and the Celtic coloring in such poems is, if not invariably, certainly more often than not, purely factitious.55 A main factor in rendering the use of the term, lai Breton, a popular literary artifice was Thomas's poem on Tristan, composed about 1170.56 Here, probably under the influence of Marie de France, that writer makes his British hero an accomplished harper who charms audiences with his lays, and so it was the example of Tristan, the most popular figure in the literature of the time, that led subsequent poets to represent their characters as singing lais bretons, or even to designate their works by that title as in the case of the French versions of Havelok and Horn, which have, of course, no connection with Brittany. Marie is the only author of genuine narrative lays 57 whose name has been preserved. We have, however, besides the collection which is unquestionably her work, a number of anonymous lays 58 of the same character, one or two of which may be also from her pen. Some of these pieces deal with the matière de Bretagne and have much the same charm of,,faerie“ the charm of wild and delicate fancy that we have noted in Marie's recognized works. So in the story of Guingamor (probably Marie's), where, after enjoying the love of a fay in the Otherworld for Three (a)hundred years, that passed like three days, the hero is allowed to return to his native land, but by disobeying the command of his mistress not to partake of mortal food, whilst there, loses both his apparent gift of immortal youth and the power to return to her or, again, in Tydorel, where a king, the son of a water 55 In the opinion of the present writer, this has been clearly established by L. Foulet in his "Marie de France et les lais bretons", Zs. f. rom. Ph., XXIX, 19 ff., 293 ff. (1905) and his subsequent articles on the lais bretons in the same journal, vols. XXX and XXXII. Cp., especially, Foulet, Marie de France et la légende de Tristan", Zs. f. rom. Ph., XXXII, 161 ff., 257 ff. (1908). 56 " 57 Le Cor by Robert Biket (Biquet) in verses of six syllables, last edited by H. Dörner (Straßburg diss., 1907), is a fabliau, and Ignaure by Renaut, also, does not belong properly to the genre. We know nothing of these authors, save their names. 58 For these lays and the critical literature relating to them see Part IV, below. sprite and a mortal mother, on being taunted once with not being human, since, in consequence of his supernatural origin, he never sleeps, learns with mortification the true secret of his birth from his mother and plunges into his father's lake, never to be heard of again. There is something suspicious in the fact that out of the seven anonymous lays that deal with the matière de Bretagne three constitute variants of themes which Marie has treated.59 The choice of themes in such cases was, doubtless, determined by her example, and, as a matter of fact, these lays, in phrasing and other matters, also, betray her influence so distinctly, indeed, that the question has been raised as to whether the authors of the pieces in question drew at all on Celtic tradition. This skepticism has included and, justly, it would seem even the beautiful Franklin's Tale of the Canterbury Tales in which a woman's honor is saved by the generosity of her lover, after she had placed herself in his power by promising him her favors, in case he performed a seemingly impossible task, which, however, he actually performs.60 Nevertheless, Tydorel, at least to say - 69 Melion is like Bisclavret; Graelent and Desiré are like Lanval. For the literature of these lays, cp. Part. V, below. Zimmer, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XIII', 1ff., has shown that the name Graelent is identical with Gradlon mur, name of a hero in early Armorican saga. Nevertheless, to my mind, Foulet, op. cit., XXIX, 19 ff., has made out so strong a case for his thesis that Graelent is essentially a combination of Marie's Lanval and Elidue that I hesitate to accept it as embodying an independent Celtic tradition. 60 Chaucer describes it as a "Breton" lay, but cp. the article, "Le prologue du Franklin's Tale et les lais Bretons", Zs. f. rom. Ph., XXX, 698 ff. (1906), by Foulet, who argued that the term is here conventional. On the other hand, the conclusions of Pio Rajna, "Le origini della novella narrata dal Frankeleyn nei Canterbury Tales del Chaucer", Romania, XXXII, 204 ff. (1903) viz., that this tale is derived from Boccaccio's Decameron, X, 5 are unconvincing. But one need not agree therefore with W. H. Schofield, "Chaucer's Franklin's Tale", PMLA, XVI, 405 ff. (1901), that Chaucer's source genuine Breton folk-tale. J. S. P. Tatlock has latterly, "The Scene of the Franklin's Tale Visited", Publications of the Chaucer Society (1914), even tried to determine the part of the coast of Brittany where the story is laid. Hesperia, Ergänzungsreihe: 8. 5 was a nothing of Guingamor, which is probably Marie's composition appears to the present writer to possess the natural magic of Celtic fancy. There is no convincing evidence that before Marie de France narrative lays existed at all in French literature. She, was doubtless, the creator of the genre 61 and her genius seems to have dominated it during the brief vogue which it enjoyed.62 61 This is Foulet's conclusion, Zs. f. rom. Ph., XXIX. 56, Apart from the fact that Le Cor by Robert Biket is really a fabliau (cp. already Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XX', 140), there is no valid ground for dating this poem earlier than Marie. Cp. the discussion of the subject by Foulet, op. cit., p. 55, note 1. As the same scholar observes, pp. 302f., the lais bretons which are first mentioned in the fabliau, Richeut (usually dated 1159, although it was in reality probably composed considerably later. Cp. Foulet,,,Le poème de Richeut et le roman de Renard", Romania, XLII, 321ff.), and to which we have allusions in Chrétien, the Roman de Troie, Horn, etc., are all lyrical, not narrative, and it was only by degrees that Marie, herself, came to use the word in the new sense. For views at variance with the one here adopted, cp. Warnke's Introduction and the literature there cited also, H. Dörner's edition of Le Cor, cited above, and Ezio Levi, "I lais brettoni e la leggenda di Tristano,", Studj romanzi editi a cura di E. Monaci, XIV, 113-246 (Rome, 1917). The only original point which Levi tries to make is that he finds in canzoni of the Countess of Dia (who died porbably in 1193) and Guittone d'Arezzo echoes of the words "Isolt ma drue, Isolt ma vie" in the Tristan lai (Thomas's Tristan). He assumes that these canzoni were too early to be influenced by Marie. The dates of both, as a matter of fact, are still uncertain. Above all, however, the similarity is so general as to have no value. 62 Interesting early testimony to the popularity of the lais is supplied by Gautier d'Arras's Ille et Galeron, 11. 928 ff., composed about 1167, or perhaps somewhat later. Cp. E. S. Sheldon, MPh., XVII, 383 ff. There, with reference to the fluctuations of love, it is said. Mes s'autrement n'alast l'amors, Nel prisaissent tot li baron. Equally emphatic is the testimony on this subject in Denis Pyramus's La vie St. Edmund le rei, 11. 35 ff. (ed. F. L. Ravenel, Philadelphia, 1906) quoted by Warnke, p. XXXVI. Denis's poem dates, it would seem, from the last decade of the twelfth century. 2. The Romances. We have been dealing so far with the lays, but the problem of the origin of the romances 63 more especially the question of their relation to Celtic tradition is essentially the same, notwithstanding the position which has sometimes been taken that it is different. The fact, however, that most of the lays do not mention Arthur and his knights does not alter the case; for the most distinctive features of these romances still remain of the same general character as in the case of the lays. Take, for instance, the magic fountain at the beginning of Chrétien's Yvain, whose waters, if dropped on the neighboring stone, raise the storm, whereupon a strange knight rushes forth to encounter the offender, or the search of Lancelot for Guinevere in the land from which no one returns in the same writer's Lancelot, or Perceval's adventures at Arthur's court in the Conte del Graal. We move in the same world of romance and marvel in each genre 64 63 only, in On the development of the meaning of the word, "romance", cp., especially, P. Voelker, "Die Bedeutungsentwickelung des Wortes Roman", Zs. f. rom. Ph., X, 485 ff. (1887). It (OFr. "romanz") was used first in the sense of "a book in the vernacular" (earliest example noted is in Samson de Nanteuil's Dits Salamon in the forties of the twelfth century) - but only of translations from the Latin. Wace, Roman de Rou, Part III, 11. 5331f. (H. Andresen's edition), was the first writer, as far as we know, to drop this restriction. In the second half of the twelfth century, the term is applied to what we call "romances", but is, also, employed of chronicles, and continues to be employed of such works down into the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, the meaning "fictitious narrative" predominates from the thirteenth century on. W. Meyer-Lübke, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XLIV1, pp. 131f., (1916) draws attention to Chrétien's contrasted use of conte (short narrative) and romanz in Cliges, 11. 22 f. But the poet does not consistently maintain this distinction. Cp. the titles of his romances: Conte de la Charette, Conte del Graal. 64 espe It has been maintained by certain Arthurian scholars cially by G. Paris, Histoire littéraire de la France, XXX, 9 (1888), E. Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XX', 151 (1898) and with unessential differences, J. L. Weston, Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac, pp. 20, 66 ff. (1901) that the romances were, in the first instance, made up of a combination of lays. The theory is similar to the case of the romances, the Arthurization is not limited to a few superficial details as in the Arthurized lays, but is thorough-going. Similarly, the adaptation of these motifs to the conditions of feudal society is even more drastic in the case of the romances. Now, in view of what has been said about the lays there can be no reasonable doubt that Brittany was one source of whatever is Celtic in the romances of Chrétien and his followers. One may go further and assert that the historical conditions render this part of the Celtic territory a far more likely source of that element in the romances than Great Britain could ever be. The emigration to Armorica of the Britons who fled from Great Britain under the pressure of Anglo-Saxon invasion was in progress during the fifth and sixth centuries so from this early period they were in constant contact with their neighbors in Gaul. Especially close were their relations with Normandy. Indeed, from the first part of the tenth century the Bretons were vassals of the Norman duke and intermarriages between the reigning houses of the two states testify to the intimacy of the intercourse which existed between them. By the tenth century the portion of Brittany which was closest to Normandy was thoroughly assimilated to Norman-French civilization and there was a considerable zone in which, to a large extent, the population was bilingual. Under these conditions, of Histoire Poétique de with regard to the thought, sprang from often, to be sure, that which Paris maintained e. g., in his Charlemagne, pp. 11f., 69 ff. (Paris, 1905) origin of the chansons de geste. These, too, he the combination of shorter pieces (cantilenae) completely transformed. We have here, of course, the familiar theory of epic origins which was first applied to the Homeric poems in the latter part of the eighteenth century (the so-called Wolfian theory) and afterwards to the mediaeval epics. This theory, as applied to the latter, however, to say nothing of the Greek has latterly become so generally discredited that there is no need of our discussing here its application to the romances. Cp. Bédier's Les Légendes Epiques, with reference to the chansons de geste. For supposed influence of the Greek romances on the Arthurian romances especially, in structural matters - through the intermediation of the Crusaders, cp. W. J. Courthope, "The Connexion between Ancient and Modern Romance", Proceedings of the British Academy for 1911-1912, pp. 245 ff. The theory, however, has no sound basis. |