Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Author's Preface
- Author's Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Charny's Career and Writings: The Current Understanding
- 2 The Charny Manuscripts
- 3 The Livre Charny: Editorial Introduction
- 4 The Oxford Text of the Livre Charny
- 5 Charny's Career and Writings: A Revised Understanding
- Appendix Oxford Manuscript (Holkham Misc. 43): Chart of Lost and Misplaced Folios
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate Section
3 - The Livre Charny: Editorial Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Author's Preface
- Author's Note
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Charny's Career and Writings: The Current Understanding
- 2 The Charny Manuscripts
- 3 The Livre Charny: Editorial Introduction
- 4 The Oxford Text of the Livre Charny
- 5 Charny's Career and Writings: A Revised Understanding
- Appendix Oxford Manuscript (Holkham Misc. 43): Chart of Lost and Misplaced Folios
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
Form and Style
Somewhat surprisingly for an author who in Piaget's opinion ‘did not know how to write’, Charny chose not to use the straightforward octosyllabic rhyming couplets that were the dominant verse form of medieval romances. Instead he opted for the comparatively demanding tercet coué, in which a four-syllable line is followed by two octosyllabic lines, all three of them rhyming.
Such a verse form was sufficiently unusual that Charny's inspiration can be narrowed down virtually to one colourful exponent, the thirteenthcentury trouvère Rutebeuf. Directly contemporary with Charny's grandfather Jean de Joinville (and a fellow Champenois), Rutebeuf was notable then as now for his satire and for the bawdiness of much of his work. However, he devoted several poems to exhorting knights and princes to go on crusade, and perhaps it was these that the ex-crusader Joinville introduced to his Charny grandson. And perhaps not just the crusading poems. For example, upon reading the famous Rutebeuf 's Complaint (a notable use of the tercet coué), it is tempting to see a similarity of tone as well as verse form to Charny's Livre, both exhibiting a heartfelt and serious intent yet being injected with wry and rueful humour, much of it at the author's own expense. Compare, for instance, the spirit of Charny's comment on a young knight's life –
ever short of cash and forced to borrow; often lumbered with a wretched nag and paying through the nose for lodging. You’ll trot smartly up to your beloved and she’ll sweetly bid you joust well; but a trot's all your nag can manage – he won't even keep a straight line! Your opponent does: he comes straight up and clobbers you!
– and the tone of these lines from Rutebeuf 's list of his problems:
Cest premier an
Me gart cil Dieus en mon droit san
Qui pour nous ot paine et ahan
Et me gart l’ame:
Or a d’enfant geü ma fame,
Mes chevaus a brisié la jame
A une lice,
Or veut de l’argent ma norrice
Qui me destraint et me pelice
Pour l’enfant paistre
Ou il revendra braire en l’estre!
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- Information
- The Book of Geoffroi de Charnywith the Livre Charny, pp. 35 - 52Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021