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4. Conte: Matiere and San
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4 Conte: Matiere and San Ut etiam si quid apparuerit unde sumptum sit, a/iud tamen esse quam unde sumptum noscetur appareat. - Saturnalia 1. Praef. 6 {So that if anything should reveal where it was taken from, it would nonetheless appear to be different from that from which it was known to be taken.} Conte: Lexicography, Terminology, and the Problem of Semantic Range and Specificity Auctorial commentary on sources and adaptation is, of course, difficult to interpret and evaluate. Scholars have tended to explain such commentary with their own hypotheses on the relation between the extant medieval text and its alleged sources. This is so, for example, for Bedier's reconstruction of the archetype of Thomas' Tristan, a reconstruction whose presuppositions have been called into question by new theories of romance composition.1 To elucidate as effectively as possible the process of romance invention, auctorial statements about sources where none is extant must be assessed in the light of three factors: (1) the auctorial statements in the romance itself and, sometimes, those of contemporaries about it; (2) the conception of writing in the scholastic tradition from which the romancers' art may derive and evolve; and (3) the relation between auctorial statements and the completed romance. This means that we must take into account the same historical context historians do in dealing with social and political vocabulary in their documents.2 Interpreting commentary occurs on various levels. Apparent allusions to sources, for example, require close scrutiny in order to distinguish when they 94 Copyrighted Material Conte 95 refer to actual sources and when they refer to the romance itself.3 An obvious and unequivocal example of the latter, but in language that could be construed as the former, is found in Villehardouin: "maintes hautres bonnes gens dont Ii livres ne fait mie mention" (Conquete ยง5) [many other worthy persons which the book does not mention]. As Faral points out, "Non pas un livre que Villehardouin aurait consulte et exploite, mais Ie livre meme qu'il composait: fa~on de parler habituelle des auteurs du moyen age."4 Although Benoit de Sainte-Maure refers to his sources: "Ne sai s'ert reis 0 cuens o dus, / Quar Ii Livres ne m'en dit plus" (Troie 725-26) [I don't know whether he was king, count, or duke, for the Book tells me no more about it]' this does not preclude Benoit's referring to his own book in allusions like: "Li dozime bataille iert grant, / Que li Livres retrait avant" (Troie 493-94)5 [the twelfth battle was a big one, and the Book relates it first]. Other cases are not so straightforward. For example, in Alexandre de Paris' Alexandre one reads: "Ce conte I'escripture, se la letre ne ment" (1.327)6 [this is what the written word relates, if the letter is truthful]. Does this mean that the French romance, or "I'escripture," follows a source, or "Ietre," or that "l'escripture" and "Ia letre" are synonymous for either the source or the romance itself? Any of the three readings is possible. Similarly, Marie de France provides a puzzle in the following lines: El chief de cest comencement, Sulunc la lettre e l'escriture, Vas mosterai une aventure. (Lais Gui 22-24) [At the outset I shall show you an adventure according to the letter and the writing.] The third-person subject may lead to the virtual personification of the text as the self-referential liber auctor,7 which may in fact reflect the transition from an oral narrator's voice to that of the narrator in a book.s Thus, the phrase "conte d'avanture" in the Prologue to Chretien's Erec refers to potentially all versions, good or bad, of the Erec story. Chretien's own is distinguished from all the others by being a bele conjointure. Similarly, the Prologue to Chretien's Cliges uses "conte" (8) and "estoire" (18,23) in the general sense of "tale" or "story." Further on, it states that this "roman" (see 22 note [po 208]) is one version of a "conte," (43) while the Beauvais "livre" (20, 44) he allegedly got it from is another;9 the romance-"son conte" (43 )-is drawn from the Beauvais conte, which in turn follows the estoire, or "story," whose truth is vouchsafed by the source book. Copyrighted Material [54.165.122.173] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:13 GMT) 96 Conte De la fu Ii contes estrez Don cest romanz fist Crestiens...