What Bachtin Did Not Say: The Medieval Origins of the Novel

Russian Literature XLI (1997) 385-410 North-Holland

W H A T B A C H T I N DID N O T SAY: T H E M E D I E V A L O R I G I N S O F T H E N O V E L

C E S A R E S E G R E

1. Bachtin's contribution to the theory of the novel is, I consider, fundamental. Moving between theory and history, at times he followed in the footsteps of Blankenburg and Hegel and defined the nature of the novel by contrasting it with the epic, while in other writings he traces its prehistory and history, from the Greeks to the bourgeois novel.

There is however a large gap in this history, corresponding precisely to the medieval romance, with which we are here concerned. Bachtin's most expansive treatment of the subject is in Section 5 of the essay 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel' (1937-1938/1975); six or seven pages in which he ranges from Tristan and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Par- zival to the Divina Commedia, from the Roman de la Rose to Piers the Plow- man. Then there are somewhat fleeting references to the Dit d'aventures (1938-1941/1975: 444), to Aucassin et Nicolette, to the Mule sans bride, to the Roland comique (?) (1965: 23); the flotsam of a possibly indirect and certainly inattentive memory: Bachtin, more open to German than to French culture, is more precise when speaking of Wolfram's Parzival. But scarcity of information is not the main reason for Bachtin's limited concern with the medieval romance.

The fact is that Bachtin puts theory and history on different levels: his historical investigations, however full and fascinating they may be, are there in the service of theory, which in turn is in the service of criticism. The

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culmination of Bachtin's work is represented by his two marvellous studies of Dostoevskij (1963) and Rabelais (1965). This is borne out by the chro- nology of his writings, the publication of the Dostoevskij book preceding that of the historical contributions, which appear to have been conceived first and foremost as confirmatory evidence.~

2. What are the characteristics of the novel, which Bachtin regards as constant? These:

I find three basic characteristics that fundamentally distinguish the novel from other genres: 1) its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness realized in the novel; 2) the radical change it effects in the temporal co-ordinates of the literary character in the novel [Eng. trans.: "of the image"]; 3) the new zone opened by the novel for structuring the literary character [Eng. tr.: "for structuring literary images"], namely, the zone of maximal contact with the present (with contemporary reality) in all its openendedness. (1938-1941/1975: 454-455; Eng. tr. p. 11)

Clearly recognizable here is the theme of some of Bachtin's central writings, collected in the volume published in Italy as Estetica e romanzo (The Dia- logic Imagination); less recognizable however are the more salient features of the French and Provencal medieval romance. Besides, like all definitions of genres, this one of Bachtin's is open to the accusation of being ahistorical.

Other statements of his have a more plastic, more evolutional character. Bachtin writes for instance that "the novel comes into contact with the spontaneity of the inconclusive present; this is what keeps the genre from congealing" (ibid., 470; 27). It would be easy to show that Bachtin was thinking not of the past history of the novel but rather of its future, not of its rise but rather of its transformations. Bachtin after all formed his idea of the novel on the Rabelais-Dostoevskij stretch, and his excursuses are for him not so much historical as prehistorical, the purpose to which they are directed being the defining of tendencies, procedures and the first gatherings of elements which, appearing in an extreme and extraverted form in Rabelais, find their first organic expression only in Cervantes.

3. The birth-date of the modem novel has, as we know, been located at points in time varying by hundreds of years. The most recent dating corresponds to the English 18th-century novel (Hegel) or in particular Fielding's Tom Jones (Curtius); some go back as far as Don Quixote (Heine) or Amadis de Gaula (Menendez Pelayo); others find its beginnings even earlier, with Jean de Saintre (Kristeva), Boccaccio's Fiammetta (the model, indeed, of the sentimental Spanish romance), or with Dante's Vita Nuova; and there are those who adduce the Arthurian prose romances. To specialists in Romance

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philology it seems obvious to regard the French romances of the "cycle de l'antiquitC', in particular those of Chrttien de Troyes, as the first novels. Were they not called romans by their authors and by contemporaries?

But if one appeals to the name roman, other problems arise. Originally the term indicates translations from Latin, or narrative texts in general, in view of the general preference translators had for such texts. It is difficult to find a place in the history of the novel for the Roman de Renart or the Roman de la Rose, even more difficult to incorporate such texts as the Roman des Ailes or the translations of the Disticha Catonis. At the most one might re- cognize, with historians of language like Voelker (1886), that roman became steadily more restricted in sense, and that the term "romance ''2 can only be applied to that type of text for which it became reserved at the end of the 12th century. 3

The Italian term romanzo certainly covers a more heterogeneous con- geries than those which the English language distinguishes as "novel" and "romance", while on the other hand broadening the area of definition with "fiction" and "narrative". But the distinction between "romance" and "novel" is somewhat unstable, and in the case of the French romances (Ital.: "ro- manzi") of the 12th century the terminological barrier is crossed in both directions. From Don Quixote to the 12th-century French romance the way can be retraced through a series of antitheses which are also, and at the same time, indications of continuity. 4 The history of literature is, as Sklovskij said, the history of successive killings of fathers, or of attempts by uncles to regain power.

4. But let us return to Bachtin. Consistently with his theory, he identifies two currents in the ancient world: one represented by the Socratic dialogues, the Menippean satires and the Dialogues of Lucian; the other by the so-called "Greek" or "Byzantine" novels: It is generally in this second current, whose plots are fictional [Ital.: "romanzesco"; literally: "novelistic"; tr.] rather than historical, that the first outline of what was to be the modern novel is seen. Bachtin, on the contrary, claims that "the authentic spirit of the novel" is present in the first current, which "anticipates the more essential historical aspects in the development of the novel" (1938: 201; 1938-1941/1975: 465; 22).

Bachtin finds a rather similar situation in the vernacular literature of the Middle Ages. On the one hand a proliferation of multi-languaged experiments, of stylizations and parodies in non-narrative or only partially narrative texts, in particular in texts which Bachtin calls "carnivalized", on the other hand narrative texts in which such experimentation is lacking, or barely suggested. Bachtin could only repeat his insistence on the greater importance of the former class of phenomena (multi-languaged and parodic texts), while merely mentioning the first appearances of experiments in perspective in the

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"chivalric romance", in particular in Wolfram's Parzival (1934-1935/1975: 302; 151).

It would be otiose to discuss whether a more important part was played by the former or by the latter element, by multi-voicedness or by plot. But there is some significance in the fact that experiments and multi-languaged texts constitute, outside the novel and even within the development of the novel itself, a series that is often broken, discontinuous, while the narrative genre which from the 12th century on bears the name of romance unfolds without interruption and consistently, even in its transformations, up to the present day.

The fact is that Bachtin, while separating the history of polyphonic procedures from that of narrative invention, on the other hand includes within the polyphonic category phenomena of very diverse origins and functions. It seems to me that the polyphony elucidated by Bachtin carries out two different programmes: 1) it differentiates the voice of the author from that of the personages, who are characterized through the multiplicity of styles; 2) it represents the linguistic stratification of the society described, employing to advantage registers, connotations and allusions already appreciated in communal usage, especially in the languages of trades, in class dialects, etc. Evidently, when personages are shown in contrast or in conflict with their social environment, the two programmes will converge. But not all novelists have represented this conflict, particularly in the Middle Ages.

I should add that polyphony serves also to represent two different attitudes of the author towards his characters: 1) representation, which may involve participation, amounting even to temporary identification with them; 2) distancing, at times polemical, when the author represents but does not share, understands yet condemns. This is why stylization and parody, with all their variants that we need not list here, are so important in Bachtin's work. But not even this implicit polemic, which is generally associated with the social defining we have just mentioned, is developed by all romance writers.

I have outlined with two parallel bifurcations the two programmes that may be carried out under the banner of polyphony, and the two extremes of attitude the writer may assume towards his characters. These two bifurcations reproduce the dichotomic model that underlies the history of the novel, according to Bachtin. For it is not only in the ancient world that he identifies "two Stylistic Lines of Development in the European novel", the one single- voiced, the other multi-voiced, the former abstract-idealizing, the latter polyphonic also in a social sense. He gives an intriguing account of the move- ment in space of these two antithetical tendencies:

Novels of the First Stylistic Line approach heteroglossia from above. It is as if they descend onto it [...]. Novels of the Second Line, on the contrary, approach heteroglossia from below: out of the heteroglot


depths they rise to the highest spheres of literary language and overwhelm them. (1934-35/1975:211; 400)

This dynamic mode of connecting the two lines could contain historiographic possibilities - in part, they are what I am here suggesting and trying to define. Bachtin, however, often found his own preference justified him in judging the rival line negatively.

There can be no doubt that in the medieval novel the prevailing norm is represented by the first component of this dichotomy: the unmarked one, so to speak. 6 This is not only because medieval society was less dynamic than modern society, being experienced by its members as a stable hierarchy, even at moments of crisis, but also because of the different overall ordering of genres and styles in the Middle Ages. While homiletic verse, even when written in the vernacular, dealt with all classes and professions (I am re- ferring in particular to the 6tats du monde), there existed literary genres that specifically (fabliaux) or by preference (the theatre) dealt with the lives and characters of the common people, the burghers, the minor clergy. The courtly romance, "a self-portrait of feudal knighthood with its mores and ideals" (Auerbach 1946: 137; 1953: 131), regards all other classes as marginal and irrelevant. It is precisely with the broadening of the romance to embrace wider social territories, and with the appearance in it of the disinherited and rejected, and, above all, of that bourgeois class that was soon to be the standard bearer of innovation, 7 that linguistic-social tension and the tendency to parody, no longer restricted to "carnivalized" productions, were to become prominent and even determining features.

So experiments in language diversity and in parody, though frequent in the Middle Ages, were not at first found in the romance: 8 they are found in particular in the theatre, and in the Roman de Renart, 9 not to mention Latin or bilingual texts of the goliardic type. This does not mean that the romance used a crystallized literary language, quite the contrary. But, as we shall see, the broadening of the language of the romance to the most widely varied sectors of contemporary life effects first of all, and without internal tensions, the acquisition of areas of existence that are interesting or useful to courtly society.

5. In the courtly romance we have, then, a clear and conscious reduction of the radius of the sociosphere (as Lotman would put it). The characters are all connected with the courtly milieu, even if the connection is sometimes a negative one; those who appear only intermittently and play no decisive part are the representatives of other milieus. 10 If the mingling of styles and registers corresponds, as Bachtin thought, with social variegation, one understands why it should be lacking in the medieval romance. 11

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So the elements identified by Bachtin can be rearranged: on the one hand there is the history of that narrative structure we call the novel; on the other, the development of a perception in depth of reality, which Bachtin rightly saw as decisively establishing itself in the civilization of the Re- naissance. And if this narrative structure began to exist before perspectival procedures were established, one is bound to take account of it and attempt to trace its history.

But even if the medieval romance lacks genuine polyphony, in it one can trace back to its source what Bachtin recognizes as the first motivation of polyphony: the author's capacity to identify with or to detach himself from his characters, to accept their point of view or to impose his own. It is a question of being able to see, behind the perspective of voices, that of vision. It is indeed the case that Bachtin's illuminating discoveries regarding the novel need not be wasted.

The author-character dialectic is probably a constituent of the imagi- native narrative, in which predominantly fictional events become convincing thanks to the author's presentation of them, with variations of distance, varying modes (direct or indirect speech, narration), a variable point of view (never a fixed gaze directed on moving characters); we must refine our sensibility if we are to succeed in perceiving the workings of perspectivism 12 also in texts which contain few variations of language and register; and we need to note the possible historical development of procedures destined to work harmoniously together towards the achieving of perspectival effects.

In this sense, procedures that will in time be perfected are already being tested for the first time in the medieval romance. The best known and studied is the monologue, originally confined to the situation of falling in love. The character gives concrete form to the conflicting movements of his spirit with a debate of voices simulating the splitting of himself in two. t~ We are close to what will be called "point of view"; and even if we cannot yet apply the term with the precise value it has taken on after Henry James and Wayne Booth, we can already see the characters as Perspektiventrager, to use Nolthing- Hauff's term (1959). 14

More interesting to us are the signs of distancing between author and character. I omit from consideration the use, extremely refined though it is, of the verbs "cuidier", "penser", "veoir", every time the author wishes to underline the fantastic, or at least mental, nature of the characters' perceptions, is But our writers often ably contrast the objective and the subjective narration of a single fact, 16 sometimes through the pre-Freudian device of the fantasy or the dream; 17 or through two different characters' views of a given situation.18They often make skilful use of the true/false transformer, 19 as noted by e.g. Menard and Uitti in the case of Clig~s. 2° Or they are able to polarize the discourse of the characters so as to create at once a discourse and

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an anti-discourse, ironically stylized, 21 and directed not so much towards the interlocutor as towards the reader, as in theatrical asides. 22

Certain syntactical facts already noted by Tobler and by Lerch have revealed their significance in the light of studies of enunciation, such as those of Meiller (1966), Stempel (1972), Lebsanft (1981a, 1981b) on transitions from the direct to the indirect style and on passages of direct speech introduced by "que". What counts in such passages is the imposing on the writer of the temporal or spatial perspectives, and even the affectivity (exclama- tions), of the character: the author takes upon himself the character's deixis and his psychological reactions. Meiller speaks of a "freed" indirect style, Stempel of a "subjectivized" one. There remains evidence that the first novelists were aware of demands that were to be satisfied in more sophisticated ways by modern novelists. Of interest in this connection are Rychner's (1980) very subtle comments on Lanval and the Chatelaine de Vergi, which show how Made de France anticipated and found her own solution for the problems of free indirect speech.

6. It is true that language diversity is rare in the courtly romance. In exchange, the romance soon achieves a sort of phagocytosis of genres which in any case brings within it traditions of literary language originally extra- neous to it. This tendency was already noticed by Bachtin (1934-1935/1975: 129); he warns also that "the courtly romance in prose of course had to introduce within its own structure all the multiplicity of ideological everyday and intraliterary genres" (1934-1935/1975: 196); but immediately stresses "the social disorientation and the lack of an ideological foundation" (ibid., 197) of these romances (which for the rest he does not indicate more precisely). In fact, the insertion within the romance, in verse or in prose, of heterogeneous texts, letters or inscriptions, lyrics or lais, and the gathering together of compositions already circulating independently, produces various results, language diversity among them. 23

The inserted texts in the first place extend the expressive possibilities: they bring with them the echo of new registers, while maintaining the connection between registers and genres. Then, going a step further, the inserted texts are given the function of expressing particular states of mind, by way of the link genre-register-theme: as in a salut d' amour incorporated in Flamenca 24 or lyrics which strike echoes in the breasts of the characters of Guillaume de Dole, who for this reason recite them at certain moments of their adventures. 25

Finally, the insertion of texts brings about that programmatic inter- textuality which is the deep sense of much of the medieval poets' creative activity. The literary works, in particular the romances, which become elements, often prominent ones, of the plot of Flamenca, define the cultural, and also the social territory in which it is situated. Works of fiction quoted in

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another work of fiction create an effect of reality, but at the same time evoke a reality related to the original fiction: a sort of trompe l'oeil, if not of raise en abyme of literariness.

7. The author-character dialectic is, at any rate from the Middle Ages on, a constituent of the fictional narrative: Bachtin speaks of "the author's image appearing within his own field of representation" (1938-1941/1975: 470; 27). It is a matter of accentuating verisimilitude by placing non-truth in view; or of exploiting the deixis of contents which in denotative terms are false. 26 Fictional plots, whose fantastic character is often remarked on, acquire the air of truth by means of the skilful shifting of distances and verb tenses, the varying of manner, the shifting of the point of view. The fictional narrator never provides a reporter's summary; his perceptions are never impassive or immutable. Luk~cs had already put it very well: "The compositional structure of the novel results from the paradoxical fusion of disharmonious and heterogeneous elements in a whole whose organic integrity is constantly infringed and revoked" (1920: 102).

The author-text, author-message and author-reader relationships form part of this narrative system. As examples of the first I shall cite such works as the Bel Inconnu and Partonopeus de Blois, in which the author declares himself prepared to carry on with the tale, or goes straight on to enrich it with further episodes, if his lady asks him to (there is something similar in Jaufre 2565-2640). It looks almost like an anticipation of the serial novel, albeit with a difference of form: the fictionality of the story is, however, made quite explicit.

In connection with the other two sorts of relationship, I shall cite the emergence of the author-recipient of Partonopeus, the Bel Inconnu and the Joufroi de Poitiers. The main narrative is often interrupted by the author's confidences to the reader, who is permitted to share the former's amatory adventures, his reflections and hopes, the contrasts he draws between what happens to himself and what happens to his characters. 27 But the author, especially Chr6tien, often provides information on the conduct of the story, or expresses uncertainty in "auctorial interior monologues", 2s or possibly appeals to the reader's experience for an exact assessment of behaviour: the reader may even be invited to advise characters in difficulty. At the same time, the author may set limits to his own knowledge, and emphasize its gaps.

It is now clear why Bachtin could not take the medieval romance into account, even if he had been familiar with it: he had concentrated on linguistic manifestations (polyphony) of phenomena related in fact to the author's treatment of his material. His attitude seems all the stranger when one considers that the aim of his Dostoevskij is to bring out the polyphony


underlying a substantially uniform language, very unlike the language diversity of Tolstoj.

8. I think I have sufficiently shown why there is no point in posing an alternative between the two parallel lines of development of the novel which Bachtin believed he had identified. One should, rather, define the plot not on the basis of an abstract recital of its content but (also) on that of the ways in which that content is communicated and its relations with the context of communication. We shall take as a starting point another statement by Bachtin, that "the novel [...] is determined by experience, knowledge and practice (the future)" (1938-1941/1975: 459; 15); even when the novel is set in the past, one of its fundamental properties is, according to Bachtin, the attention it pays to "the present, the contemporary age as such, the 'I myself and 'my contemporaries' and 'my time'" (ibid., 464; 21).

At this point we can bring in another thinker equally brilliant and equally uninterested in the Middle Ages, Luk~ics. Rather like Bachtin, Lu- k~ics had written:

The process - because the internal form of the novel was taken to be such - is the route followed by the problematic individual who arrives at himself, the way that, from the state of being torpidly enmeshed in reality that simply exists, heterogeneous and without sense for the individual, leads to complete and clear self-knowledge. (1920: 97)

Luk~ics also warns that "the novel seeks, by moulding it, to discover and construct the hidden completeness of life" (1920: 73); later he specifies that

if one is to represent the real relation of man with society and nature (that is to say not only man's knowledge of these relations, but the thing itself on which this knowledge is founded), the only suitable way is by representing action. Because it is only when man acts that his true essence, the authentic form and the authentic content of his consciousness finds expression through his social being. (1935: 144)

But to what end is this action directed? Bachtin tells us: "The idea of the testing of the protagonist and of his language is perhaps the principal orga- nizing idea of the novel, that which radically differentiates it from the epic" (1934-1935/1975: 200).

The statements I have quoted are valid - verifiably - also for the medieval romance, confirming the existence of a continuity in the development of the novel which was questioned by Luk~ics and Bachtin themselves; it now even becomes possible to attempt a characterization of the novel, having identified its communicative peculiarities in comparison with other genres.

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The novel is differentiated by its diegetic nature from theatrical and mimetic forms, and from lyric poetry, which may dispense with action and whose only character is 'T'; the shared identity of character and action (the former performs the latter, while the latter rebounds on the former) distinguishes it from genres in which character or action are pre-existent givens, linked, but not in a relation of action-reaction.

On the other hand it is the encounter of the character with the outside world (society and nature) that necessitates the perspectivist and polyphonic procedures we have spoken of: the writer cannot describe this encounter ataraxically. For him as much as for his characters, society and nature are not givens but realities in which one advances with the help of knowledge, with varying success and repeated attempts. 29 Identifying himself and distancing himself from his characters, experimenting with various points of view, the author not only shares in the investigation carried out by his hero, but conducts the same investigation, within the spaces of his invention. As a contemporary novelist writes:

la prise de conscience du travail romanesque va [...] le d6voiler en tant que d6voilant, l'amener h produire ses raisons, d6velopper en lui les 616ments qui vont montrer comment il est reli6 au reste du r6el, et en quoi il est 6clairant pour ce dernier. (Butor 1962: 271)

The relations between the author, material and characters of the novel have been defined and well discussed by Bachtin:

The novelist is drawn toward everything that is not yet completed. He may turn up in the field of representation in any authorial pose, he may depict real moments in his own life or make allusions to them, he may interfere in the conversations of his heroes, he may openly polemicize with his literary enemies and so forth. This is not merely a matter of the author's image appearing within his own field of representation - important here is the fact that the underlying, original, formal author (the author of the authorial image) appears in a new relationship with the represented world. (1938-1941/1975: 470; 27)

As we have seen, Luk~ics sees more clearly than Bachtin that the best way of making contact with reality, at any rate in the novel, is to confront it, through action. But Bachtin is more subtly aware of how contact with reality, explicitly effected by the character, in reality forms a part of that more complex contact with reality which the writer makes by his novelistic writing. And it is clear that Bachtin, unlike Luk~ics, does not oppose character and reality but considers above all the changes they bring about in each other, in a continual, boundless process of discovery: that of the author.


On this basis it becomes easier to sketch a history of the medieval romance, partly because many problems of definition and assignment to periods are removed. At the same time it has become essential to realize that the 12th and 13th centuries are a period of extraordinary eidogenetic activity. The romance takes on an identity of its own, after having existed, with frequent intermittences, alongside closely related narrations like the lais (from those of Marie de France to those of Jean Renart); 3o it even reaches out towards the fabliaux, elements of which may be glimpsed in for instance Flamenca and in Joufroi. 3~ Indeed, scarcely has the romance emerged as an autonomous genre than it shows clear hegemonic tendencies, aspiring to swallow up the other genres somehow, becoming, more than a guide-genre, a "total" genre. It is above all the late chanson de geste which tends to converge towards the romance, assimilating its treatment of phenomena associated with love and its acceptance of the comic, s2 though the chanson de geste retains its characteristic metres and style of execution 33 which distinguish two genres that are wholly blended only in Italian cantari and other poems in octaves, up to Orlando Furioso.

In this perspective, the rapid ratification of the romance can be seen as the communal aspect of that experience of reality which the romance itself describes: in less than a century, the authors of romances complete an enormous census of narratable reality, from the romance of adventure to the courtly romance, from the intimate to the burlesque or comic, from the exotic to the picaresque (the term applies I think to Wistasse le Moine). Attempts to describe the medieval romance solely on the basis of Chrrtien (who is undoubtedly its greatest master), have given a limited and one-sided picture of it.

Following the rapid progress of this communal experience, we can knock down the signposts erected here and there by scholars, inscribed "Here begins the romance proper", s4 One can trust oneself to the historical development verified by the facts, s5 proceeding from "ancient" romances (including that of Alexander) and those of Wace to the romances of Tristan, to Chrrtien de Troyes and so on. The fact that "ancient" romances are mainly derived from heroic Latin poems (to the extent that Vergil and Statius preserve the Homeric epic) will provide a real link between those two genres, epic and romance, between which a forced, abstract and anachronistic contrast has often been drawn, even though they belong to literary systems which are far apart and cannot be compared.

An important aspect of the communal experience formed by romances is the awareness of contemporary 36 reality brought about, increasingly clearly, by medieval romances, even those with a remote Arthurian or Byzantine setting. It is by means of the description of clothes and banquets, armour and trappings, and even sometimes of the activity of labourers and artisans, that medieval literature takes possession of the world and assimilates its spe-

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cialized languages. 37 A first phase, encyclopaedic so to speak, is formed by the romances of the classical cycle, which presents its ideas naively, in didactic form. 38

Nevertheless, communal experience, it used to be said, is an extension of individual, of that of the characters themselves. It is for this reason, I should add in passing, that it has been possible to identify the Latin Ruodlieb as the first medieval romance. 39 In it experience unfolds in a relation to reality that is Arthurian only in its origins: a qualifying test initiates the hero into knightly society, and a progressive series of tests which can be seen as adding up to a single main test, complete the process of integration, and purge him of his defects or errors. 4° The fact that the position of dignity thus won often corresponds to a position in the feudal world, or that vice versa the knight's exploits illuminate and redeem the milieu in which he moves, has strong ideological implications. 41

The great invention of the medieval romancers is the link between love and exploit, such as to make love the direct motive, heroic dignity and social position the indirect consequence. 42 The triangle hero-love-chivalry is of greater general significance than love-triangles, frequent and famous though these are. And it soon becomes pregnant with potentiality when it becomes itself homologous with the love-triangle, as in Tristan, where the structure hero-king (symbol of chivalrous society)-lady (object of love), static in its social signification, also embraces a powerfully disruptive erotic rivalry.

The link between love and chivalrous exploits amounts to the governing principle of the majority of medieval romances, and remains operative in the modem novel 43 (with exploits of a different nature, of course). The author of Eneas was thus taking a decisive action when he decided to describe the loves of Aeneas and Lavinia on Ovidian models, an even if, conditioned by the plot of the Aeneid, he could not yet connect them with the action, as Chrrtien de Troyes and the authors of the romances of Tristan would have done with the greatest clarity.

This governing principle makes it possible to give unity to the series of adventures, menaced by the centrifugal forces of the fantastic, mainly Celtic or claiming to be so. But very often the action is given coherence by the two lines, of departure and arrival, between which it unfolds. At the outset, we find the intention to follow the hero's development, the ideal of a Bildungs- roman or Entwicklungsroman, which runs from Perceval, Jaufrd and the Bel lnconnu as far as - where? - Wilhelm Meister, Le rouge et le noir? On arrival, we have the conclusion of a qudte that is often tension rather than attain- ment: it is no accident that Perceval remains incomplete. Another invention of genius was that of making the qurte the overcoming of earthly love, the translation into religious or mystical terms of the hero-love-chivalry triangle. We must stress the consistency of the Bildungsroman model with the cogni-


five task of the novel: the innocent hero is ideally placed to describe in detail a world that is not yet his but soon will be.

Here too a cue given by Bachtin which, for lack of documentation, has not been taken up, may yet prove of great value: his investigation of the chronotope. 45 It has more than once been remarked that Chrrtien's heroes leave the Arthurian court to accomplish their exploits, making it not so much a residence as an ideal reference point (almost an earthly Jerusalem). It has also been noted that in CligSs a bridge is built between places of different legendary and symbolic significance such as Byzantium and the court of Artd. 46 But all romances, not just medieval ones, constitute a taking possession of the world, as well as of society. This was very well understood by Cervantes, in his parody which is also a synthesis.

The analysis provided by the chronotope may make it possible to define the character on the ground of the relations established by him with the outer world and on the ground of the temporal framework within which such relations, and their history, are distributed. 47 The slow time-scheme of the double declaration of love of Guilhem de Nivers and Flamenca, for instance, corresponds to the minute precision of that romance's chronological references.

But to the topochronology of the hero's adventures will have to be correlated a semantic topochronology that will synthesize his decisive passages from one (thematic) conceptual situation to another, in a word the phases of his Entwicklung. And in variously combining these two convergent topochronologies the narrator's point of view, often shifting so as better to focalize the most symptomatic disorientations, will have a revealing function. I use the phrase "point of view" in the proper sense, and in Bachtin's sense, of a critical tension between author and character. Thus the narration and its meaning will find, together, the mental order and the clarity that it has been our constant task as interpreters to seek. 48

NOTES

The first edition of Dostoevskij dates from 1929, while the article 'Slovo v romane' dates from 1934-1935 (periodical publication in 1972, then in Bachtin 1975); 'Roman vospitanija i ego zna~enie v istorii realizma' from 1936-1938

398 Cesare Segre

(not published until 1979); 'Formy vremeni i chronotopa v romane' from 1937- 1938 (periodical publication in 1974, then in Bachtin 1975); 'Iz predystorii romannogo slova' from 1940 (not published until 1965, then in Bachtin 1975). I should add that chapter IV of Dostoevskij contains an outline of the history of the novel-genre: it has been pointed out to me by Maria Di Salvo that this was not to be found in the edition of 1929.

2 The word "romance" here translates the Italian "romanzo", which also means "novel". The ambiguity of the Italian word creates a peculiar difficulty for its translation into English, particularly when, as here, the word itself and its various meanings are themselves the theme of discussion [translator's note].

3 The name "roman" is also applied to some chansons de geste, like Elie de Saint Gille, Aiol and Fierebras. The fact remains however that the Brut and the Roman de Troie have already been defined as "romans" (Voelker 1886; Ma- richal 1968), and that Chrttien gives this name to Yvain (6805), Lancelot (2, 7101) and Perceval(8). On the other hand, it is necessary to bear in mind the very rich terminology that was soon introduced to define the matter, form and structure of the romance. Thus Chrttien distinguishes between "livre" (Latin source, auctoritas), "conte" (narration contained within the romance or its source), "estoire" (narration, seen as different from Chrttien's; also "matiere", material, or source), "conjointure" (textual organization), "sens", "antancion" (creative level of the poet): see Ollier's itemization (1974).

4 It should however be noted, as it is by Marichal (1968: 452), that in the history of the French romance there is a break, from the mid-15th century to the mid- 16th century (the gap was filled in Spain and elsewhere); it was resumed with the translation of Amadix

5 One of the main sources for this part of Bachtin's work is of course Rohde (1900), used also by a scholar far removed from Bachtin, Frye (1957). Hence certain similarities. Frye, for instance, contrasts the introspective and subjective "romance" with the extravert and intellectualist Menippean line which includes Rabelais, Swift and Voltaire. This line, as Frye says, does not observe persons so much as their spiritual attitudes.

6 This is only true in the majority of cases: cf., e.g., note 37 and notes 8 and 11. 13th-century novels, e.g. the lpomedon and Wistasse le Moine, provide striking instances of linguistic parody.

7 The definition of the novel as "the middle-class epic" is Hegel's. The implications of this definition are taken to an extreme by Lukfics (1935), who finds it is only possible to speak of the novel proper after the rise of the middle class, and that the novel cannot survive the decline of bourgeois ideology. It is however only for the reasons given here, and because literature, at any rate since the Renaissance, has been conducted by the middle class, that the nexus novel-middle class took shape at a certain moment; there is no need to regard it as either necessary or sufficient for the life of the novel.

s With certain exceptions: for example, the Latin-German bilingualism of Ruod- lieb (Dronke 1970: 62).


9 TO mention two of the many possible examples: the "franglais", further enriched with Breton and Flemish elements, of a speech made by Renart disguised as a jester (Roman de Renart, branche I, 2351-2466, 2511-2528, etc.); the Franco-Italo-Latin juridical jargon, parodying the language of a cardinal and papal legate from Pavia (Roman de Renart, branche V, 457-494).

10 Most of them are peasants and burghers. It would be out of place to ascribe to any conscious sociological attention (premonitions of industrial exploitation and alienation) the episode of the Chastel de Pesme Aventure of Yvain, an isolated episode in any case.

11 The rare examples concern languages and styles "recognized" in the courtly sphere: e.g., the Latin of the Mass in P-lamenca (2470ff.), and there too the use of words without semantic content, possibly of musical origin, certainly of a musical type: "turullutau" (1053), "vasdoi vaidau" (1054), etc.

12 The term is already used by Spitzer (1948), particularly in connection with the polyonymy of Don Quixote, but already seeing it as a symptom of the "varie- gated phantasmagoria of human approaches to reality" (56). See also, for the relation between narrative perspective and verisimilitude, Van Rossum-Guyon (1970).

13 The monologue, originating in Ovid, with its varieties of form, beginning with the Eneas (e.g., 8143ff., 8279, 8348, 8676ff.) has been the object of several studies. See among others Walker (1928); Nolthing (1959); Menard (1969: 742-746); Uitti (1973: 161-162). The extensions of the monologue to other situations of psychological disturbance or uncertainty are important, e.g., to the jealousy of Archimbaut (Flamenca, 1157-1170, 1269-1311, etc.); see Nolthing- Hauff (1959:107 and 115-116).

14 But we have already almost arrived at the point of view when the reader learns of an unexpected change of situation at the same time as, and by way of the vision of, a character. E.g.,

15

16

A tant s'en tome [subj. Guinglain] et voit Elie, Et avec lui l'en vit aler, Par mi ruis les vit dont entrer: Robert son escuier revoit Et le nain, qui detriers venoit. (Bel lnconnu, 3417-3422)

We are informed of the arrival of Elie and the dwarf solely through the fact that Guinglain sees them. The identical procedure is followed in 3869-3871. Cf. Menard (1969: 469-470). I think of Lavinia seen through the eyes of her mother (Eneas, 8242ff.) or of the perilous way created when Guinglain's imagination transforms a moral obstacle into a physical one, starting from the simple "perce d'un esprevier" (Bel Inconnu, 4551-4578; the reader becomes involved, since he only learns the truth later). There is a fine comment by Uitti (1973:211) on the episode of the drop of blood in the snow, in Perceval.

400 Cesare Segre

17 For example, Dido imagining she embraces and loves Aeneas (Eneas, 1237- 1257), as Lavinia will also do (8413); the dreamed dialogue of Guilhem and Flamenca (Flamenca, 2804ff.); Guinglain's dream of a lover's tryst with the "Pucele as Blances Mains" (Bel Inconnu, 3695-3704); the imaginary monologues and conversations of Jaufre and Brunissen (Jaufr~ 7387-7486, 7595- 7626).

18 In Erec, for instance, "events in the romance are refracted through their effects upon each member of the couple" (Uitti 1973: 222). In Perceval, the episode of the stolen kiss is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist but then also reported in the words (and focalization) of the Orgueilleus de la Lande (3845-3883).

19 The way the true/false transformer functions in a novelistic text (The De.ca- meron) has been analysed in Segre (1979, ch. IV).

20 The emperor experiences his night of love with Fenice in a dream, which he takes for reality, in Clig~s, 3309ff.; cf. Menard (1969: 270-271).

21 For example the dialogue between Corras and Jouglet in Guillaume de Dole (819-828).

22 An excellent example is the dialogue between the sdndchal and Conrad in Guillaume de Dole (3516-3517; 3570-3571; 4700-4701).

23 The phenomenon is particularly extensive in the Tristan en prose (cf. Lods 1955; Maillard 1969; Baumgartner 1973). The importance of the lyrical passages and the "chanson de toile" inserted into Guillaume de Dole and Perceforest is well known.

24 Cf. Limentani (1977: 267-268). But the whole of Flamenca is an apotheosis of "literature within literature", from the romance Blancatlor used by Guilhem as a psalter (4477) to the comparisons with characters and situations of other literary texts (Raimberge from Audigier [1905]; Isengrin, 3687-3690) to the quotation of lyric passages. Even the famous dialogue between Guilhem and Flamenca, with its bisyllabic lines echeloned over many weeks, constitute, when joined together, an octosyllabic stanza very similar to one used by Peire Rogier: cf. Limentani (1977: 275ff.).

25 Among the most symptomatic cases may be cited 11.920-930, 3620-3631, 3748- 3759, 4141-4142, 4594-4597 of Guillaume de Dole; at 3196-3197 the song quoted is woven into the plot: interesting as a recognition of interference between genres, and even between modes of execution, as stated in Guillaume de Dole, 19: "l'en i chante et lit". For the Tristan en prose cf. Baumgartner (1973). In Perceforest the lais inserted sometimes serve to recapitulate facts previously narrated: cf. Lods 1953.

26 The various attitudes of the author-narrator within the text, to which Booth in particular has drawn attention, have also been studied in medieval literature, e.g. by Grigsby 1979, Uitti 1979.

27 This procedure has often been described, e.g. by Fourier (1960: 428ff.), and cf. Zumthor (1972: 343). Grigsby (1968) gives a detailed analysis; I find the use of the term "narrator" unfortunate, since, applied to the mediation between

The Mech'eval Origins of the Novel 401

28

29

author and reader regarding the narrative contents, it indicates the emergence of the author in the text as a character with his own story. In this connection see the analyses made by Dembovski (1974). A statement by Uitti (1979: 165) is interesting: "In Yvain narrator and protagonist grow together, in authentic clergie and chevalerie" In general, I believe we still need to think about the notion of irony as a sign of the

internal splitting of the normative poetic subject into a subjectivity insofar as it is interiority which stands in contrast to outside forces and aims to impose on the outside world the contents of its own fear of being overcome, and a subjectivity that perceives the abstractness and thus the insufficiency of the worlds, foreign to each other, of the subject and the object, understands limits as necessary and as conditions of their existence, and by virtue of this intelligence does indeed allow the duplicity of the world to remain, but at the same time discovers and represents, in the mutual conditioning of elements fundamentally foreign to each other, a unitary and undivided world. (Luk~cs 1920: 91)

The romance then becomes "an appearance of organicity constantly unmasked by the skilfully ironic rhythm of the composition" (ibid., 93).

30 That la/and romance are at any rate potentially interchangeable is confirmed by the fact that the narration of a la/(e.g., Eliduc) sometimes becomes a romance (Gautier d 'Arras ' Ille et Galleron), growing longer, admittedly (from 1184 to 6592 lines): cf. Wilmotte (1941: 194). What is more, some lais, like the lai de l'ombre or the lai d'Haveloc are romances in their own right, though somewhat short ones.

31 Zumthor (1968) sees the Chatelaine de Vergi itself as developing the themes of a canzone, with a fabliau (85) inserted in it, and specifies: "les motifs lyriques fournissent le san dont le fabliau donne la matibr~' (91). For the elements of fabliau in Jofroi de Poitiers see Grigsby's preface to his edition (Droz-Minard 1972:14 [Genfve-Paris]). It should be emphasized (with Ch~nerie 1976) that fabliaux too often have as their protagonist a knight who by his exploits, especially in tournaments, wins the heart of a lady, generally married. The spirit and style are of course different.

32 I refer, e.g., to the Charroi de Ntmes and the Prise d'Orange. 33 See especially Kfhler (1963); Jauss (1963); Roncaglia (1963), and, for the

technical aspects, Pollman (1966b). And it should be remembered that while the chanson de geste was sung in public, the romance was designed for private reading to a small circle, or even a silent reading.

34 Gallais (1971), for instance, sees the romance as beginning with Chrftien de Troyes, save some foretastes in the Roman d'Alexandre, in view of the cen- trality of individual destiny and the presence of the theme of the journey and of adventure (but there is a continuity between Alexandre and Artti as symbols of earthly harmony and the "kingdom of peace", on which see Kfhler 1970: 124-

402 Cesare Segre

35

36

125; while as types of romance character a comparison between Alexandre and Galvano has been sketched: of. Frappier 1964: 33). Delbouille (1969), on the other hand, sees Apollonius de Tyr (of which only a fragment has survived) as the proto-romance; however, he also makes acute observations on the distinguishing features of early romances. Raynaud de Lage (1978) would depart from the Roman de Thebes. For instance Faral (1913: 389-419); Marichal (1968); Frappier and Grimm (1978), and others. It should be emphasized that the translatio of chivalry from Greece to Rome to France, as it is celebrated by Chr6tien, on the model of the translatio studii, in the prologue to Clig~s, exactly follows the itinerary of the first ancient romances to the courtly romances. In a sense the famous hierarchy of veracity formulated by Jean Bodel in 11.9- 11 of the Chanson de Saisnes could be reversed ("Li conte de Bretaigne, cil sont vain et plaisant, / et cil de Rome sage et de sens aprendant, / cil de France sont voir chascun jour aparant"): while the chanson de geste ("cil de France") offered a distorted and increasingly meagre historical reality, the romance ("li conte de Bretaigne"), for all its fantastic transpositions, confronted the reality of its time. But cf. Guiette's observations (1978: 78-83) and those of Roncaglia (1975); the former insists on the symbolism of the romance, the latter on the search for values and meanings. In any case, Jean Bodel's lines express what amounts to a topos : as early as Brut(1253-1258) we read that the stories of Arttl are:

ne tot manqonge ne tot voir, ne tot folor ne tot savoir. Tant ont li cont~or cont6 et li fablSor tant fabl6 por les contes anbeleter, que tot one fet fable sanbler.

Then in the Vies desperes (of before 1229):

Laissiez Cliges et Perceval, qui les cuers perce et trait a val, et les romans de vanit6. (quoted by W. Foerster in his CligSs, Halle 1884, p. XXII)

And Ruteboeuf (Les deux troveors ribauz, Jubinal I, 334) declares:

ge sai des romanz d'aventure, de cels de la reonde table qui sont a o'ir delitable.

Evidently, contemporaries saw romances above all as escapist literature: a partial but not mistaken view. See also Voelker (1886: 516-517).


37 Among many possible examples may be mentioned the seafaring terminology of Brut (2643-2690), the medical terminology of Cligbs (2971-2987), the gastronomic terminology of Guillaume de Dole (1239-1247, 5449-5458). For the presence of contemporary reality in Chr6tien, cf. Fourrier (1960: 116).

3s I am thinking of scientific information in treatise form in the "classical" romances. E.g., "Le betumoi a tel nature, etc." (Eneas, 6498); "[abesto] tel nature a e t tel costume, etc." (ibid., 6516); "Li ditans est de tel vertu, etc." (ibid., 9566); or interpolated miniature treatises, like the "de regimine principis" of Thbbes (1113-1138). For geography see, e.g., the observations on Florimont in Fourrier (1960: 472ff.). On the sources of the "encyclopedia" of the early romances Faral (1913: 305-388) is still fundamental.

39 Dronke (1969, 1970). 4o In the context of a vigorous (possibly one-sided) sociological interpretation,

K6hler (1970) also interprets the adventure as an attempt "d'unifier le monde int6rieur et le monde ext6rieur", which can be achieved on condition that it remains individual experience, aimed at integrating the individual into society (95).

41 K/Shier (1963, 1970). 42 Besides, the courtly love of our romances is quite different from the fin'amors

of the troubadours. This has already been stressed by Frappier (1959) and Pollman (1966a, chapters IV and V), but it is a point worth insisting on. In the tin'amors, the most important moment is that of desire, of inner mortification; gratification is presented as rare, and in any case situated in the future. In romances, love flares up unexpectedly, and strives for a gratification which is often swiftly obtained. Further, the tin'amors is addressed to a lady who is already married and of high social position; romance-love is generally felt for young girls, though also noble, and does not exclude, indeed often demands, a matrimonial outcome, which may coincide with the taking possession of a fief. The tin'amors is autotelic and centripetal, while romance courtly love, fundamentally heterotelic and centrifugal, is an element, necessary but not exclusive, of chivalrous perfection.

43 The chief exception is Galvano, and this is explained by his position at court: cf. Nitze (1952-1953); Fierz-Monnier (1951: 81); Kellerman (1970). As for Dinadan in the Tristan en prose, he represents an "anti-model" (that is, he reverses the basic principles, the love-chivalry relation): as confirmation and negative he is quite welcome to his milieu: cf. Vinaver (1970, ch. VIII).

44 Cf. Faral (1913: 623-157); Wilmotte (1941, ch. V). 45 I refer to Bachtin (1937-1938/1975 [1981]). For the history and various mean-

ings of the term, cf. Segre (1981). 46 In CligSs one can also see the beginnings of a fusion between ancient and

Arthurian material: cf. Liborio (1980: 53-54). 47 Topological analyses of the courtly romance made their appearance with

studies of their structure. By way of example, and stressing their differences of approach, one may mention Kellerman (1936); Woods (1953); Dorfman

404 Cesare Segre

48

(1969); KShler (1970, ch. VII, see also the concluding schemata). Lotman's topological schemata were already applied by Boklund (1977a, 1977b). Elsewhere in Segre (1984), I put forward this aim as the final goal of narra- tological analysis.

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Documents

What Bachtin Did Not Say: The Medieval Origins of the Novel