Intertextual Potential and the Reader in the Bevis Tradition: Boeve de Haumtone, Bevis of Hampton and Beuve de Hantonne

Abstract

This article investigates the role that reader-oriented, unlimited intertextuality – that is, intertextual references only as perceived or even mis-perceived by readers – might have had to play in the transmission, adaptation, and development of the Bevis of Hampton narratives across English and Francophone traditions. In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of the multi-text manuscript as a medium for texts to be integrated into new reading communities, and I therefore use multi-text Bevis manuscripts as a starting point for my enquiry. In particular, this article focuses on an Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone manuscript (Leuven, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS G. 170 or the ‘Firmin-Didot manuscript’, now lost), an English Bevis of Hampton manuscript (British Library, Egerton MS 2862) and a copy of the so-called “first version” of the continental French Beuve de Haumtone (Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Fr. 25516). Beginning with the “intratexts” that occur within the confines of the Firmin-Didot codex, this article moves forward to consider, in more hypothetical terms, the different textual encyclopedias that may have been available to the historic readers of Bevis manuscripts, and the ways in which readerly understandings (and misunderstandings) of a text’s intertextuality could prompt new narrative branches to sprout forth, and eventually lead to the emergence of new traditions.