Les Fables de Marie de France. Manuscrits et éditions

Abstract

The manuscript tradition of the Marie de France's Fables is an excellent illustration of the difficulties a text-editor may encounter while doing his work. Close to Gebrauchsliteratur, these short texts adapt to the changing historical contexts we can partly trace back trough a great number of manuscripts, varying strongly from both a geographical and chronological point of view. These documents are not only numerous and very different in detail and organization, but also appear to be largely stemma-resistent, because structuraly « contaminated ». Based on some recent editions, the present article takes another look at the problems regarding the manuscript tradition of the Fables and argues that neither the « (Neo)-Lachmann approach » nor the « Bédier attitude » will be entirely appropriate to resolve them.