Le Garçon et l'aveugle: jeu du XIIIe siècle (review)

As the 'première farce de la littérature française', the famous trickster-tricked drama of Le Garçon et l'aveugle would be richly deserving of a new edition and analysis. What one finds here, however, is in essence a reprint of Dufournet's publication of 1990, which added Mario Roques's second edition of the text (1921) to the translation, introductory section (dealing with the text's dramatic and comedic potential, its successors in the following centuries and its position within the broader context of representations of the blind) and dossier of extracts containing material relevant to the introductory section that Dufournet had already published in 1982. While the series does avowedly contain a mixture of new and republished editions, it is not a little galling that neither this book nor its promotional material appear to acknowledge its genesis and, moreover, that Roques is revealed as the editor only by inclusion of his name at the end of the introductory notes (p. 128), without explicit allusion even to the publication details of the source edition. Of course, a good edition will stand the test of time, but it is still a real pity that the opportunity has not been seized to produce a new and expanded edition of this very short text, incorporating, for example, more recent study of the manuscript. Instead, the vast majority of the book is occupied by Dufournet's supporting materials, and while these have the merits that they did 25 years ago, the fact remains that research has progressed significantly since then — and certainly much further than is suggested by the four items listed in the added 'Supplément bibliographiques [sic]' (p. 119). At least a partial revision of the references would have been in order (e.g. replacing the allusion to Perrot's thesis on p. 78 with a reference to his book of 1992). The final dossier of supporting extracts, while certainly containing material of general interest, is also (as previous reviewers seemed charitably not to note) inconsistent in presenting some texts solely in medieval French, some with an accompanying translation, and others only in translation; some also lack reference to source editions, while more recent editions of the texts in question are, naturally, excluded. Yet while stasis alone would have had the disadvantages noted, the situation is worse: the manner of duplication (presumably OCR, to judge by the errors) has led to the introduction of an inexcusable plethora of mistakes (characters, digits, spacing, punctuation, etc.), which even cursory proofreading should have eliminated. While Champion's goal of producing accessible and affordable editions in this series is most welcome, this volume leaves much to be desired.