SIR DEGARE : A study of the texts and narrative structure

Sir Degare is a fourteenth-century romance written in octosyllabic couplets and is classified as a Breton lay. It is extant in six manuscripts and three early printed editions. The story concerns Degare’s quest to find his parents, during the course of which he narrowly avoids committing incest with his mother and killing his father, instead reuniting his parents and finding a lady of his own to marry. Early scholarship was highly critical of Sir Degare’s aesthetic form; more recent critics have found much of interest in the romance’s folkloric elements and oedipal themes.