Prise d'Orange (literally "Taking of Orange";[a] also translated "The Capture of Orange"[1] and "The Conquest of Orange"[2]) is a mid-12th century chanson de geste written in Old French. Its fictional story follows the hero Guillaume as he captures the walled city of Orange from Saracens and marries Orable, its queen. Other characters include Arragon, the king of Orange, and Tibaut, Orable's erstwhile husband and Arragon's father. The anonymously written poem, part of a larger cycle about Guillaume called La Geste de Garin de Monglane, consists of 1,888 decasyllable verses in laisses. It combines motifs of courtly love with an epic story of military conquest. The narrative is humorous and parodies the tropes of epic poetry.
The surviving text of Prise was probably based on an earlier version, composed at the beginning of the 12th century, which emphasized war over love and contained a section called Siège d'Orange about Tibaut's military campaign to recapture Orange from Guillaume. Nine manuscript versions of Prise survive. Its plot is attested in other sources including a 15th-century prose compilation of stories about Guillaume. The first modern edition was published in 1854; several reconstructions followed in the 20th century. A portion of Siège d'Orange was discovered in 2021.
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- ^ Newth 2014, p. 9.
- ^ Schenck 1976.