PREFACE

Le Mort d'Author is one of the earliest extant songs of the Frankish bards; the date of its writing has been estimated, by the work's historical context, to be somewhere within the 9^th century. No original copies remain; this version is, with a few modifications, the widely printed--and colorfully illustrated--1632 English translation of which nine remaining copies are known. History indicates that Monsieurs Littell and Perkins made only three copies of their opus, its reproduction hindered by a shortage of paper and possibly by their ignorance of the expedient innovation of lowercase letters, developed early in that century during the reign of Charlemagne.

Little is known about the authors; even their names give us pause. "Littell" appears French in origin, if not in spelling. "Perkins", history records, is a rough approximation of the second author's true name, a nigh-unpronounceable muddle from some non-Indo-European language. They are assumed to have been wandering bards without fixed abode, as Charlemagne's census does not record any occurrences of those surnames within the towns or villages under his rule. (Revisionist literary historians have widely promulgated the rumor that Littell and Perkins may not have existed at all, and that the work is the product of several centuries of bards passing the story down from generation to generation. They claim that this may explain the many inconsistencies in its plot and use of language.)

No evidence remains of the song's melody, or even the instrumentation that accompanied it. A modern version for two lutes has been performed recently in Paris, London, Tokyo, and New York, but makes no claims to historical accuracy. We are not entirely sure how it was performed, either: by a single minstrel, using different comical voices for each part, or by a group of them, working in concert and dividing the roles amongst themselves?

The plot itself has also given literary historians pause, especially the cryptic non-ending in which the characters, weary of constructing their own existences without aide from an Author, seem to simply abandon the story where it stands. The widely propagated--but probably apocryphal--story is that M. Perkins died midway through the third Book and M. Littell, reluctant to continue the tale alone, tried to wrap it up as succinctly as possible.

The flaws of the work are evidenced even in this (somewhat poor) 1632 translation: Little attention to plot or character, the frequent bawdiness common among the early bards, and a megalomaniacal pretension that resembles, at great distance, the French literature produced to this day. The characters don't appear as three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood people but rather seem adapted from the comic archetypes common in bardic songs. The buffoonish Fool, the aged King, the chaste Princess who wishes to be a courtesan, the generic Knights and Ladies who populate the Court: all of these reoccur in various forms throughout the literature of the Dark Ages. Even the semblance of plot appears to have been imported from Anglo-Saxon folk legend. But flaws of these sorts are common in such works, and should not prevent the reader from trying to wrap his or her mind around this strange and singular text from over a millennium ago. In my exhaustive study of this work, I have not yet read a coherent interpretation of all the work's diverse--and often contradictory--facets. Perhaps, as the song suggests at the end, no such privileged interpretation is possible. Either way, it is hoped that the reader enjoys this edition and comes to his or her own conclusions about its meaning.

New York University