Proverbes anglo-normands : tradition insulaire ou héritage européen?

Abstract

Although even a proverb is only a proverb for a certain period of time, bound to an historical context that is demonstrated in proverb collections but is of little importance to those engaged in paremiological research, we should be able to be more precise about the terms of its existence. From this point of view, an examination of the vernacular proverbs found in three types of documents dating from 1150 to 1350, originating in the British and Channel Isles (including the costal region of Normandy), and written in Norman French or Anglo-Norman, is revealing. In the first place, there exists a clear parallelism between the development of proverb tradition on the one hand and literary tradition on the other. Thus, the translation of Salomon's Proverbs in Sanson de Nantuil's version (c. 1150) reflects the transitional phase between the medieval Latin tradition and the emerging vernacular one. A second group of texts, comprising Anglo-Norman romances and tales dating from 1150 to 1250, attests to the fluctuating fortunes of the Proverbes au vilain. Contrasting with this, the third type of documents, in particular Jean de Saint Martin's Vie du Bienheureux Thomas Elie de Biville (c. 1340), belongs to a proverb tradition arising from its own historical, geographical and intellectual context.