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Abstract
The works of Geoffroy de Charny are three in number. The Livre Charny, a 1934-line verse work written in the form of tercets coues, consists of a realistic description of the life of the knight and enumerates the qualities which a good knight should possess. The Demandes pour la .joute, les tournois et la guerre, written in prose, comprises 134 questions concerning feats of arms and is addressed to Jean le Bon. Out of the total number, twenty questions concern jousting, twenty-one deal with tournaments, and the remaining ninety-three treat various aspects of warfare. The prose Livre de chevalerie duplicates in part materials found in the preceding works in its broad treatment of different types of feats of arms, the categories of men at arms and the overall order of chivalry.
Geoffroy de Charny, presumably born in the second decade of the fourteenth century, was one of the foremost knights of his day and was engaged in many of the important military exploits of the time until his heroic death in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers,
The language of the text is basically Francian, with occasional intermixings of other dialects, such as Picard and Champenois. The base manuscript for the present edition is MS 11124- 11125 of the Bibliotheaue Royale de Belgique, Since the prose Livre de chevalerie is conveniently available in Lettenhove's edition of the works of Jehan Froissart, it is not included here. The present edition contains, in addition to the texts, a glossary of difficult word forrcs, textual notes and a selected bibliography.