73-26,249 I WADDELL, Bernice Heard, 1920- I THE OLD FRENCH AUBERON: TEXT AND CRITICAL EVALUATION. I I University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I Ph.D., 1973 | Language and Literature, general ■ s J University Microfilms, A XER0\ Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan ,, i T'iSS © Copyright by Bernice Heard Waddell 1973 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE OLD FRENCH AUBERON: TEXT AND CRITICAL EVALUATION by Bernice Heard Waddell A Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages Chapel Hill 1973 Approved by: Adviser Rea' Reader BERNICE HEARD WADDELL. The Old French Auberon: Text and Critical Evaluation (Under the directionof EDWARD D. MONTGOMERY, JR.) This new edition of Auberon is based on Arturo Graf's 187 8 reading of a late twelfth-or early thirteenth- century manuscript. Graf's early work contains a number of textual errors and is generally inadequate in terms of modern philological standards. The original intent to compare Graf's text with the manuscript was thwarted because the manuscript was burned in 1904. Therefore this edition is based by necessity upon the text of Graf, and the editor has relied heavily upon her own scholarly judgment as well as reviews and comments made by scholars of the late nineteenth century in order to present a readable text of the poem. The Auberon was written as a prologue to the better known poem, Huon de Bordeaux, in order to provide background information about the magical dwarf, Auberon, who plays such a prominent role in the Huon. His genealogy is traced from Judas Maccabeus to Julius Caesar. Replete with imaginative deeds and preposterous relationships, the poem is an excellent example of the fusion of elements previously separated and more common to either the chansons de geste or the romance. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank Dr. Edward D. Montgomery, Jr., who so graciously and diligently acted as my adviser after the death of Dr. Urban T. Holmes; the other mem­ bers of my committee, Dr. George B. Daniel, Jr., and Dr. Lawrence A. Sharpe; my mother, husband, children; and Joan C. Schwarz for her cheerful endurance and skillful execution of the mechanics of this paper. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 AUBERON (TEXT) ........... 39 NOTES TO THE TEXT............................... 133 GLOSSARY ................................. 137 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.................. . . . 1^7 © iii INTRODUCTION A. Circumstances of the Present Edition This author's original intention was to prepare a critical edition of Auberon, the prologue to Huon de Bordeaux, based on MS L.II, 14, of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Torino, the only other treatment of the manu­ script having been that of Arturo Graf who published the text with a brief introduction in 1878.^ Unfortunately, MS L.II, 14, was burned in 1904.^ Therefore, the poem survives only in the reading of Arturo Graf (1848-1913), who was professor at Torino, one of the founders of Giornale della letteratura italiana, author of numerous scholarly works including Miti, leggende e superstizioni del medio evo, and several volumes of lyric poetry, for which he is best known. It is ironic to observe that his Auberon was not considered of enough importance to be ^Arturo Graf, ed., I complementi della chanson d1Huon de Bordeaux; Auberon, Testi francesi inediti tratti da un codice della Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino (Halle: Max Niemeyer Editore, 1878)— hereinafter this work shall be cited simply as "Graf." ^Information received in a letter to Professor U. T. Holmes from the director of the Biblioteca Nazionale of Torino, dated March 9, 1971. 2 included among his listed works in the Enciclopedia italiana.^ Guessard and Grandmaison who published the complete Huon did not show enthusiasm for the Auberon: Comme on le voit, ce petit poeme n'est qu'un prologue du grand Roman d *Auberon et d'Huon de Bordeaux, qui le suit immediatement dans le manu- scrit, prologue fait apres coup, mais qui n'est pas sans int£r§t. . . . II nous a paru, cependant, qu'il n'y avait plus de raison pour le publier que pour reproduire toutes les continuations du poeme de Huon de Bordeaux.1* Gautier called it a "tres-miserable ouvrage."5 Naturally Graf thought that the Auberon material was worthy of publishing. He pleads his case: Testi del tempo a cui tali complementi appartengono han tutti, sia qual esser si voglia il loro merito letterario, un' importanza che mi parrebbe ozioso di voler dimostrare; importanza filologica e storica cui noi non possiamo forse ancora, per la condizione in che naturalmente questi giovani studii si trovano, valutar tutta intera. Ma, nel caso nostro, 1 'impor­ tanza e fatta anco maggiore dalla connessione che i testi hanno con uno dei poemi piu diffusi, e poetica- mente ancora piu pregevoli, che il medio evo cavalleresco abbia prodotti.6 ^Vittorio Cian, "Graf, Arturo," Enciclopedia italiana ,(1933), XVII, 624-5. ^F. Guessard et C. Grandmaison, eds., Huon de Bordeaux (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1860), p. li. ^Leon Gautier, Les epopees franqaises, 2 erne edn. (Paris: Societe Generale de Librairie Catholique, 1880), III, 721. 6Graf, p. v. 3 A compte-rendu of Graf's Auberon by Gaston Paris 7 has been of value in preparing the present edi• ti• on. He states that the manuscript should be edited, "que tous les textes poetiques du moyen age valent la peine d'etre mis au jour,"® but he deplores the fact that Graf did not know Old French well enough to prepare a proper edition. Paris cites over a hundred errors that Graf committed Q which are "trop nombreuses et trop graves." He con­ cludes "1'edition d'Auberon atteste une inexperience que 1 'auteur perdra bientot s'il veut s'en donner la peine."-*-0 Since Graf's work is almost a century old and since, as Paris suggests, there do appear to be obvious mistakes in his reading of the manuscript, it is impor­ tant to have a modern edition of this epic-romance. B. Manuscripts and Previous Editions The Torino manuscript, containing the Auberon, the Huon, and the continuation, consists of five hundred and eighty-six folios, each having four columns— two recto, two verso.-*-■*• Missing from the manuscript are folio twenty- four because of a mistake in numbering and folio one 7Romania, VII (1878), 332-339. 8Ibid., 332. 9Ibid., 339. 10Ibid. HGraf, p. iii. hundred eighty-one which was torn out.^2 jn 174.9 Pasini gave a brief listing of some of the contents,-1-^ but scholars have generally doubted the reliability of Pasi­ ni. Therefore in 1873 Stengel compiled a thorough list­ ing of the works in the Torino manuscript, supplying quotations and analyses of the contents.^ However, con­ cerning the Auberon, he comments: "Ich hatte leider *1 e nicht die Muse, den Text zu copieren.,,x As far as is known today, Arturo Graf's edition of 1878 is the only published edition of Auberon. C. Authorship and Date The author of the Auberon, as well as of the other related works in the Torino manuscript is unknown, but Graf states that the composition was "non da una sola mano."-^ Gautier concurs, saying that the Auberon and the Huon were not written by the same person and that "le 3-2Edmund Max Stengel, Mittheilungen aus franzosischen Handschriften der Turiner Universitats-Bibliothek, (Halle, 1873), p. 11. 13Gui seppe Pasini, Codices manuscripti bibliothecae regii taurinensis athenaei . . . (Taurini, 1749), II, 472-73. •^Cf. Stengel, oj3. cit. , p. 11. •*-^Ibid. , pp. 11-38. 16Ibid., p. 31. •^Graf, p. iii. style, n'est pas le meme, non plus la versification.11 The fact that the Auberon may have been written by more than one author will be discussed later. Graf notes that the oldest work to mention the Auberon is the related poem, Huon de Bordeaux. -*-9 The date of composition of Huon de Bordeaux has been a matter of scholarly disagreement. Graf says it was written at the beginning of the thirteenth centuryGautier places it in the "second tiers du XIIIe siecle";23- Paulin Paris reasons that it was composed at the end of the twelfth century.22 Guessard and Grandmaison solve the problem diplomatically: "C'est done a la fin du XIIe siecle, de 1180 a 1200, dix ans plus t6t dix ans plus tard, si r\ q 1 ' on veut, que notre poeme, a ete compose.11 Guessard and Grandmaison used four manuscripts in preparing their edition of Huon de Bordeaux: one from Tours, two from Paris, one from Torino, but the Torino ■^Leon Gautier, Les epopees frangaises, p. 720. ^Graf, p. ix. 20Ibid. 23-Les epopees frangaises, p. 719. 22Histoire litteraire de la France, XXVI (1873), 87. 23Huon de Bordeaux, p. viii.