SOURCE: “Aucassin,” in Love's Fools: Aucassin, Troilus, Calisto, and the Parody of the Courtly Lover, Tamesis Books Limited, 1972, pp. 23-36.

[In the following essay, Martin argues that the parody of Aucassin as a courtly lover in Aucassin et Nicoletteis the element that unifies the various episodes in the tale.]

While almost all medieval literature is the object of far too little study, the thirteenth-century chantefable, Aucassin et Nicolette, is even more critically impoverished than most. Until fairly recently, scholars who had given attention to the text had concentrated primarily on certain linguistic difficulties, disputed readings of various lines or, at best, examinations of single motifs. In the past two decades, however, critics have begun to consider the text as a whole, and their investigations have led to a general agreement that Aucassin et Nicolette is not the sweet and simple tale it was once thought to be, but that it is intended to be humorous. Most notable among these recent studies are those of Albert Pauphilet (1950), Omer Jodogne (1959), and Robert Harden (1966).¹ Although their investigations differ in many respects, they agree on one fundamental point—that Aucassin et Nicolette is, in some sense, a parody. Pauphilet claims that the author of the chantefable is parodying current literary themes of war, adventure and romance. Jodogne goes a step further in asserting (p. 65) that the work is both “pastiche et parodie de trois genres littéraires”, the roman idyllique, from which the work takes its structure, the chanson de geste and lyric poetry. Harden agrees that the parody is directed towards the “vapid plots and equally vapid personages of the idyllic novel” (p. 3). But he, too, is unable to account for all situations within the rather narrow structure he suggests, and he is forced to compromise his position somewhat by admitting that the parody laps over into chanson de geste, desbats, and even fabliaux.

While these studies undoubtedly point in the right direction, that is, toward parody, in the final analysis they leave something to be desired, for they tend to obscure the fundamental unity of the text. The parody does not seem to lie in the disunity that a pastiche of several genres or themes would suggest. Nor, indeed, does the parody seem to be one of genres at all, except peripherally. There is a more fundamental unifying element, a character who ties together the actions and tones of the different episodes—Aucassin. Certainly the importance of Aucassin as a humorous figure in the chantefable has not gone unnoticed. Pauphilet has remarked that he is “un personnage sympathique, mais un peu pâle, qui prête souvent à sourire, mais sans hostilité de fond” (p. 246). Jodogne has attributed even greater importance to Aucassin's role, concluding that along with the pastiche and parody of the three literary genres previously mentioned there is also “pastiche et parodie de l’amoureux” (p. 65) whom he characterizes as “un insensé, un réfractaire au statut social, un pusillanime” (p. 59). Harden as well has noted the humorous role of Aucassin and asserts that he is “a veritable anti-hero” (p. 6). Rather than considering the parody of the hero as a secondary issue, or, as in the case of Jodogne, of no greater significance than the generic parodies, I would contend that it is precisely and primarily toward Aucassin that the parodist directs himself, his humor, his criticism, and, as Pauphilet has suggested, his sympathy. He has seized upon the figure of the courtly lover and has made an amusing quasi-critical commentary on the eccentricities of his behavior and his lack of practical function in the real world.² Virtually all the humor in the chantefable is centered, not around the situation nor the individual episodes per se, but around the behavior of the protagonist within each episode. Even the land of Torelore which is constructed around an inherently ludicrous situation is rendered more humorous by the thrashing about of Aucassin, who exhibits there a bravura he has not shown in the outside world.³ Aucassin, and this episode merely tends to confirm it, is fundamentally a misfit. He shares with Don Quixote an existence in a world that is not especially prepared for him. The world of Aucassin should be one of dwarfs, magic rings, and strange, heroic adventures, for it is in this sort of world that he could properly function as a courtly lover. Placed in such a world as that of Beaucaire, which is by no means the “random, everyday, real world”⁴ of Don Quixote but which does concern itself with practical considerations, Aucassin is remarkably inept at almost everything. He is as awkward as the young Perceval entering for the first time into the world of chivalry, and the only lover's “duties” he can properly perform are those of mourning, sighing, and weeping, which he does abundantly, precisely the behavior most likely to be picked up and put into perspective by the mocking pen of the parodist.

From the very beginning Aucassin is described in conventional courtly-love terms. The first laisse announces that the tale is about Nicolette and Aucassin, emphasizing the role of Aucassin:

Qui vauroit bon vers oïr …
des grans paines qu’il soufri
et des proueces qu’il fist
por s’amie o le cler vis.(5)

These last three lines sum up the essential actions of the traditional courtly lover who, as we see in a more or less ideal state in the romances of Chrétien, suffered “grans paines” and performed “des sproueces … por s’amie”. That the parodist felt compelled to mention Aucassin's “proueces”, which can only be read ironically, merely confirms the hypothesis that we are indeed dealing with a “courtly lover” called Aucassin. His physical description in the second division of the work is also traditional: “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, 10-14). Blond curls, grey eyes, and a well-made nose are almost as necessary to the courtly lover as his horse and sword.

The beginning of the tale finds Aucassin already in such an unbalanced state of development between paines and proueces that he is almost immediately recognizable as a parody or a bad copy of the conventional courtly lover. “… si estoit soupris d’Amor, qui tout vaint, qu’il ne voloit estre cevalers, ne les armes prendres, n’aler au tornoi, ne fare point de quanque il deust” (II, 15-18). He is not without literary precedent, however, for even within the works of Chrétien, as we have seen, this sort of conflict between love and prowess plays a significant role. Aucassin is in essentially the same position as Erec and Yvain shortly after their respective marriages. Such apparent recreancy is one of the pitfalls of love, one into which better men than Aucassin have fallen. But if the parody did not go beyond this point Aucassin would remain a mere caricature of a courtly lover. The success of the parody is derived not just from Aucassin himself, but from an essential conflict between our courtly lover and the other characters who inhabit Beaucaire, none of whom appears to know the rules of the courtly world. In Beaucaire, for example, one cannot even trust a father to keep his word. Aucassin makes a bargain with his father Count Garin, agreeing to don his armor and defend his land against an invading army in exchange for a kiss and a few words from Nicolette. But when Aucassin has fulfilled his promise and captured the enemy leader, Garin pretends to have forgotten his pledge. How different this is from the world of Chrétien's heroes where a captured knight gives his word to return to Arthur's court and recount the story of his own defeat and fulfills his promise!

Aucassin often finds himself in situations which parallel episodes in Chrétien's romances. He behaves in many instances very much as Lancelot or Yvain before him has behaved, but the same set of rules is not followed by the other characters. For example, as Aucassin rides into battle, his mind is so preoccupied with thoughts of Nicolette that he drops his reins, totally oblivious of the fact that his horse has borne him into the thick of battle. The enemy captures him without warning. Lancelot, in search of Guenevere, finds himself in a similar situation which has been referred to in the introduction to the present study. He rides toward a forbidden ford, lost in thought:

et ses pansers est de tel guise
que lui meïsmes en oblie,
ne set s’il est, ou s’il n’est mie,
ne ne li manbre de son non,
ne set s’il est armez ou non,
ne set ou va, ne set don vient;
de rien nule ne li sovient
fors d’une seule, et por celi
a mis les autres en obli;
a cele seule panse tant
qu’il n’ot, ne voit, ne rien n’antant.(6)

Struck down by the knight who guards the ford, Lancelot asks to be allowed to rearm and joust fairly with the knight who agrees willingly.

Having been taken prisoner by the forces of Bougar de Valence, Aucassin remembers suddenly that if his head is cut off he can no longer converse with Nicolette. He realizes then that they have neglected to take away his sword; and singlehanded he captures Bougar and takes him back to his father. But when he learns of his father's perfidy, he releases Bougar, demanding from him only a promise that he will do some evil toward Count Garin every day for the rest of his life. Bougar thinks he is joking: “Sire, por Diu, fait il, ne me gabés mie; mais metés moi a raençon: vos ne me sarés je demander or ni argent, cevaus ne palefrois, ne vair ne gris, ciens ne oisiax, que je ne vos doinse” (X, 66-69). Bougar is a practical man; he cannot understand Aucassin's request for a mere promise when he could have any ransom he asked. But Aucassin insists on the promise and Bougar agrees, although there is no evidence within the text that he fulfilled the agreement. Jodogne interprets the fact that we hear from Bougar no more as conclusive evidence that he has lied to Aucassin just as his father the Count had lied. “Ces deux personnages ne sont pas déloyaux; ils ont menti comme on ment à un malade, ou mieux à un fou qu’on voudrait interner. Ils sont très sages, en somme; ils ne veulent pas ‘baer a folie’” (p. 60). For Jodogne Aucassin is “un fou au pays des sages”, but such a conclusion seems to me a gross oversimplification. What we have here is a conflict of social systems. While it is true that Aucassin usually comes out looking a little foolish, the reader tends to smile sympathetically, for however often he is the butt of the joke, he is usually right. And he has little understanding of the materialistic world of Beaucaire.

Material values are brought into play also when Aucassin meets the various rustics in the woods. Jodogne has attributed their appearance in the chantefable to an intended parody of the pastourelle, but the rustic is by no means an unfamiliar figure in the romances of Chrétien. The giant herdsman in the Yvain, for example, is almost copied in the Aucassin.⁷ Both are described as large and black; both are depicted as leaning upon a club. Even identical terms are used in the descriptions. For example, “leiz et hideus” in the Yvain becomes in the thirteenth-century Picardian dialect of the Aucassin “lais et hidex”. Instead of being adorned with “danz de sengler aguz et rous”, the rustic of the Aucassin has “uns grans dens gaunes et lais”. Yvain's rustic is described as “apoiez fu sor sa maçue”, while Aucassin's is “apoiiés sor une grande maçue”. And both are clad in skins of cattle. The similarities of the descriptions, while Chrétien's is considerably more detailed, are rather remarkable.

Just as the descriptions of the rustics are strikingly similar, so, too, in some respects, are the actions of Calogrenant, the hero of this episode of the Yvain, and Aucassin. The notable exception is the vastly different greetings proffered by our two protagonists. Calogrenant, who would not be too surprised to meet such a monster in the woods, is primarily concerned with the moral position of the giant rustic. He exclaims:

                                        … Va, car me di
se tu es boene chose ou non.(8)

Calogrenant's question shows a certain sophistication, a certain awareness of several possibilities, particularly when it is compared to Aucassin's innocent “Biax frere, Dix t’i aït!” (XXIV, 25). Aucassin's greeting to the rustic is no less courtly than is his greeting to Nicolette. He has a rather undefined sense of propriety and behaves somewhat like a novice who tries very hard not to make mistakes yet errs through his over-caution.

Calogrenant inquires of the cowherd what he is doing in the woods, and the rustic answers immediately,

                                        … Ge m’i estois,
et gart les bestes de cest bois.

(331-32)

Aucassin asks the same question: “que fais tu ilec?” (XXIV,26), but the rustic is not so accommodating. He asks suspiciously, “A vos que monte?” (XXIV, 28). The rustic of the Yvain is a herdsman who guards the wild cattle of the woods and who controls them utterly. They tremble, he says, to see him punish one among them by wrenching its horns, and they stand still, seeming to beg for mercy. The story of the rustic Aucassin encounters is less fanciful. He has been hired to drive a plough with a yoke of four oxen, but he has lost one and is out seeking it. The herdsman of the Yvain is the sort of creature one would expect to find in a courtly romance. He is superhuman, monstrously ugly, and placed within the story only for the hero's benefit, for he serves to direct Calogrenant to the marvelous fountain. The only vestige of the original herdsman left in the “demythologized” rustic of Aucassin et Nicolette is his ugliness. He seems incompetent since he cannot even keep up with his domesticated ox. And the melodramatic story he tells of not having eaten for three days, of the prison that awaits him if he cannot pay for the ox, of his poor old mother whose very mattress has been taken from under her and who must lie on straw, is just a bit too familiar for us to accept it entirely at face value. In any case, whether the story is true or not, the rustic succeeds in relieving Aucassin of twenty sous.

The herdsmen ask in turn the purpose of the knights' presence in the woods. Calogrenant answers truthfully that he seeks adventure whereby to test his prowess and courage, but Aucassin replies with a lie (or perhaps the truth garbed in symbolic language) as though the naked truth were insufficient for such a world. “Je vig hui matin cacier en ceste forest, s’avoie un blanc levrer, le plus bel del siecle, si l’ai perdu: por ce pleur jou” (XXIV, 39-41). The peasant snorts, “Os! … por le cuer que cil Sires eut en sen ventre! que vos plorastes por un cien puant?” (XXIV, 43-44). Once the twenty sous has changed hands the encounter is ended; the rustic has served no useful purpose to Aucassin. Earlier in the story, however, Aucassin does receive directions from some younger herdsmen to whom Nicolette has paid five sous to deliver a message to him. Instead of delivering the message as soon as they see Aucassin, they tease him with a song:

                                        … Bel conpaignet,
Dix aït Aucasinet,
voire a foi! le bel vellet;
et le mescine au corset
qui avoit le poil blondet,
cler le vis et l’oeul vairet,
ki nos dona denerés
dont acatrons gastelés,
gaïnes et coutelés
flaüsteles et cornés,
maçëles et pipés!
                    Dix le garisse!

(XXI, 5-16)

Aucassin, hearing their words, rides joyfully forward and asks them to repeat their song, but they coyly refuse until Aucassin offers them ten sous, whereupon one of the boys tells the tale in prose. It is significant that in both encounters some reference is made early in the conversation to Aucassin's wealth. On this occasion, one of the young herdsmen remarks, “… il n’a si rice home en cest païs sans le cors le Conte Garin” (XXII, 16-17), a statement which is echoed by the hideous rustic, “… se j’estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me feroit mie plorer” (XXIV, 32-33). In each case Aucassin asks immediately if they know who he is, and the answer is a rapid “Oïl, nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins nos damoisiax” (XXII, 11-12) or “Oie, je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins, li fix le conte” (XXIV, 35). Aucassin's reputation is apparently widespread, and he seems to be considered quite gullible.

A world like Beaucaire in which men are not always honorable and do not live by the rules of chivalry, where even herdsmen take advantage of a simple heart, is a difficult world for the courtly lover to operate in. But perhaps even these obstacles would not be insurmountable for Aucassin if only Nicolette behaved like a courtly lady. Physically she is perfect for the role:

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 blancs 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 vox dex mains le peusciés enclorre; et les flors des margerites … estoient droites noires avers ses piés et ses ganbes, tant par estoit blance la mescinete.

(XII, 19-28)

This portrait of Nicolette, as Barbara Sargent points out, “could hardly be more conventional: an enumeration from head to foot of the qualities essential to feminine beauty”.⁹ And one can scarcely fail to notice the physical characteristics she shares with Aucassin—“caviaus blons et menus recercelés … ex vairs et rians … face traitice … nes haut et bien assis”. But in spite of her physical qualifications for her role as Aucassin's “douce amie”, she seems to know little more about a proper sort of courtly romance than does Aucassin's father, and she repeatedly shows Aucassin up in comic perspective by acting as a contrast to him. Throughout the work, the author plays with the inherent reversal of male-female roles in the courtly love relationship. For example, when they are both imprisoned, it is Nicolette, not Aucassin, who escapes. It is she who comes to his tower where they engage in a love debate before dawn. In his article “The Aube in Aucassin et Nicolette”, William S. Woods contends that the separation of Aucassin and Nicolette in sections XII-XVI of the chantefable parodies the themes of the usual aube pattern. Here again, the parody is aimed not at the genre, but at the male protagonist. Woods notes, significantly, that the “usual roles are reversed here and it is the woman who is leaving the man”.¹⁰ The psychological roles are also reversed. “The man is passive, helpless, tearful, devoid of practical solution to the problem and full of idle threats. It is the woman, on the other hand, who is practical, sensible, active, stoical, and she doesn’t shed a tear” (pp. 213-14). Warned by the watchman, Nicolette slips into the forest where she builds a bower for Aucassin and hides to wait for him. When Aucassin is finally released from his tower and goes off in search of Nicolette, he stumbles across the loge she has made. The discovery in the forest of evidence of the lady's presence recalls Lancelot's finding Guenevere's comb with some of the Queen's golden hairs still caught in its teeth. Lancelot, pale from love and grief, becomes suddenly weak and nearly falls from his horse. Aucassin, dreaming of Nicolette, does fall, hits a rock, and dislocates his shoulder. Traditional courtly-love imagery pictures the beloved as a physician, curing the love-malady by returning the love. In this scene by the bower, Nicolette becomes the literal physician of Aucassin, working his shoulder back into place and binding it up with a piece of cloth torn from her petticoat. “… et il fu tox garis” (XXVI, 14). The humor of the scene is derived, not from the transformation of a love image into literal reality per se, but rather from Aucassin's comical ineptness which forces the lady to become literally what she is intended to be only symbolically.

The scene echoes even more strongly, perhaps, the loge scene of the Tristan and Yseut story, thereby emphasizing once more the exaggerated reversal of male-female roles. For it is Tristan who builds the loge for Yseut:

Sa loge fait; au branc qu’il tient
Les rains tranche, fait la fullie;
Yseut l’a bien espes jonchie.(11)

This building of the loge is by no means the only echo from the Tristan and Yseut legend. The fact that the bower is built at a point where seven roads converge, a place where Aucassin was sure to pass by, the fact that Nicolette hides, leaving the bower as a sort of lover's test, recalls Marie de France's Lai du chevrefeuille in which Tristan leaves a sign, a branch of hazel enlaced with honeysuckle, as a sort of test for Yseut, and withdraws to wait for her in the forest. Wayne Conner has pointed out that just as the honeysuckle was Tristan's identifying flower, so are the lilies entwined in Nicolette's bower her special sign, one which Aucassin, who calls her “flor de lis”, recognizes immediately.¹² Nicolette's return to Beaucaire disguised as a jongleur is an unmistakable echo, as Jodogne has pointed out,¹³ of a similar disguise of Tristan returning from exile to see Yseut. In each instance it is significant that Nicolette assumes the role of Tristan, not that of Yseut. She is not the typical swooning courtly lady of twelfth-century romances. Rather, she is a clever, active young woman who is, at one point, even described in virile terms as “Nicole li preus, li sage” (XXXVII, 1). Nicolette is practical; Aucassin is a dreamer. She is active; he is passive. It is not difficult to see how such a reversal suggests the extreme courtly love situation which makes a virtual seigneur of the lady and tends to emasculate the man who must always bow in obeisance to her will. Carried to its logical conclusions such a situation could well result in the total inversion of roles that exists in Torelore.

Gaston Paris has claimed that the Torelore episode is boring and absurd.¹⁴ But, as Pauphilet has said, “on a commis, jadis et naguère, le contre-sens de ne pas reconnaître dans toute l’oeuvre la veine parodique de l’épisode de Torelore et de supprimer cet épisode comme une dissonante interpolation”.¹⁵ Those who have judged the visit to Torelore a poorly integrated episode, in some cases the same critics who have called Chrétien's romances badly constructed, have apparently not attempted to see the episode in terms of the entire work. First of all, it provides a traditional, almost essential, motif from the courtly romance—that of the visit to an otherworldly kingdom. Lancelot's visit to the Kingdom of Gorre, Yvain's adventures in the land of the marvelous fountain, even Erec's search in the strange garden for the “Joie de la cour” serve to affirm the knight's prowess. His deeds in the otherworld are often a sort of culmination of his deeds of everyday. But Torelore is an upside-down world, where the king lies in childbed while the queen leads the army against the enemy, a more extreme situation of inversion, but one that is certainly not unrelated to the reversed roles of Aucassin and Nicolette. The Torelore incident also recalls the visit to the magic castle which transforms all qualities into their opposites in the Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, written sometime after 1194 and supposedly based on a French original by one Hugh de Morville. During his captivity at the magic castle of Schâtel le Mort, the hero, the best of knights in the outside world, is transformed into a cowardly wretch.¹⁶ Torelore is apparently the same sort of world and provides for the reader a sort of parody within a parody. Within this world à rebours, Aucassin and Nicolette seem to exchange roles. He who is described as “li biax, li blons, / li gentix, li amorous” (XXVII, 1-2) only moments before setting foot on the shore of Torelore becomes within that land “li prex, li ber” (XXXI, 11). And she who, upon leaving Torelore and arriving in Carthage is immediately described as “Nicole li preus, li sage” (XXXVII, 1-2) was in Torelore “a gentle, retiring lady from the moment of their arrival”.¹⁷ Sister M. Faith McKean has claimed, and quite rightly so, that the Torelore episode “is deliberately cut off from the fictional real world not because it is an interruption but because it is the key passage, a necessary interlude highlighting the prime target of the poet's irony” (p. 68). Explaining her reasons for considering the Torelore episode a key passage, she comments: “Catching the fundamental reversal implicit in courtly love, he [the author] created the perfect parody by creating the perfect courtly lover, and climaxed his work in the much maligned Torelore episode by making the reversal of roles so obvious that even the courtly lover had to recognize its foolishness” (p. 64). Aucassin does, indeed, recognize the foolishness of Torelore. He is even offended by the king's lying in childbed, while the queen fights with the army, but there is no indication whatsoever that he understands the implications of the episode as they relate to himself. Nor does he carry away from Torelore any of his indignation. Whatever situation he is in, Aucassin is still fundamentally a misfit. His new virility and energy are just as much out of place in Torelore as were his weeping and inertia in Beaucaire. Torelore provides a sort of culmination for the everyday deeds of Aucassin as an otherworld adventure should, for his thrashing about in this gentle land brings him to the maximum point of foolishness. He nearly beats to death the poor king who has just given birth to a son; he cheerfully enters into battle killing the enemy who have only eggs, cheeses, apples, and mushrooms with which to defend themselves. In short, the episode shows Aucassin to be hopelessly out of step with the rest of the world; and moreover, it reveals to the reader, if not to Aucassin, the potential humor inherent in the fundamental reversal of roles in the courtly love relationship when carried to its logical extremes.

Harden concurs with the notion that there is a reversal of roles in the Aucassin. Indeed, he sees inversion as the essential technique of the author:

Inversion, especially in character, has always been an effective device for parody, one in which the great are made small and the small great, in which the solemn are made absurd and the absurd solemn, in which the ideal are made ridiculous and the ridiculous ideal. … It is, we believe, the very method and intention of the author of Aucassin et Nicolette as he mocks the vapid plots and equally vapid personages of the idyllic novel

(p. 3).

Despite the fact that Harden's study is one of the best that has been done on Aucassin et Nicolette, I believe that he has, to some extent, oversimplified the question of parody by seeing inversion as “the very method and intention of the author”. Clearly, inversion plays a key role in the author's technique, but one is hard put to find it extensively used in situations outside of the Aucassin-Nicolette relationship. And within this love relationship it is perhaps not so much that the author reverses their roles, but rather that he exaggerates a reversal already implicit. One may point out the Torelore episode as an exception, but I have attempted to suggest its essential relationship with the roles of the lovers. Harden points out several details that bear clear markings of this inversion technique. The names are a good example. Aucassin is a French hero with an Arabic name; Nicolette, a North African heroine with a French name.¹⁸ Aucassin muses about life after death, finding pleasure in Hell rather than in Heaven. But even these details are in some way related to the lovers or the love relationship, the latter suggesting in a comparatively mild way the essential conflict between courtly love and Christianity. To see the technique of parody as limited to inversion alone, however, is to miss the fun of a hero who, when he behaves according to the code, as Aucassin attempts to do, meets continually with situations which are not quite what one expects them to be, although they may bear all the hallmarks of tradition. They are not necessarily inverted in any way. In fact, I believe that inversion, rather than being the technique of the parodist-author of Aucassin et Nicolette, falls under the more comprehensive category of incongruity, which is an essentially comic device. It may be incongruity between the character and the situation, between the words and their meaning, between style and content, between lover and lady. And to this technique one must add, for any good parody, a greater or lesser degree of exaggeration. In the Aucassin exaggeration is strong, so strong, in fact, that it leads logically to the inversion that is already hinted at within the convention itself.

Grace Frank has stated that “If parody alone were the author's motive then his sense of reality and his delight in his own playfulness got the better of him. And mere parody of forgotten chivalric romances would hardly charm us today, as this unpretentious trifle continues to do”.¹⁹ I am not quite sure what Mrs. Frank means by the author's “sense of reality”; certainly there is nothing markedly “realistic” about the Aucassin. Nor are the chivalric romances quite so forgotten as she suggests. The courtly love triangle of Arthur, Guenevere, and Lancelot has even succeeded as a Broadway musical, albeit in a rather spurious form. But most difficult of all to understand is why the author's “delight in his own playfulness” carries him so far beyond parody. Such delight and playfulness are part and parcel of the makeup of the parodist. It is unlikely, in view of her statement about “mere parody”, that Mrs. Frank is using the term as I have used it here. She seems to consider parody as a debased art form. Surely it is no more so than satire when used in connection with the writings of Swift. Nor is it simply a mockery. While there is always a barb in parody, there may also be affection for the thing parodied. Robert P. Falk, in fact, claims that successful parody “holds in equilibrium two opposing attitudes towards its subject—satire and sympathy”.²⁰ If this is so, then one may well claim that Aucassin et Nicolette is successful as parody. The juxtaposition of the exaggerated courtly lover with a world of practical considerations, suspicious rustics, and unreliable fathers, renders not only Aucassin, but also the people of Beaucaire, somewhat ridiculous. But the mockery is light, the criticism gentle. It is quite possible that, in parody, the didactic instinct of the author is in inverse proportion to his sense of humor. If so, one may conclude that, while Aucassin is, to some extent, didactic in that it inevitably points up the weaknesses of the courtly lover in conflict with a less romantically inclined society, its essential quality is humor. We laugh at Aucassin; we enjoy him. And while we have no desire to emulate him, we also have no desire to see him changed.

Notes

1. Albert Pauphilet, Le Legs du moyen âge (Melun, 1950), pp. 239-48; Omer Jodogne, “La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolette”, CAIEF, 12 (1959), 53-65. Robert Harden, “Aucassin et Nicolette as Parody”, SP, 63 (1966), 1-9.

2. See Erich Auerbach, “The Knight Sets Forth”, Mimesis, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, 1953; reprinted Garden City, N. Y., 1957), pp. 120-21.

3. For a delightful discussion of the Torelore episode see Sister M. Faith McKean, “Torelore and Courtoisie”, RomN, 3, ii (Spring, 1962), 64-68.

4. Auerbach, p. 120.

5. Aucassin et Nicolette, ed. Mario Roques, 2e ed. (Paris, 1963), I, 1-7. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be given within the text.

6. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la charrette, ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1958), 11, 714-24.

7. U. T. Holmes, Jr., in his preface to Aucassin and Nicolette, translated by Edward Francis Moyer and Carey DeWitt Eldridge (Chapel Hill, 1937), p. vii, first called attention to the similarity between these two rustics. Both of them undoubtedly owe much to the wild man lore of the Middle Ages. For a thorough discussion, see Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). See also Alice M. Colby, The Portrait, pp. 72-88 for a discussion of what she calls “ideal ugliness”.

8. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier au lion (Yvain), ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1960), 11. 326-27. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be given within the text.

9. Barbara Sargent, “Parody in Aucassin et Nicolette: Some Further Considerations”, FR, 43 (1969-70), 597-605. See also Edmond Faral, Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1924), pp. 75-81, 214-15.

10. William S. Woods, “The Aube in Aucassin et Nicolette”, in Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., UNCSRLL, 56 (Chapel Hill, 1965), p. 213.

11. Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan, ed. Ernest Muret (Paris, 1903), 11. 1290-92.

12. Wayne Conner, “The Loge in Aucassin et Nicolette”, RR, 46 (1955), 85.

13. Jodogne has noted that this motif appears in the Folie Tristan of Oxford as well as that of Berne, 61.

14. Gaston Paris, Review of Aucassin et Nicolette, trans. A. Bida and Aucassin und Nicolette, ed. Hermann Suchier, Romania, 8 (1897), 291.

15. Le Legs, p. 248.

16. See Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Lanzelet, ed. K. A. Hahn (Frankfurt, 1845; reprinted Berlin, 1965), 11. 3536-3825. English prose translation by Kenneth G. T. Webster, revised by R. S. Loomis (New York, 1951), pp. 73-77. A land that automatically transforms qualities into their opposites would also account for an inconsistency of description pointed out by Barbara Sargent (p. 603) and earlier by Kaspar Rogger, “Etude déscriptive de la chantefable ‘Aucassin et Nicolette’”, ZRP, 67 (1951), 421. Nicolette is described while in Beaucaire as extremely slender, yet in Torelore she describes herself as “grasse et mole” (XXXIII, 5).

17. McKean, 67.

18. Harden, 8. Jodogne has also pointed this out in his earlier article, 56.

19. Grace Frank, Medieval French Drama (Oxford, 1954), pp. 238-39.

20. The Antic Muse, p. 10.

List of Abbreviations

AnM Annuale Medievale

ANQ American Notes and Queries

BHS Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

CA Cuadernos Americanos

CAIEF Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises

CCM Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale

CEJ California English Journal

ChauR Chaucer Review

CL Comparative Literature

DA Dissertation Abstracts

ECr L’Esprit Créateur

ELH Journal of English Literary History

ELN English Language Notes

EUPLL Edinburgh University Publications Language and Literature

ES English Studies

FilR Filologia Romanza

FR French Review

FS French Studies

HSCL Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature

HSE Harvard Studies in English

HR Hispanic Review

ISLL Illinois Studies in Language and Literature

JAF Journal of American Folklore

JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology

LP Literature and Psychology

MA Le Moyen Age

MAe Medium Aevum

MH Medievalia et Humanistica

MLN Modern Language Notes

MLQ Modern Language Quarterly

MLR Modern Language Review

MP Modern Philology

MR Massachusetts Review

MS Mediaeval Studies

NQ Notes and Queries

NRFH Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica

PL Patrologia Latina

PLL Papers on Language and Literature

PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

PQ Philological Quarterly

RDM Revue des Deux Mondes

RF Romanische Forschungen

RFE Revista de Filología Española

RFH Revista de Filología Hispánica

RL Revista de Literatura

RomN Romance Notes

RP Romance Philology

RR Romanic Review

SATF Société des Anciens Textes Français

SP Studies in Philology

SUS Susquehanna University Studies

TLS Times Literary Supplement

UColSSLL University of Colorado Studies Series in Language and Literature

UCPMP University of California Publications in Modern Philology

UCSSLL University of California Studies Series in Language and Literature

UNCSCL University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature

UNCSGLL University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures

UNCSRLL University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures

YRS Yale Romanic Studies

ZFSL Zeitschrift für Französische sprache und Literatur

ZRP Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie