[In the following essay, Harden contends that the use of inversion, particularly in terms of character, in Aucassin et Nicolette undermines the traditional plots and characters of the idyllic novel.]

It has long been traditional to consider Aucassin et Nicolette as a piece of literature which, although offering some problems as to its actual literary genre, provided, as far as its protagonists were concerned, the purest example imaginable of characters motivated by idyllic love. Nevertheless, in spite of this generally acknowledged view, certain equivocal actions on the part of the youthful couple have always puzzled and morally distressed editors, translators and scholars in general. As a result of this, efforts have frequently been made to make both the principal characters and their behavior more respectable. Translators, both into modern French and into English, have been particularly guilty of this prudery. One of the early members of this group, A. Bida, for example, went so far, in his modern French version,¹ as to suppress an apparently inappropriate but yet very characteristic episode, that which took place in Torelore, on the grounds, presumably, that it was offensive and did not conform to his notions of the conduct of true lovers. With parallel objects in view, two translators into English, F. W. Bourdillon² and Andrew Lang,³ either struggled, as in the case of the first, to rationalize into acceptable conduct some quite irrational and absurd actions on the part of the hero and his sweetheart, or, as in the case of the second, chose to distort the work through a bias of unrelieved sentimentality. In a similar, if indirect, way, other scholars, while primarily engaged in attempts to discover Arabic,⁴ Byzantine,⁵ epic,⁶ classic⁷ or folklore⁸ origins for at least part of the tale, sought to bestow a certain noble gravity upon all the activities of the young couple. Likewise, Mme. Lot-Borodine, to whom it was a matter of prime concern to compress Aucassin et Nicolette into the mould of the idyllic novel, attempted valiantly to bring into line with her original concept of the work certain inconsistencies, to her way of thinking, in the plot. She was exceedingly disconcerted by two incidents in Aucassin's life which scarcely revealed him as an admirable lover. The first of these concerned his conduct during the aforementioned Torelore episode; the second, his behavior after the capture of his betrothed when he refused to search for her. Mme. Lot-Borodine noted that other scholars had faced the same dilemma and she cited, along with her own, their explanations. In the case of the first incident, she contented herself with the statement that the action ‘a tout à fait l’air d’une bonne farce, introduite dans le récit pour en rompre la monotonie et égayer le public.’⁹ In the case of the second she accepted, among others, the reasoning of M. Bourdillon who claimed that Aucassin's lack of gallantry was based on the fact that ‘le seigneur de Beaucaire ne peut pas courir le monde, ainsi que l’avait fait le fils du comte de Beaucaire.’¹⁰ It is evident that these explanations represented strained and unsatisfactory deductions on the part of both authors, determined to salvage the story for the sake of idealised love and utopian gallantry. Even Mario Roques who produced two separate and well-received editions of the chantefable and who hinted at some possible comic intention of the author when he said that the poet did not imitate the literature of the day ‘sans quelque intention parodique,’¹¹ still persisted in referring to the work as ‘cette naïve histoire.”¹² It was Professor U. T. Holmes, Jr.,¹³ to whom we are particularly indebted, who indicated most clearly that the author of Aucassin et Nicolette was consciously mocking the stock-in-trade of medieval writers whether it applied to genres, such as the saint's life and the epic, or to overworked themes such as the divided lovers' motive. He also saw parody in the use of the seven-syllable line instead of the usual eight-syllable line of ballad poetry. It is our intention to elaborate upon these suggestions and to indicate 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 chantefable is above all a parody of the idyllic novel at least as far as plot and characters are concerned.

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 particularly telling when it is used within the rather rigid conventions of a form such as the idyllic novel where it throws into relief the exaggerated and fatuous nature of the hero's or heroine's conduct. 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. An examination of the behaviour and thoughts of the two principal characters, we feel, can illustrate this, and we begin with the hero.

Our first view of Aucassin is scarcely prepossessing. We observe him as a petulant, mooning juvenile who throws a childish tantrum because his father denies him Nicolette. Neither Flor nor Pyramus, his ideal contemporaries, behaved with such lack of masculine dignity when they were deprived of their ladies as does Aucassin. Moreover, in an act which inverts both traditionally chivalric and filial virtues, he takes vengeance on his father by refusing to defend his homeland which is about to succumb to an invasion.¹⁴ Left alone, he sets about musing on the pleasures of the afterworld, not however, of Heaven but of Hell, and as before, the author seizes the opportunity to depict an inverted idyllic hero. For, in what would appear to be a parody on the habitual manner of representing the yearnings of saints for the bliss of Paradise, the noble Aucassin cries out that he prefers the joys of a physical union in Hades in the company of other knights, clerks and their numerous sweethearts to a dull spiritual existence in Paradise.¹⁵ He is, however, willing to bargain for his pleasure on earth so that when his father promises him his lady if he will fight, he is amenable under such circumstances to honoring his duty.

The battle sequence which follows is a wild satire on such often repeated scenes in the chansons de geste. But in the actual struggle it would seem that Aucassin quite forgets that his reunion with Nicolette depends on his victory at arms, for he neglects his horse and the business of riding. He allows his reins to fall and permits the animal to run helter-skelter into the midst of the fray, so that he is easily captured. Then, fearing he will be decapitated, he is moved to make the inane observation that without his head he will be unable to speak to Nicolette. Suddenly, however, he is roused and begins to strike out indiscriminately, being compared unflatteringly, in an epic image, to a boar attacked by dogs. Then, just as capriciously, he gallops away from the field of battle with all possible haste. When Count Bougar de Valence rides up to him at a place far from the actual scene of combat, Aucassin, in a manner no genuine knight could condone, beats him over the head without the formality of a challenge and seizes him.¹⁶ Such actions have all the impossible and hysterical valour of a Chaplinesque comedy.

Later when Aucassin's father refuses to fulfil his share of the pledge by which his son is to have Nicolette, the hero becomes a blatant traitor, releasing the enemy and urging war against his own people, an incredible piece of behaviour for a son, a knight and a king elect. For his action, he suffers the humiliation of being thrown into his father's prison.¹⁷

At this juncture, indeed, both the protagonists are in jail, Nicolette having been placed there as a precautionary matter. But while Aucassin mopes, presumably on the ground floor of his prison Nicolette has to knot sheets together in order to make a perilous descent from an upper room in her high, formidably solid tower, an exploit more suited surely to a male.¹⁸ Furthermore, despite the danger of being burned alive if captured, she makes her way painfully to Aucassin's tower which by ironic contrast is in such a decrepit state that Nicolette can put ‘sun cief par mi une creveure.’¹⁹ From her uncomfortable and hazardous position on the ground outside his cell she can hear her lamenting lover and engages him in urgent conversation. But at such a moment which at the very least calls for no dalliance and in any genuine idyllic novel would have been followed by action, Aucassin indulges first in an exposition of the horrors of being cuckolded, a subject more suited to a farce or a fabliau, and then, in a discussion with his sweetheart as to who love more profoundly, men or women, which would seem to be a parody of the lyric form known as the desbat. With marvelous irony, considering Aucassin's inactivity, lack of initiative and less dangerous situation, the poet has him insist on the greater profundity of the male emotion in comparison to that of the female.²⁰ Moreover during this most inopportune intellectualising, Nicolette is almost captured. She is obliged to make a dolorous flight through the moat and into the beast-haunted forest.²¹

Eventually when it is believed that Nicolette is lost, Aucassin is released from prison. But does he go at once in hot pursuit of his lady as if to verify the protested depth of his affection? No, he goes back to the castle and continues to brood until a knight reminds him finally that his sweetheart could possibly be found if efforts to search for her were made.²²

Having prepared and mounted his horse Aucassin finds that his journey takes him to the meeting place of the same shepherds with whom Nicolette had earlier talked. During the scene between them the poet takes the occasion to underline his satirical intent further. For he inverts the deference to be expected between one social order and another and has the shepherds address their lord's son with impertinent disdain and in saucy tones. The latter, in typical fashion, accepts the derision unprotestingly.²³

Immediately following this incident occurs the celebrated encounter between Aucassin and the cowherd which in many ways duplicates the satric aspect of the preceding one. 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. For in an evident attempt to link the two men in their love stories, the author has had Nicolette call herself a beste²⁴ when telling the shepherds what Aucassin is to seek in the forest. Each love tale mocks the other. As a lover, Aucassin is no superior to the bouvier. Similarly, as objects of affection, there is, apparently, little choice between Nicolette and the ox.

Eventually, the hero finds Nicolette, in a shelter which, of course, she, not he, has built and thereupon he spends his time complaining of his misfortunes and injuries while she, the stoic, keeps her silence.²⁵ Furthermore, when they are about to flee from their precarious location, Nicolette quite justifiably asks their destination. To this Aucassin can only muster, ‘que sai jou?’²⁶ Flor, Pyramus, Galeran de Bretagne, Guillaume of L’Escoufle and Guillaume de Palerne, all fellow lovers of the supposedly same idyllic school, never exercised such indecision or such lack of concern for the well-being of their ladies. Aucassin is a veritable anti-hero.

The aimless wanderings of the couple bring them to the kingdom of Torelore. There once again the poet selects an episode which is an inversion of accepted social conventions and as in the case of the bouvier, he also creates a character who parallels Aucassin in his conduct. For the hero, although he abuses the king of this curious land for his couvade,²⁷ has been equally negligent and inverted in his duties towards his lady, allowing her to instigate all the arrangements for their escape while he, like a female, accepts protection and deference as his prerogatives.

Aucassin's lecturing and beating of the king is followed by a parody on justice in war in which the author once more inverts the hero's virtues as a knight and lover. For he is shown to be capable of gaining a victory in battle only if he can viciously wield a sword against opponents whose sole weapons are baked apples, cheeses and eggs.²⁸

Following this episode the couple are captured by Saracens and placed in separate boats. In typical fashion Nicolette, the real hero of the tale, has to submit to a continuance of her miseries while Aucassin, lying in a boat which like him wanders about aimlessly, fortuitously reaches the security of his homeland.²⁹ There he assumes the rank of his deceased father and does absolutely nothing to find or rescue his sweetheart beyond the very belated proposal to send a messenger, ironically enough the disguised Nicolette, to search for her.³⁰ In this last gesture, if such it can be called, Aucassin reaches the zenith of his proueces³¹ so sarcastically proclaimed in the opening verse.

As for Nicolette, much of the inversion in her character has already been exposed in discussing that of her lover. However the author on several occasions also burlesques the type of heroine, sweet, infinitely patient, impossibly pure which she is supposed to represent. On one occasion she is portrayed as a virtual saint in an obvious parody of the miracles attributed to such people. Aucassin tells of how one day she came to the bed of a pilgrim from Limousin who was deathly ill. Gradually she lifted her garment from various areas of her body until one leg was finally exposed. At the sight of this limb the sick man was instantly cured and rose from his bed.³² Such a tale is worthy of a fabliau.

Much closer to the general tone of inversion which has been noted in previous paragraphs is the episode dealing with Nicolette's escape from Carthage and her disguise as a jongleur. The first fact to observe is that once again it is she who is obliged to escape while her sweetheart reposes in comfort in his house, a total reversal of the usual situation in idyllic novels where the hero customarily searches for his love who, although a prisoner, generally enjoys the sumptuous physical ease of an oriental court. The second is Nicolette's decision to assume the disguise of a male, that is, of a jongleur and not that of a jongleresse. Eventually she even manages to apply to herself, in her complete absorption in her unnatural role, such masculine adjectives as preus.³³

This parody by inversion of accepted character traits and dramatic situations may be also extended to the very names of the chief personalities. For Aucassin, the French hero, bears an Arabic name³⁴ whereas Nicolette, the North African heroine, bears a French one.

Finally the language and the form of Aucassin et Nicolette may also be enlisted in an attempt to underline our thesis. Reference has already been made to some of the elements in the plot which resemble those of the fabliau. With these in mind it does not seem entirely coincidental that the language of this genre is the same Picard dialect, in most cases, as that of Aucassin et Nicolette, that its tone is mocking and satiric and that it is frequently used to parody revered personages and types in the same fashion as we have found the case to be in the work under discussion here. As a consequence it does not appear exaggerated to assume that the author of Aucassin et Nicolette coming from the same region as the fabliau and writing in the same dialect, should also be influenced by the attitudes to life and literature which produced that genre.

The form of Aucassin et Nicolette with its distinctive combination of prose and poetry, along with fragments of music to be utilized in singing it, has been the subject of much speculation.³⁵ Again bearing in mind the Picard speech, we are moved to note that it was from the district of this dialect that the earliest secular dramas arose in Old French and that sometimes these works also combined dialogue, verse and music as in the case of the Jeu de Robin et Marion. As a consequence we would suggest that Aucassin et Nicolette has all the possibilities of histrionic interpretations, maybe as a dramatic monologue with vocal interpolations, maybe as part of a musical comedy or a satiric revue. Indeed we even begin to suspect that the creation of a special title, chantefable for this genre, was in some way a joke since it is apparently the only work of its kind to be classified under this distinctive form.

There has been no intention in this discussion to denigrate the qualities of Aucassin et Nicolette as a piece of literature. We have hoped rather that this examination would reveal the complete unity of tone, plot, and character in this entirely delightful work where the author attempts, principally by inversion, to parody, in particular, the extremes of the idyllic novel, and, in general, all that was, to his mind, sanctimonious, fatuously idealized, overworked and vainglorious in the literature of his day.

Notes

1. Aucassin et Nicolette, chantefable du XIIe siècle, traduite par A. Bida; révision du texte original et préface par G. Paris (Paris, 1878).

2. Aucassin and Nicolette, translated by F. W. Bourdillon (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1887), i-lxiii.

3. Aucassin et Nicolette, done into English by Andrew Lang (London: Nutt, 1904), i-xx.

4. L. Jordan, “Die Quelle des Aucassin und die Methode des Urteils in der Philologie.” Die Zeitschrift für die Romanische Philologie, XLIV (1924), 291-307. Aucassin et Nicolette, kritischer Text mit Paradigmen und Glossar von Herman Suchier, Neunte Auflage bearbeitet von Walther Suchier (Paderhorn:Schöningh, 1921), xxiv-xxxiii.

5. O. M. Johnston, “Origin of the Legend of Floire and Blancheflor.” Matzke Memorial Volume (Leland Stanford junior University Publications, 1911), 125-138.

6. Aucassin et Nicolette, éditée par Mario Roques (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1936), viii-x.

7. A. H. Krappe, “Two Ancient Parallels to Aucassin et Nicolette,” Philological Quarterly, LV (1925), 159-181.

8. D. Scheludko, “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Aucassin et Nicolete,” Die Zeitschrift für die Romanische Philologie, XLII (1922), 458-490.

9. Myrra Lot-Borodine, Le roman idyllique au moyen âge (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1913), p. 81.

10. Ibid., p. 119.

11. Op. cit., p. XI.

12. Op. cit., p. VII.

13. Aucassin and Nicolette, translated by Edward Francis Moyer and Carey DeWitt Eldridge. Preface by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. (Chapel Hill, N. C.: Robert Linker, 1937), i-viii.

14. All citations are made from the editions of Mario Roques mentioned above. The Arabic numerals refer to the pages, the Roman numerals to the divisions of the work. 2, II.

15. 6, VI.

16. 10, X.

17. 12, X and XI.

18. 14, XII.

19. 14, XII, line 33.

20. 16, XIV.

21. 18, XVI.

22. 21, XX.

23. 23, XXII.

24. 19, XVIII, line 18.

25. 25, XXIV.

26. 29, XXVII, line 11.

27. 30, XXIX.

28. 31, XXX.

29. 33, XXXIV.

30. 37, XL.

31. I, 1, line 6.

32. 12, XI.

33. 35, XXXVII, line 1.

34. See Aucassin in the Index des Noms Propres of Mario Roques' edition.

35. Mario Roques, in the introduction to his edition, p. IV, provides a résumé of the opinions of numerous scholars concerning the form and possibly manner of public presentation of Aucassin et Nicolette.