Table Of ContentGUINGAMOR, GUIGEMAR, GRAELENTMOR, LANVAL, AND DESIRE
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A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FIVE BRETON LAYS
by
William Earl Moritz
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A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
June 1968
UMI Number: DP22520
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da ‘dP
This dissertation, written by
.........................WiU jam ..Earl. M oritz........................
under the direction of hx&....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
DO CTO R OF P H ILO S O P H Y
'Tyttceja
Dean
..................... T ~ °
Date... June. .. 1.9..6.8....................
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
PREFACE
This study began with an attempt to analyze a single
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jBreton Lay, Le Lay de Guingamor, but it soon became clear i
Ithat no treatment of this particular lay would be complete
without discussions of two other topics which have been the I
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source of almost all the critical interest Guingamor has \
received: the nature of the Breton Lay as a genre, and the
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relationship between Guingamor and four other lays—
Guigemar, Graelentmor, Lanval and Desire— which share with i
it certain names, incidents, and phrases. ;
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The focus of critical attention on both of these issues
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has been the question of originality. A twelfth-century j
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Anglo-Norman poet usually called Marie de France is univer- i
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sally accepted as the author of, among other works, a col
lection of twelve Breton Lays which appear together in one
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manuscript with a prologue dedicating these lays to an
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unnamed king. Of the group of lays analogous to Guingamor,
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^Complete information about Guingamor, the anonymous 1
lays, and Marie and her lays will be found in the Introduc- j
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(two— Lanval and Guigemar— appear in Marie's collection, and 1
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the other three— Guingamor, Graelentmor, and Desire— are
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anonymous. In view of the fact that the artistry of Marie's'
lays is highly respected, various scholars have tried to ;
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iprove either that Marie also wrote Guingamor, or that all
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:the anonymous lays, including Guingamor, are merely pale ;
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imitations of Marie's lays. |
These issues have been widely treated, and the present ;
study has no new evidence to offer, but it does offer a new ,
'approach to the material— an approach suggested by Eugene ,
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iVinaver in his address Form and Meaning in Medieval ;
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Romance. Vinaver observes that critics have been prone to
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lhandle medieval literature either as historical documents I
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,useful as evidence of social, political, and linguistic |
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phenomena, or as literary works which fail to comply with i
the standards established by the "New Criticism." To j
remedy this, Vinaver calls for a new awareness that, though j
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the particulars of taste may change, men of all ages have j
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:been intelligent and sensitive; therefore, vinaver
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Cambridge, 1966.
concludes, it behooves us to find the ways in which a given J
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work may have been meaningful in its day, regardless of our
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currently favored fashions in literary styles. j
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This study, attempting to use a method compatible with
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Vinaver's principles, will survey the criticism on
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Guingamor, finding that no previous work has adequately I
treated this poem as literature in its own right rather than!
;as an analogue or derivative of other works. Then, in the
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'second chapter, the very idea of attempting to discriminate
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between various Breton Lays on the mere basis of resem- ,
blances in plot and phraseology will be attacked by investi-!
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gating the nature of the Breton Lay as a genre. Finally, in!
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jthe third and fourth chapters, the five lays of the
Guingamor group will be analyzed, and on the basis of this
literary appreciation, the study will try to determine
whether any of these three anonymous lays might be by Marie
de France.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
[
I Page
PREFACE ii
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INTRODUCTION ............................................ 1
Chapter
I. A SURVEY OF C R I T I C I S M ......................... 17
| II . THE NATURE OF THE BRETON LAY ................ 38
III. A PLOT A N A L Y S I S ................................ 81
IV. A THEMATIC A N A L Y S I S .............................. 139
V. CONCLUSION....................................... 195
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A P P E N D I X ....................................................205
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................ 207
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INTRODUCTION
Le Lay de Guingamor is preserved in only one manu
script, which is presently in the Bibliotheque Nationale at
Paris where it is catalogued Nouvelles Acquisitions
francaises 1104.^ This manuscript, comprising seventy-nine
vellum folios written in two columns of about forty lines
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teach, begins with a title in red letters reading "Ci
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commencement les lays de Bretaigne" and ends with a similar
rubric reading "explicit les lays de Bretaigne." Each of
the twenty-four poems in this collection is headed by a
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bitle in red reading "Cest le lay de . . ." and the first
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letter of each poem xs enlarged and paxnted blue and gold.
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The earlxest descrxption of the manuscript, that by
Gaston Paris in Romania, VIII (1879), 29-33, shows it to
.'have been in the same condition then as when I examined it
jduring the summer of 1966.
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; At some time before 1878 when Gaston Paris discovered
the manuscript, two folios had been cut out following fol.
:35 and preceding fol. 36, as Paris numbered them. Thus
Le Lay des II Amanz is interrupted after 157 lines, and the
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The only illumination in this manuscript appears on the
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(first page and is unfortunately somewhat damaged. It shows
a standing man playing a vielle; to his left is a seated
(figure wearing a crown, and to his right are two other
f
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seated figures. The paint has been scraped in such a way
Lay de Bisclavret begins on fol. 36 with the line which, in 1
the other manuscript of that poem (British Museum, Harley
978), is line 233. Since the other manuscript of II Amanz
contains the equivalent of 244 lines, about 320 lines, or
exactly two leaves, are missing. Curiously, E. Margaret
Grimes, an otherwise admirably precise and scrupulous ,
editor, in describing this manuscript for her The Lays of
'Desire, Graelent and Melion (New York, 1928), p. 40, says
that the manuscript contains "Twenty-five" lays and lists
'"Aelis" between Deux Amants [sic] and Bisclaret [sic] as if i
the missing pages contained a lay of that name, and yet the
fact that she notes "(from verse 233)" behind Bisclaret
, [sic] seems to indicate that she was aware of the missing
ipages and was not trying to fill them conjecturally. The
jpossibility that Aelis might be merely a typographical or '
;other mechanical error (a misreading of "(v. 157)"?) seems
to be precluded by the mention of twenty-five lays. I was
inot able to find any evidence— indexes, records of the manu-
jscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale, or separate leaves ;
(containing anything which might be construed as "Aelis" and
;might be considered the missing pages— to suggest either
ithat there were more than two pages missing or that the
jpages contained anything except the ending of II Amanz and j
Ithe beginning of Bisclavret. The matter seems worthy of \
'notice since Grimes was usually so accurate and conscien
tious, and since "Aelis," whether it be the musical "Lay of 1
'Alice" or some lyrico-narrative poem such as is described by
;the author of Lay de L'Espine (1. 176), or some short love
jtreatise like Raoul de Houdenc's Roman des Ailes— which does
appear in one other manuscript of what are, for the most
jpar.t,-Breton Lays— would be of vital importance to the *
'whole matter of the nature of the Breton Lay as a genre (see
jbelow) .
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that the faces of all the seated figures are obscured, and
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hence the sex of the figures cannot be accurately judged,
nor the possibility be excluded that other listeners might
have been pictured merely as faces peering over the
shoulders of the three discernible figures. ■
The poem entitled "Cest le lay de Guingamor" begins in
the right-hand column of folio 23 recto and extends for 678 ■
lines to the left-hand column of folio 27 verso. This manu
script also contains the other four lays of the Guingamor
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group: Guigemar, Lanval and Desire stand together as the
first three lays in the collection (folios 1 recto to 15
verso), and Graelentmor is the next to last lay (72 recto to
77 recto). A complete listing of the contents of this manu-
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script will be found in the Appendix.
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j According to Gaston Paris, the manuscript was copied j
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around the end of the thirteenth century. It is m good
condition, and its text, taken by itself, seems quite
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regular, but a comparison of its version of the text of any
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piece with the version of the text of that same piece from ,
another manuscript reveals several distinct flaws, all
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"^paris, pp. 29-33.
