A further word will have to be said of their ultimate contribution to drama in a future chapter[301]. Other lyrical dialogues of very different type found their way into the literature of northern France from that of Provence. These were the elaborate disputes about abstract questions, generally of love, so dear to the artistic and scholastic mind of the _trobaire_. There was the _tenson_ (Fr. _tençon_) in which two speakers freely discussed a given subject, each taking the point of view which seems good to him. And there was the _joc-partitz_ or _partimen_ (Fr. _jeu-parti_ or _parture_), in which the challenger proposed a theme, indicated two opposed attitudes towards it, and gave his opponent his choice to maintain one or other[302]. Originally, no doubt the _tensons_ and the _jocs-partitz_ were, as they professed to be, improvised verbal tournaments: afterwards they became little more than academic exercises[303]. To the drama they have nothing to say. The dialogue elements in lyric minstrelsy thus exhausted, we turn to the wider field of narrative. But over the greater space of this field we look in vain. If there is anything of dialogue in the _chansons de gestes_ and the _romans_ it is merely reported dialogue such as every form of narrative poetry contains, and is not to the purpose. It is not until we come to the humbler branches of narrative, the unimportant _contes_ and _dits_, that we find ourselves in the presence of dialogue proper. _Dits_ and _fabliaux dialogués_ are not rare[304]. There is the already quoted _Deus Bordeors Ribauz_ in which two _jougleurs_ meet and vaunt in turn their rival proficiencies in the various branches of their common art[305]. There is Rutebeuf’s _Charlot et le Barbier_, a similar ‘flyting’ between two gentlemen of the road[306]. There is _Courtois d’Arras_, a version of the Prodigal Son story[307]. There is _Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely_, a specimen of witty minstrel repartee, of which more will be said immediately. These dialogues naturally tend to become of the nature of disputes, and they merge into that special kind of _dit_, the _débat_ or _disputoison_ proper. The _débat_ is a kind of poetical controversy put into the mouths of two types or two personified abstractions, each of which pleads the cause of its own superiority, while in the end the decision is not infrequently referred to an umpire in the fashion familiar in the eclogues of Theocritus[308]. The _débats_ thus bear a strong resemblance to the lyric _tençons_ and _jeux-partis_ already mentioned. Like the _chansons_, they probably owe something to the folk festivals with their ‘flytings’ and seasonal songs. In any case they are common ground to minstrelsy and to the clerkly literature of the Middle Ages. Many of the most famous of them, such as the _Débat de l’Hiver et de l’Été_, the _Débat du Vin et de l’Eau_, the _Débat du Corps et de l’Âme_, exist in neo-Latin forms, the intermediaries being naturally