The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Routledge Revivals)

Dieter Mehl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136832239
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in English in 1968, this book provides a critical guide to the wide field of the Middle English Romances and gives a helpful survey of the contemporary state of scholarship. Dr Mehl traces the development of Middle English Romances from thee thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century, and interprets a number of these romances. The emphasis is literary, on their form and dominant themes rather than source-material or language.

1
INTRODUCTION: THE MIDDLE
ENGLISH ROMANCES

Since English medieval literature was first seriously studied, scholars have been in the habit of separating a certain group of narratives from the vast assortment of Middle English verse, and bracketing them together as romances. It seems rather strange that unlike most literary terms this particularly vague one has hardly ever been seriously questioned, although it has so far not proved especially helpful and says very little about the form or even the subject of the works it is usually applied to.

To the scholars of the nineteenth century, when medieval studies reached their first climax, the common denominator was, of course, the subject-matter of the romances. As the English poems were mainly approached by way of the French romances and chansons de geste, it was taken for granted that the same criteria could be applied to both, and that the English romances were only derivatives of the French—and very inferior ones at that. Thus, George Ellis, whose collection of Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances was one of the most influential works on the subject,¹ seems to have been interested almost exclusively in the content of these poems, as his prose abstracts suggest. His classification of the romances according to ‘matters’ has been adopted by most scholars up to the present day.² The individual character and literary form of the English romances seem to have concerned him very little. Since then, most of the romances have been compared wherever possible with their French sources in some detail;³ but such comparisons, consisting for the most part only of lists of differences and parallels, were used mainly to prove the migrations of certain stories and motifs or to illustrate cultural differences between the two countries. It has become a critical commonplace to allow the English romances a certain freshness, charming simplicity and native vigour, but to dismiss most of them as inferior translations or imitations. It is worth asking, however, whether the English romances are no more than mere translations and whether, in addressing a completely different audience, the English authors did not create a new literary type that should be judged by other standards than the French ‘originals’. A brief review of the historical situation may serve to illustrate this.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The English romances were, practically without exception, written very much later than their counterparts in French and German. The flourishing of the romances, in France and Germany, had by the fourteenth century given way to clearly derivative productions, while at the same time new forms and conventions were being created. It was only then, however, that in England the old romances were taken up again and newly adapted to suit changed tastes. To talk about imitation and decline is hardly appropriate here. The classic form of the courtly novel that had evolved in France, only provided a very vague model for the English adapters and they did not succeed in creating new and exemplary literary genres as did the German poets of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Even Chaucer is no exception here; his work only reflects the great variety of literary forms in Middle English, and one could use The Canterbury Tales to illustrate almost every type of Middle English narrative poetry.⁴ He seems to have been attracted by the idea that he could turn his hand to any kind of tale, from Saints’ legends to courtly novels, from edifying exempla to ribald fabliaux, and each time excel his predecessors or, indeed, parody them. If one could at all claim for him that he developed his own favourite genre, this would have to be defined as a short and yet leisurely narrative whose individuality lies in the manner of telling the story, rather than in its subject-matter. This variety of form and subject is almost the only thing Chaucer’s tales have in common with the romances, if we except agreements in smaller details of subject and style.⁵ His poetry is, needless to say, highly sophisticated and courtly which can only be said of very few romances.

This astonishing variety of literary types and the failure to produce something like a ‘classic’ genre⁶ can at least partly be explained by reference to the social and political background. We shall have to ask for what audiences, by whom, and under what external conditions the romances were written. As these questions have been discussed before in some detail, a few general remarks will suffice.

It is on the whole admitted that English knighthood never achieved the same exclusive and creative unity as it did in France and even in Germany.⁷ Wherever something like a distinctly courtly environment grew up in England, it was very dependent on French models, an off-shoot of French ideas of chivalry, French even in language, and lacking native strength and individuality. During the last decades it has become evident that in Norman England, especially under Henry II, there was far more literary activity than had previously been supposed, and important works of literature and scholarship were produced,⁸ but it can be said even of the first centuries after the conquest, that courtly society and culture was less exclusive than on the continent. The influence of Chrétien de Troyes, for instance, was not very far-reaching, and even during the twelfth century the Anglo-Norman poet Hue de Rotelande portrays chivalry and courtly ceremony with a certain degree of detached irony.⁹ This applies even more to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period in which most of the extant English romances were probably written. At that period we have even less reason to assume that there was a closed courtly body in society, portraying and idealizing itself in fiction, at least not in English. Instead, many of the knights took a far more active part in the more pedestrian and sober work of administration than on the continent and proved to be very useful though perhaps less glamorous members of feudal society. Thus even the most faithful translation of some French or Anglo-Norman courtly romance would be addressed to a completely different audience from that of the original and would delight the hearers (if at all) for very different reasons.

The centres of courtly life in England, too, were different from those in France and Germany. There were, to be sure, a number of smaller feudal households, castles and estates of barons and lower aristocracy throughout the country, and, of course, the Court of the English King; but they never played the same important part in the cultural life of the nation as did the French Court and some of the more prosperous households of princes and dukes in France and Germany, where often a highly sophisticated court-life and an amazing literary productivity developed. In England, with only a few exceptions, artificial courtly ceremonies and literary cliques remained on a more modest scale. Most of the social occasions, on which minstrels performed and, possibly, romances were read, appear to have differed considerably from the exclusive aristocratic festivities on the continent. The detailed descriptions of such courtly entertainments in many romances, if they had not been omitted altogether in the English versions, must have impressed the listeners mainly by their unreal, fairy-tale-like character, which was not at all the intention of the original poets. As far as their courtly background is concerned, the English romances were for the most part far more removed from actuality and from the daytoday experience of the audience than the French. But the majority of them did not attempt to imitate the French romances in this respect anyway and reflected fairly accurately the profound changes in social conditions.

It is also typical that the tournament, a particularly characteristic form of chivalric self-realization and entertainment, never attained the same degree of popularity in England as it did on the continent.¹⁰ Tournaments were, of course, frequently held and well attended, but they rarely displayed the splendour and formality of the French tournaments, nor were they as widely accepted. For political and religious reasons they were in perpetual danger of prohibition, often confined to certain times and places. When, especially under Edward III, they were more keenly supported and promoted, they must have already had a distinctly archaic and even nostalgic atmosphere.

The same can indeed be said for most English chivalry of the fourteenth century. The same period that saw the emergence of the English romances, also saw the steady decline of the knight, who had been such an essential part of courtly society. Just as the knight’s armour began to prove useless and obsolete during the French wars, the courtly etiquette likewise seemed to become outmoded. Where it was kept alive artificially, as was the case all over Europe, it bore no significant relation to life and had only the charm of antiquity.¹¹ This is why, from the beginning, the English romances were fairy-tales, stories from a distant past, ‘of eldirs,

byfore vs were’ (Sir Ysumbras, l.2). With very few exceptions, they were not an immediate confrontation with the present. They did not aim at a faithful representation of present-day reality, but, as will be seen, at the illustration of moral truths by way of an exemplary story. They are, for the most part, homiletic in intention rather than courtly and topical. Even Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where courtly decorum plays such an important part, is basically not a poem about chivalry, and its real meaning has not much in common with the courtly literature of France.¹² Probably, the actual manner of the knight’s existence as it would appear to contemporaries, is to be met not so much in the descriptions of the Round Table and the adventures of Arthur’s knights, as in the fates of the impoverished warriors, like Amadace, Launfal and Ysumbras.

Another important fact in considering the position of the knight in English society, is that the divisions between the classes were, on the whole, less rigorous than on the continent. Most sources suggest that as early as the Middle Ages there was closer contact between the aristocracy and the ‘citizen’, between town and country, between the King and his subjects. Thus, for instance, hardly any towns (with the possible exception of London) grew up cut off from the country, with an independent and exclusive life of their own, as in France, Italy and, to a lesser extent, in Germany. The reasons for this difference probably lie in the political history of the country as well as in the character of its people and do not concern us here. It is, however, evident that English literature was deeply influenced by these factors. One minor instance is perhaps the particular popularity of tales in which the King in disguise comes into direct contact with some of his subjects; the narrator’s sympathy is always clearly on the side of the bluff citizen who treats his sovereign with very little respect and is richly rewarded in the end.¹³

The history of English as a language considered suitable for literature also has to be briefly discussed.¹⁴ It is well known that during the early Middle Ages the overwhelming majority of literary works produced in England were written either in Latin or in French. If this important fact is neglected, as is often the case, a completely false impression of the true state of literature and scholarship during the twelfth and thirteenth ce...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 1: INTRODUCTION: THE MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCES
• 2: THE PROBLEM OF CLASSIFICATION
• 3: THE SHORTER ROMANCES (I)
• 4: THE SHORTER ROMANCES (II)
• 5: HOMILETIC ROMANCES
• 6: THE LONGER ROMANCES
• 7: NOVELS IN VERSE
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX: A NOTE ON SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF ROMANCES
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY