A2.II. Manuscripts – related abbreviations, editions and studies

R (+ number, e.g. R216) is the relevant laisse in the list established by Fritz Roepke in his Studien zur Chanson d'Aspremont (Greifswald, 1909). This doctoral thesis contains a list of the laisses with their rhyme schemes and a catalogue of their sequence in a selection of the mss. which includes P2 and P3 but not L2, L3, Ch, W (see here below). It is to be emphasised that this numerical ordering  is the orientation point or determinant of the present database.

L2 (Brandin [i.e. Brandin's edition, see 'W' below] : M) = London, British Museum, Lansdowne 782. 13th cent. The main ms. of the edition, transcribed from a copy on cd-rom.

L3 (Brandin: N) = London, British Museum, Add. ms. 35289. 13th cent.. Published in part in André de Mandach, Naissance et développement de la chanson de geste en Europe: IV, Chanson d’Aspremont, B. (Geneve, 1980). The edition renders R88-329. The readings given in the variant apparatus here are derived from that edition and not from the ms. itself. From R 329 onwards occasional variants in L3 are reproduced from Brandin’s edition of the W text. Mandach's preceding edition,  Naissance et développement de la chanson de geste en Europe: III, Chanson d’Aspremont, A. (Geneve, 1975) includes, inter alia, an introduction, and an edition of laisses R1-88 (for which no Old Norse translation has survived). For the purposes of citing the Old Norse in other contexts Mandach makes use of the translation into English by Constance B. Hieatt, Karlamagnús saga, The Saga of Charlemagne and his Heroes, Vol. II (Toronto, 1975).

Ch (i.e. 'Cheltenham') originally belonged to the Phillips Library, Cheltenham, and is now in the Martin Bodmer Foundation, 13th. cent. Some readings are cited from Mandach 1980.

P2 (Brandin: C) = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 25529. 13th or 14th cent. From R328 onwards a number of readings are transcribed from a copy on cd-rom, particularly R343a and 343b. This ms. has been edited by François Suard: Aspremont, Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, Présentation, édition et traduction par François Suard d’après le manuscrit 25529 de la BNF (Champion Classiques, Paris, 2008). Suard's numbering of the laisses in P2 is adopted here.

P3 (Brandin: O) = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 1598. 14th cent. – transcribed from a photocopy of the ms.

W (Brandin: W) = Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire. 13th cent. Edited by Louis Brandin: La Chanson d'Aspremont, chanson du geste de XIIe siècle, texte du manuscrit de Wollaton Hall (Classiques français du moyen âge, 19 & 25, 2nd revised ed, Paris, 1923-24).

Kms-U = Karlamagnús saga, ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania, 1860). For Agþ, branch IV in the edition, there is first the β version (Kms-β, pp. 126-263), which is reworked and less important for the present purposes, then the α version     (pp. 264-370, Kms-α) on the basis of the mss. A (Kms-A) and a (Kms-a). In an appendix there is the fragmentary text NRA 62e, named fragment 2 (Kms-Fr2, pp. 558-562), which contains the same version as Kms-α; its twelve surviving scraps of parchment are what remains of five leaves; three of these scraps belong to the Agþ branch and correspond to some lines between R238 and 367,  one contains text of the translation of Otinel, and one derives from the Kms text of the Voyage ou Pèlerinage à Jérusalem. In its complete state Kms-Fr2, according to Halvorsen 1959 70ff., must have been a superior text to both A and a.

Roelef Van Waard, Etudes sur l’origine et la formation de la Chanson d’Aspremont, (Groningen, 1937, pp. 204-210), includes a correspondence table which aligns the chapters in Kms-U with the laisse-numbers in W and with the numbers alotted to the laisses in R.

E. F. Halvorsen, The Norse Version of the Chanson de Roland, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, XIX (Hafniæ, 1959).

Povl Skårup, “Om den norrøne oversættelse i Karlamagnús saga af den oldfranske chanson d’Aspremont,” Opuscula VI (= Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana XXXIII), 1979, 79-103.

Povl Skårup, “Contenu, sources, rédactions,” in  Karlamagnús saga, Branches I, III, VII et IX (Copenhague, 1980), 333-355.

References