SOURCE: "Beves of Hampton" in Medieval Romance in England, Oxford University Press, 1924, pp. 115-26, 321-26.

[In the essay below, Hibbard offers an overview of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholarship regarding the oldest versions, the sources, and the composition date of Bevis of Hampton.]

Versions. The hero who bears the name of Beves of Hampton (Boeve de Hamptone, Hanstone) might well be described as an international character. The wide wandering of his story was like his own fabled adventuring from Hampton to Damascus. Versions in English, Welsh, Irish, French, Dutch, Scandinavian, Italian, attest the popularity of him who became even in Russia the most acclimated hero of the chivalric epic (Wesselofsky; cf. Rom. XVIII, 313). The story of the loss and recovery of his inheritance, his fights with Saracens and dragons, his marriage with a converted princess, his gaining of innumerable possessions, is distinctive chiefly for its amazing absorption of familiar motifs and for its blending of elements drawn from romance, fairy tale, saint legend, and heroic epic. Few stories better illustrate the catholicity of mediaeval taste; and in this, perhaps, lay the secret of an influence which may be traced, not only through the wealth of manuscript material but through many literary allusions to the poem and through the representation of its incidents in different artistic forms.¹

The length, the number, and the variety of the vernacular versions of Beves make the problem of their classification extremely difficult. Since the publication in 1899 of Stimming's edition of the Anglo-Norman version of Beves, the story has been the subject of many elaborate investigations, but for the purpose of enumeration it is convenient to disregard the maze of controversy and to note as the three principal versions the Anglo-French (AF), the Continental French (CF), and the Italian (Matzke, Mod. Phil. x, 20).

The first group, as Stimming made clear, has four branches, a thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman poem extant in two long supplementary fragments (ed. Stimming, 1899), a fourteenth-century prose version in Norse (ed. Cederschi6ld, 1884), another of the thirteenth-century in Welsh (R. Williams, 1892), and one in Middle English verse (ed. Kolbing). The last, in the Auchinleck manuscript, has the first 474 verses in a six-line stanza and the remaining 4146 lines in short couplets. The popularity of the version, belonging originally, it would seem, to the south of England (Kölbing, XIII ff.), is attested by the six existing texts and by the six which Kölbing assumed as antecedent in order to explain the extant readings. These six manuscripts fall into two classes (A and SN; Mo-ME-C), in which the earliest, the (A)Auchinleck manuscript, is less near to the lost thirteenth-century Middle English original than is the fifteenth-century (M) Manchester manuscript, or even Pynson's old print. This original, from which the later manuscripts take over numerous references to a French original, was, in Stimming's opinion, derived from a lost Anglo-Norman version (x), the source also, through various lost intermediaries, of the extant Anglo-Norman and Welsh texts, and of the Norse account. The Middle English poet seems to have shortened his original at will, to have elaborated certain episodes, and to have made three important additions: (1) the account of Beves's first battle fought on Christmas day for the honor of God; (2) his great fight with the dragon of Cologne, an episode which suggests to the poet comparison of his hero with Lancelot, Wade, and Guy of Warwick; and (3) the heroic defense made by Beves and his sons against the London citizens when they are roused against him by the accusation that Beves has killed the king's son, a scene graphic enough to suggest some contemporary riot. Despite its prolixity and its constant borrowings from the commonplaces of Middle English romantic diction, which Schmirgel pointed out in Kölbing's edition, (pp. xlv-lxvi), the poem has a certain vigor of its own. Its popularity with a mediæval audience is not to be wondered at, nor is it strange that the traditional delight in this hero persisted even in the Elizabethan period.² An instance of the foreign interest in the Middle English Beves is a fifteenth-century Irish translation (ed. Robinson).

The Anglo-Norman (AF) text is generally thought to represent an independent version of the same story as that told by the continental French texts. Of these, nine manuscripts in verse and two in prose are now known. They fall apparently into three groups. The first is represented by the thirteenth-century Paris manuscript (P¹) published by Stimming in 1911. This version, Behrens (p. 77) believed, originated between 1230 and 1250, on the southern borders of Picardy. The second version, represented by an inedited and incomplete manuscript in Rome (R), another (W) of the fifteenth century in Vienna, and by another thirteenth-century Paris manuscript (ed. Stimming, 1913), was thought by Oeckel (p. 78) and Meiners (p. 239) to have been by the scribe, Pierot du Ries. The possibility that Pierot might have been the author was dismissed by Stimming (2, p. 4, 200). This version tends constantly to amplify the original by new episodes and so much delights in ecclesiastical detail that its author was presumably of the clergy. "Lokal patriotismus," however, gives now and then a secular touch to his story. The third group comprises the Beves texts of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries found in manuscripts at Carpentras (C), Turin (T), and Venice (V); and finally a fragment now at Modena (Wolff and Paetz). Of these continental texts Boje (pp. 136-37) believed the oldest and truest form to be represented by the Rome and Paris manuscripts of the second group, and the original text to be the work of one man only. As a whole this continental French version is somewhat longer than AF, and, unlike it, places the hero's home on Gallic soil and names his stepfather Doon de Mayence. In the AF version Doon is Emperor of Almayn, and Beves's home is at Littlehampton (Hampton-sur-Mer, v. 2811), not more than two and one half miles from Arundel, the city named, according to the English romance, in honor of the race won by Arundel, Beves's famous horse. Finally it may be noted that the two fifteenth-century French prose versions of Beves and the five known sixteenth-century editions belong to the same redaction as the manuscripts P, R, W (Boje, p. 13).

The Italian version is preserved in at least six texts, of which the earliest is the fragmentary thirteenth-century Venetian manuscript (ed. Reinhold). The only complete form is the Buova d'Antona in the Reali di Francia, a late fifteenth-century composite which draws on the French as well as the Italian versions. The Italian version is shorter than the French; it differs in names and in sequence of events; and is, in the opinion of Rajna (Ricerche intorno ai Reali di Francia, pp. 135-40, Milan, 1872), of Jordan, and Matzke (3, p. 32), the prior form "independently transmitted from the original version of which the common source of AF and CF is another offspring."

Of the later popular versions of Beves, the first Dutch edition, printed at Antwerp, 1504, was derived from the CF version; and the sixteenth-century Russian and Jewish folk-books were from the Italian (Wesselofsky, Rom. XVIII, 302-14, 1889). In 1881 the Italian was translated into Roumanian (Groeber, 1901, 11, 3, 386). The fullest account of these and all the other versions is given by Boje (pp. 1-13).

The influence of Beves has been traced in the Middle High German poem, Graf Rudolph (cf. Bethmann, Palœstra, XXX; Deutschbein, p. 191), but the similar scenes are of the fairly conventional type concerning a Christian hero and a heathen princess. The Provencal poem, Daurel et Beton (ed. P. Meyer, Paris, 1880), is in part clearly a sequel to Beves (Jordan, 1, 102). Brockstedt's account (pp. 96-103) of this relationship is more convincing than his idea that the Siegfriedlied and the Nibelungenlied are variations of the Anglo-Norman Beves. The forest death of Beves's father, Beves's fight with the dragon of Cologne, and the bridal of Josian with Earl Miles, are in truth analogous to scenes in the German poems, but the inference made from the resemblance is over-large. Boje (p. 137) believed that the influence of the French forms of Beves was to be clearly traced in certain incidents in five poems; in Florent et Octavian (Hist. Litt., XXVI, 316), in Parise et Vienne (Rom. Forsh., XV, 1904), in Ciperis (Hist. Litt., XXVI, 31), in Valentin u. Namelos (ed. Seelmann, 1884, p. 68) and, most interesting of all, in Aucassin (ed. Suchier), in the episode in which the heroine, disguised as a maiden minstrel, goes in search of her lost lover. On the whole, however, the influence of Beves is best attested by the long line of its own self-perpetuating versions.

Origin. Beves of Hampton is a typical roman d'aventure which moves within a certain "Ideenkreis" of a well-defined character. In his comparison of it with one hundred and eighty-seven Old French romances Boje distinguished the following characteristic details and incidents: the forest hunt, p. 62; the murder of Beves's father, the marriage of his mother with her husband's murderer, the stepfather's hostility to Beves, pp. 62-64; the disguise of Beves, coloring his face, p. 67, etc., to save his life; the exhibition of his bloodstained clothes as a proof of death, p. 66; the rude porter, p. 71; the feast broken up by a tumult, p. 66; the selling of the boy and his stay at the court of a foreign king, the love for him of the Saracen princess, the defeat through Beves of her cruel suitor, the false accusation brought against the lovers, the letter of death carried by Beves to a heathen king, pp. 74-80; the overthrow of the idols by Beves, p. 82; his imprisonment in Damascus, his escape and the vain pursuit, pp. 91-100; the beating of the idols by the heathen king, p. 100; Josian's forced marriage and the magic protection of her virginity, p. 106; Beves's disguise as a palmer and his horse's recognition of his master, pp. 108-09; the drugging of Josian's guard, p. 112; the elopement of the lovers, pp. 109-12; the grotesque giant Escopart and his comic baptism, pp. 113-14; Josian's second forced marriage, the killing of her husband, and Beves's rescue of Josian from the stake, pp. 115-17; Beves's homecoming, the rage of the usurper who throws a knife at the messenger, p. 90; the overthrow of the usurper by Beves in battle or by a judicial combat, pp. 82-88; the great race won by Beves's horse, p. 118; the horse theft attempted by the king's son, p. 131; the killing of the king's son, pp. 120-23; the second exile of Beves, the forest birth of Josian's twin sons, the separation of the family, pp. 123-24; Beves's nominal marriage with another lady, Josian's disguise as a minstrel, her search for her lost love, the recognition and reunion of husband and wife, pp. 128-31; the old age of Beves, the angelic warning and his death, pp. 132-33.

As no text of Beves antedates the thirteenth century, as linguistic studies, no less than a literary study of motifs such as Boje's, suggest nothing antecedent to 1200, it is probable that the original poem was not composed before that date. But numerous attempts have been made to find in the extant versions the signs of much more ancient origin. Suchier's belief (1, p. cxcv) based on the evidence of such names as Ivor, Bradmund, Rudefoun, etc., that the poem was basically a Viking saga, may be offset by reference to Langlois's Tables des noms propres dans les chansons de geste, Paris, 1904, from which it appears that these names appear in Old French poems for which no Viking origin can possibly be alleged. Deutschbein (p. 198) sought to connect the story with certain historical German antecedents and suggested identification of Doon, represented in Beves as the Emperor of Almayne who murders Beves's father in the forest in order to marry his mother, with Otto (Odon) the Great (929-947) who exiled his step-son, Duke Ernst of Swabia, or with the father of Ernst II of Swabia who was killed on a hunt and whose son revolted against his step-father, the Emperor Conrad II. Boje (pp. 62 ff.), however, proved the essentially literary character of this introductory part of the romance.

The question of origin has been constantly associated with the localization of the story. The apparently ample evidence of English place-names,³ which led Stimming (pp. 183-85) to believe the poem of Anglo-Norman origin, has been brought into dispute by the contention that the Italian version, in which the English are supplanted by Continental names, is representative of the oldest and most authoritative version. Rajna in 1872 was one of the first to point out in his studies on the Reali di Francia that Hamtone or Hanstone might better be identified with Hunstein or Hammerstein on the Rhine than with Southampton, and others have stressed the importance of the clearly non-English elements in the romance. Nevertheless, Matzke, who did most to establish the independent value of the Italian version, thought (Mod. Phil., X, 54) the question of insular or continental origin still an open one. Less cautious scholars, by considering limited portions of the story in the AF or CF group, which they take to represent the original nucleus of the story, have arrived at interestingly varied opinions. Settegast (pp. 282, 383) derived the history of Beves's first exile from an Armenian tale in which a king was killed on a hunting expedition, the throne was seized by an usurper and a young prince, the true heir, escaped in disguise as a shepherd boy. By the most dubious sort of etymology (p. 354) the names in this tale were made in some instances to coincide with those in Beves, and so made to argue an eastern origin for the romance. Deutschbein (p. 182), emphasizing different elements in this same part of Beves, the ill treatment of the boy by his relatives, the feast which he breaks up by shaming his enemy, was reminded of Karl Mainet and of an episode in Jourdain de Blaivies. The account of Beves's relations with his royal step-father still further suggested (p. 198) the twelfth-century German poem, Herzog Ernst, (ed. Bartsch, 1869), which relates the adventures of Ernst of Swabia, traditionally the rebellious stepson of Otto the Great. In Graf Rudolph, c. 1170 (Palœstra XXX) the eastern adventures of the hero, his escape from prison, his rescue of his beloved from a forced marriage, parallel to some degree similar incidents in Beves. These stories of Mainet and Ernst and Rudolph, which were known in their earliest versions in the district between Flanders and Picardy, were supposed by Deutschbein (p. 204) to have been carried to England by Flemish colonists who settled in Pembrokeshire in the neighborhood of Haverford (Aberford, in AN. Beves). There the stories were localized, and to some extent, perhaps, influenced by tales of the Horn type. The commonplace likeness between Beves and Horn in the hero's expulsion from home, his adventures at the foreign court, his banishment, his rescue of his betrothed, led Hoyt, on wholly insufficient grounds, to conclude that the home of the two stories must have been in England and that Beves was "but a romantically developed form of the Horn Saga."

The historical kernel for the story of Beves's second exile is to be found, according to Jordan (Archiv, CXIII, 98), in the story recorded under the year 870 by Regino of Prum (Mon. Germ. I) of Carolus, the Frankish prince. In this anecdote a courtier, whose horse has been stolen in jest by the prince, unluckily wounds the royal youth and has to flee for his life. Deutschbein (p. 209) accepted Jordan's view and noted that Prum was not far from the district from which he fancied some episodes in the first part of Beves to have been originally drawn. The theft of a famous horse as an episode in itself was, as Boje (p. 131) indicated, a popular incident.

Legendary sources for Beves have been found far and near. Zenker (p. 44) maintained that Beves and the Hamlet (Amlethus) legend told by Saxo Grammaticus were versions of the same story (p. 32), and that the common source probably originated in England. In the two stories the hero becomes the stepson of his father's murderer, vows vengeance, has a violent altercation with his mother, is sent (but for different causes) to a foreign court bearing a letter of death (Uriasbrief), escapes, and finally returns to accomplish his revenge on the step-father, the usurper of his heritage. Zenker believed that of these incidents the most distinctive was the use of the Uriasbrief, and paralleled it (p. 45) with numerous oriental tales, with the Greek Bellerophron story (pp. 283, 313), and the French Dit de l'Empereur Coustant (Rom., VI, 162 ff.). But later students have shown that in most of these instances, with the exception of the Greek story, the letter, so rewritten as to command great rewards for the bearer, opened to him a new career of successful adventure. Such is the tale twice found in the Amlethus legend, but in Beves the original letter was delivered by the hero, and almost caused his death. This simpler use of the motif seems to be derived either from the ancient Biblical story (2 Sam. XI, 15) of David and Uriah or from "a folk-lore tale current in the East and introduced into Beves in the time of the Crusades."

A second important argument of Zenker's that Amlethus is the source of Beves, rested on the supposedly similar incidents of the double marriage of the two heroes. In Beves the hero, separated from his wife and children, comes to a city (AF, Aumberforce, CF, Civile); its ruler, one of many "Forth-Putting" ladies, offers herself to him, having been attracted by his military prowess; he enters reluctantly into a pretended marriage with her (AF version); and his true wife appears in time to prevent its consummation. In Amlethus the hero enters willingly into the second marriage, and the interest of the episode lies entirely in the Valkyrie-like character of the lady who, because of her vow of chastity, has long caused the death of all her suitors. The essential unlikeness of the episodes makes it improbable that one was derived from the other. To Jordan (2) the distinctive element in Beves was the hero's separation from his family—the separation and reunion motif that dominates such stories as Guillaume d'Angleterre, Sir Isumbras, Die Gute Frau, etc., narratives which are always in this episode in some way related to the Eustachius legend.

Although Zenker believed that the larger portion of Beves was to be derived from the northern Hamlet legend or its variants in the stories of Havelok, Hrolf Hraka, or the Icelandic Anloþi, which he thought basically related, he accounted for many of its eastern elements by traces which he detected in the Hamlet legend itself of the ancient Persian Chosro story found in the "King's Book" of the poet Firdausi (cir. 1011). This Chosro account in turn seems to show a fusion of the Brutus and Bellerophron legends. Beves's childhood resembles that of Chosro; for each has a faithful protector in the person of his father's friend, each acquires a wonderful horse whose recognition of his master is sometimes of vital consequence, each hero marries a king's daughter.

The Eastern names, the localization of so many incidents in eastern places, the perceptible flavor of the Crusading spirit in Beves, have led to other attempts to identify special incidents. Beves's imprisonment in Damascus was traced by Settegast (pp. 282, 338) to the similar experience of Bischen as recorded in Firdausi's book, and more significantly by Brockstedt (p. 35) to the French Floovent. In the Italian Bovo (Jordan, I, p. 17) the princess Malgaria loves and protects the imprisoned Beves; in Floovent the princess Maugalie, similarly tender-hearted, aids the hero to escape. The possible influence on the Ur-Bueve of Floovent or other stories of this exceedingly popular type must be admitted. Warren's study (PMLA. XXIX, 340-59) of the Enamoured Moslem Princess, showed that the type story greatly antedated the Crusading era, as he traced its earliest western form to the sixth Controversia of Seneca, the Rhetorician, and the earliest Crusade version to the account of Bohemond in the Historia Ecclesiastica, c. 1135, of Orderic Vitalis.

Brockstedt's argument, however, that the Italian version of Beves, because it borrowed the episode from Floovent, is a late form, was disputed by Matzke (Mod. Phil., X, 25) who urged that the role of Malgaria must have belonged to the French source of the Italian poem, since she is to be recognized as the necessary second heroine of the story (which he believed the fundamental one in Beves), the so-called Legend of the Man with Two Wives ("Lay of Eliduc," Mod. Phil., V, 211-39). In this type a youth exiled from his own home wins through his valor the love of a princess. He is slandered and is again forced to go into exile. In another court he wins the love of another lady but remains loyal to the first. He returns in time to rescue her from an unwelcome marriage, or she appears in time to prevent his marriage to the second lady. To Matzke (3, p. 41 ff.) the starting point of the legend is simply the doubling of the exile-and-return formula, and the consequent doubling of the love adventure of the hero. The doubled form appeared in such tales as Horn, Ille et Galeron, and, with certain variations in Tristan, Eliduc, Lai del Fraisne, and its derivative, Roman de Galeran. A comparison of the different versions of Beves seems to show that its original form was structurally of the same type as these.

Some of the earliest processes of accretion in Beves are set forth in Matzke's study of the St. George legend. In its ancient Eastern forms this legend had known only the monster-killing and martyrdom episodes, but in the course of its development in the west it absorbed the Beves story and became a typical roman d 'aventure, as it appears, for instance, in Richard Johnson's Seven Champions of Christendom, London, 1592. In Beves, on the other hand, the influence of the saint legend is especially obvious in the scene in which Beves overthrows the heathen idol, in the account of his sufferings in the prison of Damascus, and his fight with the dragon of Cologne.

In regard to the authorship of Beves, the most important suggestion of recent years was that made by Boje. He urged that the original French version was the work of a single author sufficiently acquainted with contemporary romance to borrow from it freely. His belief that Beves was not a racial saga, that it was not of German, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, or Viking origin, nor a gradual combination of elements drawn from Persian-Armenian, nor Graco-Roman story, but a literary romance, the work of one man, is in line with the whole tendency of modern criticism.⁴

Notes

¹ Scenes from Beves appear in the Smithfield Decretals and in the Taymouth Horæ.… Notes and Queries, 8th ser. XI (1897) referred to the hangings of Juliana de Leybourne, 1362, which were worked with the legend. W. G. Thompson, Tapestry Weaving, p. 26, mentioned two pieces of arras of Beves of the time of Henry V. The Bull. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de France, 1909, p. 237, shows a small stone mould (c. 1359) of the Musee de Cluny on which Beves and two lions appear. An inscription refers to "Bueve."

² Beves and Guy had an almost equal popularity, and the heroes were often mentioned together.…

³ Cf. J. Westphal, Englische Ortsnamen im Altfranzösischen. Diss. Strassburg, 1891.

⁴ Cf. Bédier, Les Légendes Épiques, Paris, 1908-13; L. Foulet, Roman de Renard, Paris, 1914; F. Lot, Étude sur le Lancelot en prose, Paris, 1918.

Bibliography

TEXTS, MIDDLE ENGLISH:

(1), A, Auchinleck MS., ed. Turnbull, Maitland Club, Edin., 1838, rev. Eng. Stud. II, 317; E. Kölbing, EETSES. XLVI, XLVIII, LXV, 1885-86, 1894, rev. Anglia, XI, 325; Eng. Stud. XIX, 261; Rom. XXIII, 486; (2) C, Caius Coll. Cbg. 175, desc. Eng. Stud. XIV, 321; (3) S, Egerton 2862, desc. Brit. Mus. Catalogue of Add. MSS, 1905-10, p. 238, formerly the MS. of the Duke of Sutherland, desc. Eng. Stud., VII, 191 ff.; (4) N, Royal Library, Naples, MS. XIII, B, 29; (5) C, Cbg. Univ. Libr. MS. Ff. II, 38; (6) M, Chetham Library, Manchester, MS. 8009, ed. Kölbing, op. cit.; cf. Eng. Stud. VII, 198. Early printed editions: L, "Douce fragments," no. 19, Bodleian; 0, undated edition by Pynson, Bodleian. Editions from 1689-1711 listed by Esdaile, English Tales, pp. 163-64. Trans. L. Hibbard, Three Middle Eng. Romances.

FRENCH:

Stimrning, A. (1) "Der Anglo-Normannische Boeve de Haumton," Bibliotheca Normannica, VII, Halle, 1899; (2) "Der festländische Bueve de Hantone," Fassung I, Gesellschaft f rom. Lit. XXV (1911); (3) Fassung II, ibid. XXX (1912); XLI (1918); Fassung III, ibid. XLII (1920).

IRISH:

Robinson, F. N. "The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton." Zts. f celt. Phil. VI, 180-320 (1907). Text and trans. See also, Eng. Stud. XXIV, 463.

ITALIAN:

Reinhold, J. "Die franko-italienische Version des Bovo d'Antone." Zts. f rom. Phil. XXXV, 555-607; 683-714; XXXVI, 1-32 (1912).

STUDIES:

Billings, Guide, pp. 40-1; Boje (see below) for MSS., pp. 1-13; Studies, pp. 43-49; Wells, Manual, pp. 765-66.

Behrens, L. Ort u. Zeit der Entstehung der Fassung I des festländischen Beuve de Hantone. Diss. 135 pp. Göttingen, 1913.

Bodtker, A. "Ivens Saga u. Bevis Saga in Cod. Holm. Chart. 46," PB. Beitrdge XXXI, 261-71 (1906).

Boje, C. "Ueber den altfrz. roman v. Bueve de Hamtone." Beihefte z. Zts. f rom. Phil. XIX, 145 pp. Halle, 1909. Rev. Rom. XLII, 314; Zts. f frz. Spr. u. Lit. XXXV, 49.

Brockstedt, 1. Floovent Studien. Kiel, 1907. 2. Von mittelhochdeut. Volksepen französischen Ursprungs. Kiel, 1912. Beves, pp. 60-159. Rev. Archiv. CXXI, 170-72.

Deutschbein, M. Studien z. Sagengeschichte Englands. Die Wikingersagen: Horn, Havelok, Tristan, Boeve, pp. 181-215, Guy of Warwick. Cothen, 1906.

Favaron, G. L 'elemento italiano nel period popolare toscano del epopea romanzesca; Saggio sul Buovo d'Antona. 61 pp. Bologna (1900).

Gerould, G. See Isumbras here.

Groeber, G. Griindriss, II, 386 (1901).

Hibbard, L. A. "Beves of Hampton and the Nibelungenlied," MLN. XXVI, 159-60 (1911). "Jaques de Vitry and Boeve de Haumtone," MLN. XXXIV, 408-11 (1919).

Hoyt, P. C. "The Home of the Beves Saga," PMLA. XVII, 237-46 (1902).

Jordan, L. I. "Ueber Boeve de Hanstone," Beihefte z. Zts. f. rom. Phil. XIV. 197 pp. Halle, 1908. Rev. Archiv. CXXII, 412, Zts. f. frz. Spr. u. Lit. XXXIV, 25. 2. "Die Eustachiuslegende, Christians Wilhelmsleben, Boeve de Hanstone u. ihre orientalischen Verwandten," Archiv. CXXI, 340-62 (1908).

Kühl, H. Das gegenseitige Verhältnis der Handschriften der Fassung II des festländischen Bueve de Hantone. Diss. 63 pp. Göttingen, 1915.

Matzke, J. E. I. "Contributions to the Legend of St. George," PMLA. XVII, 464-535 XVIII, 99-171 (1902-03). 2. "The Legend of St. George; Its Development into a Roman d'Aventure," PMLA. XIX, 449-78 (1904). 3. "The Oldest Form of the Beves Legend." Mod. Phil. X, 19-54 (1912-13).

Meiners, J. E. Die Handschriften P (RW), Fassung II d. festländischen Bueve de Hantone. Diss. 268 pp. Gottingen, 1914.

Oeckel, F. Ort. u. Zeit. d. Entstehung der Fassung II d. festländischen Boeve v. Hantone. Diss. 88 pp. Gottingen, 1911.

Paetz, H. "Ueber das gegenseitige Verhältnis d. venetianischen, d. frankoitalienischen u. d. französischen gereimten Fassungen d. Bueve de Hantone." Beihefte z. Zts. f. rom. Phil. L. 133 pp. Halle, 1913.

Reinhold, See Texts, Italian.

Robinson, See Texts, Irish.

Sander, G. Die Fassung T des festländischen Fassung d. Bueve de Hantone. Diss. Gottingen, 1913.

Settegast, F. Quellenstudien z. gallo-rom. Epik. Leipzig, 1904. Ch. XVI, 338-69, Beves, Generides.

Schüiltsmeier, F. Die Sprache d. Handschrift C d. festländ. Bueve de Hantone. Diss. 200 pp. Göttingen, 1913.

Stimming, See Texts, French.

Wolf, S. Das gegenzeitige Verhältnis d. gereimten Fassungen d. festländ. Bueve de Hantone. Diss. Gottingen, 1912.

Zenker, R. "Boeve-Amlethus, Das altfrz. Epos Boeve de Hantone u. der Ursprung der Hamletsage." Literarhist. Forschungen, XXXII, 480 pp. Berlin, 1905. Rev. Archiv., CXVIII, 226; Eng. Stud., XXXVI, 284.

Abbreviations and References

… Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, ed. Herrig. Braunschweig, 1849…

Mod Phil. Modern Philology. Chicago, 1903…

PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Baltimore, 1884-1901, Cambridge, 1902-

Rom. Romania Paris, 1872…

Rom. Forsch. Romanische Forschungen. Erlangen, 1883…