Pour rendre à l'oc et aux Normands leur dû : genèse et premier développement de l'art épique gallo-roman

Abstract

The pronouncement of the refusal to even recognize the existence of a medieval epic in Oc can be both historically dated (between 1865 and 1869) and ideologically defined (French nationalism) in terms of an on-going debate of the young Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris with the German school. This refusal continues to lock contemporary research into a logic of refusal to "go and see for oneself." A reexamination of this "exclusion" involves replacing over-encompassing theories on the origin of the epic by a narrowing of the perspective, focussing on the places and conditions of its appearance. Thus, through the relation Sainte Foi - Roland occitan, the famous "gap" in the origins of the genre is closed, and the reality of the "art of Aquitaine" or "of Tudèle" — which lies at the heart of its first flourishing — appears in an Occitan-Normand dialogue. This same line of inquiry reveals the importance of the change that took place in the middle of the 11th century, where the two winners, both in European and in Church affairs — the Capetian and the Cisterician causes — had initially at their disposal only this "métier" to express themselves. It is only towards the end of the 12th and 13th centuries that a recomposition of existing works and a prolific burst of creativity, in différent regions of oïl — with writing that would lay the fundations for the major manuscripts of the later period — construct what has corne to be called the "French epic" and obscure, to the point of excluding it entirely from our field of vision, the Occitan origins of the chanson de geste, an origin moreover which can be verified by the analysis of the surviving texts.