Metrics and Textual Criticism: The Example of Froissart’s Decasyllables

Metrics and Textual Criticism: The Example of Froissart’s Decasyllables Peter F. Dembowski E DITORS AND TEXTUAL CRITICS of Old French texts can no longer plead ignorance of sound editorial principles as an excuse for the shortcomings of their enterprises. In 1979 Alfred Foulet and Mary Blakeley Speer published On Editing Old French Texts.' Habemus bibliaml In the section dealing with corrections and emenda­ tions, the authors advise us with their customary clarity and precision that: “An editor should, of course, pay strict attention to scansion, cesura, possible elision of final vowels, and the validity of rhyme or assonance” (p. 81). Further on, addressing themselves to the problem which is central in this paper, they state: “ . . . unless there is some valid reason for not doing so. . . , an editor should correct hypometric and hypermetric lines” (p. 82). Let us keep this advice in mind. On Editing is a general guide based not only on the authors’ sound erudition, but also on the truly uncommon virtue (as Pascal puts it) of common sense. A commonsensical consideration of the hemistich (rather than the whole verse) as the basic rhythmic unit, tells us that decasyllabic lines in Old French chansons de geste do occasionally become dodecasyllabic , i.e., alexandrine, lines. This happens because the poet (or, perhaps, the “creative” scribe) had in his head as he was writing (or copying) both the tetrasyllabic and the hexasyllabic hemistich: ta ta ta ta as well as ta ta ta ta ta ta.2Sometimes, as in the case of the Roland cited by Foulet and Speer (p. 82), the first ta ta ta ta becomes ta ta ta ta ta ta: L ’emperere meismes ad tut a sun talent/Cunquerrat li les teres d’ici qu’en Orient (vv. 400-01), or: Qo est ligranz dulorspor la mort de Rolant (v. 1437). We know that many decasyllabic chansons contain such occasional alexandrine lines. We also know that this construction of six syllables + six syllables (henceforth 6+ 6) should normally not be emended, but signalled in the Notes, precisely because it is a “natural” error in Old French epic poetry. Also “natural” is the decasyllabic verse with the cesura after the sixth syllable (6+ 4). Such a rhythmic division appears quite frequently in Old French decasyllables. In fact, this metric pause a majorp has occurred in chansons de geste ever since the decasyllable, that “vers roman par excel­ 90 S p r in g 1987 D em b o w sk i lence,”4 came into being in France.5 But even in the “classical” Old French chansons, the decasyllable a minori (4+ 6) has always been far more common. Its name, “ordinary decasyllable,” is thus very apt. Cognizant of this “normal” character of the a majori lines, an editor should signal (either in the textual notes, or in the prefatory study of meter) such constructions as, e.g., the following verses of Jourdain de Blaye:6Que ilfust eschapez defort prison (v. 1275), or II meismez enfu meniz chaitis (v. 3479). Here, at first sight at least, no cesura other than the one following the sixth syllable appears possible. Before going any further in our considerations of the “normal” and the “less normal” metric constructions, we should bring into focus cer­ tain basic facts concerning the “classic” Old French decasyllable, i.e., the verse used in the old chansons de geste: 1. The decasyllable is always broken by a cesura; 2. The first hemistich can end with the fourth tonic syllable, thus constituting an ordinary cesura in the ordinary deca­ syllable, or it can end with the fourth tonic syllable followed by one7 atonic feminine -e (such a feminine cesura is called an epic cesura, because this cut is supposed to be rare in lyric poetry); 3. The hemistich is a prosodic as well as a logical semantic-syntactic unit.8 In deciding, therefore, where the pause between the hemistichs should fall, we cannot ignore semantic-syntactic considerations. In other words, if the ordinary cesura falls in the midst of a real syntactic unit, it should be signaled as a textual anomaly by the editor. Thus among the overwhelmingly ordinary (4+ 6) decasyllables of Jourdain de Blaye, v...