This hefty volume contains much more than simply the edition and translation of the three medieval French versions of the tale of the Fille du Comte de Ponthieu (hereafter FCP) announced by the title. Where one would expect an introduction with the usual discussion of manuscripts and language, including perhaps as well a literature review or the editor’s analysis of the text, Croizy-Naquet offers a book-length study of the FCP in all its aspects (including the more typical elements of an introduction; it runs to some 300 pages of the 700-page total). Each of the three versions of the FCP then receives a critical edition and facing page translation. The whole is capped off by end materials: a glossary, an index of proper names, and a small “dossier” comprising French translations of two Japanese analogs to the FCP.
Given its length and breadth, and indeed depth, this review cannot offer a detailed critique of Croizy-Naquet’s introductory study. Unlike a monograph, where a reviewer can assess the book as a whole, this study functions as an extended introduction, which is to say it examines every aspect of the FCP from multiple critical perspectives, and incorporating the previous literature on the three versions. To summarize its contents would require more space than is feasible, even in an on-line review. Indeed, the table of contents for the introduction alone fills four pages. Although the choice to pass in review each aspect of the text one after another does lead to some repetition, it has the positive result of making each section intelligible in itself.
This reviewer found the introductory study’s integration of previous scholars’ work on the FCP commendable in its thoroughness (witness the length of the bibliography at the end of the introduction), its acumen, and its generosity. I do not want to give, however, the impression that it offers only a rehash of prior scholarship; Croizy-Naquet’s own scholarly voice is present throughout, not only in the section entitled “lectures” which offers her takes on the three versions from first a genealogical and then a gender-studies approach.
The introductory matter concludes with a presentation of the manuscripts, a discussion of the texts’ linguistic features, and a brief discussion of editorial choices. Lastly, as noted above, there is a very complete bibliography.
As for the editions and translations of the three versions, they are as thorough and as detailed as the introductory study. Variants are given in footnotes to the edition as are comments about the manuscripts, while the translations include detailed linguistic, textual, contextual, and historical footnotes. The translations mostly remain close to the original medieval French. (Indeed, Croizy-Naquet comments that “nous n’avons pas cherché à traduire le texte en fonction des critères esthétiques et stylistiques du français contemporain” (268) and then explains in more detail what she chose to retain of the texts’ style.) Overall, the translations are excellent. However, this is perhaps the one area where I would quibble a bit with some of Croizy-Naquet’s choices. In fact, I wish she had been even more literal in her translations, to help students (and researchers who do not read Old French easily) grasp the nuances of the Old French. (I do recognize that I am asking the near impossible, but the volume is so exemplary, one starts expecting perfection from the entire project.) One example: at the beginning of the long thirteenth-century version, the text uses the adjective “vaillant” to describe both the count of Saint Pol and his sister, the lady of Domart: “En icel meïsme tempore avoit un conte a Saint Pol, ki toute la contree tenoit et en estoit sires et mout vaillans hom. Il n’avoit point d’oir de sa char, dont il estoit mout dolans, mais il avoit une sereur, mout boine dame et preude femme et vaillans” (ll. 5-8). C-N translates vaillans as it describes the count as “un homme très accompli,” but as for his sister, C-N describes her as “une femme pleine de bonté, de sagesse et de vertus” (379). The reader of the translation loses the parallelism of the Old French, which is unfortunate. That said, my quibbles are just that, quibbles. Overall, the translations provide readers with an accurate, reliable text.
I had one last quibble with this volume—I thought it risked being too large, and so too expensive (and heavy), for use in the classroom. However, the volume costs only twenty-nine euros as a paperback and twenty as a pdf download: kudos to Champion, and to whoever may have provided a subvention, for making it available at a price and in formats that will encourage professors to assign it for courses, even if they do not intend students to read all three versions.