PIRAMUS ET TISBÉ

Piramus et Tisbé
poem closer to 1165 than 1160, but agrees with the view of previous scholars that
Piramus influenced the Lais of Marie de France. If, as Bédier and Branciforti argue, the
reference to a ‘lay […] about Noble Thisbe of Old Babylon’ in the Tristan of Gottfried
von Strassburg 9 was present in the version by Thomas d’Angleterre on which it was
based, this might also be taken as evidence for the existence of the Old French Piramus
before 1170. 10 As we shall see, the appellation ‘the lai of Thisbe’ is peculiarly well
suited to the form and thematic orientation of our poem.
That there was a particular vogue for vernacular adaptations of Ovid in the third
quarter of the twelfth century is shown by the inclusion in Eneas of the story of Mars
and Venus (Metam. IV); by the existence of an Old French Narcissus poem (Metam. III)
which is usually thought to date from before 1170; and by Chrétien de Troyes’s
references in the prologue to Cligés (c. 1174-76) to his lost versions of ‘les
comandemanz Ovide’ and the tale of Pelops (Metam. VI), as well as to a poem about
Tereus, Procne and Philomela (Metam. VI), which is almost certainly the Philomena
preserved in the Ovide Moralisé. 11 The allusion to Piramus as an archetypal lover in line
3803 of Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrette (c. 1178) 12 is not specific enough to prove
that the author must have had our poem in mind, rather than Ovid’s version of the tale,
but it does suggest that he was writing for a non-clerical audience which was already
familiar with the story – and the existence of a vernacular poem about Piramus and
Thisbe would provide a logical explanation for that familiarity. In a poem by the
troubadour Giraut de Cabreira, quoted by Faral (Recherches, pp. 9-10), the story of
Piramus ‘who suffered death for Tisbé outside the city walls’ is included in a list of
works that every good jongleur should know, indicating that one or more vernacular
versions of the tale were certainly in wide circulation by the end of the twelfth century.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, the author of Piramus does not name
9 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, trans. by A. T. Hatto (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 90.
10 See Thomas, Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, ed. Joseph Bédier, SATF, 2 vols (Paris: Firmin Didot,
1902 & 1905), I, 52-54; de Boer, ‘Le “lai de Tisbé”’, and Branciforti, pp. 3-6. The reference does not
figure, however, in the Old Norse Tristrams saga or the Middle English Sir Tristrem, which were also
based on Thomas. Thomas’s poem was probably composed between 1170 and 1175.
11 In all probability there was also an Old French lai of Orpheus, now lost, which was one of the sources
of the Middle English Sir Orfeo.
12 Ed. and trans. by Jean-Claude Aubailly (Paris: Flammarion, 1991). In Chrétien’s Erec et Enide (c.
1170) the heroine attempts to kill herself with the hero’s sword when he collapses in front of her,
apparently dead. This may be another echo of our poem, although there are significant differences
between this scene and Tisbé’s suicide.
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