Article

Name: The laisse in Medieval Romance and Welsh literary opuses

Authors: V. B. Semyonov

Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: This paper presents the first attempt to systematically describe the laisse as the medieval quasi- stanzaic form. The essay considers communication and interaction of the laisse and border verse compositions within the whole range of genres of poetic narration (chanson de geste, romance, vie de saint). For the first time, the description of the presence of the laisse in ancient Welsh literature is given, and roman-Welsh typological parallels are carried out. As to the Romanesque literatures, the peak of the distribution of the «chanson de geste» genre, associated with the form of the laisse, falls to the end of the 12th century and the entire 13th century. The whole period of the laisse being present in Romanesque literatures is between the beginning of the 12th century and the middle of the 15th century. In Welsh poetry, mostly in folklore samples, the peak of popularity of the laisse falls to the 9th–10th centuries. Moreover, in the Romanesque literatures, the laisse became quickly associated with the voluminous forms of the syllabic verse – tenand twelve-syllabic, and at the same time, it did not adhere to the octosyllabic compositions. Meanwhile, in the oldest Welsh poetry, everything was different: the laisse subdued the whole register of local metric forms. The essay presents the results of an analysis of the complete register of stanzaic forms of all samples of ancient Welsh poetry from the «four ancient books of Wales»: «The Book of Aneirin» consists entirely of laisses filled with lines of either a short or a long meter. In «The Book of Taliesin», 47 of 57 poems are decorated with the laisse, in «The Black Book of Carmarthen» only 12 of 39 works contain laisses, and in the poetic part of «The Red Book of Hergest», including ancient poetry, only 10 texts are framed by laisses. As a result of the study, the main stages of the evolution of the ancient Welsh stanzaic system were outlined. At first, the laisse as a quasistanzaic form dominates in the epic poetic texts of a large volume. Then, the leading role gradually passes from the quasi-stanzas to the emerging terzets, Englynion. Finally, on the one hand, terzets try to grow into correct stanzas of a larger size, and on the other hand, laisses try to align with one another. It is suggested that there was the single source of the verse technique of the Romanesque and Celtic peoples on the territory of Western Europe. The laisse appears as a rudiment of the oldest poetic system which the Celts probably transferred in the process of migration from the continent to the British Isles, and which the Romanesque peoples inherited from the pre- Romanesque population of the respective regions.

Keywords: laisse, chanson de geste, vie de saint, poesie en Romanz, ancient Welsh poetry, Cynfeirdd

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