La (tras)formazione di un eroe. (Sulla conmençaille del Girart de Vienne)

To give a new life to the character of Girart, Bertrand therefore attributes a different ancestry to him, affiliating him with that fier lignage of which, moreover, he already possessed many of the salient features. For this renewed identity to take shape, however, he had to rewrite its biography, a biography that would allow projecting the events to which that name was usually associated on a different background, such as to make them compatible with the founding principles of feudal ethics. This explains a peculiarity that distinguishes this chanson, namely that of also contemplating the enfances of the hero, making him almost a unicum in the French epic panorama, a sort of bildungsgedicht that follows his evolution from youth to full maturity.