[In the essay that follows, Clevenger avers that the episode of Aucassin et Nicolette which takes place in the land of Torelore reveals the parodic nature of the work and emphasizes the writer's implicit assertion that the world and its laws and habits is the story's true antagonist.]

The plot of the thirteenth-century chantefable, Aucassin et Nicolette, is quite simple. Aucassin, son and heir to Count Garin of Beaucaire, loves Nicolette, a Saracen slave purchased and then “adopted” by the Viscount of that same Beaucaire. The remainder of the story consists of one separation after another as the lovers flee their persecutors. During their travels they reach the inverted kingdom of Torelore, a country where the king is lying in childbed, the queen is leading the troops into battle, and the battle is being waged with good cheeses and baked apples. This episode at Torelore is the structural and symbolic center of the work. Without it the story would be incomplete. With it the work becomes a structure of three symmetrically interlocking pyramids, with Torelore as the central peak. Alone the episode stands as a burlesque of chivalry, of knightly valor and courtly love. As an integral part of the whole it determines the author's intended parody of the same. Moreover, it proves the basic unimportance of the plot, making the reader conscious, by one more in a series of tonal inversions or changes, that the world (the real as well as the fictional), its laws, customs and conventions, is the true antagonist of the story.

Nevertheless, not until recently have critics begun to recognize Torelore's ultimate significance. Kasper Rogger passed it off as an “intermezzo burlesque.”¹ Albert Pauphilet did realize that it is the most outstanding example of the author's use of the “contre-pied” or inversion technique. However, he continues that “pour le progrès du roman, c’est une impasse, un épisode tellement statique qu’on n’en peut pas sortir, si ce n’est par une action extérieure.”² Lately Omer Jodogne has been more than stylistic flair in the episode: “Cet épisode est nécessaire à la détermination de la valeur d’Aucassin,” for it causes a softening of “ce que la satire avait de démesuré” against hero and love.³ More recently Sister M. Faith McKean has shown an awareness of its true structural and symbolic value. She concludes that, as an interlude, it is the “key passage” for the love theme, one that underscores the reversal of the lovers' roles and the parody of courtly love.⁴

Torelore is not simply the “key” to the love theme, however. It is the key to the entire chantefable. As an interlude, it divides the story in half: the previous action occurring in Beaucaire, in flight, with Aucassin chasing and catching Nicolette; the succeeding action taking place in both Carthage and Beaucaire, with Nicolette following and catching Aucassin. The story opens with the siege of Beaucaire and Count Garin's attempt to separate the lovers. The Viscount imprisons Nicolette in a tower; the Count imprisons Aucassin in a cell. Nicolette escapes and, before fleeing into the forest, secretively visits Aucassin at his cell, where the two impersonally discuss the respective influence of love on man and woman, in spite of the more pressing matters of their own love and the proximity of pursuit, capture and death for Nicolette. Nicolette then continues her flight into the forest where she builds a bower of branches. Later Aucassin, being freed, follows her. At the bower, for the first time since the story opened, the lovers are together without interference, except for the possibility of pursuit. The first movement in the love theme is complete. After an interlude at Torelore, where they are free from the meddling of parental authority, but not from the world at large (the attempt of the nobles of Torelore to marry Nicolette to their prince), the lovers are again parted, being abducted by pirates, placed in different ships, and separated by a storm. Thus begins the second basic movement of the story.⁵ This movement is parallel in structure to the first. The pirate raid on Torelore is similar to the siege of Beaucaire in much the same way that the storm parallels Count Garin's earlier role. During the storm, the lovers are blown to their respective homes, Carthage and Beaucaire. Afterwards the story again rises to an interlude. Nicolette, in minstrel disguise, escapes Carthage and returns to Beaucaire. There, in a scene reminiscent of the one at Aucassin's cell, she encounters Aucassin at court, relates their past love and adventures to him (without revealing her true identity), her fate at Carthage (without mentioning that she has escaped), and her fidelity. The lovers are together, as they were at the cell, but are kept apart by Nicolette's whim (she wishes to test her lover's faithfulness before revealing herself), as they were formerly kept apart by the bars on the cell window. Finally, Nicolette leaves the court and proceeds to the Viscountess' home, where she bathes eight days before sending her hostess after Aucassin; in the forest, earlier, she left a message with the herdsmen, allowing him three days to search for her. Of course Aucassin goes to her at the Viscountess', as he went to the bower, and the story ends in marriage.

Both movements thus terminate in symbolically ideal states of love, pagan and Christian, the bower and marriage.⁶ They are parallel in structure (separation, interlude, resolution), and are complete and complementary units just as an act in a play or a chapter in a novel. However, two significant changes or inversions take place in the latter section. One, the inversion of the protagonists' roles, begun more humorously before Torelore, is definitely and totally completed after that episode. Nicolette assumes the male role as Aucassin does the female one. In the chase through the forest Aucassin was, symbolically, both knight and hunter. The nightwatchman, Nicolette herself, and the herdsmen all refer to her as prey. Aucassin calls her his lost greyhound. The journey itself seems to contain all the perils of the knight errant's trials of strength, in parody, especially in the case of the ugly ox driver. Aucassin's first trial is with the shepherds. He pays them for information in spite of their insulting ways. His next trial is with the ox driver, whom the author describes in such a way as to prepare us for a battle: he is hideous, gigantic, carries a huge club, and Aucassin approaches him with fear in his heart. The approaching battle dissolves into conversation, and the peasant's problems provide a humorous contrast to those of the hero (the loss of his ox and the loss of Aucassin's “white greyhound,” his need for money and Aucassin's for love). Next Aucassin encounters his third trial at the very door of the bower: he falls while dismounting, dislocating his shoulder. After Torelore Nicolette becomes the hunter by traveling from Carthage to Beaucaire, in male disguise, to search for Aucassin. Aucassin's earlier role is completely inverted, not only through contrast with Nicolette, but because he waits for her at Beaucaire, not because of the bars to a cell, but because of his own passivity, created by his love.

Two, there has also been an extreme change in tone after Torelore.⁷ The mixture of reality, fantasy and folklore that created such caricatures as the ox driver is missing. The detail of description that made the love bower so delightful and the Beaucaire war such a travesty is absent. The burlesque quality of Aucasin's accident and the lighter humor in his description of Nicolette's healing powers, both are lacking. Remaining is the one tone that pervades the entire work, the rhythm of illogical or mysterious causality that creates the knight and the two storms, and does away with Aucassin's parents, at the appropriate moment.⁸

Between the above two movements stands Torelore. Several items, not the least of which is its central location, indicate this episode's importance structurally: it is the only episode in which natural phenomena directly intervene to affect the flight of the lovers (chance storms carry them both to and from the kingdom and thus separate it from the rest of their world); it, in relationship to Beaucaire, reverses the spatial movement found elsewhere in the story (arrival and departure in contrast to flight and return); it is the only place in the story where the world is abnormal and the actions of the protagonists normal; it is the first episode in which the lovers are together without interference or danger of pursuit; it is at Torelore where Aucassin and Nicolette meet their sole counterparts, the king and queen; and it is at Torelore where the world replaces the lovers as the direct object of the author's satire.

Throughout the story Aucassin's valor as man and knight is continuously ridiculed, both in his own actions and in contrast with those of Nicolette. He is hesitant, moody, incapable of an action not directly related to his love for her. When he does react, his reactions are negative, extremely violent or extremely passive, extremely charitable or extremely peevish, seldom being the appropriate reaction for the given situation. At Torelore this changes. He is aggressive and courteous rather than peevish and moody. He is somewhat violent and comic, but only by means of the contrast with the burlesque meekness of his opponents. Moreover, his lethargy disappears until he is again threatened with the loss of Nicolette. He has become a true knight, capable of acting in accordance with the necessity of the moment, and of reacting as man should, with moral and physical strength. Unfortunately the methods of his actions are determined by codes foreign to Torelore. Thus the superimposition of his former and later hesitancy onto his daredevil recklessness in Torelore implies a burlesque of valor, not of Aucassin. It redirects our attention to the motives for his actions, to his love for Nicolette, to the king's condition, and to some code of valor that we would expect of a knight. It reminds us that the inversion of his situation in love is the basic reason for the change in his conduct; that, therefore, love is the primary motivating force of the story, and as such is the ultimate butt of the author's satire. It is a gentle satire, however, and one directed more at a system of love than at love itself. The author's biting criticism is reserved for other conventions, such as honesty, war, filial love and feudal loyalty; in other words, for the human condition. Human conventions, in the story, create more harm than good, but only because they conflict with practice. The story is a humorous comment on the clash of the ideal with reality.⁹

As for Aucassin, his first question upon arriving at Torelore is whether or not there is a war in process. He presumably wishes to serve the king in order to win honors for himself and his mistress. When he does reach the battlefield the result is almost as much of a failure as was his earlier battle. He requests the king's permission to enter the struggle and immediately charges the wielders of baked apples and fresh cheeses, lopping off heads with his sword until the king begs him to desist and the enemy flees the field. At Beaucaire he was somewhat less aggressively energetic. He refused to enter the battle, although his own home and inheritance were being attacked and his honor was in danger, until Count Garin promised him a few kisses and words with Nicolette. When he did ride off to do battle, he rode as if in a dream, his thoughts full of his beloved. In that state of mind, meandering through the middle of the battlefield, he was dragged from his horse as unceremoniously as he later cudgels the king, and as the pirates, even later, truss him up and throw him into their ship. Not until his captors began plotting his death, an unchivalrous procedure, did he draw his sword and lay around him like a berserk housewife. He had realized that death would permanently separate him from Nicolette. After his escape, possibly still afraid of permanent separation through death, he fled the battlefield. On his way he met Count Bougars, leader of the enemy forces, and attacked him without warning, beating him to the ground and leading him, by the nosepiece of his helmet no less, to Count Garin. If the Count had upheld his promise, the victory would have been complete. He refused to allow Aucassin access to Nicolette, however, and Aucassin, in retaliation, petulantly made his captive swear to do all in his power to destroy Baucaire, thus reversing the expected oath in such a situation, as the battle itself reversed chivalric procedure and knightly conduct.

It is significant to note that, in both wars, Aucassin is victorious in battle. His victories are nullified by forces exterior to himself: the first by his father's treachery, and the second by the comic incompetence of the opposition and the king's reprimand. Ironically he is allowed to live in peace in Torelore in spite of the brutal beating he administers the king and his own bloody conduct in the war. Of the two kingdoms, at least insofar as Aucassin is treated, Torelore is preferable, just as the king is in some ways a morally better man than Count Garin. Furthermore, the absence of chivalry, (honor, loyalty, courtesy) at Beaucaire, and its presence in the war at Torelore, by contrast, implies a criticism of Beaucaire. It further suggests that the convention of chivalry is, if not itself ridiculous, at least ridiculously inapplicable to normal human affairs. It functions, successfully, only in an abnormal situation.

It is further significant that the comic quality of Aucassin's actions at Beaucaire is produced by two conditions in his love affair, by separation from his beloved, and by his preoccupation with thoughts of her. The same is true elsewhere in the story. At his cell, and later at his court, Aucassin does nothing except mourn and weep for his beloved. He vows to commit suicide if she should ever adorn any bed but his own, instead of vowing revenge as a knight should. He vows to wait for her always, thus assuming the role of the woman who remains at home while her knight departs for the wars or in search of adventure. His fall from his horse is, moreover, caused by daydreams of Nicolette.

He, like the king, suffers from a lovesickness that has become a custom, or convention. The effect on his manhood is, to say the least, disparaging. The opposite is true of Nicolette for she assumes the role vacated by him. Love ennobles her as it degrades Aucassin. However, through her relationship to the queen, in whom love's effects are carried to a ludicrous extreme, Nicolette, as well as Aucassin, becomes more humorous with respect to the role she receives in the story, with respect to the convention that makes love the center (even if it is a lover's hell) of the universe and the beloved the very life of the lover. The king and queen have reversed the essential characteristics that distinguish man from woman. He is “pregnant.” She is protecting the home through force of arms. The reversal of their roles is, symbolically, both physical and emotional. Much the same is true of the protagonists.

Nevertheless, the king and queen are but caricatures, not of the protagonists, nor of love, but of the most unimaginably extreme results of love. Furthermore, the story ends happily, without burlesque or parody. And the author never directly ridicules love or the protagonists. His descriptions of their love are often the most delightfully moving passages of the work, as is the case with Aucassin's verses at the bower, or Nicolette's to the king and nobles of Torelore. The same is true of their persons. At the very beginning, Aucassin is described as good, handsome, graceful, but under the influence of love. Nicolette's poignant beauty while crossing the moat, her bruised and bloodied hands and feet, and her fear of death lurking behind and before, make her quite feminine. Moreover, althugh their reversal of roles progressively increases toward the symbolic extreme, through their actions, their adventures before Torelore are either comic in nature, or contain comic overtones. Their later adventures can never seriously reflect upon themselves simply because of the parallel structure of the work and the central location of Torelore, for Nicolette's aggressiveness after that episode not only recalls her earlier efficiency, but also a picture of the queen and her legions competing to muddy the ford, and, through association, other more feminine characteristics of the heroine as well. Much the same is true of Aucassin in association with his own inefficiency and that of the king. When he goes to the Viscountess' home at Nicolette's bidding, we are reminded that he was the hunter in the forest. When Nicolette takes a bath before revealing herself to her lover, we are reminded of the mantel, her best, that she wore when she escaped the tower, on her way to visit her lover; we are reminded of the bower carpeted with flowers where she first awaited Aucassin. In all, we are reminded that the humor is tender when directed toward the protagonists, burlesque when directed toward their condition; satirical (the avarice of the herdsmen) or cynically missing (Count Garin's treachery and the Viscount's cruelty) when directed toward human reality; and that it is precisely at Torelore, where the extreme results of misguided love appear in the form of the king and queen, that our memories are re-directed toward the pleasant innocence of the protagonists' love.

Notes

1. Kasper Rogger, “Etude descriptive de la chantefable Aucassin et Nicolette,” II, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 70 (1954), 41.

2. Albert Pauphilet, “Aucassin et Nicolette,” Le Legs du Moyen Age, chap. 8 (Melun: Librairie d’Argences, 1950), p. 244.

3. Omer Jodogne, “La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolette,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, 12 (1960), 61.

4. Sister M. Faith McKean, “Torelore and Courtoisie,” Romance Notes, 3 (1962), 64.

5. Rogger, op. cit., p. 19, with respect to the first movement of the story, concludes that it “constitute une unité, un tout parfait” and that it contains three basic divisions:

   La Ière partie raconte l’emprisonnement des deux amants: A, de Nicolette (II-VII); B, d’Aucassin (VIII-XI). La troisième partie relate l’évasion des deux amoureux: A, de Nicolette (XVI-XIX); B, d’Aucassin (XX-XXV). La deuxième partie est un intermède où apparaît Nicolette, la jeune fille victorieuse et entraînante. Cette partie centrale comprend non seulement le portrait triomphal de l’héroïne dans la rosée, mais aussi l’exposition des difficultés du jeune couple en particulier et du problème de l’amour en général.

   My structural analyses of the second movement (the third part of the story), and of the story as a whole, are based on his conclusions.

6. It is evident that the bower represents, symbolically, an ideal pagan retreat for lovers, possibly the very “lovers' hell” that Aucassin mentions earlier. Rogger's (op. cit., p. 7) discussion of the bower suggests this possibility: Les carrefours étaient le domicile des revenants, des diables, des mauvais esprits, le rendez-vous des sorciers et des sorcières; c’étaient les lieux où on se debarrassait de ses maladies … Mais c’étaient aussi les lieux propices aux filles amoureuses: là, elles se dévêtaient pour y attirer, magiquement, l’élu de leur cœur. Quelque chose de pareil devait faire le fond de la croyance folklorique qui a stimulé l’imagination de notre auteur.

   The very spatial movement and tonal changes of the story are further suggestive of the same possibility. Beaucaire is a Christian country. Nicolette has been baptized there; both Count and Viscount mention this. The Viscount refers to the probability of Aucassin losing his soul if he should marry Nicolette. The elements of folklore, mythology and magic that Rogger (op. cit., pp. 1-18) discusses do not actually enter the story until the scene in which Nicolette escapes, at night, from her tower, and they become progressively more evident as Aucassin approaches the bower. Torelore, of course, is the next step, from the depths of folklore to the depths of fantasy, for the tone of magic and myth terminates with the bower. After Torelore the earlier movement is reversed. Aucassin returns directly to Beaucaire, but Nicolette passes through Carthage, her own fatherland, and a country with a heretical faith, on her return trip to Beaucaire, a Christian country, and a Christian marriage. It is interesting that she returns with her face darkened with stain (there are a number of references to the whiteness of her skin, earlier, in Beaucaire) and that she bathes before marrying Aucassin. Could the former symbolize a religious relapse and the latter re-baptism? There must have been some association, for the medieval mind, between skin color and religious faith. In any case, both events coming together, immediately before her marriage and after her sojourn in Carthage, are quite suggestive. Furthermore, the contrastive placement of Nicolette's adventures in Carthage and Aucassin's in the forest, together with the Christian atmosphere at Beaucaire and the lack of it elsewhere, intimates a connection between the love bower and the later marriage, for they both unite the lovers at the end of two respective movements, flight and return.

7. Robert Harden, “Aucassin et Nicolette as Parody,” Studies in Philology, 63 (1966), 3, states that the “apparent lapses or inversions in the tone of the book and in the conduct of the protagonists are not exceptional but rather typical of the entire work” and that this very use of inversion emphasizes the author's mockery of characters and themes. I would add that it is through inversion and parallelism that many of the symbolic relationships and meanings of the work become apparent. Parallel episodes, actions, scenes construct a system of associations which are delineated by the inverted aspect of some of the parallels. Torelore, of course, is the most outstanding example. The events there parallel events in both Beaucaire and Carthage, and thus establish a contrast between the three countries, a contrast which immediately includes the rulers of the countries also: Count Garin and Nicolette's father attempt to separate the lovers; the king does not. The parallel relationship of authority to “subject” once established, it becomes clear that the king's decision is based on; one, a more tolerant or “humane” attitude toward love; or, two, and which seems more logical, his lack of filial connection to the protagonists. In either case the basic satire hidden in the relationship is directed at social attitudes toward love.

8. A. Micha, “En relisant Aucassin et Nicolette,” Le Moyen Age, 4th ser., XIV (1959), 279-291, rejects Rogger's conclusion [op. cit., I, 67 (1951), 421] that the part of the story following the bower of branches is heterogeneous to the part preceding it. Micha finds (pp. 279-280) that the change in style is due to a change of perspective, not of “intention profonde.”

9. Paul Brians, “Medieval Literary Parody,” (diss., Indiana Univ., 1968), p. 117, concludes that one of the main parodic devices of the author is the continuous intrusion of reality into the fictional world of romance. It is significant that the very clash of reality (actual procedure in human affairs) with the ideal (in this case, conventions in love and war), both before and during the flight of the lovers, is one of the author's basic means in parodying human conventions, through their ever increasing distance from reality (in other words, their extreme unreality), and, conversely, of satirizing that very reality from which the lovers flee. It is not so much a case of man's reality interfering with his ideals, or vice versa, for, in the work, neither are above ridicule. It is a case of a dual standard, neither aspect of which has common grounds for reconciliation with the other.