SOURCE: “Aucassin et Nicolette,” in Ambivalent Conventions: Formula and Parody in Old French, Rodopi, 1995, pp. 55-81.

[In the following essay, Cobby argues that analyzing the manner in which the author manipulates his readers' expectations reveals the essentially parodic nature of Aucassin et Nicolette.]

Much has been written on Aucassin et Nicolette in the last hundred years, but alone among our texts it is at present not a very active field.¹ Work on parody in the text was surveyed thoroughly and critically by Tony Hunt in 1979, in an article which argues against its being a parodic work and calls attention most usefully to the dangers which beset parody scholarship in general; a more recent but brief survey is by Imre Szabics.² The presence of parody is now taken for granted by most critics, though the extent and significance attributed to it vary: from ‘allusion pleine d’humour’ to a parody of virtually every form of contemporary literature, or a specific exploitation of both Chrétien de Troyes and the romance of Fergus.³ Particularly relevant to this chapter, since the author's implicit view of parody resembles mine, is an article by Reinhold Grimm on the use and parody of courtly norms.⁴

A few critics have analysed formulae and repetitions in the text. Renate Baader believes they prove the work was orally composed and summarily refuses to see parody in them.⁵ Jean Trotin discusses the use of formulae to structure the narrative, Joan B. Williamson the repetition of naming formulae.⁶ Repetitions and patterns of recurrence are a basic theme of Simone Monsonégo's book on the vocabulary of the text, and are important in two articles by Nathaniel B. Smith.⁷ Smith links repetition with parody, seeing Aucassin et Nicolete as a ‘burlesque directed against both the content and style of traditional literary genres’.⁸

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF EXPECTATIONS

Whereas the parodic fabliaux, broadly speaking, use the language of courtly literature to establish their literary background, the author of Aucassin et Nicolette exploits above all its conceptual formulae. The work's use of the romance tradition is subtle, so that we need to bring to it sensitivity to its content, its literary context and the values of reality alike. On these three levels it is also comic, and its humour is not only an aim but also an aid to the direction of our judgement.

The essential part played by parody in this work is evident when we analyse the ways in which the author manipulates our expectations. He sets up a clear and repeated reference to the literary traditions of his day, to their conventions and, most importantly, to their assumptions; but he treats them in such a way as continually to thwart our expectations and to lead us to review the preconceptions we have as we deal with those traditions.⁹ Here, as in the fabliaux, the audience's initial impressions are crucial; and the opening sections both establish relations and disorientate us by revealing that our expectations are not to be respected.

The text begins with a prologue which seems to give us a basis for prediction but which in fact sets up contradictory expectations:¹⁰

Qui vauroit bons vers oïr
Del deport du viel antif,
De deus biax enfans petis,
Nicholete et Aucassins,
Des grans paines qu’il soufri
Et des proueces qu’il fist
Por s’amie o le cler vis,
Dox est li cans, biax li dis
Et cortois et bien asis.
Nus hom n’est si esbahis,
Tant dolans ni entrepris,
De grant mal amaladis,
Se il l’oit, ne soit garis
Et de joie resbaudis,
Tant par est douce.

(I.1-15)

If we hope for deeds of prowess we are doomed to disappointment, but more significant than the announcement of the work's content are the wider expectations which are established indirectly; for the prologue sets the work in several literary traditions at once.¹¹ It affiliates it to the courtly romance (by announcing a tale of love and by characterising it as ‘dox’, ‘biax’, ‘cortois’), to the chanson de geste (by the use of assonance, the laisse form, the vers orphelins and the opening address to the audience) and to lyric verse (the seven-syllable line). The brevity of the lines undermines both the dignity of the epic reference and the elegance of the romance style, for the odd number of syllables and the frequently recurring assonance result in a limping metre and a playful effect.

In the second section we learn that the work combines prose and verse, which further distances the text from any one genre. The prose style is prolix, with adjectives and clauses being heaped up; whilst such prolixity is far from unusual in early Old French prose, there is a striking effect of contrast as the staccato verse is punctuated by the trailing prose sections. The first sections thus give a misleading summary of the tale to come and disorientate us stylistically and generically; and conceptual disorientation follows quickly. Indeed, the whole of the first part of the work (up to the first reunion of the lovers in section XXVI) is devoted to showing that our assumptions are not to be respected; the author continually evokes formulaic expectations based on our previous literary experience and then destroys them.

THE FORMULA AS THE MARK OF THE EXTERNAL: AUCASSIN

Immediately after the prologue we are given a description of Aucassin. He is presented as the typical courtly lover, though already in the introductory portrait it is indicated that he falls short of the ideal, for a burlesque note runs through it:

Aucasins avoit a non li damoisiax. Biax estoit et gens et grans et bien tailliés de ganbes et de piés et de cors et de bras. Il avoit les caviax blons et menus recercelés et les ex vairs et rians et le face clere et traitice et le nes haut et bien assis.

(II.8-11)

The terms used are utterly standard, but there is a fundamental abnormality in the portrait.¹² For after the abstract and general opening we expect and are given a more detailed description; but the order of the elements is both unconventional and in visual terms jerky: legs, feet, body, arms, finally head. The description of the head is very traditional, and is repeated almost verbatim much later, for Nicolette: ‘Ele avoit les caviaus blons et menus recercelés, et les ex vairs et rians, et le face traitice, et le nes haut et bien assis’ (XII.14-15). The similarity of the two portraits—the only full-length descriptions of beauty in the work—makes clear that the author is inserting a set piece. The style of the passage enhances this impression. The feeling of breathless oversimplification, conveyed by the density of formulae strung together by repeated ‘et’, suggests on a stylistic level that reference is being made to a pre-existing standard portrait familiar to author and audience;¹³ so too does the incoherent arrangement of the description of Aucassin, which gives the impression of elements being borrowed in random order. The implication is that there is no need to delay on a well-known stereotype; this is always true, but unlike most authors of courtly portraits, the author of Aucassin does not even seek the illusion of originality that a leisurely description would give.¹⁴

Outwardly Aucassin is thus the incarnation of the stereotype, and to an exaggerated degree. His moral portrait, on the other hand, which (as tradition prescribes) follows the physical one, shows how he conforms to the letter of the stereotype but not to its spirit. This important aspect of the character of Aucassin is expressed here on a verbal, formulaic level: ‘Mais si estoit soupris d’Amor, qui tout vaint, qu’il ne voloit estre cevalers, ne les armes prendre, n’aler au tornoi, ne fare point de quanque il deust’ (II.12-14). On first hearing the formula ‘Amor, qui tout vaint’ we hardly notice it, except as an example of a tag which is so usual as to be virtually obligatory. Then, as the description of love's effects progresses, we realise that the label is being applied there in a way different from its normal use. Love is overcoming not obstacles, but the lover himself, so that far from being fired by it to do great things, he is led to shun his knightly duties.¹⁵ It is true that this effect of love is both exemplified and recognised in the courtly romance;¹⁶ but what is unusual and significant is that love is described in the most formulaic, courtly terms in a sentence which goes on to show its potential for negativity, and thus brings out an inherent contradiction. The formula ‘Amor, qui tout vaint’ is used without change in a context which causes us to see it semantically, and thus to realise that its formulaic meaning is only one of its possible senses, and very different from the one we have to give it here. As in many of our fabliau examples, the effect is to show how selective and unjustified our assumptions are. The courtly ideal of love is subjected to a similar process. Neither needs material alteration to bring out its negative aspects, which are within it but which our acceptance of the limited, conventional interpretation causes us to overlook. The reappraisal to which we are led reflects on us (we readily accept limited and preconceived expectations), on Aucassin (he is measured against the literary ideal called up by the use of the formula, and found wanting), and on the literary ideal (it is dismantled by having its lack of cogency made clear).

The basis of the character of Aucassin is his total conformity to the externals of the ideal hero, combined with his lack of the inner qualities usually associated with them. His description demolishes the assumption underlying all such portraits, namely that physical beauty coincides with and indicates moral worth. Aucassin is handsome according to the courtly rules, but he lacks one of the two fundamental courtly virtues, that of valour. The conventional association between this and the other fundamental virtue, love, is destroyed at the same time, for the latter is depicted as leading to the absence of the former.

It is the hallmark of Aucassin's behaviour that he adheres to externals only. This trait manifests itself in many forms, and notably in an incident which again describes Aucassin and which is a well-developed instance of deflation: his arming. The handsome, enamoured youth agrees to fight only when bribed by the promise that he will be allowed to see Nicolette if he does so (VIII). At this he is full of a formulaic joy: ‘Por.c^m. mars d’or mier / Ne le fesist on si lié’ (IX.3-4). The arming scene which follows is totally faithful to the literary convention:

Garnemens demanda ciers,
On li a aparelliés.
Il vest un auberc dublier
Et laça l’iaume en son cief,
çainst l’espee au poin d’or mier,
Si monta sor son destrier
Et prent l’escu et l’espiel.

(IX.5-11)

His hauberk and sword are characterised in typical epic formulae, and the whole traditional picture causes us to expect a warlike scene. But the tone is deflated at a blow, when Aucassin ‘Regarda andex ses piés: / Bien si sissent es estriers. / A mervelle si tint ciers’ (IX.12-14). Not only is self-satisfaction destructive of all the dignity which the scene has built up, but the contemplation of his feet is bathetic. As soon as the individual Aucassin plays a rôle, as soon as the general arming motif is superseded by the specific, the stereotype is shattered.

It is, however, rebuilt, to allow the story and the humour to continue. Aucassin exemplifies the courtly knight, externally at least:

De s’amie li sovient,
S’esperona li destrier.
Il li cort mout volentiers,
Tot droit a le porte en vient
A la bataille.

(IX.15-19)

To make the ensuing fight more ridiculous, the author stresses Aucassin's conformity to the stereotype:

Aucassins fu armés sor son ceval, si con vos avés oï et entendu. Dix, con li sist li escus au col et li hiaumes u cief et li renge de s’espee sor le senestre hance! Et li vallés fu grans et fors et biax et gens et bien fornis, et li cevaus sor quoi il sist rades et corans, et li vallés l’ot bien adrecié par mi la porte.

(X.1-5)

Yet one senses a touch of irony in the narrator's repetition, in his own voice, of Aucassin's admiration for his external appearance. The legitimate admiration of the narrator recalls the vainglorious self-admiration of Aucassin, and in this way it is itself undermined. Noble expectations are thus set up and destroyed, then re-formed only to have the destruction ironically recalled.

The beginning of Aucassin's military action, which follows, shows further examples of expectations—both linguistic and conceptual—being first established and then exploited, and it illustrates clearly how the author manipulates the reactions of his audience. Immediately after Aucassin is described, the register changes abruptly from the world and vocabulary of chivalry to those of agriculture: ‘Or ne quidiés vous qu’il pensast n’a bués n’a vaces n’a civres prendre …’ (X.6). The author plays a game with his audience, causing a series of jolting reappraisals. ‘Or ne quidiés vous’, he begins, to involve the audience and to stress by contrast what is to come. Aucassin the knight is not about to catch beasts; the differing style levels express the difference in worlds, for the animals mentioned are mundane, domestic ones, which, moreover, typify the middle and low styles according to Virgil's wheel and thereby affirm Aucassin's courtly superiority.¹⁷ Our reaction to this exhortation is two-fold. On the one hand we expect an assurance that Aucassin has come to catch not beasts but the opposite, namely men. On the other, having just witnessed his arming, why should we be likely to think he was thus dressed to catch animals, and tame ones at that? The appeal seems gratuitous. But the game is not over. We are next thwarted in our expectations of a tale of great deeds: ‘Or ne quidiés vous qu’il pensast n’a bués n’a vaces n’a civres prendre, ne qu’il ferist cevalier ne autres lui. Nenil nient! onques ne l’en sovint’ (X.6-7). The author directs sarcasm both at an outlandish expectation, which we expect to hear denied, and at a normally legitimate one. The combination at first sight seems ridiculous, and so it would be with a true hero; but with Aucassin it is justified, for to expect valour from him is as ludicrous as to expect an armed knight to catch cattle and goats. Yet once more the conventional hero surfaces; when, having deduced that decapitation would prevent his speaking to Nicolette, he begins to fight, he does so in traditional style: ‘Aucassins ne le mescoisi mie: il tint l’espee en la main, se le fiert par mi le hiaume si qu’i li enbare el cief’ (X.26-27).

Aucassin, then, is presented as a character forever at odds with conventions to which he is yet closely linked; and through him we are kept in constant touch with our literary experience and expectations, whilst being shown that they are far from reliable. The author thus evokes the literary background necessary for his parody whilst distancing us from it sufficiently to appreciate his irony; the initial prominence of Aucassin, together with incongruities of detail, ensure that we are prepared from the start for his unconventional approach.

Aucassin's adherence to mere externals continues throughout the work. It is expressed, for example, in his choice of the conventional reaction over the appropriate one, when he finds the bower Nicolette has made (XXIV-XXV). On happening upon it and knowing it was of her making, anyone other than he would have set about looking to see if she were near. But he prefers to make a romantic address to a star, ignoring the reality before him in order to live out a literary response; he reacts to the convention of night as a subject for poetry rather than to the facts of his situation which demand that he search for Nicolette. Since the conventional response and the demands of reality in this instance are in direct opposition to each other, Aucassin's preference for the former is particularly striking, and his reaction particularly misguided.

Throughout the work he is found lamenting, so that we come to see him as one whom we expect to find weeping, and who would rather lament than help himself or be comforted; he chooses a superficial response rather than one requiring action. The predictability of his tears is stressed by the monotony of their expression:¹⁸

Si comença a plorer
Et grant dol a demener
Et s’amie a regreter

(VII.9-11)

S’oï Aucassin plourer
Et s’amie regreter

(XIII.3-4)

Si comença a plorer

(XXIV.8)

Il regretoit Nicolete s’amie

(VIII.1)

Aucassins faisoit deul et regretoit Nicolete sa tres douce
amie que tant amoit

(VIII.7-8)

Si oï Aucassin qui la dedens plouroit et faisoit mot grant
dol et regretoit se douce amie que tant amoit

(XII.26-27)

Si trova Aucassin qui ploroit et regretoit Nicolete
s’amie.

(XL.31-32)

And finally, in a typically courtly setting he has a typical courtly reaction:

A Biaucaire sous la tor
Estoit Aucassins un jor;
La se sist sor un perron,
Entor lui si franc baron.
Voit les herbes et les flors,
S’oit canter les oisellons;
Menbre li de ses amors,
De Nicholete le prox,
Qu’il ot amee tans jors;
Dont jete souspirs et plors.

(XXXIX.1-10)

The monotony makes a point both within the work and externally. Aucassin's unwillingness to emerge from his grieving state both expresses his preference for inaction and exemplifies another formulaic aspect of his nature: his character and reactions hardly change throughout the work. This is because he incarnates a type, and types are constant. So, as we saw, the author expresses the standardness of the type of the hero by calling it up in detail not once but repeatedly. Indeed, Aucassin is described in similar terms twice in one battle: ‘Li vallés fu grans et fors et biax et gens et bien fornis, et li cevaus sor quoi il sist rades et corans’ (X.3-4), and ‘Li vallés fu grans et fors, et li cevax so quoi il sist fu remuans’ (X.19).¹⁹ The repetitious depiction of Aucassin thus both conveys his repetitive and inactive character, and reflects on the literary stereotype and its conventionality within the tradition. For the author takes the convention to its logical conclusion. Since the courtly lover laments if crossed in love and Aucassin is permanently crossed in love, the author introduces lamentation wherever it is at all apposite, and that is most of the time; and since the action is stereotyped he does not vary the wording. The frequency and the lack of variety draw attention to the repetition and to what he is doing, and stress by intensification how standard the subject is. Through Aucassin, the external courtly hero, the author exemplifies, exaggerates and shows up a static and repetitious aspect of the tradition which is the hero's background.

Aucassin, then, lives in formulae, both by living out conceptual ones and by fulfilling the external, asemantic aspect of verbal ones without fulfilling their substance or presuppositions. He also speaks in formulae. He almost never speaks Nicolette's name without a qualifying phrase, and when the narrator is speaking from Aucassin's point of view the same tendency is evident. There are two standard formulations; in verse ‘o le cler vis’ and in prose variations on ‘Nicolete ma (tres)douce amie que je tant aim’. It is this longer formula which is Aucassin's especial preserve; and its length leads to its appearing more and more clumsy on repetition, to the point of comedy. It is comic because the author has transplanted into prose a technique essentially of verse. In the chanson de geste and the romance the tag is a device for qualification in passing; it may become a label and may be monotonous, but it is too short to be intrusive or turgid. Here however the tag is expanded to produce a tedious and patently repetitious catch-phrase. It is abstract and does not tell us anything about Nicolette herself, so it is not even a good label; unlike verse tags, it lasts long enough for us to become very aware of its presence; and freed from the constraints of metre, assonance or rhyme, it shows minimal variation:²⁰

‘Nicolete me douce amie que je tant aim’

(II.20-21, VIII.17-18, X.16)

‘Nicolete ma tres douce amie que j’aim tant’

(VI.18-19)

Nicolete sa tres douce amie que tant amoit

(VIII.8)

Nicolete se tres douce amie qu’il tant amoit

(XXII.1-2)

Se douce amie que tant amoit

(XII.27)

Nicolete sa douce amie que tant amoit.

(XXXIV.2)

The author has adopted a standard device of all Old French narrative verse but has exaggerated both the length of the formula and its invariability, thus highlighting the habit of labelling. At the same time he shows his hero as one who espouses and exemplifies all the repetitiousness, conventionality and automatism which the author is showing up. It is noteworthy that Aucassin's own words in the table above show even less variation than the narrator's.²¹

Aucassin is thus shown as a shallow character; he is further portrayed as striving to fulfil the literary rôle of the courtly lover in which he casts himself, but as failing to go beyond its stock reactions and phraseology; and on a third level he is a channel and a focus for the author's parody of the tradition to which his hero aspires. In his conventional responses, his living and speaking in formulae, Aucassin exemplifies the nature of the formula at the same time as he establishes a parodic relation to the tradition from which the formulae are drawn. For his actions are governed by convention, by what is long established and therefore expected, by outward form and not by inner aptness or adaptation.²² Through him the author plays upon the relation between traditional literary conventions and their implications, and makes us aware of our readiness to accept literary stereotypes without analysis; their emptiness and the conventionalism of the traditions which Aucassin represents are thus made clear. This function of the character of Aucassin is but one example of the author's purpose. He uses many formulae of serious literature, ranging from phrases to the very plot of his work, in such a way as to show up their conventionality.

THE TRANSPARENCY OF CONVENTIONS: NICOLETTE

In his repeated formulaic characterisation of Nicolette, Aucassin uses the clumsier of the two formulae which label her. The other is produced usually in the narrator's own voice and always in verse. Its use is typical of that of formulae in the chanson de geste, showing variation for the needs of assonance and metre: ‘o le cler vis’ (I.7, XI.13, XIX.1, XLI.2), ‘o le vis cler’ (VII.3, XIII.1, XVII.1, XXXV.10), ‘au cler vis’ (XI.4), ‘au vis cler’ (XXXV.7). The form and frequency of the formula exaggerate by excessive repetition the labelling habit found in romances and later epics; for of all the other formulae on the same pattern—that is, an adjective or adjectival phrase following Nicolette's name or a noun signifying her—there are only eight other occurrences: ‘le bien faite’ (III.3), ‘o le cuer franc’ (XV.5), ‘o le gent cors’ (XXIII.9), ‘o le blont poil’ (XXV.4), ‘li preus, li sage’ (XXXVII.1), ‘le prox / la prous’ (XXXIX.8, 18, 24). As for their content, the verse formulae for Nicolette present her by implication as the typical courtly heroine, whereas in fact she is a highly unconventional one, and this contrast further makes plain the emptiness of labels.

Larger-scale conventions are similarly, and more subtly, shown for what they are. The author uses some of the standard narrative motifs of romance in such a way as to direct critical attention at them, so that the implausibility or selectivity which are inherent in them, but usually glossed over, are thrown into relief. Conventions both of plot and of character undergo this treatment in the passage depicting Nicolette's imprisonment (IV-V). In this scene several literary stereotypes are evoked in sketch form; selected formulae call up the wider conventions with which they are associated in our experience, and which are then manipulated.

En une canbre la fist metre Nicolete en un haut estage, et une vielle aveuc li por conpagnie et por soisté tenir; et s’i fist metre pain et car et vin et quanque mestiers lor fu. Puis si fist l’uis seeler, c’on n’i peust de nule part entrer ne iscir, fors tant qu’il i avoit une fenestre par devers le gardin assés petite, dont il lor venoit un peu d’essor.

(IV.15-19)

This brief scenario is sufficient to prepare us for a splendid prison, an inept guardian and subsequent escape. And so it proves. The old woman by whom Nicolette is guarded, a stock character in such scenes, also features in some fabliaux.²³ Ineffectual there, where she intervenes too late, she is here even more colourless; she is mentioned again only as being asleep when Nicolette escapes (XII.8). Her total lack of narrative function stresses the gratuitousness of her inclusion; her only rôle is to conform to the conventions which govern the depiction of the literary imprisonment of young girls.

The place of Nicolette's imprisonment is conventionally magnificent; it has frescoes, a vaulted roof, and a marble window on which Nicolette leans, displaying physical attributes taken from the standard portrait of the courtly heroine:

Ele avoit blonde la crigne
Et bien faite la sorcille,
La face clere et traitice:
Ainc plus bele ne veïstes.

(V.7-10)

By virtue of their close association with the standard portrait of courtly beauty, these few elements suffice to call up the conventions and thus to characterise Nicolette as the typical courtly lady.²⁴ Looking out of the window she sees flowers and birds, a traditional introduction to thoughts of love. But her thoughts are far from traditional, though love is part of them; this typical courtly girl in a typical courtly setting has quite untypical plans: ‘Longement n’i serai mie, / Se jel puis fare’ (V.24-25). The bluntness of these lines contrasts sharply with the lyricism of the earlier part of the laisse. We had been lulled by the familiarity of the standard elements into expecting an ordinary courtly heroine, but our expectations are disappointed: Nicolette does, as she said, act to free herself and engineers her reunion with Aucassin. The sudden contrast makes us reappraise both the convention we had expected (why should beauty imply passivity?) and the ease of our assumptions; it makes us see how uncritical our expectations are.

All the depictions of Nicolette give the impression of alluding openly to an existing stereotype, familiar and therefore in no need of elaboration. We saw that both the narrator and Aucassin label her; and she is described as formulaically as she is labelled. When Aucassin first depicts her it is in vague laudatory terms: ‘Tant est france et cortoise et debonaire et entecie de toutes bones teces’ (II.31-32), and

‘Nicolete est cointe et gaie …
Nicolete est deboinaire;
Ses gens cors et son viaire,
Sa biautés le cuer m’esclaire.’

(III.8-13)

The full portrait of Nicolette (XII) is very obviously a set piece, and makes clear its conventionality in a way which complements that of the brief allusions to the stereotype. Its content is utterly standard:

Ele avoit les caviaus blons et menus recercelés, et les ex vairs et rians, et le face traitice, et le nes haut et bien assis, et lé levretes vremelletes plus que n’est cerisse ne rose el tans d’esté, et les dens blans et menus, et avoit les mameletes dures qui li souslevoient sa vesteure ausi con ce fuissent.ii. nois gauges; et estoit graille par mi les flans qu’en vos dex mains le peusciés enclorre, et les flors des margerites qu’ele ronpoit as ortex de ses piés, qui li gissoient sor le menuisse du pié par deseure, estoient droites noires avers ses piés et ses ganbes, tant par estoit blance la mescinete.

(XII.14-21)

This portrait falls into two halves separated by a discordant element. As we saw, the first part closely parallels that of Aucassin. This is an effective means of advertising the author's obedience to the portrait convention; since stereotypes are by definition standard, two allusions to the stereotype should logically be identical. Normally the illusion of individuality is produced precisely by variation in the combination of details which are taken from the stereotype; but not so here, for it is the lack of individuality that the author wishes to make clear. That the same physical appearance should be assigned to each of the two lovers both expresses on the physical level the romance convention of the marriage of like beauties, and prepares for their parity on a moral level.²⁵ Instead of being, complementarily, a well-built, active man and a beautiful, delicate woman, the two are equivalent. The ‘femininity’ of Aucassin's inaction, and Nicolette's ‘masculine’ positiveness, are reflected by Aucassin's feminine ‘face clere’ and Nicolette's tight curls.²⁶

At the end of the stereotyped first section of Nicolette's portrait, an unusual and concrete simile produces a sudden change of register. The traditional ‘avoit les mameletes dures qui li souslevoient sa vesteure’ is followed by an image based upon the homely walnut and an unusual element for women, namely feet.²⁷ The elevated tone returns, however, for the second half of the portrait, with the hyperbole concerning the whiteness of Nicolette's skin. The intruding walnut simile has the effect of breaking the illusion of the stereotype, which is in all other respects so extreme. The interruption makes us aware how extreme it is: the author places the courtly stereotype before us by conforming to it, and by diverging from it he causes us to view it critically.

Nicolette is the subject of a further convention whose effect is very complex. We have seen how the first part of the work disorientates us by thwarting our formulaic expectations. Accordingly, by the time the pair are reunited in the forest we have become used to being surprised, and we expect our existing literary assumptions to be contradicted and conventions to be denied. But in the second part of the text we are presented with a second reversal: whereas we have come to expect that expectations will be disappointed, they are now—some of them—fulfilled. The development is exemplified by the revelation and treatment of Nicolette's background.

Her history as first presented is utterly conventional. It is given in sections II, IV and VI and is in no case particularly apt. The first instance is in the mouth of Aucassin's father:

‘Nicolete laise ester, que ce est une caitive qui fu amenee d’estrange terre, si l’acata li visquens de ceste vile as Sarasins, si l’amena en ceste vile, si l’a levee et bautisie et faite sa fillole, si li donra un de ces jors un baceler qui du pain li gaaignera par honor; de ce n’as tu que faire.’

(II.22-26)

This is doubly forced. On a dramatic level it is quite unnecessary, for its content is well known to Aucassin to whom it is addressed. It is, moreover, highly stereotyped: a Saracen girl adopted, baptised and loved.²⁸ The speech further gives the impression, in its breathless haste, of being an obligatory set piece, an exposition to the audience which is traditionally necessary but largely lacking in internal motivation. We are used to such set pieces in Old French narrative, but in dialogue they remain implausible.

Subsequently the paragraph is twice repeated by the viscount, when in its long-windedness it has the comedy of the predictable. In each case it is, psychologically, a substitute for thought; it is his standard reaction to the topic of marriage between Nicolette and Aucassin. Its second occurrence, addressed to Aucassin's father, shows particularly well the unthinking, runon formulaic nature of the speech, since the inclusion of ‘de ce n’eust Aucassins vos fix que faire’ (IV.9-10) is quite irrelevant: both speakers are agreed on it, the more clearly since it was the listener who originally expressed the sentiment.

Nicolette's background thus is not only utterly conventional, but is shown to be so by the manner in which it is presented. So typical is it, and its narration so excessively repeated, that its function is patently to establish the convention of the captive Saracen heroine against which the individualistic Nicolette is set. We know, moreover, that the conventional character is normally of royal birth, an implication which will become important. After its over-use in these early sections, the stereotype is not mentioned for some time, but it reappears after her escape, her reunion with Aucassin, and the journey to Torelore. Now, when we no longer expect it, it returns not as a simple formulaic description but as part of the action, and as the literal truth. Henceforth it is now of importance to the plot that the conventional Saracen princess in fact has a tangible background, a homeland and a family: she is nearly separated from Aucassin for good as a result. The stereotype is proved to be the truth and is lived out by the Nicolette whom we have come to see as conventional only in description but not in deed.

Smaller-scale conventions are proved true in the process. The revelation of Nicolette's true background depends on and enacts conventions which are laid bare by it. First, by an exaggerated coincidence, Nicolette, who has been captured by Saracens, is in the very boat of her father's sailors, who are on their way to none other than her homeland (XXXVI). (The storm which separates Aucassin and Nicolette equally obligingly takes Aucassin home to Beaucaire.) They recognise her rank not by any family resemblance—as they might reasonably have done—but by her beauty: the literary commonplace that rank reveals itself. The convention is used in preference to plausibility in the specific circumstances, and is made transparent by the implausibility of the coincidence.

Even less believable is Nicolette's sudden realisation of who she is. Here implausibility is flaunted. Within six lines we read first, ‘Ele ne lor sot a dire qui ele estoit, car ele fu pree petis enfes’ (XXXVI.5-6), and then, ‘Ele ne fu mie si petis enfes que ne seust bien qu’ele avoit esté fille au roi de Cartage’ (XXXVI.9-10). The contrast is too blatant to be unintentional, and mocks by its gratuitousness and coincidence the recognition of a person lost as a child by a physical mark or by a piece of clothing or jewellery. Here, Nicolette is ‘recognised’ first on account of her apparent nobility, then by a flash of intuition, and finally on her word. The standard device of recognition by some unlikely object here becomes recognition on no evidence at all, and the convention, far from being denied as we have come to expect, is affirmed, and that in an extreme form.

This flaunting serves to draw attention to the origin of which she so suddenly becomes aware. The proverbial formula ‘fille au roi de Cartage’, indicating great wealth, has here to be taken literally: she is in truth his daughter, and this fulfilment of the formula is at once comic in its literalism and very confusing.²⁹ For we have learnt that the text undermines formulae; and here it is vindicating one. In fact, of course, the vindication undermines, for the formula (like any metaphor) is not normally tested by reality; here it is so tested, and is proved true in both its metaphorical and its literal senses. Our surprise shows us that we do not expect formulae to be thus fulfilled, and this deprives the formula of validity; for why should we accept something which is by common consent inherently unreal?

Through this development the understanding which we had of Nicolette's background on her initial presentation is replaced by a very different one. No longer does her Saracen origin make her a benighted captive and unworthy of Aucassin; as daughter of the king of Carthagena she is much more noble than he, and rich both proverbially and actually. As such she is precisely the kind of bride Aucassin's parents destined for him when opposing his marriage to Nicolette (II), and a match worthy of approval both in literary and in social terms. As she demonstrates through literal fulfilment the potential of the convention of the Saracen captive, Nicolette fulfils the formulae of the romance type to the letter, but adds new dimensions and puts flesh onto the stereotype.

This is, indeed, the fundamental characteristic of the figure of Nicolette; but before discussing it further let us look at the Torelore episode, for, like Nicolette's origins, it causes us to revise our already revised expectations. In this fairy-tale land Aucassin and Nicolette behave as we would have expected them to do, had we not by now been trained otherwise; that is, they act in accordance with the stereotypes of the hero and heroine. This can be explained in terms of the relation of both Torelore and the protagonists to the tradition of the world upside down.³⁰ Since Aucassin and Nicolette fail to fit the standards of the ‘real’ world (Beaucaire), in an inverted world they, being inverted, conform to those standards. But more importantly, it is made clear that we are not justified in accepting the literary conventions by the fact that only in a fantasy world are these fulfilled, whereas in the ‘real’ world they are shown to be unfounded.

Torelore is a nonsense land, where kings lie in childbed and battles are fought with cheese and fruit. Here Aucassin and Nicolette conform to their literary types, but they are out of step in so doing, and thus show the types up once more. Whilst Nicolette holds Aucassin's horse and stays in the queen's chambers, as one might expect a girl to do, Aucassin comes nearer to what we think of as a typical courtly knight.³¹ He enters Torelore in chivalric style, ‘s’espee çainte, s’amie devant lui’ (XXVIII.12), and he is called ‘li cortois et li gentis’ (XXIX.2). And indeed, he shows some of the moral and active qualities of the knight: he exhorts the king and he fights. But both actions are misplaced, so that once more we see Aucassin making the conventional response rather than the appropriate one.³²

In battle Aucassin imitates the epic knight, but inappropriately. His conformity to this stereotype is stressed by the formula used of him: ‘Aucassins, li prex, li ber’ (XXXI.11), but his conventionality turns against him, for the circumstances are not epic. The contrast between this and true warfare is expressed neatly in a pun which brings formulaically to mind the epic norm: ‘ce plenier estor canpel’ (XXXI.4). For ‘canpel’ here means literally ‘of the fields’, using agricultural produce for weapons; whereas ‘estor canpel’ and ‘estor plenier’ are both epic formulae, the first meaning ‘pitched battle’, and the second being a standard intensification.³³ Since in this battle the opponents do not seek to kill each other, Aucassin's valour is both inappropriate and devalued, for he has no effective enemies. An important element of the chivalric ethic—fighting prowess—is thus presented as unfounded and destructive.³⁴

NICOLETTE, AUCASSIN AND THE STANDARDS OF REALITY

The presentation of the work's protagonists is thus highly ambivalent, not to say contradictory. We have seen how Aucassin represents the external aspects of the courtly hero, without the stereotype's essentials or moral qualities—except when these are inapt, in Torelore. Nicolette on the other hand is altogether more complicated.³⁵ In her appearance and many of her functions she fully conforms to the external characteristics of the courtly heroine. But she goes beyond this; though she fulfils the stereotype's positive externals she does not demonstrate its negative implications. She is, as tradition demands, beautiful, beloved, noble and the rest; indeed in her origin as a Saracen princess she fulfils in action what elsewhere exists merely as part of the stereotype, but which here is fundamental to the plot. Yet she is not, as our literary experience would lead us to infer, helpless, passive and weak. On the contrary: it is she who escapes when both she and Aucassin are imprisoned, she who acts whilst he laments, she who engineers their reunion in the forest, and she who seeks Aucassin until she finds him at the end of the story. She does not belie the conventional courtly attributes given her—the formulaic denotation of the type of the heroine; but she does belie its connotations, the moral qualities we expect to find accompanying the external aspects of the stereotype. In a similar way to certain fabliaux, Nicolette makes us see that our interpretation based on connotations is not necessarily warranted by the denotation of the type she represents; for she combines adherence to the denotation with contradiction of the connotations. Accordingly, the author's treatment of her shows how much potential the reality contains which the conventions do not fulfil. To be a courtly heroine need not—but elsewhere usually does—entail having the passive qualities conventionally associated with the rôle. Rather, once disencumbered of its negative connotations, the figure of the courtly heroine implies many positive qualities: inspiration and encouragement of the lover, control of the love relationship, decision-making and the taking of responsibility.

So Nicolette has the external qualities of the courtly heroine, but not the inner qualities usually associated with the type; and for Aucassin it is the same. For, as we have seen, he attempts to conform to the convention of the hero, and indeed he expresses to the extreme the external qualities of the courtly lover, in his handsome appearance, his admiration of Nicolette, his use of courtly formulae to characterise her, and his absorption in her to the exclusion of all else; but he does not combine with these effective love or active valour. Rather, he demonstrates the negative potential of the type of the hero, as Nicolette shows the positive potential of that of the heroine. It is because he is so totally the romantic lover that he is ineffectual. If it is the lover's duty to think always of his lady, it is logical that the courtly knight who is a perfect lover should forget, for love, to fight, as Aucassin does (X). Most lovers are in this sense less perfect than Aucassin.³⁶ The ideal is inherently self-contradictory.

If, then, Aucassin fulfils the accidentals but not the essentials of the stereotype, and Nicolette does the same thing, why do we laugh at Aucassin but not at Nicolette? For that is surely our reaction. We see Nicolette as appealing because she diverges from the courtly convention, but we laugh at Aucassin, the failed hero. The answer is twofold. Part of it depends on the nature of the courtly stereotypes. That of the man is essentially based on character and action: the externals are expressive of the internal qualities (thus the brave are conventionally handsome). The figure of the heroine, on the other hand, is first and foremost external: she is beautiful, elegant and inspires love, and any internal qualities are additional. This being so, we see that Nicolette fulfils the prime area of the convention, diverging in the secondary aspect by her forceful character. Aucassin fulfils the secondary area but does not have the character of a hero, which is all-important to the type.

The second part of the answer is that the values of reality condemn Aucassin and commend Nicolette. We are led to see this through our laughter itself: the comic episodes are the ones in which Aucassin is involved and in which he acquits himself ill, for example his two fights, his accident at the bower, his overreactions. If we abstract the relation of the two heroes to the courtly convention, they present themselves as a pretty girl full of good qualities (fidelity, devotion, generosity, courage, resourcefulness, energy) and a buffoon who tries to impress but gets the important things wrong, and who is conspicuously lacking in the self-same courage, energy and resourcefulness. She is better than her type, he worse.³⁷

To make this abstraction, however, is greatly to impoverish our appreciation; for even as we judge with the standards of reality, our criticism is closely dependent on the relation of Aucassin et Nicolette to contemporary literature. Indeed, without the presence of parody, Aucassin would not gain our sympathy at all, so great is his stupidity and so potentially dangerous his fecklessness; we should either find him odious or see in him a failure on the author's part. At most we might derive amusement from his failures, his exaggerations and his accidents. It is by comparison with the literary background from which he derives and which he recalls that he is deeply comic, and ironic, and parodic. For his flaws of character, superficially amusing in themselves (absent-mindedness, overreaction and so forth), are given a deeper humour by being related to a literary convention which implies them but does not elsewhere demonstrate them so openly; by establishing such relations, the author leads us to judge the conventions themselves. So as a parodic figure Aucassin regains our sympathy, since he is not merely a butt of mockery or a disastrous mistake; he is rather a focus for, and an instrument of, effective parody.

The author uses him for parody by manipulating in two ways the formulae he represents. On the one hand they are exaggerated and thus rendered obvious; on the other they are brought into sharp contrast with reality and with realism. The exaggeration has been discussed: in Aucassin the external courtly qualities are shown in extreme form and deprived of a basis in internal character, and their weaknesses are thus shown up. He demonstrates the convention pushed to its conclusion, and his poor showing condemns it. We see the emptiness of his character and reject both him and what he stands for; in the one example we judge the type, for we recognise that he is both faithful to it and inane. We therefore see the literary ideal's potential for ridicule when, as here, it is untempered by human qualities and pushed to its extreme; we are thus made aware of our own uncritical acceptance of the stereotype in our broader literary experience.

In order for Aucassin's emptiness to be made apparent, the values of reality are again relied upon. Since convention is in essence opposed to realism, anything which shows that the values of reality call into question the validity of a convention poses a threat to the very foundation of conventional literature. Accordingly, a fruitful means of parodying such literature is to show that it unrealistic. An example is the insensitivity to pain which both Aucassin and Nicolette experience. When escaping from Beaucaire, Nicolette ‘ne santi ne mal ne dolor por le grant paor qu’ele avoit’ (XVI.14-15). Aucassin on the other hand, as he rides through the brambles looking for her, ‘pensa tant a Nicolete sa douce amie qu’i ne sentoit ne mal ne dolor’ (XXIV.6). The contrast shows well the difference between the two characters, and how the author wishes to present them; their plights are similar and in both cases to be taken as real, but whereas a realistic reason is given for Nicolette's insensitivity to pain (fear), Aucassin's is explained conventionally (a lover's rêverie) and in formulaic language (‘Nicolete sa douce amie’). The conventionality seems the more misplaced because we know from experience of real life that his situation is indeed unpleasant and therefore he should feel pain. The contrast between the two frames of reference—the realistic and the literary—thus works to the detriment of the conventional expression.

A second example is Aucassin's finding the bower built by Nicolette.³⁸

Aucassins si cevauce. La nuis fu bele et quoie, et il erra tant qu’il vin[t pres de la u li set cemin aforkent] si [vit devant lui le loge que vos savés que] Nicolete [avoit fete, et le loge estoit forree] defors et dedens et par deseure et devant de flors, et estoit si bele que plus ne … estre. Quant Aucassins le perçut, si s’aresta tot a un fais, et li rais de le lune feroit ens.

(XXIV.54-58)

The whole scene mocks the unlikely coincidences and recognitions of the romance tradition; for Nicolette relies on his finding it, and he does, and moreover he knows it is of her making. Reality intrudes, however, as in dismounting he falls from his horse: ‘Il pensa tant a Nicolete se tres douce amie qu’il caï si durement sor une piere que l’espaulle li vola hors du liu’ (XXIV.63-64). If it is traditional that the lover thinking of his lady should notice no pain, it is grotesque that in his distraction he should fall from his horse, and not even in a noble circumstance like Lancelot, but whilst dismounting. It is a mundane injury and an ungraceful accident, and one which reflects poorly on Aucassin's horsemanship as well as making his love comic—thus deflating two prime qualities of the courtly knight. His love is so exaggerated and ethereal that it destroys the horsemanship which should serve it. Though the effect of his absorption here is more realistic than the conventional insensitivity to pain, the explanation given is still the fully conventional one, so that the discrepancy between reality and literary ideal is again, and more strikingly, shown up.

Aucassin continues by showing a ludicrously inappropriate reaction: though his shoulder is injured and not his legs, he drags himself along the ground and ‘vint tos souvins en le loge’ (XXIV.66): a preposterous motion, the more so when it is unnecessary. Nicolette, by contrast, concludes the incident by adapting a courtly convention to practical needs: the healing power of love, far from clashing with the reality of the circumstances as in the case of Aucassin, is expressed by her actually resetting his shoulder. The critical reflection on the convention of the courtly hero as contrasted with realistic events is set off and enhanced by the differing treatment of Nicolette, through whom positive and practical sides of the stereotype are developed. In this incident where the stereotypes of hero and heroine are brought into contact with the demands of reality, the author shows in microcosm the message of his work as a whole: he demonstrates the negative potential of the figure of the courtly hero and the positive potential of that of the courtly heroine.

CONCLUSION

In Aucassin et Nicolette, then, parodic references to the romance, and to a lesser extent to the chanson de geste, are fundamental. In those fabliaux which make use of parody we saw how it adds a further dimension to a simply humorous story. In Aucassin et Nicolette it is parody which makes the story humorous; such comedy as it would otherwise have is very slight, and would be such as to direct laughter at the author for producing poorly motivated events and a ridiculous hero. In fact, however, its comedy is deeply ironic, for it depends on the establishment of a subtle relation between the work and contemporary literature. The character of Nicolette shows us the convention of the courtly heroine redeemed by the addition to the stereotype of qualities which are laudable in real terms; whilst that of Aucassin shows the depths to which the convention of the courtly hero can sink if it is presented in pure and extreme form without the inner qualities normally associated with it. Both conventions are thus shown up as potentially empty: Aucassin's by demonstration, Nicolette's by contrast with the fulness she gives it. Good courtly authors use the traditional elements with discretion, whilst second-rate ones, by relying on them, reveal their negative potential. The author of Aucassin et Nicolette highlights this negative potential by making the conventions transparent. Depictions are so formulaic, and so standardised on repetition within the work, as to make plain how standard they are elsewhere; the coincidences on which romances depend are laid bare by having no veil cast over their implausibility; and the vacuity of courtly sentiments is revealed by the expression in a very prosaic prose of what would pass notice cloaked in poetic verse. Our author thus exposes the faults of the courtly tradition in order to undermine that tradition; he makes fundamental to his work a point some fabliaux make in passing. His parody is critical of its model; in this it contrasts with Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, to which I shall now turn.

Notes

1. Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur and Robert Francis Cook, ‘Aucassin et Nicolete’: A Critical Bibliography (London, 1982) surveys work to 1979.

2. Hunt, pp. 341-53, 376-80; Imre Szabics, ‘Amour et prouesse dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, in Et c’est la fin pour quoy sommes ensemble: hommage à Jean Dufournet. Littérature, histoire et langue du moyen âge, ed. by Jean-Claude Aubailly and others (Paris, 1993), III, 1341-49 (pp. 1341-43).

3. See respectively F. Carmona Fernandez, ‘Parodie et humour dans le roman en vers de la première moitié du XIII^e siècle: allusion et tradition littéraire dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, in Le Rire au moyen âge, pp. 97-106 (p. 104); Charles Méla, Blanchefleur et le saint homme; ou, la semblance des reliques: étude comparée de littérature médiévale (Paris, 1979), p. 58; D.D.R. Owen, ‘Chrétien, Fergus, Aucassin et Nicolette and the Comedy of Reversal’, in Chrétien de Troyes and the Troubadours: Essays in Memory of the late Leslie Topsfield, ed. by Peter Noble and Linda M. Paterson (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 186-94.

4. ‘Kritik und Rettung der höfischen Welt in der Chantefable’, in Höfische Literatur, Hofgesellschaft, höfische Lebensformen um 1200: Kolloquium am Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld (3. bis 5. November 1983), ed. by Gert Kaiser and Jan-Dirk Müller (Düsseldorf, 1986), pp. 363-86.

5. ‘Ein Beispiel mündlicher Dichtung: Aucassin et Nicolette’, Fabula, 15 (1974), 1-26.

6. Jean Trotin, ‘Vers et prose dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, Romania, 97 (1976), 481-508; Joan B. Williamson, ‘Naming as a Source of Irony in Aucassin et Nicolette’, SFr, 17 (1973), 401-09.

7. Simone Monsonégo, Etude stylo-statistique du vocabulaire des vers et de la prose dans la chantefable ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’, (Paris, 1966); Nathaniel B. Smith, ‘The Uncourtliness of Nicolette’, in Voices of Conscience: Essays on Medieval and Modern French Literature in Memory of James D. Powell and Rosemary Hodgins, ed. by Raymond J. Cormier (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 169-82; idem, ‘Aucassin et Nicolette as Stylistic Comedy’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 26 (1979), 479-90.

8. ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’, p. 487. To Hunt's and Szabics's surveys should also be added: Vladimir R. Rossman, Perspectives of Irony in Medieval French Literature (The Hague, 1975), pp. 96-106; Norris J. Lacy, ‘Courtliness and Comedy in Aucassin et Nicolette’, in Essays in Early French Literature presented to Barbara M. Craig, ed. by Norris J. Lacy and Jerry C. Nash (York, S. Carolina, 1982); Fernando Carmona, El Roman lírico medieval (Barcelona, 1988), pp. 227-95.

9. Cf. Grimm, especially pp. 368, 373-74.

10. Quotations are from my own edition in Glyn S. Burgess and Anne Elizabeth Cobby, The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne (Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne), Aucassin and Nicolette (Aucassin et Nicolette) (New York and London, 1988). Roman numerals indicate sections, arabic lines.

11. Grimm, pp. 370-74, studies the mix of genres in the text as a whole.

12. Cf. Colby, pp. 14-16, 29-50.

13. As does the predictability of the clichéd pairs of adjectives; cf. Smith, ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’, p. 486.

14. Carmona points out the comic and ironic potential of the text's concision, abbreviation and skeletal quality (El Roman lírico, e.g. p. 250).

15. On this use of the topos cf. for example Omer Jodogne, ‘La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, CAIEF, 12 (1960), 53-65 (pp. 57-58); June Hall Martin, Love's Fools: Aucassin, Troilus, Calisto and the Parody of the Courtly Lover (London, 1972), pp. 25-36; Lachet, La ‘Prise d’Orange’, pp. 174-76.

16. e.g. Erec, Yvain; cf. Erich Köhler, L’Aventure chevaleresque: idéal et réalité dans le roman courtois. Etudes sur la forme des plus anciens poèmes d’Arthur et du Graal, trans. by Eliane Kaufholz (Paris, 1974), especially p. 202.

17. Cf. Edmond Faral, Les Arts poétiques du XII^e et du XIII^e siècle: recherches et documents sur la technique littéraire du moyen âge (Paris, 1924), p. 87.

18. Cf. Smith, ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’, p. 484.

19. A further example is the almost identical passages (II.15-21 and VIII.11-18) in which he is exhorted, and refuses, to fight. Smith, ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’, pp. 482-83, shows how these and other repetitions stress themes and contrasts and make ‘comic exploitation of rhetorical variatio and amplificatio’ (p. 483).

20. To this list could be added as many more occurrences of ‘Nicolete ma / sa (tres)douce amie’.

21. This is the most striking instance of Aucassin's formulaic and repetitious references to Nicolette, but there are others in the verse sections, e.g. ‘flors de lis’ (XI.12, 32), ‘gens cors’ (III.15, XXIII.9, 13), and the vocative ‘douce amie’ (VII.20, XI.13, 32, XXIII.18, XXV.15, XXVII.11, XXXV.10). On such formulae, cf. Trotin, pp. 481-99, and Williamson, pp. 402-04.

22. Cf. Rudy S. Spraycar, ‘Genre and Convention in Aucassin et Nicolette’, RR, 76 (1985), 94-115. Significantly Aucassin chooses externals over essentials when he prefers hell in the company of courtly types with their social graces to heaven with beggars (VI). Similarly in his conversation with Nicolette at the tower (XIV), he says he would kill himself rather than know her to be in another man's bed, proposing not to prevent the fact but to avoid the knowledge, to spare his feelings but not to help her.

23. e.g. Le Chevalier à la Corbeille (MR, II, 183, NRCF, vol. IX), Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue (NRCF, IV, 151).

24. Cf. Colby, pp. 27-29, 33, 38, 43-47.

25. Cf. e.g. Floire et Blancheflor, Piramus et Tisbé.

26. Men's hair is usually curled, women's long and fine; cf. Colby, pp. 34-35. On a ‘face clere’ as a female characteristic, cf. Colby, p. 47. The exchange of rôles between the sexes is a commonplace of Aucassin criticism; see note 35 below.

27. Cf. Hermann Sauter, Wortgut und Dichtung: eine lexikographisch-literargeschichtliche Studie über den Verfasser der altfranzösischen Cantefable ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’ (Münster and Paris, 1934), pp. 37-38, 136, and Colby, p. 96.

28. Cf. Hunt, p. 359.

29. Cf. Albert Pauphilet, Le Legs du moyen âge: études de littérature médiévale (Melun, 1950), p. 241; the proverb is used by Conon de Béthune in ‘Il avint ja en un autre païs’.

30. This has often been discussed; e.g. by Darnell H. Clevenger, ‘Torelore in Aucassin et Nicolette’, RomN, 11 (1969-70), 656-65; J.H. Martin, pp. 32-35; Hunt, pp. 370-73; Moses Musonda, ‘Le Thème du “monde à l’envers” dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, MedR, 7 (1980), 22-36; Paule Le Rider, ‘La Parodie d’un thème épique: le combat sur le gué dans Aucassin et Nicolette’, in La Chanson de geste et le mythe carolingien: mélanges René Louis publiés par ses collègues, ses amis et ses élèves à l’occasion de son 75^e anniversaire (Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay, 1982), II, 1225-33. Grimm, pp. 377-82, discusses at length its parodic and carnival nature, with particular reference to courtly norms.

31. Not that Nicolette is so self-effacing that she cannot express independent and unconventional thought when faced with an unwelcome marriage (XXXIII).

32. Cf. Grimm, p. 380.

33. See Tobler-Lommatzsch s.vv. ‘champel’ (II, 201-02) and ‘plenier’ (VII, 1139-40). Le Rider, p. 1231, discusses the parodic effect of this pun.

34. Cf. Clevenger, p. 663.

35. As witness the disagreement between critics as to whether or not she is an anti-courtly heroine, and whether or not her positiveness is unusual; e.g. Hunt, p. 374, Carmona Fernandez, ‘Parodie et humour’, p. 101: she is not atypical; M. Faith McKean, ‘Torelore and Courtoisie’, RomN, 3 (1961-62), 64-68 (p. 66), Robert Harden, ‘Aucassin et Nicolette as Parody’, SP, 63 (1966), 1-9 (p. 7): she inverts the type of the heroine. It is not how unusual her positiveness is that is important, but the use to which it is put, and it is certainly made to contrast with Aucassin's inaction. Cf. J.H. Martin, pp. 30-31: though the perfect courtly lady, Nicolette shows Aucassin up by not acting according to the rules of courtly romance.

36. Though Lancelot shows the same absorption; cf. D.D.R. Owen, ‘Profanity and its Purpose in Chrétien's Cligés and Lancelot’, FMLS, 6 (1970), 37-48 (p. 47); J.H. Martin, pp. 26-27.

37. On the rôle played by various aspects of reality, cf. Jill Tattersall, ‘Shifting Perspectives and the Illusion of Reality in Aucassin et Nicolette’, French Studies, 38 (1984), 257-67; idem, ‘Social Observation and Comment in Aucassin et Nicolette’, NM, 86 (1985), 551-65.

38. Lacunae filled from Suchier's reconstruction (reproduced in Burgess and Cobby, p. 180). On this episode and its literary background see Wayne Conner, ‘The Loge in Aucassin et Nicolette’, RR, 46 (1955), 81-89.