who have studied romances written after 1300 may sense how incomplete my survey has been. This is to some extent unavoidable. We still lack good editions, so that serious study of these works is only now beginning . I Variant versions and adaptations of twelfth- and thirteenth-century romances that include authorial or scribal interventions lie still buried in any number of unpublished manuscripts. Still, there is enough for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to justify my study, and from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to permit discrete use of illustrations from later romances and compilations. Occasional references to romances in other languages, especially in German, suggest the critical usefulness- but not the certain validity-of the French art for the study of its counterparts in other languages. The more cogent or suggestive illustrations from French romances prior to 1300 are quoted as samples representative of all varieties of romance. I have tried to provide enough primary references in the notes to support my analyses and interpretations. An exhaustive index of all references would have been of great use to the scholar. But that would have made an already lengthy book longer still. The interested reader is referred to the appropriate documentary volumes in the Grundrifl der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (GRLMA), especially vols. IV /2, V1/2, and the forthcoming vol. VIII/2. The mass of primary material to be surveyed, sifted, and integrated into this lengthy study precludes critical discussion or debate except on the most important current issues. I have discussed controversial readings or interpretations only when absolutely necessary; some issues will no doubt surface in reviews and future work. My goal here has been to set forth what medieval romances say about how they were written and to integrate these statements into a coherent conception of the art of romance invention which those statements suggest. I have therefore also noted illustrations of the application of the art of romance as well as studies and interpretations by other scholars when these help clarify authorial interventions or when they corroborate them by practice. Terms in foreign languages appear frequently in the following pages. Although this "scholasticism" is irritating to some, it is also unavoidable. It is useful to remember that medieval words had medieval meanings which, by and large, do not fit modern usage, even if the words have not changed. For example, although roman can be rendered by "romance," the English word is not synonymous with Old French roman; the same is true of merveille and marvel. It may also be that a given word such as conjointure has no precise English equivalent. Many terms, especially technical ones in Latin, no longer...