The Old French Auberon : Text and Critical Evaluation [PhD thesis]

154 Pages·1973·4.348 MB·English

by  Bernice Heard Waddell

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.