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Οκασέν και Νικολέτ
Η μεσαιωνική γαλλική ερωτική ιστορία του Οκασέν και της Νικολέτ, έργο σύγχρονο περίπου με τις δικές μας Βυζαντινές μυθιστορίες και όμοιο μ΄ αυτές και με τα μεταγενέστερα κρητικά έργα των χωριζόμενων εραστών, είναι ένα δροσερό και σπινθηροβόλο κείμενο που δίνει στον σύγχρονο αναγνώστη μια καλή γεύση του Μεσαίωνα αλλά και τη σπιρτάδα ενός τρυφερού και ιδιοφυούς συγγραφέα. Έτσι, αυτή η απλή ιστορία είναι ένα σημαντικό, και σήμερα, βιβλίο.
60 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1223
8 people are currently reading
370 people want to read
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* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
See also: Anonymous
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
April 17, 2015
Le XIIeme siècle. Aucassin, le fils du vieux comte Garin de Beaucaire est tombé amoureux de Nicolette, une jeune esclave sarrasine achetée à des païens, à l'origine obscure mais accorte, d'allure et de physionomie gracieuse. Son père, voyant cette idylle d'un oeil mauvais, est prêt à tout pour que cette mésalliance n'arrive jamais; il imagine ainsi les plus noirs stratagèmes pour éteindre l'ardeur des deux tourteraux.
Loin d'être impressionné, notre héros s'entête et préfère encore aller en Enfer avec sa belle, les rois, les nobles et les riches plutôt qu'aller souffrir en paradis la compagnie des gueux, malades et autres ennuyeux dévots. Ces aventures, placées évidemment sous le signe de la satire et de la bonne humeur forment une plaisante distraction.
December 4, 2015
Tanka knjižica koju sam čak i ja uspjela da pročitam za samo jedan dan, ali sasvim sadržajna.
Stilom me podsjeća na priče koje mi je otac čitao u djetinjstvu za laku noć, prvenstveno na Grimove bajke, zbog čega budi u meni nostalgiju za vremenima u kojima se u mojoj „lektiri“ još uvijek mogao pronaći srećan kraj.
Teško je ocjenjivati ovakvu literaturu, jer je treba ocjenjivati u kontekstu svog vremena, ali, pošto sam osvojena zabavnim, da ne kažem humorističkim karakterom ovog romana, koji je sasvim lijepo uklopljen sa porukom koju nosi (iako potpuno neprimjenljivom u današnjem svijetu, ipak porukom), isuviše mi se čini simpatičnim da bih mu dala bilo šta manje od maksimalne ocjene. Možda će se nekom čitaocu mog prikaza ovo učiniti kao isuviše banalno objašnjenje tako visoke ocjene, ali zar nije veliko umijeće stvoriti takav humor i takvu fabulu koji čak osam vijekova kasnije uspijevaju da zabave čitaoce?
Ipak, priznajem: imam „soft spot“ za sve te tanke knjižice jednostavnih rečenica, gdje se u samo osamdesetak stranica uspije desiti tristo čuda. Naročito još ako je priča nekakva vrsta satire, kao što je slučaj ovdje! Takve stvari čine dijete u meni srećnim.
Na stranu sve moje simpatije, „Okasen i Nikoleta“, jedini preživjeli roman svoje vrste, djelo je koje je izvršilo veliki uticaj na dalji tok razvoja francuske književnosti, a njegov značaj se ogleda i u tome što predstavlja jednu vrstu preteče romana u prozi. Zbog toga ne čudi što zauzima veoma bitno mjesto u srednjovjekovnoj i uopšte u francuskoj književnosti.
Dakle, da sumiram: pikarski roman, parodija na kurtoaznu književnost, žitije i epove - u ovom romanu je baš sve okrenuto naopačke!
Stilom me podsjeća na priče koje mi je otac čitao u djetinjstvu za laku noć, prvenstveno na Grimove bajke, zbog čega budi u meni nostalgiju za vremenima u kojima se u mojoj „lektiri“ još uvijek mogao pronaći srećan kraj.
Teško je ocjenjivati ovakvu literaturu, jer je treba ocjenjivati u kontekstu svog vremena, ali, pošto sam osvojena zabavnim, da ne kažem humorističkim karakterom ovog romana, koji je sasvim lijepo uklopljen sa porukom koju nosi (iako potpuno neprimjenljivom u današnjem svijetu, ipak porukom), isuviše mi se čini simpatičnim da bih mu dala bilo šta manje od maksimalne ocjene. Možda će se nekom čitaocu mog prikaza ovo učiniti kao isuviše banalno objašnjenje tako visoke ocjene, ali zar nije veliko umijeće stvoriti takav humor i takvu fabulu koji čak osam vijekova kasnije uspijevaju da zabave čitaoce?
Ipak, priznajem: imam „soft spot“ za sve te tanke knjižice jednostavnih rečenica, gdje se u samo osamdesetak stranica uspije desiti tristo čuda. Naročito još ako je priča nekakva vrsta satire, kao što je slučaj ovdje! Takve stvari čine dijete u meni srećnim.
Na stranu sve moje simpatije, „Okasen i Nikoleta“, jedini preživjeli roman svoje vrste, djelo je koje je izvršilo veliki uticaj na dalji tok razvoja francuske književnosti, a njegov značaj se ogleda i u tome što predstavlja jednu vrstu preteče romana u prozi. Zbog toga ne čudi što zauzima veoma bitno mjesto u srednjovjekovnoj i uopšte u francuskoj književnosti.
Dakle, da sumiram: pikarski roman, parodija na kurtoaznu književnost, žitije i epove - u ovom romanu je baš sve okrenuto naopačke!
July 31, 2024
A King in childbed? "...il demande u li rois estoit, et on li dist qu'il gissoit d'enfent" Quite progressive for the XII century.
January 2, 2008
As a fan of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, I spent years thinking I was missing something because I hadn’t read Aucassin and Nicolette. Years. That was silly.
That said it’s a medieval cante fable and quite sweet. It is sentimental – it’s a love story after all – but not overly so. There’s a liberal amount of humor as well to balance it out. It has imprisonment, ship wrecks, kidnapping, and kissing. My copy is a beautiful, circa 1910 translation by Andrew Lang. There is a lengthy introduction comparing it to other works and making me wish Mr Lang were still alive so I could ask him a question or two. Here’s a bit of it:
Aucassin the frank, the fair,
Aucassin of the yellow hair,
Gentle knight, and true lover,
From the forest doth he fare,
Holds his love before him there,
Kissing cheek, and chin, and eyes,
But she spake in sober wise,
“Aucassin, true love and fair,
To what land do we repair?”
“Sweet my love, I take no care,
Thou art with me everywhere!”
So they pass the woods and downs,
Pass the villages and towns,
Hills and dales and open land,
Came at dawn to the sea sand,
Lighted down upon the strand,
Beside the sea.
That said it’s a medieval cante fable and quite sweet. It is sentimental – it’s a love story after all – but not overly so. There’s a liberal amount of humor as well to balance it out. It has imprisonment, ship wrecks, kidnapping, and kissing. My copy is a beautiful, circa 1910 translation by Andrew Lang. There is a lengthy introduction comparing it to other works and making me wish Mr Lang were still alive so I could ask him a question or two. Here’s a bit of it:
Aucassin the frank, the fair,
Aucassin of the yellow hair,
Gentle knight, and true lover,
From the forest doth he fare,
Holds his love before him there,
Kissing cheek, and chin, and eyes,
But she spake in sober wise,
“Aucassin, true love and fair,
To what land do we repair?”
“Sweet my love, I take no care,
Thou art with me everywhere!”
So they pass the woods and downs,
Pass the villages and towns,
Hills and dales and open land,
Came at dawn to the sea sand,
Lighted down upon the strand,
Beside the sea.
September 21, 2014
This is a wonderful parody of a medieval romance. Everything is reversed, the heroine isn't a beautiful Christian held by Saracens, she's a Saracen held by Christians. And Aucassin isn't a valiant knight, he shirks from his knightly duties to find his love... In one passage, he explains why he would prefer hell to heaven. And in the land of the Torelore, the king is in bed waiting to give birth. Though it's never cited as such, this is probably the earliest of the post-classical picaresque works of literature.
Be sure to read Lang's introduction.
Be sure to read Lang's introduction.
February 24, 2010
It was okay. That is about all I can say. I know it is supposed to be a great magnificent work of literature but I did not feel really connected to it. It seemed a bit draggy and tedious. Good story at the base- rich boy and poor servant girl fall in love and are imprisoned to keep them apart. Some of the things they go through to get back to one another were kind of funny and I did like the part about wanting to go to hell rather than heaven because the people in hell would be more interesting. That was pretty funny. I guess in the grand scheme it was a pretty good read but I don't want to read it again anytime soon.
March 12, 2018
Très bizarre de voir cet ancien français. La traduction en français moderne était, pour moi, nécessaire pour comprendre le texte en complet, mais j'ai beaucoup appris, et j'aime cela. Un très beau livre, ce n'est pas du tout l'image que j'avais de la littérature médiévale, j'ai été surprise de façon agréable.
3 - 3.5 étoiles.
3 - 3.5 étoiles.
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September 15, 2024Pour mon cours de littérature français
June 23, 2025
I re-read this one for the first time since, I don’t know, maybe grad school, because it fit with the theme of gender and play for a co-written project I was working on. For medieval literature fans who haven’t already read this one, it’s a fun little ball of weirdness. Much like something way more serious like The Consolation of Philosophy, it alternates prose and verse, but instead of being categorized as a prosimetrum, it’s the only extant example in medieval French of what’s called a chantefable, a term suggesting oral (or rather, musical) performance. This edition dates it to the thirteenth century—I’ve seen late 12th as a date, too, but 13th makes more sense to me, because I do think it’s parodying elements of romance, which requires there to have been an established romance tradition to parody.
It’s got a very Floire et Blanchefleur-esque plot: the attractive young lovers, one Christian and one Muslim, face familial opposition to their love and go on a series of adventures. I was interested in it because of the humorous treatment of gender throughout—Aucassin is kind of a passive chump while Nicolette is the mastermind of their adventures, and they end up at the middle of the book in a place called Torelore where the king lies in childbirth while the queen and ladies fight a war with rotten eggs and vegetables. It’s ridiculous—you know it’s going to end with them getting married, but the other major plot points are weird enough to add a little pizzazz.
Walter’s edition here is a facing page Old French/Modern French translation, and because it alternates between prose and verse chapters, with a lot of repetition in vocabulary between those sections, it’s a pretty fast read, even for someone as rusty in French as I am. There are helpful appendices about things like the manuscript tradition and the musical notation, and a set of notes on the text at the end. Walter hits the “Nicolette as fairy” argument more than I think is necessarily justified by the text, but it’s still a very helpful apparatus for understanding and contextualizing the text. Obviously the audience for this text is a limited one, but if you’re in said audience, this is a worthwhile edition. As far as I can tell, it’s the most recent modern French edition/translation, so if you were teaching a French literature class and wanted an edition to assign, this would make sense—after all, that’s the context in which I read it! I haven’t read Robert Sturges’s 2015 modern English translation yet, but now I’m interested in checking it out to see how his edition and reading of the text compares.
It’s got a very Floire et Blanchefleur-esque plot: the attractive young lovers, one Christian and one Muslim, face familial opposition to their love and go on a series of adventures. I was interested in it because of the humorous treatment of gender throughout—Aucassin is kind of a passive chump while Nicolette is the mastermind of their adventures, and they end up at the middle of the book in a place called Torelore where the king lies in childbirth while the queen and ladies fight a war with rotten eggs and vegetables. It’s ridiculous—you know it’s going to end with them getting married, but the other major plot points are weird enough to add a little pizzazz.
Walter’s edition here is a facing page Old French/Modern French translation, and because it alternates between prose and verse chapters, with a lot of repetition in vocabulary between those sections, it’s a pretty fast read, even for someone as rusty in French as I am. There are helpful appendices about things like the manuscript tradition and the musical notation, and a set of notes on the text at the end. Walter hits the “Nicolette as fairy” argument more than I think is necessarily justified by the text, but it’s still a very helpful apparatus for understanding and contextualizing the text. Obviously the audience for this text is a limited one, but if you’re in said audience, this is a worthwhile edition. As far as I can tell, it’s the most recent modern French edition/translation, so if you were teaching a French literature class and wanted an edition to assign, this would make sense—after all, that’s the context in which I read it! I haven’t read Robert Sturges’s 2015 modern English translation yet, but now I’m interested in checking it out to see how his edition and reading of the text compares.
December 17, 2019
Aucassin and Nicolette is an anonymous Old French chantefable (creation comprising prose and verse), probably from the 12th or 13th century; its only remaining source is a manuscript kept in the National Library of France, in Paris. The story fascinated authors such as Andrew Lang and Francis William Bourdillon, who translated the chantefable in English. I read both translations and I found them very good and similar, but I prefer Lang's version because it's more melodious and it sounds a little more old-fashioned than the other one. However, in this review, I will quote and use some of Bourdillon’s explanations from the preface of his edition and a few critical ideas from the Dictionary of the Middle Ages.
Bourdillon thinks that sometimes we need to leave modern complicated novels behind and turn to old and simple tales, which we may find "more moving, more tender, even more real, than all the laboured realism of these photographic days." (Loc. 10) He compares Aucassin and Nicolette with Romeo and Juliet, Cupid and Psyche and other classic romances, but the things that make this Old French chantefable stand out are the "perpetual touches of actual life, and words that raise pictures (...)" (Loc.12). The translator speculates that the plot is not original because the particular form of this tale pre-exists in the Arabian or Moorish culture. Thus, Bourdillon suggests that the story probably comes from Spain, the place where two religions and mentalities met. To be more exact, the plot doesn’t seem to take place in Provence, where Old French literature flourished, but in Spain. The British poet argues that Carthage doesn't refer to the Tunisian city, but to Cartagena (a port in South-East Spain), Valence is not the city situated on the Rhône River, but Valencia and the fictional name Torelore - the place where Aucassin and Nicolette shipwrecked - could be Torello.
That being said, let’s take a look at our protagonists. Aucassin is Count Garin or Warren of Beaucaire’s son, who should fight against Count Bulgarius or Bougars of Valence, his father's enemy. However, the lad refuses to become a knight and save the besieged city because he has fallen in love with Nicolette, a christened Saracen girl, who was taken from Carthage as a slave and brought up in a culture different from her own. Unlike the other knights, Aucassin doesn't care too much about duty or glory; he is constantly daydreaming about his sweetheart and laments when the two lovers are separated from each other by their parents.
A thing I haven’t expected to read in a 13th century tale is the young man’s ideas about religion which are very modern for that time if you ask me. During an argument with the Viscount, Nicolette’s ‘father in God’, Aucassin says that he would rather go to hell than to heaven because in hell he would find all the great knights, courteous ladies, lovers, artists, princes and all the riches of the world. Well, you have to admit that he is certainly not your typical medieval Christian! Actually, if you look carefully at his name, Aucassin sounds pretty Moorish, unlike his sweetheart's Christian name. Bourdillion writes that Aucassin could be related to the 11th century King of Cordova, Alcazin, whose name was turned into French.
Now let’s turn our attention to the relationship between the young man and the beautiful maiden. If Aucassin doesn’t like to fight against his father’s enemies, maybe he is better at fighting for his love interest, right? Unfortunately, he is more of a philosopher than a man of action, though you might expect more motivation in this case. Even though he goes to Nicolette’s house, fights and captures the Count of Valence just for the covenant’s sake or looks for his beloved into the forest, the young lady is the one n charge of their relationship. For example, she runs away from home in order to save herself from Count Beaucaire’s rage and determination to kill her. And, in order to return to her lover’s land, she dresses up as a troubadour. No damsel in distress has the courage and wit to do such a thing; at least I haven’t read of such women in medieval literature. It is true that Nicolette has sugary soliloquies like her lover and the narrator praises her beauty excessively, which matches perfectly the medieval female ideal – the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman with a light complexion and small, delicate hands.
The unusual twists and unspecific elements found in this story made critics see this tale as a parody of the epic, romance and saint's life. Actually, this chantefable satirises many Old French genres, such as amor de lonh or distant love; here, the maiden is the one who searches her lover, not vice versa. Karl Uitti writes in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages that Aucassin and Nicolette combines elements from various Old French genres, such as 'chanson de geste', 'lyric poems' and 'courtly novels'. He states that the term 'chantefable' appeared for the first time in the last line of this tale: “No cantefable prent fin”.
Some situations, such as the pregnant king in childbed and the rival armies, who fight against each other with baked apples, eggs and cheese projectiles, are truly hilarious scenes that reminded Lang of Rabelais' grotesque humour. In real life, people fought in wars over food, not with food. If Aucassin and Nicolette’s romance was not enough to exemplify gender role reversals, the author threw in another one: the king lays in childbed and the queen is at war with the royal army. However, if we leave behind the comic aspects of the scene, we could follow Bourdillon's interpretation of this strange behaviour. According to his research, in many cultures, there was a custom named Couvade, in which the father mimicked labour pains to sympathise with the mother and to protect her and the newborn against evil spirits. As a matter of fact, Strabo took notes of this ritual in his writings too.
http://elitere.ro/aucassin-and-nicole...
Bourdillon thinks that sometimes we need to leave modern complicated novels behind and turn to old and simple tales, which we may find "more moving, more tender, even more real, than all the laboured realism of these photographic days." (Loc. 10) He compares Aucassin and Nicolette with Romeo and Juliet, Cupid and Psyche and other classic romances, but the things that make this Old French chantefable stand out are the "perpetual touches of actual life, and words that raise pictures (...)" (Loc.12). The translator speculates that the plot is not original because the particular form of this tale pre-exists in the Arabian or Moorish culture. Thus, Bourdillon suggests that the story probably comes from Spain, the place where two religions and mentalities met. To be more exact, the plot doesn’t seem to take place in Provence, where Old French literature flourished, but in Spain. The British poet argues that Carthage doesn't refer to the Tunisian city, but to Cartagena (a port in South-East Spain), Valence is not the city situated on the Rhône River, but Valencia and the fictional name Torelore - the place where Aucassin and Nicolette shipwrecked - could be Torello.
That being said, let’s take a look at our protagonists. Aucassin is Count Garin or Warren of Beaucaire’s son, who should fight against Count Bulgarius or Bougars of Valence, his father's enemy. However, the lad refuses to become a knight and save the besieged city because he has fallen in love with Nicolette, a christened Saracen girl, who was taken from Carthage as a slave and brought up in a culture different from her own. Unlike the other knights, Aucassin doesn't care too much about duty or glory; he is constantly daydreaming about his sweetheart and laments when the two lovers are separated from each other by their parents.
A thing I haven’t expected to read in a 13th century tale is the young man’s ideas about religion which are very modern for that time if you ask me. During an argument with the Viscount, Nicolette’s ‘father in God’, Aucassin says that he would rather go to hell than to heaven because in hell he would find all the great knights, courteous ladies, lovers, artists, princes and all the riches of the world. Well, you have to admit that he is certainly not your typical medieval Christian! Actually, if you look carefully at his name, Aucassin sounds pretty Moorish, unlike his sweetheart's Christian name. Bourdillion writes that Aucassin could be related to the 11th century King of Cordova, Alcazin, whose name was turned into French.
Now let’s turn our attention to the relationship between the young man and the beautiful maiden. If Aucassin doesn’t like to fight against his father’s enemies, maybe he is better at fighting for his love interest, right? Unfortunately, he is more of a philosopher than a man of action, though you might expect more motivation in this case. Even though he goes to Nicolette’s house, fights and captures the Count of Valence just for the covenant’s sake or looks for his beloved into the forest, the young lady is the one n charge of their relationship. For example, she runs away from home in order to save herself from Count Beaucaire’s rage and determination to kill her. And, in order to return to her lover’s land, she dresses up as a troubadour. No damsel in distress has the courage and wit to do such a thing; at least I haven’t read of such women in medieval literature. It is true that Nicolette has sugary soliloquies like her lover and the narrator praises her beauty excessively, which matches perfectly the medieval female ideal – the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman with a light complexion and small, delicate hands.
The unusual twists and unspecific elements found in this story made critics see this tale as a parody of the epic, romance and saint's life. Actually, this chantefable satirises many Old French genres, such as amor de lonh or distant love; here, the maiden is the one who searches her lover, not vice versa. Karl Uitti writes in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages that Aucassin and Nicolette combines elements from various Old French genres, such as 'chanson de geste', 'lyric poems' and 'courtly novels'. He states that the term 'chantefable' appeared for the first time in the last line of this tale: “No cantefable prent fin”.
Some situations, such as the pregnant king in childbed and the rival armies, who fight against each other with baked apples, eggs and cheese projectiles, are truly hilarious scenes that reminded Lang of Rabelais' grotesque humour. In real life, people fought in wars over food, not with food. If Aucassin and Nicolette’s romance was not enough to exemplify gender role reversals, the author threw in another one: the king lays in childbed and the queen is at war with the royal army. However, if we leave behind the comic aspects of the scene, we could follow Bourdillon's interpretation of this strange behaviour. According to his research, in many cultures, there was a custom named Couvade, in which the father mimicked labour pains to sympathise with the mother and to protect her and the newborn against evil spirits. As a matter of fact, Strabo took notes of this ritual in his writings too.
http://elitere.ro/aucassin-and-nicole...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2021
Excellente porte d'entrée dans la littérature médiévale pour les novices et réfractaires. Très bon texte également pour les connaisseur.euse.s qui souhaitent poursuivre leur exploration. Cette chantefable possède de nombreux aspects et subtilités qu'il est intéressant d'étudier de plus près.
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March 10, 2020Ze síně v síň šel, stále dál,
až k loži, na němž ležel král.
„Co je vám, pro Bůh, pane králi?“
„Je vidět, hochu, že jdeš z dáli.
Což nevíš, že mám zrodit syna?
Šestinedělí započíná.“
až k loži, na němž ležel král.
„Co je vám, pro Bůh, pane králi?“
„Je vidět, hochu, že jdeš z dáli.
Což nevíš, že mám zrodit syna?
Šestinedělí započíná.“
January 30, 2025
i read this for french class and it was fairly amusing but still getting a three stars
June 3, 2025
nuh uh
August 6, 2017
This book tells the story of a French boy named Aucassin and a Saracen girl named Nicolette who fall in love despite their parents’ wishes and, of course, go to great lengths to make it happen anyway. “Aucassin et Nicolette” is the only example of a ‘chantefable’—or ‘sung story’—from the Middle Ages. As such, the reading alternates between sung verse and recited prose. This edition came with the original Old French on the left and contemporary French on the right side, which is interesting in itself in that the Old French is at times downright incomprehensible to me! I will say it was pretty funny though for I felt that I could read it and ‘understand it’… but not really. LOL! While I can get exasperated over Old English (sorry Shakespeare), I generally feel the gap between Old French and contemporary French to be even more drastic. I did note that the original text tends to rhyme, which is lost in the modern translation, and the text is sometimes written in past tense and others in present tense—which served as a reminder of the stylistic influence of oral tradition.
A story which, although simple, provides a glimpse into a once vastly popular literary tradition.
A story which, although simple, provides a glimpse into a once vastly popular literary tradition.
December 22, 2020
Dear Disney,
This. Is. How. You. Write. A. Good. Female. Character.
Many thanks to the Librivox volunteer for turning this into an audiobook.
Before Fiona made it cool in Shrek 3 (4?) to save yourself, this chick snuck by her sleeping guardian, knotted herself a rope of handkerchiefs and bedsheets and whatnot and climbed out the really tall tower, escaped soldiers sent to track her down and kill her and lived on her own in a forest #offthegrid. All the while Boyfriend Material spent time weeping and ocasionally falling off his horse and dislocating his shoulder due to daydreaming about Nicolette (as he should, but damn). And this was written in the 12th or 13th century!
A daring escape, adventures in foreign lands and oddly helpful episodic characters - an all this in under 100 pages (well, a bit more, the way books are printed now, but still).
This. Is. How. You. Write. A. Good. Female. Character.
Many thanks to the Librivox volunteer for turning this into an audiobook.
Before Fiona made it cool in Shrek 3 (4?) to save yourself, this chick snuck by her sleeping guardian, knotted herself a rope of handkerchiefs and bedsheets and whatnot and climbed out the really tall tower, escaped soldiers sent to track her down and kill her and lived on her own in a forest #offthegrid. All the while Boyfriend Material spent time weeping and ocasionally falling off his horse and dislocating his shoulder due to daydreaming about Nicolette (as he should, but damn). And this was written in the 12th or 13th century!
A daring escape, adventures in foreign lands and oddly helpful episodic characters - an all this in under 100 pages (well, a bit more, the way books are printed now, but still).
January 27, 2021
The usual drivel, save for the fist mention of Robeceons O.F., Robesson, Robin (Robin Hood) in literature, who was actually a herd/shepherd. So it seems that Robin Hood was a Norman import and all the experts were wrong, once again. This makes sense as the native Britons were, and still are, a loutish lot (just go to a British football match), more interested in swilling, wenching, and farcing their pie holes than in romance. There's also a Johanes O.F., Johannot, or Johnny (Little John) who is unaccountably omitted in the inept Lang translation, I recommend the Bourdillon translation.
February 3, 2019
Aucassin, a French noble, loves Nicolette, a muslim woman. Their love is forbidden and in protest Aucassin renounces his knighthood and refuses to defend his father's kingdom. Aucassin is imprisoned, though eventually escapes and runs off. He finds her again and they live happily ever after.
Not a whole bunch happens in this story, and having been written in the 12th century is a tough read.
Can't recommend
Not a whole bunch happens in this story, and having been written in the 12th century is a tough read.
Can't recommend
February 11, 2009
A simple story with an unknown author from the 13th century. There is a paragraph that echoes a portion of the Bible that made me believe the author must have been a priest or monk (as they were some of the only ones able to read at this time). Better than most medieval stories, which aren't my favorite.
December 16, 2016
This is an odd one. It's half poetry and half prose. Its an epic romance but also has some absurd bits. There's fights, captures, disguise's etc. It also has a surprisingly strong heroine who really does far more than the guy. Overall it's a nice oddity and as i understand it unique in its form of storytelling.
October 22, 2007
A flimsy little story of star-crossed lovers, with some high adventure medieval-style. The beauty of this book lies in imagining a troubador performing the piece in verse and song.
May 5, 2008
Medieval French poetry refreshingly attuned to questions of religious and gendered identity that are so current today.
December 20, 2010
french book
May 18, 2013
I rememb er reading and loathing this book at age 11. Not sure it deserves such hatred!
August 25, 2018
First French novel I have ever read. Definitely gives off some Shakespear vibes, but without the confusing language.
April 28, 2019
Aucassin a Nicoletta je tak trochu hrdinský epos, tak trochu středověká verze Romea a Julie. Je to průměrné čtení, ale dobrá práce na 13. století. Láska je přece nadčasová.
February 25, 2021
Fun indeed
December 29, 2019
This is the love story of Aucassin and Nicolette - Aucassin being the son of a wealthy count and Nicolette the daughter of the king of Carthage who was taken prisoner as a child and brought up by a vicomte. The parents are against their union, and the couple has to flee from their city.
While most contemporary texts describe Muslims (Saracens) as mean savages, this text takes a different stance and religion does not play a role. As such it is a pretty remarkable text given that it dates back to around 1200.
As a story it is less accomplished than contemporary texts such as the ones by Chrestien de Troyes or Marie de France. Its form is different from the contemporary literature as well - this must be the first musical ever written.
Despite its shortcomings, Aucassin et Nicolette is a peculiar text (both in content and form) that deserves to be read also today.
While most contemporary texts describe Muslims (Saracens) as mean savages, this text takes a different stance and religion does not play a role. As such it is a pretty remarkable text given that it dates back to around 1200.
As a story it is less accomplished than contemporary texts such as the ones by Chrestien de Troyes or Marie de France. Its form is different from the contemporary literature as well - this must be the first musical ever written.
Despite its shortcomings, Aucassin et Nicolette is a peculiar text (both in content and form) that deserves to be read also today.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 20, 2025
Reading this tale highlights the political and tense relations of a Mideval France with the Moors. The improbable and typical love epic that’s been turned on its head shows the boy of a noble man in love with a simple Saracen maiden who is under the care of a priest (cardinal?) who later turns out to be the daughter of a Carthaginian ruler. Years apart, they refuse to forget one another and no matter their circumstance, they always meet one another in the middle.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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