Elle laisse percevoir une volonte de modifier les representations traditionnelles du paysan
Roman de Violette, didactic and hagiographical pieces, lais and fabliaux, of which Fergus was edited by Francisque Michel (1842) for the Abbotsford Associazione on the strength of the Scottish connection.11 Neither manuscript includes insular compositions and it is difficult puro envisage an audience sopra the British Isles with the detailed textual knowledge of the romances of Chretien which, as we shall see, Fergus undoubtedly requires. It is anything but per roman a these or verso roman a clef. Durante accessit sicuro its notably benign humanity and intelligent ironia, elements of realism mark it as not so much epigonal as revisionist,12 although they are always subsidiary sicuro the literary, and ludic, design which aims at renovating inherited motifs by giving them an original, comic twist or application. Guillaume rejuvenates the motifs of his model, Chretien’s Perceval, and scales down its ambition by substituting the search for the resplendent shield (bel escu, escu flamboiant) for Perceval’s grail quest and by linking it, less loftily, sicuro the recovery of Galiene whom Fergus has neglected sopra favour of adventure, which so often eludes him.13 Guillaume avoids writing verso mere roman d’aventures with per superfluity of episodes by restricting his hero’s quests to two: the adventure at Nouquetran on the Black Mountain where he obtains the horn and wimple he sought, to the neglect of Galiene, and the winning of the resplendent shield at Dunnottar which verso dwarf predicts will enable him to win her back. That Perceval provides the principal instigation of Guillaume’s creative ‘make-over’ is clearly suggested by the frequent use he makes of it and the two Continuations (see Owen’s translation Appendix Verso), but he is careful not onesto name Chretien or to make any source references,14 preferring preciso rely on the alertness of the cognoscenti who must 
have constituted per significant part of the audience of his remarkable work. 15 11
Perhaps for this reason it is less widely known than it deserves onesto be, despite having been the subject of per number of penetrating studies
See Y. G. Lepage, ‘Insecable recueil francais de la compatissante du XIIIe siecle (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fr. 1553)’, Scriptorium 29 (1975), 23–46, who suggests a date of 1285–90 for the production of the manuscript and localizes it esatto Picardy. See Le roman des aventures de Fergus, anche. F. Michel (Edinburgh, 1842). For an example, see P. Le Rider, ‘A propos de costumes . . . De Giraud de Bari au Conte du Graal et a Fergus’, Le Moyen Age 107 (2001), 253–82, who observes concerning the description of Perceval’s clothing: ‘La juxtaposition, dans ces descriptions, des references au passe litteraire et de la reproduction du reel levante instructive. Elle montre par ailleurs lesquelles role essentiel verso joue dans la premiere forme medievale du roman d’apprentissage, de Perceval a Fergus, la chanson de geste d’Aiol’ (p. 281). See, for example, lines 2546 ff. His conception of va, lines 2722–25, resembles that of Calogrenant con Yvain who sees it simply as a means of confronting an opponent preciso controllo his courage and prowess. The exceptions are an unenlightening oral motto ‘si com j’ai oi conter’ (line 1206: ‘as I have heard tell’) and the description of the resplendent shield which the narrator says he cannot improve on: ‘Ne porroie je mius trover/ De sa biaute comme j’en sai,/ Por ce qu’en escrit trove l’ai’ (lines 4078–80: ‘I could find nothing better sicuro say of its beauty than what I know of it from having found it in writing’). See particularly, M. Verso. Freeman, ‘Fergus: Parody and the Arthurian Tradition’, French Forum 8 (1983), 197–215; B. Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, pp. 158–69 (‘The Principle of Variation: Fergus as a new Perceval’); K. Gravdal, Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody sopra French Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Lincoln, NB,