Galeran de Bretagne: Between Romance and Realism

Abstract

While the charge of being a plagiarism is no longer leveled at Galeran de Bretagne, that charge damaged it, so that it has not been appreciated as an original poem with a serious theme of its own. Galeran is infused with traditional Christian values in reflection of Renaut's own. Most simply, it is an exploration of the growth to maturity of two young people in order to live life with honor and dignity. Renaut's religious cast of mind continually leads him away from the romance conventions of his time towards an everyday realism, so that Galeran occupies a unique place among the long narrative poems of his time, between romance and realism.Galeran de Bretagne was written by Jean Renaut at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 1 It is not quite true that we know nothing about Renaut, that ''was den Galerandichter betrifft, so fehlen uns leider jegliche Anhaltspunkte über seine Person und sein Leben.'' 2