no doubt that this collection is one of the most important monuments of Middle French
prose.
Peter F.Dembowski
[See also: FABLIAU; LA SALE, ANTOINE DE; PREMIERFAIT, LAURENT DE;
VIGNEULLES, PHILIPPE DE]
Champion, Pierre, ed. Les cent nouvelles nouvelles. 3 vols. Paris: Champion, 1928. [Text heavily
amended, with an excellent introduction and notes; the third volume reproduces one hundred
miniatures.]
Sweester, Franklin P., ed. Les cent nouvelles nouvelles. Geneva: Droz, 1966. [More faithful to the
manuscript; corrects some errors of the above.]
Diner, Judith B., trans. The One Hundred New Tales (Les cent nouvelles nouvelles). New York:
Garland: 1990.
Dubuis, Roger. Les cent nouvelles nouvelles et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au moyen âge.
Grenoble: Presses Universitaires, 1973.
Knudson, Charles. “Antoine de la Sale, le duc de Bourgogne et les Cent nouvelles nouvelles.”
Romania 53 (1927):365–73.
CERCAMON
(fl. 1137–49). Little may be said for certain about the life of this early troubadour. His
pseudonym (“Search the World”) tells us nothing about his origins, and the author of his
brief vida says simply that Cercamon was a Gascon jongleur. References in his songs to
the death of Guilhem X, count of Poitiers, and to the Second Crusade allow us to date his
production to the second quarter of the 12th century. His vida also tells us that Cercamon
wrote songs and pastorelas. None of the latter have survived, but among his seven
authentic lyrics we find the first planh, the first tenso, and the first two sirventes, as well
as three love poems. However, much of the assessment of his originality is based on the
perhaps unreliable statement in the vida of Marcabru that Cercamon was his master.
Many recent scholars think, rather, that it was Cercamon who was the disciple, in which
case some of the innovations attributed to Cercamon should be credited instead to
Marcabru. In any event, Cercamon’s poetry resembles closely that of his fellow moralist
and Gascon contemporary in that both denounce the miserly nobles and their deceitful
debauchery, which undermines true love.
Roy S.Rosenstein
[See also: MARCABRU; TROUBADOUR POETRY]
Cercamon. Les poésies de Cercamon, ed. Alfred Jeanroy. Paris: Champion, 1922.
——. The Poetry of Cercamon and Jaufre Rudel, ed. and trans. George Wolf and Roy Rosenstein.
New York: Garland, 1983.
——. Il trovatore Cercamon, ed. Valeria Tortoreto. Modena: STEM Mucchi, 1981.
The Encyclopedia 349