Three remarkably engaging works have been attributed to the early thirteenth-century author known as Jean Renart: Le roman de la rose ou Guillaume de Dole; Le lai de l’Ombre; and L’Escoufle. Of these, the last is both the earliest and the least well known; at 9102 lines, it is also the longest. Previously edited by Henri Michelant and Paul Meyer [M-M] in 1894 and by Franklin Sweetser [FS] in 1974, the work has long been out of print. As the editors of this first bilingual version observe, the “literary richness of the work” (7), along with the inaccessibility of prior editions, fully justifies renewed attention to Jean Renart’s first romance.
Bragantini-Maillard and Vincensini’s 198-page introduction offers an in-depth discussion of the story, situating it within the larger corpus of thirteenth-century French romances. A codicological and philological analysis and a guide to editorial practices and translation principles, followed by a detailed bibliography, complete the presentation of the text.
The lengthy résumé of the story reveals a complex narrative, the first portion of which details the exploits of Count Richard of Normandy, who departs on Crusade, never to return home. He eventually settles in Rome as the valued friend and defender of the Roman emperor. The remainder of the romance relates the tribulations of Richard’s son Guillaume and his beloved Aélis, daughter of the emperor. When her father opposes their marriage, the young lovers flee the imperial court but become separated after an escoufle (kite) steals an alms purse containing a valuable ring. The pair must then make their individual ways in the world. Aélis earns a living by plying her needle and washing the hair of noblemen; Guillaume works in an inn as a jack-of-all-trades. The lovers are reunited after seven long years; their social status is reestablished and, at long last, they marry.
As the volume’s subtitle denotes, the editors situate L’Escoufle squarely as an “idyllic romance,” i.e., one that focuses on young love thwarted by “misalliance,” degradation of social status, and the ultimate, cathartic reestablishment of social order. At the same time, as they discuss, this is an atypical idyll, with an unusual mix of generic features: the first segment (vv. 1-1400), with its many battle scenes and depictions of soldierly bonds, derives inspiration from the chansons de Croisade; the second, built around the tribulations of the young lovers, paints a vivid picture of their experiences as working folk. Previous discussions of the work have focused primarily on the latter feature, situating L’Escoufle as a “realistic romance.” The editors delve deeply into this designation, focusing closely on its relation to “la pensée sauvage,” defined as “the traditional mytho-folkloric substrate” that undergirds narrative (45). This substrate has been intensively studied as a feature of oral versus written cultures. Critics have argued that the movement from orality towards (vernacular) literacy prioritizes rationality, a phenomenon that undercuts and eventually displaces the “wild” substrate. Hervé Martin was a particularly influential proponent of this view, as BM-V discuss. (Note that the citation to his work should read Mentalités médiévales: XIe-XVe siècle [Paris: PUF, 1996]; i.e., vol. I, not vol. II. [44, n. 2].) For the editors, the opposite is true: rational understanding does not replace the mythic substrate but instead enlivens and reinvigorates it. Jean Renart, they maintain, is among the first to promote this new form of vernacular fiction in which the idyllic, the folkloric, and the realistic play off one another.
L’Escoufle has survived in a single complete manuscript version, Paris, Arsénal 6565; it is complemented by a 160-line fragment (Brussels B-BR, ms. II 139/7), dating to the late thirteenth century. The Arsénal codex, also transcribed in the late thirteenth century, was produced in northern France and presents a mixture of regional features: western (chiefly Norman), northern and northwestern, with multiple Picard “regionalisms” appearing throughout (96). Neither M-M nor FS offers an in-depth examination of the dialectal and stylistic features of the text; the careful and substantive treatment they receive here greatly enhances the usefulness of the volume.
Included in the editors’ codicological description are notations found on the pages de garde of the manuscript. Written by cataloguers in the late eighteenth century, these have not been included in prior editions and are, in principle, a welcome addition. Unfortunately, the transcriptions, when collated with the digitized manuscript (available through the Gallica website), reveal numerous errors. In the second transcribed passage (94-95) we find: paraît (ms. paroit); colonnes (ms. colones); L’Escooufle (ms. L’Escouffle); Melior (ms. Meliore); en a cité (ms. en cite); ms. (ms. mss.); il a parlé (ms. il parle); qu’il vu (ms. qu’il a vu); duc (ms. Duc); appartenu (ms. apartenu). A marginal V. [Voir] should be added to the second paragraph (i.e., “V. l’Extrait”). The abbreviation resolved as “mnnsts [sic]” is likely “mssts,” an expanded (albeit inaccurate) form denoting “manuscrits.” One of the cataloguers states that at the time of his writing (ca. 1780), this was the only known copy of L’Escoufle, an observation that merits discussion.
Following current guidelines, BM-V claim to have edited with a light hand, emending the original text “aux seuls endroits où nous avons cru reconnaître des erreurs, mais sans tenter d’introduire une graphie uniforme” (148: “only in places where we identified errors, but without attempting to introduce uniform spelling”). An exception to this general rule is their treatment of hyper- or hypo-metric lines, which, they note, have been regularized to maintain a uniform octosyllabic count. That said, their “identification of errors” entails numerous silent emendations. A sample collation of lines vv. 2711-3314, chosen at random, reveals the following undocumented changes:
v. 2711: Ne ne doit (ms. De ne d.). FS and M-M both emend to
“Donne d.”, footnoting the ms. reading.
v. 2867: alé (ms. aler). FS and M-M both emend to “alé”; FS notes
the emendation, M-M silently emend.
v. 2993: Emendation of ms. au flui d. to “au ploi d.” is noted,
although the citation incorrectly reads a flui d. BM-V follow
M-M’s suggested “correction.”
v. 3208: Ce (ms. De); this emendation (or mistranscription) is
also silently made by FS; M-M retain De.
v. 3223: celui (ms. celi);FS emends and notes; M-M retain celi.
v. 3256: raprime (ms. raprine); FS and M-M emend and note.
“Raprime” is the form that appears in BM-V’s glossary.
v. 3314: Que c’on l. (ms. Ce con l. [with resolution of tironian
9]). FS, citing Mussafia, notes that “Que que convient mieux ici
que Ce que du ms.” (Although his ms. citation isn’t entirely
accurate, the note is nevertheless helpful.) M-M silently emend.
More significant emendations and interventions are discussed in informative, often lengthy footnotes, where salient physical features of the manuscript are also described; these include graphies not noted in prior editions and the ornate initial letters marking section breaks. The latter are also indicated in the edition by bold-faced capital letters, a practice unfortunately abandoned by Sweetser in his edition. As for diacritical marks, the editors explain that they have “systématiquement placé un accent aigu sur le e tonique final des plurisyllabes, même devant -s, pour le distinguer d’un e non accentué” (150: “systematically placed an acute accent on the final tonic e of polysyllabic words, even before -s, to distinguish it from unaccented e”). This brings a deviation from standard editorial practice: the addition of accents to -ee feminine endings (see vv. 147-148, 1073-1074, 2582-2583, etc.).
The introductory material concludes with an ample bibliography; the section devoted specifically to L’Escoufle may be usefully complemented by the on-line ARLIMA entry on Jean Renart.
BM-V’s facing prose translation into modern French opens the work to students and non-specialists. There have been two previous modern French renderings of “L’Escoufle”: André Mary’s, published in 1925 (not mentioned by the present editors) and Alexandre Micha’s from 1992. As BM-V note, Micha’s has, until now, been the only version readily available for pedagogical purposes. Both Mary and Micha, however, silently compress or omit multiple lines; the new prose version by BM-V is complete, consistent in style, and smooth as Syrian silk. Detailed footnotes provide a treasure trove of information, offering discussions of interpretive choices and explanations of cultural context. One standout is the note on “grattage,” a curious practice involving a nobleman en deshabille enjoying cooked fruit while his back is being scraped (577).
The volume concludes with an edition of the Brussels fragment, an index of proverbial expressions, an index of proper names, and an excellent 93-page glossary.
Despite the cautions noted above, this edition is, on the whole, an admirable achievement and a welcome addition to the growing corpus of bilingual editions of early medieval French texts. It is sure to spark renewed interest both in Jean Renart and in the emerging genre of what might be termed the “l’idylle sauvage.”