La Cort d'Amor: A Critical Edition

Abstract

Edited by Matthew Bardell. (Research Monographs in French Studies, 11). Oxford, Legenda, 2002. Pb £14.50; $25.00. This Occitan allegorical narrative, untitled in the sole manuscript (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 819), was first called La Cort d'Amor by Constans in 1881. The title is defensible on internal grounds (‘aqesta cort,’ l. 1336), though one could argue for Lo Zutgament d'Amor (that is, Jutgamen, cf. l. 34) or Lo Parlament d'Amor (‘Aqi s'asis a parlament/Amors,’ ll. 95–96) on the grounds that either one is just as descriptive, occurs sooner in the text, and avoids the problematic association with the myth that real people actually behaved this way. Bardell provides a text with a facing translation, notes, and an introduction. The presence of faint passages and controversial readings makes it unfortunate that he did not consult the manuscript itself but relied on microfilm. Bardell proposes that the work responds to Andreas Capellanus' De amore, written about 1185 for the court of Champagne, and hazards that the Cort was written in the same time and place. He relies on an obscure allusion to eight-score ladies and girls who are said to have made a new love for or out of a lady of great worth (ll. 21–25), possibly referring to the sixty ladies who helped Marie de Champagne adjudicate a point in Andreas. Furthermore, ‘the gallicisms in our text suggest circulation in northern courts such as that of Marie de Champagne’ (p. 14). These gallicisms (listed on pp. 161–62) are not explicated satisfactorily, however. It is not clear without discussion why the odd-looking luei (standard Occitan lui, Old French lui) or potra (Occitan porra, French porra) should be considered gallicisms. Other examples put forward seem stronger, but the argument needs further reflection. Do the gallicisms show that the Cort d'Amor circulated in northern courts, perhaps at the court of Champagne — where most people did not speak Occitan — or do they suggest a French scribe working in Occitania? Concluding overconfidently that ‘our manuscript witness is a mid- to late thirteenth-century Italian copy of a late twelfth-century work which shows linguistic evidence of circulation in northern France’ (p. 36), Bardell claims that the Cort is ‘older than Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose,’ and that therefore ‘Guillaume can no longer be accorded the honour of having invented the allegorical romance’ (p. 12). But no one has dated the manuscript as early as mid-century; the circulation of the Cort d'Amor in northern France remains speculative, and its dating so early is even more uncertain. More persuasively, Bardell argues that the figure of Amor is presented as a man despite one case of feminine agreement, and that the series of Amor's ten barons constitutes an allegorical narrative of love's progress. His reading of the allegory is sensitive and convincing. This challenging text has waited too long for a reliable edition. Bardell has advanced our understanding appreciably, but manifold uncertainties remain.