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- Title
King Arthur's Charter: A Thirteenth-Century French Satire Against Bretons.
- Authors
Berard, Christopher
- Abstract
On the verso of the last leaf of a twelfth-century manuscript containing the poetry of Hilarius, a student of Abelard, appears a faux charter purporting to have been issued by Arthur, king of the Britons, in the hundredth year of his immortality. In the act, Arthur thanks the descendants of his British subjects for their fidelity and grants them an exclusive franchise to fish in secret rivulets. The privilege contains two prohibitions: one prohibiting Britons from wearing shoes and the other prohibiting them from owning cats. This article provides a diplomatic edition, English translation and analysis of King Arthur's Charter. It identifies the strange stipulations of the charter as tropes of anti-Breton satire, attested also in the Privilège aux Bretons (c. 1240), an Old French song that mocks the customs and occupations of impoverished Breton immigrants to thirteenth-century France.
- Subjects
FRENCH satire; MANUSCRIPTS; MEDIEVAL French history; LATIN diplomatics; EPISTOLARY poetry
- Publication
Journal of the International Arthurian Society, 2020, Vol 8, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
2196-9353
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/jias-2020-0002