[In the essay below, Sargent examines two passages in Aucassin et Nicolette in which the author deliberately rejects medieval literary conventions. These examples, maintains Sargent, emphasize the author's humorous intentions.]

Among those who have commented on Aucassin et Nicolette in the last few years there is general agreement that the chantefable was written, at least partially, with humorous intent. When it comes to the exact nature and scope of the humor, the agreement is much less marked. Some scholars have stressed the apparent satire of contemporary ideas and institutions: Christianity and the Catholic Church,¹ feudalism,² the whole complex of received ideas of the older generation.³ Others have concentrated their attention on the verbal and structural aspects of the work that suggest parody. Three recent articles, by Alexandre Micha, Omer Jodogne, and Robert Griffin,⁴ have examined in considerable detail the literary genres and rhetorical conventions that are subjected to mockery; and M. Jodogne has given a penetrating analysis of several of the techniques employed.⁵

Nevertheless, something may remain to be said concerning parody in this enigmatical work. Two of the most celebrated passages, Aucassin's statement of preference for Hell rather than Paradise and the full-length portrait of Nicolette, while making an initial impression of grace and charm, offer peculiarities of thought and expression that suggest a deliberate rejection of a number of medieval literary conventions.

The first passage comes as the viscount exhorts Aucassin to renounce Nicolette for the youth's own good, since the illicit love he craves would send his soul to Hell and never would he enter Paradise. Aucassin's answer is curious in several respects:

… En paradis qu’ai je a faire? Je n’i quier entrer, mais que j’aie Nicolete ma tresdouce amie que j’aim tant; c’en paradis ne vont fors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cil viel clop et cil manke qui tote jor et tote nuit cropent devant ces autex et en ces viés creutes, et cil a ces viés capes ereses et a ces viés tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumelé, qui moeurent de faim et de soi et de froit et de mesaises; icil vont en paradis: aveuc ciax n’ai jou que faire. Mais en infer voil jou aler, car en infer vont li bel clerc, et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as tornois et as rices gueres, et li buen sergant et li franc home: aveuc ciax voil jou aler; et s’i vont les beles dames cortoises que eles ont deus amis ou trois avoc leur barons, et s’i va li ors et li argens et li vairs et li gris, et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et li roi del siecle: avoc ciax voil jou aler, mais que j’aie Nicolete ma tresdouce amie aveuc mi.⁶

M. Micha has sensibly dismissed the interpretation, advanced by early commentators, that this passage represents the personal views of an “écrivain nonconformiste, une manière d’esprit fort”; he observes that “la sortie d’Aucassin sur le paradis n’a rien d’une profession de foi teintée de libertinage; c’est un morceau brillant et pittoresque, visiblement écrit avec plaisir” and probably not belonging to any established literary tradition.⁷ M. Spitzer too rejects the notion of a “paganisme latent” or an “esprit libertin” in this passage, which in his opinion is “la manifestation … d’un amour mystique dans le genre des troubadours qui déclaraient ‘voir le paradis (ou Dieu)’ en leur maîtresse.”⁸ This last expression, though, is rather remote from the thought of the Aucassin passage. Much closer to it is the sentiment voiced by Conon de Bethune:

Bele doce Dame chiere,
Vostre grans beautés entiere
                                                                                M’a si pris
Ke, si iere em Paradis,
Si revenroie je arriere.(9)

Closer still is the troubadour Raimon Jordan, who would, though at the point of death, reject the chance of Paradise in favor of the chance to sleep one night with his lady:

Que tan la desir e volh
Que, s’er’en coita de mort,
Non queri’a a Deu tan fort
Que lai el seu paradis
                    M’aculhis
Com que’m des lezer
D’una noit ab leis jazer.(10)

There is indeed, in my view, a literary commonplace at the bottom of Aucassin's speech. Gaston Paris identified it, and considered that the writer had amplified it with some personal additions expressive of hatred of jongleurs and of worldly society for asceticism and gloomy priests. All he needed to have his character say was that “il ne se souciait pas du paradis sans Nicolette et que l’enfer lui plairait avec elle. …”¹¹ However, the commonplace referred to takes a queer form, is in fact negatived, owing to the special associations that here attach to Heaven and Hell. Indeed, no discussion of the passage in question has, to my knowledge, fully taken into account the very unorthodox picture given of the two regions. Aucassin is not saying that he finds Paradise in his beloved or that he would rather have her than eternal bliss without her. His attitude is rather this: “Paradise is an unpleasant place; I do not want to go there, provided that I may have Nicolette. Hell is a most agreeable place; I want to go there, provided that I may have Nicolette.” The representation of Heaven as peopled with the impoverished, misshapen, miserable devout, and Hell as filled with delightful people and desirable objects, may be somewhat startling, but is akin to notions expressed in other works of the period that reflect courtly standards. What is usually called, for lack of a better term, “courtly love” tacitly substituted a heretical system of values for the Christian system,¹² to the extent that love was named the source of all good and those who could not or would not engage in it were relegated, by literary convention, to something approximating Hell.¹³ Thus far, Aucassin et Nicolette appears to concur with the courtly convention, which made a closed system in which love, courtesy, wealth, leisure, and nobility were supreme, and villainy, in all senses of the word, was beyond the pale. It seemingly agrees also with the teachings of the Church, which promised Paradise to all believers, especially the oppressed and wretched of the earth, provided they were abundant in faith and good works (the priests, the devout laity, the crippled and poor) while fulminating against luxury, display, private warfare, worldly entertainments, and adultery. But one notes that in this passage there is no mention of reward for the wretched devout after their decease, nor or punishment for the prosperous sinners. Transformation is no more alluded to than is recompense; one is left with the impression that the lame, the naked, the hungry, and the poor continue to be such in the afterlife, in the absence of any suggestion to the contrary. Similarly, to Hell go those who are valiant, learned, fair, gay, and amorous, and with them go silver and gold and costly furs, the good things of this life. Again, the inference is that these persons and things will continue as they were on earth.¹⁴ If so, then we are faced with the anomaly of a paradise peopled not by glorious saints but by contemptible folk according to courtly standards; Aucassin feels an aristocratic aversion to them that he is at no pains to conceal. Hell, on the other hand, is populated by men and women he admires; and it boasts luxury and splendor. Thus Paradise is unpleasant and Hell is attractive. This is curious enough, but there is more. One could comprehend (though perhaps not approve of) an infatuated youth who stated, in a burst of enthusiasm, that he preferred Hell with his beloved to Paradise without her, meaning thereby that he would choose a highly unpleasant place with her rather than a delightful place without her.¹⁵ What are we to make of a young man who says that he doesn’t seek to go to an unpleasant place provided that (I so understand mais que¹⁶) he has his Nicolette, and that he wants to go to a delightful place provided, once again, that he has her? It seems to me that the problem is susceptible of only two solutions: either the author is attempting to show a character made incoherent by the force of his passions (love, frustration, resentment, and the like), or he is deliberately standing a literary convention on its head. Though Aucassin is frequently made to act and speak with a notable lack of sense,¹⁷ I nevertheless incline toward the second explanation. Time and again, in other passages, the author presents situations, relationships, ideas, and expressions that are the contrary of what one would expect, from the reversal of the rôles of hero and heroine to the flat non sequitur (“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”).¹⁸ In the very speech under examination there is another and perhaps more obvious example of the same technique. In his list of the admirable persons who go to Hell, Aucassin seems to be the spokesman for the normal courtly system of values, one of the best-known of which was the desirability of extramarital love. However, one of the essential traits of a fin amant according to the courtly code is faithfulness to one partner. Andreas Capellanus broad-mindedly counsels loving only one person at a time,¹⁹ but the troubadours were less indulgent. Robert Griffin has shown that these poets not only condemned ladies who loved more than one man, but some of them specifically took to task ladies who had two or three lovers.²⁰ Aucassin's allusion to the “beles dames cortoises” is immediately contradicted by what follows: these amorous ladies are not, or not perfectly, cortoises. Just as this detail flouts the convention of fidelity,²¹ so the speech taken as a whole, if I understand it correctly, flouts another convention: that of the lover who will jib at no personal sacrifice in order to enjoy the presence and person of the beloved.

From this perspective, the Hell-Paradise speech is remarkable chiefly for its sheer perversity of thought and expression and what one might call the density of the parody; while developing the central notion (Aucassin's unheroic wish to make the best of two worlds), the author rapidly and deftly mocks the idea of punishment for sin, the traditional representation of Heaven and Hell, the actions and appearance of the devout, and the rule of faithfulness in love.

The oddities of the descriptive parts of the chantefable are less apparent to modern readers, even those acquainted with the medieval traditions of descriptio. The personal descriptions of hero and heroine are entirely normal; both are depicted according to the gothic ideal.²² There is, no doubt, a certain tendency toward exaggeration: Nicolette's beauty is such that it lights up the forest, her skin is so white that white daisies in the moonlight seem black beside her feet, the very sight of her leg (obligingly exposed) not only cures a sick pilgrim but makes him better than ever. Luminous beauty, white skin, healing powers are frequently associated with medieval heroines; and one can scarcely make a claim for humorous exaggeration in the description in Section XII:

Ele avoit les caviaus blons et menus recerclés, 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 deus 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.

The portrait of Nicolette, in fact, could hardly be more conventional: an enumeration from head to foot of the qualities essential to feminine beauty.²³ Indeed, the author appears restrained in comparison with some of his contemporaries; Nicolette's skin is only extremely white, whereas that of Chrétien de Troyes' Enide is not only whiter than a lily, but her face is like a mirror²⁴ and her eyes radiate so much light that they resemble two stars. Nicolette's waist is so slender that two hands can span it; but Geoffroi de Vinsauf's prescriptions in the Ars versificatoria go even further: “Sit locus astrictus zonae, brevitate pugilli / Circumscriptibilis.”²⁵ In point of fact, the conventional romanciers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries go so far (following the theorists) in their outrageous claims for the supremacy of the beauty they are at the moment describing as to render parody impossible.²⁶

The only oddity within the description is the fact that the young girl's extreme slenderness is later denied by the girl herself; in the Torelore episode she sings of the delights of love “quant mes dox amis m’acole / et il me sent grasse et mole.”²⁷

But the really puzzling thing about the description of the heroine is its position. Normally such a portrait is introduced into a medieval work for its affective value, not only for the reader but for another character in the text; e.g., the hero, seeing for the first time a lady (whose beauty is at that moment either simply stated or fully depicted) falls in love with her. Matthieu de Vendôme, who has much to say about the technique of descriptions, cautions against their untimely use and prescribes the insertion of a picture of female beauty as a preliminary to a character's falling in love.

Amplius, si agatur de amoris efficacia, quomodo scilicit Jupiter Parasis amore exarserit, praelibanda est puellae descriptio et assignanda puellaris pulchritudinis elegantia, ut, audito speculo pulchritudinis, versimile sit et quasi conjecturale auditori Jovis medullas tot et tantis insudasse deliciis. Praecipua enim debuit esse affluentia pulchritudinis quae Jovem impulit ad vitium corruptionis.²⁸

This literary principle is a quite logical development from the commonplace of love's birth in the eyes, noted by Andreas Capellanus: “Amor est passio quaedam innata procedens ex visione et immoderata cogitatione formae alterius sexus. …”²⁹ This, however, is not the situation in Aucassin et Nicolette; there is no account of how the hero falls in love with the heroine, for their love is a “given” at the start of the story. The heroine, being loved, must be lovable; being lovable, she must be beautiful, and the author can spare himself the labor of enumerating her charms. If he wished to portray her nevertheless, the logical moment to do so would be when she first begins to take an active part in the narrative, moving and speaking “on her own.” This moment occurs in Section V, well before the passage in question. There is, indeed, a description of Nicolette in V, which, though only four verses in length, is sufficient to confirm her beauty (mentioned earlier by Aucassin) and hence to establish her claim on the reader's sympathetic interest.

The fact remains that most medieval fiction that posits love at the outset simply omits the description of the heroine. If, exceptionally, her beauty is shown, it is to announce and explain her effect on characters other than her lover, as in Floire et Blancheflor, a possible source of the chantefable (the double full-length portrait of the lovers is postponed until they have been apprehended and brought before the Emir for trial, at which moment their beauty and pathetic plight make a deep impression on the spectators).³⁰ This situation, too, is lacking in Aucassin. The portrait of the heroine has no affective function; she is quite alone as she makes her way across the garden. The author could hardly have been ignorant of the conventional purpose of the portrait, since in the only other extended³¹ personal description in the work, that of the plowman, he does show the effect of a character's appearance on another character.³² Nicolette's description, then, “pointless” according to conventional theory and practice, may signify a certain independence with regard to one more literary technique, perhaps even an outright rejection of it.

If these observations are valid, we have a somewhat clearer comprehension of what M. Micha has called the “ironie qui donne sa tonalité fondamentale à cette histoire d’amour”³³ and what M. Pauphilet termed (without examining in much detail) the “veine parodique” running through the entire work, the author having elected to “conter un roman d’aventures en tournant toujours le dos aux coutumes de ce genre.”³⁴ M. Jodogne sums it up as “pastiche et parodie de l’amoureux, pastiche et parodie de trois genres littéraires” of which the chief is the idyllic romance; yet it “traite de façon badine les procédés et les thèmes du genre.”³⁵

Although it is impossible to be certain of the exact intentions of the author, either in specific passages or in the entire work, one may hazard a conjecture. It is that the creator of Aucassin was indulging in a light-handed and good-natured mockery of the whole art of fiction as practiced at the time, packing into a few dozen pages an astonishing number of “mistakes,” i.e., deliberate infractions of the rules of composition both as expounded by the theorists and as put into practice by writers of fiction.³⁶ The work appears to be a sort of thirteenth-century anti-novel, without the bitter and destructive quality that frequently marks the corresponding modern phenomenon. Since the conventions it so often and conspicuously flouts were still very much in vogue, we may have here some explanation of the fact that Aucassin et Nicolette, so much appreciated today, was apparently not successful in its time.

Notes

1. Hermann Suchier, ed., Aucassin und Nicolette, 10th ed. (Paderborn, 1932), p. 39.

2. Robert Griffin, “Aucassin et Nicolette and the Albigensian Crusade,” Modern Language Quarterly XXVI (1965), 248.

3. Leo Spitzer, “Le Vers 2 d’Aucassin et Nicolette et le sens de la chantefable,” Modern Philology XLV (1947-48), 11.

4. Micha, “En relisant Aucassin et Nicolette,” Moyen Age LXV (1959), 279-92; Jodogne, “La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolette,” Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises XII (1959), 53-65; Griffin, 243-56.

5. He has discovered three basic devices: “le jeu permanent de contrepied, l’exagération et la bouffonerie …” (op. cit., p. 60). The first of these terms, M. Jodogne acknowledges, comes from Alfred Pauphilet, Le Legs du moyen âge (Paris, 1950), p. 243.

6. Ed. Mario Roques, CFMA, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1954), VI. All quotations are taken from this edition.

7. op. cit., p. 289. M. Jodogne agrees: “on comprend mal qu’on ait voulu entrevoir l’incrédulité religieuse de l’auteur. …” He considers the passage as ironical (op. cit., p. 58). Since parody is afoot in the chantefable, it is probably inevitable that the Church and its personnel and doctrines should have been brought in; these were favorite targets, especially for the Latin parodists. Helen Waddell made the general observation: “Medieval parody is graceless, even blasphemous. …” (The Wandering Scholars, 6th ed. [New York, 1955], p. 162).

8. op. cit., p. 11.

9. Les Chansons de Conon de Bethune, ed. A. Wallensköld (Paris, 1921), VII, 11. 1-5.

10. The Troubadour Raimon Jordan, Vicomte de Saint-Antonin, ed. H. Kjellman (Uppsala-Paris, 1923), XIII, 11. 48-54.

11. Poèmes et légendes du moyen âge (Paris, 1900), pp. 109-110.

12. For a discussion of the conflict between the two systems, see A. J. Denomy, The Heresy of Courtly Love (New York, 1947).

13. As in the fifth dialogue of Andreas Capellanus' De amore, which represents the eternal reward granted to ladies who have loved rightly and the eternal punishment of those who have refused love as well as those who have been promiscuous. See Andreae Capellani regii francorum De amore libri tres, ed. E. Trojel (Copenhagen, 1892; reprint Munich, 1964), pp. 91-108.

14. That this inference is natural is borne out by M. Pauphilet's remark: “… Aucassin déclare qu’il aime bien mieux aller en enfer qu’au paradis, car la compagnie y sera beaucoup plus élégante.” (Italics mine.) (op. cit., p. 242.)

15. Werner Söderhjelm goes this far; Aucassin's declaration is, for him, “… un trait important, qui met particulièrement bien en relief son amour impétueux et son caractère indépendant.” (La Nouvelle française du XV^e siècle [Paris, 1910], pp. 109-110.)

16. I cannot agree with Mr. Griffin's suggestion concerning the interpretation of these lines: “… the subjunctive ‘mais que j’aie Nicolete’ could bear the meaning ‘I would even go there provided I have Nicolete.’” (op. cit., p. 251.)

17. There come to mind such passages as Aucassin's capture in battle and sudden exertions when it occurs to him that, decapitated, he will no longer be able to speak to Nicolette; also his quibbles about the relative strength of their respective loves when he might be forming a plan of escape, and his fall from a standing horse. Devoid of heroism, Aucassin also falls short of the courtly ideal of mesure, well discussed by Moshé Lazar in Amour courtois et fin’ amors (Paris, 1964), pp. 28-32. M. Jodogne stresses, with much detail, the ridiculousness of Aucassin's words and actions (op. cit., pp. 55-60).

18. Edition, p. 2.

19. Among the rules of love are: “III. Nemo duplici potest amore ligari,” and “XVII. Novus amor veterem compellit abire” (op. cit., pp. 310-11.). Faithfulness in love is for Guillaume de Lorris the last and great commandment; see Le Roman de la Rose, ed. E. Langlois, SATF (Paris, 1920), vv. 2233-64.

20. op cit., p. 251.

21. And contradicts the faithfulness of the lovers themselves. Indeed, Aucassin reacts violently to the thought that Nicolette might become the mistress of another; see Edition, pp. 15-16.

22. Summarized by Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique médiévale (Bruges, 1946), II, 173 ff. For both men and women, the canon requires golden hair, bright eyes, rosy lips and cheeks, clear, white skin, long arms and hands, a straight and slender body. Certain other details, of course, vary according to sex. Alice Colby has recently made an extended study of the content and order of medieval personal descriptions in The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1965); see especially pp. 25-72 for traits of ideal beauty.

23. Consult the precepts set forth by Geoffroi de Vinsauf in Poetria nova, published by Edmond Faral in Les Arts poétiques du XII^e et XIII^e siècles (Paris, 1924), pp. 214-15.

24. “Ce fu cele por verité / qui fu fete por esgarder, / qu’an se poïst en li mirer / ausi com an un mireor.” (Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques, CFMA Paris, 1955, 11. 438-41.)

25. Loc. cit., 11. 593-94. M. Micha is mistaken in considering this “un trait original, qui est une exagération jointe á une stylisation poétique. …” (op. cit., p. 286).

26. Consider, from Floire et Blancheflor: “De sa bouche ist sa doce alainne, / Vivre en puet en une semainne: / Qui au lundi la beseroit / En la semainne fain n’avroit.” (Ed. Margaret Pelan, Paris, 1956, 11. 2660-63.)

27. Edition, p. 33, 11. 4-5. The author is particularly fond of this sort of inconsistency; see the allusion in the Prologue to Aucassin's proueces (1. 6), belied by the youth's actions. Similarly, in the Hell-Paradise speech Aucassin expresses admiration of li bel cevalier,though elsewhere (pp. 2, 8) he emphatically states his lack of interest in becoming one. (Note that the qualifying phrase following li bel cevalier clearly indicates that the term has the same military, rather than social, connotations here as in the passages on pp. 2 and 8.)

28. Ars versificatoria, par. 40, in Faral, p. 119. Douglas Kelly has recently drawn attention to this principle of composition in “The Scope of the Treatment of Composition in the Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Arts of Poetry,” Speculum XLI (1966), 274. Faral noted Matthieu's remarks on the subject in his Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et romans courtois du moyen âge (Paris, 1913) and sums them up: “… la description … explique les événements, et … la beauté du héros justifie l’amour de la femme ou la beauté de la femme l’amour du héros” (p. 101).

29. De amore, p. 3.

30. Ll. 2610-79.

31. There is a brief description of Aucassin, but it comes at the beginning and serves merely to inform the reader that this character merits interest and sympathy.

32. Edition, p. 25. The hero, observing this hideous apparition, is frightened, as one might well expect. The plowman is perhaps to be ascribed to another possible source, the Yvain of Chrétien de Troyes, in which a similar character appears in an analogous situation. There, however, he advances the narrative by giving directions to the hero; in Aucassin he has no narrative function. Incidentally, the reader aware of the medieval equations beautiful = good, ugly = evil would expect this vilain to be very villainous indeed; yet he turns out to be a neutral, even slightly benevolent character.

33. op. cit., p. 288.

34. op. cit., pp. 248, 245.

35. op. cit., pp. 64-65.

36. The closest parallel that suggests itself is Mozart's Musikalischer Spass, which aims at being as technically “wrong” as possible and yet results in an amusing and pleasing piece of work.

    The problem of determining whether a parodist is seriously criticizing, or merely fooling, or engaging in a mixture of the two, is both common and exceedingly difficult to solve. Paul Lehmann discusses this question of intention in Die Parodie im Mittelalter (Munich, 1922), noting that “… Bissiges and Launiges nicht immer leicht zu trennen sind” (p. 228). In the second edition of this work, he inclines to the view that medieval parodists usually aimed at amusement (Stuttgart, 1963, p. 4). Even if this is true, it does not, of course, prove that mere amusement was the intention of any specific medieval parody.