Edward HEINEMANN Line-Opening Tool Words in the Charroi de

Line-Opening Tool Words
in the
1
Charroi de Nîmes
Edward A. HEINEMANN
University of Toronto
The absence of enjambment from the chanson de geste is well
known, as is the predominance of parataxis over hypotaxis; indeed, these
traits contribute mightily to what often seems a droning form of
versification. This apparent monotony, however, is in fact a framework
or backdrop which highlights subtle effects. While enjambment as it
figures in modern verse is extremely rare in the genre, this very absence
serves to emphasize the play of variation in the grammatical, lexical, and
narrative connections between successive verses. The reality evoked by
the term parataxis could perhaps be more accurately expressed by
stating that the grammatical relation (coordination or subordination)
between clauses receives expression while the lexical relations like cause
or consequence remain largely implicit. The austere set of expressions
acts as something of a base line against which a melody plays consisting
of the various connections implicit in the succession of verses.
A wide range of elements goes into this play of melody and base
line: semantic thrust at the cesura, echo and variation in the semantic
patterns within the hemistich, and semantic and narrative thrusts at the
line end. In the context of a long-term study of repetition and meter in
the genre,2 I should like to examine here one small aspect of the play of
semantic thrust at the line end, namely the tool words which may open a
verse and give explicit expression to the grammatical and lexical
connections between successive verses.
The nature of versification is such in the chanson de geste that every
line of verse constitutes a kind of "metric sentence": meter imposes a full
1
Paper given at the twenty-sixth International Conference on Medieval
Studies at Kalamazoo, May 1991. Portions of the work reported on here were
made possible by a release-time grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
2
Heinemann, "On the Metric Artistry." The approach derives from the
application of Zumthor's perception of a "new form" in early Gallo-Romance
verse to Rychner's grammatical classification of four hundred verses in the
Couronnement de Louis. See Rychner, "Observations" 166-82, and Zumthor, "Le
Vers comme unité" 763-74.
52.Olifant / Vol. 17. Nos. 1-2
lexical and syntactic stop at the line-end. Against this abstract backdrop,
the linguistic string which gives concrete reality to meter can do one of
three things. It can reinforce the full stop by ending the grammatical
sentence at the line-end and changing the subject, going on to other
matters, a full stop:
Et dit Bertrans
De cels des chars
a toz tens i vendrez
devons ore chanter
1021
1022
It can close on an anticipatory note, thrusting forward, for example, from
a subordinate clause to the main clause, an anticipating thrust:
Ses veïssiez
De male gent
encontremont errer
vos peüst remenbrer
1027
1028
Or it can seem to close the sentence at the line-end only to turn around in
the next line of verse and prolong the sentence with, for example, a
relative clause modifying a noun in the first verse, an agglutinating
thrust:
De cels des chars
devons ore chanter
1022
Qui le charroi
dévoient bien mener
1023
Each of these abstract representations is subject to a considerable range
of what we might call lexical or narrative variations, and the result is that
that seeming monotony, in which line after line seems to drone on
endlessly, evaporates, in fact, again and again into thin air. Read (or
listen to) those lines with an ear for the thrust from one line to the next,
and one feels, not only variation as verse follows verse, but also, in
places, some striking lyric effects.
As a part of an effort to grasp the extent of the phenomenon, I
collected for study the first word of every verse in the Charroi de Nîmes
(Duncan edition). See the appendix the "homebrew" procedures used to
sort the text by line-opening word;3 in the paper proper I shall evoke
3
The procedure used is simply a makeshift one. The authors of TACT (©
1990, University of Toronto), John Bradley and Lidio Presutti, are currently
working on revisions intended to incorporate into the program searches of the
some of the considerations in selecting or excluding words for study and
make a tentative sketch of the kinds of semantic thrust involved.
Of the 1486 line-opening words, only those which show two features
are pertinent. 1) They are tool words, and 2) they express, explicitly,
some sort of relation to the preceding (occasionally to the following) line.
Other kinds of words, like nouns and verbs, can be eliminated from the
list. A preposition like par or a likewise does not refer back:
Par un seul home
A chascun font
507
970
iert cele hennor tenue
un grant mail aporter
Rather it introduces and forms a part of an adverbial noun phrase. In
contrast, the adverb puis expresses chronological relation between the
preceding verse and the one which it opens:
Puis descendi
de son corant destrier
358
A number of prepositions form a class of tool words which function
entirely within their own clause and contribute nothing to the thrust
from verse to verse. The following list is not intended to be complete,
nor are the numbers necessarily precise:4
a
avec
de
dedenz
delez
45
1
46
4
2
derrière
devant
par
por
1
7
48
22
To the extent that these words do affect the flow from one metric unit to
another, they bear on the flow from first to second hemistich and not on
the relation of one verse to another.
sort used in this paper. One of the purposes of this paper in its early phases was
to demonstrate the interest of incorporating such searches into TACT.
4
Precise numbers of occurrences are of little interest in this study, the
principal point being the various components which enter into the thrust from
one verse to the next. Precision of numbers could conceivably become of interest
with tagging possibilities of TACT.
54 • Olifant / Vol. 17. Nos. 1-2
To some extent prédéterminants like the definite article and the
demonstrative contain a reference to a preceding line in that they express
previous knowledge of the noun they modify:
Les .III. enfanz
que il ot engendrez
883
The three children have just been identified five lines earlier, and thus in
a sense the line-opening tool word expresses a kind of discursive bond
between successive verses. We shall not, however, look at this middle
area of rather subtle deixis. We are interested simply in the variety of
expression given to the relations between successive clauses.
One might be inclined to consider the adverb avant as belonging to
our category, but the sole occurrence in initial position of the verse is a
spatial meaning and involves no reference to earlier or later verses:
Avant passèrent
Guïelin et Bertran
627
Chronological sequence, corresponding as it does more or less to the
succession of one sentence after another, evokes a narrative thrust
forward in a way which spatial organization does not.
The following seem to be the words which display the two pertinent
traits, of being tool words and of expressing relation to the preceding or
following verse.
ainz
après
atant
car
einçois
et
lors
mes
13
5
2
1
3
201
5
18
ne,n'
puis
quant
que, qu'
qui
se, s', si
tant
tel
39
13
46
55
35
67
12
4
The list contains a number of uncertainties, the most obvious being the
conflation of se and si both the possessive adjective and the conjunction.
(The 18 occurrences of mes, however, represent only the conjunction and
not the two occurrences of the possessive adjective.) The list divides the
tool words into two kinds. On the one hand there is a small list of words
with more or less precise lexical meaning in two domains, temporal
Heinemann / Line-Opening Tool Words • 55
relation (après, atant, lors, puis, quant) and logical relation (aim, einçois,
mes). These words, with the exception of quant, appear markedly less
often than the second group, words with little or no lexical precision (in
particular et and que). This pattern reflects that of word frequencies
generally: the greater the lexical precision, the lower the frequency (see
Gougenheim et al). Whether the frequencies in our list exaggerate the
"normal" pattern is uncertain, but we can see clearly that the set of tool
words confirms the lack of explicit lexical value given to the semantic
thrust from one verse to the next; those relations remain largely implicit
and even ambiguous.
The severely limited range of explicit relations in these words
underscores not only the variety of the implicit thrusts from one verse to
the next but also the rather fine nuances by which thrusts may differ. A
brief look at a few line-opening tool words will allow us to discern some
of the elements which may go into the thrust from verse to verse. Things
like the fine details of the lexical or grammatical values expressed, like
the rhythmic effects deriving from the length (or metric status) of the
phrase expressing the thrust, and like the direction of the thrust are quite
subtle components of linguistic competence. In any succession of verses,
however, they have the potential to provoke considerable lyric effect. It
is not necessary to be able to recognize anaphora by name in order to be
sensible of its effect, and whether it is perceived by the eye or by the ear,
by a twentieth-century philologist or a twelfth-century illiterate,
anaphora is a potent rhetorical device.
The adverbs atant and lors express a fairly simple agglutination,
anchoring to a point in time the metric sentence which they introduce.
This agglutination takes the lexical value of chronologic reference
backward to a point in the recent diegetic past.5
Atant ez vos
Atant ez vos
Lors chevauchierent
Lors dist Guillelmes
Lors li remenbre
5
et Harpin et Otrant
.M. chevalier vaillant
et rengié et serré
que ne l'entendi ame
de Guillelme au cort nes
1114
1413
829
1335
1210
The sorting order of the verses is alphabetic beginning with the lineopening word. I have not rearranged this order except to point out differences of
thrust, when they occur.
56 • Olifant / Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2
Lors oi de vos
Lors se regarde
dan rois molt grant pitié
dan Guillelmes arrier
239
733
These two toolwords operate a brief reopening of the preceding verse in
the sense that they refer back to that verse as chronological point of
reference situating the verse in which they appear, a low-level variation
on a fairly important lyric device.6 The thirteen occurrences of puis show
a similar thrust, but with a very slight lexical difference, the explicit
expression of chronological sequence:
Puis avint chose
Puis descendi
Puis en monta
Puis fu tele heure
Puis l'espousa
Puis li a dit
Puis li a dit
Puis li a dit
Puis m'en revieng
Puis me mena
Puis me lessierent
Puis te servi
Puis ne devant
li rois se conbatié
de son corant destrier
tot le marbrin degré
que g'en oi guerredon
a moillier et a per
Guillelmes quar seez
Guillelmes quar seez
hautement a .II. moz
deça devers Galice
aval en un celier
aler a sauveté
de riche venoison
n'i ot onques sa per
348
358
54
191
10
59
466
1436
1195
558
1241
219
846
(We may note here parenthetically the difference of rhythm in v. 846,
which expands the expression of this relation to fill an entire hemistich.
We return below to this impact on rhythm.)
The single occurrence of the conjunction car shows a similarly simple
agglutination. Here the lexical value is one of logical development rather
than chronological reference. The grammatical bond between verses
created by the coordinating conjunction is stronger than that created by
either of the adverbs, but the underlying effect of an agglutinating thrust
from the preceding verse is quite similar:
Car de grant foi
vos ai toz jorz trové
476
A word like après shows somewhat more complexity, of what might
be called a paradigmatic nature. The "word" can be either an adverb,
6
See Heinemann, "On the Metric Artistry," 14-21; "Rythmes sémantiques,"
145-82; and "Rythmes sémantiques 2," forthcoming in Romania.
Heinemann / Line-Opening Tool Words • 57
Aprés conquist
Aprés fu mort
Orenge la cité
par dedenz ta grant tor
7
200
vos refis ge une autre
162
or a preposition:
Après celui
The adverb has the simple agglutinating effect that we saw in atant and
lors. The preposition gives rise to a semantic rhythm which differs in
two ways.
In the two occurrences of the adverb, that part of the verse which
expresses the chronological agglutination is restricted to a metrical status
of subordinate component of the hemistich.7 It occupies two syllables,
and it is the semantically less important part of the hemistich. With the
preposition, on the other hand, the expression of chronological reference
expands to the metrical status of a full hemistich; instead of being a
subordinate component of the hemistich, it is one of the two privileged
components of the metric sentence, and, in fact, the effect of meter
highlights the noun phrase expressing this chronological reference,
making it more or less the most important part of the sentence. Second,
and somewhat more subtle, the reference back to a preceding verse is
somewhat more diffused in this verse than in the two where aprés is an
adverb. Whereas the adverb simply refers back, the preposition points
forward to its object It is the demonstrative pronoun, celui, which refers
backward. Compare "Puis ne devant" in v. 846, in which the entire
hemistich makes the reference.
The two remaining occurrences of après are adverbs followed
immediately by a noun, occurring in the list of cities which Guillaume
wants to hold as fiefs from the king. The succession expressed is in fact
not chronological at all but rather a kind of coordination:
Aprés Orenge
Après Orenge
7
qui tant fet a loer
cele cité cremue
484
503
See Heinemann, "Rythmes sémantiques 2" for the concept of metric status
(grade métrique).
58 • Olifant / Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2
The coordinating conjunction et, for its part, expresses not only
coordination, as in v. 985, but also chronological sequence, as in v. 889:
Et cez granz chars
Et cil respont
retorner et verser
ja orroiz verité
985
889
All the examples so far have shown agglutinating thrusts. Some of
the tool words lend themselves to anticipating thrusts. Instead of
reopening some part of the preceding verse, words like tant project
forward from the clause in which they appear to a following clause. In
the first group of the following examples, that clause will appear in a
later verse. As the second group of examples shows, this clause may just
as well appear in the second hemistich of the same verse, in which case
the line-opening tool word does not affect the semantic thrust at the line
end.
Tant ai servi
Tant con servi
Tant lor dorrai
Tant m'avez hui
Tant ont François
Tant en ferai
Tant fist en terre
Tant les coitierent
Tant t'ai servi
cest mauvés roi de France
vos ai tenu le chief
deniers et argent cler
escharni et gabé
chevauchié et erré
con mes cuers en otrie
qu'es ciels est coronez
que il vinrent au mestre
que le poil ai chanu
276
253
654
1361
1070
1449
13
1062
257
Two further sets display still other thrusts. Verses. 1424 and 1426 show
the familiar epic enumeration, in which tant, constructed absolutely,
functions as an anaphora reinforcing the agglutination, but it expresses
no thrust in itself. And in v. 1371 the pair tant que forms a unit to open
the verse with an agglutination:
Tant hante fraindre
Tant Sarrazin
Tant que l'avras
desor l'escu pesant
trebuchier mort sanglant
de ton cors conparé
1424
1426
1371
Heinemann / Line-Opening Tool Words • 59
The forty-six occurrences of the semantically heavy conjunction
quant invite reflection, but the manipulations involved in handling this
many examples make some sort of electronic indexing necessary.8
We could pursue this kind of analysis in painstaking detail, but the
point should be clear that the semantic thrust from one verse to the next,
as it receives expression from line-opening tool words, involves a
considerable measure of subtle variation, bearing on the degree of
cohesion between verses, bearing on the details of the grammatical and
lexical values involved, bearing on the metrical status of the expression
given to that thrust, and bearing on the direction of the thrust. The
importance of the components we have examined lies not in any
classification scheme but in the lyric effects which may derive from them.
Semantic thrust from verse to verse is a component of consecutive echo,9
and line-opening tool words have anaphoral potential for that echo. In
any sequence of verses the line-opening position may be occupied by a
semantically heavy word or by a tool word. A sequence of verses all
opened by a tool word constitutes thus a marked case, a kind of
anaphora.
The prologue of the Charroi, a remarkable passage which I have used
for a variety of analyses,10 not only marks the initial position of the verse
as the site of tool words, it marks that position as the expression of
chronological sequence running from v. 6 through v. 11.
8
I distinguish here between a "reporting" function and an "indexing"
function in computer-aided analysis. Sorting the text and extracting a set of
examples, as I have done for this paper, produces a kind of report, in the form of
either a file on disk or a printout of that file; the examples in this paper are
nothing more than a manipulated form of the report generated by sorting and
extracting. An indexing function, on the other hand, is a kind of annotation of
the textbase, marking it up for future consultation. A report suggests definitive
results while indexing tends to be open-ended. The difference between the two
function has curious effects in computer-aided analysis.
9
See Heinemann, "On the Metric Artistry," pp. 40-43.
l0
See Heinemann, "Measuring Units " 28 and "Rythmes sémantiques 1,"
176-78.
60 • Olifant / Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2
C'est de Guillelme
le marchis au cort nes
5
Conme il prist Nymes
Aprés conquist
Et fist Guibor
Que il toli
Puis l'espousa
Et desoz Rome
Molt essauça
Tant fist en terre
par le charroi monté
Orenge la cité
baptizier et lever
le roi Tiebaut l'Escler
a moillier et a per
ocist Corsolt es prez
sainte crestïentez
qu'es ciels est coronez
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Verse 7, opening with the tool word après, gives explicit expression to the
chronological sequence of the incidents narrated, and, this "tone" having
been given, the conjunction et which opens the next verse acquires an
implicit notion of sequence from the fact that the marriage of William to
Guibourc does actually follow the capture of Orange in the fictional
biography of the hero. The adverb puts at the beginning of v. 10 further
strengthens the effect of chronological sequence in the passage, and vv. 9
and 11 build variations on that basic effect. The subordination expressed
at the opening of v. 9 stands out as the unique full-line subordinate
clause in the passage, a variation which goes hand in hand with the
disruption of chronological order in this verse: stealing Guibourc away
from Thiebaut is not a discrete incident in the same way capturing the
city or baptizing the princess are discrete incidents. It is rather
something of a process; one could understand this verse either as if the
verb were a pluperfect (William had stolen the lady's heart) or as the
continuing consequence of William's baptizing and marrying the lady; in
either case the change of grammatical and lexical relation expressed in
the line-opening tool word matches up with a change in the
chronological order of the incidents related. And then, in what I should
enjoy calling a grammatical climax, v. 11 picks up the conjunction et, to
which v. 8 has given the "tone" of chronological sequence by virtue of
association, and strings along in the sequence an incident which, in fact,
occurs earlier in the fictional biography, not just earlier than the other
incidents in the list but earlier, in fact, than the text in which this verse
appears. V. 11 puts a severe strain on the effect of chronological
sequence, and that strain constitutes an important element in the
rhythms of the passage. The exploit reads as if it were another one in the
same series, but its content reveals it to be an even greater violation of
the series than the one in v. 9. After this extravagant flourish, vv. 12-13
express themselves as a conclusion to the series not only by their
Heinemann / Line-Opening Tool Words • 61
contents but also in the shift of the line-opening tool word away from
chronology, thereby closing the circle opened by the tool word conme in
v.6.
The repertory of tool words in initial position of the verse, whether
in the Charroi de Nîmes or elsewhere, is not likely to constitute a
significant body of information for chanson de geste studies. Examining
some of the thrusts to which these words give expression, however,
illustrates a very real element of lyric effect inherent in the nature of
chanson de geste versification. Although the semantic thrust at the line
end probably has less lyric impact than the thrust at the cesura or the
play of internal patterns, this component of the metric art of the genre, as
the prologue to the Charroi shows, can rise to hypnotic effects.
Appendix I:
Procedure Followed in Establishing the Corpus
1. Choice of text
The choice of text was simply a matter of convenience. I had the
Charroi on disk, and at 1486 lines it is a relatively short text and
therefore relatively easy to manipulate, an important fact in what
was after all mostly an experiment. I did not want to spend much
time when I was not sure that the results would necessarily be of
interest.
2. Procedure
The sort function of a word processor will, by rearranging the text in
alphabetic order beginning with the first word of each verse,
organize a text in verse for the researcher to analyze. In
WordPerfect. 4.2 this function is <CTRL F9>.
62 • Olifant / Vol. 17. Nos. 1-2
3.
Format
The text I was using is divided at the cesura and bears the verse
number in initial position of each line:
227 En un bruillet
de pins et de loners
4.
Sorting the text
The sort function in WordPerfect includes, among other options, a
sort by line which distinguishes "words" (separated by spaces) and
"fields" (separated by TABS or INDENTS). Spaces separate the
verse number from the verse and, of course, each word in the verse.
I used the second "word" (i.e. the first word of the verse) as the first
key, the third "word" (the second word of the verse) as the second
key, and the first "word" (the verse number) as the third key,
treating it as numeric rather than alphanumeric.11
S. Sort Procedure in WordPerfect* 4.2
The keys typed are in angle brackets.
1) Bring the text to the screen and begin the sort function.
a) <CTRL F9> (Merge/Sort)
b) <2> (Option 2, Sort)
c) Accept the default Input File, the text on screen:
<Enter>
d) Accept the default Output File, the screen: <Enter>
e) Use the default type of sort (Option 7), by line (not
paragraph or merge).
f) <3> (Option 3, Keys)
2) Define the first key word.
a) <a> <Enter> The first key word is alphanumeric.
b) <1> <Enter> It occurs in the first field (defined by tabs).
c) <2> <Enter> It is the second "word" in the field
("words" are separated by spaces).
11
Treated as alphanumeric characters, "145" precedes "45"; treated as
numeric characters, "145" follows "45." An alphanumeric sort begins with the
first character; a numeric sort counts the number of characters.
Heinemann / Line-Opening Tool Words • 63
3) Define the second key word.
a) <a> <Enter>
b) <1> <Enter>
c) <3> <Enter> It is the third "word" in the field.
4) Define the third key word.
a) <n> <Enter> This "word" is numeric.
b) <1> <Enter>
c) <1> <Enter> It is the first "word" in the field.
5) <F7> Exit from defining the keys for the sort.
6) <1> (Option 1, Perform Action).
Appendix II: References
Bradley, John, and Lidio Presutti, TACT. Computer software. U of
Toronto, 1990.
Gougenheim, Georges, R. Michéa, P. Rivenec and A. Sauvageot.
L'élaboration du français fondamental (F degré): étude sur l'établissement
d'un vocabulaire et d'une grammaire de base. Paris: Didier, 1967.
Heinemann, Edward A. "Measuring Units of Poetic Discourse:
Analogies Between Laisse and Verse in the chanson de geste." Romance
Epic: Essays on a Medieval Genre. Hans-Erich Keller, ed. Studies in
Medieval Culture 24. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications,
1987.
-------- . "On the Metric Artistry of the chanson de geste." Olifant 16:1-2
(1991): 5-59.
-------- .
"Rythmes sémantiques de la chanson de geste: Types
grammaticaux du vers et pulsions à la césure," Romania 109 (1988):
145-82.
64 • Olifant / Vol. 17. Nos. 1-2
-------- . "Rythmes sémantiques de la chanson de geste, 2: Rythmes
internes de l'hémistiche dans les vers où figure un nom de ville dans
les Enfances Guillaume" Article to be published in Romania.
McMillan, Duncan, ed. Le Charroi de Nîmes, Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle.
Paris: Klincksieck, 1978.
Rychner, "Observations sur la versification du Couronnement de Louis."
La Technique littéraire des chansons de geste. Paris: Belles Lettres, 16682.
Zumthor, Paul. "Le vers comme unité d'expression dans la poésie
romane archaïque." Actes du Xe Congrès de linguistique et philologie
romanes (1962), t.2. Paris: Klinksieck, 1965.
Erratum
A printer's error caused page 184 to have its running head cut off in
the last issue, Vol. 16, Nos. 3-4. Interestingly enough, it was this page
that contained the erratum for the previous issue. Our apologies. —Ed.