Girart de Vienne


Girart de Vienne is a late twelfth-century Old French chanson de geste by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube. The work tells the story of the sons of Garin de Monglane and their battles with the Emperor Charlemagne, and it establishes the friendship of the epic heroes Olivier and Roland.
The poem comprises more than 6000 rhymed decasyllable verses grouped into laisses. It was likely based on a now lost earlier poem. The work was extremely popular up until the Renaissance, and was converted into a version with alexandrines and five prose versions, including one by David Aubert, one by Raffaele Marmora, one by Jean d'Outremeuse, and one attached to the prose version of Garin de Monglane.

Plot

In the beginning, each of the four sons of Garin de Monglane—Hernaut, Girart, Renier and Milon—comes into possession of a fief. But the son of Hernaut, Aymeri, becomes enraged when he hears the Empress bragging about how she once had humiliated his uncle Girart, and he incites the brothers to battle. In an attempt to end the war, Olivier is pitted against the nephew of the Emperor, Roland, in a duel near Vienne, but neither hero prevails and, when night comes, an angel tells the two heroes to save their strength for battling infidels. The two swear each other eternal friendship and Roland proposes to Olivier's sister, Aude. Girart is reconciled with his emperor, but before Roland and Aude's marriage can take place, a messenger announces the arrival of Saracens in Gascony.

The "three cycles"

This work is also famous for grouping the chansons de geste or "Matter of France" into three cycles, each named after a chief character or ancestral figure: the "Geste du roi", the "Geste de Doon de Mayence", and the "Geste de Garin de Monglane". The exact description is as follows: