SOURCE: “Precursors and Progenitors of Aucassin et Nicolette,” in Studies in Philology, Vol. 74, No. 1, January, 1977, pp. 1-19.

In the essay that follows, Hunt studies the form of Aucassin et Nicolette and maintains that its author drew on literary precedents in which prose and verse are combined. The originality of Aucassin et Nicolette, argues Hunt, arises from the regularity and consistency of the work's structure.

Critics of the celebrated chantefable have long puzzled over its originality of form. Hermann Suchier wrote “La forme de la nouvelle—l’auteur l’appelle cantefable—est unique en son genre en France: des morceaux en vers alternant avec des morceaux en prose.”¹ Yet it is precisely the poem's originality of form which has been deemed to account for its apparent lack of success, its greatest devotee F. W. Bourdillon frankly declaring,

One may reasonably conjecture that it is to the unattractiveness of its...