de Créquy produced a prose version of the tale. Robert de Blois’s Floris et Lyriopé (ca.
1250) has the ill-starred Narcissus as the product of his hero and heroine’s youthful
liaison. Cristal et Clarie (ca. 1268), extant in only one manuscript (Arsenal 3516),
depicts the hero’s quest for a woman he has glimpsed in a dream. There is disputed
attribution of the fabliau Guillaume au faucon to the author of this romance. Sone de
Nausay (late 13th c.) depicts the hero’s rejection by the girl he had loved, his pursuit of
adventure in England, Scotland, and Norway, his marriage with the daughter of the king
of this country, and his elevation to emperor. Floriant et Florete (ca. 1250–75) reworks
in an Arthurian setting the elopement of its hero and heroine. Eledus et Serene has its
heroine, a rich princess, fall in love with the son of a count who wins her from her official
suitor.
In the 14th and 15th centuries variations on the idyllic theme include Cleomadès et
Clarmondine by Philippe Camus, Cleriadus et Meliadice, Pamphile et Galatée, and
Ponthus et Sidoine.
The roman idyllique introduces the poignancy of young love into traditional romance
themes, including the hero and heroine’s progress toward maturity through the experience
of loss and reunion, and their ritual courtship leading to marriage and social integration.
Meg Shepherd
[See also: AMADAS ET YDOINE; AUCASSIN ET NICOLETTE; CHRÉTIEN DE
TROYES; ELEDUS ET SERENE, ROMAN DE; FLOIRE ET BLANCHEFLOR;
GUILLAUME DE PALERNE; HUE DE ROTELANDE; PIERRE DE PROVENCE ET LA
BELLE MAGUELONNE; REALISTIC ROMANCES; ROBERT DE BLOIS]
Lot-Borodine, Myrrha. Le roman idyllique au moyen-âge. Paris: Picard, 1913.
Payen, Jean-Charles. “Le moyen âge.” In La littérature française, ed. Claude Pichois. Paris:
Arthaud, 1970, pp. 172–73.
IMAGE DU MONDE
. A hugely popular didactic poem by the otherwise unknown Gossuin (or Gautier) de
Metz; the dialect is that of Lorraine. It exists in three redactions of various lengths (from
6,600 to over 10,000 octosyllabic lines), of which the first and shortest, supposedly
offered in 1246 to Robert d’Artois, brother of St. Louis, was by far the most widely
known (sixty-seven manuscripts). The work is divided into three sections: an introduction
to science (twenty-one chapters, including twenty-eight illustrations), geography and
meteorology (nineteen chapters, nine illustrations), and astronomy (twenty-eight
chapters, nine illustrations). Principal sources are Honorius of Autun’s Imago mundi,
Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Hierosolymitana, Alexander Neckham’s De naturis rerum,
and Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus. Like other encyclopedists of the period, the author
treats such diverse subjects as the Seven Liberal Arts, the four elements, the shape of the
earth (round), and celestial and terrestrial geography. His influence can be found in
Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amor, in the prose Sidrac, and in Jehan Bonnet’s
Placides et Timeo.
William W.Kibler
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 900