© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290143_011 chapter 9 A Community of Readers: The Quarrel of the Belle Dame sans mercy Joan E. McRae When at the turn of the 20th century scholar Arthur Piaget leafed through his colleague Count Max de Diesbach’s 15th century manuscript in Fribourg (cur- rently catalogued as L1200), he found within a series of poems documenting a particular and deliberate reading experience.1 Not just an assembly of some of the works of the noted poet Alain Chartier, but a collection of sequelized nar- rative poems that recorded a poignantly humorous yet deadly earnest quarrel swirling around a lovers’ debate: the Quarrel of La Belle Dame sans mercy (qbdsm). Piaget published a series of articles in Romania based on what he found within that codex, La Belle Dame sans mercy (lbdsm) and those “imitation poems” it inspired. He was, it turns out, through his reading and analysis of the poems, resuscitating a long-standing debate carried on by readers since lbdsm’ s initial circulation at the close of 1424.2 Piaget did not read lbdsm in isolation, then, as he thumbed through the thick paper pages of Count Diesbach’s manuscript. He read the poems in series, within their manuscript context, beginning with the instigating poem, lbdsm. The initial item in the codex, Chartier’s rhymed debate between lover and lady penned by an eavesdropping narrator, is traditional in subject and ver- sification, but dramatic in conclusion: the heartsick lover, refused by his 1 The Fribourg-Diesbach manuscript, lost for many years, is at the library in Fribourg, Switzerland: Fribourg, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire L1200. It can be viewed on-line with an excellent description at: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/description/bcuf/L1200. My thanks to Bob Peckham at the University of Tennessee Martin who found the on-line reference to this manuscript and indicated it to me, essentially rediscovering it. I have been eager to see it since I began my study of the Quarrel in 1989. The head librarian of the manu- script department in Fribourg, Romain Jurot, was puzzled at my delight in finding the manu- script, since for them, it had never been lost (its provenance, nevertheless, is quite complicated). See also Piaget’s description of the manuscript, written before 1899: “Notice sur le manuscrit du xv e siècle appartenant à M. le comte Max de Diesbach” in Piaget, Romania 34 (1905), 597–602. 2 Piaget, Romania 30 (1901), 22–48, 317–51; 31 (1902), 315–49; 33 (1904), 179–208; 34 (1905), 375– 428, 559–602. Copyright 2015. Brill. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 12/17/2022 2:07 PM via MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY AN: 1001090 ; Daisy Delogu, Emma Cayley, Joan E. McRae.; A Companion to Alain Chartier (c.1385-1430) : Father of French Eloquence Account: s4672406.main.edsfolio