The Source and Composition of "Ille et Galeron"

Abstract

Sinne einer idealen Liebesauffassung streng durchkorrigierte Ueberoder besser Umarbeitung des Lai von Eliduc. He hesitates between the version of this lay rimed by Marie de France, oder einer einfacheren, vielleicht ungeschriebenen Fassung (p. xxiii), since he believes that the two episodes of the shipwreck (11. 815-68) and the resuscitation by means of a marvelous herb (11. 1032-66) in Marie's poem are later additions to the story welche mit dem Stoffe des Eliduc in keiner ursaichlichen Beziehung stehen. This thesis he then tries to fortify by means of a detailed comparison of the two poems. This conclusion was rejected by Gaston Paris in Romania, XXI, p. 278, for the reason that the motive of the injured eye, which causes the separation of Ille and Galeron and forms in a way the pivot of Gautier's whole story, is incompatible with the Eliduc lay and is in itself intimately connected with another idea, also unknown to the lay, viz., that of the original social difference between Ille and his wife. He recognized, however, the relation between the two poems, and maintained (Hist. liti., XXX, p. 600, and elsewhere) that Ille et Galeron derives in part from the same source as the Eliduc lay. This same view of the relation of the two poems was accepted by Warnke in the notes to Eliduc in