''Bevers saga'' or ''Bevis saga'' is an Old Norse
chivalric saga
The ''riddarasögur'' (literally 'sagas of knights', also known in English as 'chivalric sagas', 'romance-sagas', 'knights' sagas', 'sagas of chivalry') are Norse prose sagas of the romance genre. Starting in the thirteenth century with Norse tr ...
, translated from a now lost version of the
Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
*Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
*Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
poem ''
Boeve de Haumtone
Bevis of Hampton ( fro, Beuve(s) or or ; Anglo-Norman: ; it, Buovo d'Antona) or Sir Bevois, was a legendary English hero and the subject of Anglo-Norman, Dutch, French, English, Venetian,Hasenohr, 173–4. and other medieval metrical chivalr ...
''.
Kalinke summarises the saga as follows:
"The work is a medieval soap opera that commences with the murder of Bevers's father, instigated by Bevers's mother, and carried out by a rival wooer who in turn is killed by Bevers. The ensuing plot includes enslavement, imprisonment, abductions, separations, childbirth, heathen-Christian military and other encounters - Bevers marries a Muslim princess - and mass conversions."
Manuscripts
''Bevis saga'' survives only in Icelandic manuscripts.
It is preserved almost intact in two medieval manuscripts, Perg. 4to. no. 6 (c. 1400) and Stock. Perg fol. no. 7 (late 15th century). It was also included in
Ormsbók Ormsbók or Ormr Snorrason's Book was a large Icelandic manuscript of chivalric sagas. It is assumed that it was destroyed in the Stockholm castle fire of 1697 as it was last recorded in an inventory in 1693. It takes its name from Ormr Snorrason, ...
, a 14th-century compilation of chivalric sagas, which now only survives in paper copies from the 17th century (Papp. fol. no. 46).
Kalinke and Mitchell identified the following manuscripts of the saga:
[Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, ''Bibliography of Old Norse–Icelandic Romances'', Islandica, 44 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 26.]
Further reading
*
References
External links
A volume containing the Old Norse text (in the spelling of the original manuscript)in the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
Bevis of Hampton
Chivalric sagas
Old Norse literature
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