El tratamiento humorístico del motivo de la sarracena enamorada en la épica francesa de los siglos XII y XIII

Abstract

The present work intends to study the humoristic treatment of the epic motif of the enamoured Saracen in some French epic poems of the 12th and 13th centuries. Despite being regarded as a highly stereotyped narrative sequence and almost unvaryingly repeated from the middle of the 12th century, some poets take pleasure in distorting it comically, proving variety and originality to an episode theoretically immovable or fixed. We will show that the mechanisms used to produce a humoristic effect in the motif are, mainly, the total or partial inversion of the established roles of the sequence, as it happens in Prise d’Orange, Fierabras and Huon de Bordeaux, or the inclusion of comical figures added to the original sketch, such as the lovesick old man, the mocked husband, or the spiteful rival, that appear in Anseïs de Cartage, in Saisnes and in Siège de Barbastre.