Reviews of Recent Articles

Michel Darbord. "Le Comique dans le Poema de Mio Cid: l'épisode de

Raquel et Vidas." Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales

offerts à Pierre Le Gentil par ses collègues, ses élèves et ses amis.

Paris: S.E.D.E.S. et C.D.U. réunis, 1973, pp. 175-180.

In the Rachel and Vidas episode in the Cantar de Mio Cid the Cid

fills two handsome chests with sand and takes them to the money-lenders,

Rachel and Vidas, in order to borrow money to maintain himself and his

vassals in exile. Three aspects of the matter have been extensively

discussed: (1) the comic nature of the incident; (2) whether anti-

semitism is displayed; (3) whether the Cid intended to pay back the

money or not. Darbord reviews all three issues and concludes that it

is a carefully elaborated comic interlude, but not antisemitic, in

which Rachel and Vidas were the victims of a gab (akin to that of the

Jews in Jerusalem in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne) played on their

credulity. They did not realize that because they were outside of

chivalric law the Cid's promises were meaningless.

That the episode was meant to be comic is generally agreed,

but there is less agreement about what makes it funny. In oral lit-

erature lines have to be boldly drawn without the subtlety, irony or

cynicism that Darbord finds. The money-lenders were deceived by a

familiar ruse because they trusted the Cid. Unless they were meant

to be the butt of an anti-Jewish joke, and we agree with Darbord that

they were not (the word "Jew" is not mentioned, and they are treated

by everybody with courtesy and respect), the fact of the deceit would

probably not have been as laugh-provoking as the way in which it was

managed. It was Martin Antolínez who with bluff heartiness pulled it

off by taking the words of the accusation against the Cid and turning

them to his advantage in a moment of dire need when the king had just

ordered the doors of Burgos shut to him. The humor emanates from the

rôle played by Martin Antolínez rather than from Rachel and Vidas,

which Menéndez Pidal also pointed out (En torno al Poema del Cid,

Barcelona, 1970, p. 220). It is accompanied by the pleasure that comes

with the knowledge that the Cid was somehow thwarting the king.

For most modern readers, however, the decision as to the humor-

ousness of the episode depends upon whether they believe that the Cid

intended to cheat the money-lenders. There is ample room for hypothesis

because the poem itself is noncommittal. The matter comes up once more

after the Cid has established himself in Valencia and sends Minaya

Albar Fáñez to go after his family. As Minaya is about to leave Burgos,

the money-lenders appeal to him for help. He assures them they will be

paid, and it is never mentioned again. The most detailed of the recent

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Article Reviews 149

studies on this point is Colin Smith's (Romania, 86 [1965], 520-538),

not cited by Darbord, for whom there is not the slightest doubt of the

Cid's intent to defraud them and who insists that by repaying them the

Cid would have lost "his epic stature in the interests of a respect-

ability that has no attraction." But here the moral question is not

as important as oral technique. For a successful oral performance the

meaning of each successive episode had to be easily grasped, as when,

in a more obvious instance, the princes rush off to hide when the lion

escapes. It could not be expected that the listener would hold suspended

in his mind the interpretation of an episode that would not be clarified

until some 1200 verses later. The episode must be considered complete

as initially presented. Any later mention is no more than a recall

motif without narrative significance. Neither in the initial incident

nor in the follow-up is it indicated that the Cid did not intend to pay

them. On the other hand, with every act of duplicity of the princes of

Carrion, they first state what they are going to do and then do it. The

audience is never left in doubt. Nor would it have been with respect

to the money-lenders. In this connection it is interesting to note

that in the chronicle that corresponds most closely to the Cantar de

Mio Cid as we know it, the Crónica de Veinte Reyes (passage quoted by

Colin Smith), the stratagem of the chests is not proposed by the Cid

but by Martín Antolínez and it is never referred to again.

In the matter of the Cid's keeping his word, which enters into

both Colin Smith's and Darbord's thinking, it must be remembered that in

the context of the poem the Cid is of the people, respected and trusted

by Jew, Moor and Christian alike. It is his inferior status that makes

the Count of Barcelona wonder whether the Cid will keep his promise to

let him go, to which the juglar's answer to unequivocal:

Myedo yua auiendo que myo Cid se repintra,

Lo que no ferie el caboso por quanto enel mundo ha,

Vna des leatança ca non la fizo alquandre. (1079-81)

For these reasons the gab theory on Darbord's terms is not

convincing precisely because, as v. 1081 says, the Cid never failed

his word. He incarnated popular values, true nobility as revealed

by word and deed, in contrast to unjust or despicable acts perpetrated

by the high born, first by the king, then by the princes of Carrión.

This is, in fact, the basis of the distinction made by Américo Castro

between the Chanson de Roland and the Cantar de Mio Cid (La realidad

histórica de España, Mexico, D.F., 1954, pp. 263-287) that the former

was composed "para el pueblo" and the latter "desde el punto de vista

150 Olifant/Vol. 2, No. 2/December 1974

del pueblo" with a hero whose behavior was objectivized in terms of

their own lives and in opposition to the king.

Ruth H. Webber

The University of Chicago

-o-oOo-o-

Samuel G. Armistead. "Las Mocedades de Rodrigo según Lope García de

Salazar." Romania, 94 (1973), 303-320.

This article is subsidiary to Professor Armistead's larger work

of charting the survival of the epic matter of the Early Years of

Rodrigo. He had promised this study in his previous article in Romance

Philology, 17 (1963), 344, n. 17. and now it adds a fifth variant

transcription of the matter, in passages of the Biscayan Lope García

de Salazar's Libro de las bienandanzas e fortunas (c. 1471-1476) to

the four he had already identified, sometimes, indeed, in the wake of

Ramón Menéndez Pidal. These latter four can be listed: (i) the Gesta

de las mocedades de Rodrigo, as it may be discerned in prosified form

in the Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300) and the Crónica general de España

"de 1344," in its one Portuguese and two Castilian versions. [Armistead

proposes to issue an edition of these remains]; (ii) the Paris MS of the

Refundición de las mocedades de Rodrigo (c. 1365) [He announces a crit-

ical edition of this poem to set beside those of Menéndez Pidal (Reli-

quias de la poesía épica española, critical, 1951) and A. D. Deyermond

(Epic Poetry and the Clergy, palaeographic, 1969)]; (iii) the second

redaction (c. 1504-1506) of Diego Rodríguez de Almela's Compendio

historial [studied already in his monograph A Lost Version. . . .

(Berkeley-Los Angeles 1963)]; (iv) at least six romances viejos occurring

in the literature de cordel or in cancioneros of the sixteenth century.

At the time of the composition of this article the edition of

the two Castilian versions of the Crónica general de España "de 1344,"

in the hands of Diego Catalán and María Soledad de Andrés, by far the

most important source of Lope García's lore about the Cid's early

career, had not reached the reign of Fernando I, but the parallelisms

between his text and that of MS BNM 10814/5 of the Crónica are apparent.

There are, however, a number of small divergences on Lope García's part

which augment the panorama of variants recording this epic matter. Here

are the most interesting of these. (i) The Crónica "de 1344" excludes

the battle fought by Rodrigo against the Count Gómez de Gormaz at

Ubierna, each side fielding one hundred knights, while the Crónica de

Castilla makes only a casual report of it. On the other hand, the

Refundición devotes an aggregate of twenty-four lines to it and shows

Article Reviews 151

the only discrepancy of presenting the Cid as a mere twelve years old

at the time (Lope García gives him twenty years). [To the note calling

our attention to the phenomenon, possibly symbolic, of the even number

of warriors on either side might be added K.-G. Cram, Iudicium Dei,

Münster-Köln 1955, especially 102-109]. (ii) The account of the second

battle, between Rodrigo and the Counts of Cabra, relatives of the now

dead Count of Gormaz, presents a very singular order of events; the

Crónica "de 1344" has a totally different account while in the

Refundición we only hear of Dona Jimena's dissuasion of her brothers

from carrying out a horrible revenge on Rodrigo even after he has

freed them in an act of generosity. Lope García at this point does

not actually identify the Counts of Cabra with these liberated pris-

oners of the Gormaz faction, while he does report a subsequent battle

and the taking prisoner this time of Count García de Cabra, "el

Crespo." This latter name turns up in an episode in Almela's Compendio

in its second redaction, so that it appears that Lope García had before

him some lost version, perhaps one more concerned with how the Cid

dealt with conspirators than with how he became betrothed to Jimena.

(iii) There is a vivid passage of dialogue in the episode of the Cid's

reception of the messengers of the five Moorish kings, now his vassals,

but of course this feature could be attributed merely to Lope García's

desire as an author to evoke an attitude in his reader. It is at this

same point that Jimena arrives to put forward her complaint and request

to King Fernando. Immediately we are struck by the fact that this scene

is situated in Burgos, not in Zamora (as in the Crónica "de 1344"), and

not in Palencia (as in the Refundición), yet in the same city as in the

romance "En Burgos está el buen rey." Armistead isolates here from the

passage of the Bienandanzas three phrases which show a primitive

assonance in -á-e, quite similar therefore to the corresponding points

in the texts of the Refundición, the romance and the Crónica de Castilia,

which prosifies epic material here. Lope García was evidently not using

the dissimilar text of the Crónica "de 1344" in this instance. (iv)

There is a substitution of the name of Count "Ramon de Tolosa" for that

of the Count of Savoy defeated by Rodrigo on his French expedition, and

in this he goes contrary both to the Crónica "de 1344" and to the

Refundición. Armistead speculates as to who this Count Ramon might be,

possibly the celebrated crusader Raymond IV de Saint-Gilles known in

chansons de geste. [On this prince's relations with Alfonso VI cf. L.

and J. Hill, Raymond IV de Saint-Gilles, Toulouse 1959, 20-21.]

The author concludes that the elements of epic origin in Lope

García's narrative, however exiguous they may be, deserve to be studied

as one more landmark encountered along a trajectory which carries us

from before 1300 up to the sixteenth century and beyond. Another study,

to substantiate his contention that the matter of the Early Years of

152 Olifant/Vol. 2, No. 2/December 1974

Rodrigo had assembled itself as a tradition before 1300, is here announced

to appear in a homage volume to Helmut Hatzfeld.

Menéndez Pidal had, of course, observed these traces before

Armistead, and it would be worth while to examine the slight divergence

in views between the two commentators in the matter of how the legend

was transmitted. The former contended that the prosified Gesta de las

mocedades and the Refundición stand in a continuous tradition, with the

romances representing vestiges of an intermediate version, or inter-

mediate versions. Armistead, on the other hand, perhaps prefers to say

that the prosified Gesta and the Refundición merely derive from some

entirely lost original Gesta of greater antiquity.

Alan Soons

State University of New York at Buffalo

-o-oOo-o-

1974 MLA Convention Papers

At the forthcoming Modern Language Association Convention in

New York, the Medieval French Section, under the chairmanship of Eugene

Vance (secretary: Larry S. Crist), will be devoted to "Poetics and

Systems of Culture" and will include two papers bearing on the epic:

"The Semanticization of Action in the Couronnement Louis," by Peter

Haidu, University of Illinois, and "Turoldus' Conclusion and the

Legacy of Self-Reflection," by R. Howard Bloch, U.C. at Berkeley.

The Medieval Spanish Section will have a paper on a computational

analysis of the Cantar de Mio Cid by Franklin M. Waltman, S.U.N.Y.

College at Cortland.

Abstracts of Recent Articles

Paul Brians. "Paul Aebischer and the 'Gab d'Olivier.'" Romance Notes

15(Autumn 1973)1, 164-171.

The gab in question occurs in Le Voyage de Charlemagne, lines

708-730. Aebischer contends that the gab is non-sexual in nature;

Brians disagrees.

Olivier makes his gab in the following context of the poem.

Charlemagne, having arrived with his men at the palace of Hugon, King

of Constantinople, proposes a round of gabs in their bedchamber before

retiring for the night. Olivier's gab:

Prenget li reis sa fille qui tant ad bloi le peil

En sa cambre nus metet en un lit en requeit

Si io nel ai anut testimonie de lui cent feiz

Demain perde la teste par couent le otrai (vv. 486-489)

Hugon, learning of Olivier's boast through a spy, is infuriated and

demands that Olivier accomplish it or lose his life.

According to Aebishcer, cent feiz refers to one hundred kisses

which Olivier will give to the king's daughter; Brians contends that the

gab is concerned not with kisses but with sexual union between Olivier

and the princess. Aebischer's interpretation is based on two facts:

(1) in the Old Norse version of the story, the count indeed limits

himself to kissing the princess one hundred times; (2) in the French

manuscript, a line is drawn through the text of line 726:

Li quens ne li fist la nuit mes que .xxx. feiz.

To refute Aebischer's interpretation, Brians uses the following

arguments. (1) Line 488 means not "If I do not have testimony of her,"

but rather "If I do not have her at night, by her testimony." (2)

Olivier's boast of merely kissing the maiden would amount to no boast

at all, given Charlemagne's gab (to split in half one of Hugon's men

in full armor, with a single blow of his sword) and Roland's gab (to

destroy Constantinople by blowing his horn). (3) Olivier, when

challenged by Hugon to perform the feat, does not protest or claim to

have been misunderstood by the spy. (4) Line 726 is not an addition

to the text by a particularly lewd scribe, whose lasciviousness was

subsequently corrected. More likely, the line belongs in the text,

but shocked a later prudish scribe, who wished to eliminate it. (5)

Why compare the French text merely to the Old Norse version? The scene

in question is even more bawdy in the Welsh Ystoria Charles (the night's

gab produced a child, Galien). Aebischer finds the Norse version to

represent faithfully the author's intentions; Brians finds this version

153

154 Olifant/Vol. 2, No. 2/December 1974

to be prudish and therefore not in accord with the other texts. (6)

The gab d'Olivier exemplifies the poet's sense of humor in a poem which

parodies the primitive chansons de geste from start to finish. In such

a context, it is incongruous to be shocked over Olivier's boast. (7)

The princess has saved her honor, claims Aebischer, by her agreement

with Olivier to tell her father that the gab has been fulfilled. Not

so, says Brians, for what is honor for a medieval princess but

reputation? Once she enters the bedchamber with the knight, her honor

is tarnished no matter what actually happens behind closed doors.

Finally, Brians objects to Aebischer's relegation of line 726

to a footnote in his prestigious edition of Voyage (TLF, 1965).

Preferable is Favati's inclusion of the disputed line in the text

(Il "Voyage de Charlemagne en Orient," 1965) with a note explaining

Aebischer's position.

John T. Pearce

Muhlenberg College

-o-oOo-o-

Robert L. Hathaway. "The Art of the Epic Epithets in the Cantar de Mio

Cid." Hispanic Review, 42 (1974), 311-321.

In his attempt to discover, via statistics, "whether or not

there is discernible artistic choice operating within the confines of

the narrative" of the Cantar de Mio Cid,1 Professor Hathaway has greatly

enhanced our understanding of the poet's techniques.

He divides the poem into six consecutive sections, on the basis

of similarity of events narrated within each. The sections, designated

A through F, end respectively with lines 419, 1097, 1876, 2277, 2862b,

and 3730. He finds that, aside from the subjects expressed in the

titles Cid and Campeador, four topics form the basis of the epithets

referring to the Cid: (I) the propitious hour of his birth, (II) the

favorable nature of his actions, (III) the matter of his beard, and

(IV) the connection with places of his origin and under his command.

In an appropriate table, he lists the incidence of each, thus facil-

itating comparison of usage in the development of the poem.

Professor Hathaway finds that the most frequently employed

of the four topics is the first, serving as a constant reminder that,

despite nearly insurmountable obstacles, all will go well with our

hero. The second, having to do largely with the sword, is given

1The study is based on Cantar de Mio Cid, third edition, ed.

Ramon Menéndez Pidal, Obras completas, Vol. 5 (Madrid, 1956).

Article Abstracts 155

noticeable emphasis in the first half of the poem, but appears only

rarely in the second half. Contrariwise, the beard gains importance

as the narrative develops. Bivar, of frequent epithetic use in sections

B and C, is virtually replaced by Valencia thereafter. The resulting

parallels are sword/Bivar—beard/Valencia.

Professor Hathaway offers these and other objective data, along

with a fine interpretation, "as supporting evidence of a conscious

shift of affective emphasis as the type of conflict also shifts" in

the poem, and in so doing reveals clearly some of the subtleties of

the poet's artistry.

Dorothy Clotelle Clarke

University of California

Berkeley

-o-oOo-o-

Charles Rostaing. "Une Traduction en Provençal moderne de la Chanson

de la croisade. " Mélanges Le Gentil, pp. 745-751.

Mistral and his followers, the Félibrige, always considered the

Albigensian Crusade as the most important historical event of southern

France. Before 1905, however, all the editions of the Chanson de la

croisade were in old Provençal and therefore accessible only to

scholars. In order to acquaint the people of southern France with their

literary heritage, one of the main goals of the Félibrige, selected

passages of the Chanson de la croisade were translated into modern

Provençal and published in nine installments in the monthly newspaper

Prouvènço! beginning December 7, 1905. The translator was undoubtedly

Pèire Devoluy, the editor of the newspaper.

La Chanson de la croisade consists of 9,582 alexandrine verses

in 214 laisses. The first part, written by Guillaume de Tudèle, is a

day-to-day objective account of the events which occurred from 1210-

1213. The unknown author of the second part does not hesitate to inter-

ject his partisan views into his account of the crusade years 1212-1219.

It comprises more than two-thirds of the entire work and was not written

until 1228—many years after the fact. The translator consciously

selected his passages from the second part of the chanson, which he

calls a "poème national." His intention is to show that the cause of

the Toulousains was just.

In his article M. Rostaing designated those passages from the

Chanson de la croisade which were summarized and those which were

translated, and he analyses in detail laisse 143. He notes that the

translator has remained as close as possible to the original text in

vocabulary and form. As should be expected, he was not always able to

156 Olifant/Vol. 2, No. 2/December 1974

preserve the rhyme and was forced to take certain liberties with the

text in order to maintain the rhythm. The necessary variations, how-

ever, do not betray the meaning or the spirit of the original. M.

Rostaing believes that both versions deserve further study by scholars

because of their importance in their respective historical periods and

their own literary merit.

Deborah H. Nelson

Rice University

-o-oOo-o-

Canada Council Awards

The Canada Council has recently announced support for a project

to make a stylistic analysis of three works in Old French: the Chanson

de Roland, the Lais of Marie de France, and Chrétien's Yvain. The award

is for $34,720.00 and covers a period of eighteen months. In addition to

the analysis, the project will produce the first completely parsed and

lemmatized concordances of the three works, a word list ordered by

grammatical categories (so that, for example, it will be easy to deter-

mine such information as the usage of all verbs in the third person

plural present subjunctive), a set of computer programs which will to a

large extent automate the grammatical analysis of other Old French works,

a set of programs for doing computational multi-variate stylistic anal-

yses of medieval narrative poetry, and a machine-readable Old French

vocabulary list which can be expanded as other works are analyzed in the

future and which could be used in the creation of a dictionary. In a

separate but related grant, the Canada Council also awarded $4,533.00

for a project to produce a set of guidelines for persons who want to

put literary texts into machine-readable form. The principal investi-

gator for both projects is John R. Allen, University of Manitoba.