Melion and Biclarel - University of Liverpool

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Two Old French Werwolf Lays Few scholars have explored Biclarel in any detail, and those who mention it treat it as a mere imitation of Marie’s text. Flinn, for example, states that the Clerc de Troyes’s Laüstic and Bisclavret are ‘des versions quelque peu différentes de celles de Marie de France. … Dans Bisclavret le malheureux héros, appelé Béclarel, est lui aussi vassal du roi Arthur, et à la fin l’épouse infidèle est emmuée par ordre du roi’ (Le Roman de Renart, p. 432). Busby, however, examines the texts in some detail, and concludes that the Clerc de Troyes was ‘working closely from the Bisclavret’, but that his result was not as close as Flinn believes (‘“Je fout savoir bon lai breton”’, p. 599). The Arthurianization of the werwolf tale One major factor which distinguishes Melion and Biclarel from Bisclavret is the setting: except in Bisclavret, the werwolf lay is Arthurianised, with the hero’s 28 feudal lord recast as Arthur. Scholars take the authors’ adoption of the Arthurian setting to be coincidence. Kittredge, as noted above, believed Melion’s author to have reset the tale, and Malone concurs, suggesting that this was ‘in order to give his story a connection with the popular and fashionable Arthurian cycle of romances’ (‘Rose and Cypress’, p. 445). The Clerc de Troyes supplies his versions of both of Marie’s lays with an Arthurian setting, which Busby, echoing Malone’s view of Melion, believes may be ‘betraying a fourteenth-century view of the lai as an Arthurian genre’ (p. 594), although this is problematic, given the omission of any internal reference to the lay genre. 28 The Latin prose narrative Arthur and Gorlagon depicts Arthur’s quest to discover ‘ingenium mentemque feminae’ (Kittredge, p. 150: the heart and mind of a woman (my translation)) as a frame to the werwolf story. In his notes to Milne’s English translation of Arthur and Gorlagon, Alfred Nutt concludes that ‘Melion cannot have come from the Welsh original of Arthur and Gorlagon, as it lacks the framework, and as it has preserved an opening of which no traces are found in the Welsh tale. For the same reasons it cannot be the direct source of that tale…’ (pp. 64- 65). 22
Introduction Is it not possible, however, that the authors of Melion and Biclarel were, in 29 fact, retaining an original setting, one that Marie herself excises from the werwolf tale; or that the Clerc de Troyes used both Bisclavret and Melion as source material? Biclarel clearly uses Bisclavret for its main structure, but internal evidence suggests that the author may have known Melion. For example, the transformation in Biclarel is specified as into wolf-form, unlike Bisclavret, but like Melion. In addition, Melion’s description of his metamorphosis, ‘leus devenrai, grans et corsus’ (v. 164) is echoed word for word in Biclarel, who looks like a ‘loups grans et corsus’ (v. 43); no similar phrase appears in Bisclavret. The narrators of Biclarel and Melion, furthermore, state the werwolf’s retention of his human mind early in the tale. When Melion returns to where he left his wife, ‘Molt fu dolans, ne set que face, / Qant il ne le troeve en la place. / Mais neporqant se leus estoit / Sens et memoire d’ome avoit’ (vv. 215-18). In Biclarel, the retention of the hero’s human mind is declared earlier still, with Renart making the connexion between hero and wolf in his introductory material: ‘Ne pour ce ne perdoit son san, / Sa memoire ne son asan’ (vv. 45-46). Again, when the werwolf fails to find his clothing, ‘c’est esmeüs, / Desor voit qu’il est deceüs / Par sa fame qui l’a traï’ (vv. 279-81). Conversely, Marie remains silent about Bisclavret’s thoughts at the equivalent point in her narrative; indeed, Bisclavret’s retention of his human mind is never plainly stated by the narrator, but tacitly revealed through his actions in approaching the king and behaving tamely, and in the comments of the king and his retinue. Similarly, where Marie’s condemnation of treachery is implicit and focussed on the wife herself, rather than projected on to all of her sex, Biclarel and Melion display an overt misogyny, with Melion’s denunciation of wives (vv. 587-90) mirrored in Renart’s 29 Cf. Arthur and Gorlagon. In ‘The Healing of Sir Urry’, Malory mentions one ‘sir Marrok the good knyght that was betrayed with his wyff, for he made hym seven yere a warwolff’ (ed. Vinaver, Book XIX, p. 667). The wife’s treachery is familiar from medieval werwolf tales, such as the lays, but, although Malory himself refers to a French source for his works, P. J. C. Field has confirmed to me that no direct source has yet been identified for the reference to Marrok. 23
Page 1 and 2: MELION AND BICLAREL TWO OLD FRENCH
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Page 5 and 6: Contents Acknowledgements .........
Page 7 and 8: Introduction 1 Melion and Biclarel
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Page 11 and 12: Introduction 19 innovation in her P
Page 13 and 14: Introduction in evoking the origina
Page 15 and 16: Introduction marries a lady. Biclar
Page 17 and 18: Introduction Bisclavret’s revelat
Page 19 and 20: Introduction enchanter transforms a
Page 21: Introduction Grimes follows Kittred
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Melion and Biclarel - University of Liverpool

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