Celtic Motifs in the Provençal Arthurian Romance, Jaufre: the Grail Legend Before Perceval
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
72-4627 ROOT, Martha James, 1939- CELTIC MOTIFS IN THE PROVENCAL ARTHURIAN ROMANCE, JAUFRE: THE GRAIL LEGEND BEFORE PERCEVAL. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1971 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, A XERQ\ Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan CELTIC MOTIFS IN THE PROVENCAL ARTHURIAN ROMANCE, JAUFRE; THE GRAIL LEGEND BEFORE PERCEVAL DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Martha James Root, A.B., M.A. The Ohio State University 1971 Approved hy Department of Romance Languages' PLEASE NOTE: Some Pages have in d is tin c t print. Filmed as received. UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS ACI®OWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my appreciation to my adviser, Mrs. Eleanor Bulatkin, to my parents, grandmother, and husband and to Anne Tilton and Janet Zimmerman. ii VITA November 22, 1 9 3 9 ........... Born - East Chicago, Indiana 1 9 6 1 ....................... A.B., Miami University, Oxford, Ohio I96 I-I965 ................... Teaching Assistant, Department of Romance Languages, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 196^ . M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1965-1966 ................... Lecturer, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French Literature Minor Fields: Spanish Literature Provencal Literature iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii VITA iii INTRODUCTION X Manuscript Editions Metric Form, Dialect, Localization Date of Composition Purpose of Dissertation Celtic Motifs The Qp.es ting Hero J aufre Chapter I. ARTHUR'S ADVENTURES 28 The Red Beast The Giant Bird II. THE KNIGHT JAUFRE 63 III. THE WOUND, THE WASTING AND THE LAMENT 68 IV. GENERAL COMPARISON 91 Jaufre, Chretien’s Perceval and Lug Airt, Jaufre and Peredur V. FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JAUFRE 124 The Hanging Lance The House of the Storm Enchantment The Fairy Mistress of the Underwater Otherworld CONCLUSION 166 BIBLIOGRAPHY 171 iv INTRODUCTION Manuscript Editions Among the Arthurian romances, the Provencal tale of Jaufre lias been studied very little„ The complete text exists in two manu scripts: A, in the Bibliothecjue Nationale, fr. 2164, copied at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth centuries; and B, also in the Bibliotheque Rationale, fr. 12571> copied at the beginning of the fourteenth century. There are four manuscript fragments: c, Vatican lat. 3206 , in a collection set down at the end of the fourteenth century; d, a fourteenth-century parchment at Cheltenham (Gloucester); e, a thirteenth-century parchment in the Archives du Gard at Nimes containing 527 lines, discovered in 1929 ; and f, another thirteenth- century parchment in the Archives du Gard containing 162 lines, dis covered in 1951 * Manuscript A has heen published by Clovis Brunei.1 Where A lacks a line or a page, Brunei has filled in the lines from manuscript B, using italics. Following Brunei’s edition closely is that of Rdnd Lavaud and Rdnd Nelli, which has been translated into French on facing pages.2 1 p Jaufrd, roman arthurien du XIII' sldcle en vers provenqaux, Socidtd des anciens textes frangais, 2 vol., Paris, 1949. 2 Les Troubadours: Jaufre, Flomenca, Barlaam et Josaphat, Bibliothbque europdenne, Bruges, i960 . Manuscript B, freely amended by A, was edited by I. Raynouard. 3 Wendelin Foerster and H. Breuer put out a carefully annotated edition of B with some additions from A, c and d. 4 Fragment c, comprising lines 2623-2634, 3733 -3 O18 and 7123-7973, was edited by M. Pelaez. 5 Excerpts from c were also published by H. Breuer. 6 Fragment d was published by H. Suchier. 7 Fragment e was published by Clovis Brunei and M. Gouron; 8 fragment f by the came authors.9 Several editions of various portions of Jaufre are listed in the Introduction to Brunei's work, pp. xxxii-xxxiii, and in the Intro duction of Lavaud and Kelli, pp. 29-30- Metric form, dialect and localization Manuscript A has 10,956 lines. The work is composed in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, and according to Brunei (Intro., p. xlvii), the language is closer to that spoken by the common people than to the refined poetic expression of the troubadours. He describes linguistic phenomena present in Jaufre as follows: lack of strong distinction ^Lexique roman, I (1838 ), 48-173- Jaufre, Gottingen, 1925 . 5 II canzoniere provenzale L, Studi romanzi, XVI (1921), 112-24. ^"Zum altprovenzalischen Artusroraan Jaufre," I, Zeitschrift ftir romanische Philologle, XLVI (1926 ), 411-27- 7 DenkmHler provenzalischer Literatur (Halle, 1883 ), I, 301-08. 8 "Fragment d’un nouveau mo. de Jaufre, 11 Romania, LV (I929 ), 529- 9 "Fragment d'un sixifime manuscript de Jaufre," Romania, LVII (1931), 207. between open e and closed e, absence of diphthong!zation of open e, passage of open o followed by a palatal consonant to a vowel identical to that represented by Latin u, tendency to reduce diphthongs, soften ing of the 11 and mi groups, fall of intervocalic n which has become final, and the use of the accusative forms lo and los for the dative, all of which traits were found in Catalonia and as far north as Beziers and Montpellier. However, the language is not homogeneous. Brunei points out, for example, that perfect forms of the semblec type which occur in the text were found mainly around Toulouse. The author, then, has used these different forms either consciously, to make his compos ing easier, or unconsciously, because his native language had become contaminated by other dialects. Brunei concludes that the author was Catalan or from somewhere south of the former province of Languedoc (pp. xli-xlii). Little knowledge of the author's country can be gained by an examination of place names or proper names in Jaufre, because as we shall see, the majority are Celtic in origin and have been transported from Brittany or the British Isles to the Provencal work. Thus Jaufre has as a setting not the locality of the author, but the vague and almost mythical landscape of the Arthurian romances. Date of Composition Until relatively recently Jaufre was assigned by most scholars to some time between the years 1225 and 1228 , that is, several decades later than the novels of Chrdtien de Troyes, and the work was considered a rather poor reworking of the same material. However, Rita Lejeune's articles on the dating of the romance determined the date to he around ll80, or ahout forty-five years earlier than had been previously esti mated. 10 It is believed that Chretien was in the process of writing both Le Chevalier de la charrette (Lancelot) and Le Chevalier an lion (Yvain) between 1177 or H79 an(i H 8l, having completed Erec et Enide around 1170 and Cliges about 1176. Perceval's story, Li Conte del Graal, was begun after 1181.11 Thus, according to Lejeune, three of Chrdtien's four Arthurian romances were probably not yet completed by the date she sets for Jaufre, and the author of the Provencal romance could have been familiar with only Erec and Cllgds. Lejeune even proposes Jaufre as a possible source for Chrdtien1s Li Conte del Graal. She explains similarities between Jaufre and the two intermediate works of Chretien by the prevalence and popularity at that time of the "matidre de Bretagne" from which the Arthurian romances were drawn. Thus, the matter contained in Jaufre would be parallel to, or even more archaic than that found in the works of Chretien. The episodes in Jaufre might, in some cases, be regarded as intermediate forms between "^Le jeune's articles are: "La Late du roman de Jaufrd, 11 Moyen Age, 5^-55 (19^8), 257-95> and "A propos de la datation de Jaufrd, Le roman de Jaufrd, source de Chrdtien de Troyes? ,11 Revue beige de Philologle et d'Histoire, XXXI (1953), 717-**7. In "A propos," pp. 717- 19, she lists Jeanroy, Histolre sommaire de la podsie occitane (Toul ouse- Paris, 19^5)) P* 9i|u n* 15> and others who have used as guide for the dating of Jaufre one unconvincing paragraph by Gaston Paris. H Jean Frappier, "Chretien de Troyes,11 Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959)> P° 159* early Irish and Welsh legends which contributed to the "mati&re de Bretagne," and the later Arthurian romances, including Chretien's Perceval story. Lejeune bases her argument for the earlier dating of the work on an impressive array of facts. First, she establishes that the phrases in the two accolades to the "roi d 'Aragon" fit only Alphonse II (1162-1196), and no later or earlier king. Thus, he is the patron of the author of Jaufre. A poem by Folquet de Marseille containing an al lusion, similar to one in Jaufre about the king of Aragon who makes his enemies obey, has been definitively assigned to 1179j for this reason, Lejeune assigns the composition of Jaufre to around ll8o.12 Secondly, she quotes passages from troubadour poems dated no later than 1193 to 1200 and from Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzrval, written between 1200 and 1212 , which show that the story of the hero, Jaufre, was known by this time. 14 The allusions are to a "jeune couronnS," "seigneur de Bonaventure," "chevalier de la Paix," "cavalier de Dieu," and "adver- saire de ses enemies /de Dieu/, vainqueur de ceux-ci 5 la premi&re bataille livrSe," "protecteur des troubadours." "Le roi est simple et agrSable, affectueux pour ses amis, mais plein de superbe 5 l'dgard de ses enemies, si bien qu'il se fait ainsi craindre d'eux tous" (lines 262^-30). After establishing the identity of the only possible recipient of this accolade as Alphonse II, Lejeune points out that Gtanislaw Stronski has definitively assigned to 1179 a poem by Folquet de Marseille containing a similar allusion to "lo bon rei d'Aragon...qu'als enemix vem que's fai obezir." 13 Kurt Lewent in "The Troubadours and the Romance of Jaufre," Modern Philology, XLIII, 155 j treats three references by Provencal troubadours to the Jaufre story, ll* Otto Springer, "Wolfram's Parzival," Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, p.