Amplification As Gloss in Two Twelfth-Century Texts

Amplification as gloss in two twelfth-century texts: Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie and Renant de Beanjeu's Li Biaus Descouneiis A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French in the University of Canterbury by Joanne Rittey University of Canterbury 1998 5 Abstract Where does a literary text originate and how is it fonned? What are the influences at work on the writer as he produces his work and can these be perceived by the audience or reader? The focus of this study is the literary process which took place when a medieval writer wrote. This is conducted with reference to two texts representative of the period around the end of the twelfth century to the beginning of the thirteenth century: Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie and Renaut de Beaujeu's Li Biaus Descouneus. The vocabulary which I have chosen in order to approach these questions, notably antancion, gloser la lettre and the technique of amplification, highlight the awareness of fiction, or fictional creation, called for by these writers. Both Robert and Renaut are builders of stories, elucidating and expanding the material at their disposal. The original idea is conceived in the poet's mind. This is then the starting point for a construction which relies on the combination of learned literary tradition with its patterns and codes and the wealth of material derived from antecedent sources. This study demonstrates that this seemingly artificial construct is individualised through the application of poetic antancion. Despite evidence of extensive borrowing from a number of different sources, both Robert and Renaut can be credited with producing texts which exhibit an authorial perspective which departs from the original source and take a new direction. The way in which they achieve this is the subject of my research. I~UG 1999 Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction ..................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: The Antanci'on .............................................................. 5 Chapter Two: The Antecedent Sources ................................................. 39 Chapter Three: The Presence of the Author ............................................. 69 Chapter Four: The Consequences of Genre ........................................... 109 Chapter Five: The Portrayal of Character ............................................. 149 Chapter Six: Techniques of Description .............................................. 179 Chapter Seven: Techniques of Repetition ............................................... 217 Conclusion ...................................................................................249 Appendix ..................................................................................... 253 Bibliography .................................................................................291 Acknowledgements lowe a great debt to a number of people who have supported me during the writing of this thesis. To Margaret Burrell, lowe thanks for her multi-faceted role of supervisor. Her suggestions, questions, ruthless but very skilful editing and her coffee have been invaluable. I have been greatly encouraged in my work by the other doctoral students and staff in the French Department at Canterbury. Working alongside these people has been both a joy and a privilege. To Michelle Downer for her patience in assisting with formatting and final prints. To Glyn Burgess for reading and commenting on my work in its early stages. To Alison Pickering for proofreading the thesis. I thank those entities forming part of, or associated with, the University of Canterbury, which supported me financially as a research student: the Canterbury University Vice Chancellor's Committee; The Federation of University Women for the Sadie Balkind Scholarship; those responsible for the Claude McCarthy Scholarship. To my mother, my brother and my friends, who have been very very patient on a number of occasions. Thank you. Abbreviations For reasons of brevity, the following abbreviations are used in the footnotes and bibliography. BBSIA Bulletin Bibliographique de la Societe Intemationale Arthurienne MLN Modem Language Notes PMLA Publication of the Modem Language Association Introduction My project involves the close textual analysis of two late twelfth-century romances: Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie and Renaut de Beaujeu's Li Biaus Descouneiis, and a classification of the literary and generic conventions and norms found in them. Both Robert and Renaut are engaged in the art of literary manipulation. That is to say, in having recourse to certain literary techniques, they seek to engage the attention, affection, sympathy, and interest of the reader. To that extent they can be said to be shaping the way in which the reader receives and responds to their romances. The way in which the writers achieve this is through the imposition of their determining will and the subsequent manipulation of plot, process and character. This study relies on the textual evidence provided by the Joseph and the Descouneiis to support the claim that their authors were very much aware of the manipulative power of literature. For the purposes of this thesis, I have classified the author's determining will as antancion, a classification which here requires justification. This justification is the subject of the first chapter, but in terms of a preliminary discussion, an acknowledgement of Douglas Kelly and his extensive work on the function of the author in medieval romance is necessary. Over the course of my thesis I refer frequently to Douglas Kelly and, in particular, to his book, The Art of Medieval French Romance. 1 Kelly's study seeks to define artistic conceptions and methods of composition from the recorded statements of medieval poets and scribes. From these authorial interventions, Kelly proposes the documentation of the emergence of medieval French romance as the authors and their public understood it. However, the explicit statements of intent ascribed to the authors are not the only means of expressing the determining will, or antancion, of the author. The methods of composition and techniques for elucidating the central issues of a text, I group under the heading, amplification. William Ryding devotes a considerable part of his book, Structure in Medieval Narrative, to an explanation of amplification. The aim of Ryding' s essay is 'to study the structure of medieval narrative in a general way', as opposed to the specialized treatments of specific texts undertaken in other studies. Ryding sees length as being a 'matter of central importance' in terms of analysing 'the common elements of narrative structure within the medieval tradition'.2 For Ryding, 'the impulse to amplify narrative, to give it fullness and 2 magnitude, appears to have been the most important determining factor' in the development of the structural style of medieval narrative. 3 In general, according to Ryding, 'the idea of amplification was simply to make a story longer and more effective by providing more in the way of circumstantial detail,.4 Ryding makes two classifications of amplification: rhetorical and material. Ryding's explanation of rhetorical amplification resides mainly in the addition of details acquired through rhetorical conventions. As far as Ryding is concerned, medieval writers are not discerning in their amplification, and he has them amplifying all of the narrative data 'without stopping to consider the advantages of selective expansion, of developing only the dramatic portions and of summarizing matter of only secondary importance in the progress of the story,.5 This practice he compares with the original meaning of the term, as employed by the classical writers. For them, 'amplijicatio had nothing to do with lengthening a narrative, but was directed at the manner of presenting an idea, giving it grandeur and magnitude, exalting its importance or heightening its effect. But the rules for amplification, originally intended to give fullness to an exposition, were ultimately applied to narrative and came to mean spinning out the story, lengthening, widening, and heightening, stuffing it with the full complement of rhetorical devices' .6 Material amplification concerns the addition of new narrative matter, either from outside the text, in the form of episodes borrowed from other works, or from within the text through the varied repetition of previous episodes. These additions either perform the function of clarifying what has been related or act simply as a means of lengthening the narrative. Ryding's division of amplification into material and rhetorical works very well in the Vie de St Alexis to which he applies it; however, for the more sophisticated techniques used by the authors under discussion in this thesis, his classification is too simplistic. Amplification in these texts works as a unifying device in that it indicates and intensifies authorial antanci'on. Kelly and Ryding explore much that is relevant to my thesis; however, my argument will go beyond the parameters established in their discussions. In this study I have narrowed the focus as much as possible to concentrate on an examination of antanci'on and its amplification from various perspectives, and each of my chapters is devoted to one of these viewpoints. Frequently these viewpoints overlap. For instance, it is difficult to talk about antecedent sources, termed here, materia remota, without

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