Partonopeus de Blois is an Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 romance

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

 written in the 13th century, named for its hero. The romance has been assigned, on the strength of an ambiguous passage in the prologue referring to the Vie seint Edmund le rei, the "life of Saint Edward the king", to Denis Pyramus

Denis Pyramus

Denis Pyramus was a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey and an Anglo-Norman poet who was active in the second part of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century....

.

Plot

Partenopeus is represented as having lived in the days of Clovis, king of France

Clovis I

Clovis Leuthwig was the first King of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the leadership from a group of royal chieftains, to rule by kings, ensuring that the kingship was held by his heirs. He was also the first Catholic King to rule over Gaul . He was the son...

. He is seized while hunting in the Ardennes

Ardennes

The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...

, and carried off to a mysterious castle with invisible inhabitants. Melior, empress of Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, comes to him at night, stipulating that he must not attempt to see her for two and a half years. After successfully fighting against the Saracens, led by Sornegur, king of Denmark, he returns to the castle, armed with an enchanted lantern that breaks the spell. The consequent misfortunes have a happy ending.

The tale had a continuation giving the adventures of Fursin or Anselet, the nephew of Sornegur.

Analogues

The tale is in essence a variant of the legend of Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...

. The name Partonopeus (or Partonopex) is generally assumed to be a corruption of Parthenopaeus, one of the Seven against Thebes

Seven Against Thebes

The Seven against Thebes is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the Oedipodea. It concerns the battle between an Argive army led by Polynices and the army of Thebes led by Eteocles and his supporters. The trilogy won...

, but it has been suggested that the word might be linked to Partenay, due to the points of similarity between this story and the legend of Melusine

Melusine

Melusine is a figure of European legends and folklore, a feminine spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers.She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down...

 (see Jean d'Arras

Jean d'Arras

Jean d'Arras was a 15th century North French poet-composer of whom little is known.He collaborated with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in putting together a collection of stories entitled L'Évangile des quenouilles...

) attached to the house of Lusignan

Lusignan

The Lusignan family originated in Poitou near Lusignan in western France in the early 10th century. By the end of the 11th century, they had risen to become the most prominent petty lords in the region from their castle at Lusignan...

, as the lords of these two places were connected. The story has also been compared with the Arthurian

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

 story of Le Bel Inconnu.

The romance, or a subsequent version of it, was translated into Old Norse as Partalópa saga

Chivalric sagas

The riddarasögur, sagas of knights or chivalric sagas are Norse sagas of the romance genre. Starting in the 13th century with translations of French chansons de geste the genre soon expanded to indigenous creations in a similar style...

.