Paths of genre evolution of the Constance Saga in the second half of the 14th century

Semenov Vadim Borisovich ORCID: 0000-0003-2532-5381 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Literary Theory; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., GSP-1, p. 51 vadsemionov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In the XIII century. it began to take shape, by the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. it developed and by the middle of the XIV century. it began to evolve, adapting to various genre forms of epic narrative, a single story about a woman's fate, the plot structure of which united many monuments of the Middle Ages and subsequent eras. In Western literary studies at the end of the XIX century, this story was called the "Saga of Constance" ^{[1, p. 1]}. Its direct plot completely coincides with the plot, which shows kinship with the narrative structures of folklore, and the plot is based on two major events (these events are embodied by successive chains of events and actions of characters as motives and we will call them FS, plot situations). The first situation as a whole is a forced separation from a spouse, a temporary disintegration of the family (in the form of the heroine's flight or her expulsion by third parties), the second, final, is a long–awaited reunion. Both the first and second situations are preceded by a narrative about other events and actions – those that are collectively used to motivate some basic plot situation, lead to it, motivate its appearance (their totality we call the MC, the motivation complex).

The peculiarity of the abstract plot scheme of this single story is that the two main situations and the motivational complexes preceding them are always reproduced in their places (MK-FS-MK-FS), while inside the MK individual well-known motives can completely disappear, as well as new ones appear, and inside the FS motives do not disappear, but only vary (it does not change that the wife of a certain ruler is slandered, but the mask of a slanderer can be put on one or another of her husband's relatives: her own mother, foster mother, aunt, son-in-law, etc.; the fact that the ruler's wife, as a result of her reservation, will be forced to leave his castle or city, invariably, but the course a plot action can send her into the thick of a huge forest or in an unguided boat into the open sea).

The author of this article has already considered the works of the initial stage of the life of the "Saga of Constance", monuments of the XIII century, and derived a simplified formula of the plot scheme sufficient to describe them ^{[2, pp. 191-192]}. However, history developed, and already in the next century, various genre branches began to move away from its main trunk, the growth of which was initially caused by the fact that some MK motifs hardened over time and began to seem as integral parts of history as the FS motifs (so, around 1270, Philippe de Remy de Beaumanoir created a "Novel about a Handless Man", at the beginning of which the heroine cut off her hand due to the threat of incest from her father, and then a similar plot twist began to appear more and more often in the samples of the "Saga"), or vice versa: individual motives of MK were present in the "Saga" initially and, apparently, should they were felt by medieval readers of epic works as obligatory – but suddenly disappeared, which would never have happened with the motives of the FS (the oldest motive of the "Saga", from which it began to develop, the motive of incest, was canceled by Nicholas Treveth, who in 1320-1330 in his "Chronicles" replaced it with an equally dramatized motive of a bloody wedding: at the beginning of the plot, the heroine married the converted Sultan of Syria, but the evil mother-in-law ordered fanatical pagans to kill her son and the rest of the converts right at the wedding feast, in front of the bride).

In this article, our first task will be to detail and correct the plot formula based on the consideration of the following samples of the "Saga of Constance" (Constance is the name of the heroine of Treveth, and then J. Chaucer, who in 1393 in the "Story of the Lawyer" reproduced in verse his prose plot), referring to the culminating period of its existence – to the second half of the XIV century. The large forms of J. Gower and J. We will leave Chaucer aside, and turn to works that are perhaps less well-known. We see the second task in using the example of these works to identify those various genre paths of development of the history that made up the "Saga", which were outlined for it during this culminating period.

First, we will compile a detailed plot formula for the "Saga", based on new data from the works of the XIV century, which are discussed below. The formula, as before, will consist of four familiar headings, which we will now present as follows:

MK I + FS I + MK II + FS II

Now let's list the motives that will have to be included in the formula. Those with the additional status will be placed in parentheses. Arabic numerals will indicate equally frequent variations of the same motif. A slash will indicate the variability of the motive or the variability of its position in the plot.

(A) – the motive of the battles with the Saracens (the husband or father of the heroine, or anyone who influences the events in the plot), which became especially relevant in the era of the Ottoman conquests. B – the king plotted incest (B1 – the king fell in love, B2 – the king was convinced by outsiders). (C) – the severed hand of the heroine. (D) – the threat of burning at the stake. (E) – The barons sympathize with the heroine. F – the heroine leaves her father's domain (F1 – she runs away, F2 – she is expelled). (G) – in her wanderings, she avoids the danger of unwanted marriage/sex. (H) – the person who meets with the function of patron provides her with housing (often it is the manager of the royal castle). I – the local ruler falls in love with the heroine, followed by an early wedding. (J) – The heroine hides her real name and origin. K – someone from among the groom's relatives (often his own mother) is unhappy. L – the departure of a young spouse on an important occasion for a long time (often to war), he leaves the heroine pregnant. M – she gives birth (M1 – one son, which makes it possible in FSIII to endow him with the function of the link through which the reunion of parents will take place, M2 – two sons, which will allow introducing into MKII the motive for the abduction of children by wild (often heraldic) beasts). N – the antagonist replaces the letters, the heroine is slandered. (A) – the animals carry off the children shortly after the obligatory plot replay of F1 or F2. (P) – a hermit or a person of spiritual rank takes care of the children and their upbringing (the motive appears if there is a previous motive of kidnapping). Q – the heroine arrives in Rome (rarely in another major city). R – finds housing and, possibly, patrons (often it is the senator's family, rarely other persons: a merchant, a priest, etc.). S – the husband who returned home after the investigation punishes the antagonist (a motive is possible nearby, as specifying after what events in his life the husband returned or what may prevent him from immediately embarking on the search for the heroine; if the punishment is skipped here, then the motive S appears in the finale as an additional one). (T) – the search for the heroine (surprisingly, they are not an obligatory element of the plot, often family reunification is not caused by them, but by chance). U – meeting of husband and wife after a long time in the place where the wife lives (often in the house of her patron). (V) – reunion with the children (if the plot includes the motive O). (W) – reunion with the father, who also arrived at the holy places in the city where the heroine lives, for repentance. (X) – if the motif of the severed hand (C) was present in the plot, then here the hand is miraculously reunited with the heroine with the assistance of a clergyman (saint, pontiff, etc.). Y – the fate of the heroine's descendants in the future is arranged in the best way: they inherit the vast possessions and titles of their ancestors. As a result, a detailed formula for the sequence of plot motifs common to the samples of the "Saga of Constance" of the XIII-XIV centuries is formed:

MK I: (A), B1/B2, (C), (D), (E), F1/F2 +

FS I: (G), (H), I, (J), K, L, M1/M2, N, (C), (D), (E), F1/F2 +

MK II: (O), (P), Q, R, (A), S/, (T) +

FS II: U, (V), (W), (X), /(S), Y

The first path of the Saga's evolution involved reproducing the basic reference story with minimal plot changes. We find its embodiment in a Latin prose work created at the beginning of the second half of the XIV century – "Ystoria Regis Franchorum et Filie in qua Adulterium Comitere Voluit" ("The story of the king of the Franks and the daughter with whom he wanted to commit adultery"). This sample of the "Saga" is preserved in the only manuscript of Paris, Bibliothèque n ationale de France, latin, 8701 (f. 142r-147r). In it, the text is divided into 17 unnumbered but titled chapters, and G. Suchier in 1910 based on these titles created the following synopsis:

«I. We read that the King of France had a beautiful daughter with whom he fell in love. One day at dawn he comes up to her and makes her unholy proposals. II. The girl refuses at first. III. But later, she promises her father to obey his will in four days. Meanwhile, she runs away disguised as a man. IV. That night, when she thinks she's far enough away, she puts on her women's clothes. Arriving in the city of her father's vassal count, she finds shelter with a matron who embroiders in silver and who accepts her to help her with her work. The count, passing in front of the house, sees her and falls in love with her. V. The Count sends for the matron and promises her a reward if she manages to persuade the beautiful stranger. VI. She would rather leave the city than give in to the Count's desire. VII. Before learning of her distress, the Count decides to marry her. VIII-IX. She agrees, and the wedding takes place without delay. The count's mother, who is still alive and lives as a nun in a monastery, reproaches her son for marrying someone else. X. Here the king of France wants to arrange a reception and invites the dukes, counts, barons of the kingdom. Our count is also going there, leaving his wife pregnant. Just a few days after her departure, she gave birth to two sons, whose birth she announced to her husband in a letter sent by messengers. The Count feels great joy. However, the Count's letters to the countess are intercepted by the Count's mother and replaced by other letters full of harshness and threats. XI. After a nine-month absence, the count thinks about returning. The Countess, fearing for her life and the lives of her children because of the threatening letters, fled with them thanks to the help of a boatman. After several days of travel, the boat arrives in Rome, where the Countess rents a house and continues to work as an embroiderer. XII. The count, returning home, finds out that his wife has run away with the children, and blames the cruelty of fate for this. XIII. When the Countess's two boys turned twelve, the cardinal rides in front of the Countess's residence. He sees two boys he likes and begs their mother to give them to him. Since he wants to take over their education, she agrees. XIV. The Pope wants to have a big reception and invites all the kings, counts, dukes and princes of the Christian world. When the count arrived in Rome, he settled with the cardinal, with whom he had been friends for a long time. By chance, the countess sees him there, she calls her sons to her house, and the next day goes with them to the cardinal's house and kneels before the Count. XV. She tells him the reason for her flight, and the count is glad that he has found his family. XVI. Returning to his country, the count went to question the messengers and found out that his mother had intercepted the letters and replaced them with others. XVII. The count goes to the monastery and orders the culprit to be thrown into the fire with her hands tied. After the death of their king, the English elect the eldest of the earl's sons as king. The other inherits his father in the county" ^{[3, pp. 62-63]}.

The formula of the plot motifs of the monument: MK I: B1, F1 + FS I: (H), I, K, L, M2, N, F1 + MK II: Q, R + FS II: U, (S), Y. It clearly demonstrates the isolation of expanded FS against the background of stingy MK events. Given the development of history in the XIII century. there is reason to assume that such a composition of plot motifs corresponds to the initial state of the "Saga of Constance", in which this generalized story entered the next century. The initial stage of the Saga's development was characterized by an obvious geographical spread of events (England, Greece, Spain, Byzantium, Rome, Hungary, even the "Russian Lands" mentioned by Jansen Enickel). In the first half of the XIV century. it was in France that localized versions of the "Saga" appeared – "The Novel about the Count of Anjou" by Jean Maillard and the story about the daughter of Count Pictavia (i.e. Poitou) from the "Heavenly Staircase" by Jean Goby Jr. The same localized version is the "Ystoria Regis Franchorum", all the events of which unfold on the lands of the French crown. All the more significant is the final mention that one of the heroine's sons received the crown from the British, who lost their king: this detail seems to us to be direct evidence of the historical roots of the "Saga", because its earliest version is "Vita Offae Primi" ("The Life of Offa the First"), a monument whose creation time is attributed to the end XII century.

During the same period, an anonymous work in Middle English was created in England with a volume of 1035 verses in the genre of Breton la – "Emaré" ("Emare"). The poem is preserved in the famous manuscript London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.II (f. 71r-76v). In its final stanza (namely in verses 1030-1032), an anonymous poet reports that "this is one of the Breton laes that were sung in the old days, and people call <her > "Playn d'egarye"". The actual names Emaré (from the old French esmarie - sufferer) and the consonant Egarye (from the old French esgaree - exile), replaced by the heroine in the course of the plot, are motivated by its events in the same way as it was in the novel "La Manekine" ("Handless") by Trouver Philippe de Beaumanoir, whose heroine, Joey (Joïe , joyous), deprived herself of a hand and took the name of a Handless one. The poem has not been translated into modern languages, but its synopsis, created recently by E. K. Spearing, is available to readers.:

"Emare, the only child of Emperor Artius, loses his mother in infancy and is brought up in the house of Abro, a woman who teaches her politeness and fine sewing. The King of Sicily visits Arti and gives him a beautifully embroidered cloth. Artiy longs to see his grown-up daughter; when she arrives, he falls in love with her and gets the pope's permission to marry her. He has a dress made of cloth, and upon seeing her in it, he discovers his incestuous intent. When Emare refuses, Artiy throws her into a dress <sail in a boat in the sea > downstream to <He only began to regret it. After a week of sailing, Emare reaches Galis, and is given shelter by Cador, the royal steward; renaming herself “Egare", she teaches embroidery in his house. The king sees "Egare” in her clothes and falls in love. Cador says that she is the daughter of the count, and she is here to teach his children courtliness, and the king marries her against his mother's wishes. While “Egare” is pregnant, the king is sent by his overlord to fight the Saracens. “Egare” gives birth to a son, Segramur, but Cador's letter to the king with this news is replaced by a letter from the king's mother, which says that “Egare” gave birth to a monster. The king's generous response is also substituted by his mother for the order that the “Egare” in her dress be sent to sea with her child. In the midst of storms, in a boat without a rudder and food supplies, “Egare” breastfeeds a baby until the current brings them to Rome. There she is found by a rich merchant Jourdan, blinded by her attire, and tells his wife to take care of her. "Egare” sews embroidery in Jourdan's house and teaches Segramura courtliness. Her husband returns home and expels his mother. Later, while seeking repentance in Rome, he accidentally stops at Jourdan's. "Egare” sends Segramur to serve him; the boy reminds the king of his own son, and he offers to adopt him. Now Segramur is sent to invite the king to talk to Emare, who is believed to be dead; when he sees her in her attire, they are reunited. Artius also arrives in Rome in search of absolution; Segramur reunites him with his daughter and becomes his successor on the throne of the emperor" ^{[4, pp. 61-62]}.

The plot formula of "Emare": MK I: B1, (A), F2 + FS I: (H), I, (J), K, L, (A), M1, N, F2 + MK II: Q, R, S + FS II: U, (WOn the one hand, as the formula shows, we have a traditional story, even with a wide geography of events (in the plot, among others, the king of Sicily acts, who introduces the pagans of Babylon into his story, and the heroine ends up in Galys, i.e. Wales). On the other hand, the formula does not convey how large a volume of text can be captured by a supposed secondary motive. In the first MK, a motif of the struggle against the Saracens appears, which could have been free, but in this work it acquires a different status: Spearing's synopsis does not reflect the arrival of the King of Sicily to visit Arti, the latter's gift to the heroine's father of an unusual piece of fabric with precious stones woven into it and elegant embroidery in the corners (there were depicted the famous couples Amadas and Idoina, Tristan and Isolde, Floris and Blanchefler, as well as the embroiderer herself, the daughter of a pagan emir, and her lover, the son of the Sultan of Babylon), are not reflected in the guest's story about how the emir's daughter embroidered this masterpiece for seven years to give to her beloved, and how the father of the king of Sicily by force He won it back from the Sultan.

The motive of this unusual gift, indirectly introducing the theme of the battle with the Saracens, passes into the category of plot-forming ones: researchers emphasize that Artyom's examination of this magical fabric, especially after turning it into a dress in which he sees his daughter, turns out to fall under the magical effect inherent in the gift ^{[5, p. 341]}. Indeed, when Arty saw the fabric for the first time, he felt: "thys ys a fayry" (v. 104, "this is magic"). And when the daughter put on a dress made of this fabric, the magic increased the incestuous intentions of the father to the limit, because "she semed non erthely womon" (v. 245, "she seemed an unearthly woman"). And the volume occupied by this fragment with the motif of the gift, with its detailed description and with a final indication of the symbolism of the gold embroidery work (V. 168: "stuffed wyth ymagerye", i.e. "saturated with imagery"), clearly indicates its special significance. The poem is small, in 1035 verses. Breton les are generally characterized by lapidarity of narrative manner, avoidance of both subject and plot detail. And here, a little less than a fifth of the entire text turned out to be occupied with the story of the gift. And even according to the synopsis, we see that Emare's attire plays an important role throughout the plot action: The king of Galisa falls in love with her when she wears this robe, and many years later recognizes her in the same robe. The conclusion that can be drawn about the "Emar": remaining in the field of attraction of the old, reference versions of the "Saga", this sample of Breton la outlines a new path of historical movement of the old story – to the multilinearity of the plot, since the story told to Arti by the king-giver contains in the embryo the possibility of being expanded into a separate storyline.

An early poetic version of the story known as "La Belle Hélène de Constantinople" ("The Beautiful Helen of Constantinople") dates back to the middle of the XIV century. The monument has been preserved in three manuscripts. The main one is Arras, Médiathèque municipale, MS 742 (f. 1r-199v). Here, a monument with a volume of 15,538 Alexandrian poems, organized in 399 loess, is entitled "Le Roman d'elaine, Femme au Roy d'Angleterre" ("The Novel about Helen, the wife of the King of England"). Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 767 are also known, in which the monument is explicitly named "Cronique d'elaine" ("Chronicle of Helen"), and containing a separate short fragment of the Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 381. Such a discrepancy of names in variants of the same text is not accidental: this sample of the "Saga of Constance" in some parts of the plot shows features of different non-mixing genres, i.e. the process of hybridization takes place in its plot ^{[6, pp. 73-74]}. Here is an ultra-brief synopsis from E. Archibald (we will give only the first half of it, relating to the first MK, the first FS and the beginning of the second MK: Archibald created such a short retelling that many important plot details fell out of it, and readers may not understand, for example, how Leon and Braque, the sons of the heroine, turned in Martin and Brice, etc.):

"Antoine, Emperor of Constantinople, helps the Romans during the siege of the Saracens and is rewarded with the hand of the emperor's daughter; she dies giving birth to their daughter Helene. Antoine falls in love with his daughter; when the Pope again asks for help against the Saracens, Antoine asks in return for permission to marry Helene. The pope reluctantly agrees; he is very worried when Antoine demands his reward, but a voice from heaven announces that Antoine will never be able to fulfill his unholy wish. Antoine returns to Constantinople and tells Helen that they will get married the next day. She escapes by boat, arrives in Flanders and lives in a monastery. Alarmed by the local king's interest in her, she sets out on her boat again, but is captured by pirates. The captain proposes to her, but her prayers cause a storm in which everyone but her drowns. She docks on a plank near Newcastle in the north of England and meets King Henry, who marries her, to the horror of his mother.

Rome is under attack again: Antoine has gone to look for his daughter, so the Pope asks Henry for help, who agrees and entrusts his pregnant wife to the care of the Duke of Gloucester. In Rome, Henry sees the portraits of his wife, which were painted on the columns of the papal palace by order of Antoine; the Pope tells him this story. Helen gives birth to twin sons; her mother-in-law forges a letter announcing the birth of two monsters, and a reply ordering the queen and her children to be burned. Instead, the Duke of Gloucester cuts off one of her arms, attaches it to one of the twins, and flaunts them all in a boat that arrives on an island called Constance. While Helen is dozing, the wolf carries off the child with his hand, which is then raised by the hermit. Leo takes the other child, and eventually the hermit finds him too: he names the twins Brak and Lion. Henry defeats the Saracens and returns to England. Antoine arrives in Bavaria, where he prevents the pagan king from marrying his own daughter and converts the country to Christianity. Henry discovers his mother's betrayal and burns her. The two kings meet in Boulogne, confer and go in search of Helen..." ^{[7, pp. 247-248]}. Let's add that after the numerous adventures of the minor characters (they include the husband, father, sons of the heroine and other kings and saints), which make up the largest plot part, the second MK, the family is reunited in the finale, and the unharmed hand miraculously grows to Helen.

The plot formula is as follows: MK I: (A), B1, F1 + FS I: (G), F1 (G), I, (J), K, L, (T), (A), M2, N, (C), (D), F1 + MK II: (O), (P), (A), S, (B1), (T), R, Q, (A), (A), Q, (A), (A), (T) + FS II: (V), U, (W), (X), Y. "Beautiful Helen" represents the third way of development of the "Saga". Firstly, some of the motives that define the characters' characteristics come into combination with others and change: for example, Helen's father with his perverted love is at the same time a hero, twice in the story saving Rome from the Saracens, and then preventing incest in the family of the Bavarian king, and even repeatedly baptizing pagans. Secondly, the trend outlined in "Emar" towards the development of plot multilinearity is already fully manifesting itself. Thus, in the MKII, one can notice the following motives one after another on the same topic – the fight against the Saracens. These event motives belong to different lines – the lines of the father, husband, sons of the heroine. The same is true with the motives of T: the search for the heroine is conducted by different characters, either separately or together. In general, in "The Beautiful Helen", the use of the plot technique of multiplying the motive seems to be reaching its peak. The heroine of the "Saga" traditionally runs away from her father, and then from the evil machinations of her mother-in-law (or another antagonist), but in this example of her, the heroine runs away from a possible marriage with the king of Flanders, and then from an affair with the leader of the pirates. And in this case, it has to be stated that the presented formula, which is quite saturated in itself, cannot convey the details: we selected all the plot events related to the heroine's life line in one way or another, but if we look at the plot of "Beautiful Helen" as the plot of a multi-line novel, many missed details will enter the formula, because they will be enlarged (in particular, Bris, Helen's son, one day gets captured, from which his a Saracen princess who fell in love with him saves him, - all this is especially significant for the storyline of Brice himself). Thirdly, in the story of the blows of fate that fell to the lot of a woman, in "Beautiful Helen", as in the sample of the "Saga", for the first time, motifs from the parallel developing story of the blows of a man's fate are woven: the abduction of children by wild animals, their upbringing by a person who replaced their parents, and, finally, reunification with their parents. These plot events are well known from the hagiographic slant of the chivalric novel of the beginning of the XIV century. "Sir Isumbras" and from the earlier life of St. Nicholas. Eustace, which in the Middle Ages was present in the popular collections of edifying stories "The Golden Legend" and "Roman Deeds" ^{[8, p. 90]}. These motifs both enhance the melodramatic nature of the plot action and give the text a religious coloring. In general, it can be noted that the ways of development of the "Saga of Constance" in the second half of the XIV century differed in genre coloring and complexity of the plot (along with uncomplicated texts, works with a multi–event and multilinearity of the plot were included in the manuscript) - and existed equally in the literature of the specified period.

The appearance of the fourth way also belongs to this period. If in "The Beautiful Helen of Constantinople" the heroine's line retained the status of the main line, then in the heroic epic "Lion de Bourges" ("Lion of Bourges"), the story of the "Saga of Constance" faded into the background, and the plot emphasis was shifted to lines similar to the secondary ones in "Helen". It is not for nothing that the story of the "Saga" was pushed back to the final part of the "Lion of Bourges": in this huge gesture of 34298 Alexandrian verses, the plot of the old story, embedded in a new context, begins only with verse 27778, i.e. it occupies about a fifth of the text of the monument.

Many years before the preparation of the first commented edition of "Lion of Bourges", its future editors W. Kibler and J.-L. Pichery published a synopsis of gestures in the Medievalist magazine Oliphant during 1974-1975. The length of the synopsis was adequate to the multilinearity and multi-event nature of the novel's plot, so below, based on their synopsis of the part of the plot that presented the version of the "Saga of Constance", we will convey the event outline in a significantly shortened form ^{[9, pp. 249-259]}.

Erpen of Cyprus was on a crusade when he received the news that his wife was dying. He managed to return in time to hear her last words–a request not to marry unless the woman was her copy. The barons wanted their lord to have a boy born in a new marriage, and began to convince Erpen of the need for remarriage, for which they even received permission from the pontiff in Rome. Erpin had a fourteen-year-old daughter Joyeuse, and only she looked like her mother, as the barons informed Erpin after a long search for a bride. He announced to Joyeuse that they would marry, but the next morning, in order not to be like her mother, she cut off her left hand and threw it into the sea, where it was swallowed by a sturgeon. Erpen became angry and was about to burn his daughter, but the barons threatened to revolt, and he banished her, sending her to sea on a ship.

Olivier, the son of the hero of gestures, was the king of Spain. While in Kaffa, in the castle that he gave to the shepherd Eli and his wife Beatrice, who took care of him as a child, he looked out the window and saw a ship arriving at the port with the most beautiful, but one-armed girl on board. He hurried to meet her and fell in love at first sight. Joyeuse replied to his questions that she was the daughter of a fisherman from Rhodes, and named Tristuz. He confessed his love, and the wedding was scheduled for the next day. Beatrice was unhappy that Olivier had chosen a commoner as his wife, and plotted to destroy the marriage. When Olivier soon went to war, she forged a letter from the king to the governor of the castle, Henry, with an order to burn his wife and two children born to her on pain of his and his entire family's execution. Henry and the local barons simulated the burning, and Joyeuse and her children were forced to go to sea on a ship. An unguided ship took the fugitives to the harbor of Rome. The senator's wife noticed a strange ship and hurried with her husband to the port. They took Joyeuse and the children under their care.

Olivier returned to the castle of Caffo with joy that he would hug his Tristose, but found them missing. The investigation revealed that Beatrice was guilty, but at Elie's request, Olivier forgave his adoptive mother. A few years later, Olivier, accompanied by Erpin of Cyprus, arrived in Rome to tell the Pope about his adventures. By chance, they stayed at a hotel that Joyeuse frequented. After dinner, Olivier saw one of the children playing with a gold ring, and recognized the ring with which he was married to Joyeuse. And Erpin saw that the child was exactly like Olivier, and asked them to take him to his mother. The son took his father by the cloak and led him to Joyeuse's sick room. She fell on her knees in front of him, but Olivier picked her up and told her about the great deception that had been committed. At the same time, a great miracle happened: in the kitchen, the cook was cleaning a sturgeon and found in its belly a hand that Joyeuse had thrown into the sea a long time ago. Joyeuse found out that it was her hand; she took it to the Holy Father, who miraculously restored it. After that, Erpin returned to Cyprus, and Olivier returned Joyeuse and the children to his kingdom.

The plot formula of the insert story against the background of the formula of the plot of "Beautiful Helen" looks simple: MK I: (A), B2, (C), (D), (E), F2 + FS I: I, (J), K, L, M2, N, (D), (E), F1 + MK II: Q, R, (A), S + FS II: U, (W), (X). There is a noticeable strong influence on this insertion of the plot of Beaumanoir's novel "Handless" as an early example of the "Saga of Constance": the theme of cutting off the hand and the final discovery is not in any way a time–damaged limb in a caught fish, an imitation of the burning of the heroine, her allusive name (Joieuse, 'joyful', - and Joïe, 'joy', in Beaumanoir), etc. ^{[10, p. 348]} In addition, the name Joieuse in the plot "rhymes" with the name Trestouze ('sad') but we also observed this in the previous example of the "Saga" (Emaré / Egarye). In fact, there are only two peculiar plot features in the insert story: Olivier does not execute, but forgives the temporary antagonist of the secondary heroine, the foster mother (let's pay attention to the fact that this happens once in Western European samples of the "Saga", the next time we will meet the topic of forgiveness only in the "Tale of Tsar Saltan" by A.S. Pushkin); the fate of the children is not announced upon their return to Spain, since the gesture does not end there and in general its plot reveals more important deeds – the battles of knights in the Holy Land. Finally, if Joyeuse is one of the supporting characters in the scale of the whole plot of gestures, it should be noted that there are more important secondary characters, for example, the White Knight accompanying Lyon and Olivier and, obviously, representing the heavenly host supporting the crusaders. In general, the epic poem is not limited to people living "here and now": in it we meet King Arthur, the fairy Morgan and other famous characters from various medieval narratives, and from the plane of his own plot, the anonymous author of gestures entered the three–dimensional space of the history of French literature (so, with Olivier - as a reminder of the epic of Roland – it turns out that the theme of the magic horn is connected). Thus, it turned out to be possible not only to supplement the story of the accused queen with new, inserted motifs, as it was in "The Beautiful Helen", but also to make the story itself an addition to an outsider unfolded plot without additions to it.

Summing up the consideration of the ways of evolution of the "Saga of Constance" in the second half of the XIV century, it can be stated that this is a period of active plot-genre transformation of the plot material, which has long been recognized by the habitual "ossification" of the coupling of certain motifs and that the actions of the authors of different versions of the "Saga" were aimed at updating the old story.