• 1 Hereafter referred to as BUR. The collection can be accessed online through Gallica or in a reprint (...)
• 2 As cited by R. Poirier, La Bibliothèque universelle des romans; rédacteurs, textes, public, Geneva, (...)
• 3 M. le Comte de Tress **, Extrait de l’histoire et plaisante chronique du Petit Jehan de Saintré d’a (...)
• 4 The publication history of Tressan’s Gérard de Nevers parallels that of his adaptation of Saintré. (...)
• 5 Antoine de La Sale, L’Histoire et plaisante cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré, de la jeune Dame d (...)
• 6 Antoine de La Sale, L’Histoire et Cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des Belle (...)
• 7 Antoine de La Sale, L’Hystoyre et plaisante cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame (...)
• 8 Antoine de La Sale, L’Hystoyre et plaisante cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame (...)
• 9 For an excellent overview of post-medieval editions and adaptations of Saintré, see M. B. Speer, “T (...)

1For Jean-François Bastide, general editor of the eighteenth-century literary digest the Bibliothèque universelle des romans1, medieval and other early fictions represented fertile ground for modern authors, a “pays de conquête où l’on peut se permettre tout ce que l’on veut”2. Since most readers would not have known the original, preserved in manuscripts or incunables held in private libraries, nothing prevented an author from imposing his tastes on the narrative as he abridged it into an “extrait” or a “miniature”, in keeping with the BUR’s goals of making all manner of epics, romances, and other narratives throughout history accessible to and comprehensible for a broad public of readers. The vast “pays de conquête” of medieval romance proved irresistible for the elderly Louis-Élisabeth de la Vergne, Comte de Tressan (1705-1783), former childhood companion of Louis XV, retired statesman and military officer, who became a prolific adaptor of medieval romances for the BUR and other venues from 1775 until his death (Figure 1). His adaptation of Saintré, signed by the Comte de Tress ** under the category of “Romans de Chevalerie” in 17803, was enormously popular, appearing in a variety of formats from the original serial publication, to deluxe leather-bound volumes and modest paper editions, naming only Tressan when an author is named at all. (Among Tressan’s other medieval adaptations are Amadis de Gaule, published separately with Pissot in 1778, Huon de Bordeaux, and Gérard de Nevers.)4 Despite the appearance of four complete editions of La Sale’s romance based on early printed editions or manuscripts in 17245, 18306, 18437, and 18908, most eighteenth-and nineteenth-century readers probably knew Saintré as Tressan’s sentimental romance rather than as La Sale’s didactic compilation9.

• 10 Saintré, ed. Lami-Denozan, p. 1.
• 11 Saintré, ed. Guichard, p. v.
• 12 Jehan de Saintré, ed. Hellény, p. viii.
• 13 Antoine de La Sale, L’Histoire et plaisante chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame (...)
• 14 Saintré, ed. Haugmard, p. v.
• 15 V. Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan et sur ses ouvrages”, in Œuvres du Comte de Tressan, précédées d’un (...)
• 16 “Sa situation intermédiaire entre le monde et les lettres a donné à son œuvre de vulgarisation plus (...)

2Nineteenth-century editors of La Sale’s original judged Tressan’s miniaturization quite harshly. “Une traduction mutilée”, said Lami-Denozan of Tressan’s Saintré in his 1830 edition of La Sale’s romance10, which takes pains to restore descriptions of tournaments, feasts, and costumes that Tressan had omitted, and prints the book in gothic type with added ornamentation and illustrations. “Impitoyablement abrégée”, lamented Guichard in his 1843 edition of La Sale’s Saintré, although he confessed that had Tressan published the work in its original form at the time, “un tel livre n’eût point été lu”11. In his 1890 edition, Hellény accused Tressan of giving the work “la couleur libertine qui plaisait à ses contemporains”, thus assuring the book’s success in “boudoirs” for half a century, where rather than being displayed for visitors’curiosity it had to be hidden “au plus profond des bibliothèques”12. “Méconaissable… extrêmement réduite, galante et mondaine, d’une fausse et perverse naïveté”, charged Haugmard in his 1910 transposition into modern French13, although he conceded that Tressan deserves our gratitude for allowing readers to taste the charm of hitherto unknown works: “remercions-l’en”14. According to Tressan’s nineteenth-century editor, if he was snubbed by cultivated readers, his works were nonetheless widely read: “La destinée de M de Tressan, comme écrivain, fut d’être jugé sévèrement par les gens de lettres et lu avec avidité par les gens du monde”15. Indeed, for Henri Jacoubet, it was precisely Tressan’s intermediary position between the intelligentsia and middle-brow culture, that made his “œuvres de vulgarisation” so influential, helping to create what was then called “troubadour” style not only in the novel but also in painting, drama, and the minor arts, such as fashion16.

• 17 L. Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of La Curne de (...)
• 18 Gossman, Medievalism, p. 59.
• 19 For details of Paulmy’s break with Tressan, see Poirier, La Bibliothèque universelle des romans, p. (...)
• 20 Comparing Tressan’s version of Perceval with that of Paulmy, Poirier, Poirier, Bibliothèque univers (...)
• 21 Poirier, Bibliothèque universelle des romans, p. 6-7. For an analytic study of the contents of the (...)

3Literary historians since Jacoubet have endorsed this more generous view of Tressan’s accomplishments and influence, even as his work has remained relatively little studied. To be sure, Tressan lacked the erudition and gravitas of the eighteenth-century scholar La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, whose ventures into medieval language and history were truly pathbreaking17. But Tressan frequented salons and learned circles and corresponded sporadically with philosophes, in particular Voltaire; like Sainte-Palaye and other épée and robe aristocrats, he embraced certain new philosophical ideals without seeking to upset the existing social order. Lionel Gossman has portrayed Tressan as something of a maverick, “a thoroughly worldly and irreverent character, a friend of the philosophes, the author of some elegantly libertine adaptations of medieval romances, and a wag whose propensity for satirical verse got him banished from court on several occasions”18. Roger has described Tressan’s crucial role as an anonymous contributor to the BUR, one who worked particularly closely with the new general editor Bastide after falling out with the more scholarly Marquis de Paulmy, the founding editor whose personal library supplied their literary sources until 1778, when Paulmy ceased contact with the BUR19. Although Poirier dismisses Tressan’s efforts post-Paulmy as “caricatures” rather than straightforward “miniatures”20, he recognizes the scale of the BUR enterprise – a corpus of 926 titles in 224 volumes of around 200 pages each, produced over the course of 14 years, from July 1775 to June 1789 – as one of the most important bibliographic enterprises of the eighteenth-century21.

• 22 V. Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières: le Moyen Âge dans la “Bibliothèque universelle des romans”, Oxford (...)
• 23 Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 122.
• 24 Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 155-160.
• 25 Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 186.
• 26 Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 231.

4More recently, Véronique Sigu has hailed the BUR as a publishing venture as ambitious in its scope and aims as the Encyclopédie, and has urged critics to view the project seriously in its own terms22. As it attempted to present all fictions from Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the present day, the BUR combined the erudition of eighteenth-century scholarship with certain progressive goals of the Enlightenment; it promoted a new kind of cultural history and capitalized on the vogue of the novel. Drawing upon the literary content of private aristocratic libraries, such as those of Sainte-Palaye and Paulmy, the BUR made these materials accessible to popular audiences, who received instruction in the history, customs, and social institutions of the past. According to Sigu, novels of medieval chivalry were especially prized as offering examples of exemplary conduct to eighteenth-century aristocrats, both in the courtly comportment of knights towards ladies23 and in the valorous service of knights in military service24; the knights were always presented as “efficient” agents and never as threats to royal power, as a “modèle politique et moral à l’aristocratie de cette fin du dix-huitième siècle”25. At the same time – and here Sigu specifically invokes Tressan’s Saintré as an example – the medieval knights in the BUR became heroes who transcended their aristocratic family origins to promote French national identity during a period when France was entangled in bitter, violent disputes with England. Medieval knights such as Saintré became the incarnation “du courage français, la source de la fierté nationale, d’un sentiment patriotique qui dépasse toute notion de classe”26.

• 27 M. Szkilnik, Jean de Saintré. Une carrière chevaleresque au xv ^e siècle, Geneva, Droz, 2003, p. 139 (...)

5Mentioned at several points by Sigu but never analyzed in full, Tressan’s Saintré seems to embody many of the BUR’s explicit and implicit goals. Its long-standing appeal to both popular and elite audiences through the mid-nineteenth century invites us to take another look at this work. Although many elements of the original are radically altered, Tressan re-casts La Sale’s courtly values for new readers, much as medieval remanieurs were apt to do. Through his extensive cuts, footnotes, authorial interventions, and substantial modifications, Tressan composes an engaging sentimental romance for eighteenth-century sensibilities, one that evokes nostalgia for the bygone glories of medieval chivalry, revives a dream of French military valor, and fondly depicts a slight but earnest and talented young knight whose amorous desires are awakened and kindled for years only to be cruelly rejected. If Antoine de La Sale refashions a knight into a courtier, as Michelle Szkilnik suggests27, Tressan follows suit, creating a contemporary hero who rises to prominence at court, commands respect as a general who defends France and models the best qualities of an eighteenth-century gentleman. Tressan moves La Sale’s Saintré from the late medieval court to the eighteenth-century boudoir, transforming a celebrated but minor pseudo-historical knight who was himself an image of waning chivalric glory into a symbol that not only revalorizes the nobility but also prepares the way for the young Romantic hero. In his slender yet deft recasting of Saintré, Tressan exploits the multifaceted charms of the original, mixing nostalgia for the past with the sentimental and social stirrings of a new era and opening up medieval fiction to the diverse reading publics of the modern novel.

• 28 Antoine de La Sale, La Sale, ed. F. Desonay in Œuvres completes, vol. 2, Paris, Droz, 1941, p. 1.
• 29 Antoine de La Sale, Le traité des anciens et des nouveaux tournois, ed. S. Lefèvre, in S. Lefèvre, (...)

6One can discern a similar strain of nostalgia for the past glories of chivalry and courtly splendor in La Sale’s medieval romance, which glorifies the life of a knight who lived a hundred years earlier than the time of composition. It is perhaps not without consequence that both the medieval romance and the eighteenth-century adaptation are end-of-career fictions for their authors, written when they were respectively 70 (La Sale) and 74 (Tressan). Both narrators express admiration not only for the hero’s youth, his slight but agile frame, his good looks and pleasing manners, but also for his rapid rise to high status at the king’s court and his astonishing success as a knight – accomplishments that might have stirred up nostalgia or regret in the elderly authors. La Sale and Tressan were both introduced to court life in their youth; La Sale entered service in the court of Louis II of Anjou at age 14; young Tressan was educated in the company of Louis XV, before his majority. La Sale transferred to the house of Luxembourg in 1448 after more than forty years of service to Anjou, provoking feelings that he describes as “très desplaisante merencolie”28. Saintré was written for his former pupil, Jean de Calabre, son of King René. Two more works followed Saintré, one of them, Le traité des anciens et des nouveaux tournois, explicitly recalling with nostalgia chivalric practices that were already on the wane29.

• 30 The first biography appears to be the “Vie du Comte de Tressan”, signed anonymously by l’Abbé V *** (...)
• 31 According to Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan”, p. xviii, and his great nephew, Souvenirs du Comte de T (...)
• 32 Jacoubet, Le Comte de Tressan, p. 208-210.
• 33 Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan”, p. xii.
• 34 Jacoubet, Le Comte de Tressan, p. 202-203.
• 35 Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan”, p. xiv.
• 36 Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan”, p. xvi.

7By Tressan’s time, of course, warfare had been considerably transformed and chivalric enterprises were viewed as historic phenomena, worthy of recollection for the example of valor they could inspire and as a reminder of the aristocracy’s useful social function. As we learn from biographical accounts, Tressan’s late career as an adaptor of chivalric fictions seems to have compensated for a rather rocky career as courtier and royal soldier30. (He allegedly developed a youthful passion for medieval French chivalric romance in the Vatican library, while on a diplomatic mission.) On the one hand, Tressan was a member of Louis XV’s and Queen Marie Leczinska’s inner circle; he frequented several prominent feminine salons, notably those of Madame de Tencin and Madame Lambert, and befriended the deposed King Stanislas of Poland. But Tressan also managed to offend the Queen and then Mme de Pompadour, the king’s mistress, with disrespectful verse31; he was involved in a scandal involving the defense of Rousseau against a detractor, whom Rousseau eventually pardoned32. Although he was elected to the Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris in 1749 for his treatise on electricity, a coveted election to the Académie française eluded him until a few years before his death. Although his military career had a promising start, he was passed over at several points for promotions. Wounded at the battle of Fontenoy in 1744, he asked the king for the honor of always fighting on the front as befitted his rank33. He participated in the sieges of Tournai, Bruges, Ghent and Oudenarde34. Then, at some point after 1745 and especially after 1756, his military assignments involved supervision of outposts rather than front-line combat. When tensions broke out with the English, he was first assigned to survey troops in Boulogne35 and later, as affairs heated up again, he was assigned to command troops and oversee supplies in the eastern provinces, in Bitche and Lorraine, perhaps, it is surmised, because Madame de Pompadour’s favorites were promoted over him36.

• 37 Voltaire, cited in H.-A.-G de Tressan, Souvenirs, p. 103.
• 38 Voltaire, cited in H.-A.-G. de Tressan, Souvenirs, p. 105.
• 39 Campenon, “Sur M. de Tressan”, p. xix.
• 40 Poirier, Bibliothèque universelle, p. 17, suggests that both Paulmy and Tressan had financial reaso (...)
• 41 M. de Tressan, Souvenirs, p. 194.
• 42 Petit Jehan de Saintré, BUR, janvier 1780, vol. 2, p. 65.

8To console him for his apparent demotion, Voltaire wrote to him that “cinquante mille livres de rente [à Bitche] sont plus que cent cinquante à Paris”37. Beyond the spectacle of the philosophes, advised Voltaire, his friend would have more time to cultivate his genius38. Tressan eventually lost even the salary of lieutenant-general and retired in 1764 to Lunéville, to the court of King Stanislas (who died in 1766)39. Tressan’s appointment by Stanislas as Director of the Académie de Nancy in 1751 seems to have provided some of the intellectual stimulus he lacked in living so far from Paris; he was also named to the royal societies of London and Edinburgh, in 1753. At the end of his life, Tressan installed himself in a country house in Franconville, where he dedicated himself to his family; in declining health, he was subject to frequent attacks of gout. His collaboration with the Marquis de Paulmy on the BUR, beginning in 1775, must have come as a timely distraction and a welcome source of additional income40. In any case, Tressan launched himself into writing with enthusiasm, as his great nephew reports: “On n’imagine pas avec quelle rapidité il écrivait ces divers ouvrages dont le succès se soutient encore aujourd’hui […] il ne s’est jamais donné pour un interprète très scrupuleux, mais il a excellé dans l’art de rajeunir les récits de nos vieilles chroniques”41. Saintré, published in 1780, was written during a particularly painful period, according to the editor, who introduces the BUR extract by asking, “À l’âge de soixante-quatorze ans passés; dans un lit depuis deux mois; tourmenté, par moments, des plus vives douleurs de la goutte; croira-t-on qu’on ait pu faire ce qu’on va lire?”42

• 43 Tressan, “Avertissement de l’auteur”, in Le Comte de Tressan, Œuvres du Comte de Tressan, ed. M. Ca (...)

9Tressan praises his source’s historical details – explicitly acknowledged in the “Avertissement de l’auteur” – not only for all the information these provide about “des mœurs, des parures et des usages de la cour de ce temps” and “des préparatifs des grandes fêtes, des grands défis d’armes de province à province”43, but also for the mention of noble families – “les Montmorency, les La Trémouille, les Duras….”. – who have maintained their illustrious stature, “les mêmes vertus militaires et le même éclat” (p. 8). Tressan seeks not only to renew a sense of youthful vigor, but also to rekindle and revive the glory of aristocratic families and ultimately, as we shall see, to vaunt a particularly French national identity.

• 44 Antoine de La Sale, Jehan de Saintré, ed. J. Misrahi and C. A. Knudson, Geneva, Droz, 1978, p. 190- (...)

11He retains only the sin of lust (p. 30-31). He eliminates most of the elaborate details about Jehan’s acquisition of clothing, livery, and equestrian trappings. Madame generously provides Jehan with écus but does not deliver detailed instructions about how to spend them. Tressan reduces both the number of Saintré’s chivalric exploits and their length and complexity. Although the adaptor is delighted to see the names of many noble families cited in the original, with their blazons described exactly as they are in his day (p. 68), he omits the lengthy call of arms for the Prussian Crusade, a list of heraldic emblems and battle cries from dozens of regions in France, as well as from Spain and the German Empire, that comprises nearly thirty pages in the Misrahi/Knudson edition44. The romance’s later battle scenes, the narrator opines, are “une longue et servile imitation” of earlier exploits, presenting “une monotonie prolixe” (p. 70, n. 1). Tressan prefers to cut to the love story. As a result of these major deletions, Saintré’s structure as a didactic compilation enclosing treatises of moral conduct and a handbook of chivalry is effectively gutted. The adaptor refers interested readers to the 1724 edition for the full story in greater detail.

• 45 On the BUR’s conception of history, see Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 97-119. On new approaches (...)
• 46 Gueulette, “Avertissement”, Saintré, ed. Gueulette, p. A-Diii.
• 47 This confusion originates from La Sale’s error in referring to the dukes of Anjou, Berry and Burgun (...)
• 48 Another confusion created by La Sale is the designation of Bonne as John’s queen; Bonne died before (...)

12Yet in keeping with the aims of the BUR to appeal to both erudite and popular readers, Tressan attends carefully to Saintré’s historical context. His critical apparatus, which includes the “Avertissement”, historical explanations within the text, and footnotes, reflects the era’s growing interest in social and cultural history, an approach that the BUR was eager to promote45. Thus Tressan frequently attempts to provide helpful commentary, sometimes emphasizing parallels and continuity with eighteenth-century society and sometimes drawing attention to unusual, surprising, or “bizarre” features of medieval life. Such contextualization follows the lead of Gueullette, who prefaced his edition with a lengthy description of chivalric titles46. Tressan repeats Gueullette’s assertion that the historical setting must have been the court of Charles VI or Charles V, rather than that of King John and Bonne de Bohème47. The court of Charles VI’s queen, Isabeau de Bavière, Tressan surmises, would have been more amused by such an “histoire gaillarde” than good King John and his virtuous wife Bonne de Bohème48.

• 49 “Humidité causée par les humeurs, qui n’est pas évacuée et qui peut monter au cerveau”; See “Vapeur (...)

14At times, Tressan’s fictional inventions are underscored and authenticated by pseudo-historical explanations, as in his enhanced portrait of the Queen’s doctor, Hue. Tressan transforms La Sale’s obliging but thoroughly professional doctor into a lady’s man, who is quick to offer a witty epigram and “propos gallant”, along with his prescriptions; many ladies consulted Dr. Hue without needing to, we learn (p. 73). When the doctor attends to Belles Cousines, who languishes after Jehan’s departure for the Prussian Crusade, Hue invents the term “vapeurs” to describe her ailment after modestly examining Madame by feeling “une partie de ses charmes” (p. 74). The narrator explains that the expression “vapeurs” became so popular that many ladies of the court developed the same symptoms: “Jamais expression ne devint plus promptement à la mode, et n’eut une plus longue durée”. (p. 76) Although “vapeurs” appears in late medieval medical writings to describe humidity from the humors that may rise to the head49, La Sale does not employ the term, nor does he analyze Madame’s malaise in depth. Tressan’s fanciful etymology confers authority on the doctor and the adaptor as experts in feminine psychology. Attempting to bridge the gap between medieval and contemporary sensibilities, Tressan appeals directly to female readers in his audience.

• 50 P. Demarolle, “La réécriture de Jean de Saintré d’Antoine de La Sale par le Comte de Tressan: Décap (...)
• 51 Speer, “Literary Fortune”, p. 402.

16As Pierre Demarolle has noted, the principal effect of Tressan’s many changes is to transform a chivalric romance into a “roman d’amour”50. Mary Speer, in her fine account of Tressan’s adaptation, deems the new work “a simplified psychological novel”51. Following earlier critics’character analysis further, one could say that Tressan heightens the drama between Madame and the youth, by deepening the physical and psychological intensity of their affair and complicating the power play. Madame’s show of virtuous widowhood does not occasion an ironic exemplum about a widow in ancient Rome who outlived 22 husbands, as it does in La Sale (MK, p. 6). Instead, Tressan elicits sympathy for the young widow’s plight: he explains that Madame’s elderly husband had been “odieux”, and that her marriage had been spent almost entirely in tears; nonetheless, she consequently knew something about what was at stake in flirting with Jehan. “Ainsi elle était un peu coupable; mais sommes-nous assez innocents nous-mêmes pour ne pas aimer à l’excuser?” (p. 17) asks the narrator indulgently.

• 52 Sigu, Médiévisme et lumières, p. 229.

19Such attributes in a commander would not have been unwelcome in the regiments of Tressan’s day. As an officer who was shortchanged in his military ambitions, who never received the plum assignment he desired, as a close friend of the deposed King Stanislas, Tressan perhaps uses Saintré as a vehicle to express regret at missed opportunities for leadership. If his indulgence towards Madame may have appealed to female readers, his sympathy for the young knight may well have appealed to aristocratic men who felt blindsided by social transformations in a country on the cusp of revolution. Saintré, imposing despite his slight stature, unfailingly courteous and ready to uphold his country’s cause, embodies national pride as much as he does the aspirations of a class, as Sigu has suggested specifically of Tressan’s Saintré, as well as of other BUR chivalric heroes52.

• 53 There are four copies of this in-18 edition in Paris, including one deluxe vellum edition; Tressan,(...)
• 54 Tressan, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, in Corps d’extraits de romans de chevalerie, vol. 3, Paris, Pis (...)
• 55 Tressan, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré d’après la comparaison de l’original avec l’édition donnée par M (...)
• 56 The page preceding the title page reads “Bibliothèque de Madame la Vicomtesse de Vintimille. Romans (...)
• 57 Tressan, Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles Cousines, extraite de la vieil (...)
• 58 Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles Cousines, extraite de la vieille Chroni (...)
• 59 M. de Tressan, Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles-Cousines, extraite de la (...)

32Tressan’s Saintré remained popular throughout the major social and historical transitions in late eighteenth-century history and up until the mid-nineteenth century, appealing to male and female readers, high-brow and more popular. In 1780, the same year as the BUR serial, Tressan’s miniature appears as a work in its own right, as one of 35 in-18 volumes of literature published by order of the Comte d’Artois, younger brother of Louis XVI and the future King Charles X; other volumes in the series include Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, Prévost’s Manon Lescaut, La Fontaine’s Fables, and Tressan’s Gérard de Nevers53. Tressan’s collected chivalric romances and other writings on early literature are published in four in-12 volumes in 1782; Saintré appears along with Dom Ursino le Navarin (Tressan’s only original fiction), and Gérard de Nevers in the third volume54. In 1787, an anonymous paper edition is published for the Bibliothèque universelle des dames55; a reader may pay an additional fee to have her name printed on the title page, as does Madame la Vicomtesse de Vintimille56. Post-revolution, a new edition is published by Didot Jeune in 179157 and in 179658, with four illustrations by Moreau le Jeune. A small paper copy, with an abridged Avant-Propos, fewer footnotes and no final explanatory note, appears in Geneva in 179259.

• 60 Œuvres choisies du comte de Tressan: avec figures, 10 vols, Paris, Rue et Hôtel Serpente, 1787-1789 (...)
• 61 Œuvres du Comte de Tressan précédées d’une notice sur sa vie et ses ouvrages, ed. F. N. Campenon, P (...)
• 62 Tressan, Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la Dame des Belles-Cousines, extraite de la vieil (...)
• 63 Tressan, Histoire et plaisante chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles-Cousine (...)
• 64 Tressan, Histoires du petit Jehan de Saintré et de Gérard de Nevers par Tressan, Paris, Salmon, 182 (...)
• 65 Tressan, Histoire et plaisante chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles Cousine (...)
• 66 Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles-Cousines par le Comte de Tressan, Paris (...)
• 67 For example, see Histoire et plaisante chronique de Petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles (...)
• 68 Le Comte de Tressan, Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la dame des Belles-Cousines. Les veil (...)

33Tressan’s Œuvres choisies appeared in 10 volumes in 1787, with two volumes of posthumous works added two years later60; 30 years later, during the Bourbon Restoration, his Œuvres completes were edited in ten volumes by Campenon61. In the latter collection, Saintré appears in volume 8 with Gérard de Nevers, an essay on pre-Christian romances, and Robert le Brave (a posthumous work written by Tressan’s son) (Figure 2). Saintré is also published separately in popular editions: in a tiny in-32 Édition mignonne, published in 182762, without the preface or notes, and in another small in-16 paper edition in 1830 published by Lequien fils that does contain the critical apparatus, as well as two illustrations (Figure 3)63. Tressan’s Saintré appears with his Gérard de Nevers in a compact paper-bound volume with an abbreviated “Avant-Propos” identifying the court as that of Charles VI, but without the explanatory final note; the volume contains a single engraving, “Saintré cachant avec ses mains ses yeux brillants des feux de l’amour fit semblant de sangloter” serving as frontispiece64. In 1846, Campenon’s “Sur M. de Tressan et ses ouvrages” is republished with Saintré65; three years later, a very spare paper edition is published with no “avertissement d’auteur”, and only four brief historical notes; the final explanation about Jehan’s gallantry is omitted66. These are by no means the only versions in which Tressan’s Saintré circulates; it is often bound with another work, with other chivalric romances67, or more contemporary fictions, as when it finds its way into the periodical Les veillées littéraires, in 184968. This version of the romance includes five engravings that illustrate dramatic moments or characters: “Le Boudoir”, on the opening page (Figure 4), shows Jehan and Madame touching as they converse (p. 1); three pages from the end, “Damp abbé” coquet-tishly reveals a handsome leg in one image; Jehan fights Enguerrand in another cameo; and below this, Jehan vanquishes five Bretons (all on p. 12). Finally, in the “Vengeance de Saintré”, Jehan kneels with his dagger over the abbot as Madame and one of her ladies look on (p. 13); there is no “Avant-Propos” or “Avertissement”, no final justification of the modified ending, and only a few notes. No longer presented as a medieval “miniature”, the romance appears here as a full-length novella by the Comte de Tressan, along with Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe and Goethe’s Werther, also bound in Les veillées littéraires that year. Little Jehan de Saintré has achieved the status of a romantic hero.

• 69 S.-P. Mérard de Saint-Just, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré et la Dame des Belles-Cousines, Romance. Suiv (...)
• 70 Le Petit Jehan de Saintré et la Dame des Belles cousins, comédie mêlée de couplets, en trois actes (...)
• 71 Jehan de Saintré, opéra comique en deux actes, poème de Jules Barbier et Pierre Barbier; musique de (...)

34Tressan’s “petit Jehan” also appears in other artistic forms. Young Saintré is the subject of a curious “romance”, a brief narrative poem in sizains, composed by Mérard de Saint-Just, in year 6 of the Revolution69. He is the leading man in a vaudeville comedy “imitated” from Tressan by Dumersan and Brazier, and performed in 181770. Few elements of Tressan’s abridged romance remain, save Jehan’s youth, his military prowess (here against the Saxons at the gates of Paris), and his appeal to ladies. Jehan’s name also appears in the title of an 1893 opéra comique by Jules Barbier and Pierre Barbier; the comic operetta features Jehan as a young page admired by the Queen’s attendants at the court of King René. Once again, little of Tressan’s story has survived, with the curious exception of the Queen’s physician, Messire Hue, and the malady of “vapeurs”71. With his youth, his slight figure, but outstanding prowess, his success with a well-placed lady, Jehan manages to embody qualities that are quintessentially and nostalgically “French” from the last days of the ancien régime to the Second Republic.

• 72 F. Desonay, “Notices Critiques”, in Antoine de La Sale, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, ed. P. Champion (...)
• 73 S. Lefèvre, Antoine de la Sale.
• 74 For a recent overview of the literary and historical questions raised by La Sale’s novel, and criti (...)
• 75 Guichard, ed., Saintré, p. vi.

35We have seen how the early scholarly editors of La Sale’s Saintré felt obliged to put Tressan in his place; the negative assessment reappears in the 1926 edition by Champion and Desonay, who characterize the author as “un admirateur fanatique doublé, hélas, d’un travestisseur malheureux de la littérature française” and who condemn the tone of the book as “tout imprégné de l’esprit frivole, voire même un tantinet grivois, du xviii^e siècle”, even as they begrudgingly acknowledge the adaptor’s popularity72. But Misrahi and Knudson make no mention of Tressan in their 1965 edition, and by now, interest in the ten known Saintré manuscripts, in La Sale’s authorial presence throughout his works, finely demonstrated by Sylvie Lefèvre73, and in the romance’s complexities and its reflection (or refraction) of fifteenth-century social history74 have all but eclipsed memories of Tressan’s sentimental hero. Apart from Speer and Demarolle, whose studies we discussed earlier, few scholars mention Tressan as part of the Saintré bibliography today, and perhaps rightly so. His sentimental chivalric romance bears little resemblance to La Sale’s late medieval didactic compilation. But Tressan’s enthu-siastic retelling of the medieval story deserves its place in the history of medievalism and in that of popular fiction. By refashioning La Sale’s chivalric biography as a popular novel for the boudoir, by infusing the narrative with sensuality, patriotism and modern sensibility, Tressan kept the story of Saintré alive in the public consciousness as one of the “plus charmantes productions de l’ancienne littérature”75, perhaps inspiring more serious scholars to return to the sources and to restore Antoine de La Sale’s Jehan de Saintré as a masterpiece of late medieval fiction.