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‘Ceo Testimoine Precïens’: Priscian and the Prologue to the ‘Lais’ of Marie de France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Mary-Louise Zanoni
Mary-Louise Zanoni*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Like most medieval vernacular narratives, the Lais of Marie de France begin with a prologue designed to explain the proximate causes of the author's undertaking and to set the work within a recognized context of literary tradition. This literary tradition is represented, again quite typically, by appeal to an auctor, here the grammarian Priscian, whom Marie cites as witness to the stylistic habits of ancient writers:

      Custume fu as ancïens,
      Ceo tes[ti]moine Precïens,
      Es livres ke jadis feseient
      Assez oscurement diseient
      Pur ceus ki a venir esteient
      E ki aprendre les deveient,
      K'i peüssent gloser la lettre
      E de lur sen le surplus mettre.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 36 , 1980 , pp. 407 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Marie de France: Lais, ed. Ewert, Alfred (Oxford 1944) lines 9–16. All quotations of the Prologue will be from Ewert's edition.Google Scholar

2 The relation between Marie's reference and the Institutiones has been universally accepted since its assertion in the first edition of Warnke, Karl, Die Lais der Marie de France (Bibliotheca Normannica 3; Halle 1885) 225.Google Scholar

3 Brät, Herman, ‘Marie de France et l'obscurité des anciens,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978) 180–184. A similar approach to examining the Prologue on its own terms is Pickens, Rupert T.’ interesting distinction of a premier and a deuxième prologue, ‘La Poétique de Marie de France d'après les Prologues des Lais,’ Les Lettres Romanes 32 (1978) 367–384.Google Scholar

4 ‘The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France and Medieval Poetics,’ Modern Philology 41 (1943) 96–102. Spitzer's conclusions were further supported by Robertson, D. W., Jr., ‘Marie de France, Lais, Prologue, 13–16,’ Modern Language Notes 64 (1949) 336–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Critics remain in general agreement upon Marie's authorship of the Harley lais, despite the challenge to the collection's attribution to her by Richard Baum, Recherches sur les œuvres attribuées à Marie de France (Heidelberg 1968).Google Scholar

6 Donovan, , ‘Priscian and the Obscurity of the Ancients,’ Speculum 36 (1961) 75–80; Hunt, , ‘Glossing Marie de France,’ Romanische Forschungen 86 (1974) 396–418. See also Silvestre, Hubert, ‘“Quanto iuniores, tanto perspicaciores”: Antécédents à la querelle des anciens et des modernes,’ Recueil commémoratif du X e anniversaire de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres (Publications de l'Université” Lovanium de Kinshasa 22; Louvain and Paris 1968) 231–255.Google Scholar

7 Hunt, , ‘Glossing Marie de France’ 411.Google Scholar

8 Ibid. 415.Google Scholar

9 Lemen Clark, Donald, ‘Rhetoric and the Literature of the English Middle Ages,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 45 (1959) 19–28, has asserted that the Praeexercitamina were very nearly, if not equally, as popular as the Institutiones: ‘Priscian's Praeexercitamina was, I believe, accessible to most medieval schools in England’ (p. 24). For the literary significance of the Praeexercitamina, see Robert Curtius, Ernst, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Trask, Willard R. (Bollingen Series 36, 1953; rpt. with corrections, Princeton 1967) 159, 442.Google Scholar

10 See Clark, , ‘Rhetoric’ 24.Google Scholar

11 Such is the implication of the currently accepted chronology of her works: Lais, 1160–1170; then the Fables; and, sometime after 1208, the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz. For a convenient summary of scholarship on the dating of Marie's works, see Kurt Ringger, Die Lais: Zur Struktur der dichterischen Einbildungskraft der Marie de France (Tübingen 1973).Google Scholar

12 Praeexercitamina, ed. Halm, Karl, Rhetores latini minores (Leipzig 1863) 553, lines 18–19. Also edited in Keil, Heinrich, Grammatici latini III (Leipzig 1859). All further citations of the Praeexercitamina will be by page and line of Halm's edition.Google Scholar

13 We may note as well another occurrence of the fructus metaphor in this example.Google Scholar

14 Lewis, Charlton T. and Short, Charles, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford 1879) s. v. ingeniosus. Google Scholar

15 Niermeyer, J. F. and van de Kieft, C., Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden 1976); Blaise, Albert, Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi (CCL cont. med. 27 bis; Turnhout 1975) s. v. ingeniosus. Google Scholar

16 Blaise, Albert, Dictionnaire Latin-Français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout 1954); Souter, Alexander, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. (Oxford 1957); s. v. ingenium. Google Scholar

17 De corona 15 (ed. Kroymann, Emil, CCL 2.1065).Google Scholar

18 The long coexistence of the negative and positive senses of ingeniosus and ingenium is reflected in the ambiguity of the Old French derivative engin. See Hanning, Robert W., ‘Engin in Twelfth-Century Romance: An Examination of the Roman d'Enéas and Hue de Rotelande's Ipomedon,’ Yale French Studies 51 (1974) 82–101.Google Scholar

19 Historia Francorum 8.6 (edd. Arndt, Wilhelm and Krusch, Bruno, MGH Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1.329). The passage is cited (in both cases erroneously, as 7.6) in Niermeyer, , Lexicon minus , and Blaise, , Lexicon latinitatis. Google Scholar

20 See Latham, R. E., Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources (London 1965) s.v. ingenium. Google Scholar