SOURCE: “‘Omnia vincit amor:’ The Audience of Aucassin et Nicolette—Confidant, Accomplice, and Judge of Its Author,” in Michigan Academician, Vol. 5, Fall, 1972, pp. 193-200.

[In the following essay, DuBruck maintains that the author of Aucassin et Nicolette sought to appeal to the common people of the middle to lower classes of society in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries.]

Since its first mention in modern times, in 1752, we know very little more about this charming piece of early thirteenth-century French literature than did the contemporaries of Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye, its first translator.¹ We do not know the author, we have no exact date, we have only one manuscript (BN #2168), which is partially damaged, and as for the audience to which it was addressed, any conjecture is as fair as it is unfair. Obviously, its remarkable structure attracted scholarly attention; its fictional content elicited investigations—none of them ultimately satisfactory—into the origins of its various motifs, and its rich endowment with parodic elements was uncovered more recently.² Unfortunately, though, the modern literary critic often does not hesitate to develop a kind of myopic vision, and, for the sake of explaining the entire work in terms of one principle, neglects the wonderful complexity of this little masterpiece.³

To show and elucidate the components of Aucassin et Nicolete, and still preserve its unity as a work of art, is my aim in this study. All this can be done, if one sees as the key to all the different attitudes, sentiments and thoughts displayed in our chantefable the audience to which it was addressed.

It is true that direct references of our author to his readers or listeners are rare. After an elaborate prologue of fifteen verses, in which he promises a good story, well told, which might have a salutary effect on everyone, all we find now and then is the formula “si que vous avés oī et entendu,” and at the very end the simple words: “No cantefable prent fin; / N’en sai plus dire.”⁴ However, as the author let the story itself speak to his audience, it speaks to us, revealing many interesting details about his contemporaries. In fact, he never forgets that his audience is present: this is indicated by the periodic insertion of the phrase “si que vous avés oī et entendu,” or a slight variation of it.⁵ That he expects to be judged by his audience is clear from the prologue; but he seeks in the reader, also, a confidant, and perhaps even an accomplice.

Such a relationship between author and audience is by no means novel at the time, and Chrétien de Troyes' precedent comes to mind immediately.⁶ What is new, however, is the type of confidence and complicity, and above all, the social stratum which is obviously addressed. The author of Aucassin et Nicolete speaks to the common man of the middle, lower middle and perhaps even the lowest class in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in northern France, most likely in an area which was quickly urbanizing, changing from an agrarian to a materialistic, money-oriented economy. Within the accepted scale of social hierarchies, the common man was on a fairly low level, still looking up to secular and ecclesiastic aristocracy for guidance or just protection. Often caught in a mesh of conflicting loyalities, the common man's trust was not infrequently betrayed in one way or another. Whatever the project was—crusade, fight for existence or fight for his daily living—he had little to gain, but everything to lose. The further the common people developed in their own physical and mental defenses, the more onerous did the older feudal ties prove to be.

What was the collective face—if there is such a concept—of thirteenth-century society like? Once neglected by historians of medieval French literature, this century becomes more and more interesting to us, as we discover its varied texture and the many different tendencies which urge their way forward to a more modern age. It saw the development of scholastic intellectualism as well as of popular piety, two strains so different and yet actually related to one another. It saw the failure of the crusades, the granting of the Magna Carta, a hitherto unequalled growth of the bourgeois population and the need to educate. Henceforth, the bourgeois will still eagerly absorb the aristocratic forms of literature, but he will not cultivate them further; rather, he will often make fun of them and eventually counterbalance them with a solid body of didactic writings. The man of the middle class begins to take possession of the world in which he lives, and this not only from the geographical point of view.

Most of the characters who people our chantefable are common men and women, burghers, merchants. Nicolete herself is a Moorish slave girl living in a bourgeois milieu. Her foster parents, Viscount and Viscountess, though noble, are burghers, as their property is in the city. Even Aucassin is, from the beginning, portrayed by his human, universal characteristics (his love for Nicolete), and not depicted within his aristocratic frame of reference. In chapter 8 the author makes it a point to mention the share of the “borgois” in the defense of Garin's chateau. There are references to such necessary burghers as the “escargaites de la vile” (chapter 14), or simply, “le gaite qui estoit sor le tor” (chapter 15). We encounter shepherds at mealtime, a serf who has lost the best of his master's oxen; we hear about the serf's mother who owned nothing but her mattress, and even that they took away from her: “Une lasse mere avoie, si n’avoit plus vaillant que une keutisele, si li a on sacie de desous le dos, si gist a pur l’estrain” (chapter 24). When Aucassin and Nicolete travel together, “passent … les viles et les bors” (chapter 27), till friendly merchants take them along. Nicolete eventually becomes a jongleur herself and takes shelter with a poor woman at the shore. A mariner gives her a ride in his boat.

As we analyze the role played by each of these common people in our story it becomes obvious that many of them have a favorable impact, whereas, with few nuances, the aristocracy (in the roles of Count Garins, his wife, and Bougars) fare negatively. To mention only one example, the serf opposes Aucassin's lament for Nicolete with his despair about his loss, the ox, all of which, even though the whole episode may be meant in jest and parody, makes a lot of sense in view of the precariousness of the serf's economic existence. After his words about his poor mother (see above)—what audience would at that moment still be interested in Nicolete? Yet, the serf settles the matter “philosophically”: “Car avoirs va et vient” (chapter 24). We can surmise from this how popular the wheel-of-fortune allegory must have been with the lower classes.⁷

Although he is “lais et hidex,” the serf is thus depicted favorably, and here we have an instance where physical ugliness is not necessarily allied to the morally and psychologically abject, as (upper-class) Platonism would have it in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the lowest point in Count Garin's “career” is doubtless the moment when he is convicted of having lied to his son and broken his word (chapter 10). The wider implications of this scene—the moral failure of a parent, the human failure of a warring aristocracy whose chivalric ideals have become exclusive of any other motivation—will be discussed further on.

It is obvious from the preceding paragraphs that the author is trying to please the common man by drawing a portrait of his social level, and by drawing it in favorable terms. In addition, he maintains his interest by discussing problems arising between the lower and upper classes. Above all, there is the question: May Aucassin—or may he not—marry a Moorish slave girl. We know the negative attitude of his parents, and we witness the cautious dissuasion by the Viscount and his short “De ce n’avés vos que faire” (chapter 6). Another clash of classes occurs in chapter 22, when the shepherd refuses Aucassin's request with the proud words: “Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s’il ne me seoit?” Finally, the serf faces severe punishment for losing his master's ox, probably additional labor.

Thematically, following the current vogue of stories of love and adventure, the author tells such a story, but places it into a middle-class frame of reference. As for the form of narrative, he may well have had at his disposal several verse portions of a Spanish or Southern French romance which he builds skillfully into a prose tale: late in the twelfth century prose narration became fashionable among the middle class which was less illiterate than in former times and began to conquer its world even through the written word.

Indeed, the prose portions of our chantefable reveal much attention to detail in localities, decor and everyday utensils. As the first map makers put more and more detail into their portolan charts, our first prose writers tend to familiarize their middle-class readers with their fictional surroundings. Witness Nicolete's escape, the mechanics of which are depicted in all detail: “Ele se leva, si vesti un bliäut de drap de soie, que ele avoit molt bon; si prist dras de lit et touailes, si noua l’un a l’autre, si fist une corde si longe come ele pot, si le noua au piler de le fenestre, si n’avala contreval le gardin; et prist se vesture a l’une main devant et a l’autre deriére, si s’escorça por le rousée qu’ele vit grande sor l’erbe, si s’en ala aval le gardin” (chapter 12). She descends into what seems to be a burgher's garden; the only flower mentioned is the humble marguerite: “… 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” (ibid).

Any miraculous events are kept at a minimum (Nicolete's survival and return to her native land after shipwreck), or deftly told as a form of dementia (Nicolete's miraculous healing of a pilgrim, chapter 11). Verisimilitude seems to have been more important to our author than the mere desire to entertain; and why else would he have been intent on le vraisembable but because his middle-class audience had become skeptical after an overdose of adventure tales?

The element which may have pleased the middle and lower middle class reader most, however, was the rich admixture of the grotesque and the comical, such as, for example, the couvade and “battle” scenes in Torelore / Utopia (chapters 28-33). In chapter 10, Aucassin sounds like a frustrated Pulcinello when he exclaims: “Et puis que j’arai la teste caupée, jamais ne parlerai a Nicolete me douce amie que je tant aim” (laughter from the audience). The same type of joke can be found in chapter 14: “Et puis que vos ariiés jut en lit a home, s’el mien non, or ne quidiés mie que j’atendisse tant que je trovasse coutel dont je me peüsce ferir el cuer et ozirre!” In another scene, serious though the occasion was, one cannot help thinking that Aucassin's “ne m’alés mie sermonant, mais tenés moi mes covens” (to his father) must have elicited a sympathetic chuckle especially from the adolescent reader or listener. The imagery used for Nicolete's beauty in chapter 11 is frankly comical, if very middle class, because the reader expects, automatically, the traditional “sublime” epithets: “Plus es douce que roisins / Ne que soupe en maserin.”

The dementia episode, when the sight of Nicolete's bare leg heals a pilgrim miraculously, can be satire or simple pastiche; but it also appeals to our type of audience which would rather hear a story with a sexual overtone directly, without the disguise of, say, allegory. Other points of emphasis on sexual detail are in the continuation of what seems to be a fairly stereotype effictio in chapter 12: “et avoit les mameletes dures, qui li souslevoient sa vesteüre, ausi con ce fuissent deus nois gauges.” There is no doubt that this continuation turns the preceding part into a joke; it does not mean that our author necessarily wished to ridicule all such descriptions in the romances; he merely saw the comic (slightly salacious) possibilities of such a procedure, and he knew his audience, which in all probability enjoyed this passage to the fullest. In the same category, Aucassin's “philosophy of love” in chapter 14 is a slight sally against women in general: “Car li amors de le fenme est en son oeul, et en son le cateron de sa mamele, et en son l’orteil del pié; mais li amors de l’oume est ens el cuer plantée, dont ele ne puet iscir.”

Middle-class satire of women was practiced almost simultaneously with their glorification, especially in the late Middle Ages. In this respect, Aucassin et Nicolete appears to be ahead of a trend, but so is the Jeu de la Feuillée where the same simultaneity can be observed (cf. Adam's double effictio of his wife). I am inclined to think that the author of Aucassin is male, and that he wishes to appeal here especially to the members of his own sex.

In the preceding pages we hope to have shown that the author of our chantefable tries in many ways to please his audience, to draw their attention, to discuss their problems, to make them laugh and thus to make them his confidant, as he, implicitly, is theirs. But there is more to our story: the author wants to lead them in an open attack against the upper classes and their favorite pastimes which are often so detrimental to the poorer folk. Thus, the audience becomes his accomplice, as he is theirs. For this purpose, he uses satire and parody. First of all, this early Cervantes attacks chivalry and warfare. Aucassin, as we all know, abhors fighting and thinks of nothing but his Nicolete. The people who do fight, Count Garins and Count Bougars, are depicted negatively. The battle in Torelore under the leadership of the queen is fought by means of roasted apples, eggs, fresh cheeses and mushrooms. When Aucassin, as a friend of the king, begins to strike the king's enemies, the latter intervenes hastily: “Il n’est mie costume que nos entrocions li uns l’autre” (chapter 32).

Our author has also his own ideas about nobility. Clearly, he prefers nobility of character to that of birth: “Avoi! péres, fait Aucassins, ou est ore si haute honers en terre, se Nicolete ma trés douce amie l’avoit, qu’ele ne fust bien enploiie en li? S’ele estoit enpereris de Colstentinoble u d’Alemaigne, u roīne de France u d’Engletere, si aroit il assés peu en li, tant est france et cortoise et debonaire et entecie de toutes bones teces” (chapter 2).

Repeatedly, he speaks up in favor of manual work and remuneration. The viscount, Nicolete's godfather, “li donra un de ces jors un baceler qui du pain li gaaignera par honor” (ibid); truly a “telling” statement, because our audience understands the implicit continuation of this sentence—i.e., not a nobleman who earns nothing, but takes what he needs, if need be, dishonorably. Money is mentioned frequently in the chantefable, and richece is a desirable goal. Aucassin's joy at the promise of his reward is expressed in this comparison: “Por cent mile mars d’or mier / Ne le fesist on si lié” (chapter 9); in a similar way, in chapter 18: if Aucassin could catch Nicolete, his wondrous “beste,” “il n’en donroit mie un menbre por cent mars d’or, non por cinc cens ne por nul avoir.” For money the shepherds are willing to relay Nicolete's message to Aucassin; they do, mentioning later the deniers she gave them, and what they bought. To get more information, Aucassin has to spend ten sous. In chapter 24, the ugly youth scoffs at Aucassin: “Mais por quoi plourés vos… ? Certes, se j’estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me feroit mie plorer.” For the poor man, happiness is richece. Aucassin gives him twenty sous to buy a nex ox.

The author also attacks some medieval religious attitudes encouraged by the church, specifically intolerance of any other faith. Nicolete, although of pagan origin, is lovely and morally stainless. She has been baptized as a Christian by her godparents, but socially she remains an outcast almost to the end. In turn, when she reaches her native Cartagena, she receives the highest honors, while Aucassin is about to be exiled. The healing incident told in Aucassin's dementia may be a satire of miraculous healings or not—in any case it is not original in the story but has been attested to in other romances. Finally, the author reverses the roles of hell and paradise in chapter 6, and he describes his ideal society which happens to be waiting for him in hell: “li bel clerc” (fellow intellectuals), “li bel cevalier,” “li buen sergant” (middle class) and “li franc home” (middle class), “beles dames cortoises” (for the deduit of the cevalier, clerc, sergant or franc home, for Aucassin—and our author), “harpeor et jogleor” (like himself), and “li roi del siecle” (emphasis is on “del siecle” = secular). He abhors heaven, complete with priests, unhealthy, scurvy characters, half crippled, naked and famished ascetics: clearly, a bourgeois questioning of asceticism and its advisability as a summum bonum.

It has been said that the author attacks the concept of courtly love. This is only partially true. Aucassin is constantly preoccupied with Nicolete, but she is not inexorable or cruel; she is, indeed, in love with him herself. If anything, we have here a manifestation of Ovidian love, as in Tristan, or simply the concept of love one would find in an idyllic novel. It is the expression of love in sincerely poetic and sometimes quite naīve terms which is and was a main attraction of our chantefable.⁸ The author not only destroys illusions; he also sets up new ideals in return. Aucassin is an individual who does not fit the mold of the knight who fights at the slightest provocation,—but to call him a coward and let it go under the label of parody is too easy a solution. Nicolete, on the other hand, is not the kind of woman who sits back and lets the man take over and make all the decisions. She takes the initiative and frees herself from prison. She wonders where they are going in the forest—a touch of realism—while Aucassin is too happy to be worried. What Nicolete admires in Aucassin has nothing to do with fighting or making decisions: at one point in the story she elaborates, calling him “gentix et sages, / Frans damoisiax honorables” (chapter 37).

That Aucassin is wise and tolerant and a true Christian is shown when he frees his father's enemy, Count Bougars.⁹ His second humane action was to give twenty sous to the youth for his lost ox. Finally Aucassin, whose reputation must have endeared him to his father's subjects, is received with joy by them after Garin's death (chapter 34). It looks as if he was made in the image of the ideally wise ruler whom both our author and his audience may have known in their lifetime: Saint Louis. Thus, if certain accepted attitudes or upper-class ideals were attacked in Aucassin et Nicolete, the author seems to imply to his readers, who heartily agreed with his action, that something new has to replace whatever was worn out or unacceptable.

It would be wrong, however, to go to the other extreme and to insist, with Ménard, that parody cannot be proved to exist in the chantefable (op cit, n. 6, p. 521). There are definite traces of its various forms, but they are just one element in this complex work. Also, the author uses the customary safeguards of parodists and satirists, and in this, too, his audience has to be his accomplice, if he wishes to be understood. To mitigate the sting of his attack, he places the story in an exotic setting far away from northern France. In chapters 28-33, a utopian setting is inserted (story within a story), Torelore, with clear indications that it is meant to be a somewhat comical never-never-land with strange but very desirable customs. In his satire of the clergy, he carefully places his ideal society in hell—and what is wrong with that? Nicolete's “healing powers” are tested in a dementia, which is, like a dream, another security device.¹⁰ Finally, we may have found a clue to the author's silence about himself, his complete absence from the text after the prologue: this, too, could be a security measure of a man who simply relates a story he has heard and who could claim innocence for any offensive detail in it.

For he knows he is going to be judged. Therefore the elaborate prologue which is, at the same time, intentionally inoffensive and betrays nothing of all the criticism and inversions, not even of the serious thoughts which we encounter throughout Aucassin et Nicolete. He refers to his story as “bons vers” and as “biax dis” (chapter 1), and it is still unclear—perhaps intentionally so—whether he reports someone else's story or his own, or whether he claims to recite what he has heard from the mysterious “viel antif,” but is actually that person himself. He simply promises a good story, and the audience, in all probability, would agree that he kept his promise. Secondly, he assures the readers or listeners that the song will be “dox,” courtly and well arranged (“bienasis”): he is an artist and knows that some in his audience may not be uncritical but well versed in the rules of his “trade,” and that they also will welcome such innovations as the prose sections.

Finally, he predicts a certain salutary effect from his story:

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

(ibid).

Aucassin et Nicolete speaks indeed to everyone, no matter how grieved, how troubled, how poor, how disadvantaged and how desperate he is. Therefore the need for the many heterogeneous elements in the story. In these six last lines of the prologue the author addresses his real audience, the people he wishes to reach: the middle and lower classes. They shall be his confidant, accomplice, and judge.

If our findings have led us to accurate results, the audience must have accepted the author's story enthusiastically. I am disinclined to consider the fact that we have only one manuscript as proof for the work's unfavorable reception. I am also weighing the possibility of our finding, in due time, more chantefables. We should keep in mind that only a small part of the Middle Ages (approximately one ninth, if a quantitative measure is at all appropriate) is known to us via extant manuscripts. Search and investigation must go on, especially in the East European countries, where many manuscripts are still stored and have not even been catalogued as yet. Secondly, the works that we do know reflect mostly the thoughts and attitudes of the upper classes, while we may perhaps never find out what the common man was thinking and doing, unless we develop a set of new research methods.

Be this as it may, the twentieth-century reader is just as enthusiastic about Aucassin et Nicolete as his thirteenth-century predecessor probably was. In an age of new sophistications and psychological complexities, of endless warfare, of women's liberation and parental problems, we understand the various episodes and thoughts linked up in the chantefable. With smiling intelligence we enjoy what seem to us the work's surrealistic touches, the grotesque, as well as the frankly comical incidents. If its unknown author had a message for us it would probably be to stop, in our criticism, the unilaterally analytical approach, to accept the work in all its marvelous complexity, to consider it something of a source book on social conditions in his time, and perhaps to avoid their imperfections. With his fine sense of realism, however, he would have known better than to expect great reforms from us.

Notes

1. (trans.), Histoire ou Romance d’Aucassin et de Nicolette (Paris, 1752).

2. Cf. D. Scheludko, “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Aucassin et Nicolete,” ZRPh, XLII (1922), 458-490; K. Rogger, “Etude descriptive de la chantefable Aucassin et Nicolete,” ZRPh, LXVII (1951), 409-457, and LXX (1954), 1-57; O. Jodogne, “La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolete,” Cahiers de l’association internationale des études françaises, XII (1960), 53-65; R. Harden, “Aucassin et Nicolete as Parody,” Studies in Philology, LXIII (1966), 1-9; B. Nelson Sargent, “Parody in Aucassin et Nicolette: Some Further Considerations,” The French Review, 43 (1970), 597-605.

3. To give one example, in Harden's treatment (v. n. 2, supra) Aucassin becomes “a petulant, mooning juvenile who throws a childish tantrum because his father denies him Nicolette” (p. 3). It is my intention to show that Aucassin is a much more complex character.

4. I am using the F. W. Bourdillon edition (Manchester, 1919, repr. 1930). All quotations from Aucassin et Nicolete will be taken from this edition.

5. Such contacts with the audience occur in chs. 6, 10, 11 (“si con vos porrés oīr”), 12, 18, 20, 24 (“Ne quidiés mie que les ronces et les espines l’espargnaiscent” and “tel con je vos dirai”), 28, 36 (“or lairons d’Aucassin, si dirons de Nicolete”).

6. Cf. also, P. Ménard, Le Rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge (Paris, 1969), pp. 487 ff.

7. Harden's treatment of this episode is as follows: “Here we have to picture to ourselves two huge males each weeping over the loss of his ‘beast,’ the bouvier for his ox and Aucassin for his beste … Each love tale (sic) mocks the other. As a lover, Aucassin is no superior to the bouvier” (loc cit supra, n. 2, p. 6). Now, nothing in the text indicates that the bouvier's misfortune is a love tale. It is obvious that such a narrow point of view, even though correct in some detail, does an injustice to an episode which is filled with significance.

8. As P. Ménard has pointed out, the aube in ch. 15 and the star-song in ch. 25 are genuine samples of their genres, and nothing indicates that they were meant as parody. Their presence in the work leads us to the conclusion, however, that “l’auteur d’Aucassin nous semble fort bien connaître la tradition littéraire de son temps” (op cit, n. 6, supra, p. 519).

9. In their desire to establish a system of parodies in Aucassin, modern critics have either not discussed this episode or written it off as one of the absurd things that Aucassin did in his “cowardice” (cf. Harden, v. n. 2, supra, pp. 4-5). Note, on the other hand, that Aucassin's attitude comes as a reaction against Garin's failure to keep his promise.

10. I am indebted to Alan E. Knight for his aperçus on the dream device, as well as on social problems and their literary treatment (“The Medieval Theater of the Absurd,” PMLA, LXXXVI, 1971, 183-189).