Desiré

Desiré (also Désiré, Lai del Desire) is an Old French Breton lai, named after its protagonist. It is one of the so-called Anonymous Lais. It is 'a fairy-mistress story set in Scotland'.^[1] Translated into Old Norse, the poem also became part of the Strengleikar,^[2] 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, pp. 37–48.^[3]

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

1. ↑ Ian Short, 'Language and Literature', in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill, Elisabeth Van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), pp. 191-214 (p. 207).
2. ↑ Strengleikar: An Old Norse Translation of Twenty-one Old French Lais, ed. and trans. by Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane, Norrøne tekster, 3 (Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt, 1979).
3. ↑ Glyn S. Burgess, The Old French Narrative Lay: An Analytical Bibliography (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), p. 44.