Unlike the majority of the prose narratives – the so-called mises en prose –3 commissioned and consumed by Duke Philip and his bibliophile intimate circle4, the Roman de Buscalus does not derive from a single, readily identifiable earlier (verse) source. Rather, like the enormous Perceforest which Christine Ferlampin-Acher has recently rehabilitated as a Burgundian product5, the Buscalus is an especially subtle work of montage, even of bricolage: in its story it combines elements of romance and of chronicle, deriving these from both a variety of attestable historical documents and, apparently, the fertile imagination of its anonymous author. In so doing, the text sets up a Burgundian blood-line deriving from the Trojan and subsequently Roman past, and establishes a sort of secular typology of interpretation which reconfigures questions of Burgundian dynastic origins, and which – contrary to the territorial realities of the day – places the city of Tournai squarely in a proto-Burgundian political space6.

Further, in the form in which it has come down to us, the Buscalus embodies two elements which are fundamental to its conception and composition as well as to its transmission and reception at court, and which we might term parodic, but in ways which might not necessarily or immediately be seen as parody in the more conventional sense. On the one hand, different narrative schemata common to both romance and chronicle meet, confront, and seem somehow to undermine one another here; on the other hand, the miniatures in the manuscript which I discuss below form a visual discourse which both bolsters elements of the story while also turning some of these elements on their head. In this way, our artefact taken in the round is parodic in the sense laid out

by Linda Hutcheon in her innovative Theory of Parody. Reflecting on the etymology of the Greek noun parodia, Hutcheon notes that the prefix para- has two meanings. The first of these is the one more commonly associated with parody, “counter” or “against”, with all the connotations of mockery and ridicule which this brings. The second, by contrast, is more subtle, and more illuminating for my purposes here. “Para in Greek,” she writes, “can also mean “beside”, and therefore there is a suggestion of accord or intimacy instead of a contrast.”7 It is this more positively oriented – if less conventional – reading of parody which is, I argue, in play here.

The interweaving of generic elements in the Buscalus, its use of formal and narrative features common to both romance and chronicle, and the nature of the episodes chosen for illustration here alongside others in the corpus of manuscripts of which it is part, makes of this book an especially rich example of intertextuality and intervisuality. This multi-dimensionality, or “besideness”, which Hutcheon invokes in terms of parody is especially productive for how this intertextuality and intervisuality work in the Burgundian experimental manuscriptural project. As in the mise en prose process described by Jane H. M. Taylor in her Introduction to this volume, in the Buscalus too elements are taken from elsewhere, but judiciously, and with respect. A new work – perhaps even a new genre – is created out of this relationship; and – as an analysis of a number of key episodes in text and image will reveal – the techniques employed by both author and artist permit the construction of a literary edifice that is doubly and intimately parodic. In what follows I shall discuss questions of the conception and composition of the Buscalus, its narrative schemata and generic fluidity, before moving on to issues of transmission and reception via the analysis of a number of miniatures. First, though, a brief outline of the material, literary and historical context of the work, and the story it contains, is in order.

and his pen-and-watercolour illustrations, which in the Paris Buscalus number some 105, are so ostensibly naïve and anti-mimetic that some critics have been moved to describe them as “cartoon-like”11. Secondly, as well as being the sole surviving near-complete copy (it is missing just a few paragraphs when compared with the other versions, which it predates), this version is unique in having been verifiably produced for Philip himself. It appears in the inventory of the ducal library taken at his death12; and, crucially, it bears his arms on the now-mutilated fol. 1r13. It is also the only manuscript in the Wavrin Master’s output to contain, again on this torn first folio, what was obviously a presentation miniature (Figure 15): when compared with other, contemporary manuscripts containing such opening miniatures, such as the Vienna Girart de Roussillon (ÖNB 2549), the Buscalus illustration clearly shows a commonality with these in the grouping of figures on its left-hand side14. The other two manuscripts, by contrast, contain just the second

part of the text; and though they were also produced in a Burgundian context, they belong to what Hanno Wijsman has termed the “third generation” of Burgundian bibliophilia, with the Copenhagen manuscript having been made c. 1475-1480 for Philippe de Clèves15. Set in this context, the Paris Buscalus offers a privileged space in which to examine the role of the parodic in ducal identity-formation; and this is underlined by its content.

The text opens with an account of the foundations of Troy and Rome, and so gives the (pre-)history of Tournai, a city in “Gaulle belgicque”16, and its foundation, destruction, and rebuilding (as “Second Rome”, Hostille, and Tournai respectively) by a number of individuals, including the eponymous Buscalus, and his son Tournus, from whom the city will ultimately derive its name:

[i]lz fonderent une cité qu’ilz appellerent Hostille pour le surnom de leur roy. Et depuis ce temps elle fu appellee Nerve et aussi Seconde Rome. Et depuis pour nommé Turnus qui fu leur roy fu appellee et encores est. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 6v-7r)

Issues of genealogy and foundation make up most of the earliest part of the text, while in subsequent parts events take a more supernatural turn, with the devil and interviews with him in various guises featuring alongside love-stories and further tales of the destruction and rebuilding of Tournai. What little critical attention as has been devoted to the Buscalus has tended to focus on the text as a chronicle of the foundation of Tournai17. This is not entirely unsurprising, for two reasons. Firstly, the initial dozen or so folios of BnF fr. 9343 contain

much factual information about people, politics, and places, suggesting that were a reader merely to skim-read these initial sections they would be forgiven for thinking this a chronicle. (The rest of the work is, as was noted, apparently an original composition.) Secondly, the entry for this manuscript in the BnF catalogue describes it as a “compilation d’histoire romaine, suivie de l’histoire de Turnus et de la fondation de Tournai, faite par l’ordre de Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne”, which would again suggest that what one was ordering up was a work of historiography rather than fiction. However, as we shall see below, this is not the case; and the work is the more interesting and arresting for that. In establishing, as Graeme Small suggests, a foundation myth for the house of Burgundy18, the Paris Buscalus performs a feat of generic hybridity that is as unique in its ostensible corpus as it is parodic. How, though, does this manifest itself?

Generic Cross-Fertilization
and Narrative Technique

As well as the historiographically focussed opening of the text, there is much in the Buscalus which might be considered chronicle-like at the level of narrative and of narration. As well as those aspects of the work which are more directly connected with the establishment of a foundation or origin myth, and which I have discussed elsewhere19, vast swathes of the narrative focus on battles, tournaments, and duels, and treat these in a manner which seems to partake of elements of the chronicle rather than romance. The following example is a case in point:

Quant le roy Tholomée se fu partis de la tente du roi Atarsasses et qu’il fu venus en ung pavillon que sa fille luy ot fait apporter comme cy dessus avez oÿ, le roy Atarsasses, ayant oÿ parler le roy Tholomée, fist commandement par tout son host que chascun d’eulx fust prest pour le lendemain partir et aller

vers Hostille. La nuit se passa, puis, quant ce vint le matin, l’ost s’estourmist. Tentes, pavillons et occubes furent destendues et troussées et autres baghes. Trompes, tambours et buisines encommencerent de sonner parmy, demenant si grant bruit que de trois lieues de loings on le pouoit oÿr tout à plain leur deslogement. Puis, quant tout fu troussé et chargié sur chariots, mules et sommiers, ilz se mirent à chemin. Puis, quant ce vint que le roy Atarsasses se fu eslongiez environ une lieue arriere de son logis, il s’arresta en une grant plaine. Et là il ordonna et fist .xv. batailles, lesquelles il bailla à conduire et ghider à .xv. de ses roix. Si avoit en chascune bataille .xxx.m hommes. Or advint ainsi, comme il ordonnoit ses batailles, que une espie se party de là et fist tant au mieulx qu’il peult que sans nul encombrier il entra dedens la cité d’Avignon, où il trouva nouvellement venu le roy Grimon et tout son host. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 187r-187v)

In recounting this episode, Tholomée’s assault on the city of Hostille, the anonymous author offers a systematic, chronological account of the preparations for and unfolding of the numerous battles, using a range of conjunctions of time (quant, puis, si, or) and nouns connoting time (lendemain, la nuit se passa, ce vint le matin) to signal the direct links between events and their logical relation, rather than employing the more paratactic method of retelling common to romance. Further, we might note the historiographical trait of somewhat hyperbolic enumeration – of people, battles, and so on – as used by the indiciaires (official court historiographers) George Chastellain and Jean Molinet, and designed to underline power and prestige, and the might of kings and their armies20. However, as a comparison between this and apparently similar episodes demonstrates, already these moments are inflected with aspects of romance.

As in the previous example, in the following quotation in which Buscalus is readying himself for a feat of heroism, we see careful temporal enchaining, designed to indicate the logical passage of events and lend a degree of truth-value to the (fictional) events recounted:

La nuit se passa et vint la matinée, que Buscalus se leva et se fist armer par ses gens de toutes armes telles que pour le temps on avoit acoustumé de porter. Puis quant il fu armez, l’espée chainte, la lance en la main, vint devers le prince et luy dist: “Sire, veez moy prest pour deffendre le corps de vostre fille à l’encontre du mauvais chevalier” (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 35v)

Yet alongside this chronicle-like technique are set elements which are more familiar from contemporary prose romance, especially in the description of Buscalus as he prepares to undertake the judicial duel for the honour of the lady. His presentation is as the perfect knight of courtly – or courtly-derived – romance, even of epic, an image which is redoubled as he enters the field:

Puis tantost après le sievy Buscalus montez et armez sur son destrier tout le pas, la lance au poing, sievant la demoiselle. Et vint jusques dedens le champ où il fu moult regardé, loé, et prisé du peuple qui de sa venue se rejoissoit moult fort pour la grant beauté et vaillance qui sembloit estre apparant en luy. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 36r)

In commenting on both the beauty and the personal renown inherent in our hero, the author introduces a generic cross-fertilization that is further enhanced by the narrative style we see in the last two passages quoted. As Rosalind Brown-Grant has noted, romance and chronicle have aspects of form in common (how this corresponds to the case of the Buscalus is discussed below); they also adopt similar techniques to transmit their material, most notably at the level of tenses:

both genres tend to use the past historic and imperfect as the unmarked (i.e., default) tenses with which to recount events, whilst generally reserving the passé composé, future and present tenses as the unmarked tenses of commentary, whether such comments are on the organization of the narrative, the characters and events within the text’s diegesis, or on the extra-textual world that both author and reader inhabit21.

This is precisely what we have here: events are recounted in the past historic, while compound tenses are used to describe and to glorify. Further, in these examples discours direct is used to convey the actors’ speech – a romance element which, as Brown-Grant suggests, enhances both characterization and the truth-value of the speech and the episode22. Through this typical commingling of stylistic features of both romance and chronicle, the historiographical opening of the Buscalus is tempered; and through the confluence of these two genres the text reveals itself to

be something other, something doubled, and something parodic in the multi-dimensional, intertextual sense proposed by Hutcheon. Deeper reflection on the narrative schemata of the work will underline this.

Despite its chronicle-like opening, and alongside the numerous battles which pepper its story, the Buscalus quite quickly cedes narrative ground to elements and themes which are immediately recognizable as romance in character, and indeed strongly familiar from the mises en prose – themes such as the ceremonial and aspects which could in a broad sense be called “courtly”, as well as travel and the showcasing of Burgundian topography. Yet here again there seems to be a generic cross-contamination in the episodes recounted. In the following example, as Buscalus pleads for leniency towards his wife and son when he himself is menaced with death, we have what seems to be courtliness played with a straight bat:

Quant le roy de Bretaigne heubt leu et bien advisé le contenu ès lettres Cajudas, il leva les yeulx et regarda Buscalus moult fierement. Il le vey grant et corsu à merveilles et luy dist ainsi: “Vassal, celluy qui t’a cy envoyé ne t’amoit gaires. Tu scez bien que tu fus en la bataille avec le roy des Romains et ton pere Gaullus et ton frere Achifer, qui occist mon pere Bollos. Et pour ce sa mort sera vengié sur toy”. — “Sire,” ce dist Buscalus, “bien est en vous de me faire destruire. Vecy mon corps prest pour recepvoir la mort. Mais avant ce que me fachiez morir, je vous prie que ma femme et mon enfant veuilliez garder de mal et que encombrier ne leur en soit fait. Car ilz n’ont eu coulpe à la mort du roy vostre pere, parquoy ilz n’en doivent recepvoir pugnition.” (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 48r)

However, this impression is troubled somewhat by elements of the exotic and the devilish which emerge through the intratextual relationship between this episode and the one to which Gravullis, the king of Brittany, alludes. The battle which took place between Buscalus, his father, and his brother, and Priamus the king of Rome is played out under “ung orage et une tempeste”, in which “il [Achifer, Buscalus’s brother] choisi a tous costés une grant multitude de deables aux faches moult epouvantables a voir, rouges et emflambées, qui luy jettoient gros branches de fer ardans” (fol. 27r). This curious episode lifts the straightforward revenge narrative into something other, and something Other, in which the interplay of the romanesque and the exotic enhances the effect of both, and brings them into the sort of

“intimacy or accord” outlined in Hutcheon’s innovative definition of parody.

The apparent neutrality of this narrative moment contrasts sharply with another evocation of a piece of near-courtly ceremonial elsewhere in the text. Having successfully fought the king of Rome, and lost Achifer in the process (he later reappears in Purgatory), Buscalus returns victorious to his city of Seconde Rome for some respite before his next exploits:

Et Buscalus et ses gens se mirent à chemin en tirant devers Seconde Romme, où par aucuns jours il arriva par ung mardi au vespre. Si se vint logier en l’ostel d’un sien bon ami, avec lequel en sa jonesse avoit beaucop conversé; et amoient moult fort l’un l’autre. Si fu moult esbahis du griffon sur quoy il estoit venus: de toutes [sic] pays y acouroient les bourgois pour veoir la beste sauvage et Buscalus, qu’ilz amoient chierement pour l’amour de Gaullus, qui fu son pere et qui long temps avoit gouverné la cité en paix et en justice. Si demanderent à Buscalus de toutes ses nouvelles. Et il leur racompta au long tout ce qu’il en savoit, ainsi comme ceste histoire le devise. Lors par les bourgois, par grants et par petis, fu festoyés l’espace de viii. jours qu’il fu en la cité que maintenant nous disons Tournay. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fols 32v-33r)

On one level, this episode resembles nothing more than the sort of joyful entry which Duke Philip would expect to make into his territories and towns, where his subjects would gather and celebrate his return and indeed his person, as here happens for Buscalus “l’espace de .viii. jours”, and thus serves to highlight court concerns through the literary artefact23. However, the inclusion of the unconventional mount – the griffin which Buscalus tamed on a mountain where it lowered, threatening the subjects of the town below, and for which he had tack made in order to be able to ride it – reconfigures the vraisemblable aspect of the joyous entry reference and once again inflects the text with parodic elements of affiliation and interrelationship (see Figure 16). As so often in Burgundian prose narratives, the small, well-handled detail conveyed or invented by the author comes to assume a meaning greater than the sum of its parts. Here, the curious motif of the griffin draws attention to the joyous entry intertext through its very absurdity in that courtly

context while also representing in and of itself an important realignment of the courtly romance genre.

The same sorts of imperatives can be seen to be at play if we turn our attention from the ceremonial romance themes as they are reconfigured in the Buscalus and instead examine the way in which it deals with issues of travel and Burgundian topography, and how this links to an important paratextual feature of the manuscript. Here, as is the case in the mises en prose and indeed in the Perceforest, there abound names of towns and regions in the ducal territories (as well as those which, like Tournai, are not), which reinforces the ideological function of the material book for the courtly milieu. Often these are merely dropped into the narrative apparently at random, to connote a staging-post along the way which might just as easily have been identified by another toponym; at other times, they fulfil a deeper function, as with the mention of the foundation of Soissons by Buscalus’s father:

Si chevaucherent tant ensemble par aucunes journées qu’ilz arriverent en ung paÿs non habité que à present on nomme la valée de Soissons, où ilz s’arresterent et descherent tentes et pavillons, où ilz se logerent. Et droit en ce meismes lieu Gaullus, qui estoit prince moult puissant, fonda la cité que maintenant nous disons Soissons. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 25v)

While not especially important hermeneutically – unlike the naming of Tournai after Tournus, for example – what this episode does is align topography with genealogy, which draws together aspects of the text as a foundation myth, with its romance dimension and chronicle-like opening. Indeed, this notion of foundation and dynasty is evident from that chronicle-inflected initial section, as this short quotation from the lengthy description illustrates:

[…]24 que les Romains descendirent des fugitifz de la grant cité de Troyes, jadis destruite et mise du tout en ruyne par la puissance des Gregois. Desquels fugitifz de Troies furent Eneas et Anthenor et pluiseurs aultres haulx barons par lesquelz icelle noble cité fu trahie. Si s’en departirent iceulx fugitifz, dont la pluspart de eulx arriverent en Italie, comme Eneas et Anthenor qui fonda Padoe. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 2r)

Here, the Burgundian ducal line is set squarely on the family tree (or in a veritable forest of genealogy) with various blood-lines: Roman, Trojan, Greek, Italian… Further, the mention of the figure of Eneas adds an intertextual resonance which not only establishes a physical genealogical relationship between the court of Burgundy and these great founders, but also bolsters its literary genealogy, rather as do the particular strategies operated by the mises en prose, by reappropriating a figure popularized in the francophone literary tradition for a distinct Burgundian function. What is more, this opening genealogical roll-call gains importance through its proximity to the Buscalus’s prologue, the first word or several of which are visible on the mutilated fol. 1r, and which continues, as inevitable snippets, on the verso:

“[…]tendement debille”

“de Brabant”, “et de Bourgongne”, “[…]igneur de Frise”

“nobles fais”

“en icelluy anchien”

“hystoire liront” (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 1v)

This key paratextual feature of the prologue, though common to both chronicle and romance (like division into chapters and rubricated headings, both of which are outside the scope of this chapter)25, highlights here through its content allegiance to the romance genre, and to the prologues to the mises en prose in particular. Despite the mutilated state of the folio, we can clearly discern a number of traits which this prologue has with those of the prose reworkings26. First we have the conventional modesty topos in which the prosateur protests his inaptitude for the task in hand, which is followed by the enumeration of titles and territories held by Duke Philip (which offers further weight to the notion that this manuscript was produced for him at his behest), and lastly with an indication of the content of the work. From what we can piece together, the work was set up as an account of the noble deeds mentioned which derived from some earlier source. While, as

was noted above, there are attestable sources for the early part of the Buscalus, the rest of the text is apparently an original composition. If we were to regard the Buscalus as a chronicle, this “original”, invented aspect would trouble; however, the mises en prose prologues can often make reference to a source which is not their own27, which gives a reality-effect to these narratives. This doubled aspect of the prologue brings together elements of the chronicle and of romance, and invites reflection on them both, and on the genre of the Buscalus itself. The sorts of passages just discussed partake of different sorts of narrative patterns – romance, chronicle, epic… – in a way that is not mutually exclusive, but which brings them rather into persistent co-existence, and which does not therefore lend prominence to any one or allow readers to settle on any overall framework for the text. Further, the proximity of romance-prologue tropes and the chronicle-like material which follows from fol. 2r onwards gives us pause for thought on what, precisely, our author and our artist had been commissioned to produce.

The sort of multi-dimensional parody in evidence in the Buscalus is, as I noted above following Hutcheon, a positive, productive one. This is especially clearly illustrated in one further “literary” or generic aspect, and through an examination of the miniatures which punctuate, supplement, and comment upon the text as a whole. In the second volume of the manuscript, Paris 9344, the romance-inflected aspects of the story take a surprising new turn. Although, as we have seen above, there have previously been aspects of the exotic or the diabolical, there has not been before this point in the text such a thoroughgoing use made of the féerique. Into the courtly and indeed historical milieu are brought figures who exhibit characteristics which we might expect in individuals who populate romance or chronicle, but who happen to be fairies. This parodying of these genres – through taking elements of them and creatively repurposing them – adds an extra dimension to the narrative, and provides a rationale for the artistic interventions in the manuscript, as we shall see. Two examples will illustrate the point at the level of the text. In the following quotation, we see played out the courtly motif of the gift, in which ladies give their knights objects

such as sleeves, rings, or swords to encourage them to perform great deeds in battles, tournaments, or pas d’armes:

Quant la souveraine des fées l’entendi, elle leur dist à toutes deux: “Mes belles amies, vous parlez bien du conte Philipis, et je ne veul pas aller à l’encontre de vos dis ne de vos parolles pour l’amour de Buscalus qui fu son oncle. Je luy donray deux dons moult precieux. Le premier sera une espée moult belle et rice, laquelle je tiens en ma main, qui a telle vertu en elle que tant qu’elle durera, il ne se partira de ce siecle mais vivera en force et en vigueur. Et avec ce aura mon anel que je porte en mon doit, où il y a une pierre assise qui est de si grant vertu que tant qu’il le portera sur luy, il ne brisera os ne membre qui soit sur luy, mais demourra en telle force et vigueur comme il estoit en l’eage de xxxii. ans.” Après ceste seulle parolle, les trois dames s’esvanuyrent, dont Philipis fu moult merveilliez, car il avoit oÿ tout ce qu’elles avoient dit. (Paris, BnF fr. 9343, fol. 237v)

Here, the familiar motif is turned on its head: the gifts are given to Philipis to assure his longevity and not his valour (not least because one of their donors has a soft spot for him), and they are given by a trio of fairies rather than by courtly ladies. An element of the féerique and fairy actors are not unknown in later medieval literature, of course, and in the mises en prose have perhaps their most concerted manifestation in Mabrien28; but it seems that here, in the Buscalus, the project is much more developed and more ideologically – because politically – meaningful.

This is underlined by the episode in which the queen of the fairies encourages Tournus to present himself for a battle which, once again, will have important consequences for the maintaining of territorial concerns:

À ceste heure que Tournus estoit en ce penser et en ceste grant paour, la maistresse des fées vint à l’uys de la chambre Tournus, et s’escria en hault: “Sire roy, levez sus et vous armez hastivement. Car ains quil soit midi souffrirez grant paine et labeur, et assez plus que ne cuidiez.” Tournus, oyant la damoiselle parler, reclama tous ses dieux, en leur priant que à l’encontre des anemis ilz le voulsissent secourir et aidier, puis se leva sus, si se vesti et arma, car les fées luy aiderent. Et Ebron luy chaussa les esperons, puis luy bailla l’espée, laquelle la maistresse fée luy chaindi entour luy. Son destrier luy fu amené. Les fées se baiserent et prinrent congié de luy. (Paris, BnF fr. 9344, fol. 206v)

At this point, we have a mighty confluence of féerie and otherwise exotic or strange elements: not only does the queen of the fairies present herself, but her ladies assist with getting Tournus ready; Tournus (a pagan like his forebears) prays to his gods; and Ebron, a character who has strong connections with the devil and the diabolical throughout the story (even at one point running an underground school of necromancy), is implicated in the episode. Our author has taken a theme common to romance, and indeed to chronicle – the preparation for and entry into battle –, and given it an innovative twist by taking the reader’s expectations of these genres and motifs and subverting them through the use of different actors. This sort of montage, or bricolage, effectively makes of the Buscalus a generic hybrid, or even an exponent of a new genre within the later medieval prose romance corpus – perhaps the historical romance faée, or the exoticized foundation myth? These “queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary”, as James would have it, which form it come to assume an artistic and ideological meaning at the court of Philip the Good. This is further underlined by the Wavrin Master’s miniatures; and it is to these that I now turn.

The Wavrin Master:
Reception in Miniature

The sort of productive parody we have seen in the text of the Buscalus is emphasized in the illustrations in the Paris manuscript. The particular, sui generis style of the Wavrin Master, so utterly distinct from any of his contemporaries such as Loyset Liédet, visually picks up seemingly arbitrary elements of the narrative which he instills with meaning through their very simplicity and pared-downness of detail and careful use of a reduced colour palette and strong line. This, coupled with the choice of episodes from the story which he illustrates, performs a similar sort of montage to that seen in the text, with a similar sort of ideological valence. We see this at the level of the themes of the text and his mediation of them, as well as of motifs. As I have argued elsewhere29,

the theme of topography and its link with genealogy and expansion is especially effectively handled in BnF fr. 9343-9344. Here, the Wavrin Master treats the city of Tournai very differently from how he deals with other cities in this manuscript, and indeed across the rest of his output. Rather than offering an impressionistic outline of a grouping of buildings which could represent any town or city, in the case of Tournai his approach is strikingly mimetic. Figure 17 gives a case in point. In this miniature, Philipis is seen exiting the city (at this point in the narrative known as Hostille) by the west gate. In the centre of the image is depicted the cathedral of Notre Dame in Tournai, clearly identifiable by the five towers which it still bears today, standing adjacent to the belfry to the left of the image. Here, as in other miniatures featuring the city, this highly mimetic approach is important: through moving away from his habitual practice, and parodying that of other more “conventional” artists of the time, the Wavrin Master draws attention to the fact that Philip did not possess Tournai though he wanted to, in order to complete his territorial portfolio, and hence the ideological function of the manuscript. The material book becomes the site of ducal identity formation in this very potent sense.

Yet the Wavrin Master also ensures that the manuscript fulfils this function in more subtle ways, by picking up on themes and motifs in the story and giving them his own creative reading. As we have seen above, battles and sieges are especially important thematically in the Buscalus as it is through these that Tournai, and hence posterity, are gained and lost. The Wavrin Master engages with this notion, and provides numerous illustrations of such events but with his own unique twist. Figure 18 shows Servius’s army leading an assault on Seconde Rome, while its inhabitants retaliate doughtily; all of this is suggested in the chapter illustrated by this miniature. What is not present in the text, however, is the scene in the foreground: here, a number of the inhabitants, presumably, of Second Rome are building small wicker fences and taking bundles of twigs with them over the city walls to function, we might surmise, as barricades. Across his output, even with his pared-down style, the Wavrin Master notably has a keen eye for detail and for social commentary: this, we might argue, is something which he witnessed first-hand during or had reported to him about a siege, and he includes the detail here to humanize and strengthen the

image he makes. The same can be said of Figure 19. This time, siege is being laid before Metz in what the rubric describes as “horrible temps” of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain; and while in this instance he is obviously being faithful to the text the exuberance with which the artist represents the barrage of the weather on our proto-Burgundian warriors suggests an empathy with the worthiness of the cause, and a desire to underline the adversity faced in the pursuit of the right outcome both within the text and outside of it.

The fact that in ways such as this the Wavrin Master’s work is so distinct from that of his contemporaries makes the manuscripts which he illustrates both unique and highly desirable to a duke bent on the articulation of might through luxury. His particular take on a further key aspect of the story of the Buscalus whose parodic importance we saw above – the inclusion of aspects of féerie – underlines this desirable uniqueness and the ways in which his work in this codex might be seen to contribute to its parodic dimension. Across his work, the Wavrin Master takes obvious delight in drawing the stranger aspects of a text, and its more arcane inhabitants, whether this be the serpent killed by Gérard de Nevers or the ditch-dwelling monster encountered by Florimont30; yet nowhere else is his project so thorough or so joyous as it is in the Paris Buscalus. The diabolical, the féerique, and the downright strange elements which are brought into the narrative find expression in the illustrative programme of BnF fr. 9343 and, especially, of Paris 9344, as a few brief examples will show. As the discussion of the text underlined, the greater preponderance of such episodes comes in the second volume of the work, though in the first there are nonetheless many appearances of the devil in shape-shifted guise, which our artist illustrates effectively. However, the most dazzling depiction of the “diable d’enfer” comes in the image given as Figure 20. Here, Hostus has summoned the devil to him to tell him how he will die, and the devil appears (somewhat huffily) in his own guise. The text does not describe the physical aspect of the devil, but the Wavrin Master produces this image which is as troubling as it is ludic, even down to the fire which he imagines him to breathe31. The devil’s words to Hostus

have a deep influence on the rest of the narrative and the genealogical progress of Buscalus’s line, which is made the plainer by the artist’s decision to illustrate the episode. The same can be said of the Wavrin Master’s practice in the second volume of the manuscript.

Unlike the later illustrator of one of the other manuscripts of the Buscalus, Copenhagen, Kongelige Biblioteek Thott 413, which contains just the second volume of the work, the Wavrin Master does not shy away from engaging with those stranger aspects which we have seen to be so important in the narrative. This is especially evident in his representation of the trio of fairies. They have already made their appearance by the end of the first volume (see Figure 21), but their role becomes more crucial and more ideologically charged in the second volume, as the queen’s designs on Philipis and another fairy’s subsequent desire for Tournus threaten to trouble the equilibrium of the textual world and its genealogy as well, by extension, as that of Burgundy. Figure 22 illustrates the queen of the fairies kneeling before an idol she had had made of Venus: that this is the moment at which her transgressive desire for Philipis is crystallized is indicated by the massive dart Venus holds in her left hand. At this point in the text many of the individuals who inhabit the fairies’ universe have idols made, and the Wavrin Master could have illustrated this whole scene or indeed any of the other idols mentioned, had this particular idol and particular episode not had these potentially dire consequences for the rest of the narrative, as it does here.

Conclusion

In both his selection and very specific evocation of these sorts of episode, it can be said that the Wavrin Master, like the anonymous author of the text, is engaged in a sort of parodying of his forebears of the kind invoked by Linda Hutcheon: as Hutcheon suggests, the practice illuminates potentially occluded aspects of a work; and in its

multi-dimensionality and connotations of “besideness” it dissolves distinctions between genres and indeed between notions of parody in its narrowest sense. This sort of parody is one which, in the Burgundian context, allows a text to partake of familiar elements and to repurpose them in some way, and to use them to provide a commentary on the text and the value of the material book at court. In short, this parodying of what has gone before, this rewriting and rethinking at the verbal and pictorial level are highly experimental in a way which has a particular resonance for and in the Roman de Buscalus. The narrative and visual edifice which both author and artist build here through bricolage and parody enable us to see in an especially striking way the sense in which the book plays a crucial role in the development of Burgundian courtly identity under Philip the Good. In their bringing together of apparently “queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary”, texts like the Roman de Buscalus in their manuscript context are less the “loose baggy monsters” of the Jamesian imagination than meaningful objets d’art which conspire both to establish and to bolster the glory of the ducal enterprise.

Rebecca Dixon

University of Liverpool