Among the more interesting incunabula preserved in the Salle de
la Reserve of the Bibliotheque National in Paris are the apparently
unique copies of two editions, very similar in content, of a work
entitled Les Adevineaux amoureux. In much more comprehensive form
Les Adevineaux amoureux is preserved in a manuscript belonging to
the Musee Conde at Chantilly. All three texts, in medieval French,
appear to date from the 1470s. The present work, Amorous Games, is
a critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux.
Amorous Games is a miscellany whose principal unifying force is
the compiler's aim to provide a manual of conversation and
entertainment for polite society. Included are series of questions
and answers belonging to the well-established medieval tradition of
the "Demandes amoureuses"; a very large number of riddles, mainly
folk riddles; and "venditions en amours," little poems that
apparently came into bing as part of a social game.
Students of medieval French literature, particularly those with
a penchant for some of the minor genres, will find new material in
the Amorous Games. Folklorists will discover what is probably the
largest collection of riddles bequeathed to us by medieval France
and also much that is of value to specialists in the proverb and
folk tale.
For this critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux Professor
Hassell has selected the Chantilly manuscript, because it is the
most complete and also because it had not yet been published. The
Appendix contains the text of the more complete of the two
incunabula and the significant variants appearing in the other
fifteenth-century printed edition. The manuscript text has been
collated with that of the incunabula, and copious notes and an
index to the riddles have been supplied. In his introduction
Professor Hassell discusses in detail the major classes and
subclasses of the riddle, drawing on the work of Petsch, Taylor,
Abrahams, and other scholars of the genre.
General
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