Robert the Devil
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Robert the Devil is a legend of medieval origin. Robert is the devil's own child, for his mother, despairing of heaven's aid in order to obtain a son, has addressed herself to the devil. It is also the usual translation for the title of Giacomo Meyerbeer's 1831 opera Robert le diable, which has little in common with the legend except the name of the hero.
Legend
From the moment of his birth the boy shows his vicious instincts, which urge him, when grown to manhood, to a career of monstrous crime. At last the horror which he inspires everywhere causes him to reflect, and, having found out the awful secret of his birth, he hastens to Rome to confess to the pope. He undergoes the most rigorous penance, living in the disguise of a fool at the emperor's court in Rome. Three times he delivers the city from the assault of the Saracens, but, refusing all reward, he ends his life as a pious hermit. According to another version he marries the emperor's daughter, whose love he has won in his humble disguise, and succeeds to the throne.
Literature
The oldest known account of this legend is a Latin prose narrative by a Dominican friar, Etienne de Bourbon (c. 1250). Then it appears in a French metrical romance of the thirteenth century, also in a "dit" of somewhat later date, and in a miracle play of the fourteenth century. A French prose version was also prefixed to the old Croniques de Normandie (probably of the thirteenth century). But the legend owes its popularity to the story-books, of which the earliest known appeared at Lyons in 1496, and again at Paris in 1497, under the title La vie du terrible Robert le dyable. Since the sixteenth century the legend was often printed together with that of Richard sans Peur (Richard I, Duke of Normandy); it was published in completely recast form in 1769 under the title Histoire de Robert le Diable, duc de Normandie, et de Richard Sans Peur, son fils.
From France the legend spread to Spain, where it was very popular. In England, the subject was treated in the metrical romance, Sir Gowther, probably written around the end of the fourteenth century. An English translation from the French chapbook was made by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's assistant, and published without date under the title Robert deuyll. Another version, not based on the preceding, was written by Thomas Lodge in his book on Robin the Divell (London, 1591).<ref>C. S. Lewis, "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama", p. 424 Oxford History of English Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1954)</ref> In the Netherlands, the romance of Robrecht den Duyvel was put on the index of forbidden books by the Bishop of Antwerp in 1621.
In Germany, the legend never attained much of a vogue; not until the nineteenth century did it pass into the Volksbücher, being introduced by Görres. It was treated in epic form by Victor von Strauß (1854), in dramatic form by Raupach (1835) and in comic travesty (after the 1831 Meyerbeer opera Robert le diable) by W. S. Gilbert in 1868.
See also
