Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Síða 32
loren gegangene Handschrift vollen Ersatz gewåhren?”44 Cederschiold’s
suggestion to reproduce manuscripts photographically or in diplomatic
editions became reality - but not until almost a century had elapsed -
with the publication, in 1972, of the facsimile editions of the Stockholm
codex of romances and the Uppsala codex containing the Strengleikar.
Only Erex saga, Ivens saga, and the Strengleikar are currently available in
diplomatic editions, however.45
Study of the Arthurian riddarasogur has been hampered not only by
lack of diplomatic editions but even more, it seems, by an attitude of
benign neglect on the part of scholars in both the Romance and Scandina-
vian camps. Despite the popularity enjoyed by the riddarasogur in Ice-
land, attested by centuries of copying manuscripts and plagiarizing the
romances for literary motifs, scholarly opinion has not infrequently placed
the translated sagas in the shadow of their French sources and of indig-
enous Icelandic literature. As a result, the riddarasogur have been neg-
lected by Romance scholars and Scandinavianists alike. To be sure, Jo-
seph Bédier recognized the unique position of Tristrams saga; his recon-
struction of Thomas’ Tristan would have been unthinkable without it,
since the saga is “notre témoin le plus sur du poéme de Thomas.”46
Nonetheless, the significance of the Arthurian riddarasogur - fostered in
an environment different from that in which the Arthurian legend first
took literary form - as Icelandic literature and as a contribution to the
matiére de Bretagne has been underestimated.
Henry Goddard Leach’s unique contribution to medieval scholarship,
Angevin Britain and Scandinavia (1921), was indeed a “guide-book in
strange territory” (p. vii) for most medievalists, and although “incom-
plete,” as Leach himself admitted, the study was a first effort to acquaint
the world with Scandinavia’s contribution to medieval romance. Leach’s
study went beyond the bounds of Arthurian literature, as did Margaret
Schlauch’s Romance in Iceland (1934). To the Arthurian legend, under-
standably, only a minuscule portion could be devoted in Schlauch’s
comprehensive book. Not until the publication in 1959 of an anthology of
44 Germania. Vierteljahrsschrift fur deutsche Alterthumskunde, XX (1875), pp. 316-17.
45 For a general discussion of the problem of editions, see Jonas Kristjånsson, “Text
Editions of the Romantic Sagas,” Les relations littéraires franco-scandinaves au Moyen Age,
pp. 275-88.
46 Le roman de Tristan par Thomas. Poéme du XW siécle. Vol. II (Paris: Librairie de
Firmin Didot et C", 1905), p. 64.
47 Roger Sherman Loomis, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
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