The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory

CHAPTER II.. Chansons De Geste.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.

European literature in 1100. Late discovery of the chansons. Their age and history. Their distinguishing character. Mistakes about them. Their isolation and origin. Their metrical form. Their scheme of matter. The character of Charlemagne. Other characters and characteristics. Realist quality. Volume and age of the chansons. Twelfth century. Thirteenth century. Fourteenth, and later. Chansons in print. Language: oc and oil. Italian. Diffusion of the chansons. Their authorship and publication. Their performance. Hearing, not reading, the object. Effect on prosody. The jongleurs. Jongleresses, &c. Singularity of the chansons. Their charm. Peculiarity of the geste system. Instances. Summary of the geste of William of Orange. And first of the Couronnement Loys. Comments on the Couronnement. William of Orange. The earlier poems of the cycle. The Charroi de Nimes. The Prise d'Orange. The story of Vivien. Aliscans. The end of the story. Renouart. Some other chansons. Final remarks on them 22

CHAPTER III.. The Matter of Britain.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

Attractions of the Arthurian Legend. Discussions on their sources. The personality of Arthur. The four witnesses. Their testimony. The version of Geoffrey. Its lacunae. How the Legend grew. Wace. Layamon. The Romances proper. Walter Map. Robert de Borron. Chrestien de Troyes. Prose or verse first? A Latin Graal-book. The Mabinogion. The Legend itself. The story of Joseph of Arimathea. Merlin. Lancelot. The Legend becomes dramatic. Stories of Gawain and other knights. Sir Tristram. His story almost certainly Celtic. Sir Lancelot. The minor knights. Arthur. Guinevere. The Graal. How it perfects the story. Nature of this perfection. No sequel possible. Latin episodes. The Legend as a whole. The theories of its origin. Celtic. French. English. Literary. The Celtic theory. The French claims. The theory of general literary growth. The English or Anglo-Norman pretensions. Attempted hypothesis 86

CHAPTER IV.. Antiquity in Romance.

ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.

Oddity of the Classical Romance. Its importance. The Troy story. The Alexandreid. Callisthenes. Latin versions. Their story. Its developments. Alberic of Besancon. The decasyllabic poem. The great Roman d'Alixandre. Form, &c. Continuations. King Alexander. Characteristics. The Tale of Troy. Dictys and Dares. The Dares story. Its absurdity. Its capabilities. Troilus and Briseida. The Roman de Troie. The phases of Cressid. The Historia Trojana. Meaning of the classical romance 148

CHAPTER V.. The Making of English and the Settlement of European Prosody.

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN PROSODY.

Special interest of Early Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of the modern languages. Historical retrospect. Anglo-Saxon prosody. Romance prosody. English prosody. The later alliteration. The new verse. Rhyme and syllabic equivalence. Accent and quantity. The gain of form. The "accent" theory. Initial fallacies, and final perversities thereof 187

CHAPTER VI.. Middle High German Poetry.

MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY.

Position of Germany. Merit of its poetry. Folk-epics: The Nibelungenlied. The Volsunga saga. The German version. Metres. Rhyme and language. Kudrun. Shorter national epics. Literary poetry. Its four chief masters. Excellence, both natural and acquired, of German verse. Originality of its adaptation. The Pioneers: Heinrich von Veldeke. Gottfried of Strasburg. Hartmann von Aue. Erec der Wanderaere and Iwein. Lyrics. The "booklets." Der Arme Heinrich. Wolfram von Eschenbach. Titurel. Willehalm. Parzival. Walther von der Vogelweide. Personality of the poets. The Minnesingers generally 225

CHAPTER VII.. The 'fox,' the 'rose,' and the Minor Contributions of France.

THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' AND THE MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRANCE.

The predominance of France. The rise of Allegory. Lyric. The Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence. Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language. And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. The Rise of Allegory. The satire of Renart. The Fox himself. His circle. The burial of Renart. The Romance of the Rose. William of Lorris and Jean de Meung. The first part. Its capital value. The rose-garden. "Danger." "Reason." "Shame" and "Scandal." The later poem. "False-Seeming." Contrast of the parts. Value of both, and charm of the first. Marie de France and Ruteboeuf. Drama. Adam de la Halle. Robin et Marion. The Jeu de la Feuillie. Comparison of them. Early French prose. Laws and sermons. Villehardouin. William of Tyre. Joinville. Fiction. Aucassin et Nicolette 265

CHAPTER VIII.. Icelandic and Provencal.

ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL.

Resemblances. Contrasts. Icelandic literature of this time mainly prose. Difficulties with it. The Saga. Its insularity of manner. Of scenery and character. Fact and fiction in the sagas. Classes and authorship of them. The five greater sagas. Njala. Laxdaela. Eyrbyggja. Egla. Grettla. Its critics. Merits of it. The parting of Asdis and her sons. Great passages of the sagas. Style. Provencal mainly lyric. Origin of this lyric. Forms. Many men, one mind. Example of rhyme-schemes. Provencal poetry not great. But extraordinarily pedagogic. Though not directly on English. Some troubadours. Criticism of Provencal 333

CHAPTER IX.. The Literature of the Peninsulas.

THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS.

Limitations of this chapter. Late Greek romance. Its difficulties as a subject. Anna Comnena, &c. Hysminias and Hysmine. Its style. Its story. Its handling. Its "decadence." Lateness of Italian. The "Saracen" theory. The "folk-song" theory. Ciullo d'Alcamo. Heavy debt to France. Yet form and spirit both original. Love-lyric in different European countries. Position of Spanish. Catalan-Provencal. Galician-Portuguese. Castilian. Ballads? The Poema del Cid. A Spanish chanson de geste. In scheme and spirit. Difficulties of its prosody. Ballad-metre theory. Irregularity of line. Other poems. Apollonius and Mary of Egypt. Berceo. Alfonso el Sabio 375

CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION 412

INDEX 427

THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE

AND THE

RISE OF ALLEGORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.

REASONS FOR NOT NOTICING THE BULK OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN LITERATURE. EXCEPTED DIVISIONS. COMIC LATIN LITERATURE. EXAMPLES OF ITS VERBAL INFLUENCE. THE VALUE OF BURLESQUE. HYMNS. THE "DIES IRAE." THE RHYTHM OF BERNARD. LITERARY PERFECTION OF THE HYMNS. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. ITS INFLUENCE ON PHRASE AND METHOD. THE GREAT SCHOLASTICS.

This series is intended to survey and illustrate the development of the vernacular literatures of mediaeval and Europe; and for that purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of the Latin writing which, in a steadily decreasing but--until the end of the last century--an always considerable proportion, served as the vehicle of literary expression. But with a part of it we are as necessarily concerned as we are necessarily compelled to decline the whole. For not only was Latin for centuries the universal means of communication between educated men of different languages, the medium through which such men received their education, the court-language, so to speak, of religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of knowledge which did not directly stoop to the comprehension of the unlearned; but it was indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as well as consciously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were more or less spontaneous.

But, even if we had room, it would profit us little to busy ourselves with diplomatic Latin or with the Latin of chronicles, with the Latin of such scientific treatises as were written or with the Latin of theology. All these except, for obvious reasons, the first, tended away from Latin into the vernaculars as time went on, and were but of lesser literary moment, even while they continued to be written in Latin. Nor in belles lettres proper were such serious performances as continued to be written well into our period of capital importance. Such a book, for instance, as the well-known Trojan War of Joseph of Exeter, though it really deserves much of the praise which it used to receive, can never be anything much better than a large prize poem, such as those which still receive and sometimes deserve the medals and the gift-books of schools and universities. Every now and then a man of irrepressible literary talent, having no vernacular or no public in the vernacular ready to his hand, will write in Latin a book like the De Nugis Curialium, which is good literature though bad Latin. But on the whole it is a fatal law of such things that the better the Latin the worse must the literature be.

We may, however, with advantage select three divisions of the Latin literature of our section of the Middle Ages, which have in all cases no small literary importance and interest, and in some not a little literary achievement. And these are the comic and burlesque Latin writings, especially in verse; the Hymns; and the great body of philosophical writing which goes by the general title of Scholastic Philosophy, and which was at its palmiest time in the later portion of our own special period.

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