A Sixteenth-Century Arthurian Romance:
L’Hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles.
Et de Geoffroi de Maience son compaignon.
Edited by Caroline A. Jewers

MHRA Critical Texts Vol. 19
ISBN 978-0-947623-89-0
Autumn 2010
Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / EUR19.99

Giglan manuscript image

Giglan is an unusual prose rewriting of two important, entertaining medieval Arthurian verse romances, the late-twelfth century Le Bel inconnu of Renaut de Beaujeu, and the anonymous thirteenth-century Occitan Roman de Jaufre, one of only two full-length romans from the south. L’Hystoire was last published in Lyons in 1539, and went through at least five editions in the first three decades of the century. The text is most associated with the printer Claude Nourry, who was also one of Rabelais’s publishers, and so it is no accident that a rare allusion to Giglan is to be found in Pantagruel.

Giglan’s enigmatic author/translator, Claude Platin, was an Antonine Hospitaller, about whom little is known, except that he was widely-read, liked Boccaccio, and claimed proficiency in several languages: he also penned le Débat de l’homme et de l’argent (translated from the Italian Contrasto dell’uomo e del denaro), and whatis considered ‘the first arithmetical treatise to be published in the French vernacular’ (Kirsop 1980, 94), the Oeuure tressubtille & profitable de l’art & science de aristmeticque & geometrie translate nouuellement despaignol en francoys (from Juan de Ortega’s Sigue se una conpusicion de la arte dela arismetica y Juntamente de geometria; fecha y ordenada por fray Juan de Ortega de la orden de santo domingo de los predicatores).

Caroline A. Jewers is Associate Professor of French at the University of Kansas.

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A Sixteenth-Century Arthurian Romance: L’Hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles. Et de Geoffroi de Maience son compaignon. Edited by Caroline A. Jewers

Further Information:

A Sixteenth-Century Arthurian Romance:
L’Hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles.
Et de Geoffroi de Maience son compaignon.
Edited by Caroline A. Jewers