A French 13th-century chante-fable. The only surviving example of the genre, its sole source is F-Pn fr.2168. It tells, in prose, the romantic story of the love of a count’s son for a foreign girl-captive. Interspersed in the narrative are verse sections (laisses) written in lines with equal numbers of syllables, all sung to the same double phrase of melody (a relic of narrative singing; see Chanson de geste), concluding with a single four-syllable line, which forms a musical coda. The melody is published in the standard edition by Roques and in the translation by Matarasso.
See also Medieval drama.
J. Stevens: Words and Music in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1986)
JOHN STEVENS