Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 97

determining whose is the greater beauty, the appearance at Arthur’s
court of Janual’s lady comes as a greater surprise, and her liberating
speech becomes a more decisive intervention on his behalf. She is hardly
uncertain, as is her French counterpart - Si par mei puet estre aquitez (v.
641 ‘if he can be set free through me’) - regarding the outcome of the
proceedings, when she announces,
oc vil ec at allir viti. at fru drotning heuir ranga soc a honum.
fmi at alldri ba5 hann hennar. En vm hælni oc um rosan f>a
sem hann mællti. J>a em ec komin at frialsa hann. at lendir
menn ydrir dæmi hann frialsan. sva sem Joeir ræddo i domi
sinum. (p. 74)
(I want everybody to know that the queen has brought a false
charge against him, because he never wooed her. As for the boast-
ing and the praise which he uttered, I have come to free him, that
you barons may judge him free, just as they discussed in their
deliberations.)
Janual’s beloved evinces no doubt regarding her superior beauty and her
ability to free her knight; as fairy mistress her intervention is that of a dea
ex machina.
The primary weakness of the trial scene in Januals Ijod is the retention
of the question put to Lanval regarding the identity of the maidens who
disrupt the trial proceedings. In the lai the assembled knights hope that
Lanval’s beloved will appear. In the Norwegian version anticipation of
her appearance has become a blind motif, however, inasmuch as the
earlier modifications preclude continued hope that the beloved will mate-
rialize, and thus also inquiry whether the lovely strangers - they are the
handmaidens of Janual’s beloved - might be Janual’s lady. The Norwe-
gian Ijod is flawed because of inconsistent modification of the source. A
conscientious translator who intentionally left out a lengthy speech would
surely realize that the content of the speech might have a bearing on the
denouement of the tale, and that modifications in the speech might there-
fore demand additional modifications in subsequent plot. We have be-
fore us either the work of a translator who was unsure and inconsistent in
his approach to translation and adaptation, or the result of a copyist’s
revisions, a copyist whose editorial methodology was weak. Whichever
alternative one prefers - to explain the incongruities in Januals Ijod - the
choice is accompanied by considerable uncertainty.
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