ANGLO-NORMAN FABLIAUX AND CHAUCER'S MERCHANT'S TALE.

In 1996 I published the text of an Anglo-Norman version of Le Cuvier, a fabliau which also survives in a well-known exemplar in continental French.(1) The story as it appears in AN is brief, banal, and indifferently written. Its intrinsic interest, even for a fabliau specialist, is moderate. Its historical interest, by contrast, is considerable and twofold.

The AN Le Cuvier appears in an AN remaniement of the AN B-text of the Disciplina clericalis of Petrus Alphonsi,(2) an extremely popular collection of tales from which Per Nykrog appropriated five texts for inclusion in the fabliau corpus.(3) The presence of an AN version of a continental fabliau in this context attests to the close association which exists between the fabliaux and a select number of tales in AN collections, tales which exhibit fabliau features and conform to the general characteristics of the genre.(4) Since Le Cuvier, unlike most of the tales containing fabliau elements, has a close analogue in a continental fabliau, its existence calls into question the validity of the arbitrary decision by the editors of the most recent complete edition of fabliau materials(5) to exclude from the fabliau canon tales occurring within more extensive compilations. The fact that two celebrated tale collections, those attributed to Marie and to the author of the B-text of Disciplina, both circulated in England in AN versions(6) means that the editors' decision dramatically reduces the potential number of AN fabliaux, and is detrimental to the status of AN fabliaux as a distinctive group of tales.

The second important significance of the AN Le Cuvier involves its relationship with the continental version of the story (NRCF, V, 135-44). A number of other AN fabliaux with continental analogues are dismissed by Jean Rychner as `versions orales degradees'.(7) Rychner was not familiar with the AN Le Cuvier, of course, but on the basis of the criteria he applied in judging other AN fabliaux it seems likely that he would have reached the same conclusion about this text. But the identified Latin sources of Le Cuvier clearly indicate that some version of the AN fabliau antedates its northern French counterpart. Rychner's views, which seem to have had a pervasive influence on those of the NRCF editors, are also evidently prejudicial to any positive assessment of the historical role played by AN texts in fabliau development, and warrant re-examination in the light of this new evidence.

Joseph Bedier compiled his inventory of fabliaux from the monumental Recueil general et complet des fabliaux,(8) which completed publication just three years before the appearance of his own critical study.(9) He identified five texts as originating in `Angleterre'. Of these two are known only in their AN versions: Le Chevalier a la corbeille (NRCT, IX, 263-78), and La Gageure (NRCF, X, 1-10). Another, Un chevalier et sa dame et un clerk (NRCF, X, 115-42), resembles in its final episode the continental La Borgoise d'Orliens, but prefaces this segment of the story with otherwise unknown introductory material of sufficient extent and significance to create an essentially independent work. Two other AN texts are insular versions of fabliaux which also survive in one or more continental versions, Le Chevalier qui fist parler les cons (NRCF, III, 45-173) and Les Trois Dames qui troverent un vit (NRCF, VIII, 269-81). In addition to those he abstracted from collections of tales, Per Nykrog added two further texts to Bedier's inventory, an AN version of Les Quatre Sohais saint Martin (NRCF, IV, 189-216) from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, and an AN version of Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue.(10) Apart from Le Cuvier, the only proposed addition to the AN fabliau inventory since Nykrog published his study is a version of La Housse partie included in NRCF.(11) The fabliau status of this most recent addition to the inventory is, however, disputable, since the continental version, although accepted by Bedier, was rejected by Nykrog. My immediate concern is with those AN fabliaux which are represented by continental versions, and particularly those dismissed by Rychner as inept imitations. Such an assessment obviously diminishes the importance of insular fabliau literature, but Rychner's arguments, although based on a detailed and aesthetically astute examination of the texts, are open to serious objections as regards the conclusions drawn from the evidence examined.

My intention is to submit to re-examination Rychner's view of the posteriority and inferiority of AN fabliaux by comparison with continental versions; to attempt, in the light of this investigation, to establish some characteristic features of AN fabliaux and their distinction from northern French representatives of the genre; and finally to suggest that Geoffrey Chaucer's Merchant's Tale, unlike Chaucer's other fabliau-tales, was derived from an insular fabliau.

I

Le Chevalier qui fist parler les cons survives in five complete continental versions (one of which, I, has been considerably amplified in an extensive remaniement) and a fragment, A. The four complete and unamplified continental versions are of comparable length and exhibit close textual affiliation. The AN version of this fabliau is shorter than its continental counterparts (292 lines compared to 618 in the critical text of the northern French versions) and its surface texture is consistently at variance with theirs, but the insular version is superior in structure to those from the Continent, and differences in its rhetorical practices, while real, do not justify the conclusion that it distorts and degrades the continental text which an AN remanieur has been supposed to have followed. Both of these assertions can be validated by examining a key passage in the AN text, the episode where the knight restores to three bathing fays the clothes stolen by his squire, and is rewarded by each in turn with a gift (lines 81-108):