Ebook: The Second Continuation of the Old French Perceval: a Critical and Lexicographical Study

The main aim of the thesis is to establish a basis for literary study of the Second Continuation (C2), rather than to undertake such a study.
In the first part of the thesis, a preliminary examination of the orthodox divisions of the Perceval-corpus suggests that the conventional division of C2 from the First Continuation (C1) may be wrongly situated.
An examination of the manuscript tradition (Chapter I) confirms that this is a possibility, and suggests that C1 might be divisible into different sections. (In addition, an attempt is made to define the best manuscript group for C2.) A study of (mainly) stylistic criteria (Chapter II) is intended to demonstrate a) that C1 is the work of more than one author; b) that this is also true of C2, in that the first part of this text belongs with the second part of C1.
If this is accepted, it sheds a different light on the composition of C2, whose structure is now examined (Chapter III), and found to be extremely loose. This being the case, there are grounds for considering whether C2 may contain interpolations or recasting, while there is some evidence for this, we conclude that the text would appear to be a single unit, the work of one author (except for the first part, as stated above), without interpolation, etc.
A closer study of the fifth episode of C2 (Chapter IV) - the one in which we have situated the C1 / C2 division, as regards authorship - shows the particularly confused manuscript tradition at that point, and the different redactions of the episode are examinedv with conclusion essentially in favour of the anteriority of the printed text.
There follows a re-appraisal of the attribution of C2 to Wauchier de Denain (Chapter V), and then an examination of more literary questions -sources, literary influence, etc. (Chapter VI).
The second part of the thesis consists of a glossary. - An excellent glossary (by L. Foulet) exists for the three redactions of C1, but there is none for C2, and it was felt this was a serious deficiency, particularly as the text is (in the words of one scholar) "rich in interesting words and expressions". Clearly, the normal process of giving an abstract does not apply here, but we may say that the selection of words for this glossary (which contains some 1800 headwords) is based essentially on the principle that it is unnecessary to include any word which is readily comprehensible to someone with a knowledge of Modern French, or a basic knowledge of Old French, if that word is of no interest linguistically.
The glossary is followed by four appendices, containing respectively: i) textual comments and corrections to the text; ii) a transcription of ms. L for the first part of C2 (i. e. that part which we believe belongs with C1); - in Roach's edition, mss. L and A are printed in parallel for C1, but not for C2; the transcription, which makes good this deficiency, is necessary because much of the study of C1 is based primarily on ms. L; iii) a select bibliography; iv) notes.