PARTONOPEUS DE BLOIS

This article appears in Volume V20, Page 876 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PARTONOPEUS DE BLOIS , hero of romance. The French romance of Partonopeus de Blois

dates

DATES

from the 13th century, and has been assigned, on the strength of an ambiguous passage in the prologue to his Vie seint Edmund le rei to Denis Piramus. The tale is, in its essence a variation of the legend of Cupid and Psyche. Partenopeus is represented as having lived in the days of Clovis, king of France. He was seized while

hunting

HUNTING (the verbal substantive from " hunt "; O. Eng. huntian, hunta; apparently connected with O. Eng. hentan, Gothic hinpan, to capture, O.H.G. hunda,booty)

in the Ardennes, and carried off to a mysterious castle, the inhabitants of which were invisible. Melior, empress of

Constantinople

CONSTANTINOPLE
CONSTANTINOPLE, COUNCILS OF

, came to him at night, stipulating that he must not attempt to see her for two years and a half. After successful fighting against the " Saracens," led by Sornegur, king of Denmark, he returned to the castle, armed with an enchanted lantern which broke the spell. The consequent misfortunes have a happy termination. The tale had a continuation giving the adventures of Fursin or Anselet, the nephew of Sornegur. The name of Partonopeus or Partonopex is generally assumed to be a corruption of Parthenopaeus, one of the seven against
Thebes. It has been suggested that the word might be derived from Partenay, a supposition coloured by the points of similarity between this story and the legend of Melusine (see JEAN D'

ARRAS

ARRAS

) attached to the

house

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

of Lusignan, as the lords of these two places were connected.
BIBLIoGn,gPHY.The French romance was edited by G. A. Crape-let, with an introduction by A. C. M. Robert, as Partonopeus de Blois (2 vols., 1834) ; an English Partonope of Blois, by W. E. Buckley for the Roxburghe Club (London, 1862), and another fragment for the same learned society in 1873; the German Partonopier and Melior of Konrad von Wurzburg by K. Bartsch (Vienna, 1871); the Icelandic Partaldpa saga by O. Klockhoff in

Upsala

UPSALA, or UPPSALA

Universitets Arsskrift for 1887. See also H. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances, (i. 689, &c.) ; E. Kolbing, Die verschiedenen Gestaltungen der Partonopeus-Sage, in German.

Stud

STUD

. (vol. ii., Vienna, 1875), in which the Icelandic version is compared with the Danish poem Persenober and the Spanish

prose

PROSE

Iiistoria del

conde

Partinobles; E. Pfeiffer, " Ober die HSS des Part. de Blois " in Stengel's Ausg. in Abh. vom Phil. (No. 25, Marburg, 1885).

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