Theseus de Cologne, édition partielle d'une chanson de geste du XIVe siècle

BACQUIN, MARI, Theseus de Cologne, édition partielle d’une chanson de geste du XIVe siècle. Études romanes de Lund, 81, 355 pages. Written in French. Monograph.

Theseus de Cologne is a French romance from the fourteenth century written by an anonymous author. This voluminous work contains more than 26,000 lines. The text of the romance is preserved in three manuscripts from the fifteenth century, Bibl. Nat. Paris, Nouv. Acq. 10 060 (P), British Museum Add. 16 955 (L) and ms. UCB 110 from the Bancroft Library of California, previously known as Phillipps 3636 (Ph). A part of the romance is now published for the first time in an edition based on P, with variants from L and Ph. The text is followed by notes, a glossary and an index of proper names.
The introduction deals with linguistic matters in a phonetic, morphological and syntactical perspective, and offers a description of the language in the manuscript P. The versification is also treated. The second part deals with the literary and historical contents of Theseus de Cologne in a literary perspective. By studying the characteristic stereotyped writing in mediaeval literature, it appears that some recurring motives in the romance offer an interesting illustration of a thematic change in the epic genre.