“Droit au gué de l’Espine vait”. Testi e parole in prestito nel "Lai de l'Espine"

Scholars have often thought that the narrative layout of the Lai de l’Espine, a brief thirteenth-century composition in langue d’oïl, was to be traced back to a folkloric narrative. A close analysis, instead, shows that this text presents many elements taken from various contemporary and close texts. The story, for example, was probably derived from Gervais de Tilbury’s Otia Imperialia, while other minor allusions – particularly, lexical indicators – were taken from the so-called Breton romances (starting from Béroul’s Tristan,to other more well-known lais).