Aux origines du roman: ‘Le Roman de Thèbes’ (review)

Aimé Petit has devoted the bulk of his scholarship to the twelfth-century romans antiques: the Eneas and Troie, and above all the Thèbes. He locates the Thèbes at the borderline separating early chansons de geste and the new roman. Petit devoted his theses Naissances du roman and L’Anachronisme dans les romans antiques, both published in 1985, principally to the Thèbes and its ‘learned’ (‘érudit’, p. 22) author. He brings together in the present volume twenty-nine articles published between 1979 and 2007, only one of which appears here for the first time. The Introduction provides a useful état présent of studies on the romans antiques. The volume, therefore, builds on and adds to the 1985 publications. The articles, arranged in approximate chronological order, constitute a series of excursus that show the author’s continuing attention to the Thèbes and its place in the emergence of medieval romance after about 1150. Petit is careful to distinguish the five surviving manuscripts of the Thèbes: the earliest redaction as well as the two short versions and the two later long versions whenever reference to the different redactions and their dates is necessary. Topics discussed include the anonymous author or scribal rewriters, sources and influences, versification and style, interpolations and adaptations in the different manuscripts, sources that become resources for original invention, descriptions, vocabulary. Unfortunately, scanning, spellchecking, and proofreading have sometimes not been careful enough. For example, the diagram on page 36 has vanished; the same holds for one referred to on page 150 (n. 20). Some misspelling and ‘non-words’ in foreign languages are irritating: for instance, ‘thuthfulllead (p. 26, n. 21), ’Anhtigoné’ (p. 87), ‘aufzühlen’ (p. 110), ‘les deux vers suivants’ are five lines (pp. 131–32), an incomplete reference (p. 173 n. 3), notre for nocte (p. 204). Despite these slips, scholars will want to turn to this recueil when working on the Roman de Thèbes and its influence.