PIRAMUS ET TISBÉ

Introduction
group rather than the beginning. Only the dit of Dan Denier uses a disyllabic line (and
sometimes a monosyllable) which often repeats a word from the preceding line in the
same way as lines 181, 224, 235, 251, 267 etc. of our poem (Faral, Recherches, p. 9, n.
1).
Although octosyllabic couplets eventually became the dominant metre for
courtly narrative, the earliest phase of vernacular romance writing was marked by
considerable variety of form. In the period up to and around 1170 we find texts
composed in octosyllabic rhyming couplets throughout, such as the romances of Thèbes,
Eneas and Troie, Wace’s Brut, and the Lais of Marie de France; in hexasyllabic
rhyming couplets (Robert Biket’s Lai du Cor); in decasyllabic or dodecasyllabic laisses
(Lambert le Tort’s Alexander and the Roman de Horn respectively), partly in
hexasyllables and partly in octosyllables (Philippe de Thaun’s Bestiaire) and partly in
octosyllables and partly in dodecasyllables (Wace’s Roman de Rou). The exact
combination of metres found in Piramus may be unique, but our poem clearly belongs
to a period of formal experimentation in vernacular narrative.
The alternation of narrative and lyric sequences in Piramus raises the question
of how this work was presented to an audience. Like all narrative compositions of the
period, it was intended for oral presentation rather than private reading, but there is a
strong possibility that the lyric sequences may have been sung, perhaps to instrumental
accompaniment, while the narrative passages were recited. The disyllabic lines, in
particular, are rather awkward when recited, since they do not form a coherent rhythmic
unit (the four-syllable lines in Richeut, for example, are much easier to integrate into a
spoken text because they form a complete hemistich). Set to a repeated two-note
musical phrase, they would have been considerably more effective. Aucassin et
Nicolette consists of alternating verse and prose sections, and we know that the former
were sung while the latter were spoken. The strict alternation of lyric and narrative
sections is so similar to what we find in Piramus, and the author of Aucassin drew on so
many narrative elements from our poem, that it is tempting to assume that he also
copied its form – in other words that Piramus offered a model of story-telling in which
recitation alternated with sung interludes. The available evidence indicates that this
pattern was also characteristic of the Breton lai, 26 which Marie de France and other
26 See de Boer, ‘Le “lai de Tisbé”’, p. 238.
19