Two days ago I
finished the first draft of the 13th
century poem, Le Tournoi de Chauvency. As
you can probably tell from the title, Le Tournoi is
an account of a tournament. It's quite an entertaining piece, and
one of the few detailed descriptions of a medieval tournament. But
it has a few problems. There has been only a translation from Old
French into modern French, by Dominique Henriot-Walzer, and so it is
inaccessible to most readers.
A good
few years back I decided to do something about this, in so far as I
could. My knowledge of Old French is weak, and so a translation from
OF to modern French wasn't practical. But I thought that a
translation of Henrit-Walzer's French version into English might
produce something that would allow Anglophones, at least, to enjoy Le
Tournoi. This would be no great
work of scholarship, but it would allow jousting fans of all sorts to
get a taste of the High Medieval tournament, and meet the
participants, the audience, and the organizers. (Note:
this is one of the great periods of jousting, though the question
“Will a jouster read?” has yet to receive a definitive answer.)
Two
days ago I shared my pleasure at getting close to this goal with my
many correspondents. The next day, I found an announcement from
Boydell and Brewer that they were publishing (Nov 2020) an English
translation of not only Le Tournoi but
another tournament account, The Romance of Le Hem.
What to do?
Clearly the B&B book is going to be superior to my translation
in a number of ways.
We can only
hope that Nigel Bryant's French is better than mine :-)
I think, however,
that I will go ahead with my translation because I am willing to
publish it very cheaply.
I suspect, therefore, that although real scholars will use the Bryant translation (at least I hope so), people who might be interested in the text but won't spend $65 on it will have this alternative.
I also got access to an article by the eminent military historian John Gillingham, on the transformation of the treatment of women, children and non-combatants in war -- which Gillingham divides into three phases:
I suspect, therefore, that although real scholars will use the Bryant translation (at least I hope so), people who might be interested in the text but won't spend $65 on it will have this alternative.
I also got access to an article by the eminent military historian John Gillingham, on the transformation of the treatment of women, children and non-combatants in war -- which Gillingham divides into three phases:
Phase One is the Old Testament;Phase Two represents the Age of Chivalry, including its much mocked care for damsels in distress. In Phase Two women might be raped or seized and threatened in order to extort money from their husbands or fathers, but on the whole that sort of conduct was regarded as reprehensible by those men who wrote about war or who held high military command. In Phase One, by contrast, the capture and enslavement [was not a source of shame but,] if successful, a source of pride.’
it was Honoré Bouvet. In L’arbre des batailles he expressed his conviction that wars in hisday were carried on with greater restraint than in the past: ‘nowadays we have abandoned the ancient rules of making slaves of prisoners and of putting them to death after they have fallen into our hands’. Instead ‘by written law, good custom and usage, among Christians great and small, there exists the custom of commonly taking ransom from one another.
So, did chivalry mean more to warriors of the Central and Late Middle Ages than historians have been willing to grant?
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