Guillaume, Cycle de. Name properly applied to six chansons de geste ( Les Enfances Guillaume, Le Couronnement de Louis, Le Charroi de Nîmes, La Prise d'Orange, La Chanson de Guillaume, Le Moniage Guillaume) dealing with Guillaume d'Orange, his turbulent relationship with the emperor Louis, son of Charlemagne, and his incessant struggle against the ‘pagan’ Saracens in the south of France, and to five other poems (Les Enfances Vivien, La Chevalerie Vivien, Aliscans, La Bataille Loquifer, Le Moniage Rainouart) dealing principally with Guillaume's nephew Vivien and his brother-in-law Rainouart. The title is usually given, however, to the complete set of some 24 poems about the deeds of the Narbonnais clan and their ancestor Garin de Monglane (after whom the cycle was originally named by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube).
Of the three different cycles named by Bertrand, only the Garin de Monglane, or Guillaume, cycle was seriously elaborated by manuscript compilers, whose copy-shops produced three major redactions or ‘editions’ of the texts. These are known to modern editors as AB (six MSS in Paris, London, and Milan), CE (three MSS in Paris, Boulogne-sur-mer, and Berne), and D (one MS in Paris). It is notable that no manuscript contains the complete sequence, and that the bulk concentrate on the biography of Guillaume himself, although the two commonly grouped as B contain the ‘grand cycle’ of most of the 24 poems. There are also related manuscripts devoted to Aimeri de Narbonne and Girart de Vienne, Guillaume's father and grandfather, and to Vivien and Rainouart. The garbled state of the text of some poems, notably Le Charroi de Nîmes and La Prise d'Orange in D (Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 1448), has fuelled the debate between neotraditionalists (who consider the manuscript a transcription of a jongleur's performance) and individualists (for whom it is a copy made from memory).
The kernel of the cycle is provided not by the Chanson de Guillaume, which never actually figures as a text in cyclic manuscripts, but by the combination of Vivien-Rainouart material found in Aliscans and La Prise d'Orange. Although the earliest manuscripts date from the 13th c., the elaboration of the cycle occurred in the second half of the 12th c. Le Charroi de Nîmes, composed to provide a prologue to La Prise d'Orange (c.1125) in a ‘proto-cyclic’ compilation, probably dates from the 1150s or 1160s, to judge from the treatment of ‘la Dame de Saint-Gilles’ in an episode justifying Guillaume's ‘crusade’ in the south of France. Attempts to create a consistent cycle are sporadic, however: La Prise d'Orange, for instance, which was given its final cyclic form in the 1190s, never takes into account the data of Les Enfances Guillaume (c.1190-1200).
With the exception of the early Le Couronnement de Louis, all the poems of the cycle reveal strong romance influence and a tendency to robust comedy in the person of Guillaume, the development of whose character seems to have been considerably influenced by that of the comic folk-tale giant Rainouart, and of his perpetually young but pertly precocious nephew Gui. The biography of St Guillaume de Gellone, Charlemagne's cousin, count of Toulouse and commander of the army that captured Barcelona for the Franks in 803 ad, provides an essential frame for the core of the cycle, accounting for a particular atmosphere of dedication and martyrdom (in La Chevalerie Vivien and Aliscans), an almost mythographic contact with powers of evil (in Le Couronnement de Louis, Le Moniage Guillaume, and the non-cyclic Chanson de Guillaume), and a sense of real regret for homicide, even when the victims are Saracens (in Le Charroi de Nîmes). Most of the poems, however, elaborate the traditional motif of the young hero's quest for a bride and a fief. These include the story of the founder of the clan, Garin de Monglane; that of Guillaume's father, Aimeri de Narbonne; Les Narbonnais (one of the enfances poems at the heart of the cycle, which recounts in boisterous and often comic vein the establishment of six of Aimeri's sons, first at Charlemagne's court, then in fiefs they have to conquer); La Prise d'Orange; and later poems like Guibert d'Andrenas and La Prise de Cordres et de Sebille.
Many of the poems establish links with the Cycle du Roi, including Girart de Vienne (which makes Roland's companion Oliver a collateral member of the Narbonnais clan) and Les Enfances Vivien (in which Vivien is sent as hostage to Spain to secure the release of his father Garin, captured at Rencesvals). Several texts exploit the episode of the siege of the hero's city (frequently defended by a loyal spouse during his absence) and the mythological motif of the apocalyptic battle, given initial poetic form in the Chanson de Guillaume and finding cyclic expression in Aliscans. The cycle's unity is assured by the tireless energy of Guillaume, the mutual loyalty of the clan, and the stubborn support of legitimism by the Narbonnais in the face of perpetual imperial ingratitude. It is notable that the women of the cycle, especially Guillaume's wife Guibourc (the baptized name of Orable, the Saracen queen of Orange) and Aimeri's wife Hermengart, show a force of character and independence of action that makes them stand out in a period in which the woman's role in literature, whether epic or courtly, was severely circumscribed.
[Philip Bennett]
Bibliography
- J. Frappier, Les Chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume d'Orange (1955 and 1964)
- M. Tyssens, La Geste de Guillaume d'Orange dans les manuscrits cycliques (1967)
- Les Chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume d'Orange—hommage à Jean Frappier (1983)
