''Desiré'' (also ''Désiré'', ''Lai del Desire'') is an
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...
Breton lai
A Breton lai, also known as a narrative lay or simply a lay, is a form of medieval French and English romance literature. Lais are short (typically 600–1000 lines), rhymed tales of love and chivalry, often involving supernatural and fairy-wor ...
, named after its protagonist. It is one of the so-called
Anonymous Lais
Anonymous may refer to:
* Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown
** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author
* Anonym ...
. It is 'a fairy-mistress story set in Scotland'. Translated into
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
, the poem also became part of the ''
Strengleikar
''Strengleikar'' (English: ''Stringed Instruments'') is a collection of twenty-one Old Norse prose tales based on the Old French '' Lais'' of Marie de France. It is one of the literary works commissioned by King Haakon IV of Norway (r. 1217-1263) ...
'', and the translation is relevant to establishing the archetype of the French text.
Manuscripts
*P. Cologny-Gevève, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Phillips 3713, f. 7v, col. 2--12v. col. 1. Anglo-Norman, thirteenth-century.
*S. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. acq. fr. 1104, f. 10v, col. 1--15v, col. 1. Francien, c. 1300.
*N. Uppsala,
De la Gardie, 4-7 Uppsala University Library, De la Gardie, 4-7, a thirteenth-century Norwegian manuscript, is 'our oldest and most important source of so-called "courtly literature" in Old Norse translation'.''Strengleikar: An Old Norse Translation of Twenty-one Old ...
, pp. 37–48.
[Glyn S. Burgess, ''The Old French Narrative Lay: An Analytical Bibliography'' (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), p. 44.]
Editions
* Margaret E. Grimes, ''The Lays of Desiré, Graelent and Melion: Edition of the Texts with an Introduction'' (New York: Institute of French Studies, 1928).
* Alexandre Micha, ''Lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles'' (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1992)
References
Lais (poetic form)
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