SOURCE: “Aucassin et Nicolette,” in Ambivalent Conventions: Formula and Parody in Old French, Rodopi, 1995, pp. 55-81.

In the following essay, Cobby argues that analyzing the manner in which the author manipulates his readers' expectations reveals the essentially parodic nature of Aucassin et Nicolette.

Much has been written on Aucassin et Nicolette in the last hundred years, but alone among our texts it is at present not a very active field.¹ Work on parody in the text was surveyed thoroughly and critically by Tony Hunt in 1979, in an article which argues against its being a parodic work and calls attention most usefully to the dangers which beset parody scholarship in general; a more recent but brief survey is by Imre Szabics.² The presence of parody is now taken for granted by most critics, though the extent and significance attributed to it vary: from ‘allusion pleine d’humour’ to a...