Une bele conjointure: the structure of Galeran de Bretagne

Abstract

This essay analyzes the structure of Galeran de Bretagne in order to dispel the concept of it as a mere expansion of Marie de France's Lai le Fresne. Renaut, the author, has carefully plotted the course of the story beforehand, with a sense of proportion and direction. He controls the direction through a number of parallel scenes early and late and a series of tableaux that are dramatically vital, not static like woodcuts. Galeran can appropriately be considered an instance of what Chrétien de Troyes called une bele conjointure.Keywords Old French romance Á Galeran de Bretagne Á Jean Renaut Á Chrétien de Troyes Á Marie de FranceThe early 13th-century French romance, Galeran de Bretagne, has been unlucky in its history and slow to gain attention. It had later and more limited attention than the other French romances of its time, not being discovered in the Archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris until 1877. Early 20th-century scholars who concerned themselves with it were mainly interested in the question whether the author, who signs himself Renaut, was the same man as Jean Renart, a contemporary of established reputation. Lucien Foulet, notably, believed that he was, and published his 1925 edition, to which he gave the title Galeran de Bretagne (the original title being missing from the MS.), as written by Jean Renart. 1 Later critics-Maurice Wilmotte in 1928, 2 Rita Lejeune-Dehousse in 1935, 3 and Ernest