Les manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes: the manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes (review)

148 Reviews critical dictionary (1992), kept close at hand does not go astray. It is difficult to say whether Bums has succeeded in her stated aim of convincing m o d e m feminists to read these fascinating medieval texts or whether, preaching to the converted, she has simply confirmed feminist psychoanalysis as a versatile critical tool. Those of us still fearful of outmoded intellectual paradigms such as 'truth' and 'reality' are left with the uneasy feeling that Burns's book, like much post-modem scholarship of gender in the Middle Ages, has evaded the real woman and faded to revive the specifically medieval concepts of femininity and sexuality, in favour of a slick, fashionable attempt to link the past to m o d e m attitudes. Mae West may be good for sales but does she really add anything to our understanding of medieval gender? Fortunately for Bums, one suspects, there will be few medieval women who wiU object. Alison Moore Department of History University of Sydney Busby, Keith, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones and Lori Walters, eds, Les manuscrits de Chritien de Troyes: the manuscripts of Chritien de Troyes, (Faux titre: 6tudes de langue et literature francaises, No. 71), 2 vols, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 1993; cloth; pp. xiv, 503 and 553; 373 monochrome illustrations (vol. I), 28 colour plates and 435 monochrome illustrations (vol. II); R.R.P. HfllOOO/ US$585.50. With such an omnibus tide one expects all the works of Chretien to be covered, but on reading the avant-propos one finds that these splendid volumes are devoted to the study of each of the forty-five surviving codices which contain, complete or fragmentary, any of the five romances: Erec, Cligis, Lancelot, Yvain, and Perceval. The reader may legitimately ask at the outset for information about works that are lost or of disputed attribution. For the lost poems, such as Li rois Marc et Iseut la blonde, Li mors de I'espaule, L'art d'amors and Les commandemanz Ovide, one is obliged to carry out one's own research, starting at the dust cover enlargement of a Cligis codex and working through other photographs; for example, in volume II,figs.42, 58, 76, etc. Are there no references to these works other than in the prologue to Cligesl As for the works of doubtful authenticity, certain lyrical pieces, Philomena, Guillaume Reviews 149 d'Angleterre and the Mule sansfrein, information about then manuscripts is relegated to one page (vol. JJ, p. 256). One may question the editorial wisdom of admitting to the collection of articles and essays a discussion by Elizabeth Burin of a sixteenth-century reworking of Yvain by Pierre Sala and a paper by Keith Busby exclusively on the Continuations of Chretien's Perceval. W h y are the prose derivations of the romances not included also? Further, h o w do references to manuscripts of works by Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Jean Gower, and Christine de Pisan (vol. I, pp. 2-4) throw light on the problems of Chretien codicology? A final criticism about the contents concerns the balance of discussion allotted to thetextualtraditions and scribal activity in manuscripts of the five verse romances. Lancelot and Yvain have been neglected by essayists to the advantage of the other three. However, ah in all, there is no doubt that the scholarly features of these volumes surpass these minor detractions. The point de depart is A. Micha's, La tradition manuscrite des romans de Chritien de Troyes (1939). Each of the forty-five codices are presented in a thorough fashion in chapters by Terry Nixon dealing with shelf-mark, textual contents, physical appearance, date, localization, provenance, bibliography, and reproduction of selected folios. Even juxtaposedtextsare scrutinized and matters of propinquity arerelatedto literary trends, patronage, and the role of copyists. However, an opportunity was missed to identify or suggest codices which may have insphed Welsh, German, Scandinavian, or English adaptors of Chr6tien's texts. Perhaps others wUl plunge into this unknown and seize upon an unsuspecting manuscript. There is a reminder by Tony Hunt of his call in 1979 for a new edition of Chretien's works. The partial or complete editions of Hilka...