[In this essay, Ferrier characterizes Little John of Saintré as essentially an failed experiment, but defends the work's breaking with the traditional romance and chronicle genres. Ferrier praises La Sale's serious attempt at innovation in introducing the notion of a full-length fictional work.]

It is a curious fact that a work which has frequently been acclaimed as the first modern novel, and which certainly differs in kind from the rest of the literary output of the fifteenth century, should have been produced, near the end of his life, by one of the most conservative of authors. This conservatism appears to have extended to every sphere of activity of Antoine de la Sale. He is an acute observer of the details of life at the Court of Anjou, and gives the fruit of his observations in the early part of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, where the life and progress of the page are observed with such meticulous care. The greatest wealth of description occurs in the middle part of the work, where he deals with battles and jousts; in this commemoration of a way of life and a type of amusement which were rapidly disappearing, we may detect something of the nostalgia more openly expressed in the Traité des Anciens Tournois et Faictz d'Armes.¹ There Antoine recalls, as perhaps the most enjoyable experience of his life, the tournament he attended in Burgundy in his youth; his statement near the end of the Traité is full of regret for times that are gone:

Je treuve que ad ce tresglorieux temps de beatitude que le monde estoit en paix, les tresnobles et chevallereux cuers des princes et aultres seigneurs, pour eschevier ce tresvil pechié de oyseuse, aussy pour acquerir honneur, les ungs par ce tresnoble mestier d'armes, et les autres par longs voyaiges, en acquerant de bien et mieulx les tresdesirees graces de leurs tresbelles dames, dont par ainssy, les ungs ou les autres, une ou deux foiz l'an, se festoient, et par autenticques roys d'armes et heraulx, portans leurs riches cotes d'armes vestues, ou la piece de drap d'or, ou d'aultre riche drap de soie en escharpe entortillié, se mandoient la noble espee du tournoy.

Antoine is not only conservative in his choice of entertainment, but also in his cultural background. The principles of education laid down for the duc de Calabre in La Salade and the educational treatises in Saintré are little different from those of other pedagogic treatises of the period. In scholastic matters, Antoine is no precursor of Rabelais or Montaigne. Even in his syntax, as W. P. Shepard has shown, our author is far more conservative than most of his contemporaries.² Yet despite this love and admiration for the past, Antoine has produced in Le Petit Jehan de Saintré a work different from the rest of the fiction of the period, neither a roman d'aventures nor a nouvelle, but a full-length work dealing with contemporary life. It is true that he places his events in the not too distant past which he admires because it typifies the apotheosis of the spirit of chivalry which in his own time was rapidly decaying and threatened to disappear altogether; but the sentiment of the work is throughout, and particularly in the last part, one of actuality. It may, indeed, be no exaggeration to define Saintré as the earliest roman de mœurs.

At the same time, however, there is a pseudo-historical flavour which pervades the whole work. It is made more noticeable and emphatic by the presence in the title of the words plaisante chronique, by the frequent documentation, often inaccurate, of the deeds recorded, the fact that the story is from the beginning placed at a definite point in history, and the zeal for exact enumeration, particularly in the account of the Prussian expedition. This flavour, added to the obvious parallels between Saintré and the Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing on the one hand and the Livre des Faits de Boucicault on the other, has been sufficient to lead some critics, notably A. Bronarski,³ to attempt to find specific historical antecedents for Saintré and Belle Cousine, and to regard Le Petit Jehan de Saintré as primarily a work of historical biography. Although this view is hardly tenable⁴ the existence of these historical elements shows that in the substance of Saintré there is something of the chronicle as well as something of the nouvelle in its tone; it is therefore not unduly surprising that in a detailed examination of the structure of the work we find at once the application of the structure of the nouvelle to a full-length work, and that of the chronicle to a work of fiction. It is the first of these types of adaptation that chiefly concerns the present study.

The opening lines of the story of Jehan de Saintré plunge the reader, without preamble, in medias res. In the first paragraphs we are already given the elements essential to the story: its situation in time and space, the names of the principal characters and a suggestion of the relation in which they stand to each other:

Au temps du roy Jehan de France, filz ainsné du roy Philippe de Valois, estoit en sa cour le seigneur de Pouilly en Thouraine, qui en son hostel avoit un tresgracieux et debonnaire josvencel nommé Jehan, et ainsné filz au seigneur de Saintré, aussy en Thouraine. Lequel josvencel, par sa debonnaireté, vint en grace au roy, et tellement que il le voult avoir; et car il estoit encores bien josne, le ordonna a estre son paige, et seullement apres lui chevauchier. …

En cellui temps, en la court de la royne Bonne de Boesme, femme dudit roy Jehan, avoit une assez josne dame vesve, qui de Belles Cousines estoit. … La quelle dame onques puis le trespas de feu monseigneur son mary … a mary ne se voult accompaignier.⁵

In these lines we have a succinct account of the characters who are chiefly to concern us in the succeeding narrative, together with a brief mention of their social status; we know their respective places in the hierarchy of the court; and the intelligent reader, faced with the juxtaposition of a handsome and well-bred page and a young widow, may from the start have some inkling of the situation which will ensue.

The analogy of such an exposition with that generally adopted in the nouvelle, and essential to the structure of that form, is at once apparent. Here, as in the short story, we are told about the characters only what is essential to their relationship to each other and consequently to the situation which will arise out of that relationship. We learn that Jehan and Belle Cousine find themselves together at the court, that Jehan, though well-born and well versed in court etiquette, is young and inexperienced, and that Belle Cousine has no obligation to remain single other than her self-imposed fidelity to her first husband. Accordingly La Sale gives no account of the family life or the early years of Saintré. Of Belle Cousine, too, he categorically remarks, “Mais de son nom et seignourie l'istoire s'en taist.” Here, then, we have, introduced in the usual way, the familiar characters of the nouvelle situation: the cunning lady and the simple lover. As Desonay's analysis of the characters of Saintré and Belle Cousine has shown⁶ there is not, as some critics have maintained, any contradiction in the personality of the lady as shown in the first and last parts of the story. It is perhaps not out of place to emphasize here that Belle Cousine is of the same type as the women of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles and the Quinze Joyes de Mariage, just as the situation of Saintré in which the lady outwits one lover in favour of another and deceives those about her is the stock one of the nouvelle. The social background here may be aristocratic rather than bourgeois; the meetings of the lovers may take place in retiring-rooms or in the préau, instead of in kitchens or inns; but the character of Belle Cousine is familiar to us in spite of these exterior changes. She is the characteristic feminine type of the nouvelle, sensual, cunning, hypocritical and quite unscrupulous in her methods of attaining the end she desires.

If Antoine de la Sale had begun to write novels earlier in his life, and if he had produced more than one full-length work of fiction, we should no doubt have been able to discern a development of the art of narrative which in Saintré is present in embryo.⁷ But in him the artist is constantly at war with the pedagogue and too often it is the pedagogue who gains the upper hand: a fact scarcely surprising in view of the many years when the love of didacticism had been allowed full play, both in Antoine's writing and in his life. He seems in Saintré to have been unable to let slip so excellent an opportunity of recalling his teaching to his former pupil, the duc de Calabre, by putting into the mouth of his heroine moral discourses and expositions of the faith as well as purely secular and academic instruction. The consequence is that after so admirable a beginning the story appears to go off at a tangent; and it is easy to lose sight of the essential structure of the first part beneath the homilies with which it is overlaid.⁸

A more profound examination of the discourses here inserted, in relation to the whole work, indicates, however, that they are perhaps not altogether foreign to the main issue of the story. M. Coville points out that “le vrai récit” in this first part of the story is the development and education of Saintré between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one; but the learned discourses of Belle Cousine are precisely that. The exhortations to godly living in accordance with the principles of the Church, involving disquisitions upon the Commandments, the Articles of Faith and the Cardinal Virtues; the principles of the Courts of Love regarding conduct in general and particularly in the presence of ladies; these are vital here because they explain why Saintré is afterwards, in all that he undertakes,

A l'eglise le plus devot, a table le plus honneste mengant, en compaignie de dames le plus gracieux et plaisant, ès armes armigeres et ès armes courtoises le plus vaillant.⁹

In the same way, the detailed exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins is important here, as it is in the parallel passages in the Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing,¹⁰ because the teaching contained here will influence the conduct and outlook of the young man in later life.

But these didactic passages have another purpose than this immediate one of illustrating the development of the adolescent Saintré. They play their part in the whole framework of the narrative: many of them find an echo at the end of the work and from this gain a piquant quality which the majority of critics have overlooked in their conviction that the story is sharply divided into two parts, and their persistence in taking the moral lessons at their face value. M. Desonay has pointed out¹¹ the irony of the parallel between the condemnation of faithless ladies made by Belle Cousine in her sermon on faithful love near the beginning of the book and the condemnation of Belle Cousine herself by the ladies of the Court after Saintré has told them the whole story and asked for their judgment on it. Here there is a literal parallel:

Ou elle de nature aultrement seroit villaine, ingratte et digne d'estre bannye de toutes gens de bien, et puis gectee au tresgrant et puant abisme du pechié de ingratitude, en ame et en corps; combien que jamais n'en ouy parler de nulle qui telle fust.¹²

Alors la royne dist … nous disons que telle dame est faulce et maulvaise et n'en disons plus. Or ça, Madame de Rethel, qu'en voulez-vous dire? J'en dis ce que la royne en dist, et oultre plus que on la devroit bannir de toute bonne compaignie se elle y estoit.¹³

Another and more subtle example is the parallel between the peroration of Belle Cousine's discourse on the excellence of true love and its effect on the character and the author's own reflections near the end of the work, just before the exposure by Saintré of Belle Cousine's conduct, this time apostrophising false love and reflecting upon its degrading effects:

… dont j'en coignoiz aucuns, qui pour estre vrais amoureux, et de bien servir lealment leurs dames, sont venus en sy hault honneur que a toujours mais en sera nouvelle; et se ilz ne l'eussent esté, de eulx ne seroit plus de compte que d'un simple compaignon.¹⁴

… que d'aucuns en avez pris les cuers, ainssi que en maintes ystoires se treuve en escrit, dont vous en estes tresfaulcement et malvaisement servy, et puis a la fin abandonnez, et meritez d'avoir perdu leurs ames, leurs vies, se Dieu n'en a mercy, et leurs honneurs.¹⁵

The verbal contrast between the phrases bien servir lealment and tresfaulcement et malvaisement servy, and between sont venus en sy hault honneur and meritez d'avoir perdu … leurs honneurs appears too striking to be purely accidental. Antoine de la Sale seems to have used this device of parodying Belle Cousine's own words, or at any rate of echoing the high sentiments which are not mirrored in her conduct, to give an added savour of irony to the final situation. In the same way, her early discourses on the Seven Deadly Sins show ironic parallels with her subsequent conduct, though here the contrast is rather in substance than in verbal similarity. More than once, Belle Cousine's actions are in direct and striking contradiction to her speeches at the beginning. Her insistence, for example, in the discourse on Pride, that a lover especially should be “doulz, humbles, courtois et gracieux, adfin que nul deshonneste parler ne puist estre dit de luy,” is scarcely compatible with her reception of Saintré, when he returns from his expedition to Austria to find her out hunting with Damp Abbé:

Le Seigneur de Saintré, le cuer ravy de joie, prestement descendit; et quant Madame le vist a terre, sy hault que pluiseurs l'entendirent, luy dist, ‘A! sires, que le tresmal venu soyez-vous!’ Le seigneur de Saintré, qui pas n'entendit ces parolles, a tresgrant joye, a un genoul, lui toucha la main, et dist, ‘A! ma tresredoubtee dame, comment le faictes-vous?’—‘Comment je le fais,’ dist-elle, ‘que faut il dire ce que voys? Ne voyez-vous pas que je suis sur ma haquenee, et tiens mon esprevier?’ Alors vire sa haquenee, appelle ses chiens pour giboyer, comme celle qui de lui ne tint nulle compte.¹⁶

When these various parallels are placed side by side, the intention of the author in introducing these discourses at the beginning of the work becomes sufficiently evident. To suggest that the elaboration of the essentials of the Christian faith has also an ironic significance, in view of the fact that their upholder was later to make the observances of the Church an excuse for flirtation, might be to press the point too far; but it is something more than a mania for compilation and excessive didacticism which accounts for these passages. We may conclude from their form and manner of expression that they are culled primarily from one of the many collections of moral sayings and exhortations to godly conduct of the time. But whereas the author of the Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing, evidently using the same source, interpolates the exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins with no better purpose than to show how his hero avoided them in later life, and to give a tone of general moral elevation to his work, Antoine de la Sale appears to have had an artistic purpose; for when the reader finds at the end of the work echoes of what he has read at the beginning, he may well feel that the wheel has come full circle, and have an impression of artistic completion and unity. The existence of such parallel passages is evidence that La Sale already envisaged at the beginning of the work the nature of the denouement; or at any rate that, in writing the final episode, he turned back the pages to what he had written in the beginning, in order that the two might be more closely associated. In other words, Antoine de la Sale has used the commonplaces of fifteenth-century pedantry to give inner unity to his narrative and a new piquancy to these banalities. In so doing he is conforming to another kind of contemporary literary convention. The ending of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré is the logical, although the unexpected, outcome of the teaching of the beginning, and so places the work structurally in the category of the nouvelle, of which this is a vital element.

These apparent digressions have their place, then, in the total narrative of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré. Nevertheless if the narrative is shorn of them a further structural pattern emerges which is at first obscured by the didactic passages. The essentials of the story up to the rupture between Belle Cousine and Saintré amount to this: that an experienced woman undertakes the education of a page in order that he may become a perfect knight. Her object seems to be not solely, or even principally, that his glory may be increased, though this appears incidentally as a natural consequence of his training. Her purpose is that she may have the secret satisfaction of knowing that the credit for his bravery and the initiative for his exploits are due to her; and at the same time have the pleasure—also secret—of seeing this popular hero and unconquered knight humbled at her feet, assuring her that “Voz prieres me sont entieres commandements.”¹⁷ Unfortunately, however, Belle Cousine trains him too well, and at the highest point of his achievement and popularity, he reproaches himself:

Hellas! povre de sens … que tu es! Oncques par toy aucun bien d'armes ne fust empris, que ta tresnoble et doulce dame ne t'y ait mis! Ores vrayement je me conclus et delibere que, pour l'amour d'elle, je veuil faire aucun bien.¹⁸

The decision which he then makes to go and fight on his own account is the consequence of the training he has had at the hands of Belle Cousine, and the expression of his devotion; but it is the last thing that she desires, for it will take him away from her; the very fact that he is doing it on his own initiative shows that her power over him is not complete. It is a paradoxical position, but one which necessarily springs from the situation which has been developing since the beginning of the story; and the essential nature of it, as well as the fact that we see here a woman undone by her own cleverness, places the story in the category of the nouvelle. The whole of the narrative up to date—the moral discourses, the buying of expensive clothes and caparisons, the knightly exploits culminating in the triumph of the Crusade—leads up to this trait, and the elaboration of the preceding situations makes the unexpected ending all the more striking. There is no real contrast in technique or in tone between the opening chapters of Saintré and the episode of Damp Abbé; the first two-thirds of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré. are not less essentially—although they are less obviously—of the genre of the nouvelle than the last part.

Within this main structure, however, there are many smaller episodes, and a closer examination of these shows that many of them are also modelled on the pattern of the nouvelle. After the initial digression on widows¹⁹ we come to the account of the first meeting between Belle Cousine and Saintré. The exact place and time of the meeting and the relative positions of the two principal figures are noted:

Sy advint, ainssy que fortune et amours le eurent permis, Madame venoit en sa chambre, qui sur jour la royne avoit mis a dormir: et en passant sur les galleries avec ses ecuyers, dames et damoiseles, trouva le petit Saintré là, qui regardoit bas en la cour les joueurs de paulme jouer. Et quant il vit les escuiers de Madame passer, incontinent, faisant sa reverence, a genoux se mist.²⁰

After this exposition, which in its brevity and the way in which it successfully supplies all essential information in the minimum space recalls the technique of the nouvelle, there follows the incident of the bringing of Saintré to Belle Cousine's room and the detailed examination on the subject of love to which she subjects him, until he replies that the lady he loves most is his mother, and after that his sister. He is then dismissed, although he is assured that he has not heard the end of this question. We may compare this incident with what in analysing the nouvelle I have called the First Episode. The two central figures, Saintré and Belle Cousine, have come into contact with each other and in the situation which has arisen as a consequence, Belle Cousine has come off with more credit than the page. He has given a foolish answer which showed a lack of sophistication and has been laughed at by all the ladies who were present.

This episode is succeeded by a short passage of transition, which tells how the ladies laughed at Saintré's expense, and then describes how Saintré, busy serving at table, is reproached by Belle Cousine's ladies for not serving them. Madame is thus able to arrange a future meeting with him. In imitation of a court of law, the ladies all sit in judgment upon the page and give him a relentless examination, forcing him to name a lady. Eventually he names his playmate, Matheline de Coucy. Here we see the Second Episode and the trait. In this scene, although Saintré's embarrassment is equal to that which he felt on the first occasion, we have the impression that it is he and not Belle Cousine who scores. He would, she perhaps hoped, name herself; or if he did not, feminine jealousy would enable her wittily to show Jehan what an unworthy lady he had chosen; but she can say nothing of the kind about a child of nine, and momentarily she is at a loss. At the same time, this choice of Matheline de Coucy is right and proper: it is brought about by the circumstances and is what we should expect when a child is asked about problems of love that he is too young to understand. If this section were standing by itself, this naming of Matheline de Coucy would in fact be the trait, rounding off the incident, to which we have compared it. But since the episode is only part of a longer story, Saintré's admission does not close the incident; it merely serves as a natural pretext for Belle Cousine, when she has recovered from her surprise, to begin a discourse on the advantages of loyal love and the good effect that the right lady can have upon a man.

The next section of the story also contains an element of the nouvelle, although here, since it is the nature of the situation that suggests the analogy, an exact analysis into component parts is not possible. Belle Cousine is well embarked on one of her discourses. She deals with the Seven Deadly Sins, means of salvation and moral virtues, and goes on to consider the legality of battles for wager and the rules for single combat. Throughout these varied themes, her emphasis has been on humility: the lover must be lowly before his lady, and the knight must not fight for personal aggrandisement. The lady is so eloquent, and Saintré takes her lesson so very much to heart, that when she asks him whether after all this he cannot name the lady he would choose to serve, he can only reply,

‘Mais qui est la dame, telle que vous dictes, qui vouldroit mon service, et amer un tel que je suis? … J'aroye aussi chier mourir, que de moy offrir et estre reffusé, et puis estre mocquié et farsé, ainssy comme aultres sont, que j'ay oy. Et pour ce, Madame, me vault mieulz estre tel que je suis.’²¹

In face of this self-abasement Madame is put in the embarrassing situation of having, under great vows of secrecy, to propose herself as his lady. Here is a situation which reflects in miniature the whole of the first part of the book: the lady's own actions and words have put her in a situation distasteful to herself. It is again the unexpected and yet logical trait of the nouvelle.

In the succeeding part of the story, up to the time of the arrangements for the first exploit of Saintré, we find no more of these smaller episodes on the nouvelle type within the larger structure. These events are concerned with the carrying into execution of Belle Cousine's plans and are the material counterpart of the spiritual preparation he has had through the discourses on the Christian duty, the cardinal virtues, the articles of faith and so on. The buying of expensive and beautiful clothes, the engaging of servants and followers, the careful use of influence to advance Saintré in the royal favour, are all means of developing the situation and emphasising the dependence of the youth on Belle Cousine for everything in his career. This situation is the essence of the book, for the more it is developed, the more piquant will be the discomfiture of Madame when Saintré goes away on his own account. Here, as in the nouvelle proper, all the emphasis is upon the development of the situation; for Antoine de la Sale, Saintré and Belle Cousine appear to be of interest only in the interplay of their relationship and in the state of affairs so produced. This can only be resolved in the unexpected development of the final episode.

In this final episode of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, that of Belle Cousine and Damp Abbé, the analogy with the nouvelle is much clearer.²² The theme is a familiar one to any nouvelle reader: the lady forsakes her faithful and legitimate lover for the attractions of a clerical admirer, with a consequent quarrel between the old love and the new, and the ultimate discomfiture of the lady. We have returned, in other words, from the wide canvas of Saintré's chivalrous exploits, the splendid trappings and heroic feats of arms, to the type of scene and situation that we had at the beginning of the work; but now all three essential characters are present, and not merely two of them. This change in atmosphere and tone is reflected in a change of technique. With the enlargement of the scene in the central portion and the introduction of many new figures into the story, the action grows correspondingly complex. Antoine de la Sale, attempting, like the less skilful chronicle-writers of his period, still to preserve a strict chronological sequence in the narrative, is led, like them, to make many link-passages as he moves from one scene or episode to the next:²³

Et a tant me tairay cy de son partement, et parleray de son chemin et de la venue de Lisignien, le poursievant.

(p. 147.)

Et a tant laisseray cy a parler des grans honneurs, des disners et des souppers que le roy, la royne, les aultres seigneurs et dames donnerent a Saintré, et Saintré a eulx; et diray du congié que il prist, et des dons que les ungs aux aultres furent fais.

(p. 190.)

Et a tant laisseray cy a parler des honneurs fais a Saintré, des offres, et des congiés prins; et parleray de sa venue devers le roy, des vœux et des voyages que Madame, pour l'amour de luy, a faiz.

(p. 195.)

Few other writers make these passages as elaborate as does Antoine de la Sale: he supplies us with a summary of what has gone before and another of what will follow. By so doing he cuts the narrative into separate parts and at the same time, by the detail he gives to his summaries, slows down the tempo. When, however, Saintré returns from the Crusade, which is the climax of his knightly achievements, and goes to seek the lady of whom he now considers himself worthy, La Sale reverts to his earlier methods of narration, for from now until the final denouement, with the exception of the brief interpolated account of Saintré's adventures in Austria, there is a unity of action and of idea: we are no longer concerned with a series of more or less disjointed episodes, but with a situation which is allowed to develop fully until it reaches its logical, if unexpected, conclusion.

This reversal to the earlier technique is brought very clearly to the reader's notice by an abrupt change of tense. The grandiose account of Saintré's departure with the Nine Companions had been, like most of the narrative, in the past definite and past anterior. But when the author turns to speak of the grief of Belle Cousine, he uses for a short period the present and the perfect:

… ne tarda gueres que leur partement fust. Et quant le jour fust venu que, pour abregier, ilz vindrent, tous enssemble, prendre congié du roy, de la royne, de messeigneurs et des dames. …

Madame, qui est ainssy demouree seulle de ami, ne voist behours, joustes, dansses, chasses, ne aultres deduis, où son cuer prende ung seul plaisir; et quant elle veoit les amans per a per deviser enssemble, lors renouvelloient ses doulleurs; … et tellement, que peu a peu sa tresvive face coulouree s'est changee en trespalle coullour.²⁴

The result is a complete change of tempo, from the slow dignity suitable to accounts of knightly deeds, to a quicker, lighter rhythm: the tone becomes more intimate and informal.²⁵ It is a transition significant of the change in manner and technique for the last part of the work, which no longer deals with knightly prowess but with intrigue and deception.

After the preliminary transitional chapters dealing with Belle Cousine's sickness and her ruse to be sent to the country, we come to the beginning of the final episode. Again we find an exposition characteristic of the nouvelle, telling the reader the essential details of the characters and their relation to each other. Belle Cousine we already know and the author has no need to reintroduce her; but Damp Abbé is a stranger to us. Consequently Antoine de la Sale tells us briefly all that we need to know about him:

Damps abbés, qui pour lors estoit, fust ja filz d'un tresriche bourgoiz de la ville, qui, par dons de seigneurs, aussi des amis de court de Romme, donna tant que son filz en [i.e., de ceste abbeye] fust abbez, qui de l'aaige de XXV ans estoit, grant de corps, fort et deslivré: a luictier, saillir, geter barre, pierre et a la paume jouer, ne fust moine, chevalier, escuier ne bourgoiz, quant estoit en son privé, qui avensist a lui. Que vous diroye? En toutes joyeusetez se employoit, adfin qu'il ne fust trouvé oyseux; et d'aultre part, estoit larges et liberal de tous ses biens.²⁶

There is nothing in this description that does not have its bearing on the later development of the story. Damp Abbé's middle-class birth will explain why he stoops to methods that would never occur to the courtly Saintré;²⁷ the fact that his position as abbot is due neither to a true vocation nor to outstanding ability, but to parental influence at Rome, explains his speedy forgetting of his vows; his youth makes him attractive to Belle Cousine; his athletic prowess Saintré will discover to his cost; and finally, the mention of his liberality prepares us for the lavish feasts to which he invites Madame so assiduously. Antoine de la Sale has achieved what might serve as a model of this kind of introduction.

The author of the nouvelle must also introduce any historical or geographical details which will be relevant to the story that follows, and here again Antoine de la Sale conforms to type:

… fainderay que son principal hostel fust a une lieue d'une bonne cité, et a une aultre lieue de son hostel fust une abbeye que les predecesseurs de Madame avoient jadis fondé, et de celle abbeye ne avoit que une aultre lieue jusques a ladicte cité; dont par ainssy l'ostel de Madame, l'abbeye et la dicte cité estoient ainssy comme en ung trepier.²⁸

The scene is set, the actors introduced; and from now until the end of the story the action proceeds swiftly and neatly, with no introduction of irrelevant matter, until the trait of Belle Cousine's discomfiture when the girdle is returned and she is revealed as the heroine of the story that Saintré has told the court. The narrative pattern adheres to the structural plan of the nouvelle: the first episode consists of the development of relations between Belle Cousine and the Abbé, leading up to Saintré's overthrow in the wrestling-bout; the second episode is Saintré's vengeance on Damp Abbé, when the position of the parties is reversed, and the woman put in a ludicrous situation; and the trait consists of the telling of the story to the Queen and her ladies, their judgment on it, and the unexpected production of the blue girdle, an action provoked by Belle Cousine's own remarks, and leading to her final unmasking and the triumph of Saintré:

‘… puis qu'il faut que je dye, je dye que cellui amant, chevallier ou escuier qu'il soit, fust tresmal gracieux de avoir deschaint celle dame et emporté sa chainture, comme vous avez dit.’ … Lors tira de sa manche la sainture toute ferree d'or en lui disant, ‘Madame, je ne veuil plus estre ce tresmal gracieux.’ Et devant la royne et tous, gracieusement, a ung genoul, il la lui mist en son giron. … Et de Madame furent tous et toutes, comme chacun le doit penser, tresesbahis; et ne fait mie a demander s'elle fust bien honteuse: certes elle eust voulu estre oultre mer bien loing; et la perdist toute joye et honneur.²⁹

But here again there is evidence that it is not only in the construction of the whole that Le Petit Jehan de Saintré is modelled on the nouvelle. As in the earlier part, there are here smaller episodes within the larger structure which also show the same technique. There is, for example, the account of the first visit of Belle Cousine to the Abbey.³⁰ The first part of this episode consists of a description of her thank-offering, her somewhat cursory veneration of the relics, and her attendance at Mass, followed by the lavish dinner during which the flame of love first began to burn in her heart and that of Damp Abbé. Then, after the interval of the siesta when the monk's praises are sung by Belle Cousine and her ladies, we come to a further episode, which is really nothing but an elaboration of the first: the collation fourree to which the ladies are constrained to stay. There follows the departure of Belle Cousine, and here we have once more the introduction of the unexpected twist at the end: for we should expect—as Damp Abbé himself must surely have expected—that the lady would be, like the members of her retinue, full of gratitude and appreciation for this unstinted hospitality. Instead she takes the opportunity of reminding her host that they are in the season of Lent, and to rebuke him for such excessive eating and drinking. Consequently, although Damp Abbé retorts, “Jeuner? Madame, ja pour ce ne laisseray-vous a jeuner; et je vous en donneray l'absolucion”—nevertheless we leave him at the end of this episode not so triumphant as we might have expected. The climax of the relationship between Saintré and his rival also conforms to the type of the nouvelle; the fact that Saintré wounds the Abbé instead of killing him, unexpected as it is when the passions of both are fully roused, is also explained and prepared by the previous events of the story and in particular by all that Belle Cousine had taught him of the virtues of moderation.

Antoine de la Sale's curious and persistent use of the technique of the nouvelle in a lengthy biographical work of fiction is too striking to be fortuitous or without artistic purpose. It is important to remember that though he was attempting a new kind of literary form he was not an innovator by nature. Le Petit Jehan de Saintré posed certain problems of narrative method to which the type of structure characteristic of the nouvelle supplied one kind of answer. In the nouvelle the object of the author is to develop a situation, and then to surprise the reader by the introduction of the trait. It is this element of surprise, with its attendant faculty of keeping the reader's interest constantly stimulated, that seems also to explain the use of the same technique in Le Petit Jehan de Saintré. Where we are dealing only with a short story, it is fairly easy to keep the reader's attention fully occupied from beginning to end; but where the situation is prolonged to fill a full-length novel, the question becomes increasingly difficult and complex. It is natural, then, that Antoine de la Sale should consider that the repetition and development of a device successful in the short story should also be successful here. Consequently, throughout the first and last parts of Saintré, we do not find simply, as in a modern novel, a slight progression with each new episode towards the climax, together with a logical and emotional development of the situation, though this element does exist, and there is nothing in the early part that is without significance for the structure of the whole and the nature of the denouement.

But in Saintré this is not all. When an episode turns out rather differently from what we expected, when, for example, Saintré is so well instructed in the virtue of humility that he dares not aspire to be Belle Cousine's lover and she herself has to make the proposal, or when she rebukes Damp Abbé instead of praising him, we receive on each occasion a slight shock. Our attention, which might have flagged during the disquisition upon the Seven Deadly Sins, or the account of the dishes of the banquet, is startled by the unexpectedness of the development into becoming more lively. The intricacy and subtlety of Antoine de la Sale's use of nouvelle technique thus becomes apparent. Individual episodes serve a double purpose, at once carrying the reader forward to the final denouement and, more immediately, pricking his attention from time to time to a more lively interest.

Viewed as a whole, then, Saintré, despite the apparent novelty of its form, is in fact a work of adaptation of existing methods and not of innovation in structural technique.³¹ That technique contains many problems not relevant here.³² Nevertheless the qualities that distinguish it from other long prose works of the fifteenth century are those that it shares with the nouvelle: emphasis upon situation and exploitation of its ironical elements, use of stock types, division of the narrative into rounded episodes. This is not to say that Antoine de la Sale consciously attempted to model his technique upon that of the nouvelle. On the other hand, though the appearance of Saintré preceded that of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles by some years, it seems clear that the same narrative principles are behind the writing of both works; that at this period, in fact, and especially at the Court of Burgundy with which Antoine was associated during his latter years, this was the dominant form of prose fiction. The attempt to use this method of composition in an extended form was not a successful one, though it might have seemed so if the author had not felt bound to include the tournaments and courtly deeds of the middle section; it is significant that there are no later works written on the model of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré.

Yet, though this work must be accounted an unsuccessful experiment, it is a very important one, since it represents an attempt to break with the established traditions of the romance and the chronicle and to introduce to the full-length work of fiction the cohesion and point that distinguish the short story. It is interesting not merely in the degree in which this attempt succeeded but also in the mere fact of its having been made at all. The narrative principles upon which Le Petit Jehan de Saintré is constructed show how far the preoccupations of the nouvelle dominate the literary scene of the latter half of the fifteenth century.

Notes

1. Ed. Bernard Prost, Traités du Duel Judiciaire, par Olivier de la Marche … Antoine de la Sale, etc. (Paris, 1872), pp. 123-221.

2. The Syntax of Antoine de la Sale, P.M.L.A., XX (3), 1905, p. 435 ss.

3. See Appendix II, pp. 113-15.

4. Cf. Desonay, Revue du XVI^e Siècle, XIV, p. 213: “Si Le Petit Jehan de Saintré n'est plus autre chose qu'une ‘salade’ … d'épisodes réels cousus tant bien que mal, une sorte de chaotique pot-pourri de la chronique de 1350-1450, explique qui pourra la ‘vis’—je ne sais pas de mot plus adéquat—qui court d'un bout à l'autre de cet œuvre, conférant à chacun des personnages ce relief caractéristique des véritables créations littéraires.”

5. Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, texte nouveau publié d'après le Ms. de l'auteur avec des Variantes et une Introduction par P. Champion et F. Desonay (Paris, 1926), pp. 11-12.

6. Desonay, op. cit., p. 219: “C'est au personnage de Belle Cousine, autant qu'à celui de Saintré, tous deux parfaitement logiques d'un bout à l'autre … que le roman doit son unité psychologique.”

7. The story of the Seigneur de Chastel and his wife in Le Resconfort de Madame de Fresne, however, though its theme is tragic, shows how considerable Antoine's narrative gifts could be. (See J. Nève, A. de la Salle: Sa Vie et ses Ouvrages (Brussels, 1903).)

8. How easy this is, is illustrated by the remarks of A. Coville upon the composition of Saintré. He says, “Le roman dans ses deux premiers tiers apparaît comme une suite de pièces et de morceaux, résultat d'un mélange de pédantisme et de conventions courtoises. Antoine de la Sale, si vanté par ailleurs, n'avait pas le sens de la composition. … Ainsi, point de souci d'art dans les deux premiers tiers. La Sale n'a pu résister au désir d'étaler ses principes d'éducation qu'il saisit l'occasion de rappeler à Jean de Calabre, ni plus loin à la tentation de montrer ses connaissances en droit d'armes et en blason. … Le Petit Jehan de Saintré est une œuvre fort maladroite.” (Le Petit Jehan de Saintré: Recherches Complémentaires (Paris, 1937), p. 69. Cf. Appendix II.)

9. Saintré, p. 36.

10. J. A. C. Buchon, Chroniques et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France, Vol. IX, pp. 603-726.

11. Desonay, op. cit., p. 256.

12. Saintré, p. 49.

13. Ibid., p. 414.

14. Ibid., p. 21.

15. Ibid., p. 407

16. Saintré, p. 374. It is true, of course, that the courtly code to which Belle Cousine adhered permitted conduct by the lady that would not be tolerated in the gentleman.

17. Saintré, p. 136.

18. Ibid., p. 316.

19. This might well be condemned as a characteristic example of an excessive love of erudition. But the fact that the pronouncements of St. Jerome and the stories of Lucia and Marcia are followed by that of the woman with twenty-two husbands is not without significance in view of the later development of the story. Doutrepont suggests that la Sale, like Rabelais and Molière, could use his erudition for comic purposes. See Appendix II, p. 113.

20. Saintré, pp. 56-7.

21. Saintré, pp. 56-7.

22. Most critics agree in contrasting the episode on these grounds with the first two-thirds of the work. See Appendix II.

23. Cf. Olivier de la Marche's attempt to give the reader an account of conditions in France at the beginning of the Guerre du Bien Public (Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune et J. d'Arbumont (Publ. de la Soc. de l'Hist. de France, 1883-8), Vol. III, pp. 1-25 passim).

    Comme j'ay dit dessus, le roy de France donna a monseigneur de Charrolois trente-six mille livres de pension. …

    Et en ce temps un bastard de Rubempré aborda en Zeelande. …

    Le bon duc en ce temps là estoit fort caduque et envieilly de sa personne, a cause d'une grant maladie qu'il avoit eue. …

    En ce temps, monseigneur Charles de France frere du Roys Loys en esperance d'avoir partaige au Royaulme de France … se partit soudainement de Tours sur ung bon cheval. …

    En ce temps se mirent sus en armes, de tous costez, iceulx aliez et aultres du royaulme de France. …

    Or est temps que je devise de monseigneur de Berry et du duc de Bretaigne, qui s'estoient retirez … a Chasteaudun. …

    Et reviendrons a parler en celluy temps des Bourguignons. …

    Or ne fault pas oblier que quand les Liegois … veirent que le duc Philippe estoit denué de ses gens d'armes, … ils commencerent la guerre de feu et de sang.

24. Saintré, pp. 330-1.

25. Cf. D. R. Sutherland, Tenses in Old and Middle French (Studies presented to Professor M. K. Pope, pp. 329-37): “[In Early and Middle French] … If the story is concerned with the past, then the incidents must be related in the past, and their relationship to one another conveyed by variations of tense in the past. The use of the present indicative or the compound past as a historic tense will tend then either to be considered as a poetic licence, or a deliberate imitation of the oral style; it will give the passage a personal, intimate air, or indicate a colloquial use.”

26. Saintré, pp. 336-7.

27. The mention of the tresriche bourgoiz also serves to transport the reader into an atmosphere associated with the characteristic situation of the nouvelle and opposed to the courtly one he is now leaving.

28. Saintré, pp. 415-16.

29. Saintré, pp. 415-16.

30. Ibid., pp. 337-48.

31. The difference between Antoine de la Sale's attitude to his story and that of a more modern writer is clearly shown in the eighteenth-century version of Le Petit Jehan de Saintré made by the comte de Tressan. Not only does he omit the discourses and accounts of battles and change the ending to suit a more refined taste. He also fills out the details of the personalities of the principal characters, whose sensibilities and behaviour have become more important than the situation they produce. The consequence is that the narrative, while possibly gaining in psychological interest, loses much of its logical coherence.

32. That, for instance, of chronology of composition. The middle section, though connected with the beginning and the end by the moral reflections to which attention has been drawn, clearly belongs to an earlier and less complex tradition. Is it possible that Antoine de la Sale wrote this part, which has so much in common with his other writings, before the rest, and that his original intention was to produce only a courtly chronicle of Saintré's exploits on the field of battle?