Companion

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 = 14^th 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]

tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd. (To Virgil)

Alliteration, used here by Tennyson in his tribute to Virgil, and in our own time by presidential speech writers and journalists for special effects, is fundamental to the line of all Old English verse and to some very important Middle English verse. (See Alliterative Revival *). Alliteration is what holds the two half‑lines of the poetic line together in Old English.

waes gehwaeðer oðrum

Lifigende lað. Licsar gebad

Atol aglaeca. Him on eaxla wearð

Syndolh Sweotol. Seonowe onsprungon,

Burston banlocan. Beowulfe wearð

Guðhreð gyfeðe. Scolde Grendel ðonan

Feorhseoc fleon under fenhleoðu ...

(Beowulf, 814‑820)

Was each to the other

loathsome while living. Body‑pain endured

the dreadful monster: on his shoulder appeared

a wound enormous. Sinews sprung apart,

bonelocks burst. To Beowulf was

battle‑victory given. Grendel had thence

to flee lifesick under his fencovering. (Literal translation)

The rule is that two stressed syllables in the first half‑line in Old English alliterate with the first stressed syllable in the second half line. It is this alliteration that holds the line together even when the syntax demands the period in mid line that the modern editor supplies. In the 19C Edward Sievers figured out that there were five basic types of alliterating half‑ line in OE, and his scansions, easily consulted in most anthologies of OE poetry, are still generally held to be valid. (See, e.g., Bright or Pope). Any vowel alliterates with any other vowel. Each of the combinations 'sp', 'sc', 'st' alliterates only with itself. There is no rhyme.

A somewhat looser alliteration is also very prominent in some Old English prose, particularly in the writing of Aelfric :

Of God : He hylt mid his mihte heofonas ond eorðan and ealle gesceafa buton geswince

He holds with his might the heavens and earth and all creation without effort

Of St Cuthbert: [he] sang his gebedu, on saelicre yðe standende oð ðone swyran

he sang his prayers, in the sea-like wave standing up to his neck

And here is Wulfstan on the state England c. 1000 a.d. :

ac waes here and hungor, bryne and blodgyte on gewelhwylcum ende, oft and gelome;

but there was invasion & hunger, burning and bloodletting in every corner, oft and again

and us stalu and cwalu, stric ond steorfa, orfcwealm and uncoðu, hol and hete, ...

& to us there was theft & killing, strife and plague, cattle pest and disease, slander and hate

This feature has, as we remarked, continued in the prose of modern times, particularly in speeches, which are in many ways like the homilies of Aelfric and Wulfstan. It is clearly natural to the Germanic part of our language. Alliteration, surviving the Norman Conquest which brought the Latinate and Romance habit of riming in verse, burst out in the Middle English of the 14C in what we think of as the Alliterative Revival * . But alliteration has never again become the organizing feature of our verse since Chaucer ensured the conquest by the continental forms: counted syllables and rhymed lines, which were not features of Germanic verse.

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Cassidy and Ringler; Pope.

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ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL

A term applied to the flowering of alliterative verse in the West and Northwest Midlands of England in the later fourteenth century, roughly contemporary with Chaucer who, however, preferred accentual and rhymed verse. This flowering is called a revival because the standard form of verse in Anglo‑Saxon times was the alliterative line, where two words in the first half of the line generally alliterated with one in the second half. With the Norman Conquest, however, and the consequent strengthening of the continental influence in England, that aspect of English verse almost disappeared. At least, little or no post‑ Conquest OE verse has survived in MS. It is surmised that the indigenous verse, much of which was transmitted orally anyway, could not have entirely disappeared, but probably survived among the common people and even in the homes of the gentry in those parts of the country more remote from London and continental influences, such as the West and Northwest Midlands. The "revival" of the native tradition in such a rich outpouring of verse in the fourteenth century is generally held to be a proof of this.

This view is disputed by Turville‑Petre who proposes that "the fourteenth‑century poets did not inherit a tradition of 'correct' verse miraculously preserved, but instead they consciously ‑‑and by gradual stages‑‑remodeled a written tradition of alliterative composition that led back only by rather tortuous routes to Old English verse" (p.17).

The verse form of the later period is much changed from the strict alliterative patterning of "classic" OE poetry such as that found in Beowulf. Some of the later poems, moreover, are divided into "stanzas": four lines each in Purity and Patience, twelve lines each in Pearl and of varying length in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In addition there is rhyme that marks the end of each stanza in this last poem,

..................................................

Thus in peril and pain and plights full hard

By country cares this knight till Christmas eve rides

Alone

The knight well that tide time

To Mary made his moan Virgin Mary

That she him rede to ride would guide

And wisse him to some wone direct him ... dwelling

Pearl is rhymed throughout as well as having a very elaborate Stanza Linking * pattern. The Destruction of Troy and Piers Plowman are more like Old English verse in that the line, not the stanza or quatrain, is the largest regular formal pattern, though the versification is not the “classic” OE form.. The subject matter of the poems of the Alliterative Revival ranges through a variety of genres we can categorize loosely: romance (Sir Gawain & the Green Knight), romance-epic (Alliterative Morte Arthure), moral teaching (Patience, Purity), allegory, complaint , encyclopedic social comment and religious exhortation (Piers Plowman), versified "history" (Wars of Alexander Destruction of Troy).

Among the other alliterative poems not mentioned so far are the Debate * poems : The Parlement of the Three Ages, and Wynnoure and Wastoure.

___________

Turville‑Petre

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ANGLO‑SAXON CHRONICLE

The Anglo‑Saxon Chronicle is not a single chronicle, but a number of different related annals, i.e. entries in a book recording the events of every year. There are seven surviving MSS that can be called Anglo‑Saxon chronicles. Some clearly derive from an earlier chronicle which was copied, and then the copies dispersed to be continued in different places. This similarity is especially noticeable in the entries down to the year 891 in the reign of King Alfred who is often associated with inaugurating or revivifying it.

The earliest entry in any chronicle is for the year 60 B.C. and the latest — in the Peterborough Chronicle — is 1154 A.D.. Even though the recording of events of early centuries occurred long after, the chronicle-writing itself does extend over about three hundred years, from 9C to 12C, and thus displays the English language from Early West Saxon to Early Middle English. Hence it is of considerable interest to linguists. It is of equal interest to historians, for it constitutes, with Bede's History, the major source of information on the events of the Anglo Saxon period. It is of less interest to literary critics or literary historians because the chronicle or annals form is so limited, frequently not extending beyond a few lines for a given entry, and is, over time, the product of a great many people. Occasionally, however, a personality does break through the restrictions of the form, and an extended piece of narrative of some force is the result. Perhaps the most famous among the earlier ones is the annal for the year 755, reproduced in most anthologies of Old English, a rousing story of lust, political vengeance, violence, and fierce loyalty.

Many of the most stirring entries involve the events of the reign of King Alfred of Wessex (871‑900), a reign filled from the beginning with the need to resist the Viking invasions. Chronicle entries for some of these years include fairly detailed accounts of campaigns, including a daring and successful attempt to take on the Vikings in their own element, the sea (v. year 896). Astonishingly under the year 937 in four of the chronicle MSS appears not the usual brief prose entry as in the other three, but the whole poem we now know as the Battle of Brunanburh, a record of a victory over the Vikings won by Alfred's grandsons. For the end of all the resistance to the Vikings see the entry for the truly dreadful years of 1013 and 1014 when English resistance crumbled, tried to recover one last time, and finally collapsed under the savagery of the Vikings Swein and Cnut. The entry for 1087 in Peterborough is exceptionally long, and has an unusually edged tone in its account of the sins and virtues of William the Conqueror who went to Normandy in that year where "sharp death, which spares neither rich man nor poor, seized him. ... He who had been king and lord of many lands now had no more land than seven feet. And he who had been clothed with gold and with gems lay covered with mold." The entry for the year 1137 in the reign of Stephen records with sad bitterness the atrocities committed throughout the land by a baronage totally out of control. The last entry, for 1154, records the unlamented death of Stephen.

The language of these later entries is generally characterized as early Middle English.

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ARISTOTLE

Aristotle remains one of the two or three preeminent philosophers of the Western world. His works became widely known in the universities of Europe only about the middle of the 13C through Latin translations from Greek and from Arabic , especially after St. Albert the Great and his even greater pupil St Thomas Aquinas (1225‑74) had applied Aristotelian concepts to science and to Christian theology. Aristotle was for Dante the "master of them that know." Chaucer's Clerk wishes he could own

It is just because of his reputation for great wisdom that he acquired a quite different reputation in popular circles in the Middle Ages: as a "senex amans" * , an old man seized by love or sexual desire. This story seems to begin with Henri D'Andeli's French Lai d'Aristote or Jacques de Vitry's Latin version in Sermones Vulgares, both of the mid 13C. But from then to at least the 16C, one incident is frequently narrated, adverted to, and illustrated. It relates how Aristotle warned his pupil Alexander that he was too much in the toils of his wife (or mistress) and had become uxorious; he should get back to serious political and martial pursuits. Angry, the woman (variously named) determined to show her feminine power and humiliate Aristotle at the same time. As the old philosopher was sitting studying at his usual window, she came by, clothed only in a seductive smile and a revealing negligee. Smitten, the old man proposed a sexual encounter to which she agreed on condition. The bargain was struck for a later assignation. Forewarned by the confident seductress, Alexander and the rest of the court watched from hiding the whole proceeding as Aristotle later submitted to the condition that she had imposed: she bridled, saddled , mounted him, and rode him across the garden, literally making an ass of him.

The moral of the story, drawn by fast‑recovering Aristotle himself, is this: even old men who are great philosophers can be turned into sots and thralls of lust. Or, as Joyce's Stephen Dedalus put it: "Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love." (Ulysses, Circe: 15: 11‑12). The name of the woman varies in various versions of the story: Phyllis, Candacis, Silarin, Persones, Campaspe, Amor, Regina, anonymous. (See Springer, n. 17).

A very similar story is told about Virgil, * the great poet (and magician). Indeed, in one French fabliau, Aristotle is the one in the predicament usually reserved for Virgil. Artists took delight in depicting both situations well into Renaissance times.

A copy of Hans Baldung Grien’s rendering of the Aristotle /Phyllis scene can be found on the web at

http://www.arscomica.com/aristotle.html

Aristotle and Virgil were examples from the classical world, of the power of women over men , as the oft‑cited Adam, Samson, David, and Solomon were from the biblical world. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the hero mentions all these biblical names in his outburst after he realizes that he has been tricked by Sir Bercilak's wife (2412 ff). John Gower's Confessio Amantis brings together the classical and biblical.

And there me thought I might see

The king David with Bersabee, Bathsheba

And Solomon was noght without

Passende an hundred in a rout Surpassing

Of wives and of concubines .........

With Dalida, Samson I knew ......... Delilah

I saw there Aristotle also

Whom that the queen of Greec so

Hath bridled that in thilk time that time

She made him such a syllogime syllogism

That he forgot all his logique.

There was no art of his practique

Through which it might be excluded

That he ne was fully concluded

To love, and did his obeisance. submission

And eke Virgil of acquaintance ....

Bk 8, 689 ff

A convenient illustration is in Kolve, 248, a diptych ivory: Aristotle teaching Alexander, and Phillis riding Aristotle.. For brief comment and iconography see his p. 247 and n. 50.

__________________

Mâle; Springer; Sarton; Kolve, Chaucer.

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ARMING THE HERO

Narrative passages that describe the preparation of the warrior for battle were already conventional in Homer. There are a number of such elaborate descriptions in the Iliad (Books 3, 11, 16, 19). The arms, especially the shield, given to Aeneas by his mother Venus are similarly described in the Aeneid (Book 8).

The convention continues in medieval literatures:

Beowulf, 1441 ff; Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (a.d. 1130’s), the arming of Arthur at Badon; Chretien’s Eric and Enide (late 12C); another full‑scale description of the arming of Arthur in Alliterative Morte Arthure, (ll. 900 ff) and, perhaps best known of all, the arming of Gawain in Sir Gawain & Green Knight (II, 4‑7 and IV, 1‑2).

In the latter the elaborate explanation of the significance of the pentangle (II, 6‑7) illustrates the degree to which the ritual of preparing a warrior for battle had become Christianized. St. Paul had urged the Christian man to "put on the armor of God", which included the breastplate of justice, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit (Ephesians VI).

Ramon Lull (13 C) and later writers of chivalric manuals developed this Pauline metaphor into an elaborate system where each piece of the knight's equipment signified some virtue. The manual writers are generally concerned, however, with the ceremonies of arming a new, young knight. After the 13C these ceremonies became highly elaborate and sacralized, a long way removed from the simple ceremony mentioned by Tacitus in Germania XIII. The knight‑candidate, for example, took a ritual bath, was ceremoniously dressed, and kept vigil in the church where he was later belted and spurred in a religious rite.

The arming trope is persistent enough in the English romances to be parodied by Chaucer in Sir Thopas, where he burlesques the use of the topos in such romances as Libaeus Desconus, Guy of Warwick, and Bevis of Hamton. It can still be found at some length, again for comic purpose, in a movie like “Cat Ballou,” and briefly but not comically in “Patton.”

__________________________________

Bryan and Dempster; Ackerman; D. Brewer, “Arming”.

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AUBE / AUBADE / ALBA ( French and Provencal for dawn; in German tagelied). The aube, a dawn song or lament, was a highly stylized minor lyric genre cultivated in Europe from the 12C to the 15C, especially in Germany. The general situation in such poems is this:

a knight has spent a night of lovemaking with a lady who is not his wife. The dawn, whose arrival is announced by the Watchman ( often a dependent or friend of the knight), interrupts their pleasure or the knight's post‑coital sleep. The lovers (more often the lady alone) rebuke dawn and Watchman alike. They are, however, obliged to yield to reality, and they part, often exchanging blessings and promises of fidelity.

The aube is not a common form in ME, though there is some evidence that there was a popular English tradition of dawn meetings or partings, and Hatto has shown clearly that songs of such meetings or partings are universal. But the only medieval English author who exhibits the form fully is Chaucer, who has a long, elaborate and passionate aube / alba in Troilus III, 1415‑70, and a briefer one in III, 1695‑1712. He also uses the tradition for comic purposes in the Reeves Tale, A 4236‑47. See also Gower's version of Ovid's Amores I, 13, in Confessio Amantis, IV, 3188‑3295. The famous parting scene in Romeo and Juliet III, v, 1‑64, and Donne's "Busy Old Fool" belong to the alba tradition, though they probably owe more to Ovid than to any medieval tradition, popular or aristocratic. Ovid's lover says to Aurora, goddess of dawn:

But if you held in your arms the form of the mortal you wanted

Then you would cry: "Run slowly, slowly, horses of night.”

Marlowe's Faustus recalls the second line of this in his last despairing speech whose irony becomes even more bitter for the reader who knows the dawn song from which it comes. For such readers Philip Larkin’s modern poem “Aubade” gives a different additional irony to the word.

____________________________

Hatto; Kaske; Saville.

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AUREATE LANGUAGE

"Aureate" means literally "gilded". Applied to poetry it means a conscious effort to produce an effect by the use of collocations of words striking for their unusualness and splendor. They are generally florid, learned, latinate, polysyllabic, though what exactly constitutes an "aureate" word in English will be in dispute among readers and scholars. Still there is little doubt about what is aureate when such words are used heavily in a short space. A stanza from William Dunbar's poem Ane Ballat of Our Lady in praise of the Virgin Mary will illustrate. (Spelling of original lightly modernized):

Hail, stern supern, hail in etern

In Godis sight to shine;

Lucern in derne for to discern

Be glory and grace divine;

Hodiern, modern, sempitern

Angelicall regine:

Our tern infern for to dispern

Help, royalest rosine.

Ave Maria, gracia plena.

Hale, fresh flower feminine.

Yerne us gubern, virgin matern,

Of ruth both root and ryne.

Hail heavenly star, hail for ever

In God’s sight to shine;

Lantern in the dark to see ( show ?)

By glory and grace divine;

Today, now and forever

Angelical queen:

Our infernal gloom to disperse

Help, most royal rose.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

Hail, fresh flower feminine.

Earnestly guide us, virgin mother,

Root and bark of mercy (ruth)

The poem goes on in this fashion for 84 lines, a display of linguistic virtuosity as striking as his very different flytings* which, by contrast, use vernacular words, often coarse, in a similar controlled torrent, but for abuse not praise. The other major Scottish poets of the late Middle Ages, Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas, were also occasional and distinguished practitioners of aureate poetry.

They were all better poets than the man who probably influenced them most in the practice of enriching the language, the Englishman Lydgate, a self‑pronounced disciple of Chaucer, the master they all admired for the "aureate colours of rhetoric" with which he "enlumined" our "rude language". Lydgate assiduously practiced "enameling" and "enlumining" the language in poems like Balade at the reverence of Our Lady or Ave, Jesse virgula, where the desire is clearly to load every rift with ore of a purely lexical kind. The poetic garment becomes stiff with gold thread and verbal gems. Though most of Lydgate's poetry is not of high quality, there are large quantities of it, and one scholar has credited him with introducing over 800 new words to the English vocabulary. John Metham, a minor poet of the generation after Lydgate, accurately (though not altogether critically) described the effect of some of Lydgate's efforts:

They left behind them to enjoy the corpses the black‑feathered, sharp‑beaked raven,

that greedy warhawk, the white‑tailed, darkbodied eagle, and the greycoated wolf of the forest.

The theme occurs also in the following poems: Beowulf, 3024‑7. Elene, 27‑30, 52‑3, 110‑114. Exodus, 162‑7. Finnsburgh, 5‑7, 34‑5. Genesis A, 1983‑5. Judith, 204‑12, 294‑6. Maldon, 106‑7.

________________

Magoun; Bonjour.

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BEGGING POEM

A minor genre where the poet asks for money or promotion to alleviate his poverty. Medieval poets could not hope to make a living from selling their work but, like Chaucer and Lydgate, relied on a salary from a regular job or on patrons, or both. Chaucer's Complaint to his Purse is a witty begging poem in which he parodies the conventional phrases of the lover's complaint* to portray the distress of poverty rather than the pangs of despised love:

You be my life, you be mine heart’s steer (rudder)

Queen of comfort and of good company

The poem, directed to Henry IV, seems to have had the desired effect, for Chaucer's pension was renewed. There is no information about the effect of that other fine English begging poem, The Owl and the Nightingale, in which the author pleads his case for ecclesiastical preferment with a unique comic charm.

There are begging poems in Latin by the Archpoet of Cologne (fl. 1160), in French by Chaucer's contemporaries Froissart, Deschamps and Machaut, and in English by Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Dunbar. The last named wrote at least 15 poems of "petition", some of them a great deal less tactful than Chaucer's elegant complaint.

________________________________________________

Hammond, pp. 66‑68, 149,174 (for Hoccleve and Lydgate); F. Robinson, p. 865 for the French poems ; Riverside, 1088. Brown‑Robbins, p.768, and Supplement s.v. "money".

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BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

This entry will not attempt to provide critical theory for the rhetorical devices used by medieval poets to begin and end their work; nor does it pretend to be anything like exhaustive.. It will merely set out, for easy reference, some of the most common conventions for such beginnings and endings in Old and Middle English.

Beginnings‑‑Old English 1. In OE the most common formula for beginning a poem , or major section of a poem, is the Gefraegn formula: ic gefraegn, we gefrunon = I / We have heard. This formula, according to Klaeber, points to a preliterary stage of poetry "when the poems lived on the lips of the singers and oral transmission was the only possible source of information." Such formulas are used "to introduce poems or sections of poems (Beowulf 1, 837, 2694, 2752); to point out some sort of progress in the narrative (Beowulf 74, 433, 766, 2172, 2480, 2484, 2773); to call attention to the greatness of a person, object or action (Beowulf 38, 70, 575, 582, 1027, 1196‑7, 1965, 2685, 2837)." (Klaeber, xlvi ‑ xlvii and ci).

See also the openings of Exodus, Andreas, Juliana, Daniel.

Beginnings‑‑Middle English In Middle English there are a number of both verbal and thematic formulas and structural conventions:

Verbal Formula

a. A sizeable number of narratives begin with the word Whilom = Once upon a time. See e.g the opening of Chaucer's Knights Tale: “Whilom, as olde stories tellen us ...”, and the Pardoners Tale proper: “In Flanders whilom was a company ...”. Others often begin with the word "Lordings" or "Listeneth, lordings" which means something like "Listen, ladies and gentlemen", as in the Pardoner’s Prologue that precedes his tale: “Lordings,” quod he, “in churches when I preach ...”. Many begin with "When", like the famous opening line of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: "Whan that April with his shoures soote". (See Robbins, s.vv.).

b. Many verse romances begin with an Invocation to God or the Virgin Mary for help to the narrator to tell his tale.(See Humility Formula). This presumably is a medieval version of the classical call to the muses. (Of course, the body of the narrative might begin with When, Whilom, or Lordings).

Now great glorious God through grace of Himself

And the precious prayer of his pris mother

Shield us from shamesdeeds and sinful works ....

And wisse me to warp out some word at this time

That neither void be nor vain..... (Allit Morte A, 1-10)

A call for silence and attentive listening often accompanies the Invocation:

Hearken me hendely and hold you still

And I shall tell you a tale .... (Allit MA , 14-15)

c. The Pastourelle often begins with some version of the phrase "As I went out this ender day."

Thematic Beginnings:

1. Brutus‑Brut Legend * / Troy Legend * : Several works begin with a reference to the beginning of Britain by the eponymous Brutus, grandson or great grandson of Aeneas: Wace’s Roman de Brut and its English derivative La3amon’s Brut; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Winner and Waster. (See Silverman,1965).

2. Dream Vision * : A number of poems, some of them well‑known, begin with the narrator falling asleep; the poem is the account of his dream: Piers Plowman, by Langland; three of Chaucer's poems: Parliament of Fowls, Book of the Duchess, House of Fame. In his Legend of Good Women it takes him about 100 lines before he falls asleep. (And see #4).

3. Chaucer is fond of deriving the inspiration for his dreams and poems from his reading.

See his Legend of Good Women; Book of the Duchess; Parliament of Fowls.

4. Spring/Summer opening (Reverdie):: The Canterbury Tales; Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes a deliberate imitation of the CT. Henryson’s Testament does a variation of the Spring opening where his “Lent” does not brings the sweeth breath of Zephyrus; instead the “blasts bitterly / From Pole arctic come whistiling.” Piers Plowman, a dream vision, begins “in a summer season when soft was the sun.” which is echoed by Winner and Waster whose narrator, after a prologue, also lies down by a stream “By a bank of a burn , bright was the sun.” Parlement of Three Ages begins “In the month of May when mirths been fele (many) /And the season of summer when soft be the weathers.”

(See the helpful note to opening lines of the CT in Riverside Chaucer).

5. Humility Formula * See separate entry.

Endings ‑‑Old English

It is hard to generalize about the endings of Old English poems since a sizeable number of them are fragments.

endings -- Middle English

a. As ME Romances often begin with an Invocation, they frequently end with a similar Benediction, wishing a blessing on the narrator or the audience or both.

b. Some poems end as they began: Avowing of Arthur; Pearl; Sir Gawain & the Green Knight; Parliament of the Three Ages, Quatrefoil of Love, Patience, Sir Octavian.

c. Request for Correction: Troilus and Criseyde 1856 ff., possibly in imitation of Boccaccio at end of Genealogy of the Gods. But see Humility Formula entry.

d. Retraction or Palinode. The most famous Retraction is, of course, that which appears at the end of the Parsons Tale in the Canterbury Tales. The end of Troilus and Criseyde is similar.

e. Brut Legend‑‑ Alliterative Morte Arthure, Sir Gawain & Green Knight. (See Thematic Beginnings)

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Bartlett

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BESTIARY

The beast fable is moralized narrative; the bestiary is moralized "science". All the world declares the work of God's hands. The natural world is a kind of Bible in which God's truth can be read through the infinite variety of His creation. Hence, the medieval interest in beasts, domestic and exotic, was often not what we would think of as natural history or science, but a natural curiosity and love of marvels mixed with the need to justify this curiosity or use it for the greater glory of God. It is hard to know just how much the writers and readers of bestiaries believed in what they wrote, for it was often very strange, and was sometimes demonstrably wrong. But perhaps it did not occur to them to question the "truth" of the science; it was the truth of the moral that mattered. Readers of Lives of the Saints may not have believed wholeheartedly all the unlikely stories to be found in those collections. But one could still be edified by the story of the (literally) incredible courage of the martyrs, and be encouraged to put up with one's own lesser sufferings in the name of God. The details of the habits of animals in the bestiary may lend themselves somewhat more to credibility than some of the sufferings of martyrs, for, while we know what men were like in all ages, we do not know what all animals are like in all countries, and some of them are strange enough in truth. The swallows do come back to Capistrano; it is not a pious fable.

In OE there are some bestiary poems taken from the Latin Physiologus, a bestiary widely popular throughout the early medieval western world. The OE poems are on the Panther, the Whale and the Partridge. They are, of course, moralized.

Here is a typical Bestiary entry from a late medieval bestiary:

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/translat/8v.hti

See also Beast Fables

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White, T H

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BOAST (OE noun: gilp ; verb: gilpan; ME nouns: bost, 3elp; ME verbs: bosten, 3elpen).

The boast generally refers to actions or achievements in the past or to present proficiencies

such as strength or knowledge. The vow * refers to the future. The terms vow and boast are sometimes used interchangeably in casual commentary, partly because the vow, as recorded in the literature can be extremely boastful.

Like the vow,* the boast represents something that was at first more than a mere convention.

On the one hand, a warrior's recitation of his past achievements established his credentials for

a given task. On the other hand, it served to remind him that he had something to live up to.

Similarly boasts about noble ancestry such as those in The Battle of Maldon 216‑223, or in The Alliterative Morte Arthure , 1691 ff and 2595 ff., serve to remind everyone of the warriors' obligation to emulate the deeds of those ancestors of whom they are proud. Boasting about ancestry is, however, rebuked by the more sober authors of less heroic or chivalric literature. Boethius, Dante, and Chaucer, for example, take the more thoughtful and Christian point of view that a man's ancestry adds nothing to his worth, and that it is idle to boast of something for which one is not responsible.

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Murphy, Vows, Boasts

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BOB and WHEEL

This metrical device is best defined by a couple of illustrations, taken here from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The first two (dotted) lines and the one immediately following represent an indeterminate number of long lines of alliterative verse. The very short line of generally no more than two words is the bob, and the short rhymed and alliterating quatrain is the wheel:

..................................................................................

..................................................................................
Blithe brought was them drink, and they to bed yeden went

with light

Sir Gawain lies and sleeps

Full still and soft all night.

The lord that his crafts keeps his promises

Full early he was dight. (1684-9) was dressed

.........................................................................

.........................................................................
But he defended him so fair that no fault seemed,

Ne none evil on neither half, neither they wisten they experienced

but bliss

They laughed and layked long. played, flirted ?

At last she gan him kiss

Her leave fair gan she fong take

And went her way y-wis. (1552-8) indeed

The device, frequent, as here, at the end of sections of otherwise unrhymed alliterative verse, is also called “tail rhyme” and there is a whole category of Tail Rhyme Romances written in this way . Unlike SGGK, many of them are of poor quality ; the metrical demands of the bob and wheel often take precedence over sense, and the result is sometimes difficult to translate, even in SGGK. Chaucer famously parodied the trope in Sir Thopas where the relentless jog trot rhythm and cliched or meaningless bobs draw from Harry Baily the withering critical comment: this “drasty riming is not worth a turd.”

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BRETON HOPE

A legend of the continental and insular Britons that Arthur was not dead, but would return when his wounds had been healed in Avalon .* The legend was current well before Geoffrey of Monmouth, but began its literary career in his Historia, Bk. XI, and his Vita Merlini in both of which he hinted strongly that Arthur's wounds could be healed. Repeated with reservations by Wace in his Roman de Brut, with enthusiasm and additions in La3amon’s version of Wace, the "Hope" was derided by William of Newburgh (c. 1197) and about the same time by Giraldus Cambrensis who pointed to the "discovery" of Arthur's tomb at Glastonbury * in his own day. The legend was widely known in continental Europe, and, belief in it seems to have persisted in England into the 19C., perhaps because it was mentioned though not endorsed at the end of Malory’s Morte Darthur, or because Tennyson mentions it at the end of the Passing of Arthur section of the Idylls (lines 191-2, 425-432,449-51) . Indeed, according to Leslie Alcock, who has researched the possible site of Camelot at Cadbury, the Breton Hope was far from dead in 20C England.

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BRETON LAY

Breton Lays are short stories in verse believed to derive from Celtic sources in Brittany similar to those which influenced the longer Arthurian romances.* Both combine the themes of ennobled love with a sense of adventure. The stories also often incorporate supernatural elements associated with Celtic legend. Unlike many romances, however, lais are typically short narratives which contain little superfluous detail that does not contribute to a single plot. The typical lay does not have digressions or subplots; rather it relies on a direct vivid telling of the story. Lais were traditionally sung to a musical accompaniment in an oral tradition kept active by Breton performers in the courts of France and Norman England.

In the twelfth century, Marie de France, a Norman poet writing in French in England, wrote a collection of lais which she attributed to Breton sources. In her collection the lay often presents a dilemma which tests the lovers’ fidelity to each other, the whole enhanced by magical fairy‑tale devices. The adulterous element is a common motif in these narratives, sometimes presented as a dilemma of “old husband versus young lover.” (See Senex Amans).

The Breton Lay was imitated by English authors although these vernacular narratives never developed into a substantial body of literature apart from romance. Aside from the twelve lays of Marie de France there are twenty‑two in French, but only nine extant in English. Probably the earliest Breton Lay in Anglo‑Norman is Robert Biket’s Lai du Cor, (The Lay of the Horn) (c. 1150). The English examples, appearing mainly in the fourteenth century, are: Sir Landeval, Chestre’s Sir Launfal, Lay le Freine, Sir Orfeo, Sir Degaré, Sir Gowther, The Erle of Tolous, Emare, and Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale.

The Franklin’s Tale, which Chaucer’s he calls a Breton lay, has no known predecessor among the Breton Lays; and it is commonly held that he got the story from Boccaccio’s Filocolo, but he clearly knew the Breton genre:

Prologue to Franklin’s Tale

There is now a convenient edition of Middle English Breton Lays by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury (See also entry for Brittany)

J. Clawson

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BRITAIN, MATTER OF

Matiere de Bretagne was Jan Bodel’s 12C term for the lais and romances dealing with (Great) Britain and Brittany (little Britain), especially the Arthurian romances. From the appearance in the 1230's of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin History of the Kings of Britain, and the French and English “chronicles” by Wace and La3amon that derived from it, the matter of Britain / Brittany grew to enormous proportions, producing some of the most celebrated imaginative literature of the Middle Ages in various languages. Distinguished practitioners in French poetry were Marie de France (see Breton Lay) and Chretien de Troyes; in prose the authors of the enormous French prose romances that came after Chretien’s comparatively short tales; in German Hartmann von Ave’s Erec and Iwein; Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzifal; Gottfried von Strasbourg’s Tristan and Isolde which takes place in the Celtic lands of Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany; in Welsh The Mabinogion; the English Alliterative and Stanzaic Morte; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and, at the end of the medieval period, Morte D’Arthur, Malory’s great English version of the huge French prose romances.

D. Childress

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BRITTANY

Brittany or “Little” Britain, or “Armorica” is the peninsular region of north‑west France inhabited by the Bretons some of whose Celtic ancestors appear to have fled from Devon, Cornwall, and Wales when (Great) Britain, that is, the island of Britannia, was being pressured by Anglo‑Saxon invaders in the fifth century.

The legends of Arthur of Britain, including that of the Round Table* according to Wace’s Roman de Brut, were probably kept alive in the oral tradition the Bretons brought with them when they emigrated from Great Britain. The magical forest of Broceliande is also in Brittany though Wace found it less than magical. From Brittany the Arthurian legend probably spread to other parts of Europe, especially throughout the rest of France. The Breton Lays * of Marie de France, several of which deal with elements of the Matter of Britain * are thought to have originated with the Breton minstrels or “jongleurs”. Arthur holds court in Brittany in Chretien’s Cliges and in Wolfram’s Parzifal, and Brittany figures prominently in the Tristan of Gottfried and of Thomas, especially at the end.

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BRUTUS / BRUT

The eponymous founder of Britain, according to Nennius (c. 8C ) and Geoffrey of Monmouth whose History (c.1135) greatly elaborated on Nennius. According to Nennius the Brutus from whom the island derived its name was alternatively (a) a Roman consul who conquered a Britain already inhabited by descendants of Aeneas's son (chaps. 7 & 10) (b) the son of Hisicon (Istio) and the brother of Romanus, the founder of the Latin race (chap 17) (c) the son of Hisicon, who is himself the great‑great‑grandson of Aeneas (chap 18) (d) the son of Ascanius, and so the grandson of Aeneas. He was expelled from Italy for accidental parricide, and eventually made his way to the island later named for him, Britain. (chap. 10).

It is this last version that Geoffrey developed and embroidered. Among other changes from Nennius, he made Brutus the great grandson of Aeneas and says the island was called Albion before it was renamed. Many English chronicles and romances after Geoffrey began with a version of the Brut story: among the earliest and best known are Wace's Roman de Brut (1155) and La3amon's Brut (1190‑1200). Consequently, the "Brut" was sometimes used as a generic term for any chronicle beginning with this story. In the 14 C and 15C it was attached especially to a genre of chronicle in French, an English version of which was published by Caxton in 1480. The whole collection of such chronicles deriving ultimately from Geoffrey is referred to, rather quaintly, as "The Common Brut". The Brut legend was almost universally accepted in England until the end of the 16C, and even had its defenders in the 18 C.

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T.D. Kendrick.

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CAEDMON

The first English poet known by name. Our knowledge of him comes from Bede's Ecclesiastical History (Book 4, Chap. 24) which recounts the story of this simple cowherd. Unable to join in the festivities with his fellows because of his inability to sing, he received the gift of poetry in his sleep from a divine messenger. The nine‑line song that he promptly composed under this inspiration is reproduced in most anthologies of Old English.

After he joined the monastic life he composed many more songs, Bede says, all of them pious and most of them based on the Scriptures that the literate read or recited to him. Hence the poems in the Junius MSS, especially Genesis and Exodus and Christ and Satan were referred to by scholars as "Caedmonian". It is not now believed that Caedmon composed all of the poems once attributed to him. Indeed there is some doubt if he was a real person, since similar stories of a simple illiterate receiving the gift of poetry in an equally striking way appear in different cultures.

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CAIN` (Caym, Kaym)

Rabbinical and early Christian commentators on the biblical story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4) provided many of the non‑biblical details of the medieval legend of Cain, parts of which appear in English as early as the OE Genesis and Beowulf.

There are Cain plays in the ME Chester, Hegge, Towneley and York cycles. Other references, brief and lengthy, to Cain and his kin are ubiquitous in medieval English writing. Cain, the sinner and outlaw, rather than Abel, the "type" of Christ (see Typology) is, almost inevitably, the figure who captures the attention and imagination of secular and religious writer alike.

The following are the chief features of the legend as they appear in medieval English writing. (References are very selective):

1. For the murder of his brother Abel, Cain was condemned by God to a lifetime of wandering, in exile from the company of men, and living often among beasts: OE Genesis, 1013‑35; Beowulf, 104 ff and 1258 ff; the York Sacrificium, 86ff; the Chester Creation.

Cain was also, however, the founder of the first city (Gen. IV, 7) regarded by St. Augustine as the type of the Earthly City. (City of God, Bk.15).

2. The giants and monsters of the earth were "Cain's kin", the result of a union between the "daughters of men", presumed to be Cainite women, and "the sons of God" (Gen. 4 & 6). Though the biblical Genesis and the Beowulf poet (1087‑93) both say that all these giants were destroyed by the Flood, this does not seem to have affected the association of Cain with later giants in medieval legend: OE Genesis, 1245 ff; Beowulf, 104, 114, 1087‑93, 1258 ff; Ywain and Gawain, 243 ff; Paradise Lost, XI, 573 ff, esp. 642 and 687‑8.

3. Presumably by extension of (2) the morally "deformed" were also Cain's kin: Piers Plowman A, 135‑172, Havelok, 2044‑46. Wycliffe rings the changes on the term "Cain's castles" to indicate friaries: ( See, e.g. Index to his English Works). According to their enemies, the initials of the names of the four orders of friars spelled CAIM or KAIM (Carmelites, Augustinians, Jacobins i.e. Dominicans, Minorites i.e. Franciscans). See MED.

Saracens in French Chansons de Geste have Cain for their ancestor.

4. The principal sins associated with Cain are envy, anger, false tithing, despair and, of course, manslaughter.

5. Cain murdered Abel with the jawbone (of an ass): Towneley Mactacio, 323‑4; Cursor Mundi, 11073‑4; Hegge Cain and Abel, 149; Hamlet, V, I, 85. Many early illustrations, however, show the murder weapon as a rock or a club.

6. The "mark of Cain" was a trembling of the head or body, or sometimes a horn on the head: Prose Adam and Eve in Horstmann's Legenden (1878), p. 224; the Cornish Creation.

7. The murder of Abel took place near Damascus: I Henry VI, I, iii, 39‑40.

8. Cain shares with Judas * the reputation of having a red or yellow beard: Merry Wives of Windsor, I, iv, 23.

9. Cain was begotten at a time of the year when copulation was forbidden: Piers Plowman B, IX, 120 .

10. Satan was Cain's father.

For web images see: http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/g/ghiberti/paradiso/3kilabel.jpg

http://clipart.christiansunite.com/Bible_Characters_Clipart/Cain_and_Abel_Clipart/

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Emerson; Peltolta; Patterson.

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CATALOGUE

The literary catalogue is a rhetorical device as old as Homer and as modern as Joyce or Fitzgerald. One of the most famous of such lists is the catalogue of ships in the Iliad . The lists of Gatsby's guests in The Great Gatsby, and the recurring catalogues in Joyce's Ulysses are familiar to modern readers. Indeed a catalogue of catalogues in English literature from earliest times would be very lengthy. W.H. Auden even makes an appreciation of such lists one of the four indispensable qualifications for the critic of poetry.

Used as a mere conventional device of amplification the trope can be a trial for the reader; skillfully employed it can produce true poetry of the kind familiar from the resounding catalogues in Shakespeare and Milton.

Nicholas Howe makes a distinction between the list and the catalogue, a distinction he finds useful in his extensive treatment of catalogue poems in Old English, and he treats only poems that are catalogues rather than have catalogues, including Menologium, Fates of the Apostles, Gifts of Men, Fortunes of Men, Precepts and Maxims I & II; Widsið and Deor.

The catalogue, by which we mean mostly a list, was very frequently used in later medieval literature, especially within longer poems, and Chaucer was as fond of it as any. His work will be cited here as the primary example, partly because he is best known, partly because his use of the technique illustrates most of the stages between the drily conventional and the splendidly successful. He has, for example, lists of trees, birds, authors, and ‑‑‑ something he was especially fond of — martyrs or traitors to love. His lists of trees in Parliament of Fowls (176 ff) and the Knights Tale (A 2921‑3), derived probably from the Roman de la Rose and ultimately from the classics, hardly rise above dutiful imitation. The same can be said for his lists of animals and birds in Parliament (182 ff and 344 ff).

His lists of unlucky or unfaithful lovers in the Man of Law's Introduction (B1, 61 ff), the House of Fame (397 ff), and Parliament (283‑292) are also conventional enough, but the list in the ballade in the Legend of Good Women has real charm. The LGW itself is, of course, an extended version of the catalogue topos, in the tradition of Ovid's Heroides and Boccaccio's De Claribus Mulieribus. The list of faithful wives and chaste maidens in Dorigen's complaint in the Franklins Tale (F 1379 ff) is so diffuse as to lead one to believe that, in the context, Chaucer is using it with slyly comic intent. Openly comic and very skillful is Jankyn's list of wicked wives and their victims in the Wife of Bath's Tale (D. 715 ff).

But Chaucer also pokes fun at himself and the trope in Sir Thomas. As L.H. Loomis puts it: "Sir Thopas, a whimsical mea culpa, parodies the convention with no fewer than seven lists -- of physical attributes, of pastimes, of spices , birds, food, arms, and heroes of romance.” (S&A, p.550). The particularly wooden use of the convention that he was burlesquing is well illustrated in The Squire of Low Degree with its recurring catalogues of birds, trees, heroes, wines and even bedroom furnishings. Chaucer’s catalogue of Chanticleer’s physical beauties in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale may also be making fun of the catalogue of head-to-foot features of beautiful female body as illustrated by the rhetorician Geoffrey de Vinsauf in Poetria Nova.

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Hoffman; Curtius; Index s.v. “Catalogues”; Robinson, Riverside: notes to Parlement; Howe; Gass.

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COKAYNE (COCKAIGNE)

A land of plenty , delight and total laziness. The name occurs in a medieval doggerel poem which shows a land inhabited by monks and nuns who make merry with each other sexually, where the monastery fabric is made of pies, sugar cakes and puddings, birds drop from the air already cooked, water is used only for landscape gardening and washing, the rivers flow with milk and honey, oil and wine. To get there one has to wade in hog's dung up to the neck for seven years.

The poem is both a coarse satire on the monastic life and a crude parody of the Earthly

Paradise.* The modern American hobo song The Big Rock Candy Mountain provides an amusing and instructive parallel and a confirmation of the inadequacy of our human imagination when it comes to dealing with heaven or Elysium.

______________________________________

Robbins; translations in the Norton and Oxford anthologies of English Literature; Pleij.

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COMITATUS

The Latin word used by Tacitus and retained by scholars to refer to the special band of retainers gathered around a chief in early Germanic society, and to the mutual bond between chief and retainer. Tacitus describes the institution succinctly: "Lads attach themselves to men of mature strength and of long approved valor....These followers vie with each other as to who shall rank first with his chief, the chiefs as to who shall have the most numerous and the bravest followers. It is an honor as well as a source of strength to be thus always surrounded by a large body of picked youths.... When they go into battle, it is a disgrace for the chief to be surpassed in valor, a disgrace for his followers not to equal the valor of the chief. And it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief, and return from the field. To defend, to protect him, to ascribe one's own brave deeds to his renown, is the height of loyalty. The chief fights for victory, his vassals for their chief.... Men look to the liberality of their chief for their warhorse and their bloodstained and victorious lance." (Germania, 13‑14. Church and Brodribb translation). However, there have been legitimate questions about the propriety of using the authority of Tacitus for actions and attitudes that belong to people and places far distant in time and place from his Germania, and doubts of the accuracy of his statements about that place and its customs.

Until recently The Battle of Maldon (especially 185 to end) was generally felt to be the locus classicus in OE literature illustrating the accuracy of Tacitus's account and the longevity of the heroic Germanic ideal. This presumably applies even if, as some critics contend, the account of the battle is largely fictional rather than historical. However, Rosemary Woolf asserts forcefully that the "obligation" to die with one's lord in a battle encounter is unknown in OE writing before Maldon. Beowulf, for example, survives the battle in which Hygelac dies, and Wiglaf survives Beowulf with honor. Woolf surmises that the author of Maldon may have got the idea from the Old Icelandic Bjarkamal — many Vikings had settled in England by 991 — or from reading Tacitus. Others object that Bjarkamal may be from the 12C or that Livy's account of Horatius at the bridge is a possible classical source. This "obligation" is not at all the same as the well‑attested obligation to be loyal to and avenge one's lord, even if this involved certain death. This feature is familiar from the Finn, Heathobard, and Wiglaf episodes of Beowulf and in the Anglo‑Saxon Chronicle for the year 755.

As late as the 15C Alliterative Morte, the king specifically says he is going to face the monster alone,

And the king keenly commanded his knights

For to bide with their blonks and boun no further horses & go

“For I will seek this saint by myself [al]one...” saint = giant (a joke) 935-7

Nevertheless, Sir Kay shows considerable trepidation about their honor when the king has been wounded by the giant:

Then Sir Kayous the keen unto the king starts

Said: “Alas we are lorn. My lord is confounded

Overfallen with a fiend. Us is foul happened by a devil

We mun be forfeited in faith and flemed forever. ” & banished

1152-5

The king has not been killed, as Kay feared, and their reputations do not suffer.

The importance of the concept of mutual loyalty between lord and comitatus is pointed up by the frequency of terms for both in OE poetry. Retainers are gesiþ(as), rinc(as), ðegn(as), (ge)dryht, ðeod; duguþ, werod, haeleþ, etc. (Many more terms are listed in Klaeber's Beowulf, p. 270.). The lord is called dryhten (head of the dryht); þeoden (head of the ðeod), beaggyfa (ring giver), eorla hleo (head or covering of warriors), helm maþþumgyfa (helmet/chief of treasure-givers), etc. Moreover, the vocabulary and some of the concepts of this heroic ideal are retained by AS Christian poets. In Genesis B, for example, Satan is the rebellious member of God's comitatus, who establishes a comitatus of his own. In Andreas the apostles are referred to as haeleþ, þegnas, rincas, etc., just as if they were Germanic warriors. God is weroda dryhten, duguþa wealdend, (ruler/leader of an army, lord of hosts), aeþelinga helm (helmet/head of nobles) like a king or chief.

The difficult situation of a man cut off, for whatever reason, from his lord and comitatus is a favorite theme with OE poets. See, for example, the laments of the scop* in Deor, and of the narrator of The Wanderer, and the fate predicted by Wiglaf for the members of Beowulf's comitatus who deserted him in his hour of need (Beowulf, 2884‑2891). The terms for such men are also numerous: wineleas (friendless), wraecca (wretch, outcast), angenga (alone-goer,solitary) freondleas (friendless), ealdorleas (which means both lordless and lifeless).

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D. Whitelock, chap. 2; Cherniss, chaps. 2, 3, 5; Woolf, " Obligation”.

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COMPLAINT (PLANCTUS)

A widespread mode in both secular and religious varieties, both with music and without. The complaint of Christ (Planctus Christi), especially popular from the 12C onwards, is often based on the "Improperia" (Reproaches) of the Good Friday service, in which Christ laments the ingratitude of mankind: "My people, what have I done to thee, or in what have I grieved thee? Answer me. Because I brought thee out of the land of Egypt, thou hast prepared a cross for thy savior" etc. This planctus is dramatized in the crucifixion plays of the cycles, notably those of Wakefield and York, and is also well represented in lyric form. A well‑known English lyric planctus of this kind is the Quia Amore Langueo, a powerful if flawed poem, combining elements of the "Improperia" and the Song of Songs, and in which Christ, the Hound of Heaven, pursues his beloved or spouse (the erring sinner) who seeks to flee Him.

Some of the earliest complaints are uttered not by Christ but by His mother as she stands at the foot of the cross watching her Son die. These are the Planctus Mariae, many of which are in Latin, and which occur in both lyric and dramatic form, in monologue and dialogue. Once again, an English dramatization can be found in the Wakefield (Towneley) crucifixion play. The English lyric versions are very numerous. There are other complaints by Mary where in Christ's infancy she laments his future fate which she already knows. (See Taylor, p. 612, note.)

The secular Complaint includes the lover's lament of unrequited or betrayed love or the lament for the death of a beloved or of a ruler (parodied by Chaucer in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale) or even laments for one’s colleagues as in Dunbar’s Lament for the Makars. There are also complaints about poverty, the fear of unemployment (see Scop*) or lack of promotion (see Begging Poem *); and there is the ever present Complaint Against the Times. The lover's complaint hardly needs illustration, and ranges from the anonymous simple lyric to Chaucer's sophisticated verses To His Lady and Complaint Unto Pity. Two financial complaints of very different kinds are The Owl and the Nightingale and Chaucer's Complaint to his Purse. The Complaint Against the Times can be represented again in Chaucer's minor poetry in Lak of Stedfastness as well as in Alain de Lille's De Planctu Naturae which so deeply influenced the satirist Jean de Meung and, of course, Chaucer himself.

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Taylor; Karl Young, especially chap 16; Brown‑Robbins, svv "BVM, Laments of," "Appeal", "Complaint".

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CONTEMPTUS MUNDI (Contempt of the World)

A pervasive medieval attitude based on the notion that this world is not only temporary, but that its goods and pleasures are seductive, leading the soul away from God, its true good both here and hereafter. The Consolations of Boethius simply strengthened, from a philosophical point of view, the theological attitude on the subject expressed by the early Fathers, especially Augustine and Jerome.

Commentary on the Contemptus Mundi nearly always involved a gloss on the sentences in I John 2: 15‑17: "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world....For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life. And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof, but he that doth the will of God abideth forever." A classic commentary is to be found in Augustine's Confessions (especially IV, 6‑10 and X, 30‑40), one of the first and probably the most influential in a long line of what became a whole genre of writing. But perhaps the central medieval statement of the idea was in Pope Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi (c. 1200), more accurately called De Miseria Humanae Conditionis, which Chaucer says that he translated in a version now lost.

Contemptus Mundi meant at least detachment from all the goods of this world, an active spiritual effort not to put one's trust in princes or in riches or in pleasure of any kind. Its more ascetic application, as in Innocent and many of those who followed him, involved an active rejection of the world's goods both physical and intellectual. This ascetic aspect was represented at its best by St. Francis of Assisi and his love of Lady Poverty, but it had in it more than a little Manicheanism and anti intellectualism, elements already present in the passages mentioned above from Augustine who distrusted his own pleasure even in color and music.

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COURTLY LOVE

Courtly love is a much-disputed term that refers to a philosophy or religion of love popularized by the medieval French troubadours. The term, however, was not coined until the nineteenth century by the French critic Gaston Paris for a literary fusion of chivalry and love, two prominent themes in medieval literature patronized by aristocrats, resulting in a literary convention which has had a long history. Whether or not it was ever an actual code of behavior has been hotly disputed, as such behavior would certainly have often come in conflict with other important social conventions and religious convictions. The code held that love of a man for a woman was not a brief madness, as the ancients inclined to think, but an ennobling passion that gave a man grace and every other worthwhile virtue, and even increased his military prowess. However, the male blessed or stricken by Love, eats and sleeps very little and his obsession sometimes leads to temporary madness. So the ancients were not altogether wrong. (See Lovers Pains *).

Love strikes where He wills (He is a god). But since aristocrats did not marry for Love but as family or national politics dictated, it followed that the passion of love was sometimes adulterous. According to Andreas Capellanus it was necessarily so: real love and marriage are incompatible. Partly as a result, love that ceases to be secret ceases to be.

As a literary convention, the concept of “courtly love” had wide‑ranging influence on the themes of narrative and lyric poetry in medieval literature. In his study of the literary expression of the convention, The Allegory of Love, (now much disputed), C. S. Lewis stated that medieval poets writing in the courtly tradition, consciously attempted to displace medieval Christianity’s judgement of passionate human love as directly associated with the Fall, and replace it with a religion of love that set itself up in opposition to Church teaching. But at least one other scholar finds the literature of courtly love expressing only secular versions of religious teaching:

(D.W. Robertson, Preface, 457).

Provençal troubadours popularized the particular sentiment of love called fin’ amors, which we refer to as courtly love. The fin’amors sentiment of the lyrics and narratives flourished in the sophisticated courts in the north, especially at Poitiers in France where Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie de Champagne resided in the late twelfth century. It was with the patronage of Marie de Champagne that Andreas Capellanus wrote De Amore -- The Art of Courtly Love (c. 1185), a document which purports to codify for the aristocracy (and literary posterity) the precepts of this “honorable” style of amorous behavior.

Extracts from a translation of De Amore, including the famous Commandments of Love, can be found on the web at

http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/andreas/de_amore.html

Marie was also the literary patron of Chrétien de Troyes whose Arthurian romances dealt in a central way with love, notably in the portrayal of adulterous love in Chrétien’s Lancelot (2^nd half of 12C). These literary vehicles for the courtly literary tradition were immensely influential because they joined the sentiment of fin’amors with epic spirit of adventure. Two of the great legends of the Middle Ages have at their core the matter of adulterous love:(1) the Lancelot and Guinevere story beginning with Chretien’s Lancelot: the Knight of the Cart and culminating in

Malory’s Morte Darthur; and (2) the Tristan and Isolde story especially as contained in the version by Gottfried von Strasbourg (c. 1210).

In the older heroic ideal the individual man exerted himself, generally in a military fashion, for the good of the tribe or nation, and not primarily for his own satisfaction and certainly not for his love of a woman. The new set of set of values focused on the hero beset with the problems of love without altogether abandoning concern with military prowess. This literature reflected a new set of social values clearly influenced by women; in this courtly love ethic the female beloved was placed above the lover in a position analogous to the feudal relationship between lord and vassal

Works such as Guillaume de Lorris’s part of the Roman de la Rose (c. 1235 º) adapted the theme of courtly love to allegory*, a genre which had traditionally been didactic and religious. The Roman, the first part by Guillaume, the larger part by Jean de Meung, enjoyed a large readership and became one of the primary texts from which the literary treatment of the themes and motifs of courtly literature was passed to other vernaculars through translation, including a large fragment attributed to Chaucer (Romaunt of the Rose). His own great poem Troilus and Criseyde is his contribution to the courtly romance tradition. An “anti‑courtly love” treatment of that theme is displayed in Henryson’s sequel, The Testament of Cresseid (late 1400’s).

Again, at the very end of the Middle Ages (c. 1470) comes Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, the most famous English rendition of the whole Arthurian story, incorporating the love of Lancelot and Guinevere derived from French Romances and the English Stanzaic Morte. Malory makes it very clear that it is the adulterous love between Lancelot and Guinevere that causes the breakup of the fellowhip of the Round Table, which is to him the great tragedy.

J. Clawson

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CYCLE PLAYS (See Mystery Plays)

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DANCE OF DEATH (DANSE MACABRE).

The literature and art of the later Middle Ages, particularly in the 15C, were more than ordinarily obsessed with the subject of death. No doubt, the recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague, especially the memory of the Black Death of the 1340's, had much to do with the deep concern about sudden and final dissolution. The Dance of Death is one powerful and unforgettable expression of this haunting fear.

About 1424 the cloisters of the Church of the Innocents in Paris were covered with a series of illustrations depicting the Coming of Death to a representative selection of medieval people. Death, a skeleton or mummy, was seen leading away pope, emperor, lady, merchant, peasant, etc. The pictures were accompanied by verses later translated into English by John Lydgate in whose poem the following characters have a sort of dialogue with Death: squire, abbott, merchant, good monk (a Carthusian), man of law, bad monk, juror, minstrel, magician, parson, laborer, child, hermit. Lydgate thought of “Machabre” as a person, a “doctor” who draws a moral at the end.

Thereafter, similar series of pictures, with or without verses, were painted on the walls of English and European churches and convents, including the wall of the north cloister of the old St. Paul's church in London where the painting was known as the Dance of Paul's. After the advent of printing, the Dance appeared in many woodblock illustrations, most strikingly in the 16C work of Holbein, who died of the plague in 1543.

Holbein’s illustrations can be seen on the Web at: http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/holdod/holdod.htm

The lifted leg of the Mors and the grin on its face express eagerness and glee in dragging the victim off; by contrast, in many paintings the understandable reluctance of the living is shown in their almost complete lack of movement. The original artist probably meant to suggest no more than the coming of death to each individual, but since he had to reproduce Death in each panel that showed a different type in society, the end result was a series of pairs that, together with the leer and half‑leap of the skeleton, suggested a grotesque dance. Lygate’s Death refers regularly to his “dance.” The irony of pairing the prancing Death with the almost immobile living is, if obvious, nevertheless potent, and some later 15C versions of the Dance do show men and women actually dancing together, with Death in attendance ready to strike, or living people dancing with skeletons to the music of drums or pipes.

A related pictorial theme is that of the Three Dead and the Three Living (Trois Morts et Trois Vifs) in which three young and generally fashionable people come face to face with three dead ones whose message is: “Such as we are shall you be.” See e.g. Henryson’s Thre Deid Pollis (Three Deathsheads).

Another literary version of the theme occurs in the Vado Mori poems, some as early as the 13 C. Here each stanza begins (and sometimes ends) with the phrase vado mori (I go to die). The first stanza of an English rendering goes as follows (spelling somewhat modernized):

I wend to death -- knight stith in stour

Through fight in field I won the flower;

No fights me taught the death to quelle;

I wend to death, sooth I you tell.

I go to death, a knight strong in battle.

Through fight in field I won the prize

No fights taught me to conquer Death.

I go to Death, the truth I tell

(Index, 1387)

The Timor Mortis (Fear of Death) poems of Dunbar and Lydgate, and a host of others, perpetuate the theme in their own way.

The Dance and the Vado Mori have obvious if limited, dramatic or mimetic possibilities, and there is evidence that both were performed in church or elsewhere. The play of Everyman, however, while it does not fit neatly into either category, takes the idea to full dramatic power.

Early spellings and rhymes, both English and French, make it clear that "macabre" was pronounced "macabray".

A full if not exhaustive list of examples of the Dance of Death and artistic versions of the Trois Morts et Trois Vifs can be found at

http://www.geocities.com/ppollefeys/dance.htm___

_________________

Hammond; Kurtz, Pearsall: Anthology.

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DAWN SONG See Aube

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DEADLY SINS (See SEVEN)

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DEBATE, DIALOGUE

A literary form probably as old as literature itself: examples can be found from ancient Egypt and India, in Greek and Latin, and even in the Bible (Job).

The DEBATE / DIALOGUE was especially popular in the later Middle Ages, in many languages and in many kinds of verse that we often classify in other genres. It is possible, for example, to see the Flyting * as a form of debate . It is certainly a verbal exchange between two personages, real or imaginary, but openly hostile. The verbal conflicts between the Pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; the exchanges between the narrator and his daughter in Pearl or the many conversations in Piers Plowman might also be thought of as debates. But the term is generally reserved for whole poems or discrete sections of poems which are formally set up as debates or dialogues.

These were particularly commonly in medieval Latin and French, and deal with many topics sacred and profane, profound and frivolous. The most influential dialogue / debate for the Middle ages was probably Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy, a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy that dealt with the most basic of difficulties: the problem of evil that overcomes even good men. There are debates between God and man, soul and body (particularly common), between old and young, female lover and male lover, Christ and Mary, vices and virtues, water and wine, and so on.

The best-known examples in Middle English are probably The Owl and the Nightingale; The Parliament of the Three Ages (Youth, Middle Age, Old Age), Winner and Waster (the thrifty and the extravagant), and the debate among the birds at the end of the Parliament of Fowls (the "seed fowl, the worm-fowl, the water fowl, and the fowls of ravine"). In two of these poems the protagonists are birds and there are a number of other such avian debates. It is to be noticed also that the debate in Parliament of Fowls can be classified as a Demande D'Amour * ; the Owl and Nightingale is a Begging Poem * as well as a debate; Winner and Waster is a Complaint * and also a Dream Vision as is the Parliament of Three Ages.

In some debates there is a judge or referee of sorts (Owl & N.; Parliament of Fowls); in others, it is for the reader to decide.

__________

Utley; Conlee.

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DE CASIBUS ILLUSTRIUM VIRORUM (The Fall of Great Men)

A theme popular in the MA and later, and intimately related to the Wheel of Fortune, *

Ubi Sunt* and similar notions. In fact, it might be said that all of these are aspects of the Contemptus Mundi * attitude . De Casibus Illustrium Virorum is the title of a book by Boccaccio, a collection of tales largely devoted to the fall of men in high place from power or virtue. Boccaccio's book was written to demonstrate to princes the virtues of moderation and humility by pointing out the results of excessive pride and ambition in other princes who fell from power or grace. The idea is, of course, older than Boccaccio; the most obvious predecessors were Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy, and the Romance of the Rose, especially ll. 5921‑6900.

In medieval English the literary progeny of these earlier works are Chaucer's Monk’s Tale, which equates the fall of great men with tragedy, and Lydgate's Fall of Princes. The latter, rather more polite than its indirect source (Boccaccio) was written at the command of Duke Humphrey, who could, it appears, have benefitted from its lessons.

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DEMANDE D'AMOUR

A question of the conundrum variety about a problem of love. According to Andreas Capellanus such questions were propounded on occasion to a "court" of ladies at Poitiers, headed by Marie, Countess of Champagne and her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. At any rate , this game found its way into literature. A series of thirteen such puzzling questions can be found, for example, in Boccaccio's Filocolo, where Fiammetta is the "judge".

In ME the best examples are probably in Chaucer. At the end of Part I of the Knight’s Tale the narrator asks his audience: "Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamon?" One is in prison but can see Emily every day through the bars; the other is free but cannot see or speak to her. In the Wife of Bath's Tale the demandes are put to the young knight in the tale: first he is asked what women most desire, then, at the end of the tale the old hag asks him if he will have her foul, old and faithful, or young, fair and doubtful. At the end of the Franklin’s Tale the narrator asks his audience who was the most generous character in his story: the knight who insisted that his wife fulfill her rash promise at whatever cost, the squire who excused her from that promise, or the magician who excused the squire from payment for his services? In Boccaccio's version of this tale in the Filocolo Fiammetta decides that the husband is the most generous.

Dunbar’s alliterative poem The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo ( The Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow) seems to mock the tradition: a question by a widow to two wives about their marriages leads to three remarkably coarse disquisitions on married love from the female viewpoint. The poem ends with this demande (the spelling of the Middle Scots has been modernized):

Of these three wanton wives that I have written here

Which would you waill to your wife if you should wed one? (choose)

The phrase demande d'amour is occasionally applied to the interior monologue of a lover in romance, where he or she inwardly debates the likelihood of a return of love by the beloved.

_____________

Amy Kelly; Parry.

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DOUZEPERS or DOUSEPERIS (TWELVE PEERS)

The word is from the French phrase "Les douze pers," the twelve peers of Charlemagne's household, the best and bravest in his kingdom. The names of the members of this select group vary considerably in different sources, and there are at least twenty. The invariable ones seem to be Roland (Orlando), Oliver, Ogier the Dane, and Ganelon* who was the traitor. Others are Otuel, Ferumbras, or Fierabras, and Nayme(s) of Bavaria. The term occurs in ME even in the singular and applied to other knights of renown, mostly nameless. In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, for example, it is used fairly frequently to refer to Arthur's knights and others as a convenient alliterating element in the phrase "dukes and douzepers."

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DRAGON (L. draco, OE draca, hence early ME "fire drake")

Dragons are known in many cultures widely separated in time and space, but especially in the East, where they are sometimes venerated. In the West, by contrast, they seem to be always objects of terror. The term "dragon" is used in the English bible and in Western literatures to indicate various kinds of vaguely designated monster: in the Book of Daniel, for example, and in the legends of Greece, particularly those of Hercules and the Hydra, Perseus and Jason, where they serve, as in medieval literature, to give opportunity to heroes to show their mettle. There is also, of course, the biblical dragon of the Apocalypse (Revelations), chap 12, which has many heads, like the Hydra, and is called "the serpent". It belches forth a flood of water (vv. 15‑16) rather than fire to kill the woman. It is, of course, a symbol of moral depravity, and figures as such as late as Spenser and Milton.

The most notable of the few dragons in Medieval English literature is unquestionably the dragon in Beowulf which like the other great dragon of northern myth, Fafnir, guards a treasure rather than capturing or devouring maidens like some of the dragons in oriental or Mediterranean legend.

Draca sceal on hlaewe It is the nature of the dragon to sit in a barrow

Frod, fraetwum wlanc Old and glorying in its treasures.

(Maxims II, l.26)

Beowulf's dragon also spouts fire, like some other northern dragons. It has been suggested ‑‑ by Baring‑Gould, for example ‑‑ that the flame‑throwing quality of the dragon is really the expression of a memory of some appalling invasion that involved fiery devastation, a notion interestingly developed in a modern novel, Eaters of Darkness. A dragon figures in Arthur’s dream in the Alliterative Morte, and couple of dragons lurk under a castle in Snowdonia in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.

The dragon-slayer of medieval story was sometimes the heroic or chivalric warrior like Beowulf or Tristan, Sir Guy of Warwick or Bevis, but was sometimes (in hagiographical stories) saintly or even female rather than secular and manly. St. George, perhaps the most famous of dragon‑slayers, manages to combine the holy and the heroic, like his later literary incarnation, Redcross, in The Faerie Queene. Holy maidens like St. Martha and St. Margaret make do with sanctity alone.

While the term "dragon" covers a wide variety of monsters whose shape is never exactly specified, in general and from early times dragons were depicted as having elongated, rather serpentine bodies (OE wyrm, worm) often with scales, wings, talons, horns, and forked tongue. In a wall painting in one English church such a dragon takes the place of the usual serpent as the tempter of Eve.

_____________

Klaeber, pp.xxi - xxiii and 208-215

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DREAM VISION POEMS

There was a good deal of interest in dream theory in the Middle Ages, and considerable difference of opinion about the origin and relevance of dreams: some held that dreams were generally inconsequential, others that they were often of considerable significance. Those of the "significant" school had biblical support from both testaments e.g. Pharaoh's dream of the fat cows and lean cows and Joseph's interpretation (Gen. 41) and many others in the O.T.; and in the NT e.g. the other Joseph's dreams that assured him that Mary his wife was pregnant with Christ through divine intervention (Matt. 1:20, 2:13‑20). They also had Macrobius's famous Commentary on the Dream of Scipio which distinguished between 5 different kinds of dream, 3 of them significant ("visio, somnium, and oraculum") and 2 insignificant ("insomnium" and " visum" or "phantasma"). The first 3 were felt to be prophetic in one way or another by Macrobius; the other 2 either simply carried on the worries or desires of the day, or were formed of disconnected and fragmentary images (phantasma) supposedly the result of indigestion. These last two, of least interest to the philosopher, might be of more interest to the psychologist and poet.

Chaucer has several dream vision poems, in most of which he has some discussion of dream theory: The Book of the Duchess (which mentions both Macrobius and the OT Joseph, 280-4), The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, The Parliament of Fowls, especially the opening of House of Fame on the causes and significance of dreams. The argument of Chanticleer with Pertelote about the value of his dream in The Nun's Priest's Tale illustrates the common medieval disagreements.

Though Chaucer seems to have known Macrobius, he was also part of a poetic dream vision tradition and did not require direct knowledge of Macrobius or dream theory in order to write dream poems. The most influential sources of this tradition for medieval poets were Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and the Romance of the Rose, a French poem of the early 13 cent. Chaucer had translated both of these in whole or in part. The Romance set the tradition for a host of French poems dealing mostly with erotic love, notably by Machaut and Froissart. It may also have influenced English poems as different as Langland's Piers Plowman and the anonymous Pearl, although there is possibly a native English alliterative dream tradition that dated back to the OE Dream of the Rood. Winner and Waster and The Parlement of the Three Ages, which are both Dream Visions and Debates,* may be indebted to both traditions.

In the dream poems the narrator tells us that he fell asleep, frequently outdoors as a rule, and dreamed the substance of his poem. Often he does not figure in this dream himself, but is merely a spectator of the scenes he describes, but notably in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, and House of Fame, and Langland's Piers Plowman the dreamer is a very active, and sometimes deliberately comic protagonist. In the Pearl he is a deeply hurt man who needs to be talked and persuaded out of his grief in a debate that is also indebted to Boethius’s Consolation.

________________

Winny; Windeatt.

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EARTHLY PARADISE

This myth is universal and timeless, and ranges in its western manifestations from the Garden of Eden to The Big Rock Candy Mountain. For Western vernacular literature the sources lie mainly in the Bible and in the Greek and Roman classics. Genesis provides a picture of a fruitful Eden irrigated by four rivers one of which flows through a land rich in gold and precious stones. But there are far more lush descriptions of paradisal places and ideal landscapes in Homer and Hesiod, in Virgil's pastoral poetry and Claudian's epithalamia. Early Christian theologians and poets borrowed from such classical sources to flesh out the rather sparse descriptions of Eden in Genesis. Some of them clearly believed in the continued existence of an Earthly Paradise, and there was a good deal of speculation about its geographical location.

By the time of Tertullian (died 220 A.D.) the features of the EP were rather well set, and the medieval tradition adds little. In the EP trees, flowers and fruit abound perpetually, the air is always warm and fragrant, fountains plash and murmuring streams flow pleasantly through the land, sometimes over beds of precious stones. There is no pain, disease or want, neither anger nor war, no night, no death. To these features, equally appropriate to Elysium or Paradise, Christian writers added the four rivers mentioned in Genesis the first three of which were often associated with the Nile, the Ganges and the Tigris. Also added were the Trees of Life and of Knowledge from Genesis, and often jeweled walls and palaces similar to those in the Apocalypse (Revelations). The O.T. figures, Enoch and Elijah, who had not tasted death, were permanent residents.

For medieval writers the EP is always in the East, at the other side of a huge ocean or desert, frequently at the top of a mountain, and guarded by a wall of flame. It is somewhere beyond the land of Prester John, according to Mandeville’s Travels, and medieval maps often show its location somewhere in or near India or China. The EP tradition helped to form the secular love gardens of medieval poetry which, in turn, influenced the form of the enchanted false paradises and blissful bowers of the Renaissance.

Descriptions of the EP are many, though most of the full portrayals do not occur in the more "literary" works of the period. The OE Phoenix, however, provides a rather full description along typical lines. Here is a small extract:

Ne maeg ðaer ren ne snaw Nor may there rain , nor snow

ne forstes fnæst ne fyres blæst Nor the bite of frost, nor fire’s blast

ne haegles hryre, ne hrymes dryre Nor fall of hail, nor descent of rime (frost)

ne sunnan hætu ne sincaldu Nor heat of the sun, nor constant cold

ne wearm weder ne winterscur Nor torrid weather, nor winter shower

wihte gewyrdan Molest one

For ME see Mandeville's Travels, (which also includes a false paradise), and The Land of Cokayne whose coarse parody testifies to the familiarity of the legend (see Cokayne *).

See also Dante's Purgatorio, 28 and the Romance of the Rose 19,975 ff. Milton's Paradise Lost, Bk. IV is indebted to the classical and EP traditions.