husband. Winner of the tournament, for both his prowess and his beauty, Partonopeu is
finally married to a forgiving Melior.
The Continuation offers two unsuccessful love stories, and the narrator tells us that he
could write yet another book about the goodness of his lady, Passe-Rose. His desire to
win her love motivates the entire romance project and appears in many personal
interventions, when he compares the characters’ love story and his own. This lyric
persona of the narrator, one of the major innovations of Partonopeu, begins with the
springtime opening evoked in the prologue. The genealogy that follows, linking the
French monarchy to Trojan ancestors, establishes the narrator in the clerkly tradition of
romance writing as well. Chansons de geste, Romances of Antiquity, lais, Chrétien de
Troyes’s romances, contemporary travelogues, bestiaries, school debates—the author of
Partonopeu de Blois exploits and reinvents all the literary and historical resources of his
day. Reflecting the medieval view of fabulous Byzantium, where goods, peoples,
religions, and cultures meet in a rich mix, this romance fuses the real and the marvelous,
combines fantasies of the East and lessons on contemporary French politics, as it
prolongs the pleasure of a love story skillfully told and enticingly opened to the public’s
desire for more. A measure of its success can be calculated by the translations of
Partonopeu into English, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Dutch, and Danish between the
13th and early 16th centuries.
Matilda T.Bruckner
[See also: GRECO-BYZANTINE ROMANCE]
Gildea, Joseph, ed. Partonopeus de Blois: A French Romance of the Twelfth Century. 2 vols.
Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1967.
Bruckner, Matilda T. Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: The Convention of
Hospitality (1160–1200). Lexington: French Forum, 1980.
Fourrier, Anthime. Le courant réaliste dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge. Paris:
Nizet, 1960, pp. 315–440.
Hanning, Robert W. The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977.
Newstead, Helaine. “The Traditional Background of Partonopeus de Blois.” PMLA 61 (1946):916–
46.
PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS
(ca. 790–865). Born near Soissons, Paschasius Radbertus was raised in a women’s
monastery.there by Theodrada, sister of Adalard and Wala of Corbie and cousin of
Charlemagne. He entered the monastery of Corbie ca. 820, assisted in the founding of
Corvey in Saxony in 822, and was ordained deacon. He was elected abbot of Corbie in
- An active church leader, Radbertus attended the councils of Paris (847) and Quierzy
(849), where he signed the condemnation of Gottschalk. Following a dispute in the abbey
of Corbie, he resigned the abbacy and moved to Saint-Riquier (Centula) in 851 but
returned to Corbie before his death. Paschasius Radbertus wrote the vitae of Adalard and
Wala and local saints; commentaries on Psalm 44, Lamentations, and the Gospel of
Matthew; and important treatises on theology and the Virgin Mary. He is most famous
The Encyclopedia 1335