Introduction

here is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to "Aucassin and Nicolete."

By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Story has escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of Menander, and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very form of the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth or thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the cante-fable. {1} We have fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances. We have Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like "Roland," unrhymed assonant laisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with laisses in seven-syllabled lines. It cannot be certainly known whether the form of "Aucassin and Nicolete" was a familiar form-- used by many jogleors, or wandering minstrels and story-tellers such as Nicolete, in the tale, feigned herself to be,--or whether this is a solitary experiment by "the old captive" its author, a contemporary, as M. Gaston Paris thinks him, of Louis VII (1130). He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares itself everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain traditional formulae, that have survived in his time, as they survived in Homer's, from the manner of purely popular poetry, of Volkslieder. Thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the same, or very nearly the same words. He has a stereotyped form, like Homer, for saying that one person addressed another, "ains traist au visconte de la vile si l'apela" [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] . . . Like Homer, and like popular song, he deals in recurrent epithets, and changeless courtesies. To Aucassin the hideous plough-man is "Biax frere," "fair brother," just as the treacherous Aegisthus is [Greek text] in Homer; these are complimentary terms, with no moral sense in particular. The jogleor is not more curious than Homer, or than the poets of the old ballads, about giving novel descriptions of his characters. As Homer's ladies are "fair-tressed," so Nicolete and Aucassin have, each of them, close yellow curls, eyes of vair (whatever that may mean), and red lips. War cannot be mentioned except as war "where knights do smite and are smitten," and so forth. The author is absolutely conventional in such matters, according to the convention of his age and profession.

歐·亨利（Ｏ·Ｈｅｎｒｙ，１８６２～１９１０），原名威廉·西德

尼·波特（Ｗｉｌｌｉａｍ　ｓｙｄｎｅｙ　Ｐｏｒｔｅｒ），是美國最著

名的短篇小說傢之一，曾被評論界譽為曼哈頓桂冠散文作傢和美國現代短篇

小說之父。他齣身於美國北卡羅來納州格林斯波羅鎮一個醫師傢庭。他的一

生富於傳奇性，當過藥房學徒、牧牛人、會計員、土地局辦事員、新聞記者、

銀行齣納員。當銀行齣納員時，因銀行短缺瞭一筆現金，為避免審訊，離傢

流亡中美的洪都拉斯。後因迴傢探視病危的妻子被捕入獄，並在監獄醫務室

任藥劑師。他在銀行工作時，曾有過寫作的經曆，擔任監獄醫務室的藥劑師

後開始認真寫作。１９０１年提前獲釋後，遷居紐約，專門從事寫作。

歐·亨利善於描寫美國社會尤其是紐約百姓的生活。他的作品構思新穎，

語言詼諧，結局常常齣人意外；又因描寫瞭眾多的人物，富於生活情趣，

被譽為“美國生活的幽默百科全書”。代錶作有小說集《白菜與國王》、

《四百萬》、《命運之路》等。其中一些名篇如《愛的犧牲》、《警察與

贊美詩》、《帶傢具齣租的房間》、《麥琪的禮物》、《最後一片藤葉》等

使他獲得瞭世界聲譽。