CHAPTER 5. THE MATTER OF FRANCE: CAROLINGIAN AND OTHER ROMANCES The Chanson de Roland-Origin of the Chansons de Geste-Carolingian Romances in The "Chanson de Roland."-Wace tells how at the battle of Hastings the minstrel Taillefer rode into the fray singing of Charlemagne and of Roland and Oliver and the knights who died at Roncesvalles. This was the subject of the earliest of the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland, which is also in many respects the finest. It was probably finished in its present literary form during the latter half of the 11th century; the best manuscript, written in England and preserved at Oxford, dates from a century later. Though it contains a nucleus of fact, careful research has shown that in this and all the other chansons history has been completely transformed. The battle of Roncesvalles, described by the trouvère as the encounter of two mighty hosts of Franks and Saracens, was in reality a mere rearguard action, taking place in 778, in which a part of the Frankish army was set upon and defeated by the Gascon inhabitants of the mountain region between France and Spain. An elaborate plot is constructed, hingeing on the treason of Roland's enemy Ganelon, so as to make the catastrophe sound plausible without hurting patriotic feeling. Origin of the "Chansons de Geste."-The theory that the chansons grew into the extant form of continuous poems out of shorter lays composed by minstrels contemporary with or very little later than the events which they celebrated has now been exploded. They are not an historical épopée directly begotten of the events themselves; they are not types of popular epic, but imaginative works deliberately composed in order to furnish a picturesque account of certain traditional heroes. An examination of the place-names occurring in any of the chansons shows that they are all closely associated with certain pilgrims' ways and certain abbeys and other shrines where the tombs of Girard de Roussillon and other paladins were a source of revenue to the monks who preserved them. Actual persons had existed answering to the foremost heroes of the poems; but the records of their careers in the chansons are fantastic, and their actual achievements are for the most part ignored. The process of development seems to have been roughly as follows. The monkish guardians of a shrine, desirous of glorifying the relics under their charge, would put forth, perhaps in all good faith, an historical account of the founders of their abbey or the persons entombed there. This account would probably take the form of a Latin biography, such as the Vita Gerardi, relating the history of Girard de Roussillon, which corresponds in main lines to the chanson de geste known by the hero's name. The Latin life would then be converted into a metrical story for the unlearned. As M. Bédier, who has made a thoroughgoing inquiry into the origins of the whole family of chansons de geste, tersely puts it, "These fictions took the shape of a story of adventure and strife, at once religious and heroic-a chanson de geste having the distinctive features of a hagiography, the life of a saint having the distinctive features of a chanson de geste." It is worth noting that the genealogy of the Arthurian story is precisely similar. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes a Latin history, drawn largely from Bede and Nennius, who obtained their history to a large extent from Orosius; Wace and Layamon, and on the Continent Chrétien de Troyes and the rest of the chivalric poets, turned this material into the more acceptable shape of metrical romance. The supposed burial-place of King Arthur at Glastonbury even played an analogous part in the genesis of the Historia Regum Britannia to that in the chansons of the shrines containing the bones of Charlemagne's paladins. General Character of the "Chansons de Geste."-Thus the epical Matter of France, whilst it reached its maturity before the finest blossoming of the Arthurian literature, had by no means so remote an origin, although as it degenerated very ancient traditions became embedded in it, such as the Teutonic folk-tale of the dwarf Oberon (identified with Alberic of the Nibelungenlied) who plays so romantic a part in Huon of Bordeaux. Before they began to be corrupted by the taste for novelties, the chansons de geste were severely epical in spirit and style. Love was not among the prominent motives. There were no heroines. But in the more romantic poetry which succeeded them the resources of rhetorical wit are exhausted in describing the beauty of women, whom the chansons, if they mention them at all, dismiss with a single epithet. The chansons were written for men; the romances, like the modern novel, were probably meant chiefly for feminine readers. And, as Professor Wilmotte neatly puts it, “On chantait la geste; on lisait le roman." Both kinds were essentially aristocratic, in subject, sentiment, and appeal. CAROLINGIAN ROMANCE IN ENGLISH The English romances of Charlemagne and his peers represent the French romans d'aventure, the late versions or remaniements (rehandlings) that were produced when new interests-love, knight-errantry, and fantastic adventure-had adulterated the simple warlike spirit of the original chanson de geste. There are no medieval poems in English breathing the austere heroism of the old epic, unless it be Layamon's attempt to make a national saga of the story of Arthur. When the English minstrels tried their hand on the current French romances, they found the chansons and the newer continuations and remaniements forming an immense literature, from which they selected to suit the taste of their audiences. This poetic literature falls into three or four large groups, known collectively in French as (a) the Geste du Roi, the cycle of Charlemagne, comprising a number of poems from Roland to Huon of Bordeaux, composed in the 12th century; (b) the Geste de Guillaume d'Orange, a large family of romances, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, the finest single poem being the splendid Aliscans, celebrating the defeat of Guillaume near Arles in 793; (c) the cycle, mainly of the 13th century, relating to the struggles of the great nobles against Charlemagne ; and (d) the Geste des Lorrains, centering in Raoul de Cambrai. Only fragments remain of an English rendering of Roland, made in the 14th century. From the chanson Otinel, in which Roland figures, came two English poems, Duke Roland and Sir Ottuell of Spain, and a very free adaptation entitled Otuel. Rauf Coilyear is a late Scots poem of Charlemagne, composed in an alliterative rhyming metre. Rowland and Vernagu and the Sege of Melayne (Siege of Milan) tell late and extravagant stories of Roland, Charlemagne, and Archbishop Turpin. Huon of Bordeaux was Englished from late prose redactions by Lord Berners (c. 1525-33), the translator of Froissart; it was one of the most popular of all the romances, and had been expanded in a series of continuations. It is in this tale that the dwarf Oberon, king of the fairies, plays a picturesque part, inspiring one of Shakespeare's most poetical creations and also the fine epic of Wieland bearing the name of Oberon. Sir Ferumbras (c. 1380) and The Sowdone of Babylone (c. 1400) are poems in homely verse recounting the marvellous incidents of Charlemagne's wars with the Saracens and relief of Rome; they belong to the Fierabras cycle, among the latest but most popular of the French chansons. Fierabras, in a prose redaction later on, was the main source of Caxton's Charles the Grete (1485). Caxton also translated and printed (1489) a typical romance from the group relating the story of Charlemagne and his rebellious vassals, Renaud de Montauban, entitling it The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon. The earliest text of the original chanson is in alexandrines of the 12th century. Caxton used a 15th-century prose version. OTHER ROMANCES OF FRENCH ORIGIN Putting on one side for the moment the poems with classical and oriental subjects and those based on native English legends, we find many romances derived from French originals besides those that come under the Arthurian canon. Hugh of Rutland's Ipomedon was twice translated in rhyme and once in prose. There were also several translations of the popular Parthenope de Blois. The alliterative William of Palerne is a rather clumsy rendering of the highly romantic Guillaume de Palerme, the hero of which is magically transformed into a werwolf. Another story of metamorphosis originally told in Latin prose by Jean d'Arras (1387) is the romance of Mélusine, of which there is an English prose version, Melusyne, and also a rendering in seven-line stanzas, called the Romans of Partenay, drawn from a French poem in the ordinary octosyllabic couplets (c. 1400). Translation as often as not fell into the hands of professional hacks, and the stanzas are mostly not far above doggerel. But even the hack was moved to poetry by the pathos of the elfin-wife's parting from her husband Raymond, whose curiosity had brought on their heads this doom by asking the secret of her mysterious disappearances. At once she is transfigured into the likeness of a great serpent, and flies round the palace uttering dolorous cries, finally with a loud lament vanishing for ever. Adieu, wurthieste! Adieu, with all honour! When of hyr wurdes thys had made an ende. The alliterative Chevelere Assigne was a 14th-century version of the popular romance, the Chevalier au Cygne, which was afterwards reduced into prose as Helyas, Knight of the Swan, and had long currency. It celebrates the deeds of the Crusader Godefroy de Bouillon, reputed to be the son of a swan-maiden. Amis and Amiloun.-Other exceptions occurred to the third-rate quality of the native adaptations of foreign works. Perhaps no mediæval story was re-told in more numerous or more various forms than that of the old chanson de geste, Amis et Amile, which was based on a Latin life embodying a legend of the Dark Ages. The subject was the friendship between two nobles-dubbed knights of Charlemagne by the French version-friendship self-sacrificing even unto death. In the English redaction, which appeared in the 13th century, the parts of the two friends are reversed, and the central interest of the story is the passion of Belisante, daughter of the King of Lombardy, for Sir Amys. The characters of the pair are developed with no little realism, and the sensuous charm of the garden scenery amid which the intrigue goes on brings a foretaste of the Renaissance. Up her rose that swete wight, With maidens hende and free; She heard the foules great and small, Ac her heart was so hard i-brought, Belisante woos her knight with the self-abandonment to passion that came in with Chrétien de Troyes and the more sophisticated romans d'aventure, and when Amys protests his loyalty to the king she flies out upon him. That merry maiden of great renown Answered," Sir knight, thou n'ast no crown! 1 Whether art thou priest other parson? That preachest me thus here ? Thou no shouldst have been no knight Thou shouldst have been a frere ! He that learned thee thus to preach, The devil of hell I him beteach, My brother though he were ! " Thus the piece of simple hagiography has passed through the stage of hero-saga to the form of a passionate idyll inspired with the new ideals of the age of Courtly Love. 1 A monk's shaven crown. |