Le Bestiaire de Gervaise

edited by Paul Meyer

Romania (Paris)
Volume 1, 1872
pages 420-443

The Bestiaire de Gervaise is a 1280-line verse bestiary written around the thirteenth century. It is by Gervaise, who was probably a Norman French cleric and who wrote in the Norman-French dialect. Little else is known about the author. The poem appears in only one manuscript, British Library Additional MS 28260. A similar poem, also in the Norman dialect, is The Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon (Wright, 1841). In this article, Meyer provides an introduction to and commentary on the Bestiaire, along with a full scholarly edition of the poem.

Full edition (216 KB file)

The print edition of this text was published in Paris in 1872; the digital edition was created from the original in 2004 by David Badke. The original print edition by Paul Meyer (1840-1917) is believed to be in the public domain. The digital edition is copyright 2004 by David Badke, but can be used for any non-commercial purpose without further permission. See the copyright notice in the digital edition for more information.

The digital edition has been published as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. To read it, you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (version 4+), available from the Adobe Web site.