Adiaphoric variants and historical semantics: a case study

This paper analyses two adiaphoric variants in the handwritten tradition of a fabliaux by Jean Bodel, Le vilain de Farbu: barbeoire (ms. B) and papeoire (ms. H). Both couplets d’octosyllabes (the one containing barbeoire in B and the one containing papeoire in H) are coherently integrated into the textual structure to the point of appearing practically interchangeable. But the two variants are less interchangeable: if barbeoire could easily replace papeoire in H, since both have in common the seme of frightening, of terrifying, which is used to connote the woman’s attitude, papeoire would have little meaning in relation to arbalestiax in B, whether it is intended as ‘jester’ or purely as ‘crossbowman’. This leads us to suppose that the original lesson is papeoire, a term that, if not already used to designate the mannequin attested in later Picardy folklore, at least bears the meaning in which we recognise its etymological root, ‘devourer’, an attribute always associated with the figure of the monster. This term was certainly familiar to both the author and the copyist of H, both Picards, but probably not to the copyist of B (or to the copyist of an antigraph at the highest levels of this branch of stemma) who, not understanding it, may have considered it appropriate to intervene on the phrasal system in order to adapt it to a known noun close to the original unintelligible one.