ABSTRACT
Whereas M.Kaluza, the first editor of Libeaus Desconus, believed that the poem was a direct translation of the French Le Bel Inconnu, most scholars now take a more cautious view and prefer to think that the source of Libeaus Desconus was a French adaptation, largely independent of Le Bel Inconnu, of some common original.5 This is, of course, mere conjecture, but it is certain that the source-problem is more complex than earlier scholars assumed and that it will probably never be definitely solved. For our purposes, it may suffice to say that in Libeaus Desconus, as in several other English romances, a story that in French could run to over 6000 lines was dealt with in just over 2200 lines, which is of course more than the length of most of the shorter romances, but is still considerably
briefer than the French courtly novels. This abridgement is achieved mainly by a marked increase in tempo and the leaving out of many smaller details, but also by the omission of a complete episode, Libeaus’ sojourn on the ‘Ile d’or’ which in the French novel takes up as much space as the whole of the English poem. In Le Bel Inconnu, this episode evidently has a very important function, not only because the role of magic is given special prominence here, but because the author wished to lay particular stress on the dangers surrounding the hero and he wanted to describe as impressively as possible the moment in which the knight almost loses his personality and is in great peril of forfeiting his glorious destiny-a moment that also plays an important part in the structure of Chrétien’s novels. Thus, the hero’s triumph at the end of this episode is not just another of his exploits; it has a much more decisive and final quality.6
