De Peredur à Aspremont : chassé-croisé de têtes coupées entre épopée et roman

Abstract

The severed heads are rarely highlighted in the chanson de egste. Aspremont, which tells the story of Charlemagne’s conquest of southern Italy, is an exception : the care and luxury of detail with which the severed heads of the defeated Saracens are presented puts us on the track of the valorization of this motif in Arthurian literature. Yet the link between the two materials is inscribed at the very heart of the song, since the juggler accompanying Charlemagne’s expedition is from Brittany and is called Graelent. So could not the severed Saracen heads be interpreted in the light of the severed head presented to Peredur in the eponymous Breton novel ?

Keywords

• Aspremont
• chanson de geste
• Saracen
• heaume
• trophy
• ring