woman, La Guignarde, who insists that Fausseté brings more joy to love the Loyauté.
Puzzled by the conflicting advice, he decides to consult the opinions of the count of Eu,
Boucicaut, and Crésecque, all of whom opt for Loyauté. In the final ballade, the four
authors ask all lovers to respond to the dilemma. Thirteen answers complete the work,
with most pronouncing in favor of Loyauté. In the six manu scripts that preserve the
work, the ballades are organized into groups of four with seven different forms, making
four series of twenty-eight, twenty-eight, twenty-eight, and sixteen poems, respectively,
with the same succession of forms in each.
Deborah H.Nelson
Raynaud, Gaston, ed. Les cent ballades. Paris: Didot, 1905.
CENT NOUVELLES NOUVELLES, LES
. In the early 1460s, amusing after-dinner stories were told at the court and in the
presence of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (1396–1467). Sometime later, before the
duke’s death, an anonymous author-compiler wrote down these hundred prose tales,
attributing the telling of them to thirty-five conteurs. Thirteen of the stories are ascribed
to the duke himself, fifteen to monseigneur de la Roche (Philippe Pot), ten to Philippe de
Laon, and others to various of the duke’s aristocratic friends and courtiers. Two tales are
anonymous, and the author himself “tells” five. The latter is doubtless responsible for
giving a sense of unity to those basically diverse stories. They come to us in one
manuscript (Glasgow, Hunter 252) and an incunabulum (Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1486).
The only conteur with a well-established literary reputation mentioned is Antoine de
La Sale (ca. 1385–1461), who “tells” the fiftieth story. Because of that, it was long
thought that he was the author-compiler of the collection. This attribution is no longer
accepted, nor is that of authorship to Philippe Pot.
The origins of those tales are varied and impossible to pin down. The idea of a
collection of a hundred nouvelles was doubtless much influenced by the Decameron, well
known in the French-speaking lands through the translation by Laurent de Premierfait
(1414), but the Cent nouvelles owe little directly to Boccaccio. A more likely literary
source is the Liber facetiarum by Poggio (Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini; 1380–
1459). Their real origin, however, must be sought in the local, popular, oral tradition. For
the most part, they are tales of the fabliaux kind (e.g., the nineteenth story is, in fact, the
well-known fabliau of “The Snow Child”). Racy, farcical, joyful, and occasionally crude,
they deal with the eternal comedy of adultery and sex, with its cuckolded husbands,
easygoing girls, lusty clerics, crafty and lecherous wives, all placed in a panorama of the
social classes: monks, nuns, knights, merchants, bourgeois, and peasants.
Besides their powers to amuse, the real value of the Cent nouvelles lies in the
documentary character of many of these stories. Under their amusing and irreverent form,
we can find a great deal of realia of the everyday life in Brabant (where the stories were
apparently told), Flanders, Hainaut, Holland, and the north of France. The authenticity of
the settings is enhanced by the authenticity of the language. The anonymous author-
compiler was a man of obvious talent with an excellent ear for the spoken word. There is
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