Aucassin & Nicolete . INTRODUCTION THERE is nothing in artistic poetry quiteakin to Aucassin and a rare piece of good fortune the onemanuscript of the Song-Story has escapedthose waves of time, which have wreckedthe bark of Menander, and left of Sapphobut a few floating fragments. The veryform of the tale is peculiar ; we havenothing else from the twelfth or thirteenthcentury in the alternate prose and verseof the cante-fable.^ We have fabUaux inverse, and prose Arthurian romances. Wehave Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like** Roland, unrhymed assonant laisses, butwe have not the a

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Aucassin & Nicolete . INTRODUCTION THERE is nothing in artistic poetry quiteakin to Aucassin and a rare piece of good fortune the onemanuscript of the Song-Story has escapedthose waves of time, which have wreckedthe bark of Menander, and left of Sapphobut a few floating fragments. The veryform of the tale is peculiar ; we havenothing else from the twelfth or thirteenthcentury in the alternate prose and verseof the cante-fable.^ We have fabUaux inverse, and prose Arthurian romances. Wehave Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like** Roland, unrhymed assonant laisses, butwe have not the alternations of prose withlaisses in seven-syllabled lines. It cannot I Gaston Paris, in M. Bidas edition, p. xii. Paris,1878. The blending is not unknown in various coun-tries. See note at end of Translation. INTRODUCTION be certainly known whether the form ofAucassin and Nicolete was a familiarform — used by many jogleors, or wanderingminstrels and story-tellers such as Nicolete,in the tale, feigned herself to be,

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Keywords: ., bookauthorlangandr, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1901