Esclamonde three times, and to bring back the emir’s moustache and three of his teeth.
Huon overcomes many obstacles thanks to his companion, Gériaume, and the fairy king
Auberon. After numerous adventures, Huon returns to his fief with Esclamonde, now his
wife, only to discover that his brother has betrayed him. Huon is thrown in jail, but
Auberon intervenes to free him.
Huon de Bordeaux was composed by a talented but unknown author. It is an original
and complex poem that successfully renews the genre of the chanson de geste. The author
followed the epic literary tradition, using assonance and decasyllablic verse, while at the
same time drawing from the romance, especially folk themes and supernatural and
fantastic elements. The author must have known a number of French poems, among them
the Chanson de Roland, Fergus, the Voyage de Charlemagne, Aye d’Avignon, Ogier le
Danois, and Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain.
Huon de Bordeaux enjoyed great popularity in France and abroad beyond the Middle
Ages. In the 15th century, it was rewritten both in Alexandrines and in prose and was
printed many times until the middle of the 19th century.
Jean-Louis Picherit
[See also: LATE EPIC; TRISTAN DE NANTEUIL]
Ruelle, Pierre, ed. Huon de Bordeaux. Paris and Brussels: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960.
[Based on MS Tours 936.]
Rossi, Marguerite. Huon de Bordeaux et l’évolution du genre épique au XIIIe siècle. Paris:
Champion, 1975.
Suard, François, trans. Histoire de Huon de Bordeaux et Aubéron roi de féerie. Paris: Stock/Moyen
Âge, 1983.
——. “Le cycle en vers de Huon de Bordeaux.” In La chanson de geste et le mythe carolingien:
Mélanges René Louis. 2 vols. Saint-Père-Sous-Vézelay, 1982, Vol. 2, pp. 1035–50.
HUON DE MÉRY
(fl. first half of the 13th c.). Author of the Tournoiement Antéchrist (3,546 octosyllables;
ca. 1234–40), Huon is known only through topical allusions in this work. He appears to
have been a Norman who participated in the wars against Pierre Mauclerc, duke of
Brittany, during Louis IX’s minority (1232–35). His poem, contemporary with the
Roman de la Rose, is an allegorical psychomachia opposing the forces of God (the
Virtues, archangels, and Arthurian knights) and those of the Antichrist (the Vices, pagan
gods, and peasants). In the midst of the battle, the narrator himself is wounded in the eye
by Cupid’s arrow, which eventually drives him to seek refuge in a monastery. The poem
includes direct allusions to Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain and to Raoul de Houdenc’s Songe
d’enfer.
William W.Kibler
[See also: CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES; JACQUEMART GIELÉE; RAOUL DE
HOUDENC; TOURNAMENT ROMANCES]
Huon de Méry. Li tornoiemenz Antecrit, ed. Georg Wimmer. Marburg, 1888.
——. Le torneiment Anticrist, ed. Margaret O.Bender. University: Romance Monographs, 1976.
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