Huon de Méry
Huon de Méry (fl. 1200–1250) was the author of Li Tournoiemenz Anticrit (modern French: Le Tornoiement de l'Antechrist, "The Tournament of the Antichrist"), a 3,546-line Old French poem written in octosyllables.[1]
Life
Huon's life is a matter of conjecture based on references in his work. He seems to have been a
The Tournament of the Antichrist
Published around 1234–1240, Li Tournoiemenz Anticrit is a
Huon articulates a view of courtly love that distinguishes between love sanz vilanie ("without wrongdoing") and fornication: "Love is born of courtesy" (C'amours nest de courtoisie).[4] While Huon introduces courtly figures into the conventional battle of Vices and Virtues, love is not the poem's primary preoccupation.[5] During the battle, the narrator is wounded in the eye by Cupid's arrow and seeks refuge in a monastery.[1]
Li Tournoiemenz is contemporary with the Roman de la Rose, and contains allusions to the Yvain of Chrétien de Troyes and the Songe d'enfer of Raoul de Houdenc.[1] It enjoyed an "ample" manuscript tradition.[6] Huon self-consciously acknowledges literary precedent, and views the Arthurian world as bygone and thoroughly explored by his poetic masters.[7] At the same time, he asserts his own inventiveness with his distinctive conjointure of material.[8]
References
- ^ a b c d e f William W. Kibler, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (Garland, 1995), p. 467.
- ^ Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript (Rodopi, 2002), p. 577.
- ^ Keith Busby, "Hunbaut and the Art of Medieval French Romance," in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly (Rodopi, 1994), p. 49.
- ^ Douglas Kelly, Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love (University of Wisconsin Press, 1978, 1981), p. 15.
- ^ Kelly, Medieval Imagination, p. 95.
- ^ Busby, Codex and Context, pp. 577–578, with a fairly detailed survey.
- ^ Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 35.
- ^ Douglas Kelly, The Conspiracy of Allusion: Description, Rewriting, and Authorship from Macrobius to Medieval Romance (Brill, 1999), pp. 218–220.
External links
- Edition under the modern French title of Le Tornoiement de l'Antechrist par Huon de Mery (Reims, 1851), full text.
- Works by or about Huon de Méry at Internet Archive
- List of manuscripts of the work at Arlima
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