The Cycle of Guillaume d'Orange or Garin de Monglane (review)

Long acquaintance with chanson de geste studies and long service to the profession through the Société Rencesvals have enabled Philip E. Bennett to produce a model and exhaustive bibliography of the Guillaume d'Orange cycle. An Introduction briefly reviews the history of scholarship in this complex field before going on to define the terms of the project. Bennett then gives indispensable lists of abbreviations of manuscript sigla, poems, periodicals, collaborative volumes and so on, before the beginning of the bibliography proper, which is divided into four major sections: manuscript studies; editions and studies of the cycle and of groups of poems; editions and studies of individual poems; and studies of characters, topography and themes. The book ends with an index of scholars and a subject index. The kind of work carried out by Philip Bennett (and others who have published in this series) is a major service to the profession and deserves to be fully acknowledged by colleagues — and the university authorities who assess 'research output'. Philip Bennett's bibliography will henceforth be the starting-point for all studies on the Guillaume d'Orange cycle and its constituent poems. The Lorraine, Renaut de Montauban and Crusade cycles, not to mention the geste du roi, await similar attention.