Medieval English Literature

PLOVDIV UNIVERSITYFaculty of Philology

Department of English and American Studies

Medieval and Renaissance English LiteratureEnglish Philology <[email protected]>

I. THE MIDDLE AGES

The Anglo-Saxon Period (428-1100)

1. Introduction: The Anglo-Saxons.

2. Anglo-Saxon Heroic Poetry: Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Elegies: Deor’s Lament, Widsith, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message. Gnomic Poetry. Spells. Riddles.

3. Early Christian Poetry - The Schools of Caedmon and Cynewulf (660-850).

4. King Alfred and the Literature of Wessex (890-1100). The Venerable Bede - Ecclesiastical History. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The Anglo-Norman Period (1180-1350)

5. The Norman Conquest. The Gothic Renaissance. Literature of the Transition (1180-1250).

6. Layamon. The Arthurian Legend.

7. Western Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century.

8. Romances, Tales and Chronicles (11250-1350/1180-1350).

The Middle English Period (1350-1500)

9. The Fourteenth Century. The Alliterative Revival (1350-1400). W. Langland. The Gawain Poet.

10. Geoffrey Chaucer. The Periods. Troilus and Criseyde. The Canterbury Tales.

11. The Waning of Courtly Poetry (1380-1500). John Gower. John Lydgate. The Chaucerians.

12. Late Romances (1350-1500). The Traditional Ballad.

13. Medieval Drama 1: Mysteries, Miracles.

14. Medieval Drama 2: Moralities, Interludes.

15. Fifteenth Century Prose. John Capgrave, R. Pecock, J. Fortescue, the Paston Letters, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, W. Caxton, Sir Thomas Malory. Margery Kempe.

October 2011-May 2012 Lecturer: Dr. A. Manchorov

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MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ENGLISH LITERATURE

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ANTHOLOGIES, SURVEYS, HANDBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

I. Anthologies

Abrams, M. H., and Stephen J. Greenblatt, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1986. Print.

Costello, Jacqueline, and Amy Tucker, eds. Forms of Literature: A Writer's collection. New York: Random, 1989. Print.

Gordon, R. K., trans. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London: Dent, 1957. Print.

Grancharov, Hristo, and Bogdan Atanasov, eds. English Medieval Literature: A Reader. Veliko Turnovo: Cyril and Methodius U, 1976. Print.

Hollander, John, and Frank Kermode, eds. The Literature of Renaissance England. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. Print.

Neilson, W. A., ed. The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists. Cambridge: Riverside P, 1939. Print.

Shurbanov, Alexander, and Boika Sokolova, eds. Readings in English Literature: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance Age. Sofia: SUP, 1986. Print.

Trapp, J. B., ed. Medieval English Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. Print.

Wilkie, Brian, and James Hurt, eds. Literature of the Western World. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1988. Print.

II. Surveys of English Literature

Beadle, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

Braunmuller, R. A., and Michael Hattaway, eds. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

Chambers, E. K., ed. English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1957. Print.

Corns, Th. N., ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.

Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. 2 vols. London: Ronald P, 1969. Print.

Ford, Boris, ed. The New Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vols. 1-4. London: Penguin, 1982. Print.

Ford, Boris, ed. The Pelican Guide to English Literatture. Vols. 1-4. London: Penguin, 1977. Print.

Grebanier, Bernard D. Essentials of English Literature: From its Beginning to the End of the Eighteenth Century . Vol. 1. Great Neck: Barron's, 1959. Print.

Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the 16th Century (excluding drama). Oxford: Calarendon P, 1969. Print.

Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature. Pt. 1. Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo,1976. Print.

Quennell, Peter, and H. Johnson, eds. A History of English Literature. London: Oxley, 1973. Print.

Ricks, Christopher, ed. History of Literature in the English Language. 3 vols. London: Sphere, 1970. Print.

Scott-Kilvert, Ian, ed. British Writers. 2 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1979. Print.

Wells, S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Print.

III. Handbooks and Dictionaries

Barnhart, Clarence L., and William D. Halsey, eds. The New Century Handbook of English Literature. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1967. Print.

Cuddon, J. A., ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1991. Print.

Harvey, Sir Paul, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1981. Print.

Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon, eds. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Print.

Myers, Robin, comp. and ed. A Dictionary of Literature in the English Language. Oxford: Pergamon, 1970. Print.

Ousby, Ian, ed. The Cambridge Giude to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.

Wynne-Davies, Marione, ed. The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 1989. Print.

Plovdiv Oct 2011-July 2012 Dr. A. Manchorov

SEMINAR TOPICS

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Medieval and Renaissance English Literature

English Philology <[email protected]>

I. Medieval Literature……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION

Issues for Discussion

Definition of Literature. Fiction and nonfiction. Basic components: plot, characters, theme, style (point of view etc.).

Criticism

“How Should One Read a Book.” Forms of Literature: A Writer’s Collection. Ed. Jacqueline Costello and Amy Tucker. New York: Random, 1989. Chap. 1, 1-7. Print.

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WEEK 2: ANGLO-SAXON HEROIC POETRY

Work(s): BeowulfIssues for Discussion

The Tradition of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Form and Aspects of the Poem. Elements of Folk Culture and Myth. Structure of the Poem. Heroic Code.

Editions1. “Beowulf.” Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Trans. R. K. Gordon. London: Dent, 1957. 1-63. Print.2. “Beowulf.” Literature of the Western World. The Ancient World through the Renaissance. 2nd ed. Ed.

Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1988. 1197-1267. Print.Criticism

1. “Types of Poetry.” Literature. 2nd ed. Ed. R. Di Yanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. Chap. 7, 423-25. Print.

2. Robinson, Fred C. “Beowulf.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 142-59. Print.

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WEEK 3: ANGLO-SAXON LYRIC POETRY. THE ELEGIES

Work(s): Waldhere, Widsith, Deor's Lament, The Wanderer, The Seafarer.


The Anglo-Saxons and the Heathen Tradition. Old English Prosody. General Characteristics of Old English Verse and Poetry.

Editions

1. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Trans. R. K. Gordon. London: Dent, 1957 (Waldhere, pp. 65-66; Widsith, pp. 67-70; Deor's Lament, pp. 71-72; The Wanderer, pp. 73-75; The Seafarer, pp. 76-78). Print.

2. Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 98-103. Print.

Criticism

A Handbook to Literature. 5 ed. Ed. by C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon. New York: Macmillan, 1986 (e.g. see elegy, elegiac, elegiac stanza, p. 168). Print.

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WEEK 4: EARLY CHRISTIAN POETRY

Work(s): Caedmon’s Hymn, Genesis; The Fates of the Apostles.Issues for Discussion

Themes. Ideas and Biblical Background. Poetic Vocabulary, Diction and Imagery. Type of Verse. Editions

1. “Genesis.” Anglo-Saxon Poetry 650-1000. Trans. R. K. Gordon. London: Dent, 1959. 95-111. Print.2. “The Fates of the Apostles.” Anglo-Saxon Poetry 650-1000. Trans. R. K. Gordon. London: Dent, 1959.

178-80. Print.Criticism

1. Godden, Malcolm. “Biblical literature: the Old Testament.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 206-226. Print.

2. Raw, Barbara C. “Biblical literature: the New Testament.” The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 227-42. Print.

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WEEK 5: KING ALFRED AND THE LITERATURE OF WESSEX (890-1100)

Work(s): Bede - An Ecclesiastical History of the English People

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The Author. The Work. Bede’s Sources. The Theme of Bede’s “History”.

Editions

Bede, Ecclesistical History of the English People. London: Penguin, 1990 (Book 1, 44-97). Print.

Criticism

Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature (Part 1). Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo, 1976. 50-62. Print.

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WEEK 6: LITERATURE OF THE TRANSITION (1180-1250)

Work(s): The Owl and the Nightingale.


The Debate Poem – Definition. Sources and Manuscripts. Themes, Imagery, Picture of the World. The Effects of Oral Tradition.

Editions

The Owl and the Nightingale (in translation: <http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owltrans.htm>.

Criticism

1. Shepherd, G. T. “Early Middle English Literature.” The Penguin History of Literature. The Middle Ages. Ed. W. F. Bolton. Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1986. 103-06. Print.

2. Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature. Part 1. Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo, 1976. 75 ff. Print.

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WEEK 7: THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

Work(s): Layamon - Brut


Date and authorship of the poem. Contribution to the Arthurian Legend. Prosody of the Alliterative Verse Chronicle.

Editions

1. <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LayBruC.html> (in Middle English)

2. < http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/0/14305/14305.txt> (in Modern English)

Criticism

1. Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature. Pt. 1. Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo,1976 (pp. 80-87).

2. G. T. Shepherd, “Early Middle English Literature.” The Penguin History of Literature. The Middle Ages. Ed. W. F. Bolton. Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1986. 94-95. Print.

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WEEK 8: METRICAL ROMANCES (1180-1350)

Work(s): Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo


Types of story material, incident and characterization. Themes of Middle English verse romances. Metrics.

Editions

1. Herzman, Ronald B., Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury, eds. “Havelok the Dane.” Four Romances of England. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1999 (<http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/danefrm.htm>).

2. Laskaya, Anne, and Eve Salisbury, eds. “Sir Orfeo.” The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1995 (<http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/orfeo.htm>).

Criticism

1. Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature (Part 1). Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo, 1976. 94 ff. Print.

2. Woolf, Rosemary. “Later Poetry: The Popular Tradition.” The Penguin History of Literature. The Middle Ages. Ed. W. F. Bolton. Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1986. 271-73. Print.

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WEEK 9: THE ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL (1350-1400)

Work(s): W. Langland, Piers Plowman


Authorship and Date of Production. Structure and Organization. The Dream Vision Method. Social, Political and Religious Aspects. Genre Characteristics of Piers Plowman.

Editions

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http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/orfeo.htm

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/danefrm.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/0/14305/14305.txt

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/LayBruC.html

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owltrans.htm



Langland, William. “Piers Plowman.” Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 348-63. Print.

Criticism

1. Coghill, N. “Langland.” British Writers. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner's, 1979. 1-18. Print.

2. Williams, D. J. “Alliterative Poetry in the 14th and 15th Centuries.” The Penguin History of Literature. The Middle Ages. Ed. by W. F. Bolton. Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1986. 146-53. Print.

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Work(s): Sir Gawain and the Green Knight


The Gawain Group. Authorship and Date of Production. Sources of Plot. Ideological Climax. The Pentangle - Symbolism. Main Characters. Structural Organization and Patterning of Numbers.

Editions

Medieval English Literature, Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 284-348. Print.

Criticism

1. Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature. Pt 1. 3rd ed. Sofia: Naouka I Izkoustvo, 1976. 117-23. Print.

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Work(s): Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales.


Cluster of Literary Forms (romance, fabliau, exemplum, fable, homily, saint's life). Function of the General Prologue. Stories - Principles of Arrangement. Verse Technique: rhyme royal, iambic pentameter, rhymed couplets etc. Types of Characters.

Editions

1. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales.” Literature of the Western World. The Ancient World through the Renaissance. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan, 1988. 1563-1636. Print.

2. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales.” Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 119-276. Print.

Criticism

1. N. Coghill, “Chaucer.” British Writers. Ed. by Ian Scott-Kilvert. Vol.1. New York: Scribner's, 1979. 19-47. Print.

2. Pearsall, D. A. “The Canterbury Tales.” The Penguin History of Literature. The Middle Ages. Ed. by W. F. Bolton. Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1986. 237-66. Print.

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WEEK 12: THE WANING OF COURTLY POETRY (1380-1500)

Work(s): John Gower – Confessio Amantis; John Lydgate - The Troy Book


(1) Gower: Sources, Structure and Symbolism. Ideas, Language and Style; (2) Lydgate: Classes of Lydgate’s Work: Verse Satires, Mythological Works, Religious Works. Ideas, Language and Style.

Editions

1. John Gower, Confessio Amantis (<http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/cabk1fr.htm>).

2. John Lydgate, Troy Book Selections (1998). Ed. by Robert R. Edwards (<http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/edwards.htm>).

Criticism

1. Pearsall, D. “John Gower.” British Writers. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner’s, 1979. 48-56. Print.

2. Pearsall, D. “J. Lydgate.” British Writers. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner's, 1979. 57-66. Print.

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WEEK 13: THE TRADITIONAL BALLAD

Work(s): The Cherry Tree Carol, The Two Magicians, The Wife of Usher's Well, Lord Randall, Sir Patrick Spense, The Douglas Tragedy, The Birth of Robin Hood.


Theories of composition. Elements of the ballad. Technique and form. Subject matter. Types of balladry.

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http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/edwards.htm

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/cabk1fr.htm



Editions

1. “The Popular Ballads (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)”. The Heath Introduction to Poetry. 3rd ed. Ed. Joseph de Roche. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1988. 36-42. Print.

2. Trapp, J. B., Douglas Gray, and Julia Boffey, eds. Medieval English Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 429-43. Print.

Criticism“Ballad and Ballad Stanza.” A Handbook to Literature. 5th ed. Ed. C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon. New York: Macmillan, 1986. 46-47. Print.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...............

WEEK 14: MEDIEVAL DRAMA

Work(s): The Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play; Everyman.


Mysteries and Miracles. Types of Dramatic Material. Structure and Composition; Definition of Moralities. Antecedent Forms. Conventions. The Flyting. Types of Moralities. Medieval Allegory.

Editions

1. Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 368-88; 388-411. Print.

2. “Everyman.” Literature of the Western World. 2nd ed. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1988. 1672-96. Print.

Criticism

1. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Ed. R. Beadle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996 (“An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre,” 1-36; “The Towneley Cycle,” 134-38, 150-57; “Morality Plays,” 255-58). Print.

2. Wickham, G. “The Beginnings of English Drama.” History of Literature in the English Language. Ed. C. Ricks. Vol. 3. London: Sphere, 1971. 368-88. Print.

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WEEK 15: 15TH-CENTURY PROSE.

Work(s): Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte Darthur


Historical Authenticity of King Arthur. The Contribution of Chretien de Troyes. Structure and Meaning. Sources of Malory’s Work. Prose Style and New Trends.

Editions

Malory, Thomas. “Le Morte Darthur.” Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. 444-58. Print.

Criticism

Bradbrook, M. C. “Sir Thomas Malory.” British Writers. Ed. Ian Scott-Kilvert. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner's, 1979. 67-80. Print.

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Academic Year 2011-2012 Dr. Atanas Manchorov

THE PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

The division of a nation's literary history into periods offers a convenient method for studying authors and movements. Hence, most literary histories and anthologies are

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arranged by periods. In the case of English literature, there are almost as many arrangements as there are books on the subject. The lack of uniformity arises chiefly from two facts.

In the first place, periods merge into one another because the supplanting of one literary attitude by another is a gradual process. Thus the earlier romanticists are contemporary with the later neoclassicists, just as the neoclassical attitude existed in the very heyday of Elizabethan romanticism. Dates given in any scheme of literary periods, therefore, must be regarded as approximate and suggestive only, even when they reflect some definite fact, as 1660 (the restoration of the Stuarts).

In the second place, the names of periods may be chosen on very different principles. One plan is to name a period for its GREATEST OR ITS MOST REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOR: Age of Chaucer, Age of Spenser, etc. Another is to coin a descriptive adjective from THE NAME OF THE RULER: Elizabethan Period, Jacobean Period, Victorian Period.

Also PURE CHRONOLOGY or PURE NAMES may be preferred: Fifteenth-Century Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature, etc.

Or descriptive titles designed to indicate PREVAILING ATTITUDES or DOMINANT FASHIONS or “SCHOOLS” OF LITERATURE may be used: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Age of Reason. Logically, some single principle should control in any given scheme, but such consistency is seldom found.

1. The Middle Ages a) 428 - 1100 Old English Period

b) 1100 - 1350 Anglo-Norman Periodc) 1350 - 1500 Middle English Period

2. The Renaissance Perioda) 1500 - 1557 Early Tudor Ageb) 1558 - 1603 Elizabethan Agec) 1603 - 1625 Jacobean Aged) 1625 - 1649 Caroline Age

e) 1649 - 1660 Commonwealth Interregnum

ELEMENTS OF LITERATURE

Characters. Literature appeals to us because it is connected with human beings. It must have the sense of the physical presence of persons in a specific place and at a specific time. Such persons are called characters. Always when we turn X, Y, and Z into characters we assign human values. In the detective or adventure story, character not only "humanizes" the action, it must also motivate the action. The reader of fiction wants to know the why of an action just as much as the what for action is the flowering of character. The latter is also connected with two more components of essential importance: motivation and setting. To summarize: character is action, and action is character.

Plot. The writer's process of manipulation involves two aspects: selection and ordering. As for selection, we must recall that theoretically an action involves an infinite mass of details characteristic of events in the real world. That is why a writer must select the details that he thinks important because relevant or suggestive. Here a relevant item means one that is essential to establishing the logic of the action. The suggestive are those that provoke the imagination to attribute the immediacy of events in the actual world to those in the fiction. The action, then, is the raw material plot. It is

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the story behind the story as we find it formed into fiction. The plot is the action as we find it projected, by whatever selection of event and distortion of chronology. Each story has four basic elements:

(1) Exposition. - It refers to such elements as to inform the reader of facts necessary to understand the plot, e.g. facts of time, persons, the preliminary condition of affairs etc.

(2) Complication. - It roughly corresponds to the stages by which, in the middle of an action, the conflict moves toward resolution. The action normally implies resistance to the movement toward solution of the problem from which the plot stems.

(3) Climax. - It is the point at which the forces in conflict reach their moment of greatest concentration as the apparently dominant force becomes subordinate. It is the moment in plot that is called the turn or the reversal.

(4) Denouement. - It is the end of the plot, the "unknotting" of the tangle of the complications. Here the conflict is resolved and stability is restored.

Theme. A story has what we ordinarily call a theme, the governing idea implicit in the original situation of conflict that becomes, in the end, the focal idea - that is what we take to be the "meaning" of the whole. In each story the writer shapes content and organizes material in order to produce through a fusion of content and form an interpretation of life. The wedding of content (notably characters and events) and form (technique, style) gives a story its main meaning, or theme. A theme is a distillation of everything that happens in a story's human drama. Whereas the subject is simply the topic of the tale, our understanding of the theme grows from our perception and evaluation of the story – it is our understanding of what the work says about the subject. For instance, we might say that the topic of Anton Chekhov's “The Lady with the Pet Dog” is love. However, stating the theme of this story would take more than one word; normally, at least a sentence.

Style. First we must ask whether the writer is using his own voice, a personal style, or whether, in a greater or lesser degree, he is fully playing the ventriloquist, using the voice of a specific character. A writer's point of view is another part of style. First, there is the fictional first person. Here the narrator (who may or may not resemble the author) tells us all that we are to know. But there are various possibilities within this general viewpoint as the narrator may tell his own story like the central character in it or may be merely an observer. The omniscient third-person point of view is the exact opposite of the former kind. Point of view is the position from which the author presents the action of the story. Thus point of view is one of the most important technical considerations for fiction writers, because it directly influences all other elements in a tale. Criticism traditionally has focused on three major types of point of view:

(1) omniscient, where the narrator sees and knows everything, moving across space and time, commenting on character and action;

(2) first person, in which the author allows one character to tell the story, thereby limiting himself to what can be seen, heard, felt, thought, or known by that single character; and

(3) third person, in which actions, thoughts and perceptions are filtered in the third person (signaled by the pronouns “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they”) through the mind of one character or the minds of several characters.

ANGLO-SAXON EPIC POETRY: BEOWULF

1. Type of Work. Beowulf is an epic, a long poem telling a story about a hero and his exploits. It is further classified as a folk epic in that it pieces together its story from folk tales

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transmitted orally for centuries, probably sometimes to the accompaniment of a musical instrument such as a harp. Beowulf consists of 3,182 lines written in vernacular Old English (native language of the author's time and place) rather than in Latin, the lofty language of religion, philosophy, science, history, and, of course, literature. That fact does not mean that the writing in Beowulf is inferior; on the contrary, it is superior.

Today, this epic is recognized as the greatest work in Old English. Unlike many other epics, Beowulf has characteristics of an elegy (a somber poem or song that praises or laments the dead). In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, maintained that Beowulf is more an elegy than an epic. However, that observation is not in accord with the prevailing body of opinion about the genre of Beowulf.

2. Date and Place of Composition. Beowulf was probably composed between 700 A.D. and 900 A.D.The place of its composition was probably Northumbria, an important Anglo-Saxon kingdom between Scotland on the north and the Humber River on the south. Northumbria was home to Roman Catholic monks who excelled in learning and literature. The most famous was the Venerable Bede (672-735), who wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People and popularized the use of "A.D." (abbreviation for the Latin Anno Domini, meaning in the year of the Lord) in dating events in relation to the year of the birth of Christ.

3. Transmission of the Story. Beowulf was first transmitted orally for one to three centuries. Although its author did not write it down, two English scribes did so in about 1000 A.D. Their manuscript, considered one of the great heirlooms of world literature, is now preserved in the British Library in London. The scribes' manuscript was earlier held in Ashburnham House, the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631), who collected historically important manuscripts. Sir Robert bound Beowulf with four other manuscripts in a combined codex known as Cotton MS. Vitellius A.xv, the 15th item on the first shelf of manuscripts placed under the bust of Emperor Vitellius in his library. The Beowulf manuscript was in what was known as the Nowell Codex.

After fire ravaged the library in 1731, the manuscript was rescued by British authorities. However, water damage and burned edges made it difficult to read.

4. Settings. The time is the Dark Ages, between 500 and 700 A.D. The action takes place first in a Danish kingdom ruled by Hrothgar, situated on the island of Zealand (site of present-day Copenhagen, Denmark). There, in the great mead hall of the king, Beowulf confronts a monster that has been terrorizing the king and his men. (A mead hall was a communal gathering place for feasting and drinking mead, an alcoholic beverage made of water and fermented honey. Mead was a popular drink in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries during the Middle Ages because grapes, a crop that thrives in warmer southern climates, were not readily available to make wine.) Later, Beowulf dives into a lake and fights the monster's mother. The scene of action then shifts 50 years later to the land of the Geats in Sweden, where an elderly Beowulf confronts a dragon terrorizing his own land.

5. Main Characters.Beowulf: Illustrious warrior from the land of the Geats in Sweden. According to Webster's

New World Dictionary, Beowulf may mean bee- hunter (Beo for beeand wulf for hunter). A bear, of course, hunts bees and, therefore, Beowulf translates loosely as bear.

Hrothgar: King of a Danish realm terrorized by a monster. He presides at Heorot, a great mead hall. Heorot.

Wealhtheow: Hrothgar's wife and queen.Grendel: Monster that terrorizes Heorot.Grendel's Mother: Monster that retaliates after Beowulf defeats Grendel.Dragon: Monster that goes on a rampage in the land of the Geats.Wiglaf: Warrior who helps Beowulf fight the dragon.Hygelac: King of the Geats in Sweden. He is Beowulf's uncle.Hygd: Hygelac's wife and queen.Heardred: Son of Hygelac.Ecgtheow: Beowulf's father.Unferth: Danish warrior who envies Beowulf.Breca: Childhood friend of Beowulf.

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Aeschere: Counselor to Hrothgar.Freawaru: daughter of Hrothgar and Wealhtheow.Scyld Scefing: Onetime King of Denmark and great-grandfather of Hrothgar. He is

mentioned in the epic but does not take part in the action.6. Language. Beowulf was written Old English in the West Saxon dialect of 1000 A.D. Old

English was used in England between 600 and 1100 A.D. Beowulf is believed to be the first important literary work of medieval Europe to be written in the language of the common man rather than in the lofty elegance of Latin.

7. Verse Format. Beowulf is written in unrhyming verse, without stanzas, with a caesura (pause) in the middle of each line. The lines contain caesuras to represent the pauses that speakers normally use in everyday speech. Thus, each line is divided into two parts. Each part is called a hemistich (HEM e stick), which is half a line of verse. A complete line is called a stich. Each hemistich contains two stressed (accented) syllables and a varying number of unstressed (unaccented) syllables. Following are the opening three lines of Beowulf in Old English, with the space in the middle representing the caesura.

Old English With a Space for the Caesura TranslationHwæt! We Gar-Dena in geardagum, Lo. we have heard of the glory in days of oldþeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, of the Spear-Danes, of the kings of the people,hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. how the athelings did deeds of valor.

Quoted in Baugh, Albert C. and George Wm. McClelland. English Literature. New York: Appleton, 1954, Page 19.

8. Structure. In structure, Beowulf is divided chronologically into two main sections: one that focuses on Beowulf as a young man and one that focuses on him as an old man. In terms of action, it is divided into three main sections: one that introduces the characters and describes Beowulf's conquest of Grendel, one that describes Beowulf's defeat of Grendel's mother, and one that describes Beowulf's defeat of the dragon with the help of Wiglaf.

9. Source. The author of Beowulf based his tale in part on pagan myths, fables, Scandinavian history, and biblical and Christian history. Thus, Beowulfis a mixture of fiction and fact.

10. Point of View. The poet tells the tale in omniscient third-person point of view from a Christian perspective. Though describing events taking place in a pagan culture, the poet credits the Christian God and the Christian ethic for the triumph of good over evil.

11. Themes:1. Goodness conquers evil. Beowulf, of course represents goodness; the three monsters

that he slays represent evil.

2. Actions (Beowulf's) speak louder than words (Unferth's).

3. Judge the greatness of a human being by the greatness of his deeds and his noble ancestry.

4. Help thy neighbor. (Beowulf risks his life to help a neighbor, King Hrothgar, in trouble.)

5. Forces of darkness–irrational, menacing–are always at work in society.

6. Life is a continuing struggle. After Beowulf defeats Grendel, Grendel's mother seeks revenge. Beowulf kills her. Eventually, in old age, he faces still another challenge, this time from a dragon. He kills the dragon, too, but suffers a mortal wound. After he dies, new troubles loom on the horizon in the form of wars with neighboring tribes.

ANGLO-SAXON LYRIC AND EPIC POETRY

Lyric: Originally from the Greek ("for the lyre"), the term is now commomnly used to describe any short poem, especially one expressing the poet's personal sentiments.

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The lyric mode covers a wide ramne of topics ranging from the experience of love, to pastoral description and praise of God.

Waldhere

An OE poem of which only two brief fragments survive nowadays. It was apparently quite long and told a well known story recorded in a Latin poem by Ekkerhard of St. Gall (d. 973):

Hildegund, Walter and Hage are prisoners of Attila of the Huns. Hagen escapes to join Gunther, king of the Franks. Walter and Hildegund, who are lovers, also escape with much treasure and Gunther persuades the reluctant Hagen to accompany him and 11 warriors going to rob them. In a narrow pass Walter kills all but Hagen and Gunther, and these three are maimed.

The surviving fragments are from speeches, the first by Hildegund and the second from the end of Gunther's speech with Walter's reply.

Widsith

It is an OE poem preserved in the Exeter Book. Dating from the 7th century, it is one of the oldest surviving works in the vernacular. Purporting to be an account of the courts visited by the minstrel Widsith, the poem catalogues the heroes of the European tribes. The chronological span, from Eormanric (d. 375) to Aelfwine's invasion of Italy in 568, makes it impossible that the work was based on the reminiscences of a real minstrel.

Deor's Lament

A short OE poem found in the Exeter Book. It is written in the form of a first-person narrative by a minstrel called Deor. The narrator tells of five well-known miserable situations from history and mythology and then of his own misfortune, probably fictional: his position as official poet and its attendant benefits have been given to another. He comforts himself with the thought that God will soon improve his fortunes and offers solace throughout in a refrain which says that these other sorrows passed and so shall his own. Deor is similar in form and function to the longer poem Widsith.

The Seafarer

An OE Poem preserved in the Exeter Book. It falls into two halves not connected by their subject matter. The first 64 lines present a monologue by a seafarer about the hardships and dangers of his life and about his love for the sea. The second half of the poem is a homiletic discourse, perhaps intended to draw a general moral from the seafarer's description; it considers the transience of worldly bliss and praises humble, honest living. The poem is characteristic of the lyric speaker's sudden change of mood coming right after his elegiac lamentation: "Therefore my thoughts force me that I myself should try the high streams, the play of the salt wavces."

The Wanderer

An OE poem preserved in the Exeter Book. The structure is somewhat ambiguous: the poem may represent a monologue containing two reported speeches or, alternatively, speeches by different characters. The first speech or quotation says that the solitary wanderer often experiences the grace of God despite the hardships he endures. There follows a long personal account of exile leading the speaker to wonder that his suffering and the general state of decay of the world do not make him miserable. Finally the voice of wisdom asserts that the world's wealth is transitory and faith in God is the only source of secutiry. Although the dramatic form is obscure, the though is clearly developed.

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The Wife's Lament

An OE poem preserved in the Exeter Book. The poem is about the lament of a wife whose husband is in exile.She is apparently an alien in his home land and friendless; he has committed a crime and been banished. Consequently she lives in an earth-barrow in the forest. The chronology of events is not completely clear and the circumstances of the husband's exile are not fully explained. Despite this obscurity, the woman's lament poignantly expresses her solitude, isolation and longing for her husband.

The Husband's Message

An OE poem preserved in the Exeter Book. The message, apparently carved on a staff in runic letters, is to woman of royal rank; her husband has been forced to flee because of a vendetta and he sends her assurances of his love, pleading with her to take ship for the south and join him in the spring. It is not clear whether the Message begins with Riddle 60, which immedietely precedes it in the manuscript. The poem may be connected with The Wife's Lament, also in the Exeter Book.

ACCENTUAL PATTERNS OF OLD ENGLISH ALLITERATIVE VERSE

The style and meter of all Germanic poetry that has come down to us differs from all the familiar verse systems above all in its apparent irregularity (there is none of the fixed scheme of long and and short syllables of classical meter, and none of the syllable counting of Slavonic poetry).The basis is accentual; the reason is that only the two strong beats (arses) give the structure of the verse, and the two theses, the corresponding unstressed parts, may consist of an indefinite number of syllables. Although the system is flexible, it too is subject to rules. The permutations of arses and theses, according to Sievers's scheme, give us three simple patterns:

A: / X / X B: X / X /C: X / / X

Combinations in which the two theses follow one another are not permissible, theoretically, since the two would count as one; with the help of secondary stresses, however, such combinations are also possible:

D: / / {/ X or X /}E: / {/ X or X /} /

The arsist must consist either of a single long syllable, or a slur of a short stressed syllable with an unstressed one to follow, as in heaven. Each pair of these metrically determined half-lines is bound together into a long line by means of alliteration: in the first half-line either of both stresses may bear the alliteration, in the second only the first.

THE SCHOOLS OF CADMON AND CYNEWULF

1. The School of Caedmon. a) Caedmon’s HymnThe only known survivor from Cædmon’s oeuvre is his Hymn. The poem is known from

twenty-one manuscript copies, making it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede’s Death Song and the best attested in the poetic corpus in manuscripts copied or owned in the British

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuscript



Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period. The Hymn also has by far the most complicated known textual history of any surviving Anglo-Saxon poem. It is found in two dialects and five distinct recensions. It is one of the earliest attested examples of written Old English and one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Together with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, Cædmon's Hymn is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry.

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard, meotodes meahte and his modgeþanc, weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs, ece drihten, or onstealde. He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend; þa middangeard moncynnes weard, ece drihten, æfter teode firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.

Modern English translation Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom, the might of the Creator, and his thought, the work of the Father of glory, how each of wonders the Eternal Lord established in the beginning. He first created for the sons of men Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator, then Middle-earth the keeper of mankind, the Eternal Lord, afterwards made, the earth for men, the Almighty Lord.

1. Circle a hemistich. 2. In one line, mark the two stresses in each hemistich using apostrophes ('). 3. Mark one line of alliteration by underlining the words that alliterate. 4. Explain what alliteration is. 5. Does anything rhyme in this poetry? Why or why not? 6. What is variation? How does the poet use it in this poem? How many variations of the varied

element can you find?

b) Genesis AClose around the year 1000, an English monk made a copy of an older poem paraphrasing

the first half of the book of Genesis, up to the sacrifice of Isaac. No one knows what he was copying from, but his handiwork (which includes other texts) survives in a single bound volume now located in Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Nowhere in these texts is authorship ascribed to anyone. Caedmon was the first individual we know to have been posited as their author, based on Bede’s description of his talents and interests, and for a long time the texts were commonly known as — though not so firmly believed to be — the poetry of Caedmon. As centuries passed this position continually weakened, and now only part of Genesis (if even that) is thought to be Caedmon’s.

Centuries of scholarship have settled on few conclusions regarding this work, but it has become clear that the original Genesis poem was in two parts, one of them labelled B being a translation of an Old Saxon poem dated to the early 9th century, and the other labelled A being a native Old English composition (perhaps originally Anglian, though recorded in West Saxon); which of the two poems is older, and how they came to be conflated, is much debated. A well defended position is that Genesis A dates to ca. 700, which would likely make it older than Beowulf, and might possibly be the work of Caedmon, though more likely it is not following the argument that the author was probably literate. Yet it might well represent the work of a poet in

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_literature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_Casket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthwell_Cross

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recension



Caedmon’s Northumbrian school, and with this unoriginal note we surrender all arguments to the scholars.

Reading and Textual AnalysisOur lesson text describes Noah taking his family into the ark, and there riding out the flood

that covered even “the high mountains.” Genesis A is a poetic paraphrase, so there is no direct correspondence to the Hebrew scriptures, or even to the Latin Vulgate translation of them that the poet arguably must have studied.

The selections below include Genesis (7: 1-24) and Genesis A ll. 1356-1391, found on pp. 42-43 in: George P. Krapp, ed. (1931), The Junius Manuscript, New York: Columbia U. The events portrayed are found in Genesis chapter 7.

Genesis 7: 1-241 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

14

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/cubit.html

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/noah.html

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/bird.html

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/japheth.html



http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/thee.html



23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Genesis A Him þa Noe gewat, swa hine nergend het, under earce bord eaforan lædan, weras on wægþæl and heora wif somed; and eall þæt to fæsle frea ælmihtig habban wolde under hrof gefor to heora ætgifan, swa him ælmihtig weroda drihten þurh his word abead. Him on hoh beleac heofonrices weard merehuses muð mundum sinum, sigora waldend, and segnade earce innan agenum spedum nergend usser. Noe hæfde, sunu Lameches, syxhund wintra þa he mid bearnum under bord gestah, gleaw mid geogoðe, be godes hæse, dugeðum dyrum. Drihten sende regn from roderum and eac rume let willeburnan on woruld þringan of ædra gehwære, egorstreamas swearte swogan. Sæs up stigon ofer stæðweallas. Strang wæs and reðe se ðe wætrum weold; wreah and þeahte manfæhðu bearn middangeardes wonnan wæge, wera eðelland; hof hergode, hygeteonan wræc metod on monnum. Mere swiðe grap on fæge folc feowertig daga, nihta oðer swilc. Nið wæs reðe, wællgrim werum; wuldorcyninges yða wræcon arleasra feorh of flæschoman. Flod ealle wreah, hreoh under heofonum hea beorgas geond sidne grund and on sund ahof earce from eorðan and þa æðelo mid, þa segnade selfa drihten, scyppend usser, þa he þæt scip beleac.

Then Noah went, as the Savior commanded him, to bring his sons on board the ark, men into the ship and their wives also; and all that the Lord Almighty would have for progeny. And he went under the roof as their provider, as the Almighty, the Lord of hosts, bade him by His word. Behind him the Ward of the kingdom of heaven shut the door of the ark with His hands, the Lord of victories, and blessed (those) within the ark with His own riches, our Savior. Noah, Lamech’s son, had [was] six hundred years [old] when he climbed on board with (his) children, the wise with the young, at God’s behest, with (his) beloved family. The Lord sent rain from the heavens and also abundantly allowed well-springs to throng into the world from channels everywhere, dark currents to roar. Seas rose up over shore-walls. Strong and fierce was He who directed the waters; covered and hid wickedness, the children of the world with dark billow, the land of men; the Creator ravaged dwelling place, wreaked havoc on men. The sea firmly seized upon doomed people forty days (and) another such of nights. Anger was fierce, cruel to men;

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the waves of the King of Glory drove wicked life from body. The flood, savage under the heavens, covered all the high mountains on earth and on the water lifted up from the earth the ark and that noble race within, that the Lord himself blessed, our Creator, when he closed up that ship.

2. The School of Cynewulf The work of Cynewulf and his school marks an advance upon the writings of the school of Caedmon. Even the latter is, at times, subjective and personal in tone to a degree not found in pure folk-epic; but in Cynewulf the personal note is emphasised and becomes lyrical. Caedmon’s hymn in praise of the Creator is a sublime statement of generally recognised facts calling for universal acknowledgment in suitably exalted terms; Cynewulf’s confessions in the concluding portion of Elene or in The Dream of the Rood, or his vision of the day of judgment in Crist, are lyrical outbursts, spontaneous utterances of a soul which has become one with its subject and to which self-revelation is a necessity. This advance shows itself frequently, also, in the descriptions of nature. For Cynewulf, “earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God”; it is, perhaps, only in portions of Exodus and in passages of Genesis B that the Divine immanence in nature is obviously felt by the Caedmonian scop.

The Fates of the Apostles

Hwæt! Ic þysne sang siðgeomor fandon seocum sefan; samnode wide,hu ða aðelingas ellen cyðdon,torhte ond tireadige. Twelfe wæron,

5 dædum domfæste, Dryhtne gecorene,leofe on life. Lof wide sprang,miht ond mærðo, ofer middangeard,þeodnes þegna – þrym unlytel.Halgan heape hlyt wisode

10 Þær hie Dryhnes æ deman sceoldon,reccan fore rincum. Sume on Romebyrig,frame, fyrdhwate feorh ofgefonþurg Nerones nearwe searwe:Petrus ond Paulus. Is se apostolhadWide geweorðod ofer werþeoda.

Listen! I found this song journey-wearysick at heart; assembled it from far and wide,about how these noble men revealed their courage,glorious and famous. They were twelve,

5 renowned in deeds, chosen by the Lord,beloved in their life. Their fame spread widelyover the earth, the power and gloryof these thanes of the Lord – not a small glory.The holy band’s duty led

10 them to where they should preach the law of God,to interpret it before the people. Some, in the city of Rome,bold, warrior-like, gave up their livesbecause of Nero’s oppressive treachery:Peter and Paul. That order of apostles isWidely honored by the nations.

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The Venerable Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English PeopleBede’s life“Servant of Christ and Priest of the Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul which is at

Wearmouth and Jarrow.” These are the words which Bede used to describe himself. Today, we probably know him best as the author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People which he completed in AD 731. This work is our primary source for understanding the beginnings of the English people and the coming of Christianity. This is the first work of history in which the AD dating system is used.

Bede was born in AD 673 on the lands of the monastery. Of his family background we know nothing, save that he was entrusted at the age of 7 to the care of Benedict Biscop, the founder of the monastery, and then to Ceolfrith who in AD 681 was appointed Abbot of the new foundation at Jarrow. Bede spent the rest of his life in the monastery. He was ordained deacon at the age of 19 and priest at 30. He observed the Rule of the monastery and was punctilious in his attendance in choir at the daily offices. Outside of his time in choir, he worked as scholar and teacher; he records that “It has always been my delight to learn or to teach or to write.” And he explains that “I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.”

The range of Bede’s scholarship was astonishing, going far beyond the “History.” Bishop Boniface, who led a mission to Germany, wrote of Bede that he “shone forth as a lantern in the church by his scriptural commentary”; and his commentaries on books of the Bible were widely sought and widely circulated. He wrote also of nature. He knew that the earth was a sphere. He had a sense of latitude and the annual movement of the sun into the north and south hemispheres from the evidence of varying lengths of shadows. He knew that the moon influenced the cycle of the tides. He wrote on calculating time and his exposition of the Great Cycle of 532 years was of fundamental value to the church in the task of calculating the date of Easter. He wrote a textbook for his students on poetic metres.

Bede died in his cell at the monastery in the year 735. Cuthbert, a young monk who was with him later wrote an account of his death. He describes how Bede finished dictating a chapter of a book which he was composing. Then he said “I have a few treasures in my box, some pepper and napking and incense. Run quickly and fetch the priests of our monastery, and I will share among them such little presents as God has given me.”

An Ecclesiastical History of the English NationThe Ecclesiastical History of the English Race is, as we know, Bede’s greatest and best work.

If a panegyric were likely to induce our readers to turn to it for themselves, that panegyric should be attempted here. Probably, however, a brief statement of the contents and sources of the five books will be more to the purpose. The first book, then, beginning with a description of Britian, carries the history from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the year 603, after the arrival of Augustine. Among the sources used are Pliny, Solinus, Orosius, Eutropius, Marcellinus Comes, Gildas, probably the Historia Brittonum, a Passion of St. Alban and the Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius. The second book begins with the death of Gregory the Great, and ends in 633, when Edwin of Northumbria was killed and Paulinus retired to Rochester. It is in this book that the wonderful scene is described in which Edwin of Northumbria takes counsel with his nobles as to the acceptance or rejection of the Gospel as preached by Paulinus; and here occurs the unforgetable simile of the sparrow flying out of the winter night into the brightly-lighted hall and out again into the dark. In the third book we proceed as far as 664. In this section the chief actors are Oswald, Aidan, Fursey, Cedd and Wilfred. The fourth book, beginning with the death of Deusdedit in 664 and the subsequent arrival of his successor Theodore, with abbot Hadrian, deals with events to the year 698. The chief figures are Chad, Wilfrid, Ethelburga, Etheldreda, Hilda, Caedmon, Cuthbert. In the fifth and last book we have stories of St. John of Beverley, of the vision of Drythelm, and others, accounts of Adamnan, Aldhelm, Wilfrid, the letter of abbot Ceolfrid to Nechtan,

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king of the Picts, the end of the Paschal controversy, a statement of the condition of the country in 731, a brief annalistic summary and a list of the author’s works. In the dedication of the History to Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria, Bede enumerates the friends who had helped him in the collection of materials, whether by oral or written information. The chief of these were Albinus, abbot of Canterbury, Nothelm, afterwards archbishop, who, among other things, had copied documents preserved in the archives of Rome, and Daniel, bishop of Winchester. Bede used to the full, besides, his opportunities of intercourse with the clergy and monks of the north who had known the great men of whom he writes. It is almost an impertinence, we feel, to dwell upon the great qualities which the History displays. That sincerity of purpose and love of truth are foremost in the author’s mind we are always sure, with whatever eyes we may view some of the tales which he records. “Where he gives a story on merely hearsay evidence, he is careful to state the fact”; and it may be added that where he has access to an original and authoritative document he gives his reader the full benefit of it.

From the literary point of view the book is admirable. There is no affectation of learning, no eccentricity of vocabulary. It seems to us to be one of the great services which Bede rendered to English writers that he gave currency to a direct and simple style. This merit is, in part, due to the tradition of the northern school in which he was brought up; but it is to his own credit that he was not led away by the fascinations of the Latinity of Aldhelm. The popularity of the History was immediate and great. Nor was it confined to England. The two actually oldest copies which we possess, both of which may have been written before Bede died, were both produced, it seems, on the continent, one (now at Namur) perhaps at St. Hubert’s abbey in the Ardennes, the other (at Cambridge) in some such continental English colony as Epternach.

The two lives of St. Cuthbert and the lives of the abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow must not be forgotten. The lastnamed, based to some extent upon an anonymous earlier work, has very great beauty and interest; not many pictures of monastic life are so sane, so human and, at the same time, so productive of reverence and affection in the reader. The two lives of St. Cuthbert are less important in all ways. The metrical one is the most considerable piece of verse attempted by Bede; that in prose is a not very satisfactory expansion of an earlier life by a Lindisfarne monk.

Enough has probably been said to give a general idea of the character of Bede’s studies and acquirements. Nothing could be gained by transcribing the lists of authors known to him, which are accessible in the works of Plummer and of Manitius. There is nothing to make us think that he had access to classical or Christian authors of importance not known to us. He quotes many Christian poets, but not quite so many as Aldhelm, and, clearly, does not take so much interest as his predecessor in pagan authors.

CHAPTER XXIV

THERE WAS IN THE SAME MONASTERY A BROTHER, ON WHOM THE GIFT OF WRITING VERSES WAS BESTOWED BY HEAVEN.

[A. D. 680]

THERE was in this abbess's monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue; for having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying; for which reason being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him, he rose up from table and returned home.

Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said,

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"Caedmon, sing some song to me." He answered, "I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place because I could not sing." The other who talked to him, replied, "However, you shall sing." "What shall I sing?" rejoined he. "Sing the beginning of created beings," said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard, the purport whereof was thus: We are now to praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being the eternal God, became the author of all miracles, who first, as almighty preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men as the roof of the house, and next the earth. This is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep; for verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another, without losing much of their beauty and loftiness. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.

In the morning he came to the steward, his superior, and having acquainted him with the gift he had received, was conducted to the abbess, by whom he was ordered, in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream, and repeat the verses, that they might all give their judgment what it was, and whence his verse proceeded. They all concluded, that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by our Lord. They expounded to him a passage in holy writ, either historical, or doctrinal, ordering him, if he could, to put the same into verse. Having undertaken it, he went away, and returning the next morning, gave it to them composed in most excellent verse; whereupon the abbess, embracing the grace of God in the 'man, instructed him to quit the secular habit, and take upon him the monastic life; which being accordingly done, she associated him to the rest of the brethren in her monastery, and ordered that he should be taught the whole series of sacred history. Thus Caedmon ' keeping in mind all he heard, and as it were chewing the cud, converted the same into most harmonious verse; and sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their turn his hearers. He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis : and made many verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ; the incarnation, passion, resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the apostles ; also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides many more about the Divine benefits and judgments, by which he endeavoured to turn away all men from the love of vice, and to excite in them the love of, and application to, good actions; for he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who behaved themselves otherwise; for which reason he ended his life happily.

For when the time of his departure drew near, he laboured for the space of fourteen days under a bodily infirmity which seemed to prepare the way, yet so moderate that he could talk and walk the whole time. In his neighbourhood was the house to which those that were sick, and like shortly to die, were carried. He desired the person that attended him, in the evening, as the night came on in which he was to depart this life, to make ready a place there for him to take his rest. This person, wondering why he should desire it, because there was as yet no sign of his dying soon, did what he had ordered. He accordingly went there, and conversing pleasantly in a joyful manner with the rest that were in the house before, when it was past midnight, he asked them, whether they had the Eucharist there? They answered, "What need of the Eucharist? for you are not likely to die, since you talk so merrily with us, as if you were in perfect health." " However," said he, "bring me the Eucharist." Having received the same into his hand, he asked, whether they were all in charity with him, and without any enmity or rancour? They answered, that they were all in perfect charity, and free from anger; and in their turn asked him, whether he was in the same mind towards them? He answered, "I am in charity, my children, with all the servants of God." Then strengthening himself with the heavenly viaticum, he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked, how near the time was when the brothers were to be awakened to sing the nocturnal praises of our Lord? They answered, "It is not far off." Then he said, "Well, let us wait that hour; " and signing himself with the sign of the cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber, ended his life so in silence.

Thus it came to pass, that as he had served God with a simple and pure mind, and undisturbed devotion, so he now departed to his presence, leaving the world by a quiet death; and that tongue, which had composed so many holy words in praise of the Creator, uttered its last words whilst he was in the act of signing himself with the cross, and recommending himself into his hands, and by what has been here said, he seems to have had foreknowledge of his death.

BOOK IV, CHAPTER XXIVTHERE WAS IN THE SAME MONASTERY A BROTHER, ON WHOM THE GIFT OF WRITING

VERSES WAS BESTOWED BY HEAVEN [A. D. 680].

THERE was in this abbess's monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him

19



out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue; for having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying; for which reason being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him, he rose up from table and returned home.

Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said, "Caedmon, sing some song to me." He answered, "I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place because I could not sing." The other who talked to him, replied, "However, you shall sing." "What shall I sing?" rejoined he. "Sing the beginning of created beings," said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard, the purport whereof was thus : We are now to praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being the eternal God, became the author of all miracles, who first, as almighty preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men as the roof of the house, and next the earth. This is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep; for verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another, without losing much of their beauty and loftiness. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.

In the morning he came to the steward, his superior, and having acquainted him with the gift he had received, was conducted to the abbess, by whom he was ordered, in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream, and repeat the verses, that they might all give their judgment what it was, and whence his verse proceeded. They all concluded, that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by our Lord. They expounded to him a passage in holy writ, either historical, or doctrinal, ordering him, if he could, to put the same into verse. Having undertaken it, he went away, and returning the next morning, gave it to them composed in most excellent verse; whereupon the abbess, embracing the grace of God in the 'man, instructed him to quit the secular habit, and take upon him the monastic life; which being accordingly done, she associated him to the rest of the brethren in her monastery, and ordered that he should be taught the whole series of sacred history. Thus Caedmon ' keeping in mind all he heard, and as it were chewing the cud, converted the same into most harmonious verse; and sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their turn his hearers. He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis : and made many verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ; the incarnation, passion, resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the apostles ; also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides many more about the Divine benefits and judgments, by which he endeavoured to turn away all men from the love of vice, and to excite in them the love of, and application to, good actions; for he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who behaved themselves otherwise; for which reason he ended his life happily.

For when the time of his departure drew near, he laboured for the space of fourteen days under a bodily infirmity which seemed to prepare the way, yet so moderate that he could talk and walk the whole time. In his neighbourhood was the house to which those that were sick, and like shortly to die, were carried. He desired the person that attended him, in the evening, as the night came on in which he was to depart this life, to make ready a place there for him to take his rest. This person, wondering why he should desire it, because there was as yet no sign of his dying soon, did what he had ordered. He accordingly went there, and conversing pleasantly in a joyful manner with the rest that were in the house before, when it was past midnight, he asked them, whether they had the Eucharist there? They answered, "What need of the Eucharist? for you are not likely to die, since you talk so merrily with us, as if you were in perfect health." " However," said he, "bring me the Eucharist." Having received the same into his hand, he asked, whether they were all in charity with him, and without any enmity or rancour? They answered, that they were all in perfect charity, and free from anger; and in their turn asked him, whether he was in the same mind towards them? He answered, "I am in charity, my children, with all the servants of God." Then strengthening himself with the heavenly viaticum, he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked, how near the time was when the brothers were to be awakened to sing the nocturnal praises of our Lord? They answered, "It is not far off." Then he said, "Well, let us wait that hour;" and signing himself with the

20



sign of the cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber, ended his life so in silence.

Thus it came to pass, that as he had served God with a simple and pure mind, and undisturbed devotion, so he now departed to his presence, leaving the world by a quiet death; and that tongue, which had composed so many holy words in praise of the Creator, uttered its last words whilst he was in the act of signing himself with the cross, and recommending himself into his hands, and by what has been here said, he seems to have had foreknowledge of his death.

A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature

L. C. Lambdin, Th. Lambdin, eds. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

21



R. Th. Lambdin and L. C. Lambdin, “Debate Poetry” (pp. 118 ff.)

In medieval English literature the poems of the debate genre have lent themselves to various, although scarce, interpretations that range from allegorical readings to those responses dependent upon unraveling a work’s historical contexts. Curiously, there is no complete survey presenting the diverse criticism of these poems. Moreover, a substantial gap exists in the recognition and criticism of the debate as it appears in Middle English literature. Regardless, debates serve to illustrate both sides of some sort of moral or philosophical instruction. Given this significant function of the Middle English debate, it seems necessary to recognize its importance in the canon of Middle English literature.

Before identifying and exploring various debates in major works of this period, it is first necessary to define the debate as it appears in Middle English literature and then to trace its literary background from classical literature through its appearance around 1200 in the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale. Few genres of English literature have stimulated such cursory critical analysis. Indeed, one must study and synthesize several secondary sources in order to comprehend the components and evolution of the Middle English debate. C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon (132) state that in the debate two persons or objects (birds, conditions, feelings, and so on) argue a specific topic and refer it to a judge. Thomas Garbáty (555) adds that the tensouns, sardonic works of the twelfth-century Provençal troubadours that poked fun at contemporary love, initiated the caustic, satiric tensions that are the inherent quality of many debates. However, these descriptions must be amended to include the rhetorical dialectic of the debate that offers distinct theses and antitheses that are to be pondered and interpreted in order to persuade the debate’s audience to select the best possible alternative provided. Thus the debate becomes a highly individualized teaching tool through which the audience, using interpretive and reasoning skills, must synthesize the points provided by the debaters to expose themselves to the moral or philosophic message of the debate. This genre, then, was a handy tool for the church to incorporate in explaining the dogmatic mysteries of its canon—ideas that depend upon the faith of the audience. The debate provided a valuable service among the schemata of church ethics.

These works, usually poems, begin by introducing the scene and the points to be argued, often by a dreamer or a coincidental observation by an “unknowing” narrator. The two combatants in turn offer particular theses and antitheses that are supported by proofs or points meant to strengthen their various arguments. The debaters speak alternatingly and, often by using sarcasm, attempt to refute the proofs provided by their opponent. Following several rounds of this verbal interplay the debate concludes, often without the announcement of a clear victor. It is up to the author to provide enough clues and evidence for the audience to decide for itself who or what wins the debate. Naturally, the social status of the audience weighs heavily in the listener’s ability to choose a winner. For example, the tone and rhetoric of The Owl and the Nightingale work on several levels of interpretation toward a varied audience.

To more fully comprehend the role of the debate in Middle English literature, it is beneficial to trace the form from its apparent foundation in classical literature through its continental influences to its eventual integration into the works of the Middle English canon. Of seminal importance is J. H. Hanford’s study, which traces the roots of the Middle English debate to the Latin Eclogues of Virgil. In the Eclogues, composed in 43 B.C., Hanford convincingly identifies the pastoral settings of Virgil’s work as comparable to those of the medieval debate poems. Also, the Eclogues center upon shepherds who gather and participate in singing contests. The victor of these

22



confrontations is the shepherd who most convincingly proves that his song is the best. The poems consist of sharp alternation of speeches between the debaters. These personal pastorals lend a format easily adaptable into a literary form whose function it is to illuminate conflicting points of view.

With the Norman Conquest, England became closely associated with French influences. French became the language of the English court and the nobility; French works were composed in England, and copies of French literature were made available to English readers (Woledge xix). This influx, which lasted for some three hundred years, provides a strong background for the appearance of the Middle English debate poems, such as The Owl and the Nightingale, in England around the year 1200. Given this interaction between these two cultures, it is natural that the debate genre would be available to and used by Middle English writers.

By the end of the twelfth century there is evidence of the coming together of several movements that will be prominent in the study of the debate. First, the debate had evolved into a popular form on the Continent, being especially prominent in France. At the same time there was a growing Scholastic regime where the works of the great classical writers were being translated and analyzed. These movements coincided with the establishment of universities in England. Consequently, these university curricula heavily emphasized the classics in their teaching of young clerics. Since the universities were the product of the church, it is only natural that their writings would be applied toward the dogmatic, didactic teachings in an attempt to reconcile reason with faith. Aristotle, whose “pagan” works closely mirrored Christian elements, was the ideal source in the medieval scholars’ attempts to solidify the link between reason and logical truth and religious truth.


The Owl and the NightingaleLondon, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix (C), ff. 233ra--246ra

Oxford, Jesus College MS 29 (J), ff. 156ra--168vb

Translation

Go to line: 100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | 500 | 600 | 700 | 800 | 900 | 1000 | 1100 | 1200 | 1300 | 1400 | 1500 | 1600 | 1700 (line-numbers are keyed to the Middle English text)

This is where the argument between the Owl and the Nightingale starts.

I was in a valley in springtime; in a very secluded corner, I heard an owl and a nightingale holding a great debate. [5] Their argument was fierce, passionate, and vehement, sometimes sotto voce, sometimes loud; and each of them swelled with rage against the other and let out all her anger, and said the very worst she could think of about the other's character, [10] and especially they argued vehemently against each other's song.

The nightingale began the argument in the corner of a clearing, [15] and perched on a beautiful branch---there was plenty of blossom around it -- in an impenetrable thick hedge, with reeds and green sedge growing through it. She was all the happier because of the branch, [20] and sang in many different ways; the music sounded as if it came from a harp or a pipe rather than from a living throat. [25] Nearby there stood an old stump where the owl sang her Hours, and which was all overgrown with ivy; this was where the owl lived. The nightingale looked at her, [30] and scrutinised her and despised her, and everything about the owl seemed unpleasant to her, since she is regarded as ugly and dirty. 'You nasty creature!', she said, 'fly away! The sight of you makes me sick. [35] Certainly I often have to stop singing because of your ugly face. My heart fails me, and so does my speech, when you thrust yourself on me. I'd rather spit than sing [40] about your wretched howling.'

The owl waited until it was evening; she couldn't hold back any longer, because she was so angry that she could hardly breathe, and finally she spoke:

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http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owltrans.htm#1700%231700




















[45] 'How does my song seem to you now? Do you think that I can't sing just because I can't twitter? You often insult me [50] and say things to upset and embarrass me. If I held you in my talons -- if only I could! -- and you were off your branch, you'd sing a very different tune!'

[55] The nightingale answered, 'As long as I keep out of the open, and protect myself against being exposed, I'm not bothered about your threats; [60] as long as I stay put in my hedge, I don't care at all what you say. I know that you're ruthless towards those who can't protect themselves from you, and that where you can you bully small birds cruelly and harshly. [65] That is why all kinds of birds hate you, and they all drive you away, and screech and scream around you, and mob you at close quarters; and for the same reason even the titmouse [70] would gladly rip you to pieces. You're ugly to look at, and hideous in all sorts of ways; your body is squat, your neck is scrawny, your head is bigger than the rest of you put together; [75] your eyes are black as coal, and as big as if they were painted with woad. You glare as if you want to bite to death everything that you can strike with your talons. Your beak is hard and sharp, and curved [80] like a bent hook. You often make a repeated clacking noise with it, and that's one of your songs. But you're making threats against my person, and would like to crush me with your talons; [85] a frog would suit you better, squatting under a mill-wheel; snails, mice, and other vermin would be more natural and appropriate for you. You roost by day and fly by night; [90] you show that you're an evil creature. You are loathsome and unclean -- I'm talking about your nest, and also about your dirty chicks; you're bringing them up with really filthy habits. [95] You know very well what they do in their nest: they foul it up to the chin; they sit there as if they're blind. There's a proverb about that: 'Shame on the creature [100] which fouls its own nest'! The other year a falcon was breeding; she didn't guard her nest well. You crept in there one day, and laid your filthy egg in it. [105] When the time came that she hatched the eggs and the chicks emerged, she brought her chicks food, watched over the nest and saw them eat; she saw that on one side [110] her nest was fouled on the outer edge. The falcon was angry with her chicks, and screamed loudly, and scolded sternly: 'Tell me, who's done this? It was never your nature to do this kind of thing. [115] This is a disgusting thing to have happened to you. Tell me, if you know who did it!' Then they all said, 'It was actually our brother, the one over there with the big head--- [120] it's a pity nobody's cut it off! Throw him out as a reject, so that he breaks his neck!' The Falcon believed her chicks, and seized that dirty chick by the middle, [125] and threw it off that wild branch, where magpies and crows tore it to pieces. There's a fable told about this, though it's not entirely a fable: this is what happens to the villain [130] who's come from a disreputable family and mixes with respectable people; he's always letting his origins show, that he's come from a rotten egg even if he's turned up in a respectable nest; [135] even if an apple rolls away from the tree where it was growing with the others, although it's some distance from it it still reflects clearly where it's come from.' The nightingale replied with these words, [140] and after that long speech she sang as loudly and as shrilly as if a resonant harp were being played.

The owl listened to this, and kept her eyes lowered, [145] and sat puffed up and swollen with rage, as if she had swallowed a frog, because she was fully aware that the nightingale was singing to humiliate her. And nevertheless she answered: [150] 'Why don't you fly into the open and show which of us two is brighter in colouring and prettier to look at?'

'No! you have very sharp claws; I don't fancy being clawed by you. [155] You have very strong talons; you grip with them like a pair of tongs. You were planning---that's what your sort do---to trick me with flattery. I wouldn't do what you suggested to me; [160] I knew very well that you were trying to mislead me. You ought to be ashamed of your bad advice! Your deviousness has been exposed; hide your dishonesty from the light, and conceal that wickedness under good behaviour! [165] When you want to practise your villainy, see that it's not obvious; because dishonesty brings down contempt and hatred if it's open and recognized. You didn't succeed with your cunning plans, [170] because I'm cautious and can easily dodge. It's no use your pushing too hard; I would fight better with cunning than you with all your strength. [175] I have a good castle, both in breadth and length, in my branch; the wise man says, 'He who fights and runs away, Lives to fight another day.' But let's stop this quarrelling, because speeches like

24


http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owlbks.htm#91.


http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/owl/owlnn.htm#65-8.



this aren't getting us anywhere; and let's begin with reasonable procedure, [180], and courteous and diplomatic language. Even if we don't agree, we can plead better politely, without quarrelling and fighting, properly and correctly; [185] and indeed each of us can say what she wants to fairly and reasonably.'

Layamon’s Brut

We come now to that section of the literature of the period which represents a revolt against established religious themes. It has been seen that religious writers occasionally

25



made use of the motives of legend and love, and from this it might be inferred that these were the directions into which the general taste was inclining. At all events these are the lines along which the literary revolt began to develop, Layamon, in the first instance, setting forth in the vernacular legendary material which came to hand. Layamon’s Brut, written early in the thirteenth century, has come down in two MSS. (A text and B text), belonging respectively to the first and second halves of the thirteenth century. The later version has numerous scribal alterations: there are many omissions of words and passages, the spelling is slightly modernised, riming variants are introduced and foreign substitutes take the place of obsolescent native words. The author reveals his identity in the opening lines. He is Layamon, a priest of Ernley (Arley Regis, Worcester), on the right bank of the Severn, where he was wont to “read books” (i.e.,., the services of the church). Layamon’s ambitious purpose was to tell the story of Britain from the time of the Flood. He is, however, content to begin with the story of Troy and the arrival of Brutus, and to end with the death of Cadwalader, 689 A.D. As regards his sources, he mentions the English book of Bede, the Latin books of St. Albin and St. Austin (by which he probably meant the Latin version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History) and thirdly, the Brut of the French clerk Wace. Of the first two authorities, however, it is curious to note, he makes not the slightest use. The account of Gregory and the English captives at Rome (11. 29,445 ff.), which is often quoted in support of his indebtedness to Bede, in reality proves his entire independence, for glaring discrepancies occur between the respective narratives. Elsewhere in the Brut Bede is directly contradicted22 and, in fact, Layamon’s assertion of indebtedness, as far as Bede is concerned, can be nothing more than a conventional recognition of a venerable work which dealt with a kindred subject. Convention rather than fact also lay behind his statement that he had consulted works in three different languages.

His debt to Wace, however, is beyond all doubt. Innumerable details are common to both works, and moreover, it is clear that it is Wace’s work rather than Wace’s original (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain) that has been laid under contribution.23 In the first place, Wace and Layamon have certain details in common which are lacking in the work of Geoffrey; in the matter of omissions Wace and Layamon frequently agree as opposed to Geoffrey; while again they often agree in differing from the Latin narrative in regard to place and personal names. But if Wace’s Brut forms the groundwork of Layamon’s work, in the latter there are numerous details, not accounted for by the original, which have generally been attributed to Celtic (i.e. Welsh) influences. Many of these details, however, have recently been shown to be non-Welsh. The name of Argante the elf-queen, as well as that of Modred, for instance, point to other than Welsh territory. The traits added to the character of Arthur are in direct opposition to what is known of Welsh tradition. The elements of the Arthurian saga relating to the Round Table are known to have been treated as spurious by Welsh writers; Tysilio, in his Brut for instance, passes them over. Therefore the explanation of this additional matter in Layamon, as compared with Wace, must be sought for in other than Welsh material.24

Hitherto, when Wace’s Brut has been mentioned, it has been tacitly assumed that the printed version of that work was meant, rather than one of those numerous versions which either remain in manuscript or have since disappeared. One MS. (Add. 32,125. Brit. Mus.), however, will be found to explain certain name-forms, concerning which Layamon is in conflict with the printed Wace. And other later works, such as the Anglo-French Brut (thirteenth or fourteenth countury) and the English metrical Mort Arthur, both of which are based on unprinted versions of Wace, contain material which is present in Layamon, namely, details connected with the stories of Lear, Merlin and

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Arthur. Therefore it seems possible that Layamon, like the authors of the later works, used one of the variant texts. Further, the general nature of Layamon’s additions appears to be Breton or Norman. The names Argante and Delgan, for instance, are derived through Norman media; the fight between Arthur and Frollo is found in the Roman des Franceis (1204) of Andrè de Coutances. But Layamon seems to stand in yet closer relations to Gaimar’s Rhyming Chronicle, so far as that book can be judged from the relatedMünchner Brut. An explanation of the Carric-Cinric confusion, for instance, would be obtained by this assumption. The representation of Cerdic and Cinric in Layamon as one and the same person25 might conceivably be due, not to the account in the Old English Chroniclebut to some such foreign version as is found in Gaimar (11. 819 ff.). To Gaimar moreover may probably be attributed several details of Layamon’s style—his tendency to employ forms of direct speech, his discursiveness, his appeals to the gods and his protestations as to the truth of his narrative. It is possible that one of the later versions of Wace may have embodied details taken from Gaimar. Waurin’s Chroniques et istoires (fifteenth century) seems a compilation of this kind, and it is not impossible that Layamon’s original may have been a similarly compiled work, with, it should be added, elements taken fromcontemporary Tristram and Lancelot poems. In any case, the English Brut is not based on the printed Brut of Wace, but on one of the later versions of which certain MSS. remain and of which other traces can be found. This particular version had probably been supplemented by Breton material introduced through some Norman medium, and, since this supplementary portion is reminiscent of Gaimar, there is reason for supposing that the particular version may have been mainly a compilation of the earlier works of Wace and Gaimar.

This view as to sources must modify, in some degree, the estimate to be formed of Layamon’s artistic merits, and must discount the value of some of the additions formerly ascribed to his imagination or reasearch. It will also account for certain matters of style already mentioned. But, when these items have been removed, there still remains much that is Layamon’s own, sufficient to raise his work far above the rank of a mere translation. The poet’s English individuality may be said to pervade the whole. It appears in the reminiscences of English popular legend perceived in Wygar, the maker of Arthus’s courselet, and in the sea of Lumond, the “atteliche pole,” where “nikeres” bathe. His English temperament appears in the fondness he betrays for maxims and proverbs, which afford relief from the mere business of the narrative. The poet is still in possession of the ancient vocabulary, with its hosts of synonyms, though the earlier parallelisms which retarded the movement are conspicuously absent. His most resonant lines, like those of his literary ancestors, deal with the conflict of warriors or with that of the elements. In such passages as those which describe the storm that overtook Ursula (II, 74), or the wrestling match between Corineus and the giant (I, 79), he attains the true epic note, while his words gather strength from their alliterative setting. His verse is a compromise betweenthe old and the new. With the Old English line still ringing in his ears, he attempts to regulate the rhythm, and occassionally to adorn his verse with rime or assonance. His device of simile was, no doubt, caught from his original, for many of the images introduced are coloured by the Norman love of the chase, as when a fox-hunt is introduced to depict the hunted condition of Childric (II, 452), or the pursuit of a wild crane by hawks in the fenland to describe the chase after Colgrim (II,422). The poet, in general, handles his borrowings with accuracy, but he has limitations—perhaps shows impatience—as a scholar. Apart from a totally uncritical attitude—a venial sin in that age—he betrays, at times, a certain ignorance on historical and geographical points. But such anachronisms and irregularities are of little importance in a work of this kind, and do not detract from its literary merits. Other

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verbal errors suggest that the work of translation was to Layamon notdevoid of difficulty. Where Wace indulges in technical terminology, as in his nautical description of Arthur’s departure from Southampton, Layamon here and elsewhere solves his linguistic difficulties by a process of frank omission.

The interest which the Brut possesses for modern readers arises in part from the fact that much of its material is closely bound up with later English literature. Apart from the Arthurian legend here appear for the first time in English the story of Leir and Kinbelin, Cloten and Arviragus. But the main interest centres round the Arthurian section, with its haunting story of a wondrous birth, heroic deeds and a mysterious end. The grey king appears in a garment of chivalry. As compared with the Arthur of Geoffrey’s narrative, his figure has grown in knightliness and splendour. He is endowed with the added traits of noble generosity and heightened sensibility; he has advancedin courtesy; he is the defender of Christianity; he is a lover of law and order. And Layamon’s narrative is also interesting historically. It is the work of the first writer of any magnitude in Middle English, and, standing at the entrance to that period, he may be said to look before and after. He retains much of Old English tradition; in addition, he is the first to make extensive use of French material. And, lastly, in the place of a fast vanishing native mythology, he endows his countrymen with a new legendary store in which lay concealed the seeds of later chivalry.

Note 22. Cf. Layamon, Brut, 412; Bede, 1, 3, etc.Note 23. R. Wulcker, P.B.B. III, pp. 530 ff.Note 24. For the main points contained in the discussion of Layamon’s sources see Imelmann, Layamon, Versuch uber seine Quellen.Note 25. Cf. 11. 28,867 ff.

Layamon: Brut (c. 1205)From Roger Sherman Loomis and Rudolph Willard,

Medieval English Verse and Prose (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948).( VSS . 1 -67) There was a priest in the land; Layamon was he called. He was Leovenath's son; the Lord be gracious to him; He dwelt at Earnley, at a noble church, Upon Severn shore,-good there he thought it,- Quite near to Redstone; he read there his service book. It came to his mind and into his serious thought, To relate of the English their noble deeds, What they were called and whence they had come, Who first did possess the land of the English, After the flood, which came from the Lord, And did destroy all things that it found alive, Except Noah and Shem, Japhet and Ham, And their four wives who were with them in the ark. Layamon did travel widely among the people, And got him those noble books that he set as his pattern. He took that English book that Saint Bede had made; Another he took, in Latin, that Saint Albin had made And the fair Augustine, who brought baptism hither; A third book he took, and laid it alongside, Which a French cleric had made, well learned in lore; Wace was his name, he knew well how to write, And he then did give it to the noble Eleanor, Who was Henry's queen, that high king's. Layamon laid these books out, and he turned the leaves; With love he searched them, the Lord be to him gracious. He took feathers in his fingers, and he composed on parchment; And these three books he condensed into one. Now Layamon prayeth each noble man, For the love of Almighty God and of his gracious heart,

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Who will read these books and learn these runes, That some true words he will say together For his father's soul, who did beget him, And for his mother's soul, who bore him as man, And for his own soul, that it be the better for them. Amen. ( VSS . 19246- 69) There Uther the king took Ygerne for queen. Ygerne was with child by Uther the king, All through Merlin's wiles, ere she was wedded. The time came that was chosen; then was Arthur born. As soon as he came on earth fays took him. They enchanted the child with magic right strong: They gave him the might to be best of all knights; They gave him another thing, that he should be a mighty king; They gave him a third,-his death would be long deferred. They gave to that roya1 child right good virtues, That he was most liberal of all living men. This the fays gave him, and thus the child thrived.

(VSS. 21111-456) There came tidings to Arthur the king, That his kinsman Howell lay sick at Clud. Therefor he was sorry, but there he left him. With very great haste he tried him forth Until beside Bath he came to a held. There he alighted and all his knights, And the doughty warriors donned their byrnies, And he in five parts divided his army. When he had arrayed all, and all seemed ready, He did on his byrny, made of linked steel, Which an elvish smith made with his noble craft; It was called Wigar, and a wizard wrought it. He hid his shanks in hose of steel. Caliburn, his sword, he swung at his side; It was wrought in Avalon with cunning craft. He set on his head a high helm of steel; Thereon was many a jewel all adorned with gold. It had been Uther's, the noble king's; It was called Goose-white; 'twas unlike any other. He slung from his neck a precious shield; Its name in British was called Pridwen. Thereon was graven in red-gold figures A dear likeness of the Lord's Mother. He took in hand his spear, which was called Ron. When he had all his weeds, he leapt on his steed. Then might they behold who stood there beside him The fairest knight who would ever lead host. Never saw any man a goodlier knight Than Arthur was, the noblest of ancestry. Then Arthur called with a loud voice: "Lo, here are before us the heathen hounds Who killed our chieftains with their base crafts; And they on this land are loathes" of all things. Now let us attack them and lay on them starkly, And avenge wonderously our kin and our kingdom, And wreak the great shame with which they have shamed us, That they over the waves have come to Dartmouth. They are all forsworn and they all shall be lorn; They all are doomed with the aid of the Lord. Hasten we forward fast together, Even as softly as if we thought no evil. And when we come on them, I myself will attack; Foremost of all I will begin the fight. Now let us ride and pass over the land, And let no man, on his life, make any noise, But fare firmly , with the help of the Lord." Then Arthur , the rich man, to ride forth began,

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Went over the weald and would seek Bath. The tidings came to Childric, the strong and the mighty, That Arthur came with his army, all ready to fight. Childric and his brave men leapt on their horses, Grinned their weapons; they knew themselves fey. This saw Arthur, noblest of kings.He saw a heathen earl hastening against him, With seven hundred knights all ready to fight. The earl himself came ahead of his troop, And Arthur himself galloped before all his army. Arthur, the fierce, took Ron in his hand; He couched the strong shaft, that stern-minded king. He let his horse run so that the earth rumbled. He laid shield to his breast; the king was bursting with anger. He smote Borel the earl right throug hthe breast, So that his heart was split. The king cried at once: "The foremost hath met his fate! Now the Lord help us And the heavenly Queen, who gave birth to the Lord!" Then cried Arthur, noblest of kings:"Now at them, now at them! The foremost is done for!" The Britons laid on, as men should do to the wicked. They gave bitter strokes with axes and swords. There fell of Childric's men fully two thousand, But Arthur never lost one of his men. There were the Saxon men most wretched of all folk And the men of Almain most miserable of all peoples. Arthur with his sword executed doom; All whom he smote were soon destroyed. The king was enraged as is the wild boar When he in the beechwood meeteth many swine. This Childric beheld and began to turn back, And bent his way over Avon to save himself. Arthur pursued him, as if he were a lion, And drove them to the flood; many there were fey. There sank to the bottom five and twenty hundred. Then was Avon's stream all bridged over with steel. Childric fled over the water with fifteen hundred knights; He thought to journey forth and pass over sea. Arthur saw Colgrim climb to a mount, Turn to a hill that standeth over Bath; And Baldulf followed after with seven thousand knights. They thought on that hill to make a stout stand, To defend themselves with weapons and work harm to Arthur. When Arthur saw, noblest of kings, Where Colgrim withstood and made a stand, Then cried the king keenly and loud: "My bold thanes, make for that hill For yesterday was Colgrim most daring of all men. Now he is as sad as a goat, where he guardeth the hill. High on a hilltop he fighteth with horns, When the wild wolf come there, toward him stalking. Though the wolf be alone, without any pack, And there be in the fold five hundred goats, The wolf falleth on them and biteth them all. So will I now today destroy Colgrim altogether. I am a wolf and he is a goat. The man shall be fell" Then still shouted Arthur, noblest of kings: "Yesterday was Baldulf of all knights boldest. Now he standeth on the hill and beholdeth the Avon, How there lie in the stream steel fishest Ready with sword, their health is broken! Their scales float like gold-colored shields; There float their fins as if they were spears. These are marvelous things come to this land, Such beasts on the hill, such fish in the stream; Yesterday was the kaiser boldest of all kings; Now hath he become a hunter, and horns follow him;

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He flieth over the broad weald; his hounds bark. But beside Bath he hath abandoned his hunting; He fleeth from his deer and we shall bring it down, And bring to naught his bold threats; And so we shall revel in our rights again." Even with the words that the king said, He raised high his shield before his breast, He gripped his long spear and set spurs to his horse. Nearly as swiftly as the bird flieth, There followed the king five and twenty thousand Valorous men, raging under their arms, Held their way to the hill with high courage, And smote at Colgrim with full smart strokes. There Colgrim received them and felled the Britons to earth. In the foremost attack there fell five hundred, Arthur saw that, noblest of kings, And wroth he was with wondrous great wrath, And Arthur the noble man to shout thus began: "Where be ye, Britons, my warriors bold? Here stand before us our foes all chosen. My warriors good, let us beat them to the ground." Arthur gripped his sword aright and smote a Saxon knight, So that the good sword stopped at the teeth. Then he smote another who was that knight's brother, So that his helm and his head fell to the ground.Soon a third dint he gave and in two a knight clave. Then were the Britons much emboldened And laid on the Saxons right sore strokes With spears that were long and swords that were strong. There Saxons fell, met their fated hour,By hundreds and hundreds sank to the earth, By thousands and thousands dropped there to the ground. When Colgrim saw where Arthur came toward him, He could not, for the slaughter, flee to any side, There fought Baldulf beside his brother. Then called Arthur with a loud voice: "Here I come, Colgrim; we will gain us a country. We will so share this land as will be least to thy liking," Even with the words that the king uttered, He heaved up his broad sword and brought it down hard, And smote Colgrim's helm and clove it in the middIe, And the hood of the byrny; the blade stopped at the breast. He struck at Baldulf with his left hand, And smote off the head and the helm also. Then laughed Arthur, the noble king, And began to speak with gamesome words: "Lie now there, Colgriml Thou didst climb too high! And Baldulf thy brother lieth by thy side. Now all this good land I place in your hand, Dales and downs and all my doughty folk. Thou didst climb on this hill wondrously high, As if thou soughtest heaven; now thou shalt to hell! There thou mayst ken many of thy kin! Greet thou there Hengest, who of knights was fairest, Ebissa and Ossa, Octa and more of thy kin; And bid them dwell there, winters and summers. And we on this land will live in bliss, And pray for your souls that they may never be blessed, And here shall your bones lie beside Bath."

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HAVELOK THE DANE

A Middle English romance(<http://www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/havelok-dane>)

INTRODUCTION

Havelok the Dane is one of the oldest Middle English romances, generally considered to have been written around the thirteenth century, and consisting of some 3000 lines of rhymed octosyllabic couplets. In addition to being an exciting and vigorous tale in its own right, Havelok the Dane provides the first glimpse of the lives of common people after the Norman Conquest. Written in a Lincolnshire dialect, Havelok the Dane offers local color and insight into the diverse people inhabiting England, championing their humble lifestyle. It is also an important historical source for the understanding of political and legal procedures of the time. The work has been praised by critics for its narrative style and gritty realism.

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Textual History. Havelok the Dane exists in only one manuscript, positioned towards the end of a collection of saints' lives and immediately before the verse romance King Horn (circa 1225). Havelok's inclusion in this collection perhaps reflects Havelok's vaguely divine status in the tale. While the English romance version is the longest of the various forms of the Havelok tale, the basic story exists in several other guises. Its first known telling was around 1135-40 in Geffrei Gaimar's L 'Estoire des Engles. It was on this work that the 1112-line Old French (or Anglo-Norman) version, Le Lai d'Haveloc (1190-1220) was based. Robert Mannyng's Chronicle of England, commonly called the Lambeth Interpolation, contains a concise rendition of Havelok's story in eighty-two long lines. Scholars continue to debate to what degree one version is indebted to others and to what extent common, mythical elements are incorporated.

Plot and Major Characters. The Havelok tale begins in England, where the beloved Christian King, Æthelwood, has died, leaving his daughter, Goldboro, sole heir to the throne. She is entrusted to her guardian, Earl Godrich of Cornwall, who sets up an oppressive rule and imprisons Goldboro in a tower, denying her the kingdom. She is told she can marry no one but the "highest" man in England. Shifting to another plot, the reader learns of Birkabeyne, the dying King of Denmark. The King entrusts his son, Havelok, and Havelok’s two sisters into the protection of their guardian, Earl Godard. Wishing to assume rule himself, Godard slits the young girls' throats and orders his serf, Grim, to drown the Prince in return for Grim's freedom. Before Grim can carry out his order a blazing light leaps from Havelok's mouth, indicating his kingly origin and divine mission. Further, Grim sees a "king-mark" on Havelok, a birthmark in the shape of a cross. Grim spares the boy, adopts him, and flees with his family and Havelok to England, where they take up residence in Lincolnshire. Here Havelok works tirelessly and cheerfully in a series of menial jobs. The work helps Havelok grow strong and through his participation in sports he gains skill and agility. Eventually he becomes employed as a cook's helper in Godrich's household. Godrich, thinking Havelok of common origin, marries him to Goldboro. One night the beam of light again appears from Havelok's mouth and is witnessed by Goldboro, who realizes her husband is a prince. An angel speaks to Goldboro and tells her of her husband's destiny. Havelok, Goldboro, and Grim and his family travel to Denmark. Havelok raises an army, defeats and hangs Godard, then goes back to England and defeats Godrich, who is burned at the stake. Havelok unites the kingdoms of Denmark and England and he and Goldboro rule the countries and have fifteen children who become kings and queens themselves.

Major Themes. Thematically, Havelok the Dane is concerned with the triumph of good over evil, the importance of the rule of law, and the protection of God for good men, who may be used as his instruments. It deals with a man who rises to his rightful seat on the throne not solely by virtue of his birth, but also through his Christian qualities, personal abilities, and hard work. Some critics have also made the case that the work sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of Danish rule over England.

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Critical Reception. Scholars have praised Havelok the Dane for stylistic sophistication not generally found in its time. It is dual-plotted and the author appears to be aware of his narrative skill: he neatly inserts himself at times between the action and the audience and is adept at rendering transitions, sometimes of numerous years. The work has also been acclaimed for its liveliness; for its treatment of characters, even minor ones, as individuals rather than types; for its realistic, natural style; and for its inclusion of legal facts and procedures. Critics have contrasted it with French tales of the time, noting that, while they emphasize an idealized aristocracy, Havelok the Dane focuses on the peasant class. Source studies of the Havelok tales are of particular interest to scholars. Extensive research has yielded much information and much contention over such matters as derivation of words and names, sequence, correspondences, and references. There is no disagreement that the Gaimar version, Le Lai d'Haveloc, and the Lambeth Interpolation are heavily related; however, scholars debate the source of the English version. Some believe Havelok the Dane to be based on the French tale, others believe it is the source of the French. A common source for all versions is not ascertainable, but many believe that this conjectured original was of Scandinavian origin. Scholars have also devoted much effort to trying to determine the date of composition of Havelok. Herlint Meyer-Lindenberg has contended that Havelok must have been composed between 1203 and 1216, advancing several arguments to support the thesis. George B. Jack has taken issue with each of these conclusions and has insisted that the date of composition cannot be determined any more precisely than from the late twelfth century to around 1272. Concerning the derivations and interrelations of the various Havelok tales, G. V. Smithers has written that "finality has not been reached and is hardly possible."

Sir Orfeo

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice, as told by Apollonius of Rhodes, Virgil and Ovid (and retold by Edith Hamilton in Mythology, Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1942, 107-10)

Orpheus: "On his mother's side he was more than mortal. He was the son of one of the Muses and a Tracian prince. His mother gave him the gift of music and Thrace where he grew up fostered it. The Thracians were the most musical of the peoples of Greece. But Orpheus had no rival there or anywhere except the gods alone. There was no limit to his power when he played and sang. No one and nothing could resist him.

In the deep still woods upon the Thracian mountains Orpheus with his singing lyre led the trees, Led the wild beasts of the wilderness.

Everything animate and inanimate followed him. He moved the rocks on the hillside and turned the courses of the rivers....

When he first met and how he wooed the maiden he loved, Euridice, we are not told, but it is clear that no maiden he wanted could have resisted the power of his song. They were married, but their joy was brief. Directly after the wedding, as the bride walked in a meadow with her bridesmaids, a viper stung her and she died. Orpheus' grief was overwhelming. He could not endure it. He determined to go down to the world of death and try to bring Eurydice back. He said to himself,

With my song I will charm Demeter's daughter, I will charm the Lord of the Dead, Moving their hearts with my melody. I will bear her away from Hades.

He dared more than any other man ever dared for his love. He took the fearsome journey to the underworld. There he struck his lyre, and at the sound all that vast multitude were charmed to stillness....

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O Gods who rule the dark and silent world, To you all born of a woman needs must come. All lovely things at last go down to you. You are the debtor who is always paid. A little while we tarry up on earth. Then we are yours forever and forever. But I seek one who came to you too soon. The bud was plucked before the flower bloomed. I tried to bear my loss. I could not bear it. Love was too strong a god, O King, you know If that old tale men tell is true, how once The flowers saw the rape of Proserpine, Then weave again for sweet Eurydice Life's pattern that was taken from the loom Too quick. See, I ask a little thing, Only that you will lend, not give, her to me. She shall be yours when her years' span is full.

No one under the spell of his voice could refuse him anything. He

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, and made Hell grant what Love did seek.

They summoned Eurydice and gave her to him, but upon one condition: that he would not look back at her as she followed him, until they had reached the upper world. So the two passed through the great doors of Hades to the path which would take them out of the darkness, climbing up and up. He knew that she must be just behind him, but he longed unutterably to give one glance to make sure. But now they were almost there, the blackness was turning gray; now he had stepped out joyfully into the daylight. Then he turned to her. It was too soon; she was still in the cavern. He saw her in the dim light, and he held out his arms to clasp her; but on the instant she was gone. She had slipped back into the darkness. All he heard was one faint word, "Farewell."

Desperately he tried to rush after her and follow her down, but he was not allowed. The gods would not consent to his entering the world of the dead a second time, while he was still alive. He was forced to return to the earth alone, in utter desolation. Then he forsook the company of men. He wandered through the wild solitudes of Thrace, comfortless except for his lyre, playing, always playing, and the rocks and the rivers and the trees heard him gladly, his only companions. But at last a band of Maenads [women] came upon him....They slew the gentle musician, tearing him limb from limb, borne along past the river's mouth on to the Lesbian shore; nor had it suffered any change from the sea when the Muses found it and buried it in the sanctuary of the island. His limbs they gathered and placed in a tomb at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there to this day the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else. "

Sir Orfeo(an anonymous Middle English narrative poem)

Dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, it represents a mixture of the Greek myth of Orpheus with Celtic mythology and folklore concerning fairies, introduced into the English culture via the Old French Breton lais of poets like Marie de France. Sir Orfeo is preserved in three manuscripts, Advocates 19.2.1 known as the Auchinleck MS. and dated at about 1330, the oldest. The next oldest manuscript, Harley 3810, is from about the beginning of the fourteenth century. The third, Ashmole 61, was compiled over the course of several years; the portion of the MS. containing Sir Orfeo is c. 1488. The beginning of the poem describes itself as a Breton lai, and says it is derived from a no longer extant text, the Lai d*Orphey. Child Ballad 19 "King Orfeo" is closely related to this poem.

In the poem, Sir Orfeo, king of Thrace, loses his wife Heurodis (i.e. Eurydice) to the fairy king, who steals her away from under an apple tree, an imp tree that happened to be haunted by the fairies, and takes her to his underworld kingdom. Orfeo, distraught by this, leaves his court and wanders in a forest. While there, he sees Heurodis riding past in the company of the fairy

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurydice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de_France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_lai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_mythology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_poetry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous



host. He follows them to the realm of the fairy king, where he entertains the fairy king by playing his harp. The fairy king, pleased with Orfeo's music, offers him the chance to choose a reward; he chooses Heurodis. Orfeo returns with Heurodis and reclaims his throne.

While this is not the classical myth of Orpheus, the poet shows substantial ingenuity in merging the Orpheus of mythology, who tries and fails to obtain the return of his wife Eurydice from Hades, the realm of Pluto, with the traditional Celtic fairy motifs of the fairy rade or hunt, the fairies' otherworldly kingdom, their attempts to abduct mortals, and the magical transformations endured by those who are captured by them. These motifs are shared by both Sir Orfeo and later-collected versions of Celtic ballad fairy-lore in such works as the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin.

Sir Orfeo

As we read often and find written,As scholars have let us knowThe lays that were sung (to the accompaniment of the harp)Are found to be about wondrous things.Some are of war, and some of misfortune,And some of joy and pleasure, too,And some of treachery and guile,And some of adventures that once happened in old.Some of jokes and ribaldry And many of fairy/enchantment,Of all things that men may see,No doubt, they were mostly of love.In Brittany these lays are writtenFirst found and composedOf adventures that happened long agoOf which the Brittons composed their lays.When they might anywhere widsh to hearOf any marvels that existedThey [i.e. the harpers] took up a harp in minstrelsy and amusement,Composed lays and gave them names.Of adventures that had happened,I can tell some but not all.Hearken, Lords, who are loyal,I will tell you Sir Orfeo.Orfeo was a kingIn England, a man of high rank,Both a stalwart man and bold,He was generous and noble as well.His father was descended from King PlutoAnd his mother from King JunoThat some time were held to be godsFor adventures that they did and told.Orfeo most of anythingLoved the pleasure of playing the harp.Certain was every good harperFom him to receive much honor.He himself like playingAnd thereto devoted his keen intelligence;He stidued so that there was No better harpist anywhere.In the world was never born a manWho, once he sat before OrfeoAnd heard his music on the harp,Would not think that he wasIn one of the joys of Paradise,There is such joy and melody in his music. This king resided in ThraciaThat was a city of noble fortification.For, without any doubt, then Thracia Was named Winchester.The king had a queen of excellence

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Rhymer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(paranormal)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(god)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_antiquity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harp



That was called Lady Heurodis,The fairest lady, believe me,Who could exist as flesh and bone,Full of love and goodness,But no man can fully describe her beauty.It happened at the beginning of May When merry and warm is the dayAnd gone are all winter showersAnd every field is full of flowersAnd blossom bright on every boughEverywhere grows more than enough.This same queen, Lady Heurodis,Took two ladies of excellence

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LANGLAND – PIERS PLOWMAN

The Dream Vision(<http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/dream_vision.htm>)

The typical dream vision is a medieval work of literature which takes advantage of medieval dream psychology's acceptance of the notion that some types of dreams could communicate wisdom to the dreamer. The source of this dream might be God (a truly prognostic "visio"), the devil (sometimes a form of sexual temptation like an incubus or succubus), or natural causes. Typically, the dream vision occurs in a predictable series of stages:

1) The dreamer falls asleep in the midst of some life crisis or emotional impasse; 2) The dreamer, almost always a male, finds himself in a beautiful natural place (locus amoenus), often an

enclosed garden filled with beautiful plants, animals, etc. (hortus conclusus); 3) The dreamer encounters a guide figure who instructs the dreamer and/or leads the dreamer to one or more

allegorical visions; 4) The dreamer may interrogate the guide figure about the significance of the visions, but often this does not

produce satisfactory results; 5) Something within the dream causes the dreamer to awaken before the full significance of the dream can be

explained, though the audience is left with a few highly likely choices which are likely to stimulate debate about important cultural values that are in contention or undergoing change.

Parliament of Foules, Book of the Duchess, and House of Fame, are Chaucer's surviving "dream visions." The genre faded out in the Renaissance, but it was well-known enough for all the great poets of Chaucer's era to try their hands at it. The dream vision Pearl was one of five long poems known to us in a single surviving manuscript by the anonymous "Pearl-Poet." William Langland, who also lived at the same time as Chaucer and "Pearl-Poet," confined his entire lifetime poetic output to a single, immense and immensely complex poem known as The Dream of Piers the Plowman. The oldest dream visions were Latin poems like Cicero's Somnium Scipionis ("The Dream of Scipio"), in which the younger Roman politician, Scipio, dreams he is visited and instructed by his ancestor, Scipio Africanis, who defeated Hannibal of Carthage. (Cicero's version was lost until its rediscovery late in the Renaissance, but a later version by Macrobius survived, and it was Macrobius' retelling of Cicero's tale that Chaucer knew.) That poem introduces a special feature of dream visions not shared by many medieval versions, "the soul flight," in which the guide figure takes the dreamer into the heavens from which they can contemplate the entirety of human and divine existence. It's a breath-taking strategy, and one which is used in Boccaccio's Il Teseide (source of Chaucer's "Knight's Tale") and given by Chancer to the hero of the Troilus. Interpretive approaches to the dream vision have become considerably more complex since Constance Hieatt's early attempt to discover the authors' motivations in covert political messages or social commentary. The "vision" creates a wonderfully complex aesthetic event that suffers from "reductive" criticism that argues authors cast their poems as dreams only to avoid social or political persecution for commenting on highly charged topics. Certainly this can happen, but it hardly explains the enormous density and layering of the most complex poems, like Chaucer's "The Book of the Duchess," Langland's "Piers Plowman," or the Pearl-Poet's "Pearl." For instance, Chaucer embeds his visions within other visions, multiplies "guide figures," and develops both the "Dreamer" and the "guide" personae until they approach what E. M. Forster called "roundness," the illusion of realness. Langland's Dreamer undergoes dreams within dreams, witnesses mystery-play-like pageants within dreams, and angrily disputes the meaning of his dreams within the dream. The Pearl-Poet's Dreamer and guide figures may be the most subtly layered of all, transforming their paired identities from jeweler-and-lost-gem to parent-and-lost-child to body-and-lost-soul to . . . something else, as the stanza groups work out their intricate mathematical schemes and the poem's content plunges toward the central mysteries of human existence. Though these poems pre-date Freud and Jung by four centuries, they often suggest psychoanalytic insights about personality, psychic defenses, self-delusions and self-discoveries which Freudian and Jungian interpretation seek to explain.

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http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/typical_dream_vision_plot_stages_character_types.htm

http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/dream_vision.htm



Piers PlowmanIN a summer season when soft was the sun, I clothed myself in a cloak as I shepherd were, Habit like a hermit's unholy in works, And went wide in the world wonders to hear. But on a May morning on Malvern hills, A marvel befell me of fairy, methought. I was weary with wandering and went me to rest Under a broad bank by a brook's side, And as I lay and leaned over and looked into the waters I fell into a sleep for it sounded so merry. Then began I to dream a marvellous dream, That I was in a wilderness wist I not where. As I looked to the east right into the sun, I saw a tower on a toft worthily built; A deep dale beneath a dungeon therein, With deep ditches and dark and dreadful of sight A fair field full of folk found I in between, Of all manner of men the rich and the poor, Working and wandering as the world asketh. Some put them to plow and played little enough, At setting and sowing they sweated right hard And won that which wasters by gluttony destroy. Some put them to pride and apparelled themselves so In a display of clothing they came disguised. To prayer and penance put themselves many, All for love of our Lord living hard lives, In hope for to have heavenly bliss. Such as anchorites and hermits that kept them in their cells, And desired not the country around to roam; Nor with luxurious living their body to please. And some chose trade they fared the better, As it seemeth to our sight that such men thrive. And some to make mirth as minstrels know how, And get gold with their glees guiltlessly, I hold. But jesters and janglers children of Judas, Feigning their fancies and making folk fools, They have wit at will to work, if they would; Paul preacheth of them I'll not prove it here - Qui turpiloquium loquitur is Lucifer's hind. Tramps and beggars went quickly about, Their bellies and their bags with bread well crammed; Cadging for their food fighting at ale; In gluttony, God knows going to bed, And getting up with ribaldry the thieving knaves! Sleep and sorry sloth ever pursue them. Pilgrims and palmers pledged them together To seek Saint James and saints in Rome. They went forth on their way with many wise tales, And had leave to lie all their life after -- I saw some that said they had sought saints: Yet in each tale that they told their tongue turned to lies More than to tell truth it seemed by their speech. Hermits, a heap of them with hooked staves, Were going to Walsingham and their wenches too; Big loafers and tall that loth were to work, Dressed up in capes to be known from others; And so clad as hermits their ease to have. I found there friars of all the four orders, Preaching to the people for profit to themselves, Explaining the Gospel just as they liked, To get clothes for themselves they construed it as they would. Many of these master friars may dress as they will, For money and their preaching both go together. For since charity hath been chapman and chief to shrive lords,

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Many miracles have happened within a few years. Except Holy Church and they agree better together, Great mischief on earth is mounting up fast. There preached a pardoner as if he priest were: He brought forth a brief with bishops' seals thereon, And said that himself might absolve them all From falseness in fasting and of broken vows. Laymen believed him welcomed his words, And came up on their knees to kiss his seals; He cozened them with his brevet dimmed their eyes, And with his parchment got his rings and brooches: Thus they gave their gold gluttons to keep. And lend it to such louts as follow lechery. If the bishop were holy and worth both his ears, His seal should not be sent to deceive the people. But a word 'gainst bishop the knave never preacheth. Parish priest and pardoner share all the silver That the parish poor would have if he were not there. Parsons and parish priests complained to the bishop That their parishes were poor since the pestilence time, And asked leave and licence in London to dwell And sing requiems for stipends for silver is sweet. Bishops and bachelors both masters and doctors, That have charge under Christ and the tonsure as token And sign that they should shrive their parishioners, Preach and pray for them and feed the poor, These lodge in London in Lent and at other times too. Some serve the king and his silver count In Chequer and Chancery courts making claim for his debts Of wards and of wardmotes waifs and estrays. And some serve as servants to lords and ladies, And instead of stewards sit in session to judge. Their mass and their matins their canonical hours, Are said undevoutly I fear at the last Lest Christ in his council accurse will full many. I perceived of the power that Peter had to keep, To bind and to unbind as the Book telleth, How he left it with love as our Lord ordained, Amongst four virtues the best of all virtues, That cardinal are called for they hinge the gates Where Christ is in glory to close and to shut And to open it to them and show heavenly bliss. But of cardinals at Rome that received that name And power presumed in them a pope to make, That they have Peter's power deny it I will not; For to love and learning that election belongeth, Therefore I can, and yet cannot of that court speak more.

Passus One

WHAT this mountain meaneth · and the dark dale And the field full of folk · I fairly will show.A lady, lovely of looks · in linen clothed, Came down from a castle · and called me fairly And said: `Son, sleepest thou? · Seest thou this people, How busy they be · about all the throng? The most part of this people · that passeth on earth, Have worship in this world · and wish for no better; Of other heaven than here · they hold no account.' I was feared of her face · though she were so fair, And said, 'Mercy, madam · what is this to mean?' 'The tower on the toft,' quoth she 'Truth is therein And would have that ye do · as his word teacheth; For he is Father of Faith · formed you all Both with flesh and with face and gave you fine wits To worship him therewith · while that ye are here.

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Therefore he hath bade the earth to help you each one With woollen, with linen · with food at your need, In reasonable measure to make you at case. And commanded of his courtesy · three things in common. None are needful but those · and name them I will And reckon them rightly · rehearse thou them after. The first one is vesture · to save thee from chill; And meat for meals · to save thee misease And drink when thou art dry · but do naught out of reason Lest thy worth be wanting · when thou shouldest work. For Lot in his lifetime · for liking of drink Did with his daughters · what the Devil liked. He delighted in drink · as the Devil wished, And Lechery was gainer · and lay with them both, Putting blame on the wine · for that wicked deed: Inebriamus eum vino, dormiamusque cum eo, ut servare possimus de patre nostro semen. Through wine and through women · there was Lot overcome, Begetting in gluttony · boys that were blackguards. Therefore dread delicious drink · and thou shalt do the better; Measure is medicine · though thou yearn for much. All is not good for the spirit · that the guts asketh, Nor livelihood to thy body · that is life to the soul. Believe not thy body for · him a liar teacheth: That is, the wretched world · which would thee betray. For the fiend and thy flesh · follow thee together; This and that chaseth thy soul · and speak in thine heart; That thou shouldest be ware · I teach thee the best.' `Madam, mercy,' quoth I · `I like well your words. But the money of this earth · that men hold to so fast, Tell me, madam, to whom that treasure belongeth?' `Go to the Gospel,' quoth she · `that God spoke himself, When the people posed him · with a penny in the Temple, Whether they should therewith · worship king Caesar. And God asked of them · of whom spake the writing And likewise the image · that stood thereon? "Caesaris," they said · "Each one sees him well."

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SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

Type of Work. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a medieval romance, a long poem resembling an epic in its focus on heroic deeds. Unlike an epic, however, a medieval romance is light in tone, and its content is at times fantastic and magical. In a medieval romance chivalrous knights pay homage to lovely ladies. The knights are often pure in heart and soul, although sorely tempted by the wiles of beautiful women. There may be merriment and singing. The manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight appeared circa 1375, although it may have been written some years earlier. Because the original language of the poem is difficult for the modern reader, it appears today in translations. This study guide is based on Jesse L. Weston's public-domain prose translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, published in 1898.

Author. The author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has never been identified. He or she wrote with considerable skill and sophistication, using specific details and vivid imagery to develop the story. Three other works—The Pearl, Purity, and Patience -- are also attributed to this author.

Settings. The action takes place in Medieval England and Wales in the age of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The story begins at Arthur's castle at Camelot when his nephew—the doughty Sir Gawain—takes part in a test of valor proposed by a visitor, a giant of green complexion and attire. The scene shifts to the countryside, then to another castle, then to the countryside, then to the valley of the giant -- the centerpiece of which is a mysterious Green Chapel -- and finally back to Camelot. The location of Camelot, if it existed, is uncertain. Some legends place it in Monmouthshire, Wales. Others place it in England in Corneal, Soberest, or Hampshire.

Characters:*Sir Gawain: Brave, chivalrous young knight of Camelot who is the nephew of

King Arthur and Morgan le Fay. He takes up the challenge proposed by the fearsome Green Knight.

* King Arthur: Ruler of the legendary Camelot.* Guinevere: Queen of Camelot.* Green Knight (Bernlak de Hautdesert): Giant of green complexion and attire

who pays a surprise visit to Camelot at Christmastide to challenge the knights to a test of bravery. The narrator reveals him at the climax as Bernlak de Hautdesert. Magic worked by Morgan le Fay enabled him to assume the guise of the gigantic knight.

* Morgan (or Morgain) le Fay: Half-sister of King Arthur and aunt of Sir Gawain. (She is the daughter of Ygraine, Arthur's mother, and Ygraine’s first husband.) She resides at the castle of Bernlak de Hautdesert as the companion of Bernlak wife. From books and from Merlin the Magician, Morgan le Fay learned sorcery and was particularly skilled in the arts of healing and changing shape. Some accounts depict her as sinister and others as generous and beneficent. She became an enemy of Queen Guinevere after the latter banished Guitar, Morgan paramour. It was Morgan who enabled Bernlak de Hautdesert to change into the Green Knight in order to work a jest against Camelot, frighten Guinevere, and test the mettle of young Gawain.

* The Lady: Bernlak's beautiful wife. She participates in the scheme of Morgan and Bernlak.

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* Guide: Man who leads Gawain to a high place overlooking the valley of the Green Knight and the mysterious Green Chapel at which Gawain is to meet the Green Knight.

* Knights of the Round Table: Besides Gawain, these include Ywain, Erec, Sir Dodinel le Sauvage, the Duke of Clarence, Lancelot, Lionel, Lucan the Good, Sir Bors, Sir Bedivere, Sir Mador de la Port, and Agravain à la dure main.

* Bishop Bawdewyn: Guest at Camelot.* Catholic Priest: Clergyman who hears Gawain’s Confession.* Porter: Man who greets Gawain at the entrance of Bernlak castle.* Ladies, Servants, and Others at the Courts of Arthur and Bernlak.* Gringalet: Gawain’s trusty steed.

Structure, Language, Style. The story begins and ends at Camelot. Between the Camelot episodes are an episode in the wilderness, an episode at Bernlak's Castle, another episode in the wilderness, and an episode at the Green Chapel in which the Green Knight (Bernlak) wields the axe against Gawain. Thus, the plot structure is balanced, with two Camelot episodes, two wilderness episodes, and two episodes in Bernlak's domain (at his castle and at the Green Chapel).

This study guide is based on Jesse L. Weston's public-domain prose translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The original text is in Middle English and largely unintelligible to all but Middle English scholars. In his preface to the first edition of the translation, published in 1898, Weston describes the structure, language and style of the poem as follows:

Our poem, or, to speak more correctly, metrical romance, contains over 2500 lines, and is composed in staves [stanzas] of varying length, ending in five short rhyming lines, technically known as a bob and a wheel, -- the lines forming the body of the stave being not rhyming, but alliterative. The dialect in which it is written has been decided to be West Midland, probably Lancaster, and is by no means easy to understand. Indeed, it is the real difficulty and obscurity of the language, which, in spite of careful and scholarly editing, will always place the poem in its original form outside the range of any but professed students of medieval literature, which has encouraged me to make an attempt to render it more accessible to the general public, by giving it a form that shall be easily intelligible, and at the same time preserve as closely as possible the style of the author.

For that style, in spite of a certain roughness, unavoidable at a period in which the language was still in a partially developed and amorphous stage, is really charming. The author has a keen eye for effect; a talent for description, detailed without becoming wearisome; a genuine love of Nature and sympathy with her varying moods; and a real refinement and elevation of feeling which enable him to deal with a risqué situation with an absence of coarseness, not, unfortunately, to be always met with in a medieval writer. Standards of taste vary with the age, but even judged by that of our own day the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comes not all too badly out of the ordeal!

Gawain's Conflicts. Gawain faces both external and internal conflicts. The main external conflict is his contest with the Green Knight. Secondary external conflicts include his struggle to find the Green Chapel during harsh weather and his encounters with wild animals. His internal conflicts include his struggle to restrain his physical attraction to the lady, his trepidation at having to submit his neck to the axe of the Green Knight, and the shame he feels after resorting to a talisman (the sash) to protect himself.

In the first of the three internal conflicts, Gawain faces a no-win situation. On the one hand, refusing the lady's request for a kiss would uphold his loyalty to his host but

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offend the lady, the host's wife. On the other hand, granting her request for a kiss would uphold the courtesy a knight is expected to show a lady but offend her husband. Gawain decides to weasel out of his dilemma: Instead of bestowing kisses, he accepts them passively but does not tell the lady's husband about them.

What Gawain did not realize (or chose to ignore) was that as a knight his first duty was to God and the moral law. Relationships with humans are secondary to this covenant.

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CHAUCER, THE CANTERBURY TALES

Type of Work . The Canterbury Tales is a fictional account in a historical setting about pilgrims who tell stories on their way to a cathedral shrine. A tavern owner acts as their tour guide. The pilgrims' stories are in various genres, including chivalric romance, Arthurian romance, satire, beast fable, fabliau, and exemplum (an exhortation on morals and religion.) The Canterbury Tales opens with a general prologue introducing the storytellers after they gather at an inn. It continues the next morning. The pilgrims tell their tales to pass the time while journeying to Canterbury, about fifty-six miles southeast of London, to visit the shrine of Thomas à Becket, a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. In prologues between the tales, the travelers comment on a tale just completed or introduce a story about to be told. Sometimes they also make general observations.

Date of Composition. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400) wrote The Canterbury Tales between 1387 and 1400, about half a century before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The first copies of Chaucer's work were handwritten. William Caxton (1422-1491), the first printer in England, published two editions of The Canterbury Tales, one in the late 1470s and one in the early 1480s.

Language. The language of The Canterbury Tales is Middle English, spoken and written in Britain between 1100 and 1500. Middle English followed Old English (450 to 1100), the first period in the development of the English language, and preceded Modern English (1500 to the present).

Between 1100 and 1250, Middle English was the language of the middle and lower classes, French was the language of the upper classes, and French and Latin were the languages of literature. (William, Duke of Normandy, had brought French to England when he conquered the country in 1066 and acceded to the throne on Christmas day of that year.)

Between 1250 and 1300, the upper classes also began speaking Middle English because of the decline of French influence in England, but French and Latin remained the language of literature. When Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in Middle English between 1387 and 1400, he was among the first writers who told stories in MIddle English. Chaucer mainly used the East Midlands dialect of Middle English (spoken in London and nearby locales) in The Canterbury Tales. .......During the Middle English period, rules of pronunciation and inflection were flexible, allowing the language to evolve. A notable characteristic of Middle English as used by Chaucer was the presence of a final -e in words that today are written without a final -e. Generally, the final -e of a word was pronounced if it preceded a word beginning with a vowel. Although midway through the Middle English period speakers were beginning to cease pronouncing the final -e before a vowel, Chaucer usually retained its pronunciation in The Canterbury Tales. It was pronounced like thea in coma and the second a in papa. (Note: A sounded e inside a word was generally pronounced like the modern longa. Thus, the first e in the word swete, the Middle English equivalent of sweet, was pronounced like the a in mate.) Following are examples of words ending in e in lines 1-30 of the general prologue as presented in many popular editions of The Canterbury Tales.

Another characteristic of Middle English was the use of the letter y (pronounced as a long e) followed by a hyphen and a verb to indicate the past tense of that verb. Examples from The Canterbury Tales are y-draw (drawn), y-know(known), y-

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shave (shaven), y-beat (beaten), y-hold (held), y-do (done), y-take (took), y-go (gone), y-crow (crowed),y-fall (fallen), y-grave (engraved), and y-run (ran). Sometimes the y and hyphen preceded verbs already in the past tense in modern English, as in y-bought (bought), y-told (told), and y-nourished (nourished). The use of y- before a verb continued until about 1600. On some occasions or in some editions of The Canterbury Tales, a y without a hyphen precedes a verb.

Narration and Structure: the Frame Tale. The Canterbury Tales has one overall narrator, Chaucer himself in the persona of the first pilgrim, who presents his account in first-person point of view. In the general prologue, he establishes the time of the year, April, then begins telling the story about the pilgrimage to Canterbury. After describing the pilgrims gathering at their point point of departure—the Tabard Inn, across the Thames River from central London—he reports a proposal by their host, the proprietor of the Tabard, that the pilgrims tell stories on their journey to pass the time. Upon their return, the pilgrim deemed the best storyteller would receive a meal paid for by his companions. The proprietor, Harry Bailly (spelled Bailey or Bailley in some editions of The Canterbury Tales), says he would accompany the pilgrims, acting as their tour guide. The pilgrims enthusiastically approve his proposal.

Chaucer then allows the pilgrims to narrate their tales. They tell them in third-person point of view. Between their stories, Chaucer resumes his narration, reporting the discourse of the pilgrims and the words of Harry Bailly when he introduces the next storyteller. Thus, The Canterbury Tales consists of stories within a story. Bailly plays a crucial role in The Canterbury Tales. With his questions and comments, he stimulates conversation that helps to reveal the personalities and attitudes of the pilgrims. .......Scholars label as frame tales literary works that present a story (or stories) within another story. The inner story is like a painting on a canvas; the outer story is like the frame of the painting. In The Canterbury Tales, the inner stories told by the pilgrims form the images on the canvas; the outer story told by Chaucer forms the frame. The frame tale was not unique to Chaucer. Among other literary works with this format were The Seven Sages, a collection of tales (authors and dates of composition not established) originating in India that spread westward; The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of tales (authors and dates of composition not established) from India, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, including the famous stories about Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor; Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902).

The group traveling to Canterbury to visit the the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket includes the following:

WHO HOW MANYNarrator, the first of the pilgrims to arrive at the Tabard Inn 1Pilgrims who arrive at the Tabard after the narrator 29Pilgrim (canon's yeoman) who joins the others on the road 1Host at the Tabard Inn, who accompanies the pilgrims 1

Number of Tales. According to Chaucer's original plan, each pilgrim was to tell four tales, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the return trip, for a total of one hundred twenty-four tales (counting those of the canon's yeoman). However, Chaucer died before he could begin the twenty-fifth tale. Of the twenty-four stories in The Canterbury Tales, twenty are complete, two ("The Cook's Tale" and "The Squire's Tale") are incomplete, and two ("The Monk's Tale" and "Sir Thopas's Tale") are intentionally cut short.

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The Tabard Inn. The Tabard was one in a row of inns lining Borough High Street in Southwark, across the Thames River from central London. In his Survey of London, published in 1598 and revised in 1603, John Stow (1525-1605) says the inns could be identified by images on their signs. In Southwark, he says, "be many fair inns for receipt of travellers, by these signs: the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queen's Head, Tabard, George, Hart, King's Head," &c." The Tabard was constructed in 1307, repaired during Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603), and destroyed in a fire in 1676. Among the lodgers at the Tabard and other Southwark inns were pilgrims traveling south to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket in Canterbury. The inns also hosted northbound travelers to London and other points.

What Was a Tabard? A tabard was a short-sleeved or sleeveless cloak worn by a knight to prevent the gleam of his armor from signaling his position to an enemy. A tabard, made of a heavy fabric, was emblazoned with a coat of arms. Presumably, the sign at the Tabard Inn bore the image of such a garment.

When and Where the Story Begins. The Canterbury Tales begins in April of a year in the late 1300s at the Tabard Inn in the borough of Southwark (pronounced SUTH erk), across the River Thames from central London. In Chaucer’s time, a traveler passing through London reached Southwark by boat or by the only causeway spanning the Thames, London Bridge. The bridge led directly into a Southwark street that was the starting point of the road to Canterbury and other destinations in southeastern England, including ports on the Strait of Dover, between England and continental Europe. Inns that lined the street, including the Tabard, hosted many southbound travelers.

When and Where the Story Continues. After Chaucer introduces the pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn, the story continues the next morning when they begin telling their tales as they ride on horseback on the road to Canterbury, nearly sixty miles to the southeast.

Length of Trip, Condition of Road, and Safety. In Chaucer's day, a leisurely journey to Canterbury on horseback probably took three to five days, with stops at inns along the way. April rains probably made the dirt road connecting Southwark and Canterbury muddy in spots with water pooling in holes and ruts. Robbers were a constant danger on rural roads. However, armed pilgrims traveling in a large group, like those in The Canterbury Tales, probably were safe from marauders.

Thomas à Becket: Martyr, Saint. The destination of the pilgrims is the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket (1118?-1170) in Canterbury Cathedral, in which he was entombed after he was murdered in the church on December 29, 1170.

Becket was born in London to well-to-do parents of Norman birth. After receiving an education in England and France, he served as a secretary to a lord and as a city clerk and an auditor for sheriffs.

When he was twenty-five, his father helped him gain employment in the house of the archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec. After proving himself competent, he acted on the archbishop’s behalf on missions to Rome and studied civil and church law in Bologna, Italy, and Auxerre, France. His talents won him an appointment as archdeacon of Canterbury. After Theobald introduced him to England’s King Henry II in 1154, Henry appointed him chancellor of England on the archbishop’s recommendation. In that position, Becket exhibited superior administrative skills in domestic and military endeavors and in the king’s effort to gain more control and authority over the activities of the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy. .......After Theobald died in 1161, Henry recommended Becket as a replacement for Theobald and, in 1162, Thomas won election as Canterbury’s archbishop. Henry now had a powerful ally who could win popular support for Henry’s program to bolster his

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control of the church—or so he thought. But in his new position, Becket took the side of the church—in particular, in its contention that the right to try and punish priests accused of felonies should remain the sole responsibility of the church. .......In January 1164, Henry promulgated the Constitutions of Clarendon, a document limiting church authority. In a key provision, it decreed that priests accused of serious crimes must be tried in government rather than ecclesiastical courts. Although Becket at first accepted this document, he later rejected it. In retaliation, the king charged that Becket had committed graft as chancellor, and Becket took refuge in France in November 1170.

In that same year, Henry ordered the crowning of his oldest son, Henry, as a co-ruler by the archbishop of York. Becket, maintaining that only the archbishop of Canterbury could preside at a coronation ceremony, excommunicated clergymen who conducted the ceremony. While Henry was in France, Becket returned to England and ordered additional excommunications. The people regarded him as a hero. .......Upon hearing of Becket’s action, as well as his soaring popularity with citizens of the realm, Henry exploded into a tirade against Becket. Four of Henry’s knights then took it upon themselves to return to England and get rid of Becket once and for all. On December 29, 1170, they murdered him in Canterbury Cathedral. Shortly thereafter, pilgrims began visiting his tomb in the church. Reports of miracles at the site prompted the Pope to canonize Becket a saint in 1173. A repentant Henry visited the tomb in 1174, and thereafter pilgrimages to Canterbury became a European tradition.

Characterization. In depicting the Canterbury pilgrims, Chaucer presents realistic descriptions that exhibit his understanding of the human drama and the foibles and eccentricities of its participants. Using concise and specific language, he enables the reader to see or hear the squire carving meat for his father, the prioress crying when she sees a mouse ensnared, the monk riding horses with bridles that jingle, and the wife of Bath wearing hose of scarlet red. In "The Reeve's Tale," Chaucer tells us that Simkin is a bully with a bald head who can play pipes, fish, and wrestle. In "The Man of Law's Tale," he tells us that the eyes of the evil knight pop from their sockets after he tells a lie. In "The Miller's Tale," he tells us that Absalom gains revenge by ramming a red-hot poker between the buttocks of Nicholas.

Among the pilgrims are the learned, the religious, the worldly, the romantic, the practical, the idealistic, the merry, the irreverent. The pilgrims come from the middle class but vary in their personal backgrounds and occupations. As a group, they are a microcosm of the English society that flourished beyond the pale of the highborn. However, the characters in the pilgrims' stories include royals as well as commoners. Thus, in The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer presents the whole range of humanity, a rarity in a day when most writers centered their stories primarily on kings and queens and legendary heroes. The host, Harry Bailly, plays a crucial role in The Canterbury Tales. With his questions and comments, he stimulates conversation that helps to reveal the personalities and attitudes of the pilgrims. Generally, the tales the pilgrims tell reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the tellers.

Examples of Genres and Literary Devices:*Fabliau. Five of the tales that the pilgrims tell are fabliaux. The fabliau was a

short verse tale with coarse humor and earthy, realistic, and sometimes obscene descriptions that present an episode in the life of contemporary middle- and lower-class people. The fabliau uses satire and cynicism, along with vulgar comedy, to mock one or several of its characters. Not infrequently, the ridiculed character is a jealous husband, a wayward wife, a braggart, a lover, a proud or greedy tradesman, a doltish peasant, or a lustful or greedy clergyman. Plot development often depends on a prank, a pun, a

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mistaken identity, or an incident involving the characters in intrigue. The fabliau was popular in France from 1100 to 1300, then went out of fashion. Chaucer revived the format in The Canterbury Tales to write “The Miller’s Tale,” “The Reeve’s Tale,” “The Cook’s Tale,” “The Shipman’s Tale,” and The Summoner’s Tale.” It is not entirely clear whether the fabliau was a pastime of the upper classes as a means to ridicule their social inferiors or of the middle and lower classes as a means to poke fun at themselves.

*Chivalric Romance (or Courtly Love). "The Knight's Tale" is an example of a chivalric romance, or a tale of courtly love. In such tales, the knights exhibit nobility, courage, and respect for their ladies fair, and the ladies exhibit elegance, modesty, and fidelity. Although knights and ladies may fall passionately in love, they eschew immoral behavior. In conflicts between good and evil, justice prevails.

*Exemplum. "The Pardoner's Tale" is an example of an exemplum (plural, exempla), a short narrative in verse or prose that teaches a moral lesson or reinforces a doctrine or religious belief. Other tales can be regarded as exempla or contain elements of the exemplum in that they present examples of right or wrong living that teach moral precepts.

*Arthurian Romance. "The Wife of Bath's Tale" is an example of an Arthurian romance, a type of work in which a knight in the age of the legendary King Arthur goes on a quest.

*Beast Fable. "The Nun's Priest's Tale" is an example of a beast fable, a short story in verse or prose in which animals are the main characters. They exhibit human qualities, and their activities underscore a universal truth.

*Satire. A satire is a literary work or technique that attacks or pokes fun at vices and imperfections. Many of the prologues and tales contain satire that ridicules people who exhibit hypocrisy, greed, false humility, stupidity, self-importance, and other flaws.

*Burlesque. A burlesque is a literary work or technique that mocks a person, a place, a thing, or an idea by using wit, irony, hyperbole, sarcasm, and/or understatement. For example, a burlesque may turn a supposedly respected person—such as old John in "The Miller's Tale"—into a buffoon. A hallmark of burlesque is its thoroughgoing exaggeration, often to the point of the absurd.

*Low Comedy. A type of comedy that is generally physical rather than verbal, relying on slapstick and horseplay as in "The Miller's Tale." Low comedy usually focuses on ordinary folk.

*Breton Lay. "The Franklin's Tale" is an example of a Breton lay, a Fourteenth Century English narrative poem in rhyme about courtly love that contains elements of the supernatural The English borrowed the Breton-lay format from the French. A lay is a medieval narrative poem originally intended to be sung. Breton is an adjective describing anyone or anything from Brittany, France.

*Allegory. An allegory is a literary work or technique that ascribes secondary or symbolic meaning to characters, events, objects, and ideas, as in "The Nun's Priest's Tale." The pilgrims' journey to Canterbury may also be regarded as an allegory in that it can be viewed as a representation of the journey through life or the journey toward the ultimate destination, heaven.

.

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JOHN LYDGATE, TROY BOOK: INTRODUCTIONJohn Lydgate, Troy Book: Introduction

Edited by Robert R. EdwardsOriginally Published in John Lydgate, Troy Book: SelectionsKalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998

Troy Book is one of the most ambitious attempts in medieval vernacular poetry to recount the story of the Trojan war. John Lydgate, monk of the great Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, began composing the poem in October 1412 on commission from Henry, Prince of Wales, later King Henry V, and he completed it in 1420. Lydgate's poem is a translation and expansion of Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, a Latin prose account written in 1287 but based, without acknowledgement, on Benoоt de Sainte-Maure's Old French Roman de Troie (c. 1160). Troy Book presents the full narrative and mythographic sweep that the Middle Ages expected for the story of Troy's tragic downfall. Though Lydgate wrote the poem some three decades after Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, it furnishes the essential background that educated medieval readers would have brought to Chaucer's poem and to Chaucer's source, Boccaccio's Filostrato. It is background as well for the myths of origins adopted by medieval nations and regions, which claimed descent from the heroes driven to new lands by Troy's fall.

Lydgate's poem is one of several translations of Guido's Historia into Middle English. The Laud Troy Book and the alliterative Destruction of Troy are near contemporaries. All three poems follow the arc of Guido's narrative as it moves from the remote origins of the war in Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece to the heroic battles and downfall of Priam's Troy and finally to the catastrophes awaiting the Greek victors on their homecoming. Lydgate gives, however, a defining shape to Guido's account where the other translations are content to reproduce its sequence of action. In a gesture of acknowledgement and homage to Chaucer's "litel tragedye," Lydgate brings a five-book structure to Guido's thirty-five shorter books. He thereby balances the opening and closing movements and makes Hector's death in Book 3 the narrative center and turning point of the story. Troy Book also differs from its contemporaries by making significant additions to the outlines of Guido's story. Lydgate adds materials from Ovid, Christine de Pisan (for Hector's death), and authorities like Fulgentius (for mythology), Isidore of Seville (for mythography), Jacobus de Cessolis (for the invention of chess), and John Trevisa (for the labors of Hercules). The result is a poem longer, more diffuse in focus, and more consciously learned than its predecessors or contemporaries. As Derek Pearsall remarks, "The Troy Book is a homily first, an encyclopedia second, and an epic nowhere" (1970, p. 129).

In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Troy Book enjoyed considerable reputation and influence. Not long after it was composed, it served as the source for a proseSege of Troy, which retold the story through the fall of the city at the end of Lydgate's Book 4. In The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (STC 15375), the first book printed in English (c. 1475), William Caxton professes that there is no need for him to translate the portion of his French source, Raoul Lefévre's Recueil des Histoires de Troie, dealing with the fall of Troy: "And as for the thirde book whiche treteth of the generall and last destruccioun of Troye Hit nedeth not to translate hit into englissh ffor as moche as that worshifull and religyous man dan John lidgate monke of Burye did translate hit but late // after whos werke I fere to take upon me that am not worthy to bere his penner and ynke horne after hym, to medle me in that werke" (Epilogue to Book 2). Troy Book's classical topic, narrative scope, and moral purpose probably had something to do with William Dunbar's inclusion of Lydgate with Chaucer and John Gower as a triad of originary English poets in his early-sixteenth-century "Lament for the Makaris": "The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour, / The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre" (lines 50-51). Richard Pynson printed the first edition of Troy Book in 1513, under the title The hystorye / sege and dystruccyon of Troye (STC 5579). As A. S. G. Edwards and Carol M. Meale note, Pynson's edition was printed at the command of Henry VIII to manipulate public opinion in his first French compaign (p. 99). Thomas Marshe printed a second edition in 1555, with a prefatory epistle by Robert Braham (STC 5580). The continuing influence of Troy Book can be detected

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in Thomas Heywood's modernization, printed in 1614 as The Life and Death of Hector (STC 13346a), and in the works of Robert Henryson, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. The sense of Trojan history and particularly of Cressida's character in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida bear the imprint of Lydgate's poem.

Troy Book incorporates a distinctly medieval approach to its subject matter. As Chaucer shows in the House of Fame and Troilus and Criseyde, medieval writers knew Homer only as a name. Moreover, they discounted the poetic tradition associated with him, even as they recognized its cultural authority and struggled ambivalently to appropriate it to their own ends. For them, the claims of the Troy story lie not in the fables of the poets but in the truth of what they took to be historical witness. Such witness was provided by Dares and Dictys, who were supposedly contemporary observers of the war. A fragment of a Greek text of Dictys survives, but the chief sources are Dares's De excidio Troiae historia and Dictys's Ephemeridos belli Troiani, two late Latin texts purporting to translate Greek originals. However spare their accounts of heroes and battles may be, these accounts established the idea for the Middle Ages that the Trojan War could be approached as history with the same factual basis as found in chronicles. Joseph of Exeter's Frigii Daretis Ylias (dated 1188-90) is one example of the continuing claim to historicity that surrounded such chronicle writing. Benoоt drew on Dares and Dictys to compose his Roman de Troie. He goes beyond the accounts in his sources, however, to introduce an exotic and chivalric locale that figures prominently in subsequent medieval versions of the story. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (dated 1135) claimed a Trojan origin for the British monarchy and people. The poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight deliberately frames his Arthurian romance with references to the fall of Troy. In addition to its narrative, the Troy story offered an example to be studied for its lessons in statecraft and moral conduct. Greeks and Trojans participate in the same chivalric culture, and their actions serve as examples of how to govern both a kingdom and its aristocratic subjects.

The medieval approach to the Troy story also implies a particular sense of authorship. Lois Ebin argues that Lydgate regards his literary role as that of "an orderer and civilizer of men" (1985, p. 39) who transmits the lessons of the past. Lydgate makes it clear that he sees his poetic task as "making" (the technical composition of verse) rather than original creation. Like Chaucer, he does not call himself a poet. His translation follows medieval literary conventions by rendering the sense of Guido's text rather than striving for word-for-word equivalences (2.180). Just as Guido supposedly follows Dares and Dictys so that "in effecte the substaunce is the same" (Pro. 359) in both source and translation, so Lydgate hopes that, despite any flaws in meter, his readers will find "[t]he story pleyn, chefly in substaunce" (5.3543). Lydgate ascribes to Guido a rhetorical skill (Pro. 360-69) that other readers might well dispute, but he understood Guido's intentions accurately. As Guido explains at the end of the Historia (Book 35), his work presents a truthful historical account ("ueram noticiam") embellished by rhetorical colors and figures. Lydgate regards his source and, by extension, himself as part of a tradition of chroniclers for whom language is superficial and external to actual meaning. "Ye may beholde in her wrytyng wel," he says confidently, "The stryfe, the werre, the sege and everydel, / Ryghte as it was, so many yeres passyd" (Pro. 247-49).

The truth of such historical writing ostensibly sets it apart from poetry. Lydgate's way of expressing this difference is to contrast the transparency of history and the opacity of poetry. The chronicle story of Troy is open and plain; we can grasp its "substaunce" apart from any rhetorical effects. The poets use "veyn fables" in order to "hyde trouthe falsely under cloude, / And the sothe of malys for to schroude" (Pro. 265-66). Homer's honey-sweet words only disguise the gall inside. Ovid and Vergil fall under the same suspicion:Ovide also poetycally hath closydFalshede with trouthe, that maketh men ennosed To whiche parte that thei schal hem holde;His mysty speche so hard is to unfoldeThat it entriketh rederis that it se. Virgile also for love of Enee In Eneydos rehersyth moche thyng And was in party trewe of his writyng,Exsepte only that hym lyst som whyle

clothedconfused

ensnaresAeneasAeneid

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The tracys folwe of Omeris stile.(Pro. 299-308)

traces (ideas)

Here and elsewhere, Lydgate uses the same images for poets that he applies in the narrative to characters who employ deceitful language to mislead others and subvert just deliberation.

Besides historical truth, the Troy story carries exemplary meaning for medieval and Renaissance culture. Walter Schirmer observes that the tales connected with Troy were regarded "as a historical work containing all the moral and political lessons which history was expected to teach" (p. 44). An important feature of Lydgate's moralizing is its rather precise focus. The lessons of Troy Book apply on one level to kingship and statecraft and on another to the individual within an aristocratic, chivalric world. The capacity to foresee consequences or control anger, for example, serves a king in his political role as a governor and a hero in his public office as an adviser, advocate, or warrior. Conspicuous by its absence is a larger social vision. Troy Book concedes the need in several places to account for popular opinion. Priam's rebuilding of Troy in Book 2, for example, incorporates the gesture of vesting its builders with citizenship so that the founding of a new city is simultaneously the creation of a new state. But Lydgate offers nothing really comparable to John Gower's appeal in his Confessio Amantis to the commons as a source for political legitimacy or to the estates as a basis of stable government and institutions. Lydgate's moralization of Troy's history offers an aristocratic perspective rather than a social vision. It is a mirror for kings and nobles.

The principal lesson that Lydgate's Troy story offers its royal, aristocratic, and noble readers is the virtue of prudence. In Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines prudence as an intellectual virtue by which one can deliberate about particular goods and the practical steps toward attaining them. Prudence considers means rather than ends, and it addresses things that are variable rather than true and unchanging. Thomas Aquinas's phrase "recta ratio agibilium" - right reason directed toward what can be done - captures the spirit of Aristotle's idea and shows its application to politics and statecraft. Prudence is commonly described as an "imperative" virtue, governing all the others. The importance of prudence for rulers is a standard precept from medieval political theorists like John of Salisbury and Marsilius of Padua to Lydgate's English contemporaries, Thomas Hoccleve and Thomas Usk. Chaucer signals its importance in The Tale of Melibee and makes it the virtue Criseyde lacks (Troilus and Criseyde 5.744). In the imitation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum that he undertook at the very end of his life, Lydgate has prudence rule over the other virtues needed by a king.

At the end of Troy Book (Env. 36-42), Lydgate presents Solomon as the Biblical model of prudence. But the character who best embodies prudence in Lydgate's poem is Hector, the figurative root of all chivalry (2.244). Hector's prudence extends from practical wisdom in infantry tactics to political governance, moral example, skill in debate and deliberation, self-containment, and foresight. As Lydgate describes him, he is an ideal because of his traits of character and judgment: "He had in hym sovereine excellence, / And governaunce medlid with prudence, / That nought asterte him, he was so wis and war" (3.489-91). Significantly, it is Hector who urges restraint when Priam seeks support from the Trojan council to avenge Hesione's abduction by Telamon after the fall of Lamedon's Troy:But first I rede, wysely in your myndeTo cast aforn and leve nat behynde,Or ye begynne, discretly to adverteAnd prudently consyderen in your herteAl, only nat the gynnyng but the endeAnd the myddes, what weie thei wil wende,And to what fyn Fortune wil hem lede:Yif ye thus don, amys ye may nat spede. (2.2229-36)

advise

reflect

not only

end

His death "thorugh necligence only of his shelde" (3.5399) is surely the most interesting contradiction of Lydgate's poem. Hector's fatal lapse, which Lydgate adds to Guido's narrative, does not compromise Hector's heroic stature so much as challenge the primacy of prudence as a virtue that can be applied to so many facets of human experience.

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Lydgate's depiction of prudence also reveals the way in which he expects his moralizations and the exemplarity of the Troy story to be understood. C. David Benson points out that Lydgate's moralizing is practical rather than spiritual (1980, pp. 116-24). In particular, prudence seems to offer a remedy to Fortune and the transitory world. Lydgate's panorama of pagan history from Jason's quest outward through Ulysses's return home sketches a world of unknown and hidden consequences. Remote, even trivial causes set tragic events in motion: "of sparkys that ben of syghte smale / Is fire engendered that devoureth al" (1.785-86). Thus Lamedon's discourtesy in denying Jason temporary respite in his land initiates a cycle of vengeance that destroys Troy twice. The governing mechanism of history is Boethian Fortune, a compound of sheer accident and of consequences proceeding from hidden and only partially understood choices. Boethius's remedy is to see past the mutability of the world and finally reject the secular for the transcendent. But for pagans trapped in their history and for Christian chivalry and rulers who cannot abandon the duties of worldly governance, prudence offers the only means for navigating the reversals of Fortune. Still, if prudence is the chief virtue of Troy Book, it also generates the profound moral contradiction that inhabits the center of Lydgate's poem. In the Troy story, prudence means right reason, foresight, cleverness, eloquence, and practical wisdom, but it also comes to mean cunning, deceit, and false language. While Lydgate extols the value of prudence throughout the story, he ends Book 5 of Troy Book by asserting the fragility of human institutions before Fortune and giving a final definition to prudence. "For oure lyf here is but a pilgrymage," he says, citing a medieval commonplace. If men would "toforn prudently adverte" (5.3573), they would put little trust in worldly things. Through the example of Troy, princes, lords, and kings can see that in this life none of them "may have ful suretй" (5.3578).

To judge from the reception of Troy Book and the marginal commentary recorded in the manuscripts, medieval and early Renaissance readers understood Lydgate's moralizations on the level he intended them and not necessarily in their fuller, tragic implications. On the fly leaf at the end of one Troy Book manuscript (Rawlinson poet. 144), an anonymous sixteenth-century reader takes to heart Lydgate's protest that he writes true meaning but with little craft. Ancient English books, says this reader, show little art; ignorance darkened understanding in those earlier times, "but mark the substance of this book / In wiche this mownk such paynes hath vndertook" (Bergen 4:52). He then goes on, without any sense of contradiction, to connect Lydgate with precisely the poetic fabrication from which he strives to distinguish Troy Book in his

Prologue:A, story tys sone writt, thats nothing true,And poets haue it decte, with vading hewe.So lydgat hath a poets lycence tookeBy vayne discowrce, with lyes to farce this book,Yet dothe his paynes, Joynd with Obedience,Deserve dew prayse, & worthy recompence.Various manuscripts preserve marginal responses to Lydgate's sententious passages in Troy

Book. In Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.876, Agamemnon's speech to Menelaus, counseling him to disguise his grief at Helen's loss (2.4337-4429), carries the marginal reminder, "note thes | and follow." In Rawlinson C.446, a sixteenth-century reader has added verses on the dishonorable deaths of Hector and Troilus at the hands of Achilles. In the Pierpont Morgan manuscript and in slightly later manuscripts (dating from the mid-fifteenth century onwards), pointing hands mark various passages in the text, especially those dealing with the supposed perfidy of women.

Manuscript illustrations provide another means of grasping how Lydgate's contemporaries might have read his poem. Eight manuscripts, including the four oldest witnesses, have miniatures, and at least six others have decorated borders or initials. The textual and visual layout of the manuscripts show that Troy Book was a prestige item, appearing as the sole text in the earliest witnesses and with the Siege of Thebes and the romance Generydes in several later manuscripts. One manuscript, which cannot be identified from among extant witnesses and may not have survived, was, of course, a presentation copy for Lydgate's patron, Henry V. Coats of

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arms indicate that Troy Book manuscripts were owned by fifteenth-century gentry and, in at least one instance, by aristocracy. In the later case (Royal 18.D.ii), the conventional portrait of Lydgate presenting the poem to the king is displaced by a scene that shows the owner, Sir William Herbert, First Earl of Pembroke and his second wife, Anne Devereux, in postures of homage to the king.

Kathleen L. Scott proposes that the manuscript was intended as a presentation gift to Henry VI or Edward IV and that it may register Herbert's shift of allegiance from the Lancastrian to the Yorkist cause (1996, 2:282-84). Lesley Lawton observes that there is a uniform sequence of miniatures in the manuscripts which reflects Lydgate's structural reordering of Guido's narrative into five books. Miniatures introduce the Prologue and the first major incident of each of the five books; they are visual markers of the formal divisions of the text. The opening of Book 2, where Lydgate complains about Fortune, occasions some divergence among the illustrations. Four manuscripts have a miniature of the goddess Fortuna, while the other four represent Priam's siege (2.203), the first event in the narrative. For Books 3 and 4, Royal 18.D.ii adds illustrations to highlight Troilus. Even when the number of miniatures is increased in manuscripts from the later fifteenth century, the basic program remains intact. In addition, a "decorative hierarchy" governs the use of initials in the text, emphasizing such features as seasonal descriptions and other examples of Lydgate's amplification. Royal 18.D.ii contains extensive rubrics to guide the reader. The overall effect of the miniatures, initials, and rubrics in Troy Book manuscripts is to delineate the formal order of Lydgate's poem rather than provide a visual representation parallel to the written text. Pynson's edition retains these manuscript features, while dividing the text into both Lydgate's five books and a reminiscence of Guido's original thirty-five books plus Lydgate's Prologue and final materials. Marshe's 1555 edition eliminates the woodcuts but uses rubrics and blank spaces to mark structural divisions.

For a full understanding of Troy Book, Lydgate's historical and literary contexts prove as important as the narrative scope and thematic complexity of the poem. Ebin describes Troy Book and the Siege of Thebes, the poem composed directly after it and finished in 1422, as "public poems" (p. 39). Pearsall calls Troy Book "an instrument of national prestige" as well as a chivalric and moral exemplar (1970, p. 69). Schirmer proposes that Henry's commission involved a poetic rivalry with Benoоt's Roman de Troie and Guido's Historia (pp. 42-43). Certainly, Lydgate's description of Henry's motives bears out some of this claim. Henry seeks to preserve the worthiness of true knighthood and "the prowesse of olde chivalrie" so that his contemporaries can find examples for pursuing virtue and rejecting sloth and idleness. He commissions Lydgate to make the exemplary force of the story available to all by creating an English equivalent to the French and Latin histories:By cause he wolde that to hyghe and lowe The noble story openly wer knoweIn oure tonge, aboute in every age,And ywriten as wel in oure langageAs in Latyn and in Frensche it is,That of the story the trouthe we nat mysNo more than doth eche other nacioun:This was the fyn of his entencioun.(Pro. 111-18)

wished were known

goal

That Henry should choose Lydgate, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, to carry out such a weighty task reflects political allegiances and an intricate network of personal connections. Bury St. Edmonds had a long association with the English crown, and it actively supported royal interests during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Far from retreating from the world, the great monasteries of the day cultivated economic and political ties with secular institutions. Lydgate's profession as a monk makes him in some measure an agent of ecclesiastical public policy. Though he entered the monastery at about age fifteen, he spent much of his life outside and even overseas, until his retirement to St. Edmunds in the early 1440s. From the commission to write Troy Book in 1412, he served in effect as a court poet, and the record of later commissions, such as the Fall of Princes for Duke Humphrey, shows his

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popularity and adaptability to occasions. Some recent scholars have proposed that one of the underlying objectives of Lydgate's work is to affirm Lancastrian legitimacy. Lydgate's address to Henry in the Envoy of Troy Book subtly raises these issues. The poet addresses his sovereign not only as the source of knighthood but as one "born also by discent of lyne / As rightful eyr by title to atteyne, / To bere a crowne of worthi rewmys tweyne" (Env. 5-7). Though the immediate reference is to English claims to the French crown, the effect is tacitly to affirm Henry IV's usurpation of the English throne and Henry V's legitimate succession of his father.

The link with Henry also has some enticing biographical dimensions. Lydgate spent time at Oxford in Gloucester College, which the Benedictines maintained for monks engaged in university study. Henry had studied at Queen's College in 1394, and sometime between 1406 and 1408 wrote Lydgate's abbot asking for permission for Lydgate to continue his studies, either in divinity or canon law. Henry's letter mentions that he has heard good reports about Lydgate; it does not indicate necessarily that the Prince of Wales and the monk had a personal acquaintance. John Norton-Smith proposes, however, that Lydgate resided in Oxford from approximately 1397 to 1408 and that he met Henry (p. 195n). The rubrics of Lydgate manuscripts owned by the fifteenth-century antiquarian John Shirley suggest that Lydgate and Henry shared interests in the liturgy, but these are textual sources that postdate Troy Book. Henry's religious fervor matched his enthusiasm for tales of chivalry. Schirmer argues that Lydgate's attitude differs from his patron's endorsement of military adventure. He contends, for example, that Lydgate initially invokes Mars (Pro. 1-37) but reproves him (4.4440-4536) after Henry becomes king. In his view, the line "[a]lmost for nought was this strif begonne" (2.7855) refers not just to the Trojan War but also to the pointlessness of the French war. Lydgate's peace sentiments seem, however, more the expression of commonplace counsel than a rejection of Henry's policies. To be sure, there are profound tensions and contradictions in Troy Book, but they grow out of the narrative that Lydgate recounts and embellishes and not from a kind of authorial resistance. In its immediate historical context, the poem aims to affirm chivalric virtues, offer examples and moral precepts, and celebrate the national myth of Trojan origins.

The literary rather than the historical context of Troy Book is a more likely source of ambivalence. Lydgate situates himself conspicuously within literary tradition, even if he knows many of the authors who comprise that tradition only at second hand. Guido is the author whose achievement he serves, Chaucer is his acknowledged master, and the treasures of encyclopedic learning and anthology literature lie about as sources for embellishing the Troy narrative with scientific, mythographic, and historical commentary. E. B. Atwood proposes that, for Lydgate, Guido has completely superseded Benoоt, the poet who initially gave the medieval Troy story its admixture of classical and chivalric elements. All the details on which Lydgate and Benoоt agree, says Atwood, are also contained in Guido, and so there is no direct influence on Lydgate from the original French source of his story. Of the classical auctores, Lydgate knew only Ovid well. He goes to the Ovidian sources to add more when Guido cites them and uses Ovid elsewhere as a supplement to Guido. Lydgate's acquaintance with Vergil is by all accounts scant or indirect. His references to the Aeneid show, for instance, that he depended on the story of Dido contained in Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women. Other classical authors he knew largely through anthologies and grammars. The library at Bury St. Edmunds gives some sense of the practical form literary culture might have taken for Lydgate. It contained over 2,000 volumes in Lydgate's day, and it was notable for its holdings among Patristic writers, later commentators on the Bible, classical authors, theologians, and encyclopedic writers. It contained two manuscripts of Guido and possibly a copy of Gower's Confessio Amantis. All the materials for embellishing an authoritative historical text with the apparatus of learned comments, excursus, and interpolations lay readily to hand. The one manuscript positively associated with Lydgate (Bodleian Library MS Laud 233) has two works by Isidore, sermons by Hilbert of Le Mons, and brief quotations from Vergil and Horace.

The bookishness of this literary context shows itself perhaps most apparently in Lydgate's rhetorical amplifications. Pearsall observes, "Lydgate's expansiveness clearly forms part of a deliberate poetic style" (1970, p. 7), but for Troy Book it may be still nearer the case to speak of a poetics of amplification. The conceptual and thematic counterpart to the poet's task of "making" is the addition of new materials suitable to the passage that Lydgate is translating at

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any given point. Lydgate finds the warrant for such practice in Guido himself. Guido adds rhetorical colors to "[t]his noble story" and "many riche flour / Of eloquence to make it sownde bet / He in the story hath ymped in and set" (Pro. 363-66). Lydgate's amplifications take the form of learned digressions on mythography and science, additional speeches, set-piece descriptions, formal laments, and seasonal descriptions. The aim of such amplification is not, however, merely dilation. Ebin contends that the additions are part of a program directed toward securing a place within literary culture: "Lydgate's changes in the Troy Book reveal his concern with elevating the narrative and creating a monumental version of the story in English, loftier and more impressive than any before him" (1985, p. 51). Moreover, the additions afford Lydgate the opportunity to develop his own thematic interests. His reproval of Guido's antifeminism, though by no means unproblematic (see note to 3.4343-4448), is one example. Benson argues that Lydgate uses Christine de Pisan's Epistre Othea to introduce a new view of Hector and the value of prudence (1980, pp. 124-29). Schirmer finds three major themes in Lydgate's formal digressions: transitoriness, war and discord, and encyclopedic learning (p. 47).

The other defining feature of Lydgate's literary context is the influence of Chaucer as both inspiration and rival. Troy Book contains laudatory passages that not only offer praise for Chaucer but also shape literary history by establishing him as the father of English poetry. Robert O. Payne observes that Chaucer offered Lydgate a double model of poetic originator and craftsman (p. 255). Chaucer is "Noble Galfride, poete of Breteyne" (2.4697). His great achievement is to have exploited the rhetorical possibilities of English and thereby to have established it as a literary idiom comparable to classical languages and other European vernaculars. He was the firste "to reyne / The gold dewedropis of rethorik so fyne, / Oure rude langage only t'enlwmyne" (2.4698-4700). He is the "chefe poete" (3.4256), the English counterpart of Petrarch as poet laureate.For he owre Englishe gilte with his sawes,Rude and boistous firste be olde dawes,That was ful fer from al perfecciounAnd but of litel reputacioun,Til that he cam and thorugh his poetrieGan oure tonge firste to magnifieAnd adourne it with his elloquence . . .(3.4237-41)

gilded; talesUnpolished; rough; days

make greater in importance

Elsewhere Lydgate says that the death of "[t]he noble rhetor" (3.553) leaves him without counsel or correction, and so he goes "[c]olourles" - without rhetorical figures - to his composition. When he later submits the finished work for correction to his readers, he invokes the image of Chaucer as a gentle and beneficent master who genially overlooks defects in the works offered to him: "Hym liste nat pinche nor gruche at every blot" (5.3522).

It is unlikely that Lydgate actually knew or ever met Chaucer. He did have connections with Thomas Chaucer and Thomas's daughter, Alice, the Duchess of Suffolk. Some recent criticism wants to see in these connections a link between establishing the Chaucer canon and furthering Lancastrian politics. The important point, however, is that Lydgate constructs the paternal figure of Chaucer and, through that figure, his own literary pose of discipleship and "dullness" - the persona of a belated, deferential, and supposedly inadequate latter-day follower. Chaucer had, of course, already perfected the role of the humble literary artisan, its commonplaces of modesty and inability, and its characteristic phrasing. Lydgate's innovation is to position himself with respect to Chaucer just as Chaucer had positioned himself with respect to the classical auctores. Later writers show that the process can go a step further. Lydgate's discipleship can be transmitted to his successors. Caxton says that Lydgate's version of Troy's fall is too strong to emulate. In his Pastime of Pleasure (1509), Stephen Hawes claims to write without rhetoric or "colour crafty": "Nothynge I am/ experte in poetry / As the monke of Bury/ floure of eloquence / Whiche was in tyme/ of grete excellence" (lines 26-28).

Lydgate's echoes and allusions make it clear that he had access to Chaucer's work, though monastic libraries possessed few vernacular manuscripts, still fewer in English. Lydgate obviously knew The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women,

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and a number of the pieces comprising theCanterbury Tales. In his description of the Greeks' landing to destroy Lamedon's Troy (1.3907-43), Lydgate goes so far as to hazard an imitation of the opening of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, with disastrous results. The Notes to the present edition give examples of the wide range of allusion to Chaucer that runs throughout Troy Book. Atwood divides the borrowings into classical material for which Chaucer served as an intermediary and "miscellaneous fine phrases and descriptive passages" (pp. 35-36). At those points where he strives most to represent himself within the poem, Lydgate recalls Chaucer's narrative persona, even if the occasional efforts at comic deflation fail, as in the uneven, shifting tone of his reproval of Guido's misogyny.

Troilus and Criseyde is, of course, the poem that bears most immediately on Troy Book and Lydgate's relation to Chaucer. Chaucer's poem is Lydgate's subtext, even though Lydgate's subject matter furnishes the background for Chaucer's poem. More important, Troilus and Criseyde is the literary work that fully embodies Chaucer for Lydgate, as it did for readers in the Renaissance. Lydgate concedes there is no need for him to retell the lovers' story after Chaucer, but he goes on to summarize it and echo the style and content of its conclusion (3.4196-4230). He even works mention of Chaucer's description of Criseyde (Troilus and Criseyde 5.803-26) into his own adaptation of Chaucer's inability topos (2.4676-93). Benson would find in Troy Book the beginnings of a distinct historical sense, derived from Troilus and Criseyde, that views pagan antiquity as a remote and radically different cultural world to be investigated almost ethnographically for its rites and beliefs, false though they be. At the same time that it proclaims discipleship, however, Troy Book competes with Chaucer's poem in the scope of its ambition. Chaucer's genius, following from Boccaccio's Filostrato, is to portray the intimate, private sphere of antiquity and the epic. Lydgate gives the larger, encompassing story. As Anna Torti rightly points out, the love story of Troilus and Criseyde is one of many love stories counterpointing the war in Guido and Lydgate (p. 180). Following perhaps the narrator's suggestion in Troilus and Criseyde (1.144-45) that "the Troian gestes" can be found "[i]n Omer, or in Dares, or in Dite" for whoever can read them, Lydgate seeks to go beyond his master.

Chaucer's influence shows in the style of Troy Book as well as in the narrative and thematic elements. The pentameter couplets are modeled on Chaucer's later work in the Canterbury Tales, while the rhyme royal stanzas of the Envoy recall the Parliament of Fowls, Troilus, and works probably composed earlier and then added to theCanterbury Tales. Lydgate's ambition is to write in an elevated style appropriate to his subject matter. This leads to an English verse approximation of what he claims to recognize as the high style of Guido's prose. The most common effect is to distort the natural order of syntax, abandoning the "conversational tone" that characterizes Chaucer's most mature writing. Lydgate seeks instead to emulate Latin models by using devices of accretion, parallelism, and subordination. Constructions such as the ablative absolute, syntactic inversion, and anacoluthon (lack of sequence in a sentence) are common. Pearsall remarks that one of Lydgate's major traits is the use of "unrelated participles instead of finite verbs" (1970, p. 58). Few run-on lines disrupt the patterning of phrases and clauses within Lydgate's couplets. At times, when he reaches for his most complex effects, the syntax can fail altogether; at others, as in the laments and passages expressing his authorial response, he achieves a fluid, more direct elegiac verse.

The designation often given to Lydgate's verse is aureate style or diction. "Aureate," meaning both "golden" and "eloquent," refers generally to the effort to reproduce the elevated effects of Latin in English. Lydgate originated the term and the concept, and it exerted a strong influence on both the Scottish Chaucerians and English Renaissance poets. The style depends essentially on the importation of Latin vocabulary, though the number of words Lydgate introduced into Middle English is now reckoned fewer than once thought. Norton-Smith contends that Lydgate always uses the term with strong metaphoric associations, and he notes that these associations are with rhetorical skill, eloquent language, and inspiration (pp. 192-95). The style produces a poetry based on exuberant elaboration rather than master images or controlling symbols. Scholars would limit most applications of "aureate" to Lydgate's religious poetry and would distinguish his borrowing of Latin vocabulary for purely artistic effect from borrowings of Latin technical and scientific terms. In a broad sense, however, what matters

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most to Lydgate's style is the combination of Latinate vocabulary with intricate syntactic structures.

Lydgate's meter, like his style, has been the topic of much aesthetic debate. Alain Renoir traces most dismissals of Lydgate's metrical skill to the early nineteenth century, which reversed centuries of opinion that ranked Lydgate with or above Chaucer in prosodic skill as well as rhetorical eloquence. Lydgate's assertion that "moche thing is wrong, / Falsly metrid, bothe of short and long" (5.3483-84) is, as Schirmer observed (p. 71), a modesty formula rather than a description of his actual composition or poetic ambitions. The basic model of prosody in Troy Book is Chaucer's iambic pentameter line, which regularly placed a caesura after the fourth or sixth syllable and permitted the addition of an unaccented syllable at the end of the line. Lydgate also follows Chaucerian practice in sounding final -e as needed for meter, even though the spoken language dropped this feature of the grammatical case system in the second half of the fourteenth century. Josef Schick distinguished five kinds of lines in Lydgate's poetry. Iambic pentameter (Type A) is the most common line. Trochaic feet sometimes appear before the caesura (Type B) and in the first foot (Type E) of a line. More characteristic are a headless line (Type D), with the first syllable missing, and the so-called "Lydgate line" or "broken-backed line," in which the unaccented syllable is missing after the caesura so that two accented syllables stand next to each other (Type C). In the following example, the manuscripts preserve a Lydgate line with stressed syllables on both sides of the caesura: "That his entent || can no man bewreye" (1.224). In Chaucer manuscripts, which are also fifteenth-century witnesses, the Lydgate line is commonly treated as a scribal error rather than an intentional form; most editors emend the line, frequently without notice. The pattern is intentional with Lydgate, however. In general, the metrical features that Chaucer used occasionally and even then with a rhythmic purpose in mind become frequent and systematic. Chaucer's metrical variants are the recurring elements of Lydgate's metrical program.

The present edition of Troy Book offers a selection of Lydgate's text from the vast and encyclopedic narrative that Lydgate composed. Its aim is to present key episodes, while preserving the overall shape of a narrative running to 30,117 lines. Prose summaries recount the material left out between the passages. The Prologue and Epilogue as well as the openings of each book are printed as markers of the poem's formal divisions and stylistic examples that differ significantly from Lydgate's narration. The selections for Book 1 seek to balance the Jason and Medea story with the events that precipitate the war. The passages from Book 2 alternate between narrative elements and set pieces, such as Priam's rebuilding of Troy, Lydgate's apostrophe to Priam on kingship, and the speeches made by Hector and Agamemnon. The episodes chosen from Book 3 sketch the evolving catastrophe of the war: the death of Patroclus, Hector's blunder in not pursuing his tactical advantage in battle, Achilles's plot to murder Hector, the exchange of Thoas for Antenor that prepares for the betrayal of Troy, and the sequence that begins with Andromache's prophetic dream and moves through Hector's death and enshrinement. The last of these is a fascinating reminiscence of the exotic element that Benoоt introduced to the medieval Troy story. The episodes taken from Book 4 reflect the final stages of Troy's downfall. Achilles succeeds in killing Troilus, the second Hector, but falls in love with Polyxena and subsequently dies in a murder plot. Though the Amazons give Troy some respite by entering the war, the conspiracy to betray the city succeeds, and after Troy's destruction, Achilles's son Pyrrhus exacts a brutal and unjust vengeance on Polyxena. The selections from Book 5, which recounts the return of the Greek heroes, focus on the story of Ulysses. The resolution reached by his sons, Telemachus and Telegonus, mirrors a larger pattern of peacemaking between Trojans and Greeks that Lydgate sees as an example for the current strife between England and France. Throughout these selections, passages and episodes of particular literary interest have been included, such as Lydgate's remarks on translation (2.134-202) and the many references to Chaucer and to Troilus and Criseyde (2.4677-4762, 2.4861-95, 3.550- 57, 3.4077-4448, 3.4820-4869, and 4.2029-2177). From the text and intervening summaries, the reader can follow the main line of Lydgate's story and examine its major rhetorical and narrative elements.

The text of Troy Book survives in twenty-three manuscripts and fragments. Pynson's first edition seems to have relied on another early manuscript with a good text. Despite the claims to

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sober editorial judgment made in Braham's prefatory epistle, the 1555 edition printed by Marshe reproduces Pynson's text and emends it freely with no manuscript authority. An extract from Lydgate's reproval of Priam (2.1849-56) appears in one manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (Royal 18.C.ii). In two late manuscripts (Douce 148 and Cambridge Kk.V.30), fragments of a fifteenth-century Scots translation of Guido are inserted. Douce 148 was "mendit" by John Asloan, and both manuscripts descend from the same exemplar that was the ancestor of Arundel 99. A portrait of Lydgate presenting Troy Book to Henry appears in Cotton Augustus A.iv, Digby 232, Rawlinson C.446, Rylands English 1, and Trinity College, MS 0.5.2. The same themes and details of the portrait reappear in a woodcut from Pynson's edition; Pynson also introduces Lydgate's complaint on Hector's death with a portrait of the poet writing at a desk. The earliest manuscripts, it has been suggested, might have been written and illustrated at Bury St. Edmunds for the monastery's great poet, but the London booktrade now seems a more likely source.

As A. S. G. Edwards points out, manuscript study over the past two decades has added much important detail about the material production of Troy Book (1981, pp. 16-19). The illuminations of Rawlinson C.446 have been connected to the atelier of a follower of John Siferwas, a master miniaturist (Spriggs, p. 200 n. 2). Rylands English 1 was illuminated by an artist close stylistically to William Abell, the mid-fifteenth English illuminator who reacted against developments in Netherlandish and Italian Renaissance painting (Alexander, pp. 169-70). Decorations in a fragment of Troy Book attached to the front of a manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (Rawlinson poet. 223) are linked to the "owl" atelier, so called for the trademark used by one artist who decorated the borders of books in a London illuminating shop around 1465; the text was written elsewhere (Scott, 1968, pp. 189-91). Rawlinson C. 446 and Digby 230 were written by the same scribe in the 1420s; the space left for coats of arms to be inserted in illuminated initials indicates they were destined for noble owners (Doyle and Parkes, pp. 201 n. 100, 210 n. 128). There also seems to have been a "Lydgate scribe" active in the mid-fifteenth century who was responsible for the text of Troy Book in Arundel 99 and for other Lydgate poems (Edwards, 1981, pp. 17-19). His presence suggests that a complex publishing organization existed to produce and disseminate Lydgate's work. A. I. Doyle speaks of a "long-standing Lydgate workshop" in East Anglia possibly composed of monks and laymen (p. 7).

The most important textual sources for Troy Book are the four earliest manuscripts: Cotton Augustus A.iv, Bristol MS 8, Digby 232, and Rawlinson C.446. None of them is Lydgate's original, and each was copied independently from the others. Cotton Augustus A.iv is usually thought to be the earliest witness; Bergen dated it 1420-30, the other three 1420-35. Scott suggests revised dates of 1430-40 for Cotton Augustus A.iv, c. 1420-35 for Digby 232, and c. 1420-25 for Rawlinson C.446 (1996, 2:261). The Cotton MS is virtually complete, lacking only six lines of the full text; the other three are missing portions of text that run between two thousand and five thousand lines. Bristol 8, which suffered the greatest loss of text, was mutilated for the miniatures. The large folio layout of the early manuscripts and the extent of decoration indicate that all of them could have been presentation copies, but no one manuscript can be identified as the Troy Book that Lydgate presented to Henry. The evidence of later manuscripts indicates that the poem retained its value as a prestige possession and found an audience among provincial gentry. Rylands English 1, for example, shows up in an inventory of Markeaton Hall, Derbyshire, compiled in 1545.

Cotton Augustus A.iv is the base text chosen for this edition of selections from Troy Book, as it was for Henry Bergen's complete edition of the poem prepared for the Early English Text Society early in this century. Cotton Augustus offers the most complete early text. Written on vellum leaves measuring 26 x 15 inches, the manuscript is composed of 155 folios, gathered in eight-leaf quires. The script is an Anglicana formata, with the characteristic double-lobed a, e, and g. The letter d is looped. Both s and long s are used. The two-shaped r replaces the regular r after the letter o, but the forked r does not appear. Cotton Augustus contains only Troy Book. The text is arranged in double columns of 49 lines, except for the rhyme royal stanzas of the Envoy and the two eight-line stanzas of the final Envoy and Verba translatoris. The first miniature (fol. 1ra) contains the arms of Sir Thomas Chaworth (d. 1458) and his second wife, Isabella de Ailesbury below the portrait of Lydgate and Henry V. A short description of the

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manuscript appears in the British Museum catalogue compiled by H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert. A more extensive description is contained in Bergen's edition (4:1-4).

The text presented here follows the readings of Cotton Augustus A.iv, except for the emendations recorded in the accompanying Notes. Emendations have been made where sense requires and where metrical changes are needed to avoid clearly defective lines. Final -e has been added as needed for meter, most notably in forms like myght, hert, and gret, which are spelled inconsistently. A MS form like ageyns is emended to ageynes, particularly at the beginning of a line. Obvious spelling errors have been corrected. In accordance with the conventions of the TEAMS series, the letters i/j and u/v have been normalized. Thorn has been transcribed as th, yogh asy or g or gh, and the scribal ampersand as and. Unless spelled ee (e.g., secree 1.2001), the accented final -e is printed й, as in pitй. Double consonants at the beginning of a line have been treated as capitals, so, for example, MS fful appears as Ful. Suspension marks and common abbreviations have been silently expanded. Capitalization and word division are editorial. The noun nothing, for example, is distinguished from the adverbial form no thing (not at all, in no way). Punctuation follows modern practice, but there are points where the complications of Lydgate's syntax make any effort to show the structure of subordination among clauses, phrases, and parenthetical expressions only approximate.

Every reader of Troy Book owes a debt to Henry Bergen, and any later editor's debt must be greater still. As the Notes make clear, I have relied frequently on his suggestions for final -e and for additions needed for sense and meter. My editorial practice is somewhat more conservative, however, in retaining substantive readings from the base manuscript. I preserve some wording that Bergen would change and phrasings that he would transpose. MS forms of the past participles avenget(1.4255), conselit (4.6739), defoulit (2.545), flickerit (3.4179), forget (1.3218, 2.2508, 4.6938), and plounget (5.3551) are allowed to stand, as are a number of idiomatic constructions attested in Chaucer and the Middle English Dictionary. In some places I read the MS differently from Bergen and in others follow the MS order where Bergen transposes lines. Bergen proposes a number of metrical emendations at points where I have chosen to let the Lydgate lines stand. My punctuation of the text is somewhat lighter than Bergen's Victorian punctuation; on occasion, the structure of Lydgate's long parallel clauses is broken into shorter sentences as an aid to reading and comprehension.

John Lydgate, Troy Book: PrologueEdited by Robert R. Edwards

Originally Published in John Lydgate, Troy Book: SelectionsKalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998

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O Myghty Mars, that wyth thy sterne lyghtIn armys hast the power and the myghtAnd named art from est til occidentThe myghty lorde, the god armypotent,That wyth schynyng of thy stremes redeBy influence dost the brydel ledeOf chevalry as sovereyn and patrown,Ful hoot and drye of complexioun,Irows and wood and malencolykAnd of nature brent and coleryk,Of colour schewyng lyche the fyré glede,Whos feerce lokes ben as ful of dredeAs the levene that alyghteth lowe Down by the skye from Jubiteris bowe(Thy stremes ben so passyng despitous,To loke upon, inly furious,And causer art wyth thy fery bemys Of werre and stryf in many sondry rewmys), Whos lordschype is most in CaprycornBut in the Bole is thy power lorn And causer art of contek and of strif; Now for the love of Vulcanus wyf Wyth whom whylom thou wer at meschef take, So helpe me now, only for hyr sake,And for the love of thy Bellona That wyth the dwellyth byyownd CirreaIn Lebyelonde upon the sondes rede; So be myn helpe in this grete nede To do socour my stile to directe And of my penne the tracys to correcteWhyche bareyn is of aureat lycourBut in thi grace I fynde som favour For to conveye it wyth thyn influence,That stumbleth ay for faute of eloquenceFor to reherse or writen any word;Now help, O Mars, that art of knyghthod lordAnd hast of manhod the magnificence.And Othea, goddesse of prudence, This wirke t'exsplyte that ye nat refuse But maketh Clyo for to ben my muse Wyth hir sustren that on Pernaso dwelle In Cirrea by Elicon the welle, Rennyng ful clere wyth stremys cristallynAnd callyd is the welle CaballynThat sprang by touche of the Pegasee. And helpe also, O thou Calliope,That were moder unto OrpheusWhos dites wern so mellodyusThat the werbles of his resownyng harpe Appese dyde the bitter Wyrdys scharpe Bothe of Parchas and Furies infernalAnd Cerberus so cruel founde at al;He coyede also beste, foule, and tree. Now of thy grace be helpyng unto meAnd of thy golde dewe lat the lycour wete

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My dulled brest that wyth thyn hony sweteSugrest tongis of rethoricyens And maistresse art to musicyens;Now be myn help t'enlumyne with this wirk Whyche am beset with cloudis dym and dirkOf ygnoraunce, in makyng to procede, To be lusty to hem that schal it rede. Also in hert I am so ful of dredeWhan prudent lysters herto schal take hede, That in makyng more skylle can than I, To whom I preie ful benignely Of her goodnesse to have compassioun Wher as I erre in my translacioun.For God I take hyghly to wyttenesseThat I this wirk of hertly lowe humblesseToke upon me of entencioun,Devoyde of pride and presumpcioun,For to obeie withoute variaunceMy lordes byddyng fully and plesaunce,Whiche hath desire, sothly for to seyn, Of verray knyghthod to remembre ageyn The worthynes, yif I schal nat lye,And the prowesse of olde chivalrieBy cause he hath joye and gret deyntéTo rede in bokys of antiquité,To fyn only vertu for to swe Be example of hem and also for to eschewe The cursyd vice of slouthe and ydelnesse.So he enjoyeth in vertuous besynesseIn al that longeth to manhood, dar I seyn;He besyeth evere, and therto is so faynTo hawnte his body in pleies marcyalThorugh excersice t'exclude slouthe at al,After the doctrine of Vygecius: Thus is he bothe manful and vertuous,More passyngly than I can of hym write.I wante connyng his highe renoun t'endite, So moche of manhood men may in hym sen.And for to witen whom I wolde mene - The eldest sone of the noble KyngHenri the Firthe, of knyghthood welle and spryng,In whom is schewed of what stok he grewe;The rotys vertu thus can the frute renewe;In every part the tarage is the same, Lyche his fader of maneris and of name,In sothefastnesse, this no tale is, Callid Henry ek, the worthy prynce of Walys, To whom schal longe by successioun For to governe Brutys Albyoun, . . .

THE TRADITIONAL BALLAD

What Is a Ballad?Is it defined by its form? by the way it tells a story? by who sings it? by the date of

its composition or performance? Is a ballad identical to its text, and, if so, to which

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text? As you read, note the use of past or present tense, and note how many of these statements propose a cultural location for "ballad" and then cut away as "not ballad" all material that doesn't fit.

A ballad is a song that tells a story, or -- to take the other point of view -- a story told in song. More formally, it may be defined as a short narrative poem, adapted for singing, simple in plot and metrical structure, divided into stanzas, and characterized by complete impersonality so far as the author or singer is concerned. This last trait is of the very first consequence in determining the quality or qualities which give the ballad its peculiar place in literature. A ballad has no author. At all events, it appears to have none.... Unlike other songs, it does not purport to give utterance to the feelings or the mood of the singer. The first-person does not occur at all, except in the speeches of the several characters. Finally, there are no comments or reflections by the narrator. He does not dissect or psychologize. He does not take sides for or against any of the dramatis personae.... If it were possible to conceive a tale as telling itself, without the instrumentality of a conscious speaker, the ballad would be such a tale.

George Lyman Kittredge, Introduction. English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Edited from the collection of Francis James Child). Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1904. p xi. Print.

* * *

A ballad is a story. Of the four elements common to all narrative--action, character, setting, and theme -- the ballad emphasizes the first. Setting is casual; theme is often implied; characters are usually types and even when more individual are undeveloped, but action carries the interest. The action is usually highly dramatic, often startling and all the more impressive because it is unrelieved. The ballad practices rigid economy in relating the action; incidents antecedent to the climax are often omitted, as are explanatory and motivating details. The action is usually of a plot sort and the plot often reduced to the moment of climax; that is, of the unstable situation and the resolution which constitutes plot, the ballad often concentrates on the resolution leaving the listener to supply details and antecedent material.

Almost without exception ballads were sung; often they were accompanied by instrumental music. The tunes are traditional and probably as old as the words, but of the two -- story and melody -- story is basic.

MacEdward Leach, quoted by Tristam Potter Coffin in The British Traditional Ballad in North America. Rev. ed. Austin: U of Texas P, 1977. 164. Print.

* * *

“What is a ballad?” The short reply -- “It is a narrative song that has been transmitted by tradition” -- is not entirely satisfactory, as the processes of tradition have varied in response to social change. A longer, more satisfying, but more complicated account of the ballad has to take into consideration, first, ballad transmission, second, ballad-story, and, third, ballad text.

The three stages of tradition correspond to a culture’s periods of nonliteracy, initial literacy, and settled literacy. It is the degree or outright absence of literacy that determines the kind of composition and transmission employed by the folk at different times. The folk of the oral tradition were nonliterate and it is their method of

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composition and transmission that has given the distinguishing traits to what we normally think of as “the” ballads.

David Buchan, Introduction. A Scottish Ballad Book. London: Routledge & Paul, 1973. 1-2. Print.

* * *

To define the ballad...is the equivalent to determining precisely what justifies distinguishing it from other forms of popular song. The most common notion of the ballad, certainly in the scholarship of the English-speaking world, is that it is a narrative song, current in popular tradition, which tells its story in a particular, specified way. Of the various factors composing this definition, the musical is at once the most important and the least useful...[because] the ballad tunes were part of a traditional corpus of melodies which could be applied to all kinds of song, narrative and lyric, traditional and journalistic.

Similarly, insistence on oral transmission, by itself, is of little value in distinguishing the ballad from other forms of popular song...and is an oddly sideways approach to the problem... For many undoubted ballads we have no objective evidence that they were transmitted orally, as they survive exclusively in manuscript or on broadsides, and there are plenty of narrative songs, recovered directly from oral tradition, which no one has contemplated calling ballads.... The most frequent problem confronting any ballad scholar who goes beyond wrestling with definitions to the direct study of texts, is the availability, for any one ballad, of a multiplicity of variants from a wide range of dates and places.

Of the many responses which have been made to this circumstance...[the] more fruitful are the attempts to see oral transmission and its attendant textual instability as factors determining what we, as our title indicates, consider the most salient characteristic of the ballad, its peculiar mode of narration. The ballad, this approach implies, is not merely subject to variation in the course of transmission, but is somehow created by it; not merely in the sense that the text of any one ballad finally recovered from tradition is the compound of all the changes introduced by the singers who transmitted it, but rather that oral transmission is a fundamental cause of the narrative technique, which effectively defines the genre itself...

The traditional ballad belongs, and has always belonged, to that oddly named “little tradition:” of popular culture, as opposed the “great tradition” of the cultural elite, provided we are aware that by "popular tradition” we mean the culture shared by all members of a community, including the cultural elite, who are so distinguished by having access to their exclusive “great tradition” as well. As part of this little tradition the ballad is neither the debris... of some earlier phase of the great tradition--it has never in its recorded history been exclusively the possession of the cultural elite--nor did it become “folklore” until the very recent period when the educated elite rediscovered it as part of that common popular culture from which they had withdrawn in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is for this reason, presumably, that neither folklore...nor literary studies...has succeeded in coming to terms decisively with the ballad problem... We cannot define the ballad, if by that we mean recovering the concept of the ballad current among those who composed, sang or listened to it, for there was no such concept. Nor was the ballad a fixed and unchanging phenomenon, independent of context: the genre itself, as well as the individual song, has been subject to variation. What is needed is observation rather than definition.

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Thomas Pettit, Introduction. The Ballad as Narrative: Studies in the Ballad Traditions of England, Scotland, Germany and Denmark, by Flemming G. Andersen, Otto Holzapfel, and Thomas Pettit. Odense: Odense UP, 1982. 2-3. Print.

* * *

Our Scottish ballads are amongst the finest and most under-rated and neglected products of our traditional culture. The truth is that today people don't understand the meaning of oral tradition. At school I was told that ballads were passed on by word of mouth and the words changed because singers forgot the words. It was only in the Folk Song Revival of the 1960s that I came to realise what nonsense this was. People who sing ballads with anything up to a hundred verses or more don't have bad memories.

Sheila Douglas, ballad singer and scholar in “The Ballad Tree.”

* * *

A true ballad is a folksong of unknown authorship that tells a story in a special way. The stress of the story is on the crucial situation; it is told by letting the action unfold itself in event and speech. Ballads are always objective, impersonal, and unreflective; the language is direct, containing conventional epithets and set phrases.

The main reason that ballads have arrived at this rather mechanical condition is that over the years and centuries -- the oldest date from the 13th century -- the detailed and complicated features of the verse eroded, leaving the basic pattern and style of the present-day versions.

Anonymous. “The Heritage Club Sandglass,” issued to the members of the Heritage Club, Norwalk, Connecticut, with the release of The Heritage Book of Ballads, selected and edited by MacEdward Leach. New York: The Heritage P, 1967. Print.

Sir Patrick Spence

The king sits in Dunferline toune,* townDrinking the blude-reid* wine blood-red“O quhar* will I get a guid sailor, where; goodTo schail this schip of mine?”

Up and spak an eldern* knicht, oldSat at the king’s richt* knee rightSir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,That sails upon the see.”

The king has written a braid* letter, openAnd signed it wi’ his hand;And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,Was walking on the sand.

The first line that Sir Patrick red,A loud lauch* lauched he: laughThe next lilne that Sir Patrick red,The teir* blinded his e’e.* tear; eye

O quha* is this has don this deid,* who; deed

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This ill deid done to me;To send me out this time o’ the yeir,* yearTo sail upon the see?

Mak haste, mak haste,my mirry men allOur guid schip sails the mourne.”“O say na sae,* my master deir,* not so; dearFor I feir* a deadlie storme. Fear

Late, late yestreen* I saw the new mooone last eveningWi’ the auld* moone in hir arme;* oldAnd I feir, I feir, my deir master,That we will come to harme.”

O our Scots nobles wer* richt laith loathTo weet their cork-heil’d schoone;* shoesBot lang owre a’* the play wer played, ere allThair hats they swam aboone. either

O lang, langmay thair ladies sitWi’ thair fans into their hand,Or eir* they se Sir Patrick Spence beforeCom sailing to the land.

Olang, lang may the ladies standWi’ thair gold kems* in their hair, combsWaiting for their ain* deir lords ownFor they’ll se thame* na mair.* them; no more

Half owre,* haf owre to Aberdour,*It’s fiftie fadom deip:* deepAnd thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,Wi’ the Scots lords at his feit.* feet

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MEDIEVAL DRAMA

Typologically, English drama of the Middle Ages may be divided into several areas, each having a dramatic subject-matter of its own.

First, we may point out the Drama of Christ the King. Easter was the most important Festival of the whole Church year and hence the interest the medieval audience took in the miracle of Christ's life and resurrection. The Introit in such performances was a text from the Latin Bible describing the visit of the three Maries to Crist tomb and their meeting with the angel before the empty sepulchre. It was sung antiphonally - i.e. by two voices, the one responding to the initiative taken by the other. The text takes the form of a question and an answer:

CANTOR: Whom seek ye at the sepulchre, O followers of Christ?RESPONSOR: Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, O heavenly creature.CANTOR: He is risen.

Second, it is the Drama of Christ the Crucified that appealed to the spectators of liturgical performances. Though it is striking to the understanding of modern people, such plays did not try to re-enact the crucifixion itself. In some countries dramatic treatment of it was avoided until late in the 13th century and in others until early in the 14th century. Two answers present themselves, one artistic and the other doctrinal: the two are interrelated (furhter information available in: English Drama to 1710 (vol. 3), Ed. by Christopher Ricks, Penguin Books, 1987).

A third kind of medieval drama at the time was the so-called Drama of Crime and Punishment. If the doctrine of Transubstantiation was a major factor in the genesis of the English vernacular Cycles of Miracle Plays, the preaching of the mendicant friars with its emphasis upon Judgement Day was at least as important to the birth of a third kind of religious ludus, the Morality Play. Like the Cycles, the Moralities were deliberately didactic, but aimed not so much at instructing the populace as at bringing home to each individual the application of his faith to his daily life and conduct; and if the source of the Cycles was the lectio, or readings from the Latin Bible, the source of the texts of the Moralities was the single vernacular item within the liturgy, the sermon.

And lastly, a fourth kind of dramatic expression was brought to life - the Drama of Social Recreation. Those traditions of stagecraft that were formulated in the context of Mummings, Disguisings, Masques and other dramatic entertainments that developed from a nucleus of song and dance in a strictly secular environment from the twelfth century onwards led to the development of the above mentioned form. Reference should be made to the festivals of the agricultural year as opposed to those of the Christian Calendar, and especially to the dead season of midwinter. Part of this nucleus was the entertainment provided by the minstrel troupes; and in the course of time these two strains came to mingle with each other until a point was reached when the dancing became formally organized within a literary context, and decorated with special costumes, scenic devices, songs and a text appropriate to the chosen theme.

Miracle Plays are plays designed to illustrate the central events in the Bible because most of the people were quite unable to read, let alone afford a costly hand-copied book. These plays were performed in cycles at various feast days during the Christian year. The Cycles consisted of a large number of plays adding up to the story of the world from the Creation, through the Flood right down to the birth of Christ and Christ's death on the cross. These plays were performed on movable stages, normally with an "upstairs" and a "downstairs"; the lower part being a changing room for the actors, the upper part being the stage where the action took place. The actors were townspeople themselves who were the members of the guilds.

Morality plays are basically plays where personified abstractions, or ethical concepts, fight for possession of the human soul. Obviously for them to be effective (i.e. for the spectators to respond favorably towards them) the audience must have possessed a fairly developed knowledge of theology; Christ as man and God, and as the supreme controller; man was unable to reach salvation by his own efforts alone. There is also a fundamental difference between the

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concept of knowledge as it was understood by medieval man and as we tend to understand it today. Knowledge was conceived of as completely theological, i.e. the only true knowledge was knowledge about God and how he operated in relation to the world. Besides it was important for characters in such plays to fully obey God’s commandments as in Genesis 3: 19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”.

Death. Almighty God, I am hereat your will,Your commandment to fulfil.

God. Go thou to Everyman,1

And show him in my nameA pilgrimage2 he must on him take,Which he in no wise can escape;And that he bring with him a sure reckoningWithout delay or any tarrying.

Death. Lord, I will in the world go run over all,And cruelly outsearch both great and small;Everyman will I beset that liveth beastlyOut of God's laws, and dreadeth not folly:He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart,His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart,Except that alms be his good friend,In hell for to dwell, world without end.Lo, yonder I see Everyman walking;Full little he thinketh on my coming;His mind is on fleshly lusts and his treasure,3

And great pain it shall cause him to endureBefore the Lord Heaven King. [enter Everyman]Everyman, stand still! Whither art thou going Thus gaily? Hast thou thy maker forgeet?

Everyman. Why asketh thou? Wouldst thou weet?Death. Yea, sir; I will show you now:

In great haste I am sent to theeFrom God, out of his Majesty.

Everyman. What, sent to me! Death. Yea, certainly.

Though thou hast forgot him here, He thinketh on thee in the heavenly sphere,As, ere we part, thou shalt know.

Everyman. What desireth God of me? Death. That shall I show thee.

A reckoning he will needs have Without any longer respite.

Everyman. To give a reckoning longer leisure I crave. This blind matter troubleth my wit.

Death. Upon thee thou must take a long journey,Therefore, do thou thine accounting-book with thee bring.For turn again thou canst not by no way,And look thou be sure in thy reckoning, For before God thou shalt answer, and show true Thy many bad deeds and good but a few, How thou hast spent thy life and in what wiseBefore the Chief Lord of Paradise.Get thee prepared that we may be upon that journey,For well thou knowest thou shalt make none for thee attorney.

1 Mankind, personified here for the first time in the play. The Messenger has been talking, we feel, in general terms, but now the matter comes to us more strongly.

2 Life as a pilgrimage is an especially common image in the later Middle Ages.3 These are the pleasures of the flesh (lechery, gluttony, sloth) and the world (avarice); but Death will give

Everyman some leisure to repent.

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LE MORTE DARTHUR

Le Morte D'Arthur is the first true novel written in English. A moving tale of love and betrayal, and quests inspired by noble ideals amidst the turmoil of an age on the threshold of profound change, the essence of Sir Thomas Malory's timeless masterpiece has remained firmly in the imagination of successive generations. This monumental work of fiction deserves not only to grace the bookshelf of every lover of literature but to be read and appreciated from cover to cover.

Le Morte d'Arthur in context: Arthurian legend.In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, Arthurian Legend is flourishing more

than ever, after over a thousand years of development in literature and in our collective imagination. Whatever the factual origins of King Arthur (if any), he and the Knights of Camelot passed into popular legend from the early Middle Ages. And as the field of European literature developed - British and French, especially - so did versions and variations on the Arthurian tale, proliferating both in books and in poetry. Today, Arthurian legend is understood for what it is - just legend - and King Arthur and his knights are enjoyed as imaginary figures rather than ones based on historical fact.

The romantic concepts of chivalry and heroic quest, in an age of religious purity and secular glory, provided a perfect platform for writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth and the poets Wace, Chrétien de Troyes, and Layamon. In the French court - the most powerful in Europe at the time - King Arthur's popularity was intense, and the French felt an empathy for Arthur perhaps because, even though a Briton, he was regarded as a fellow Celt and was seen as a powerful metaphor for defiance against the invading Saxon hordes. In Britain, King Arthur's development from his mystic origins into a patriotic symbol grew stronger, especially after the publication of the (English) poet Layamon's translation of (the French poet) Wace's version of Arthur as a historical figure, which itself was based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's "The History of the Kings of Britain" ('Historia Regum Britanniae', c.1135).

So the Arthurian Legend continued to grow, spurred on by popular sentiment and imagination on both sides of the Channel, but it was works such as 'Le Conte del Graal' (Chrétien de Troyes, in France, c.1191) - marking the first appearance of the Holy Grail (the Sangreal) and the Grail King - and the 'Vulgate Cycle' (c.1215 - 1235) - highlighting the importance of Sir Lancelot and his love for Queen Guinevere as the ultimate cause of the downfall of Camelot - that provided the starting point for most future versions of Arthurian Legend.

By the beginning of the 13th Century, the myths surrounding Arthur and his Knights were becoming considerably expanded by writers and poets who adopted the theme of Arthurian Legend to elaborate issues the the day. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were also linked to actual locations such as Glastonbury and Tintagel, and a connection with the Holy Land and the Crusades interwove the concepts of a rescue of the Grail with that of purge of the "heathen occupation" of Jerusalem - a sort of divine justification for the barbarism of the Crusades. Thus, Arthurian Legend was adapted by the mood of the time into propaganda for the preservation of Christianity, and Arthur was transformed from Celtic warlord into a true Christian hero (not to mention the fact that any historical basis for the life of an English King called Arthur was probably obscured for all time).

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As the Middle Ages progressed, so did Arthurian Legend, and over the centuries, poets and writers gave new or comparatively minor characters Arthurian tales of their own. The King Arthur concept was also adapted to fit localised issues and literary styles, and in the process was diluted, and lost some of it's original "high romance". This apparently appealed to Geoffrey Chaucer, who remarked in The Canterbury Tales something to the effect that stories and poems about Sir Lancelot had become little more than romantic fantasies for the titillation of court ladies.

HOW UTHER PENDRAGON SENT FOR THE DUKE OF CORNWALL AND IGRAINE HIS WIFE, AND OF THEIR DEPARTING SUDDENLY AGAIN (BOOK 1, Chapter 1)

It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the duke of Tintagil. And so by means king Uther sent for this duke, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine. So when the duke and his wife were come unto the king, by the means of great lords they were accorded both: he liked and loved this lady well, and he made them great cheer out of measure, and desired to have lain by her. But she was a passing good woman, and would not assent unto the king. And then she told the duke her husband, and said, I suppose that we were sent for that I should be dishonoured, wherefore, husband, I counsel you, that we depart from hence suddenly, that we may ride all night unto our own castle. And in like wise as she said so they departed, that neither the king nor nor of his council were ware of their departing. All so soon as King Uther knew of their departing so suddenly, he was wonderly wroth. Then he called to him his privy council, and told them of the sudden departing of the duke and his wife. Then they asked the king to send for the duke and his wife by a great charge; And if he will not come at your summons, they may ye do your best, then have ye cause to make mighty war upon him. So that was done, and the messengers had their answers, and that was this shortly, that neither he nor his wife would not come at him. Then was the king wonderly wroth. And then the king sent him plain word again, and bade him be ready and stuff him and garnish him, for within forty days he would fetch him out of the biggest castle that he had. When the duke had this warning, anon he went and furnished two strong castles of his, of the which the one hight Tintagil, and the other castle hight Terrabil. So his wife Dame Igraine he put in the castle of Tintagil, and himself he put in the castle of Terrabil, the which had many issues and posterns out. Then in all haste came Uther with a great host, and laid a siege about the castle of Terrabil. And there he pyght many pavilions, and there was great war made on both parties, and much people slain. Then for pure anger and for great love of fair Igraine the King Uther fell sick. So came to the King Uther, Sir Ulfius a noble knight, and asked the king why he was sick. I shall tell thee, said the king, I am sick for anger and for love of fair Igrain that I may not be hool. Well, my lord, said Sir Ulfius, I shall seek Merlin, and he shall do you remedy, that your heart shall be pleased. So Ulfius departed, and by adventure he met Merlin in a beggar's array, and then Merlin asked Ulfius whom he sought. And he said he had little ado to tell him. Well, said Merlin, I know whom thou seekest, for thou seekest Merlin; therefore seek no farther, for I am he, and if King Uther will well reward me, and be sworn unto me to fulfil my desire, that shall be his honor and profit more than mine, and I shall cause him to have all his desire. All this will I undertake, said Ulfius, that there shall be nothing reasonable but thou shall heve thou desire. Well, said Merlin, he shall have his entente and desire. And therefore, said Merlin, ride on your way, for I will not be long behind.

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