Untitled - Monoskop

Sibylle' (CH 1522, i). 1 The
RANGE OF INTERESTS: ANALYSIS BY SUBJECT
most celebrated collection of short stories, Les cent
nouvelles nouvelles, sometimes attributed mistakenly to Antoine de La Sale, had
been published by Antoine Verard in i486. 2 The novel and the short story had
not yet, however, become the literary forms most cultivated by ambitious
authors. The prose romance, ancestor of the novel, was certainly very
popular. So much of it had indeed been inherited from the past, in a state still
useable or adaptable for early sixteenth-century readers to enjoy, that it was
hardly realised until the success of Nicolas de Herberary with Amadis de Gaule
in 1540 what a public there would be for a well-written story composed (it is
virtually an original composition) purposely for contemporary taste.
And so from 1478 onwards a very large number of the most popular
romances were printed, some of them, like Les Quatrefilz Aymon, over and over
again. At least three new ones were composed in the chivalrous manner, and
all obtained privileges: Les excellentes cronicques du prince Judas Machabeus, by
Charles de Saint-Gelais (CH 1514, 4), adapted from the biblical story; La
conqueste du trespuissant empire de Trebisonde, a sequel to Les quatre filz Aymon
arranged by an anonymous author who dedicated it to Queen Claude
(PA 1518, 2); and La conqueste de Grecef aide par Philippe de Madien by Perrinet
Dupin (PR 1525, 3 (2)). But nine prose romances of earlier origin 3 obtained
privileges, evidently because they were wholly or partially hitherto
unpublished. The prose version of Huon de Bordeaux, the famous thirteenth-
century romance which introduced the character of Oberon the fairy king,
was made in 1455: the printed edition of it in 1513 was the first publication of
it, and it is known only in this form, no manuscript of it having survived
(CH 1513, 3). L'hystoire du sainct greaal contains the Estoire del Graal, the
Perlesvaus and the Queste del Graal: the first two of these, at least, had not been
printed before 4
(CH 1515, i). Guerin de Montglane, based on a thirteenth
century original, was reworked in the fourteenth century: the 1517 edition
seems to be the first edition of the prose romance (CH 1517, 6(2)). Gerard de
Nevers is the first edition of the prose version, made for Charles de Cleves,
comte de Nevers, who died in 1521, of the Roman de la Violette, by Gerbert de
Montreuil (PR 1520, 3). Jourdain de Slave is a prose
version of another
thirteenth-century romance: it is known only from the printed edition
(CH 1 520, i ) . Berinus et Aygres is a fourteenth-century prose romance, ofwhich
its modern editor assumes this edition to be the first (PR 1521, 5). 5 Ysa'ie le
1
Edition of Le Petit Jean de Saintre by P. Champion and F. Desonay ( 1 926) ; edition of La Salade by
F. Desonay in (Euvres completes d'Antoine de La Sale, i (1935).
2 J. Macfarlane, Antoine Verard (1899), p. 2, n". 4.
3 See Georges Doutrepont, Les mises en prose des epopees et des romans chevaleresques (Brussels, 1939);
Brian Woledge, Bibliographic des romans et nouvelles en prosefran^aise anterieurs a 1500 (Geneva/Lille,
I954)-
4 C. E. Pickford, 'Les editions imprimees des romans arthuriens en prose anterieurs a 1600',
Bulletin bibliographique de la Societe Internationale Arthurienne, xm ( 1961 ) x pp. 99-109.
5 Berinus, roman en prose du xitf siecle, ed. Robert Bossuet, SATF (1931), i, pp. xxxix xl.
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