Companion
to Medieval English Literature
Some
themes, motifs and conventions
Michael Murphy
and
James Clawson
Conal and Gavin Publishing
Brooklyn, New York
© Copyright Michael Murphy 2004
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Introduction
This book consists of slightly over 100 entries on some of the more
important forms and conventions of Old and Middle English literature,
especially as they are encountered in college
classes and seminars. It is a
"Guide," "Companion" or "Handbook" that aims to
provide in alphabetical order a short commentary on each item. It is devoted
largely to fact and received opinion, rather than to individualistic
interpretation. In addition, the entries
try to list the recurrences of a given topos in the literature as fully
as is consistent with good scholarship and the size of the book. With most entries there is also be a very
brief bibliography of scholarly work — generally no more than two or three to
any one entry.
Ernst Curtius's now classic study, European Literature and the Latin
Middle Ages, became a landmark in
medieval studies because it demonstrated forcefully and persuasively the
importance of an understanding of literary convention for the literature with
which it deals. As the title of his work indicates, Curtius
dealt preponderantly with Latin and the vernaculars of continental Europe, and
only incidentally with English literature.
This Companion is not intended as a competition with the
international and monumental scholarship of Curtius, but rather as a modest
supplement. It concentrates on English
without, we hope, being parochial, for it is evident that many of the themes or
conventions treated here are borrowed from Latin and from Continental vernaculars. The focus, however, is English.
Length and Comprehensiveness of Treatment The web version of the Companion or Handbook
is intended as a pre-print run. In print version the Companion will be small
enough to be owned by students and scholars, and to be leafed through or
referred to at leisure, not a heavy tome
or multi‑volume treatment to be consulted only in the library. At least two large collections have been
published in recent years: one is a Lexikon of the Middle Ages in German from
Artemis Verlag that involves all aspects of medieval life, but also features
sections on Old and Middle English that are heavily weighted towards individual
works and authors, and categories such as "Monitory Works" -- matters
we do not deal with. There is also now the large multi‑volume
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, in English, again planned in quite a
different way, and not directed exclusively toward literary interests. These volumes have much longer entries on
some of the items in this book but nothing at all on most. This is largly true
also of the one-volume Medieval England: An Encyclopedia (Garland,
1998).
The length of an entry in this Handbook is not the measure of its
importance. The Ubi Sunt motif is
perhaps of no more importance than, say, Aubade or Boast or Kenning. But it seemed meaningless without examples,
some of which cannot easily be
shortened. A small anthology with translations seemed in order, even though
this makes this entry a good deal longer than most others. Similarly an entry like Beginnings and Endings deserves a treatment of article,
chapter or book length. We have had to settle for something more like a
list of ways of beginning and ending
medieval poems, not a treatment of the
rhetorical problems.
We hope we have found a median
between the meaninglessly brief and the dauntingly long entry.
Criteria
for Inclusion
There
are no entries for authors, individual works, or most characters, or for categories like Devotional Writings,
Satire, Lyric. Such information would have
made this book inordinately long, and in any case is readily available
elsewhere in Lacy's one-volume Arthurian Encyclopedia, or his shorter Handbook;
Moorman's small Arthurian Dictionary, Spence's Dictionary, or a
multi-volume publication like Wells's Manual (old or new) and other
works of that sort. We have, however, decided to include a few of the major
characters who occur in the literature and who can be said to owe much of their
presentation to convention:
1. classical figures like Aristotle, Alexander and Virgil about whom medieval literary legends were common,
stories that portray them very differently from the way we usually think of
them.
2. biblical figures like Cain, Herod, or
Pilate about whom various legends were current in the Middle Ages that are no
longer well-known.
The
aim has been to omit purely folkloristic motifs, though this is
sometimes a difficult choice. The preferred guide in such cases has
been pedagogical experience. There is not much problem about deciding to
exclude whole entries for Youth, Reared in forest; Fidelity, tests of; Scullion, aristocratic Hero serves as; Hero, Magnanimity of, — entries of the kind
one finds in the Motif Indexes of Stith Thompson, Aarne, and Bordman, although
references to these occur in some
individual entries on other topics. The Fair Unknown, for example, is sometimes
an aristocratic hero who serves as a scullion, and Perceval is certainly a
youth raised in a forest; such conventional narrative motifs do not have full
entries but may be mentioned in passing in the course of a separate item about
something else. But a topic such as Rash
Promise seems to deserve a full entry, for, while it is common in folklore,
it figures frequently enough in literature to warrant inclusion in the more
general category of literary convention.
We have, we hope, managed to abide by our own criterion, though we
realize that we have not tried to provide a rigorous definition of it. Possibly a fully comprehensive treatment of
medieval literary convention would include some, perhaps many, entries of this
kind. For the type of work we contemplate it seems most
reasonable to exclude them as separate entries, though, as we have said, some of them may figure in other
entries. We hope that informed criticism
of the book would help to settle this matter.
We
have also decided to omit most references to theological doctrine. First, because Handbooks of Christian
Theology are readily available; secondly, the sometimes subtle and arcane
distinctions in matters of divinity involved are best left to these and to
large Dictionnaires and Lexikons which have space for experts to deal
thoroughly with such matters.
Indeed the religious conventions that occur with
some frequency in medieval English literature are often less a matter of
theological dogma than of pious popular belief, and derive either from
apocryphal writings or from pious speculation and elaboration on genuine
biblical texts. The Harrowing of Hell,
for example, on which there is an entry here , was a very popular theme in
medieval literature and iconography; but has no basis in the New Testament. Legends of Cain, the Earthly
Paradise, Judas, Pilate, which are also treated here, have fragile bases in
scripture. Like stories of Joseph of Arimathea
and the Grail, they are really built on pious, even superstitious,
belief, though the writers who propagated the stories were not necessarily
ignorant people. These motifs are here
because they recur with some frequency in the literature of medieval England,
and it is helpful to have a short reference guide to them.
Similarly,
notions that surfaced in the Dance of Death, Memento Mori, and Contemptus
Mundi, though they were certainly congenial to the ascetic aspect of Christianity,
are essentially reminders of mortality in the interests of morality ‑‑
not an exclusively Christian concern.
Such notions were not really strangers to the pagan Roman world. Thus the purely religious motifs left on our
list are few: Felix Culpa (The Fortunate Fall), Pater Noster (Our
Father), and a few others.
This
book is meant as a first attempt. If
enough people find it useful, reasonable criticism of current entries and
sensible suggestions for other entries could be considered for a second
edition, which might be a continuous affair on the web.
All
unsigned entries are by Michael Murphy; the others are signed by their named
writers.
The
brief bibliographical references at the end of many entries are expanded to
full bibliographical information at the end of the Companion.
An
asterisk * in an article means that
there is a separate entry on the asterisked topic.
Michael
Murphy
Table
of abbreviations:
ME
= Middle English
OE = Old
English;
MED
= Middle English Dictionary
OED
= Oxford English Dictionary
MS
= manuscript; MSS =.manuscripts
s.v.
= sub verbo, i.e. see under that word (in a dictionary)
C
= Century, as in 14C = 14th century
c.
= circa = around: c. 1185 = around the year 1185
ff.
= following, as in 23 ff = page 23 and
following, or line 23 and following.
*
= see the separate entry on that topic
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Click the following links to take you to the
appropriate section]
CYCLE PLAYS (See
Mystery Plays)
DANCE OF DEATH (Danse
Macabre)
DEADLY SINS (See SEVEN)
DOUZEPERS or
DOUSEPERIS (TWELVE PEERS)
ENDINGS (See
Beginnings)
^ Return to Top of Table of Contents
FORTUNE (See Wheel
of)
FOX (See REYNARD)
HOLIDAYS (See Feasts
& Fasts)
HORTUS CONCLUSUS (See
Gardens)
^ Return to Top of Table of Contents
LAI (See Breton Lay)
LAMENT (See
Planctus)
MATTERS, THREE
(See also Britain,
England, France, Greece.)
MEMENTO MORI (See Dance
of Death)
MIRACLE PLAY (See Mystery Play)
MODESTY (See
Humility)
^ Return to Top of Table of Contents
PHYSIOLOGUS (See
Bestiary)
QUADRIVIUM (See
Liberal Arts)
STEWARD (See
Seneschal)
TRIVIUM (see Liberal Arts)