LANG, Andrew (translator). Aucassin and Nicolette. London: David Nutt. 1887.
8vo. Contemporary red crushed morocco by Riviere & Son, spine lettered in gilt, elaborately gilt turn-ins, top edge gilt, other edges uncut, original wrappers with decorative border bound at end; pp. [4], xx, 70, [2], with engraved frontispiece by P. J. Hood; extremities gently rubbed; the odd mark, else a near fine copy.
First edition, one of 550 copies (of which 500 for sale) on Japanese paper, of Lang’s translation of this French medieval romance, in a fine contemporary binding.
Written in Old French by an anonymous author in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, Aucassin and Nicolette is the only known example of a chantefable (literally “sung story”), a hybrid form combining prose and verse. The text survives in a single manuscript, discovered and published in 1752 by French medievalist Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye. A playful parody of the medieval romance, it recounts the tale of Aucassin, son of Count Garin of Beaucaire. His love for Nicolette, a Saracen captive raised as a daughter by one of the count’s vassals, led him to forsake chivalry and even to refuse to defend his father’s lands against attack.
Andrew Lang (1844-1912), was a Scottish anthropologist, classicist, and historian, best known for his celebrated collections of fairy tales, collectively known as Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, including The Blue Fairy Book (1889). His translation of Aucassin and Nicolette appeared in the same year as that of the English poet and translator Francis William Bourdillon (1852-1921), published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. Lang’s rendering was particularly admired by Ezra Pound, who remarked that “Lang was born in order that he might translate it perfectly […] bringing into his English all the gay, sunlit charm of the original.” (p. 84).
See Pound, Spirit of Romance, 1910.
SKU: 2124441