Les Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes/The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes by Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS279 KEITH BUSBY, TERRY NIXON, ALISON STONES, A]V(D LORI WALTERS, LeS Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes/The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. Pp. xiv, 503; viii, 553. $532. The most exciting and profitable trend in recent philological studies is not the selfproclaimed 'New Philology' but the renewed interest in manuscript studies, manifested in such diverse works as Rupert Pickens' edition ofall the manuscript versions of The Songs ofJaufréRudel(Toronto, 1978), collaborative editions ofthe many Crusade Cycle poems and the Chanson de Roland (currently being readied under the direction of Joseph J. Duggan), Alastair J. Minnis's Medieval'Theory ofAuthorship (London, 1984), Alison Stones's important series of art historical studies of vernacular illuminated manuscripts, and the important contributions of Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book (Cornell, 1987) and The Romance ofthe Rose and Its Medieval Readers (Cambridge, 1993). Thanks to these and other scholars drawing particularly on the seminal works of Jean Rychner and Paul Zumthor, we are much more conscious today of the material context of medieval literary production, whether oral or manuscript. Nonetheless, manuscript studies of vernacular literature - studies which considet the physical organization ofthe medieval codex, its contents, script, decoration, and illumination are still in their infancy. The collaborative volume under review, which includes 13 entries by the four principal authors and an additional 13 (several collaborative) by 14 other scholars, is a significant scholarly and publishing event. The contents can be roughly divided into three areas of interest: 'literary' studies of scribal and textual problems; 'art historical' evaluations ofthe decoration and miniatures, particularly of Chretien's Perceval; and 'codicological' descriptions of the individual manuscripts containing Chretien's works. Forty-three manuscripts or fragments exist of Chretien's five Arthurian romances (two additional ones previously described have since been lost), which is more than that for any other vernacular text of the twelfth century. None, however, is from the twelfth century, and all but one (Pierre Sala's 16th-century antiquarian recopying of Yvain) can be dated either thirteenth- or fourteenth-century. Of the 45 known manuscripts or fragments, 11 contain miniatures or historiated initials, totaling 2 illustrations for Lancelot, 4 for Erec, 17 for Yvain, and 62 for Perceval. The present volumes have 28 color and 805 black-and-white reproductions, which include all the miniatures and decorated initials of the 11 illuminated manuscripts, photographs of text and initials from the other extant Chrétien manuscripts and fragments, as well as numerous reproductions from stylistically related manuscripts. Volume one contains 19 essays that offer a variety ofapproaches to the manuscript evidence. After providing a list of manuscripts by shelf order, by date attribution, and by text, Terry Nixon discusses the make-up of the individual manuscripts, which move from single- to multiple-column productions, and from individual works to collections of Chretien's romances, to complilations of multiple Arthurian romances. Problems of editing Chretien's works occupyTony Hunt (a reprinting ofhis important French Studies article of 1979) and Margot van Mulken, while four essays treat various scribal and 28oA RTHU RIANA paleographical features: Keith Busby argues that the manuscripts B.N.. fr. 12576 and fr. 6614 were produced by the same scribe; Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell describe the 8 manuscripts and 4 fragments containing Cligès, with conclusions that parallel those of Nixon above; Françoise Gasparri, Geneviève Hasenohr, and Christine Ruby examine the Erec et Enide manuscripts, with particular attention to punctuation, abbreviations, and decoration; and Roger Middleton studies the colored capitals in the Erec manuscripts. In separate essays, Patricia Stirnemann, Alison Stones, and Elizabeth Burin explore the artistic context of the illuminated Chrétien manuscripts. In the final seven essays of volume one, Lori Walters (2 essays), Keith Busby (2 essays), Angelica Rieger, I^aurence Harf-Lancner, and Emmanuele Baumgartner discuss various aspects ofthe five illustrated Percevalmanuscripts, showing particularly the relationship (or lack thereof) ofillumination and rubric to text. Whereas Busby concludes that 'the miniatures ofChretien's Percevalm the thirteenth and fourteenth century manuscripts tell us little about the poet's intentions and the reception of his poems by his first audiencs' (363), Walters, and to a lesser extent Rieger, argue that...