Gaston Paris

Introduction.

there is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to aucassin and nicolete by a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the song story has escaped those waves of time which have wrecked the bark of menander and left of sappho but a few floating fragments the very form of the tale is peculiar we have nothing else from the twelfth or thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the contes-fables we have fabliaux in verse and prose arthurian romances we have chansons de geste heroic poems like roland unrhymed assonate less but we have not the alternations of prose with less in seven-syllabled lines it cannot be certainly known whether the form of aucassin and nicolete was a familiar form used by many jugglers or wandering minstrels and story-tellers such as nicolete in the tale feigned herself to be or whether this is a solitary experiment by the old captive its author a contemporary as m gaston paris thinks him of louis the seventh eleven thirty he was original enough to have invented or adopted from popular tradition a form for himself his originality declares itself everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece true he uses certain traditional formulae that have survived in his time as they survived in homer's from the manner of purely popular poetry of folksleder thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the same or very nearly the same words he has a stereotyped form like homer for saying that one person addressed another intresse au vicomte de la ville si la pelle ton d'apage bomenos prosefe like homer and like popular song he deals in recurrent epithets and changeless courtesies to aucassin the hideous ploughman is bia frere fair brother just as the treacherous aegisthus is amumon in homer these are complimentary terms with no moral sense in particular the juggler is not more curious than homer or than the poets of the old ballads about giving novel descriptions of his characters As Homer's ladies are fair-tressed, so Nicolette and Auxin have each of them close yellow curls, eyes of there, whatever that may mean, and red lips.

War cannot be mentioned except as war where knights do smite and are smitten, and so forth.

The author is absolutely conventional in such matters, according to the convention of his age and profession.

See note at end of translation.

2.

I know not if I unconsciously transferred this criticism from M. Gaston Paris.

3.

It takes only a dramatic interest in the guns of Yorktown.

Its philosophy was nobly uttered by Gaston Paris in the Collège de France in 1870, when the city was beleaguered by the German armies.

Common studies pursued in the same spirit in all civilized countries form, beyond the restrictions of diverse and often hostile nationalities, a great country which no war profanes, no conqueror menaces, where souls find that refuge and unity which in former times was offered them by the city of God.

The catholicity of English languages and literature transcends the temporal boundaries of states.

An early scholar, the Abbé de La Rue, in fact said that this was undoubtedly the case, giving cogent reasons in support of his contention.

But modern scholarship in the person of Gaston Paris has decided that the king was Henry II of pious memory, the Count William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, his natural son by fair Rosamund.

and that Marie must be placed in the second half of the twelfth century.

This shows that scholarship is not an exact science, and that such words as doubtless should not be employed more than necessary.

But I think it unlikely that Marie suffered with a morbidly sensitive conscience.

There is little enough real devotion to be met with in her lays, and if her last book, a translation from the Latin of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, is on a subject she avoids in her earlier work, it was written under the influence of some high prelate and may be regarded as a sign that she watched the shadows cast by the western sun lengthening on the grass.

Gaston Paris suggests 1175 as an approximate date for the composition of the lays of Marie de France.

Their success was immediate and unequivocal, as indeed was to be expected in the case of a lady situated so fortunately at court.

It takes only a dramatic interest in the guns of Yorktown.

Its philosophy was nobly uttered by Gaston Paris in the Collège de France in 1870, when the city was beleaguered by the German armies.

Common studies pursued in the same spirit in all civilized countries form, beyond the restrictions of diverse and often hostile nationalities, a great country which no war profanes, no conqueror menaces, where souls find that refuge and unity which in former times was offered them by the city of God.

The catholicity of English languages and literature transcends the temporal boundaries of states.

An early scholar, the Abbé de La Rue, in fact said that this was undoubtedly the case, giving cogent reasons in support of his contention.

But modern scholarship in the person of Gaston Paris has decided that the king was Henry II of pious memory, the Count William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, his natural son by fair Rosamund.

and that Marie must be placed in the second half of the twelfth century.

This shows that scholarship is not an exact science, and that such words as doubtless should not be employed more than necessary.

But I think it unlikely that Marie suffered with a morbidly sensitive conscience.

There is little enough real devotion to be met with in her lays, and if her last book, a translation from the Latin of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, is on a subject she avoids in her earlier work, it was written under the influence of some high prelate and may be regarded as a sign that she watched the shadows cast by the western sun lengthening on the grass.

Gaston Paris suggests 1175 as an approximate date for the composition of the lays of Marie de France.

Their success was immediate and unequivocal, as indeed was to be expected in the case of a lady situated so fortunately at court.