The Middle Welsh Charlemagne Cycle: Readings in Manuscript Context

The Welsh Charlemagne cycle is a compilation of four translations into Middle Welsh of popular Latin and French texts: the Historia Turpini or Chronicle of the Pseudo-Turpin, as it is widely known; an incomplete version of the Chanson de Roland, which replaces chapter 21 of the chronicle, known as Cân Rolant (ed. Rejhon 1984); a rendering of the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Pererindod Siarlymaen; and the chanson de geste Otinel, Otuel. Stephen Williams edited the cycle as it appears in the Red Book of Hergest in 1930 as Ystorya de Carolo Magno. This compilation represents the latest development of the cycle. An early form, lacking Otuel, is preserved in five manuscripts (NLW Peniarth MSS 8i and 8ii, 7, 10, 183, Cwrtmawr MS 2) and existed by c. 1275. Two other groups of manuscripts, Peniarth MSS 9 and 5 (part of the White Book of Rhydderch), on the one hand, and Jesus College MS 111 (the Red Book of Hergest), on the other, order the texts differently and include Otuel, thus marking a later stage of the cycle (for the grouping of manuscripts I follow Poppe 2014).
These texts, then, circulated as a group, that is, in their cyclic form, which is how medieval audiences read them (and not as individual texts). In this paper I will thus analyse how each manuscript version of the cycle arranges the Charlemagne material and constructs a coherent story by way of the introduction of transitions, intra-textual references, and extra-textual additions. Looking at the manuscript context of the narratives will also yield significant clues as to how medieval audiences read the texts. I will also discuss the differences between the three manuscript versions, including their (perhaps) different take on the source texts. This analysis will hopefully cast light on the development of the cycle, and the patrons and audiences of the translations.