Floriant et Florete (review)

This is the first bilingual edition of this text, edited twice previously from a single manuscript, first by Francisque Michel in 1873 and secondly by Harry F. Williams in 1947. The first edition, printed at only 100 copies, is fairly interventionist and—according to Combes and Trachsler—betrays a certain speed of execution and a lack of precision. Williams’ edition is traditionalist, close in methodology to current practice but—again in the opinion of the editors of this edition—at fault in its at times excessive respect for the letter of the manuscript. The current editors have improved on Williams’s edition by including numerous notes that discuss the transcription and by providing an introduction that takes account of recent developments in scholarship. Combes and Trachsler look on the text’s heavy borrowings from Chrétien de Troyes and other texts—Le Bel Inconnu, Erec et Enide, the Chevalier au lion, the Conte du Graal and Claris et Laris—in a more positive light than criticism of this text has been wont to do, and interpret them as explicit intertextual echoes. At the same time, they ask—without providing an answer—at what point the variation becomes mere repetition. They emphasize—stressing that it is to this that the text owes its charm—the coexistence in the romance of vague, mythical landscapes with detailed enumeration of real place names, reflecting the hero Floriant’s mixed genealogy (his adopted mother is the fairy Morgane) and the conflicting forces that influence him. They put forward a convincing argument, based on the accuracy with which southern Italian and Sicilian place names are evoked, for a Mediterranean origin for the text and speculate on the relevance of its plot to the political situation of the Angevin kingdoms in the late thirteenth century. The translation aims at the demanding goal of combining fluency with accuracy, and on the whole succeeds, although inevitably the rhythm of the octosyllables is lost. It does, however, preserve the parataxis of the Old French sentences, as well as the use of tenses, synonyms, repetition and various elements of vocabulary, such as bliaut and lices, explained in a glossary—very useful for undergraduates—called ‘Termes de civilisation’. In summary, this is an affordable, accessible and welcome new edition of a text that deserves to be better known. It will aid the work of specialists of thirteenth-century Arthurian romance, while its copious introduction and modern French translation make it equally suitable for undergraduate courses.