Perceforest et Zéphir: Propositions autour d'un récit bourguignon (review)

Abstract

124 arthuriana arthuriana 22.1 (2012) Reviews christine ferlampin-acher, Perceforest et Zéphir: Propositions autour d’un récit bourguignon. Geneva: Droz, 2010. Pp. 476. ISBN: 978–2–600–01432–8. $82. After long neglect by medievalists, the Roman de Perceforest has of late received the attention it truly deserves. Along with Jeanne Lods and Sylvia Huot, Christine Ferlampin-Acher is one of the first scholars to have written on this extraordinarily rich romance. Her book is the sum of her numerous articles published on Perceforest over a period of twenty years. Perceforest et Zéphir contains an introduction, four dense chapters, each of which is divided into multiple sections, a conclusion, and a bibliography. In the first chapter, Ferlampin-Acher discusses and questions the conventional dating of the composition of Perceforest. Medievalists have long accepted the idea, first proposed by L. F. Flutre in 1949, that the romance was written around 1340 by an anonymous monk from the abbey of Crespin (Hainaut). Ferlampin-Acher suggests instead that it was originally composed in or around 1450 by David Aubert for the Duc de Bourgogne, Philippe le Bon. The connections she makes between Perceforest and several fifteenth-century romances and chronicles convincingly support her thesis. Chapter 2—by far the longest at 170 pages—pursues the discussion initiated in the previous chapter by considering Perceforest in relation to the fifteenth-century Burgundian court of Philippe le Bon. She argues that the vast territory represented in the romance reflects the geopolitical reality of Burgundy at the time as Philippe le Bon’s dream of territorial expansion. The central role given to tournaments in Perceforest is of particular interest to her. By giving the tournoi both an English and a Flemish origin, she writes, the romance denies France any role in its creation, and by the same token, illustrates Philippe le Bon’s ambition to establish himself as an ally of England against the king of France. Ferlampin-Acher is not the first scholar to use the rivalry between the Pays-Bas and the king of France represented in Perceforest as means of dating the romance. Since this antagonism predates Philippe le Bon, however, it is difficult to completely agree with her conclusion.This reader is troubled by the fact that the political rivalry she so thoroughly discusses could just as convincingly date the romance to the fourteenth century under the rule of Guillaume de Hainaut. It would be unfair, however, to say that Ferlampin-Acher bases the later dating of Perceforest solely on the political climate of the time. She gives many examples of episodes in Perceforest—including the one involving the bearded witches’ Sabbath—that could not have been written before the fifteenth century or even outside of Burgundy. Despite her persuasive arguments here, the possibility of fifteenth-century additions made to an earlier reviews all.indd 124 3/7/12 11:38 AM 125 reviews version of Perceforest is not addressed. However, at the end of her book, the author rejects the idea of any late interpolation (410). In the third chapter Ferlampin-Acher discusses the luiton (an elflike creature) Zéphir whose name figures in the title. She argues that Zéphir is Perceforest’s principal character who gives the narrative its coherence. The evolution of the luiton from a folkloric figure to a spirit announcing the virginal conception of Christ follows closely that of the romance from paganism to Christianity. More importantly for FerlampinAcher ’s main thesis, Zéphir assures the transfer from the Arthurian Brittany, well represented in the first part of the romance, to Philippe le Bon’s Burgundy. The author gives several examples from the text of problems and issues never discussed in the fourteenth century, but very much present in the second half of the fifteenth century, especially in Burgundy. She concludes that the fifteenth-century version of Perceforest composed by David Aubert has to be the original. Chapter 4 then provides a welcome and useful outline and summary of the rich and complex perspective developed in the previous chapters. There is certainly much to be praised in Christine Ferlampin-Acher’s book, beginning with the author’s impressive knowledge of medieval literature...