according to Bédier, but in the 12th and thereafter. The poets’ sources were in Latin
chronicles that related the Carolingian events that provided the historical kernel; Bédier
connected these with monasteries along the pilgrimage routes of Europe, which claimed
to have in their possession relics from celebrated heroes. To draw pilgrims to their
institutions, the custodians of these venerated objects prepared publicity in the form of
the chansons de geste. Bédier insisted upon the near-contemporaneity of the written text
and the creation of the surviving epic, while his predecessors (and followers) believed
that one way or another, and probably through oral tradition, the event was borne over
centuries through history.
Bédier’s view, labeled “Individualism,” dominated scholarship until a
“Neotraditionalist” current was inaugurated in 1955 by the publication of Jean Rychner’s
Essai sur l’art épique des jongleurs. Rychner relied on the notion that the feudal
civilization in which the chanson de geste was born created and consumed “literature”
orally. Not only did audiences listen to the singing of the poems, but the poets actually
created this highly formulaic poetry in the act of singing. In the wake of Albert Lord’s
discoveries about Yugoslav singers of tales still thriving in preNazi Europe, Rychner
showed how a poet could memorize motifs, themes, and formulae and skillfully
recombine them for oral presentation, recomposing the poem each time he sang it, using
his own stock of formulae. Thus are explained in great part the vexing contradictions that
appear in almost all the story lines of the epic, the numerous exhortations to listen
carefully, and the apparent repetitions.
In the late 1950s, Ramón Menéndez Pidal returned to theories expounded as early as
the 19th century concerning the oral origins of the Chanson de Roland. He had
investigated the manner in which Spanish epic had been born at the moment of the
historical event. In 1924, he published Poesia juglaresca y juglares, demonstrating that
Spanish literature cultivated short, totally epic poems and setting forth the hypothesis that
French literature undoubtedly passed through a period that mirrored this archaic phase.
After Rychner’s book, Menéndez Pidal’s inquiries into the neotraditionalism of the
French epic, particularly in the Roland, gave impetus to the growing orality movement.
The debate is of importance, for how we view the very nature of the early chansons de
geste depends on the answer: are we dealing with literature (in the sense of works
composed of letters) at all, or with an ever-changing tradition of sung epic that has no
definitive form but exists in a multiplicity of performances, one of which is accidentally
preserved in each manuscript manifestation?
No matter its origins, scholars have had to admit the influence of handwriting, courtly
romance, and other literary phenomena in the chansons de geste by the end of the 12th
century. As the “classical” epic appeared to be dying, efforts were made to preserve its
traditional matière by creating and copying accretions, which led to the formation of
cycles. An early attested recognition of the division into cycles is recorded by Bertrand
de Bar-sur-Aube in the prologue to Girart de Vienne (early 13th c.). He discerned three:
the gesta (deeds) of Charlemagne (the King Cycle), of Doon de Mayence (the Rebellious
Vassal or Doon de Mayence Cycle), and of Garin de Monglane (the Guillaume d’Orange
Cycle). Aside from the allusion to Charles in the King Cycle, the hero mentioned by
Bertrand is not the most famous but rather an ancestor of the principal protagonist of each
cycle. To give each hero a glorious past, these authors invented histories of their ancestry.
In addition to Bertrand’s divisions, modern scholars have discerned the gestes of the
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