Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor ed. by David Arbesú (review)

Like so many other medieval tales, the romance of Floire and Blancheflore begins on the road to Santiago. A Saracen king, while on a raid in Galicia, captures the pregnant widow of a count. Taken to court, the pilgrim befriends his Queen, who is also expecting, and the two women give birth on the same feast day: the former to a daughter called Blancheflore, and the latter to a son named Floire. The children grow up together and eventually fall in love despite the king’s disapproval. Accusing the girl of treachery, he makes arrangements for slave merchants to transport her to Babylon, where she will be sold into a harem. The king then constructs a tomb to convince his son, who has been away at school, that Blancheflore has died. When the Queen reveals the truth, Floire vows to venture across the Mediterranean and rescue her. Arriving in Cairo, he learns that Blancheflore is being held by a cruel Emir who, every night, deflowers and slays one of his maiden slaves. After defeating one of the guards in a chess match, Floire manages to enter her chambers by hiding in a basket of roses. The reunited couple is soon after discovered and, following a trial, wise men advise the Emir to pardon them. The freed lovers return to Europe as husband and wife, and Floire becomes a Christian King.

The couple was frequently cited by medieval writers as exemplary or proverbial lovers, together with Tristan and Isolde, and celebrated paramours of Pagan mythology. Versions of their story were translated and adapted into nearly every major Western European language during the Middle Ages, including a Spanish narrative that was inserted into a copy of Alfonso X’s Estoria de España (MS. B.N. Madrid 7583, fols. 5v–50v). It is this important yet often ignored or underappreciated text that David Arbesú has brought to light with his excellent critical edition of the Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor. Scholars have traditionally distinguished between “aristocratic” and “popular” versions in Old French and theorized that both were probably derived from a now lost proto-type, composed in France sometime during the twelfth century. In aristocratic renditions, Floire is crowned King of Hungry and goes on to sire Bertha, the mother of Charlemagne. In popular retellings, he returns to Spain and becomes King of Almería, with no mention of imperial offspring. Following Patricia Grieve, Arbesú considers how elements associated with both strains can be found in a Spanish Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor. Not only does the Alfonsine version claim that Floire was both King of Almería and grandfather of Charlemagne, but more importantly it historicizes the romance within an overarching context of Muslim conquest and Christian reconquest of the Peninsula, resulting in what can aptly be characterized as a distinctive Peninsular legend.

Arbesú’s edition provides a detailed and clearly-written “Introduction” (1–47) that includes an extensive discussion of scholarship concerned with the possible origins of the story – be they Eastern, Byzantine, and/or Arabic – as well as the complex relationships between medieval and later witnesses in Spain and elsewhere. He also provides in-depth historical information together with a complete and well organized bibliography of primary and secondary works that will no doubt facilitate further studies of this classic medieval tale. The text of the edition (48–135) faithfully renders the medieval Castilian of the original with a restricted number of modernizing interventions intended to helpfully maintain orthographic consistency, expand abbreviations, and consign scribal corrections and repetitions to footnotes. Other footnotes shed light on historical contexts, mark variations that exist between different versions of the story, and insightfully comment on passages of particular interest. Useful references can be found in two indices of proper and place names (137–47). David Arbesú should be congratulated for having produced an outstanding and much needed first critical edition of the Crónica de Flores...