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Marie De France and the Tristram Legend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Grace Frank
Grace Frank*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

Chievrefueil,the shortest and perhaps the most charming of the lays by Marie de France, has troubled critics because, unlike her other poems, it seems to lack clarity. Is it not fair to assume, however, that in this instance the usual limpidity and forthrightness of Marie's narrative style may have been clouded by her modern interpreters, rather than by Marie herself? I hope to show that to her mediaeval audience the lovely lines of Chievrefueil presented no difficulties whatsoever, needed no esoteric subtleties for their understanding, and that their Old Norse translator as well as the scribes of both our surviving manuscripts readily comprehended Marie's lucid phrases.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1948 , pp. 405 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 See Edith Rickert, Marie de France: Seven of her Lays done into English (New York, 1901), p. 193; L. Sudre, Romania, xv (1886), 551; L. Foulet, ZRP, xxxii (1908), 278–80; L. Spitzer, Romania, lxix (1946), 80 ff., who cites a biblical exegesis of Genesis, xxx, 37, by Macé de la Charité to support the contrast he finds in Marie between letre and sume=écorce and moelle. For Spitzer's interpretation see also note 7, below.

2 On runes in general see the works of Helmut Arntz, Bibliographie der runenkunde (Leipzig, 1937), Die Runenschrift (Halle, 1938). For runes in England, see The Cambridge History of English Literature, I, chapt. 2. “The Lover's Message” is in The Exeter Book, ii, ed. W. S. Mackie, EETS, cxciv (1934), 192. For Irish material, Douglas Hyde's A Literary History of Ireland (1901), chapt. xi, is convenient (cf. especially p. 111); see also Revue Celtique, xiii (1892), 220. In the Egil's Saga note especially chapters 44, 72, 78 and cf. The Lay oj Sigrdrifa, The Sayings of Ear, The Lay of Skirnir, etc. Note that it is the coldre itself which Tristram cuts par mi, and that he splits the tree and squares it to make his bastun. Most modem critics imply diminutives which are not in the text. Incidentally, the European hazel, Corylus Avettana, may attain considerable size and has a tough, pliant, close-textured wood much used in the Middle Ages for making bows and crossbows, and, as is well known, the O.F. baston might be a very big stick indeed.

3 See Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, SATF (1902), i, 194 ff. The Old Norse version is here almost like Bédier's. For it and the English Sir Tristrem see Eugen Köl-bing's editions, Die Nordische und die Englische Version der Tristan-Sage (Heilbronn, 1878, 1882). Eilhart was edited by Franz Lichtenstein in Quellen und Forschungen (1877), xix; Gottfried's Tristan, by Karl Marold in Teutonia, vi (Leipzig, 1906). For the Folie Tristan d'Oxford, see Bédier's edition (SATF, 1907) or Hoepffner's (1938).

4 Warnke and Rudolf Meissner, Die Strengleikar (Halle, 1902), p. 205, agree in positing a close relationship between MS. H and the Norse version.

5 For the Old Norse version I have used the text in Leit eg sudur til landa, ed. Einar 01. Sveinsson (Reykjavik, 1944), pp. 112–4.1 should like to express here my warm thanks to Professor Stefan Einarsson for his aid in translating it and for many other helpful suggestions.

6 Because of the meaning and the emphasis throughout the passage on Tristram, I believe, with Warnke (p. 268) and G. Cohn (ZFSL 242, 1902, p. 15) that la reïne in the phrase si cum la reine l' ol dit is a dative. Grammatically, there is no objection to Foulet's translation (sur la demande de la reine), although nothing has heretofore been said of this request, nor to the Old Norse translation (remembering the words she spoke), nor to Miss Rickert's (for remembrance of her words), nor to Spitzer's (comme la reine le lui avait dit). But if one adopts the interpretation that the words to be remembered are the Queen's, then the line must refer to the Queen's conversation in the forest (et ele li dist son plaisir, etc.) and not to the lines beginning Bele amie or to the words about the honeysuckle which give the lay its title. In any case, it must be the passage about the honeysuckle that is to be commemorated in a lay so called, and these are the words that Tristram wrote (on the tablet).

7 See op. cit., p. 84: “Il n'y avait sur la baguette de coudrier comme lelre que le nom ‘Tristan,… c'était à Iseut de découvrir le sens du message, et c'est l'amour seul qui, Tristan le sait, aiguisera l'intelligence de l'amante, au point de lui faire découvrir l'image du coudrier et du chèvrefeuille … et de lui faire murmurer les deux beaux vers finaux, comme si elle les avait entendus de la bouche de Tristan.…” And pp. 87–8: “A cause de la joie de Tristan d'avoir réussi à voir son amie par le message de la baguette, joie que la reine lui avait exprimée lors de leur rendez-vous, et pour conserver les paroles telles qu'elle les lui avait dites, Tristan—-”