Introduction

Preserved in only one manuscript (Paris, BNF, fr. 1553), Ignaure has a named author, Renaut (v. 621). This Renaut has been identified as the ‘Renals de Biauju’ who composed the romance Le Bel Inconnu (v. 6249). He has long been seen as a member of the Beaujeu family from the Mâconnais, but it is now thought more likely that he was from the rival Bâgé family. Despite some intriguing parallels, it remains uncertain whether the author of Le Bel Inconnu also wrote the lay of Ignaure, and there is a further complication in that there was more than one Renaut in the Bâgé family.

As in the lay of Lecheor (see above) and Marie de France's Chaitivel (vv. 233–37), the question of the poem's title is raised by the author in the concluding lines. We are not expecting the title, which the author tells us was bestowed on the text by the French, the Bretons and, unusually, the Poitevins: the Lay del Prison (Lay of the Prisoner or Lay of the Capture, v. 660). Our surprise derives largely from the fact that neither prisons nor captivity had loomed large within the tale. We are told that Ignaure is handed over to the custody of his captor's loyal servants (vv. 511–13) and that the ladies seek to find out if he has been released from ‘prison’ (v. 563). The author states that he himself is being held in his beloved's ‘sweet prison’ (‘douce prison’, v. 655), but the final section of Renaut's version of the story would not have been part of traditional versions, whose title the author purports to offer us. Perhaps we are supposed to infer that Ignaure is a prisoner of his own sexual inclinations. However, the scribe's explicit to the text, ‘Chi define li lays d'Ygnaure’ (‘Here ends the lay of Ignaure’), provides us with a title that seems closer to the mark.

The lay tells of a fun-loving and renowned knight of modest means and background, whose attractiveness to women is such that he wins the love of the wives of twelve peers who reside at the castle of Riol (perhaps the castle of Rieux in the arrondissement of Vannes in Brittany).