Sir John Bourchier’s Arthur of Lytell Brytayne: its relation to the French Artus de la petite Bretagne [thesis]

249 Pages·1972·10.291 MB·English

by  Kenneth Joseph Oberembt

72-17,590
OBEREMBT, Kenneth Joseph, 1940-
SIR JOHN BOURCHIER'S ARTHUR OF LYTELL BRYTAYNE:
ITS RELATION TO THE FRENCH ARTUS DE LA PETITE
BRETAGNE. ------------------
The University of Iowa, Ph.D., 1972
Language and Literature, modern
; University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
(C) Copyright by
KENNETH JOSEPH OBEREMBT
1972
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SIR JOHN BOURCHIER'S ARTHUR OF LYTELL BRYTAYNE;
ITS RELATION TO THE FRENCH
ARTUS DE LA PETITE BRETAGNE
by
Kenneth Joseph Oberembt
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the Department of English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
January, 1972
Thesis supervisor; Professor John C. McGalliard
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Graduate College
The University of Iowa
-Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
PH.D. THESIS
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
KENNETH JOSEPH OBEREMBT
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of
Philosophy in the Department of English at the
January, 1972, graduation.
Thesis committee
21
Member
fiepaeir
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The study of the relationship between Sir John Bour-
chier's Arthur of Lytell Brytayne and its source the
French Artus de la Petite Bretagne that follows grew in­
directly out of a seminar in analytical bibliography and
textual criticism taught at the University of Iowa in the
spring semester of 1969 by Dr. Oliver Steele and Dr. Paul
Baender. To these men as well as to Dr. OM Brack, Chair­
man of the University .of Iowa Center for Textual Studies,
and to the acquisitions department of the University of
Iowa Libraries I am indebted for securing microfilm
copies of the several editions of Bourchier's Arthur and
of various manuscripts and editions of the French Artus.
The libraries that made available to me microfilms of
works important to my study— the Nationalbibliothek,
Vienna, Austria; the Universitatsbibliothek, Gottingen,
West Germany; the New York Public Library; the British
Museum; the Folger Shakespeare Library; and the Henry E.
Huntington Library— deserve thanks for prompt and courteous
attention to my requests. Dr. Oliver Steele, Dr. David
S. Chamberlain, Dr. Richard O'Gorman, and Dr. John
McLaughlin graciously have served as readers of my thesis,
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and for their annotations of my manuscript and for their
advice generally I am grateful. Most of all am I indebted
to Dr. John C. McGalliard, the supervisor of this disserta­
tion and the director of my graduate program in medieval
studies at the University of Iowa. He has always been
generous with his knowledge and his counsel.
iii
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER Is INTRODUCTION.......................... 1
Purpose of the Work ................ 1
Apologia for Arthur of Lytell Brytayne . . . 2
Methodology.................................... 18
Survey of Conclusions ....................... 37
CHAPTER Is FOOTNOTES.............................. 39
CHAPTER II: BOURCHIER'S ADDITIONS, OMISSIONS, AND
CONDENSATIONS ................................. 51
Additions.................................... 52
Chapters and Headnotes ................ 52
Long-Passage Additions ................ 54
Amplification.......................... 62
Use of Restrictive Phrases . . . 63
Clarification of Pronouns . . . . 70
Use of Transitions and Specific
Details....................... 81
Omissions.................................... 84
Deletion of Multi-Line French Passages . 94
Deletion of Patriotic References . . . 96
Condensations ................................. 98
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CHAPTER II: FOOTNOTES ............................. 104
CHAPTER III: BOURCHIER'S REVISIONS ............. 109
Mistranslations ............................. 109
Inadvertent Mistranslations ............. Ill
Deliberate Mistranslations . . . . . 124
From Casual toward Formal Direct Discourse . 137
CHAPTER III: FOOTNOTES .......................... 173
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSIONS .......................... 176
CHAPTER IV: FOOTNOTES...................... 210
APPENDIX A: A SAMPLE COLLATION OF THE FRENCH
EDITIONS OF 1493, 1496, 1509, 1514 . . . . 214
APPENDIX B: CORRESPONDENCE OF CHAPTERS AMONG THE
1555? ARTHUR AND THE 1493, 1496, 1509, 1514
ARTUS........................................... 221
APPENDIX C: NON-ORIGINAL CHAPTER HEADINGS FOR
NEW ENGLISH CHAPTERS................ 228
APPENDIX D: ORIGINAL CHAPTER HEADINGS FOR NEW
ENGLISH CHAPTERS ............................. 233
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................... 238
V
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Purpose of the Work
The purpose of the present work is to examine the
relationship between Arthur of Lytell Brytayne by Sir
John Bourchier, second Lord Berners,1 and the French
source from which it was translated, Artus de le Petite
Bretagne (or Petit Artus de Bretagne). Bourchier com­
pleted the work some time between 1520, when he assumed
the deputyship of Calais, and 1532-33, the year of his
death. Despite the date of its composition, Arthur of
Lytell Brytayne can be classed with the medieval English
romances— as it is by the editors of A Manual of the
Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, Fascicule I:
Romances2— because whatever specific redaction of the
French Artus Bourchier used as his immediate source, the
original French romance took shape in the fourteenth cen­
tury,2 although the story itself, probably, and some of
the elements within it, certainly, are of still earlier
date.4
Such a study as the one here proposed is a tradi­
tional critical endeavor, usefully applied to literary
works, like Bourchier's Arthur, that are retellings of
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2
earlier stories. Retelling, of course, does not at all
preclude independence in the treatment of plot, action,
character, setting, design, or meaning, and it is the
intent of any well-founded source study to recognize the
familial relationship that exists between the derivative
and its source, but also, to the extent that it can be
accomplished, to determine the singularity of the deriva­
tive. Such is the aim of the comparison of Arthur of
Lytell Brytayne with its French source that follows. This
study will focus upon the differences in narrative and
narrative art of Bourchier's translation with the purpose
both of assessing their effect, local and general, upon
the Little Arthur story and of determining Bourchier's
contribution to the story.
Apologia for Arthur of Lytell Brytayne
A sufficient justification for the selection of
Bourchier's Arthur as the subject for a source study is
certainly that its relationship to the Artus de la Petite
Bretagne has never been systematically and thoroughly
investigated. But there are even stronger reasons for
its selection.
One of these is the generally favorable reputation
of Sir John Bourchier's literary work. Bourchier, only a
minor figure in English literary history, was one of the
most prolific of literati in the first third of the
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3
sixteenth century. His account of Little Arthur of Brit­
tany (as distinct from Big King Arthur) was only one of
five translations he completed during his roughly thir­
teen-year tenancy in Calais, the period of his life that
he devoted in large part to literary pursuits. In addi­
tion to the story of Little Arthur he translated John
Froissart's Chronicles, the French prose Charlemagne
romance Huon de Bordeaux, Diego de San Pedro's c/rcel de
amor, and Antonio de Guevara's Libro aureo de Marco
Aurelio.5 Ordinarily such quantity would be sufficient
to guarantee Bourchier the attention of critics, but not
merely because his works are abundant have some few critics
been attentive. It is true that several of his transla­
tions, namely The Castle of Love and the Golden Boke of
Marcus Aurelius, have not found much favor with modern
critics. The testimony of W. P. Ker fairly well summa­
rizes critical opinion of them:
It is impossible to say, in our ignorance about
the shadowy character of Lord Berners, what
motives led him to these books, or whether he
really saw much good in their contrasted kinds
of vanity. . . . Both books were much in
favour, and Lord Berners ... has the advan­
tage, if that be anything, of having kept his
English readers well abreast of contemporary
literature in translating them. They were what
every one in Italy, Spain, and France was read­
ing, or wishing to read, or shamed to be sup­
posed not to have read. Most probably he cared
very little for them himself.®
On the other hand, critics have most often found reason
to praise, albeit at times guardedly, several of Bourchier's
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