Claude Platin, The Story of Giglan
Translated by Caroline A. Jewers
Booksellers & libraries: | Modern Humanities Research Association
ISBN: 978-1-839546-32-7 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-839542-52-7 (paperback) • RRP £14.99, $19.99, €17.99 ISBN: 978-1-839542-53-4 (JSTOR ebook) Claude Platin’s The Story of Giglan is a colourful Arthurian romance from the first decades of the sixteenth century. Known to Rabelais, who lampoons its heroes in Pantagruel, Giglan is a fine example of the French mise en prose: these adaptations of medieval lyric romances and feudal epics updated and repackaged adventure stories in more fashionable language and style. They enjoyed great success in the age of Humanism, and not just in France – booksellers hurried to cater to a readership eager to consume tales of courtly love and chivalric prowess with a more modern twist, and a moralizing element of Renaissance vertu. While Giglan typifies such works, it unique in conjoining two thirteenth-century texts, Renaut de Beaujeu’s Le Bel Inconnu (originally in Old French) and the anonymous Occitan Roman de Jaufre: Platin invents a mysterious Spanish volume as his source and combines the adventures of Giglan and Geoffroy, who must negotiate supernatural perils, violent adversaries, and enchantments on their way to completing parallel quests and finding true love. Platin was an Antonine friar and is the known translator of three works: this translation aims to reproduce the liveliness of his original and the experience of sixteenth-century readers of romance. Bibliography entry: Jewers, Caroline A. (trans.), Claude Platin, The Story of Giglan, New Translations, 18 (MHRA, 2025) First footnote reference: 35 Claude Platin, The Story of Giglan, trans. by Caroline A. Jewers, New Translations, 18 (MHRA, 2025), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Jewers, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Jewers, Caroline A. (trans.). 2025. Claude Platin, The Story of Giglan, New Translations, 18 (MHRA) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Jewers 2025: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Jewers 2025: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Claude-Platin-Story-Giglan www.mhra.org.uk/publications/nt-18 |
Autumn 2025