Antecedents of the English novel, 1400-1600 (from Chaucer to Deloney) 0313212198

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ANTECEDENTS OF THE

ENGLISH

NOVEL

14400-1600

ANTECEDENTS OF | THE ENGLISH NOVEL 1400-1600 (from Chaucer to Deloney)

by MARGARET

Oe

SCHLAUCH

D PRESS, PUBLISHERS

ESTPORT,

CONNECTICUT

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Date

Schlauch, Margaret, 1898Antecedents of the English novel, 1400-1600. Reprint of the lst ed. published by PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, Warszawa, Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English fiction--Early modern, 1500-1700-History and criticism. 2. pa seed 1100-1500--History

33.S3_ 1979

ISBN 0-313-21219-8

English literature--Middle, and criticism. I. Title.

823'.2'09

'

7178-23909

Copyright 1963 by Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe Pwn— (Polish Scientific Publishers) Warszawa First edition 1963 Reprinted with the permission of Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe

Reprinted in 1979 by Greenwood Press, Inc. 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport, CT 06880 Printed in the United States of America

100987654321

TABLE OF CONTENTS refatory NOte pcs hes) arse. ceroprd ouleei die aio

I. INTRODUCTORY

REMARKS

anes

Sahay ol lorne

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

II. . Women

Characters and Romantic Love. .......

. Contributory Techniques in the Romances ...... . Sir Gawain as Society Romance ........... . The Achievement of Chaucer’s Jroilus and Ginye. . The Medieval Heritage in Shorter Narratives: Bien AkhWwn ANG WEADUGUR ois cleus cose oreeinee eh eve ie atts aes

Mil.

11 11 17 23 28

THE LATE PHASE OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE 1, Changing Social Contexts ........... aa be 2. Survival and Adaptation of Simpler Types ..... . 3. Sustained Passages of Society Romance in Early Prose . . 4. The Special Case of Caxton’s Reynard as. Ariti-Romance

47 47 51 65 78

THE RISE OF POPULAR FICTION: ITS MINOR FORMS

82. 82

1. From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes

pee

eae hay sees

2. Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes ...... 3. The Anti-Romantic Novelle ............-. 4. Realistic Narrative in the Social Pamphlets; Long Meg. .

99 111

ROMANTIC FICTION CONTINUED AND TRANSFORIMBD brig) Sach ee ae ee is Pones de:de ayes oe 1. New Successors of the Society Romance. .......

120 120

2. Medieval Allegory and Debate Continued

as Prose Ro-

MANCE rete ee Ete te ee ahsem aes 3. Separate Romantic Novelle: FirstGroup ........ 4. Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group ....... SiueramedNovelle;

VI.

vil

COURTLY

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

wed wyede smag hin by(od ene SEL cline as

ROMANCE,

ELIZABETHAN

8

STYLE...

Neo-Chivalric Tales Translated into English ..... . The English Imitators. ............-44-. The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type. ... . The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Euphuistic Type... .. Euphuism Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle ...... -

Table of Contents

Vi VII.

VIII.

TOWARDS THE FORMS OF MODERN FICTION . . 1. The Impact of the Spanish Picaresque ....... 2. Some English Picaresque ...........2..2.. 3. Celestina and the Elizabethan Bawds ........ 4. Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters in a New Style 5. Fiction for the New Middle Classes .........

RETROSPECT

AND

SUMMARY

...........

PREFATORY

NOTE

THE course of English fiction from Chaucer to Deloney has often been traced in compendious works such as E. A. Baker’s History of the English Novel. Most of the names and titles referred to in the present study are already known, if not well known,

to students

of the subject.

But many

individual

texts,

very interesting from the paint of view of both English and comparative literature, have been passed over with but perfunctory notice. In a number of instances both the English translation or adaptation and its continental source still await modern critical editions. Yet these paired texts offer many challenging problems to the student of fiction, especially to one who is concerned with more than the mere cataloguing of plots and their origins. They are significant for the history of English style, a field to which linguistic analysis can make a significant contribution. English translators of tales in French

or German, Flemish

or Spanish,

were faced with the challenging task of conveying the stylistic values of alien works into their own tongue. Some of them, like Caxton, have indicated that they were quite aware of the difficulties involved. As they wrestled for solutions they were in effect contributing in a special way to the formation of a narrative style appropriate to English. Their efforts cannot have been without influence on contemporaries who were trying to do the same thing in original creative works. At various points in the present study I have therefore introduced concrete examples from related texts in order to illustrate typical situations of the sort. It is to be hoped that my indications of work still to be done will stimulate some further comparative studies based on hitherto neglected texts and taking into account problems of stylistics as well as others. As a matter of fact, not all instances of works of a given fype, whether original or trans-

Prefatory Note

Vili

lated, have been covered in the present discussion. Among such widely cultivated literary types as the novella, the belated chivalric romance and the satirical tale, it has been impossible to discuss every known example. I have tried however to include accounts of enough representative examples in order to convey a fair

impression of each. Among those not here analyzed’ there will also be found materials for supplementary special studies. A word is needed about techniques of presenting citations

from early printed books. I have tried to keep these as readable as possible. Hence I have silently expanded all the obvious abbreviations in them, and I have introduced occasional obvious emendations and brief explanations (for instance synonyms of archaic words) within the cited passages, enclosed in square brackets. Following the general practice of modern editors of Romance language texts I have normalized the use of capitals and of such letters as i and j, u and v, but I have left the English versions unchanged in this respect. In the footnote references I have reproduced the orthography of original title pages, but have made no attempt to follow the more erratic printers’ usages with respect to capitals, italics, italic capitals and the like. As will appear in the course of the discussion, many questions of literary relationship here touched upon still await clarification and solution. For one thing, the relationship of many English versions to their foreign models and sources needs to be studied with a view to establishing precisely which edition of an early

printed text was used by its translator. I have not always been able to make use of the edition which stood chronologically or otherwise closest to the English. Problems of the exact filiation of texts are in fact. conspicuous among the many which require further investiga-

tion by specialists in the field of early English prose Warsaw, January 1962 1 For instance:

Barnabe

fiction. NS.

Rich,

The Adventures

of Brusanus,

Prince

of

Hungaria (1592); the romances of Henry Robarts; Richard Johnson’s Nine Worthies of London (1592) and Seaven Champions of Christendome (1596-97); Robert Parry, Moderatus the Blacke Knight (1595). For these and others see the list in E. W. Bateson, The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1 (1941), pp. 728-32.

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTORY

I

REMARKS

THE literary genre known as the novel is extraordinarily inclusive, and many are the subtypes into which it can be divided. Yet a generally satisfying definition is for practical purposes not too difficult to formulate. We all assume more or less consistently that this is a specifically modern form of fiction, realized at some length in prose (not in verse, as were the ancient and feudal epics), dealing with ordinary men and women (not the supernatural or larger-than-life figures of the age of myth), and making some claims to verisimilitude in its manner. of presentation. By a convention generally accepted, the action is set forth as an account of something that actually happened. Locale and circumstance are evoked in such a way as to facilitate the reader’s imagined participation as an intimately involved observer. Since the 18th century,

therefore,

the

tendency

has been

to deal with those

classes in society which have risen in importance since the eclipse of the feudal aristocracy: the urban middle classes first of all,and later such more inclusive groups as workers and farmers, also salaried folk and various lesser groups attached to these major ones. It becomes easier to recognize the type we call novel when we contrast it with epic or courtly romance, folk tale or popular ballad. But what a variety of forms and techniques is nevertheless subsumed under this single term! The author of a novel may rely on any of several media to convey his story. He may use letters exchanged among his characters, straightforward narrative containing much or little dialogue, much or little reportage and commentary. The point of view may be coldly detached and objective or obviously partisan and subjective. The events chronicled may range from the minute doings of private persons shown

5

i. Introductory

Remarks

in a domestic setting, to the deeds of generals and men of state in a panorama of world significance. It may embody disquisitions on history and geography (one remembers, for instance, the Napoleonic battle scenes treated by Thackeray, Hugo and Tolstoi), or detailed descriptions of a modern technological process in factory or laboratory, if these are necessary for an understanding of the action. Some of the great achievements in novel-writing have in effect created a microcosmic image of a whole section of modern society in one of its concrete phases. Among these are Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina, for instance, or Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu,

or Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg. Others have limited themselves to very restricted groups concisely presented, but they have nevertheless managed to imply wider social horizons within a short span of narrative. This was done, for instance, by the

pioneer Swedish novelist C.L.J. Almquist

(born 1793) in his

Sara Videbeck, and much later by the American Edith Wharton in her stark novelette of rural New England, Ethan Frome.

Characteristic of our own time is the concentration on the inner complications of an individual’s psyche, analyzed by various techniques through layers and layers of experience and memory down to the level of things seemingly quite forgotten. The material treated may be and often is extended to include lapses from sanity or the phantasmagoria of dreams. Here is an area unknown to the earliest novelists and their precursors. Outstanding modern

examples areto be found in the works of James Joyce, who used the stream of consciousness in his Ulysses and followed it up with the stream of unconsciousness in Finnegans Wake; also in the novels of Franz Kafka, who

made

use of dream

states as

essential adjuncts of his satirical method of presentation. It should be remembered, however, that the very personal dreams and memories and suppressed experiences deployed by authors like Joyce and Kafka contribute in the end to a picture that is essentially public and social, for they serve to sharpen the image of modern man in a specific environment. For these particular authors this is as much as to say: modern man in a non-socialist

i. Introductory Remarks

3

environment such as Dublin before the First World War or Prague before the Second. The images they create are already somewhat

generalized by their contexts. On the surface, to be sure, it would seem that completely private experiences such as dreams, unspoken thoughts and inner

streams of consciousness (not to speak of the subconscious) do not lend themselves to use in novels, for the novel has from its beginnings in the 18th century been consistently oriented towards a social point of view. That is to say, the novel has traditionally reflected or tried to reflect, with varying degrees of fidelity and success, the publicly accepted motives that actuate real men and women

in their relations with one

another.

Nothing could be

more social, in this sense, than the works of the great initiators Richardson and Fielding. For all his playful and subtle technique, Lawrence Sterne was close to them. Jane Austen too, that exquisite artist, was preeminently social in her interests. The great 19th-century English novelists— Thackeray and Dickens, Meredith and Hardy—followed close after these; and the same may be said

of their 20th-century continuators such as Galsworthy and Conrad. What then is to be said of the inner-oriented, seemingly quite ego-centred and non-social novels of Joyce and Kafka? Here too the world of external social relations is extensively present, if not

directly portrayed. The pioneer exploiter of the stream of consciousness technique, Dujardin, did after all give some sort of im-

pression of Parisian life in his Les lauriers sont coupés: the life of many people working and talkirig and serving one another, even though they are reflected exclusively in the narrow sphere of one man’s consciousness. As for Joyce’s Ulysses, despite its odd and disputable techniques and point of view, surely the social milieu of Dublin as a whole looms overwhelmingly large in the background of his characters’ doings and sayings and thinkings. The same will be found to be true of Finnegans Wake by those readers bold and industrious enough to adventure into the thickets of its special language. As for Kafka, it is clear that his satirical dream-sequences such as Amerika, The Trial and The Castle have an obvious

social foundation. We may not share the anxieties and the pes-

4

i. Introductory Remarks

simistic viewpoint of the author, but we may concede that, behind his very individual adaptations of the novel form, the implied area of interest remains preeminently social. It is the technique that has changed since the 18th century rather than the substance. Why it is that certain contemporary Western novelists (and their critics) strive to underemphasize the social aspects of narrative art and to overemphasize its private, less communicable elements, is a question which requires special analysis elsewhere. The fact remains, however, that whether emphasized or not ihe objective social relations within typically modern, non-feudal circles have afforded the raw material for most novel-writing since its usually recognized origin in the 18th century. The detailed and credible portrayal of people in non-aristocratic circles, seen in the course of their ordinary daily lives, has

been a major task of English novelists in particular, despite the numerous excursions made since Walter Scott into realms of fantasy and remote history. There is indeed a demonstrable connection between the rise of the new literary form worked out by Defoe and Richardson

and Fielding, and the class backgrounds

from which they emerged. But the question arises: did these innovators create in a vacuum when portraying people of their own sort, or did they operate within a tradition which was able to contribute something from an earlier time to their conceptions of realism? Did they have any precedents for their efforts to put down chronicles of imagined lives with a maximum fidelity to natural speech and action? Elementary textbooks in the history of English literature sometimes give the impression of a very abrupt beginning, or at least a very abrupt transformation, such as would be exceptional in the history of any art. Even Ernest Baker, who devoted the first volume of his monumental History of the English Novel' to a survey of fiction

anterior to Defoe, stated there that the preceding ages yield us hardly anything answering unmistakably to our modern conception of the novel. “Romance

there was

in prose

and verse, but

1 Vol. I: The Age of Romance from the Beginnings to the Renaissance (London, 1924); see especially the introductory chapter, p. 11 f.

i. Introductory Remarks

it had little to settled relation true, of course. because Baker

5

do with ordinary life,” while other types had no to actuality. Generally speaking, this statement is Neverthelessit is somewhat less than just, partly passed over in silence a number of the very prose

works which come

closer to the novel than any cited by him?,

and partly because he failed to trace consistently the contributions made by minor forms in the shaping of a modern novelistic style. The present study undertakes to survey afresh this earlier and still relatively neglected field, questing for evidences of continuity in style and subject matter within such traditions as lead to the novel. The age under consideration is, roughly, that between 1400 and 1600. The 17th century presents new problems and would require a separate study. On the other hand, there are distinctive patterns to be traced between the age of late medieval romance and the age of mannered narrative exemplified in Sidney and Lyly. The death of Chaucer marks the end of an exceptionally high period of achievement in verse narrative, the preferred medieval form. True enough,

romances

and other tales continued to be

written in verse during the coming century, but they were imitative, looking to the past for both contents and form. The conditions for oral entertainment of illiterate or only partially literate audiences in the earlier Middle Ages had made versification with rhyme or assonance or alliteration all but obligatory for practical reasons, as aids to memory. Such was the technological motive, we may say, for aesthetic form. But the multiplication of manuscripts and the spread of a custom of reading to oneself had already favoured the practice of retelling inherited romances in prose versions, beginning in France as early as the 13th century. A whole cycle of such prose redactions constituted the main library of texts upon which Sir Thomas Malory drew for his Morte d’ Arthur; and there were besides many instances of separate stories thus retold—and retold very well—by anonymous literary redactors. With the end of the 15th century, the invention of printing facili2 Eurialus and Lucrece, for instance, and Arthur of Little Britain, to name

but.two. See chs. 3 and 5.

6

i. Introductory Remarks

tated enormously the spread of literacy and the acquisition of texts by individual persons. Hence too the more rapid spread of silent reading as opposed to public delivery or chanted recitation. On this new form of entertainment is posited the development of precursors for the modern novel in the two centuries before 1600. Concomitant with the expansion of prose as a vehicle we shall observe an increased tendency to introduce elements which we would today call realistic. This term will be used here in a very broad way. The problem of defining realism in terms satisfactory for all of art history is still under debate among specialists and critics of many schools. For working purposes it may be assumed however that an author inclines to realism insofar as he inclines to present his characters in a known environment socially and economically conditioned in a given epoch: consuming, let us say, the food actually produced by serfs or villeins or free farmers rather than that provided by magic table-cloths or cauldrons of plenty. (Not that magic repasts do not have their places also, and properly so, in literature of a more symbolic kind, whether

primitive or sophisticated.) The success of realistic portrayal depends on many factors -of an author’s natural endowment: a fine ear for the nuances of spoken language, a sharp eye for significant gestures, an ability. to interrelate setting and action convincingly.

But beyond these talents for representation there is need for further gifts of interpretation, whether direct or indirect. Two

ladies sit drinking tea, for instance, and exchanging gossip which may be lively and diverting. A sound film may record their voices and images. The resulting cinema will undoubtedly be an accurate transcription of what happened, but we should not therefore call it a document of realistic art. What is lacking is the artist’s elimination of impertinent materials, his choice of others as pertinent, and his organization of these from a specific point of view and for a specific purpose. Thus the overtones of a seemingly frivolous conversation may be made to serve an over-all purpose that is far from being frivolous.

i. Introductory Remarks

7

And how may this purpose be defined in terms of realistic art? Speaking very simply, it is to create a microcosm of selected and organized substitute experience which somehow forms a commentary on the huge world of real experience that we are in a position to know directly or vicariously. Insofar as the artist shows or implies in his imagined world the cause-and-effect rela~ tions we presume to be valid, he will incline us to ready acceptance of his microcosm and. its internal economy of motives. The nonrealist also makes a bid for acceptance, but his aims and methods are naturally different. Now there are in fact many ways of evoking the response of acceptance. Direct, faithful, almost reportorial presentation is one

of them.

But abundance

of factual data does not necessarily

ensure successful artistic realism, nor does absence of journalistic information necessarily mean rejection and failure. The newspaper clippings introduced by John Dos Passos into his novels such as 42nd Parallel represent a device which may possibly strengthen his desired effect, but they are not decisive for its literary validity. In the same way Upton Sinclair’s pleas in support of this or that incident in his novels—that he based them on documented reports of “real-life” occurrences—are quite irrelevant if the incidents do not themselves convince a reader of their verisimilitude in the fictional context provided for them. A reader’s favourable response, his assent to the thesis that “truly such persons could indeed have existed and such events could have occurred” in the hypothecated situations may be aroused (as has been said) by the organization of a relatively small and simple microcosm of fiction as well as a relatively large one. A limited view on a limited field can still have realistic value. In

most parts of the medieval epics and romances such is not the case. But in the midst of sequences dealing with larger-than-life heroes and their adventures we sometimes come upon vignettes of daily existence, on whatever level, that still speak to us directly over the centuries. The tone becomes familiar and unexaggerated, the substance understandable. Though the actions may conform to a code of behaviour no longer accepted by us, they seem at least

8

i. Introductory Remarks

to spring from the demands of normal rather than exceptional living. The conversation likewise may be sprinkled with formalities long since lost to our etiquette, but it flows easily, with a certain sprightliness that still captures the reader’s inner ear. In passages such as these in medieval narrative we may detect adumbrations of the methods of modern fiction. When a story is told in satirical vein and the characters’ motives are shown in a negative

light, the whole is sometimes labelled realistic chiefly because it is unflattering to human

nature.

Actually,

such a story may

be more conventional than realistic as we understand the term (though still highly effective as satire). This problem will have to be discussed in some detail later.* On the other hand, many scenes of aristocratic life, narrowly conceived though they may be, still have certain values of realistic persuasiveness though they are not satirical. Despite their ceremonial tone they may well give more accurate reflections of microcosmic social reality than do the stylized passages of satire. For the convincing pictures of aristocratic life, Eric Auerbach’s term “courtly realism” will be found useful (though there are theoretical reasons, involving both aesthetics and sociology, for dissent from Auerbach’s presentation of medieval realism).* Before embarking on a quest for precursors of modern novels in the 15th century, it will be desirable to glance at certain narrative forms of the immediately preceding age which, though differing in 3 These remarks apply especially to the medieval fabliaux and their successors. See ch. 2, sec. 5 and ch. 3, sec. 2. “ Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Berne, 1946; English translation Princeton University Press, 1953), ch. 6. Auerbach here analyzes the opening part of Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain (Calogrenant’s adventure), praising especially the portrayal of ideals and mores and external social forms prevailing among the French feudal aristocracy. The ease of conversation contributes much to the general effect. “There is a great deal of brilliance, of realistic favor, of psy-

chological refinement, and also a great deal of realism in these pictures,” he says, But the qualities he mentions remain on the colourful surface. In general, “courtly culture was decidedly unfavorable to the development of a literary art which should apprehend reality in its full breadth and depth.” Quotations from the English translation, pp. 115 and 124.

i. Introductory Remarks

9

style and medium, reveal a kinship with the future narrative form. Medieval romance is the most important early type. The whole field represented by it is a rich one, and has been investigated by very many specialists in all European countries. Middle English romance by itself represents but one provincial subdivision of a huge international territory that was cultivated more or less as a unity throughout all of medieval Europe. Neither linguistic barriers nor political ones (such as they then were) offered hindrance to the dissemination of a good plot, or even to the transmission of an entire text by translation and adaptation. Therefore a student of medieval fiction may find himself requiring the use of languages ranging from Icelandic in the North to Provencal and early Italian in the South; from Irish and Welsh in the West to Old Czech and Russian in the East (not to mention Arabic and Hebrew in medieval Spain). To pursue a single plot in its migrations and transformations throughout many languages can be a fascinating task in itself. It may serve to bring to light significant facts in its social and aesthetic history. Looking backwards, the researcher may discover eloquent testimony of the lost culture in which a specific plot originated. Looking forwards, he may see evidence of the new conditions to which it was

adapted®. 5 The influential two-volume History of Prose Fiction by John Colin Dunlop (London, 1816; amplified and reissued 1888) begins with the Greek romances of Xenephon the Ephesian, Heliodorus and others, and carefully indicates analogues as well as direct borrowings by later authors. Though an early attempt, this work already indicated the course to be taken by many later studies on medieval fiction. Another ambitious work concerned with the evolution of European fiction is the Origines de la Novela, by D. M. Menéndez y Pelayo (Madrid, 1905; reissued Santander, 1944). The “Introduccién,” occupying all of Volume I (over 500 pages) traces the heritage of many types of fiction from classical antiquity on into the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The discussion is by no means limited to the shorter forms of narrative such as are usually understood under the terms novella, nouvelle etc. Yet Menéndez y Pelayo is like others so concentrated on the contents of stories conveyed to medieval Europe from alien sources that he pays little

attention to their and place.

adaptation

in order to fit the new

realities of time

10

i. Introductory Remarks

All this is very valuable. Yet the search for sources and analogues is not the primary concern of the present investigation. Rather it wilt be concerned with those significant adaptations of material which foreshadow the new techniques of the modern novel. This foreward-looking approach has been but relatively little exploited by English medievalists, and it is to be hoped that as employed here it may yield some new insights into the

history of early modern English fiction.

CHAPTER

THE HERITAGE 1. WOMEN

II

OF MEDIEVAL

CHARACTERS

AND

FICTION

ROMANTIC

LOVE

Medieval romance, as is well known, was extensively concerned with ladies: their charms, their caprices, their kindnesses and their cruelties. A hero may wander as far afield as you will, slaughter all sorts of giants and monsters, vanquish enemies and raise sieges of castles single-handed, but throughout the entire

action he is always bound as by an sive charms of some absent beauty, for his reward in the end. If she is pected to marry him with parental

invisible chain to the compuland to her he always returns an unwed girl she may be ex-

blessing; if she is already the wife of someone else, her rewafd of him, must naturally be granted

in a more discreet, less public manner. Such indeed is the general pattern of very many romances, told in hundreds of thousands of riming verse lines in Old French, Middle High German and

also Middle English. The preeminent role played by women in feudal romances is what chiefly distinguishes them from the Carolingian and other epics of the time, devoted exclusively to crusading expeditions or local warfare between feudal lords and their recalcitrant vassals. In these latter, blood and brains are spilled aplenty on the battlefield and heroes die in great numbers, but the ladies have minimal importance. This is especially true of the heroines associated with the Christian cause in the crusading epics. Occasionally however a Saracen princess is permitted to appear as an independent, even aggressive personage in the French chansons de geste. If so, her main function will be to rescue captive Christian knights and to flee with them to a happier life (presumably) in Western Europe. Thus the Saracen princess Josiane in the Anglo-Norman

12

ii, The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

epic Boeve de Haumtone (ca 1200)! is prompt and eager to offer her love to the handsome Christian captive Boeve and readily con-

sents to pay the price of baptism in order to escape with him and finally marry him. Floripas, the heathen princess in Fierabras*, another French epic of the same period, threatens to punch on the nose her father’s councillor when he expresses doubts about the wisdom of confiding to her care some Christian knights recently captured in battle. As it turns out, the councillor is quite justified in his scepticism, for the young lady has already decided, because of her love for Guy of Burgundy, to betray her father and lead the whole group of them towards France. Both of these heroines ‘are shown as gruff, forthright, even brutal in their speech and manners. Needless to say, they do not at all correspond to the characters and situations of real women under Islam of that period. The chansons de geste were concerned merely to show the Mohammedan world (including its women) as the opposite in every respect to the Christian—and therefore automatically worse. If Christian feudal ladies were being glorified as noble and gracious and aloof, then obviously their counterparts in the other world had to be depicted as bold and readily inflamed erotically. No matter how absurd, the legendary type of amorous Saracen princess became well established in English romantic fiction translated from the Old French.* In the Middle English version of Fierabras incorporated in The Sowdone of Babylone, the heroine does not quite go so far as to punch a grave councillor on the nose, but she is still capable of very unladylike deeds. She casually thrusts her governes$ out of a window and into the sea to get rid of her: 1 Der anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone, ed. A. Stimming (Halle, 1899). 2 Fierabras, ed. A. Kroeber and G. Servois in the series Anciens Poétes de la France, IV (Paris, 1860). 5 The Middle English Beves of Hamtoun is edited by E. Kélbing, EETS, ES, Nos. 46, 48, 65 (1885-94). The Floripas incident appears twice in Middle English: first of all in Sir Firumbras, ed. S.J. Herrtage, EETS, ES, No. 34 (1879) and by Mary Isabelle O’Sullivan, EETS, OS, No. 198(1935); secondly in The Sowdone of Babylone, ed. E. Hausknecht, EETS, ES, No. 38 (1881).

A long selection from the Sowdone is given by French and Hale; see n. 14.

Women 1575

Characters and Romantic Love

“Loke oute,” she saide, “and see aferre The porpais pley as they were wode.”

13 /aferre: afar /wode: mad

Maragounde lokede oute; Floripe come nere, And shofed hire oute into the flode. “Go there,” she saide, “the devel the spede!”

Just as casually, she murders the gaoler who had been guarding the prisoners, by knocking him on the head with a wooden block so that “The brayne sterte oute of his hede-pan” (1. 1606). Elimination of a governess and of a gaoler acting in the line of duty, and later on, the organization of an attack upon an unsuspecting father—all these are commendable acts if performed by a Mohammedan girl in the interests of Christian captives. There is more than a little of comic burlesque in the presentation of heroines like Floripas, and perhaps we should not take them too seriously. They are indeed exceptional in the sum total of medieval epics. In the verse romances

of the same

period,

however, there are very many ladies of an entirely different cast who play an important role without being demonstrative about it. These are the ones who exercise their influence thanks to an assured class position calling for qualities of gentleness and detachment. They are depicted as objects of an adulation approaching the religious; they are infinitely desirable yet exalted and all but unobtainable. Because they represent so dominant a force in the romances, they require a few words of commentary at

this point.

.

The cult of amorous worship for aristocratic feudal ladies is known as courtly love. Originating in Southern France in the early 12th century, this social-literary fashion spread widely throughout Europe and had many social consequences still perceptible in the life and literature of our own days. The phenomenon has been so often investigated that little new remains to be said on the subject. Product of specific social conditions obtaining in the castles of France, England, Germany and elsewhere, favoured by the cultural influences emanating from Mohammedan Spain,

associated with patronesses like Eleanor of Acquitaine and Marie de Champagne in the 12th century, courtly love became

14

ii. The Heritage of Medieval

Fiction

a staple ingredient of medieval story-telling*. The net result of the new fashion was to concentrate a large part of the motivation on female characters. Now since most noble ladies in real life were married young to consorts not of their own choice, their chances

to love and be loved on a voluntary basis frequently occurred only after they had appeared in society (the very masculine society of a castle) as young matrons. Their patronage of adoring lovers had in it something of the queenly, something of the maternal. If it also became erotic, the result had to be adulterous love. Because

of the sharp competition

for their favours. the ladies could be

imagined, at least in fiction, as cruelly exacting in their demands, while the lovers would then be forced to absurdities of behaviour

in the manifestation of their devotion. Thus we find the haughty Queen

Guinevere

implacably

punishing her lover Lancelot

for

a minor hesitation in his abject service to her: the classical instance of courtly love provided by Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette (late 12th century). Whether the heroine is already married or not, she quite expects her devotee to swoon at her * Many valuable studies have been devoted to this problem, notably The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis (Oxford ,1936). The basic medieval text in Latin is that by Andreas Capellanus, De Arte honeste amandi, translated with a helpful introduction by J.J. Parry, The Art of Courtly Love (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941). Recently the sociological aspect has been

investigated by Herbert Moller in two important articles, namely “The Meaning of Courtly Love,” Journal of American Folklore, LXXIII (1960), 39-52, and “The Social Causation of the Courtly Love Complex,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, I (1959), 137-63. The latter of these two articles

suggests a direct correlation between the cult of romantic love and the high ratio of men to women within a given ruling class—e.g., the aristocracies of Southern France and Southern Germany. In these areas the 12th-century nobility was an “open class” attracting recruits by opportunities for a career

as soldiers and minstrels. Castles—typical ruling-class institutions of the Southern area—were manned and administered by a large number of unmarried males. On the other hand, where nobles delegated administration to outside elements from the cities, as for instance in Northern France, the Low Countries, Saxony, Southeast England, etc., courtly love was not a native growth but was introduced as part of a literary convention. Other aspects

of the cult are explained by Moller in psychological terms, partly Freudian, but they are even here posited by him on the concrete social environment.

Women Characters and Romantic Love

15

feet, suffer illness and insomnia for her sake, and yet sally forth

unimpaired in strength to perform prodigies of valour. In the French romance Amadas et Ydoine (13th century) the heroine is such an exacting beauty, unmarried as yet, and the hero is a young squire in her father’s service. Middle English romances place the emphasis more on action and less on swooning, but the pattern of patient devotion is still clear in such tales as King Horn and Havelok the Dane, not to mention such transplanted Arthurian romances as Libeaus Desconnus. Guy of Warwick, hero first of an AngloNorman romance and later of two in Middle English, begins his career as a love-sick youth very much like the swooning Amadas. To what extent literature reflected life in presenting these relations between the sexes is much in doubt. But the fact that they were so presented in fiction is enormously significant for the future. Courtly love was a convention—whether or not observed to the full in practice—originally limited to the aristocracy. But the wealthier middle class soon took it over, at least in its preferred reading matter. The class limitations of the code are. made clear by the first theoretician to write on the subject: Andreas Capellanus (12th century).§ Whatever their status in real life,* the noble ladies of feudal romances

could apparently

be shown

with some

credibility as

enjoying a certain freedom of choice and movement, a certain respect and prestige among their masculine associates. Only under such circumstances could plots and situations be conceived

which anticipated aspects of the modern novel. For it may be said that from the time of its accepted modern beginnings, with 5 See the preceding note. 6 The rights enjoyed by single women (including widows) in English real

life are summarized by Margaret Adlum Gist, Love and War in the Middle English Romances (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947), ch. 2. They included: the right to inherit land, although a male heir was to be preferred; the right to own land, even under military tenure; also to own

chattels, to sue and be sued as individuals, to make wills and contracts, and (in the case of widows) to be guardians of their own children. In this connection the author refers to Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law (Cambridge, 1898) I, pp. 482-85. See further II, pp. 364-447.

16

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

Richardson and the rest in the 18th century, the novel has often

been centred on feminine viewpoints and feminine problems. This has been especially true of the type of novel which comes closest to the comedy of manners.

A social situation in which

a woman can be bartered as a passive object of ownership may evoke pathos; it may fit well enough into an epic which concentrates mainly on external conflicts; but it is not conducive to the values esteemed in a roman de moeurs. It is worth while noting that the great Icelandic sagas of the 13th and 14th centuries, which approximate modern realistic novels in many ways, assign a-decisive role to women and their influence on familial relationships. In modern times, women novelists have themselves done some of their best writing in this field. The limited

but subtly complicated world of the family has attracted a distinguished series of them, beginning with Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, continuing with Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontés, and extending down to Virginia Woolf and others of

our own time. The late Middle

Ages produced no English forerunner of these gifted ladies,” but the literature of the time showed some

anticipations

of their manner

and their interests.

In treating

social relations, family life and kindred themes medieval English

writers were learners from the French. Therefore it will be desirable to cite first of all some instances of French practice in this sphere, both on the mainland and in Norman England; later, some typical instances appearing in English. French romances of the 12th and 13th centuries shared many traits with the epics: delight in combat, use of the supernatural, stylistic exaggeration, and so on. But they differed from the epics in that they devoted far more attention to personal relations among individuals as seen in a well-defined social setting. In order to indicate such relations they relied on various techniques for the 7 Christine de Pisan, a versatile and talented lady of Italian origin who lived atthe French courtin the first half of the 15th century, was an exceptional figure. Among her many writings she produced a novel-like romance. See below, p 22.

Contributory Techniques in the Romances

17

portrayal of characters and their moods and physical environments. As for straightforward descriptions, these are usually highly conventionalized: the heroines are all beautiful and blonde, the heroes tall and muscular. Characterization is indicated mostly by conventional gestures and actions. If the authors make comments, their suggestions are of the most elementary, distinguishing sharply between admirable personages on the one hand and villains—whether high-born traitors or base-born clowns—on the other. More subtly employed was the technique of oral discourse, either in the form of dialogue or spoken monologue. Here too the conventional elements are conspicuous, but the possibilities are more fully elaborated. When ladies and gentlemen in the French romances engage in formal conversation or quick repartee, they talk in a manner clearly modeled on the prescriptions of Roman rhetoric. One can hear echoes of classical devices such as apostrophe, stichomythia, deprecatio, indignatio, and so on. At the same time these people do often appear to speak in the tone of authentic conversation: naturally, indeed, so far as verse form and literary conventions allow. In this sense they show traits of what has been called courtly realism. 2. CONTRIBUTORY

TECHNIQUES IN THE ROMANCES

The term “society romance” is a convenient one to apply to those verse tales in which normal upper-class human relations are the centre of interest rather than military or supernatural adventures, and in which techniques of dialogue and monologue, description, gesture and action are employed to give vitality to the characters. Sentimental relations are the ones most frequently presented, for the genre inclines much to love as a motive, but others 8 This useful term appears in the title to a dissertation by Sarah F. Bartow, The Medieval Society Romances (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924). The author devotes most of her attention to those French romances, some of them existing also in English versions, where a main motive of the action is fine amor or courtly love. She shows how it is employed as a didactic element in some tales, and how in a few of them, like Le Chastelain de Coucy,

the presentation achieves psychological depth. Some attention is also‘given

18

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

are also important, such as those existing between a lady and confidante, a knight and his faithful friends, a father and his or daughter. In the opposite type of romance, which we may the action romance as exemplified in Gui de Warewic (later

her son call re-

worked in English as Guy of Warwick), the stress is laid for the most part on external deeds rather than on the quieter forms

of social intercourse. In many instances, of course, elements of both types are combined. The 12th-century French romance Yvain by Chrétien de Troyes, though it contains a large measure of action and adventure, may be qualified as society romance on the basis of some of the most brilliant passages contained in it.? A charming widow is left inconsolable (presumably) after the death of her husband, who was killed while defending the approach to their estate. That the spot being defended was a magic well, that there are overtones of folklore and mythology in the combat, need not concern us here.” The point is that the fight was a fair one according to the rules of chivalry, and the lady is now not only desolate but also defenseless in a feudal world. Meantime the slayer of her husband, the hero Yvain, has fallen in love with her and enlisted the sympathetic aid of her lively, quickwitted, fluently talkative maid.“The damsel’s name was Lunete,” says Chrétien, “and she was a charm-

ing brunette, prudent, clever, and polite.”" A delightful figure (ch. 4) to literary techniques such. as descriptions and structure of* plots, but little is said of the use of dialogue. The courtly elements in Anglo-Norman romances—many of which were likewise put into English—are discussed by Constance B. West, Courtoisie in Anglo-Norman Literature (Oxford, 1938).

® The text of Yvain—more properly called Le Chevalier au Lion—as originally edited by W. Foerster (Halle, 1887), has been published with notes and glossary by T.B.W. Reid (Manchester University Press, 1942; reprinted

1948). There is a more recent edition by Mario Roques (Paris, 1958) in the Classiques Francais du Moyen

Age.

10 On this aspect see R.S. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), pp. 267 ff. 11 Yyain, 1]. 2415 ff. Use has been made of W. W. Comfort’s translation

given in his volume: Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Everymans Library, 1914; reprint of 1955).

Romances

(London:

Contributory Techniques in the Romances

19

is Lunete, precursor of many lively and warm-hearted confidantes

in later literature. Lunete undertakes to work on her mistress Laudine, to break down the lady’s natural resistance, and to bring Yvain before her as an acknowledged suitor. In the end she triumphantly manages to realize Yvain’s desire, and the widow

accepts her husband’s slayer as second husband. There is more than a little artificiality in all this. Conversations like those recorded in. Yvain embody more rhetoric and less realism than Auerbach and other admirers of Chrétien would perhaps be inclined to admit. But the persuasions and debates do exeniplify social finesse characteristic of the best society romances.!2 The poet shows distinguished skill in the organization of his dialogues, monologues, descriptions of public affairs such as feasts and tournaments. The rhetorical devices are cleverly worked in, for instance when Lunete undertakes to turn the thoughts of her mistress away from grief to the contemplation of marriage, and also in the scene where Yvain and the lady first meet. In both instances, free use is made of ratiocinatio (a series of short questions rapidly posed and rapidly answered—sometimes by the questioner himself). Laudine, the widow in question, asks Yvain why he has been impelled to seek her out; he replies that his heart fixed his desire in this direction. And what prompted his heart? His eyes. And what the eyes? Her great beauty seen by them. And where is beauty’s fault in that? Merely that it makes him love. —Love? Whom? —Yourself, dear lady. —Impossible!— And so on. We may wonder whether gentle folk in real life followed this stylized pattern of conversation, and if so—to what extent. 12 Foster Erwin Guyer, Chrétien de Troyes: Inventor of the Modern Novel (London, 1960), has advanced the thesis that Chrétien actually initiated the literary genre in question. He denies the possibility of indebtedness to the “classical” romances Enéas, Troie and Thébes, for these (he argues) postdated Chrétien’s work. Guyer also sets aside as unconvincing and irrelevant the possibility of Celtic sources for the Arthurian plots of the romances. See however J. Frappier, Chrétien de Troyes: L’homme et I’oeuvre (Paris, 1957), ch. 1; also Mario Roques, “Pour une introduction a I’édition du Chevalier au Lion de Chrétien de Troyes,” Romania, LXXX (1959), 1-18.

20

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

Just before the interview with Yvain the widow Laudine indulges in a pastime much affected by heroines of society romances. She conducts a solitary monologue addressed to herself (whether aloud or silently we do not know), in which she debates her emotional predicament. The procedure is a commonplace with Chrétien and others of same school. Again, the method is rhetorical. It rests upon objectified (or as some would say, extroverted) discourse rather than one kept strictly interior (introverted) according to the methods of our contemporary fiction. Thus there are essential divergences from modern technique. The only way in which a medieval romancer could conceive of a person in self-communication was in terms of formal objective debate, using quaestio and disputatio as taught and practised in courses of rhetoric and dialectic. Hence the character’s ego had to be split into two neatly contrasted opponents, who could be shown arguing like lawyers in a Roman court. Sometimes the opponents are allegorical figures representing impulses within an individual’s psyche, such as Reason versus Sensuality, Love versus Fear or Discretion.1* In Laudine’s case the monologue appropriately enough takes the form of an imagined colloquy with the knight towards whom her feelings have already become softened (“ambivalent” would be the fashionable modern term). “So she argues as if he were in her presence there,” says Chrétien. And what she says, though private to herself, is as coherently formulated as any passage of classical deliberative oratory. It is interesting to see what was done with these techniques by the Middle English poet who translated and adapted Yvain in the 14th century.!4 He suppresses the ratiocinatio in the conver18 The so-called “psychological” passages in the romances share the technique exemplified in objectified allegories such as the Roman de la Rose. Modern commentators have not always realized the role of convention in producing effects they call “modern’”’ or “sentimental.” On this problem see the important article by Charles Muscatine, “The Emergence of Psychological Allegory in Old French Romance,” PMLA LXVIII (1954), 1160-82. 14 The text, known as Ywain and Gawain, was edited by Gustav Schleich (Oppeln and Leipzig, 1887). Citations are taken from the later edition of an extended excerpt in the anthology by Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York, 1930), pp. 485-527.

Contributory Techniques in the Romances

od |

sation of the two women, and gives to Lunete (the maid) single sustained speeches of argumentation. He also reduces the monologue of Laudine to a few lines of sensible comment (Il. 1028-32), to the effect that the maid Lunete meant everything for the best after all. There is no trace of an imagined disputation with the hero. The actual interview between knight and lady is limitéd to a brief and very practical interchange leading to his promise to defend her property. Satisfied of this, she promptly states: “Sir, fan er we at ane” (i.e., we are agreed, 1. 1176). Once again, a lively passage of ratiocinatio has been suppressed. At the same time, the English poet has evoked a more homely and somewhat less courtly atmosphere by rendering the language more colloquial. He prefers concise proverbial sayings to long discourses. When Lunete is dismissed by her mistress the first time, she observes merely: 967

“Madame, it es oft wemens will bam for to blame pat sais pam scill.”

/scill: wisdom

This English Lunete opens her second argument with Laudine with abrupt directness: 975

“Madame,” sho said, “je ar a barn! pus may 3e sone gowre self forfarn.”

/barn: child : /forfarn: destroy

The widow Laudine likewise wastes little time in putting Yvain at his ease: 1159

“Syt down,” sho said, “and let me here Why pou ert bus debonere.”

/debonere: meek

Such abbreviations indicate that the Middle English poet had little interest in the refinements of courtly conversation, but preferred to reduce them to brisk interchanges coming quickly to an essential point. The difference between Chrétien’s Yvain and the Middle English adaptation of it is typical of a general difference between courtly romances in the two languages. In the later Middle Ages it so happens that French literature produced a romance, probably based on real characters and events in high aristocratic

22

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

circles, which came closer to a society novel than any other versi-

fied tale of the period. This was Le Livre du duc des vrais amans (The Book of the Duke of True Lovers)'* written in 1404 by the poetess Christine de Pisan.1® All attention is here focused on the nuances of social intercourse, with combats and warfare relegated to the background. Christine has her hero anticipate David Copperfield and many another modern character in that he tells his story in the first person, as autobiography, and thus she heightens the reader’s sense of intimate participation. The plot is of the simplest, and if true it demonstrates the facility with which life imitates art. It is the record of a young man’s timorous first love and his education through worshipful contact with a charming woman more experienced than himself. What distinguishes this treatment of a familiar situation is the careful fidelity with which individual scenes are depicted. The reader shares intimately in the preparations made by the lady to receive her lover at last in a private interview: she goes to bed, then complains of a slight malady, rises again, robes herself in a long mantle, orders a fire to be lit in the neighbouring room where the hero waits concealed, and carefully dismisses the maid who had been busy about the fireplace. Due note is taken of the closing of the door: “Aprés elle l’uis on serre” (1. 2666). The lady’s reception of her trembling and speechless lover shows her as a poised hostess endowed with a sense of humour. She kisses him with affection and- laughingly puts her arm about his neck, saying that she must speak for both of them if he is unable to talk: “Dont pour nous deux me convient/ Parler” (1. 2706 f.). This is but one of many occasions when the course of an otherwise conventional affair of courtly love is enlivened by the author’s instinct for social comedy. Christine’s real-life story was not translated into English. However, in the generation just previous to hers there appeared two outstanding achievements of a comparable type, namely the

anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s Troilus 18 Ed. Maurice Roy in the Oeuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan, Il

(Paris: SATF, 1896). There is an English translation by Alice Kemp-Welsh (London,

1908).

Sir Gawain as Society Romance

23

and Criseyde. In different ways they represent the best that is to _ be found among English society romances in verse. It will therefore be desirable to examine them briefly as a point of departure towards the coming age of fiction in prose. 3. Sir Gawain as SOCIETY ROMANCE

The supreme position of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca 1370) among English Arthurian romances is assured because of its happy combination of several literary qualities'®. Some of them, such as the poet’s skill in versification, and his imaginative use of the supernatural, are not pertinent to the present inquiry. Others, however, are qualities common tq better romances and the modern novel. First of all, the author possessed an exceptional talent for descriptions of nature, which are woven into the story as

a record of changing moods and seasons related to the actionPreparations for a hunt at sunrise of a winter’s day, a journey on horseback through sleety showers—such pictures of natural environment had never before been attempted in Middle English literature. Even more striking is the poet’s ability to place before

readers and listeners a transcription of natural colloquies carried on in specifically realized settings. The production, as one might say today in terms of film and theatre, is beautifully carried off. Here is the situation. Sir Gawain, model knight of King Arthur’s court, has got himself involved in a test of bravery which has put him in a situation of extreme jeopardy. A huge champion, green in complexion and habiliments, had appeared at Christmas time before the assembled knights of the court and had offered a strange challenge: let any one of those present smite 16 These literary qualities are appreciatively described by Laura Hibbard Loomis in her study of the poem included in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford University Press, 1960)» pp. 528-40. Among other things Mrs. Loomis stresses the sophistication of manners and conversation, and the resemblance of certain scenes to “‘a gracious comedy of manners”. She also gives a lucid account of the relation between Sir Gawain and its medieval analogues.

24

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

him a blow as deadly as he pleases with a battle-axe offered for the purpose, and the Green Knight will endure the blow, provided only that the opposing champion will meet him a year and a day later to undergo a like blow in return. Sir Gawain alone had had the

courage to meet

the challenge.

He

had struck off the Green

Knight’s héad; but the trunk of the decapitated visitor had imperturbably lifted up the separated member from the ground, mount-

ed his horse “and settled himself in his seat as calmly as though nothing had happened to him,” while the gory head spoke and informed Gawain that he must appear twelve months later at the Green Chapel (precise address not given, of course) to submit himself to the return stroke. A fine predicament, this, for any conscientious knight! On

the one hand, his word has been given and he must abide by it, according to the chivalric code he follows; but on the other hand it is obvious that his opponent jis something more than human—for what ordinary mortal could elevate his severed pate and cause it to speak? Cephalophoric saints like Denis of France might have done so, but this is no hagiographical situation. Thus Gawain faces a truly parlous adventure when he sets out in November of the following year to find the Green Chapel and submit to the reprisal agreed upon. En route to the western territory of this rendez-vous, Gawain has to fight beasts and monsters that hamper his way, but “his fights wearied him less than the winter weather, when the cold clear rain fell from the clouds and froze into hail before it could reach the faded ground below. More nights than he cared for he slept in his armour among the bare rocks, half dead with the cold and the sleet, while the cold stream came rattling down from the crest high above him, and hung over his head in icicles.”!? This glimpse of winter’s seasonal

726

17 The Middle English poem runs as follows: For werre wrathed hym not so much, bat winter was wors, When pe colde cler water fro be cloude§ schadde, & fres er hit falle mydt to be fale erbe; Ner slayn wyth pe slete he sleped in his yrnes

Sir Gawain as Society Romance

25

rigours is a far cry indeed from the banal May landscapes repetitiously portrayed in the conventional romances. Gawain persists in his uncomfortable journey, enjoys a week’s welcome hospitality at a castle not far from his goal, and in the end very creditably faces and survives the test of threatened beheading. It is the interlude in the castle which is of especial interest here. Gawain’s host turns out to be a jovial character who makes him heartily welcome, urges him to take part in the Christmas festivities and then rest well before going on to keep his hazardous appointment at the nearby Green Chapel. During the last three days of his visit, Gawain is to sleep as late as he pleases while the host indulges his passion for hunting. Buta strange bargain is struck between the two men. The host offers to surrender to his guest all the daily spoils of his venery, if the latter will yield in exchange any bounty of fortune that comes his way in the same interval. Meantime, the lady of the castle will be glad to contribute to his entertainment, remarks her husband genially. And the lady does; but she also contributes sensibly to the guest’s embarrassment. For she visits him every morning in his room, and in a series of delicately maneuvered but unmistakably slanted conversations she proceeds to tempt him to make love to her, while he with equal politeness and firmness parries her advances. Daily she gives him an unsolicited kiss before retiring in defeat; daily he passes on the kiss to her husband while at the same time he gallantly refuses to reveal its origin. "Twas not in the bond so stipulated. The sequence is developed in a spirit of comedy remote enough from the supernatural beheading match in which it is framed. And the comic effect is heightened when in the end it is revealed that the husband himself—none other Mo

nydted ben in-noghe in naked

rokkeé,

ber as claterande fro be crest be colde borne renned, & henged hege ouer his hede in hard ysse-ikkles.

See the edition by Mabel Day and Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS, OS, No. 210 (1940 for 1938), p. 27. The translation follows that by M.R. Ridley (1950), as cited in R. S. Loomis and L. H. Loomis, Medieval Romances (New York, 1957), pp. 324-89, with occasional minor changes to keep it closer to the original.

26

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

than the Green Knight, now appearing in normal human guise— had prompted his wife to conduct the sophisticated temptations as an additional test of Gawain’s quality as a knight. The setting of the three temptation scenes comes into imagined reality without “being formally described. We are told about

Gawain’s soft curtained bed and its bright coverlet and the light of early morning reflected on the walls: not as a set description, but as part of the hero’s experience in waking up. He is still half asleep, but a sound fully rouses him: the sound of an opening door. With this “he brought his head up out of the clothes and lifted a corner of the curtain and took a cautious glance to see what this might be.”!8 It was the lady, of course, and our embar-

rassed hero quite naturally lies down again and pretends to be asleep until he is forced to arouse himself and enact the part of someone taken completely by surprise. Both of the interlocutors exert efforts to appear very much at ease; they banter and laugh urbanely, the tone is kept consistently light, she teases and provokes and compliments him while he continues to evade her. So far as the ostensible situation is concerned, the lady might have been one of Mr. Aldous Huxley’s redoubtable hostesses bent on the seduction of a week-end guest. But our medieval heroine expresses herself with far greater subtlety. Her offers are ambiguous. When she says “You are welcome to my person to do with as you please. I am perforce, and must

remain, your servant” (11. 1237-40)—

her words might be taken literally, or again they might be understood as a polite feudal expression of deference towards the nephew of her husband’s sovereign lord King Arthur. Similarly, Gawain’s modest parryings might be taken as either insincere protestations or as genuine attempts to extricate himself from a painful dilemma. The repartees have in other words:a high percentage of that literary quality conspicuously praised today in certain critical circles, namely ambivalence. The reader is kept

1184

18 In & A &

the original: he heued vp his hed out of be clopes, corner of be cortyn he caét vp a lyttel, wayte3 warly bider-warde, quat it be myat.

Sir Gawain as Society Romance

|

intrigued and doubtful until the end of the poem, when the wellintentioned hoax is revealed.

The literary skill evinced in Sir Gawain has been warmly recognized by many specialists, and the elements of society romance in the poem have had their meed of appreciation. It has been noticed, among other things, that although the social relations in the host’s castle are exceptionally refined, they are nevertheless not based on the postulates of courtly love. Gawain stoutly maintains that the lady has chosen as her husband someone far superior to himself (1. 1276), whereas in the usual romance

of

amour courtois the possible lover is automatically superior to the husband.!® Both the conversations, with their combination of formal courtesy and light flirtatiousness, and also the descriptions of milieu, represent a high point in medieval narrative. Moreover the handling of gesture contributes to the plastic effects in an unprecedented way.”° No longer merely stylized and stereotyped as in the epics and early romances, gestures are here associated with specific individualities. They accompany dialogue dramatically, create a sense of movement, and enter essentially into the action. Very remarkable is the consistency with which the poet has adopted Gawain’s point of view and maintained it throughout. Having shared with him the discomforts of his cold journey, the reader also shares his delight in glowing fireplace and abundant food supplied at the castle (“he sat down in the rich chair and eagerly warmed himself, and his spirits rose”).?! Particularly vivid are his first impressions of his hostess, for the poet allows us to look into Gawain’s unspoken thought at this time, quite in the manner of a modern novelist: “She was lovelier than Guenever, Sir Gawain thought, and he made his way down the chancel to 19 This point is made by Dorothy Everett, Essays on Middle English Literature (Oxford, 1955), pp. 74-85. 20 Werner Habicht, Die Gebarde in englischen Dichtungen des Mittelalters

(Miinchen: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 832

1959), pp. 148 ff.

*! & he sete in pat settel semlych ryche, & achaufed hym c[h]efly, & benne his cher mended.

28

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

salute her.”2? The hunting scenes are to be sure described in some detail though Gawain is absent from them—and very lifelike they are, too—, but at no point is the reader permitted to know more

about the hero’s actual situation or the true relationship among the characters than the hero does himself. Thus the Gawain-poet anticipated to an exceptional degree that “unity of point of view” which was to become a cardinal matter of technique for later writers like Henry James. Although it is a jewel of medieval narrative having many novelistic qualities, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exercised

no important influence on the later course of English fiction. It represents a culmination and a conclusion, not the initiation of a new manner.

Its dialect was provincial; its complex techniques

of language and versification looked to the past rather than to the future, when narrative for entertainment was to be embodied in

a single national language understandable by all readers. Hence its interest for the historian of the modern novel must be largely antiquarian. 4. THE ACHIEVEMENT

OF CHAUCER’S

Troilus and Criseyde

Chaucer’s pre€minent society romance, Troilus and Criseyde, was more fortunately situated in respect to linguistic medium and prosodic techniques than was Sir Gawain. The poet, a native middle-class Londoner who was also at home in the circles of the highest aristocracy, composed his works in the dialect which was later to become generalized (in a slightly modified form) as standard English for the whole country. Moreover, Chaucer conformed to the new canons of versification, adapted from tbe French, which were destined to win the victory over the native forms going back to Anglo-Saxon times. The alliterative lines—featuring strong stress, elastic numbers of unaccented syllables, and so on—were giving place finally to non-alliterative lines having 945

** [Ho watd] wener ben Wenore, as be wyde poht. He ches bur be chauncel, to cheryche bat hende.

The Achievement of Chaucer's Troilus

29

arithmetically equal numbers of syllables and regular alternation of those stressed with the unstressed. Since Chaucerian verse was of the latter type it was ensured in advance of ultimate prevalence and comprehensibility. And since the poets of the next two centuries continued to read and understand and admire Chaucer, the mimetic traces of his genius are to be found in numerous obscurer imitators, while the genius of the Gawain-poet remained ineffectual and largely unrecognized until modern times. Throughout the course of his varied literary productivity Chaucer frequently created individual scenes which bear the hallmark of convincing reality. The great sustained approximation to a modern novel among his works is however his Troilus and Criseyde, a poem in five parts based on Boccaccio’s presumably autobiographical romance II Filostrato*. As is well known to all readers of Boccaccio, the Italian poem recounts the wooing of Criseida, daughter of the seer Calchas, by the shy but brave and

courtly Prince Troilo, son of King Priam; the lady’s brief and conventional resistance (conventional, because she is clearly shown to be a woman of ready passions); her capitulation and their

ecstatic if purely sensual bliss; later, the betrayal of Troilo by Criseida when she is separated from him, transferred to ‘the Greek

camp, and exposed to the wooing of the handsome Greek warrior Diomede. The presentation is lyrical and colourful, the musicality of the verse most aptly corresponding to the theme of love rapturously consummated, but it cannot be said that the delineation of character is extraordinarily subtle or profound. The intermediary who aids the hero in his wooing is a young man, Pandaro by name, cousin of the heroine, who corresponds to the friendly

confidant in many. another romance. Troilo is very much the courtly lover in his suffering, his devotion and knightly prowess and discreet behaviour. Criseida on the other hand falls short of the ideal courtly heroine, not only because she abandons one lover 23 H. G. Wright, Boccaccio in England from Chaucer to Tennyson (University of London, 1957), points out that recent studies are sceptical about the

identification of Boccaccio’s lady with Maria d’Aquino, hitherto thought to have been the model for his Criseida and Fiametta.

30

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

for another, but because she is rather easily won by the first of them.”4 Her delays and hesitations do not flow so much from an inner reluctance as from the force of convention and apprehension about the dangers of discovery. Very quickly she is admitting to herself her hidden desire (“il nascoso desiro,” II, 924) and yearning to be within the sweet arms of Troilo (“or foss’ io nelle braccia/ Dolce di lui...,” II, 135 f.). Chaucer makes deep-going changes in his adaptation and expansion of the Italian poem. The modifications trend in more than one direction. In the first place, the plot is withdrawn from the atmosphere of torrid intrigue in an Italian city of the 14th century and placed once more (as in the early French treatment by Benoit de Sainte-Maure) in a setting of courtly romance more appropriate in many ways to fiction of the 12th century. Moonlight and nightingale’s song and interpolated lyrics heighten the romantic atmosphere.”* Troy is at once a feudal stronghold and the abode of legendary classical heroes, indubitably pagan, seen through a glamorous mist of remote ages. Most important of all, the characters are transmuted into quite new personalities. Paradoxically, although they are drawn backward towards the attitudes of early feudal romance in many respects, they are at the same time endowed with individual complexities which move them forward in the direction of modern literature, with its threedimensional psychological portrayals of people.

24 Thomas A. Kirby, Chaucer’s Troilus: A Study in Courtly Love (Louisiana State University, 1940), begins his discussion of Boccaccio’s work with

the statement: “No one, I suppose, will dispute the statement that the FiloStrato is in most respects a typical courtly love poem,” p. 91. In most respects. yes: but by no means in all.—For Boccaccio’s text see the edition by Nathaniel E. Griffin and Arthur B. Myrick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929), with introduction and English translation.

*5 The reversion to earlier medieval attitudes and atmosphere has been Stressed by C. S. Lewis in “What Chaucer Really Did to I/ Filostrato,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XVII (1932), 56-75, and by Karl Young, “Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde as Romance,” PMLA, LIL

(1938), 38-63.

The Achievement of Chaucer's Troilus

31

The analogy of Troilus and Criseyde to modern social comedy and to the modern psychological novel was perhaps overstressed by some writers in the past.?* It is necessary to recall, indeed, that Chaucer was still creating within a medieval tradition, and that the persons he knew and dealt with at the English court—cynical and unscrupulous as many of them appear to have been in. the

light of recorded facts—still fancied themselves as exponents of the idealized code of chivalry, and publicly assumed its attitudes. It is in terms of their own code that they are addressed by poets writing dedicated ballades and eulogies and allegorical epithalamia or elegies. It is in these terms, indeed, that Chaucer himself addressed patrons of both sexes whose deeds often in fact digressed sharply from ostensibly accepted standards. Yet from the beginning Chaucer shows a certain ironical detachment from the inherited code for behaviour sexual and military,

though at the same time his artist’s nature responds to the positive values contained in it. He saw beauty and absurdity side by side in the conventions

of medieval

romance,

as his own

writings

repeatedly indicate. Awareness of the absurdity increases with his artistic maturity.*7 He may have had personal experiences and perceptions causing him to adopt a dual attitude towards the pretensions of chivalry. If so, these must have been strengthened by his dual position in society, as a son of the practical, non-

romantic middle class of London who was at the same time courtier, diplomat and poet of the royal court. His origins and his 26 Thomas R. Price, “Troilus and Criseyde, A Study in Chaucer’s Method of Narrative Construction,” PMLA, XI (1896), 307-22, was one of the first to analyze the work in terms of a drama, stressing its elements of social comedy. Analogies with the novel have frequently been drawn. See the bibliography of such studies given by Sanford B. Meech, Design in Chaucer’s Troilus (Syracuse University Press, 1959). Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition (University of California Press, 1957), p. 132, judiciously remarks that the Troilus is neither romance nor realistic novel, although it has traits common to both. He sees in it a third form resulting from an interplay of styles and attitudes. 27 Agnes K. Getty, “Chaucer’s Changing Conceptions of the Humble

Lover,” PMLA,

XLIV

(1929), 202-16.

32

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

later career favoured, a priori, a divided point of view on romantic

love.* And this divided point of view, tending to a juxtaposition of comic insights with serious and even tragic situations, found abundant scope as Chaucer re-worked II Filostrato and made of it something hitherto unknown. It is not romance in the old sense, though it is romantic; it is not comedy of manners or social novel either; and yet it shows much of all these genres. It stands by itself and in this position we may be content to leave it without strict classification. Of the three main characters, Troilus is changed least from his Italian prototype, and though sympathetically treated he remains the most conventional.®® Pandarus is transformed into quite a new figure. Instead of the heroine’s cousin he now appears as her uncle, a worldly man older than the lovers, affectionate towards them but also a bit cynical, ready to weep with Troilus but also to jest knowingly with Criseyde, full of advice, pat proverbs, gossip and ingenious contrivances. His speech is often markedly colloquial, as if in deliberate contrast to the hero’s more rhetorical flights. Even his gestures and mannerisms are rendered with an unprecedented vividness: he coughs (II, 254), he hums a tune at a critical moment (II, 1199), he stares hard at Criseyde’s face, he confidently thrusts into the bosom of her dress (II, 1155) the letter she has just sworn she will never, never take or read (of course she does read it -later),*° and in an

unforgettable

scene

entirely of Chaucer’s invention he conspiratorially awakens her the morning after her first night of love with Troilus. His jesting references cause her to blush: 2® Earle Birney, “The Beginnings of Chaucer’s Irony,” PMLA, LIV (1939), 637 ff., correlates Chaucer’s “flippancies of thought and comic ambiguities of diction” with his social status: an “in-between” position which he was never able to escape. 2° The changes made by Chaucer in adapting // Filostrato have been studied more than once, most recently and in greatest detail by Professor Meech in

the work cited above, n. 26. 3° In the Italian source the lady takes the letter without protest and herself tucks it into her dress: “E£ quelle prese, e messesele in seno,” II, 898.

The Achievement of Chaucer’s Tll,1569

Troilus

33

With that she gan hire face for to wrye /wrye: conceal With the shete, and wax for shame al reed;

And Pandarus gan under for to prie, And seyde, “Nece, if that I shal be ded, Have here a swerd and smyteth of myn hed!” With that his arm al sodeynly he thriste Under hire nekke, and at the laste hire kyste.*1

This is not only first-rate visualization; it is characterization by word and deed. The ironic archness of his morning greeting has ensured the ironic intention of offer of the sword, and the sudden kiss under these circumstances suggests the unspoken vicarious

pleasure Uncle Pandarus has had in helping to unite the two lovers. Criseyde too has become a different person. It is not only that her initial reluctance about amorous involvement is made genuine and convincing, but its inner causes are thrown into relief. The reader understands her doubts and scruples and the stages by which they are surmounted. Chaucer has endowed his heroine with a feminine timidity unknown to Boccaccio’s, at least to such a degree: “she was the ferfulleste wight/ That myghte be” (II, 450), he says of her. She is acutely aware of her exposed position in Trojan society as the widowed daughter of a deserter. At the same time she clings to what security she does enjoy, both with respect to her emotions and her social status. When first introduced she appears contentedly enjoying a literary afternoon with women friends in an atmosphere that irresistibly suggests a modern teaparty (II, 78). The irruption of Uncle Pandarus with his invitation to frivolity (“‘‘Uncle,’ quod she, ‘youre maistresse is nat heere!’ ” II, 98) heralds the agitation that is about to disturb the even tenor of her days. The well-timed spectacle of her royal lover riding by her window evokes a natural private satisfaction at the thought of her power over his happiness, leading to the swift conclusion: I know I’m young and beautiful—and after all, why shouldn’t I love someone like him? But just as swiftly comes the 21 All quotations from Chaucer are taken from the Works, ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston, 1957).

34

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

second thought of love’s tyrannies and uncertainties: “Sholde I now love [she asks herself], and put in jupartie/ My sikerness, and thrallen libertee?” (II, 772 f.). Such a state is particularly hard on women, 11,782

she thinks:

“Therto we wrecched wommen

nothing konne,

Whan us is wo, but wepe and sitte and thinke; Our wrecche is this, oure owen wo to drynke.”??

The emphasized motif of security (sikernesse) appears again, characteristically, in the next stage of the affair. During the period of probation, as it were, before Criseyde’s final ,capitulation to Troilus, she particularly rejoices in his discretion and utter reliability, for “wel she felte he was to hire a wal/ Of stiel, and sheld

from every displesaunce” (III, 479 f.). Thus protected, and with her fears gradually allayed, she is able to think “that love, al come it late,/ Of alle joie hadde opned hire the yate” (III, 469 f.). It is with a sound instinct that Criseyde’s second lover Diomede plays on her fears in the Greek camp by stressing the imminent doom of the besieged city from which not one shall escape alive: “ ‘Lat Troie and Troian fro youre herte pace!/ Drif out that bittre hope, and make good cheere,’” he urges (V, 912 f.). That is to say: accept the substitute love and the assurances it may bring with it. While emphasizing her timidity Chaucer has at the same time elevated her social status by showing her on terms of easy familiarity with members of the royal family. Her poise and experienced manners appear with especial clarity in two extensive scenes which Chaucer added to the Italian romance. They deserve separate mention because they throw light on the poet’s changed conception of his heroine and also his gift for independent creation. The first scene is a dinner-party arranged. by Pandarus in order to permit Troilus to have a short interview with his lady—alone now for the first time. The affair is to take. place in the house of Prince Deiphebus. Pandarus approaches him with a story to the effect that his niece’s property rights are being threatened by some *? Boccaccio’s heroine also meditates on the uncertainties and hazards of love, II, 593 ff., but she makes no such reference to woman’s peculiar lot.

The Achievement of Chaucer’s Troilus

35

unnamed foes: a situation that might well have been imagined by a Victorian Thackeray for one of his distressed heroines. Will the Prince perhaps be good enough to invite a small group of important people to meet her and discuss ways and means of help? Certainly, replies Deiphebus graciously; and the two plan a list of guests most likely to command the requisite influence.. What would you say, asks Deiphebus, if I were to include Helen, since she can of course do anything she pleases with Paris? HI, 1447

“What wiltow seyn, if I for Eleyne sente

.

To speke of this? I trowe it be the beste, For she may leden Paris as hire leste.” 8

The list having been agreed upon, Pandarus next frightens his niece with the story of a law suit being prepared against her by Poliphete. She shrewdly remarks that such an opponent would not alarm her by himself, but that Poliphete unfortunately has influential connections. She is therefore grateful indeed to accept the invitation which Deiphebus later confirms in person. The preparations thus serve to give a life-like impression of cliques and groups within Trojan high society. The project is carried through to the desired conclusion, for Pandarus, most skilful of stage managers, so arranges entrances and exits and conversations at the

dinner party that Criseyde is indeed left alone for a time with Troilus and no one is the wiser for it. Throughout, she conducts herself with the utmost decorum. The second occasion is also a dinner party, this time in the house of Pandarus himself. The host has carefully chosen a moonless night during a season of rainy weather. Before Criseyde accepts the invitation she asks cautiously whether Troilus is to be. present. Pandarus swears that the young man is at the moment out of town. Chaucer cannot tell us, he says, whether she really believed this: it is one of several occasions when the poet disavows knowledge of his heroine’s motives. In any event, Criseyde goes to her uncle’s house with some of her ladies, and he provides them a merry evening of song and story-telling. When the time comes for departure, however, the guests look out on a frighten-

36

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

ing downpour, and Pandarus laughingly insists possibly return home in it: III, 629

that they cannot

At which Pandare tho lough, and seyde thenne, “Now were it tyme a lady to gon henne!”

He offers hospitality to all of them for the night. Criseyde, with the tact characteristic of her, quickly reflects that since there is no choice for her in any event, it will be more gracious to yield at once, with thanks, than first grumble and later accept after all.*

Of course Troilus is not “out of towne yfare”; he is waiting concealed in that very house, and Pandarus later introduces him into his niece’s bedroom with yet another one of his plausible stories to explain the intrusion. The ensuing dialogue is the very refinement of comedy, thanks to Pandarus. The lover is timid and apologetic, the lady is ostensibly alarmed (but not too much), the uncle is artful and impatient, melodramatic and humorous by turns. There are moments—as for instance at the swooning of Troilus— when the scene is dangerously balanced on the edge of absurdity; there are others when Pandarus seems about to slip from archness into something more vulgar. But no: the tone is faultlessly preserved, and the withdrawal of Pandarus, after having accomplished his purpose, is accompanied by a most sophisticated bit of litotes. As far as I can see, he remarks, I am no longer needed here, nor is the candle that I am holding: 11,1135

“For aught I kan aspien, This light, nor I, ne serven here of nought. Light is nought good for sike folkes yén!”

The reference to sickness has all the earmarks of jesting irony.** Our last glimpse of the accommodating uncle reveals him in a char33 Constance Saintonge, “In Defense of Criseyde,” Modern Language Quarterly, XV (1954), 312-20, has emphasized Criseyde’s charm and social

graces. 34 However,

it must

be remembered

seriously regarded in medieval romances sympathetically presented.

that love-sickness

was

a malady

and that of Troilus is on the whole

The Achievement of Chaucer's Troilus

37

acteristic gesture: leaving the lovers in darkness, he “bar the candele to the chymeneye” (III, 1141). For

the lyrical outpouring

which

accompanies

the lovers’

union Chaucer once more had recourse to Boccaccio’s poem, which here rises to heights of great eloquence. But the English poet was careful to introduce at this point a new insight into Criseyde’s character, for he makes her confess that if she had not previously yielded to Troilus in spirit she would not have been present. in that house on the contrived occasion: “‘Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte deere,/ Ben yold, ywis, I were now nought heere!’” (III, 1210 f.). There is naturally no such avowal

on the part of Boccaccio’s Criseida, since she had herself arranged the rendez-vous, and it was held in her own house. Criseyde’s admission casts retrospective light on some of her previous tremors

and protestations. These two scenes, so brilliantly éxecuted, are enough of themselves to vindicate Chaucer’s position as a master of narrative techniques anticipating many of the values which we especially prize in novels of today. There are other values, of course. The

poetic medium itself makes a great difference. Then in the latter part, where the poet returns to a more faithful rendering of his source, the comic moods are progressively overshadowed by more serious ones, and the gradual heartbreak and ultimate despair of Troilus are delineated with full sympathy. The sense of a brooding destiny—never quite absent even in the lighter sections— is greatly deepened. Chaucer puts into his hero’s mind a passage of philosophical meditation on fate and free will, derived from Boethius, just before his separation from Criseyde (IV, 960 ff.). Finally, the Epilogue shows the spirit of Troilus rising above the earth after his death in combat, and with the new vision now granted him despising his former mundane attitudes. He laughs at and even execrates the sorrows and desires of those left behind him: V, 1821

And in hymself he lough right at the wo Of hem that wepten for his deth so faste; And dampned al oure werk that foloweth so The blynde lust, the which that may nat laste...

©

38

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

The reversal of attitude, while not quite unprepared, is here so complete

as to be breath-taking.

Poor

Troilus,

whose

utter

seriousness was unrelieved on earth, who so conspicuously lacked Pandarus’s ability to jest at himself, now quits us with peals of celestial merriment

ringing in our ears: a sound very different

from the polite mirth aroused in Pandarus and Criseyde during their social interchanges. But there is no such reversal on the part of Criseyde. Until the end she remains charming and feminine, sympathetic and timorous and above all susceptible to the flattery of being wanted and adored. Chaucer shows a very tolerant understanding of her frailties and her attractions throughout. He is reluctant to criticize or even to put into words the fact of her infidelity. He comprehends the efforts she makes, in vain, to evoke the memory of Troilus and his fine qualities (“Of Troilus the grete worthynesse,” V, 717), deliberately but to no avail trying to set her heart aflame with the fires of remembrance. She simply is not the sort of woman who can be thus fortified in her steadfastness. When she yields

herself to Diomede it is with tears of pity for his gaping bloody wounds (V, 1047); Chaucer will not say definitely that she gave

him her love as well: “Men seyn—I not [i.e., I don’t know]— that she yaf hym hire herte” (V, 1050). He insists that her promises

and protestations to Troilus on the eve of separation (IV, had been sincere, at least at the time, although he has that she was of unstable temperament (“slyding of when tested. He condemns her for giving to her new

1415-21) to admit corage”) lover the

brooch she had received from the first one, but he does so by

notable understatement: “And ek a broche—and that was litel ‘nede—/ That Troilus was, she yaf this Diomede” (V, 1040 f.). And in attributing to her the desperate cry: At least I'll be true to Diomede! (V, 1071), Chaucer realizes a master stroke of selfrevelation on her part. It is an original bit of characterization unknown to Boccaccio. The very turn of phrase is ironical: no 35 A reversal of attitudes away from earthly love and towards the heavenly

was of course expressed by other poets before Chaucer. See Eugene Slaughter, Virtue According to Love—in Chaucer (New York, 1957), pp. 156 ff.

The Achievement of Chaucer’s

Troilus

39

woman would thus exclaim in such circumstances if she did not actually doubt her own capacity for fidelity, already foreseeing the possibility of a long series of Diomedes to come. Even while judging Criseyde, then, Chaucer reveals sympathies for her human plight just as lively as those manifested for Troilus. All the more startling, therefore, is the conclusion in which a nonpartisan detached point of view is replaced by overt rejection.

No wonder critics have disagreed as to the fitness of the Epilogue and the Boethian additions.** However, the question of Chaucer’s artistic success or failure in the latter part of his poem is here not directly at stake. It is sufficient to establish his outstanding success as a writer of narrative which, among many other values, included

to a superlative degree the ones recognized as essential to the

modern novel at its best. | The Troilus and Criseyde remained without peer in this respect for several centuries. Nevertheless we shall find that certain 36 Most recently, Paull F. Baum has expressed a negative judgement on Chaucer’s effort to combine social romance with loftier elements of high seriousness. See his study entitled Chaucer: A Critical Appreciation (Durham: Duke University Press, 1958), ch. 4. Pathos lay within Chaucer’s reach, says Baum, but not tragedy; the latter was beyond him since he understood only pity, not the Aristotelian concomitant of terror. “His gifts were for comedy, or 2 close observation and portrayal of human frailty, and a cheerful, smiling condonement of such frailty,” p. 157. This statement will seem to many to underestimate Chaucer’s versatility. Nevertheless we may legitimately query Chaucer’s success in unifying artistically the various points of view he asks us to take towards his-people in Book V of the Troilus. The Epilogueis a magnificent piece of writing; the shift in attitude is no more shocking, psychologically and aesthetically, than in Shakespeare’s juxtapositions of tragedy with comic relief. Yet one might argue that the final palinode required a better preparation, reaching back to the earlier parts of the poem. In the beginning, the extremities of romantic love are counterposed neatly with the opposite weight of practical realism voiced by Pandarus. At the end, of human desire is contrasted with divine love and wisdom, while a vision theentire universe is contrasted with “This litel spot of erthe, that with the se/ Embraced is” (V, 1815 f.). The basis of comparison (Pandarus as anti-romantic But being replaced by nothing less than God) may be said to be incongruous. the and anti-romantic, completely not is Pandarus that it must be admitted reader is not required to see the comparison in terms of bald substitution.

40

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

neglected prose tales of the sixteenth century belong in the tradition of Troilus, insofar as they also record, with overtones of social comedy, the emotional education of a romantic youth

bound by the spell of a more experienced lady of the upper classes. Chaucer or his source, or both together, continued some sort of influence for the 200 years to come.*”

to exercise

5. THE MEDIEVAL HERITAGE IN SHORTER NARRATIVES: Exempla AND Fabliaux

While medieval romances are the most direct and important of the streams tributary to the modern novel, certain other types of narrative made a contribution as well. Allegory, which achieved a luxuriant florescence in 14thand 15th-century England, had least of all to offer. True it is that outstanding poets were able to use this vehicle in order to throw light upon the devious inner workings of the human spirit. Their way leads to Spenser and Bunyan, however, not directly to Lyly and Richardson. Yet overtones of allegory do appear in some passages of romantic narrative, especially when very wicked characters are contrasted with very good ones. One might say indeed that sentimental novels of the 17th and 18th centuries continued aspects of the medieval tradition all unwittingly, and

that some exponents of psychiatric symbolism are today doing the same thing, much as they would be surprised to hear it. Nevertheless, allegory may be set aside as only slightly relevant to our purpose. On the other hand, some attention should be paid to the vast treasure of shorter tales current in the Middle Ages which con-

trived to Capture and preserve pictures of contemporary life, albeit minuscule and fleeting. Anecdotes, jests, fables, exempla (stories told to illustrate an argument or adorn a sermon) and fabliaux (short stories in verse designed to provoke laughter— 87 See below, ch. 5, sec. 1. It is possible that later English writers had also read such texts as Christine de Pisan’s Duc des vrais amans. and Le Petit Jehan de Saintré by Antoine de la Sale, though they had not been translated from the French. These would help to fortify the influence exercised by the Troilus.

Medieval Heritage in Shorter Narratives

4]

usually satirical or improper or both): all of these circulated freely and many of them were written down, first in Latin and later in

the vernacular. They come from a variety of sources: folklore. local happenings and legends, bits of classical tradition, biblical and historical materials adapted in oral transmission, and numerous clever plots (often cynical) that can be traced to the East. Many of the tales were embodied in sermons after being equipped

with moral interpretations. Christian homiletics had used illustrative narrative from the very beginning, of course, but exempla were employed far more generously, and from more diverse sources, after the Preaching Friars had developed so brilliantly the art of appealing to popular audiences. At the same time the exempla were made more homely, more contemporary to the listeners by the manipulation of details. Many collections of them were made for the use of preachers, especially after the early 13th century. The concise Latin texts represent mere summaries of the plots, but some of the more expansive versions give us an idea of how the incidents could be developed by an effective speaker. Even fabliaux, stories verging on the ribald, could be included in the repertoire if the ultimate application was morally edifying.** As for the edifying exempla, their literary value rises above the ordinary when they are animated by dialogue and made concrete by local references. A certain English Friar Minor, originally from. Ireland, tells for instance of a period of pestilence in Clonfert (Connaught), when the local panic caused people to behold armies of devils in the fields. The Bishop of Clonmacnois, named Thomas Okoyn (today’s O’Quinn), thereupon called them together and explained to them that it was their very fear which gave the devils such power over them so that they sickened and died 38 In this context it is not necessary to enter into a discussion of medieval

Latin exempla as a type. For those who wish to make an initial exploration of the subject, the following studies are recommended: J.E. Mosher, The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature of England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911); G.R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge University Press, 1926); the same, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (ibid., 1933); J.-Th. Welter, L’Exemplum dans la littérature religieuse et didactique du moyen dge (Paris, 1927).

42

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

after experiencing the vision. He himself demonstrated how one should defy the fiends, and he reported to the author of the

exemplum just how he spoke to his flock on that occasion: And you, he said, can very well see that we are the ones, the men of this world (homines de mundo) who are doing more against them and saying more

ill things about than others do; and it is myself that am standing here (er ego sum hic stans) and denouncing them and preaching against them, and I do wish and say to them that they should come (he said) if they dare to; let all of them come! Why don’t they? What are they doing? Where are they?— Such-like insulting words I’m repeating (replico) in the ears of all the people.— And behold, from that hour forth the demons vanished, so that they never

appeared afterwards in that region; and at once the pestilence ceased which had so long miserably oppressed the people.*®

In the same style of direct reportage a visiting friar from Denmark tells of surviving heathen practices associated with the ancient god of fertility named Bovi (No. 192), and Friar Bartholemew reports the sad experience of a handsome young English priest (pulcher bachillarius, fortis et admodum iocundus et gaudiosus) who almost lost his soul because he was too fond of going out to look upon the sports and dances (luctas et choreas) of unregenerate persons in the parish (No. 191). To take but one more instance of lively writing: the 13thcentury Dominican collector of exempla, Thomas de Cantimpré,

begins an account of blasphemous rioters in a Flemish tavern with precise.indication that the setting is the city of Louvain; and the author states that he himself saw the event recorded: In the city of Louvain, within the boundaries of Brabant, we saw a and worthy citizen who, rising to go to matins on the holy night of Friday, passed in front of a tavern in which dissolute young men sitting, playing at dice and vying with one another in blaspheming and

noble Good were oaths.

A striking resemblance to this is to be found in the opening of Chaucer’s exempla:

Pardoner’s Tale, that most effective of all medieval

8° Liber Exemplorum ad Usum Praedicantium Saeculo XIII Compositus a quodam Fratre Minore Anglico de Provincia Hiberniae, ed. A.G. Little (Aberdeen, 1908), p. 86.

Medieval Heritage in Shorter Narratives C 463

472

43

In Flaundres whilom was a compaignye Of yonge folk that haunteden folye, As riot, hasard, stywes and tavernes, Where as with harpes, lutes, and gyternes, They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght... Hir othes been so grete and so dampnable That it is grisly for to heere hem swere.*°

Again and again Thomas insists on local settings and personal knowledge of incidents recorded, including experiences with demons, revenants and persons possessed. He interposes bits of dialogue and good advice too, as in this reminiscent anecdote of a poor but pretty girl who came weeping to him in the city of Brussels and told about a misadventure she had had with a certain priest: “He wanted to abuse me with violence [she said], and he kissed me against my will, but I hit him in the face with my hand and gave him a nose-bleed: and for this the clerks tell me it will be necessary by all means to make a pilgrimage to Rome.” Then I, barely restraining myself from laughter, spoke to her seriously and said...: “I herewith advise you... that, in case that priest or any other should wish to do you violence by his kissings or, fumblings, you will clench your fist and knock his eye out for him if you can. And don’t spare any Order in this respect, for it is proper for you to guard your chastity with a scourge, just as you would the life of your body.” When I said this, Iprovoked much mirth and gaity among all who were present, including the girl herself.41

With like circumstantiality Thomas tells the eerie tale of a man, carelessly drinking in a tavern with friends, whose sceptical boasting leads him to forfeit his soul to a devil. He is carried off 4° The exemplum of Thomas de Cantimpré is contained in his Bonum universale de apibus, Distinctio V, No. 103. An edition of 1605 gives the Latin thus: In Brabantiae partibus, urbe Louanio, ciuem vidimus generosum & bonum, qui in nocte sancta parasceues ad matutinas surgens, transibat ante cellarium in platea, in quo perditissimi adolescentes ad ludum terrarum sedentes, blasphemijs & iuramentis inuicem contendebant (p. 449). For discussion of the exemplum in relation to Chaucer see Carleton Brown’s separate edition of The Pardoner’s Tale (Oxford, 1935), Introduction. “1 Bonum universale (1620 ed.), p. 357.

44

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

“trembling with horror to the infernal regions” at the end of the day’s roistering—a simple precursor of Faustus.‘? What writers of fiction could learn from exempla like these was a flair for concrete setting and homely detail. Not all tales of the sort are concretized as well as the ones by Thomas, to be sure. . The well-known Latin collection called Gesta Romanorum, put ‘together (most probably in England) in the early 14th century, took a perverse delight in presenting its personages as unreal Roman

emperors,

generals and the like. The names

are often

fictitious, the circumstances always so, and the moral interpretations are forced to the point of being comic. Many of the Gesta are set down in bare outline, lacking circumstance and location. But a writer like Thomas de Cantimpré, with his asseverations of personal experience or quotable authority, his concrete settings in familiar towns and villages, his idiomatic dialogue shining through the Latin, could give inspiration to a Chaucer, and he anticipates in miniature the technique of Daniel Defoe when engaged in persuading us of the truth of Mrs. Veale’s apparition. What is true of the moral exempla is also true of the fabliaux. As a matter of fact, the two categories cannot be completely separated, for many a preacher’s instructive fable is no more than a ribald tale strangely twisted for homiletic ends. Here again, there is a wide range of techniques extending from the bald and artless summary to the artistically rounded tale. The audiences were apparently not limited to any one class. Those

who enjoyed romances could also enjoy the fabliaux which often represented something like a deliberate burlesque of romance.‘* Entertainers of all ranks, when bent on frivolous effects, could

make use of many traditional plots disseminated widely in Europe from Oriental sources. 43 Ibid., p. 537 f. 43 See Per Nykrog, Les Fabliaux (Copenhagen, 1957), in large measure a convincing refutation of the thesis of Joseph Bédier, who had argued in Les Fabliaux (Paris, Ist ed. 1893) that this literary type was a product of the medieval bourgeois class, separate and distinct from the literature of the aristocracy. See also Janet M. Ferrier, Forerunners of the French Novel (Manchester University Press, 1954), ch. 2.

Medieval Heritage in Shorter Narratives

45

The fabliaux, with their penchant for lascivious matrons, cynical seducers and gulled husbands, were in fact the antithesis of romance. We may call the type anti-romantic. But their classification in this category did not automatically make the fabliaux realistic. The devices by which husbands are deceived in ribald tales frequently strain our credulity no less than do the feats of prowess performed by Arthurian knights in combat with supernatural foes.. Exaggeration plays a great part in both instances. And once again it is Chaucer who most brilliantly realizes the possibilities of the genre. Certainly no reader of his can forget the breathing, moving, talking personalities who enact the well-worn plots as he adapts and elaborates them. In place of the pallid abstractions traditionally playing cuckolds’ parts we have the thieving miller of the Reeve’s Tale, with his quarrelsomeness overlaid with false joviality; or the superstitious carpenter of the Miller’s Tale, full of gnomes and anecdotes; or the solid merchant of the Shipman’s Tale, ponderously aware of his importance in the community and the risks he runs in his business ventures; or the fatuously uxorious elderly knight of the Merchant’s Tale, complete with “thikke bristles of his berd unsofte” and slack skin shaking about his neck. The localities are also sketched in—more elaborately now than in the Latin exempla— and are essentially related to the action. This functional use of environment is unusual. The internal economy of a Cambridge college explains why the two students of the Reeve’s Tale become directly involved with the dishonest miller. Similarly, the carpenter’s residence in Oxford explains why, although he is a “riche gnof,” he has a handsome clerk living in his house as paying guest. The affluent merchant of Saint-Denis, with his counting room full of bills and books of reckoning, would understandably have business to transact in the prosperous commercial cities of Flanders, thus ensuring his absence from home at a time opportune for his wife’s intrigue with her monastic creditor. And so on. Finally, Chaucer contrives to introduce just those passages of conversation which will serve to complete portraiture and forward the action: the dialect of the North-country Cambridge students; the

46

ii. The Heritage of Medieval Fiction

miller’s heavy jests at their expense;

the carpenter’s rambling

comments on death, life, and supernatural

powers;

the brash

wooing of Nicholas and Alisoun’s flustered, inconsistent rejoinders; the self-important speech of the French merchant and the frivolous reply of his spouse, which is—one need not be told— part of an act she puts on to please him and strengthen his image of her as a harmlessly flighty, adorable little wife. All these are elements of realistic narrative even though the plots embodying them had been and still remained implausible when viewed by the cold eye of reason. The numerous conventions persisting in Chaucer’s fabliaux** need not diminish in any way our appreciation of his innovations in handling and modifying the materials at his disposal. To say that the poet’s forte lay in acute observation of a reportorial kind rather than in a philosophical conception of realism is surely not to detract from his outstanding position as an innovator in this field of creative writing.“© Much time was to elapse after Chaucer’s death before any writers of fiction began to approach him in the ability to capture the impression of a social environment and relate it essentially to the people moving within it, whether of high or low degree. English fabliaux in verse did not develop to higher levels -after Chaucer’s brilliant experiments with the type. The simpler fabliau materials no doubt continued to circulate orally. In what age do they not? But little of the sort appears in writing during the next century or so. The nearest continuation will be found in the early Tudor jest books which, as we shall see, make a direct contribution to the picaresque novels and romances of roguery which blossomed somewhat later in the 16th century. “4 Muscatine, op. cit., ch. 3, emphasizes the conventions and exaggerations to be found in the French fabliaux, but in discussing the Canterbury Tales he also points out Chaucer’s independence in adapting style to subject matter. “6 In his Critical Appreciation Baum concedes Chaucer’s exceptional gifts in this line but seems to find an inadequacy in the theoretical foundation: “Chaucer had no theory of realism. What we see in him of this sort runs to the purely reportorial founded on acute observation, especially of English low life... and analytical insights of motive or action,” p. 108. Despite the initial

qualification, this would seem to be high praise for any medieval writer.

CHAPTER

Ill

THE LATE PHASE OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE 1.

CHANGING

SociAL

CONTEXTS

A new chapter opens in the history of fiction when prose, especially printed prose, becomes the favoured medium for romantic

narrative. The old materials and the old manner still persisted obstinately, to be sure. Refined love stories about damsels in distress, feudal struggles between lords and vassals, crusading adventures among Saracens, Arthurian quests and marvels: all these traditional themes were still used and re-used throughout the

15th and much of the 16th century. As a literary institution, chivalry became something of a myth, the more ardently cultivated (it would seem) as its original social function became a.matter

of the remote past. Yet there was an understandable historical reason for the enthusiastic cultivation of outmoded attitudes, precisely in the iate Middle Ages. It will be worth while at this point to take a glance at some of the factors involved. In the 15th century the world of military reality witnessed the beginnings of what may be called modern armies, organized under a central royal power which corresponded to an emerging national unity. This development naturally meant the doom of feudal chivalry, with its multiple divided loyalties to multiple leaders, and its preoccupation with individual exploits instead of planned campaigns. The new trend encountered some opposition, of course. Social groups which stood to lose by centralized monarchy found ideological support in the cultural heritage of the earlier Middle Ages. Powerful barons. both in England and France were still carrying on the tradition of rebellious vassals as literarily expressed

in some of the chansons de geste about Charlemagne and his heirs. What was different in the historical situation was the rise of a new “third force” which could in certain circumstances give support

48

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

to the embattled remains of the separatist feudal aristocracy. The new force resided in the wealthy middle classes of the now very influential trading towns. At first glance it might seem strange that such contradictory interests as those represented by the feudal nobility and the urban bourgeoisie should ever find common ground for action and attitude. But political and economic interests have more than once brought about curious partnerships. Specifically in 15th-century France, the Dukes of Burgundy, who were powerful enough to challenge the strengthening and centralization of royal authority, were also associated with and economically indebted to the flourishing commercial towns of Flanders. Here the new middle classes might have ultimate interests quite different from the ducal Burgundian, but they had enough immediate interests to warrant a cooperation which extended from the political to the cultural sphere. It was the Dukes of Burgundy who retained the pageants and symbolism of chivalry longest and even gave them a new vitality in the 15th century.’ Significantly also, it was at the court of Duke Philip of Burgundy and his wife the Duchess Margaret, sister of the English King Edward IV, that William Caxton was stimulated to begin his series of translations from French into English, including the prose romances then popular among the Burgundian élite. Previously, Caxton had been a merchant representing interests of the English wool-traders in Flanders; he had been in fact governor of the community of English merchants resident in the Low Countries. It will be remembered that King Edward IV (reigned 1461-83) favoured these merchants and was himself engaged in the wool trade. During a period of military reverses in the War of the Roses, the King and his brother-in-law Lord Rivers were fugitives on the continent; * See Raymond Lincoln Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard’ University Press, 1937). The author presents the cultural alignments and traditions very clearly; he does not, however, attempt to explain them. See also Georges

Doutrepont, La Littérature francaise a la cour (Paris, 1909),

des Ducs

de Bourgogne

Changing Social Contexts

49

they visited Margaret of Burgundy and mobilized aid from the merchants of Calais and Bruges. Here the interests of a mercantile English king, supported by the middle class of London, happened to coincide with those of the feudal-minded Burgundian nobility,2 supported as it also was by urban middle classes, even while that nobility still adhered culturaily to the manners of a past age. The political cause shared by both parties was a common desire to perpetuate the internal divisions and hence the weakness of the realm of France, to the advantage of both England and Burgundy.® Symbolic of the combination of chivalric ideals with wool-trade prosperity was the founding of the Order of the Golden Fleece by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1429. The classical hero Jason was its model pagan hero, as Gideon was its biblical, since both were associated with the prized commodity of wool. Raoul Lefevre wrote a prose account of Jason’s career to help glorify the Order; William Caxton translated and published it (about 1477) when King Edward became a member. There was another aspect of the cultural and political situation of Europe which helped to keep alive and even to fortify an interest in the early medieval tales of chivalry, and that 2 The complex alignment of social and cultural factors is well presented by Arthur B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1960), especially in ch. 1. “If the splendor of Burgundian chivalry rested on the profits of Burgundian commerce,” remarks Ferguson, “it was the wool and cloth trade that kept Englishmen constantly in touch with Burgundy and rendered them all the more susceptible to the chivalric pretensions of the Burgundian court.” And again: “Jt was no accident that Caxton, who for many years had held important positions among the English merchants in Bruges, became in his later years the most influential interpreter of the chivalric tradition to the English reading public,” p. 19 f. 3 Cooperation between Burgundy and England had previously been interrupted by quarrels, but during Caxton’s sojourn on the continent, under the

reign of Edward IV, it was once more close. The political situation is outlined by K. H. Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1919); underlying economic factors are considered by A. R. Myers, England in the Late Middle Ages (Pelican Books reprint, 1952), Part ii, ch. 3. * Caxton’s The History of Jason, ed. John Munro, EETS, ES, No. 111 (1913 for 1912).

50

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the consequent expansion of Turkish power in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean. The ideology connected with the term Crusade had

fallen into obsolescence and even disrepute in the 14th century, when it was misapplied to petty political wars between princes who were indisputably Christian on both sides. But the external threat now brought a belated revival of literary interest in the early feudal epics about wars previously waged against Saracens, both in Spain and Palestine.’ Caxton responded to the current taste by publishing his Godeffroy of Boloyne [sic] in 1481 “to thende that every cristen man may be the better encoraged tenterprise warre for the defense of Christendom.”* His Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prynce Charles the Grete (1485), embracing materials from several crusading epics of the Carolingian cycle, served the same purpose. The battle of Roncevalles is here placed in the honourable position of climactic episode.’ Thus William Caxton, middle-class merchant and also familiar of Burgundian and English aristocratic circles, true child of his times, was responding to many contemporary cultural

influences when he returned to England as its first printer. It is quite comprehensible that he, despite his mercantile background, was nevertheless instrumental in the infusion of new, life into the traditional literature of chivalry. The same rejuvenation of older modes was occurring in France, whence Caxton borrowed most of his texts for translation, at the same time and for the same reasons.® 5 Neither Kilgour nor Ferguson indicates the importance of this international situation as an explanation for the otherwise anachronous vogue of the chansons de geste in 15th-century prose redactions. * Caxton’s book was prepared for the press precisely when John Kendall arrived in England to collect funds in aid of the Knights of St. John, besieged by: the Turks in Rhodes. See Nellie Slayton Aurner, Caxton: Mirrour of Fifteenth-Century Letters (Boston,

1926), p. 42.

7 William Caxton, Charles the Grete, EETS, ES, Nos. 36-37 (1881) in one volume.

® A helpful survey of pertinent English materials is given by Ronald S. Chivalric Romance during the English Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1919). Crane, The Vogue of Medieval

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

51

It will now be in place to examine the contribution made by Caxton and other printer-publishers who immediately followed him, such as Robert Copland and Wynkyn de Worde. Our purpose will be to detect such tendencies in their fiction as were to lead away from medieval romance to newer forms. At the same time it will be interesting to see how these innovators dealt with the problem of shaping a new style fit for narrative in English prose. of experimentation. Its methods were fumbling This is the period and uncertain. In spite of inexperience, however, it will be found that writers of the transition era attained results deserving of somewhat more credit than they have hitherto received. 2. SURVIVAL AND ADAPTATION

OF SIMPLER TYPES

Redaction of French epics and romances into prose usually implied not only a qualitative change of medium but also a quantitative expansion of text. Sentences were amplified at a leisurely pace, and characters were also modified or increased in number.

New subplots were frequently introduced, thus creating new types

of interest. English translators in their turn sometimes expanded upon their sources, though their innovations were mostly limited to matters of phraseology and descriptive detail. The end result was often, though not always, quite different from the 12th- or 13th-century poem which was the fountain-head of inspiration. An example of one of the literary types least modified in its

later mutations is the old feudal epic of warfare between the Emperor Charlemagne and some of his recalcitrant vassals, namely the chanson de geste called Renaut de Montauban. This was done into French prose late in the 14th century as Les quatre fils Aymon, and put irito English by Caxton as The Foure Sonnes of Aymon.® Here the reduction to prose meant a loss of epic values such as the delineation of strong simple passions and moments of ® Caxton printed his version about 1486. It has been edited by Octavia Richardson, EETS, ES, Nos. 44 and 45 (1884 and 1885). Wynkyn de Worde reprinted the Caxtonian text in 1504 and Copland again in 1554. The French

prose used by Caxton is represented by the Lyons edition of 1480, which has been used here for purposes of comparison.

52

dramatic

i. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

intensity,

without

a compensatory

gain in subtlety

of delineation. The descriptions of combats remain starkly severe, and the rhetoric of defiant speeches is very much in the naive Ercles vein. Caxton’s fidelity to the French text betrays him—here as elsewhere— into Gallicisms, while his independence sometimes lands-him in awkward or disorganized sentences.!° It should be recognized, however, that Caxton’s source was likewise not impeccable in this respect. We obtain a typical picture of Caxton at work on this relatively simple tale if we examine the following passage in which the translator’s version shows certain weaknesses that are partly his own and partly derived from his source. The situation portrayed is the arrogant entrance of Lohier, Charlemagne’s son, into the great hall of Aigremont in order to summon

its lord Benes to do homage to the Emperor: Thys was in the moneth of May, that all creatures humain ought wel for to reioyce them”? and that folke preu!* and worthy in armes/ taken hert and hardinesse/ for to defende them self wel, and warre agaynst theyr enemyes. And this during, Lohier, the sonne of king charlemagne, entred into the halle of the Palays of Aygremont ryght nobly armed, and his folke also, and saw the halle ryght well garnysshed of fayre folke rychelye arrayed. And the duke sittynge right proudlye amonge his barons/ and the duchesse, hys wyfe, next by him; and before hym his sonne Mawsgys, that was a great mayster of the science of Nigromancy, that played afore his father of his art of nigromancy, wherin the Lordes that were there tooke great pleasure; and wit it well that in all the worlde/ was not a worthyer chrysten, nor more able, than was the sayd Mawsgis, except onlye his cousyn (p. 23 f.). 10 Octavia Richardson stated in the introduction to The Foure Sonnes that Caxton’s piously literal translation had led to Gallicisms, while Leon Kellner replied in his edition of Blanchardyn and Eglantine (see below, n. 29) that Caxton’s stylistic errors were due rather to his own penchant for repetitions, tautologies and blundering anacolutha. Both critics are right; there is no cone

tradiction between them except in emphasis. 11 In reproduction of early printed texts, obvious abbreviations will be expanded without indication by italics. 12 Richardson gives the expanded reading: then; it should obviously be them. The French is: que toutes creatures humaines se rejoyssent. 18 Richardson reads: pren. The French has: gens preux.

*

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

$3:

Here we have a formal presentation of the main characters. It is followed by simple action (the insulting summons) and simple response on the part of Duke Benes, featuring elementary gesture and speech: Whan the duke Benes of Aygremounte hadde herde Lohier thus speke, Thenne, yf ye hadde seen hym chaunge his colour, pouff, blowe/ as a man cruell prowde and owterageouse, and sayd to Lohier in this maner, ‘I shal not goo to kynge Charlemayne, nor noo thynge of his wylle I shalle not fulfylle/ For I holde nother castelle ne fortresse of hym/ But I shal goo vppon him wyth alle my puyssaunce/ and shalle dystroye alle the londe of, Fraunce vnto Parys’/ Thenne sayd Lohier ynto duke Benes of Aygremounte, ‘Vassaylle,’ sayd he, ‘how dareste thou answerre thus? And yf the kynge knewe now that thou threteneste hym thus as thou-dooste, he sholde come Incontinente vpon the, and sholde vtterli dystroye the. Well thou knoweste that thou arte his liege man/ and that thou canne not saye ayenste hit/ Comme then redeli, and serue thy souerayne lorde, the kynge Charlemayne. And byleue me, yf thou wylle, saue thyne owne lyffe. For yf thou doo not, J make the sure and certayne/ that yf he canne haue the by force, that he sholle make the to be hanged there as the ayre and wyndes wyth theyr grete blastes shall drye vppe the bones of the’ (p. 25 f.).

Despite its limitations, the style has a certain appropriateness for depicting uncomplicated human tensions which are clearly on the verge of irrupting into violence. In such a situation it is enough to have Duke Benes puff and blow with anger, and to. have Lohier reply with his vivid threat of hanging. Here is a world of emotion much more primitive than that shown us in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As translator Caxton erred against English idiom through literal renderings in some instances (for instance, his urtidiomatic “this during” for ce pendant), and he has dislocated an entire sentence by his introduction of a non-functional-yf in the first sentence of the second passage just quoted.'4 On the other hand Caxton has notably heightened the ‘effect of his story at two points. First of all he has shifted the entire puffing and blowing speech of Benes into direct discourse (the French begins it thus: 14 The original is: “Quant le duc Benes d’Aigremont eut ainsi ouy parler Lohyer le filz du roy Charlemaigne lors l’eussiez veu muer coleur,” B 4’. Caxton must have read /’eussiez as s’eussiez. He clearly did not check his work

carefully.

:

.

54

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

“Et dist a Lohier par ceste maniere Que ja ne daigneroit aler au roy...”), and he secondly has strengthened both the rhythm and visual impact of the final speech (the French has merely: “Il te fera pendre et encroyer au vent”). These two changes, which could be paralleled elsewhere, are definitely to the good. Yet both style and subject matter remain actually remote from ‘the needs of a new age in fiction. Still less promising from this point of view were the efforts to warm up and re-serve earlier crusading romance in prose form. The tone adopted is that of a moralizing chronicle, not auspicious for the development of prose narrative. In Caxton’s Charles the Grete the episode of the Amazonian Princess Floripas is reported, but it fails to impress. A slightly more promising effort at fiction in this genre was the anonymously translated Three Kings’ Sons‘ which deals with an imagined war against the Turks in Sicily. The three heroes are princes of France, Scotland and England who fight in aid of the Christian King Alfour, and with almost comical unanimity fall in love with his daughter Iolanthe. A few short speeches show an effort towards simple eloquence,'® but the battle scenes and tournaments proceed with stereotyped monotony. Somewhat more variety is to be found in the prose Huon de Bordeaux, done into English by Lord Berners, which offers marvels of fairyland and Oriental adventures as well as a conflict between Charlemagne and one of his vassals.?” It also contains another one of those forthright Saracen princesses who are not without interest in the gallery of fictional heroines, 18 Ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS, ES, No. 67 (1895). This neglected text was taken from a French source which exists in several MSS., one of them bearing the date 1463 (ten years after the fall of Constantinople).

16 An example is the lament of the King of France when he learns of Prince Philip’s secret departure for the wars: “Alas, my dere sone /what haue I forfete vnto you?/ ye haue put me to dethe without desert/ for I haue loued you more than my self... I was he bat more gladly wolde haue died to haue lengthid youre lif, than to haue lyued by youre dethe,” etc., p. 11. Alliteration, balance

and antithesis here indicate a care for rhetorical effect. 17 John Bourchier Lord Berners, The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, ed. S. L. Lee, EETS, ES, Nos. 40-41 (1882-83), from the print by Wynkyn de Worde (ca 1534).

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

55

ancient and modern. Her first encounter with Huon was dramatic, to say the least. The latter had been ordered by Charlemagne, as feudal penalty for alleged insubordination, to visit the Saracen Admiral of Babylon in his palace, to slay the paynim king sitting at the Admiral’s right hand, to pluck out some hairs of the Admi- . ral’s own beard, and—crowning insult—to kiss the Admiral’s daughter in public. The effect of the abrupt osculation is described with a certain naive charm: Than Huon saw where his [the Admiral’s] doughter, the fayre Esclarmonde, sat by her father; than Huon went to her/& kyst her .iii. tymys before her father, wher of the damesell was sore abasshyed; but she saw hym so fayre, & felte his mouth so swéte/ that she thought, without she myght haue hym to her louer, she sholde dye for sorow (p. 120).28

The fair Esclarmonde soon avows her passion to the imprisoned Huon, but he makes it clear to her that he had kissed her only in the line of duty, because Charlemagne had ordered him to. If his rejection of her sounds rather ungallant, the sequel demonstrates that he had ample reason to be wary. The lady undertakes quite unsportingly to starve him into submission; and it must be regretfully stated that she succeeds, despite his initial resistance: ... and at the last, when she saw that, then she demaundyd of hym/ yf she delyueryd hym out of preson yf he would then promyse her to lede her with hym to Fraunce, & to take hyr to his wyf when he cam ther. ‘yf thou wylt promyse me this,’ quod she, ‘thou shalte haue mete & drynke suffycyent at thy pleasure.’ ‘Dame,’ quod Huon, ‘I promyse you faythfully, though I shulde be for ever dampned in hell, I shall do your pleasure, what so euer fall to me therby’ (p. 127).

Only then does the fair blackmailer consent to become a Christian. The motives of both parties are of the simplest. 18 Very close to the French original in Les prouesses et faitz merveilleux du noble Huon de Bordeaulx (Paris: Lenoir, 1513): “Alors Huon choisit la belle Esclarmonde qui auprés de son pere l’admiral estoit/, Huon s’approcha d’elle, sila baisa trois fois devant son pere dont la pucelle fut moult esbahye/

mais elle le vit tant bel et sentit sa bouche tant fresche que advis luy fut se de luy ne faisoit.son amy elle mourroit de dueil,” fol. 30°.

56

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

Little more can be said of the characters in the more romanticized prose tales of the crusading cycles. Valentine and Orson and The Knight of the Swan may be taken as typical illustrations. The former of these’® is a translation of a French romance in prose (based on a lost one in verse) composed some time between 1475 and 1489. The fundamental themes in Valentine and Orson are well known in folk tales: false accusation of an innocent queen followed by her vindication, combats between two brothers and between father and son who do not recognize each other, reunion of a scattered family (including foundlings) after many vicissitudes. Hagiographical themes are also woven in. Finally and again most significantly for the period, much space is devoted to accounts of fictitious wars against the Saracens, centred mostly about Constantinople. The element of magic is grossly exaggerated, but it evidently pleased the taste of the time. Frequently reprinted, the romance continued to be popular in condensed versions down into the 19th century. Yet there is little here which might contribute directly to the

development of later fiction. The course of the action is slowed down by endless repetitions and duplications, for readers are often warned in advance what is about to happen, they are then told about the event when it occurs, and they must also hear it reported once again (or oftener) to interested persons by eyewitnesses. Speeches, monologues and dialogues are excessively formalized and elaborate. The doughty knights and fair damsels — are for the most part as conventional in action as in speech. Even the amorous Saracen Queen Rozemonde, a lady of many wiles and much experience, remains shadowy. A very slight element of social comedy appears when the hero Valentine, like an early Joseph Andrews, is forced to parry the advances of his cousin 1° Valentine and Orson, translated from the French by Henry Watson, ed. Arthur Dickson, EETS, OS, No. 204 (1937 for 1936). Watson also translated the popular History of Oliver of Castile (late 15th century) from the French of Philippe Camus. Wynkyn de Worde printed Watson’s version in 1518; there is a modern edition by Robert Edmund Graves for the Roxburghe Club (London, 1898).

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

57

Eglantine (unknown to him as such). The style of the English translation diminishes the effect, for it is fumbling and imitative, full of Gallicisms and syntactic awkwardnesses. It is thus, for instance, that Valentine stiffly replies to his cousin: A madame sayd valentyne Leue your imaginacion, and haue not your herte soo ardaunt on me. You knowe that I am a poore foundlyng that your father hath rouryshed for goddes sake and am in no manner a man for to haue you, nor the poorest damoysell that is with you, thynke els where and do so that ye maye shew of what bloude ye be comen of. And to god I commaund you, the which haue you al wayes in his kepyng (p. 55).

One scene, describing an abortive attempt to murder King Pepin in his sleep (p. 207 f.),is presented with unusual realism of detail. The suborned assassin enters the royal bedchamber with intent to kill: but when he was besyde hym, and that he lyfte vp his arme for too haue put hym to death, hym thoughte that the kyng woulde haue wakened, wherfore so great feare toke hym that he let hymselfe slyde downe by the bedde syde, where as he was a great whyle and durste not remeue hym. After he haue smytten secondly, but so great fere toke hym as he woulde haue hym, that all hys body fayled, and began for too tremble in suche wyse myght not acheue his enterpryse, and put the knyfe within the

(p. 208).

woulde smyten that he bedde

This episode, as the editor of Valentine and Orson points out in his introduction (p. lix f.), bears certain resemblances to the. scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Duncan is killed according. to a plan not quite logically executed by Lady Macbeth. When she enters the chamber of the sleeping king and lays the daggers ready to kill her royal guest (Macbeth, MI, ii, 12 ff.), Lady Macbeth’s failure to accomplish the design may well have been due, as Dickson suggests, to Shakespéare’s memory of the corresponding abortive scene in the romance. If such lively and direct portrayal is rare in Valentine and Orson, it is still rarer in the tale of Helyas, Knight of the Swanne (1512), translated from a French prose romance about a fabu-

58

iii, The Late Phase of Medieval Romance ©

lous ancestor of the crusader Godefroy of Bouillon®®. Robert Copland did the English text. The plot, like that of Valentine and Orson, represents a curious mixture of folk tale, pious if unorthodox thaumaturgy, and pseudo-history. The early life of the hero is closely modeled on the mdrchen about some brothers who are bewitched into birds and later unspelled by their sister’s devotion (see Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmdrchen, No. 93).

In the romance however the unspelling of the swans occurs by different means and the sister becomes a useless supernumerary. Helyas, a brother accidentally exempt from the spell, now occupies the leading role. After vindicating his falsely accused mother, he rescues another falsely accused damsel in circumstances made famous by: the adaptation in Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. Helyas is represented as the founder of the historical dynasty of the Bouillon crusaders. Though the romance has but imperfectly assimilated disparate materials of fairy tale and chanson de geste, its popularity may well have been due to the Turkish threat which revived a public interest in crusades. Whatever the contemporary pertinence of the theme, both action and manner of expression were alike remote from the postulates of modern fiction. Stylistically, Copland’s source led him into a deplorable type of mannered diction studded with tautological pairs of 20 See C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954), p. 636. The text is reprinted by William J. Thoms, Early English Prose Romances (London, n.d., introduction dated 1889), pp. 693-704. William Copland was the publisher. Robert Copland’s source was the story contained in the first 38 chapters of Pierre Desrey’s compendious French prose work, La Genealogie avecques les gestes et nobles faitz darmes du... Prince Godefroi de Boulion (Paris: Jehan Petit, 1500; the print of 1504 has here been used). This prose version is a late treatment of the extensive . cycle of legends clustering about the figures of the historical crusader Godefroi and his family and associates. The earliest treatments were two 12th-century poems: La Chanson du Chevalier au cygne, ed. C. Hippeau (Paris, 1874-77) and La Naissance du Chevalier au cygne, ed. H. A. Todd in PMLA, IV (1889). On these see Robert Bossuat, Manuel bibliographique de la littérature fran¢aise du moyen dge (Melun, 1951), items 891-905; on the prose version see

Brian Woledge, Bibliographie des romans et nouvelles en prose frangaise anté-

rieurs @ 1500 (Geneva-Lille, 1954), items 36-39.

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

59

words like those affected by Caxton, but here much exaggerated.” The love of such tautologies, in French as in English, may well have resulted from an imitation of the idiosyncrasies of legal language. Copland’s fidelity to his source went so far as to produce many Gallicisms in word order and syntactic constructions. He also took over occasional flowery adornments of rhetoric anticipating Lyly’s extravagances. The speeches of lamentation, sup-

plication and reproach are just as stilted as in Valcntine and Orson, and again we find numerous repetitions and recapitulations of events already known. Rare indeed is a simple dialogue such as the one conducted between Helias and the lady he undertakes to rescue from danger arising out of a false accusation. Even when straightforward in style, such utterances are still highly formalized. Their technique reminds one of the woodcuts adorning these early printed romances: charming in their way, 1 In the colloquy between Oriant and Beatrice, when the lady reproaches him with transgression on her domain during a hunting party, the following tautological phrases may be noted in both the English and French (italics added): French Original

Copland’s English

en le redargnant de ce qu'il estoit

she... began to speake to the king Oriant in repreuing him for that he was comen to hunte with in the

venu chasser es mettes et limittes de sa seigneurie et possession, A 4”. qui vous a meu de venir chasser ne prendre bestes es foretz de ma region? Ygnorez vous que je soye dame et possesseresse de ceste terre. Nennil respondit le roy. Et qui vous a, dist elle, doncques donné congé et licence de le faire, ibid. Car vous n’avez aucune action de droit de chasser ne prendre quelques bestes privees ou saulvages en ma terre, ibid. moy rendre tribut et hommage, A 5‘.

boundes and limites of hir signourye and possession, A 2°,

who hath moeued you to come hunte or take ony beastes within the forestes of my region, know ye not that I am lady and posesseresse of this londe. Damoysel said the king nay. And wo hath than said she giuen you leue or licence to doo, ibid. For ye haue none accion of right for-to chase or to take any beast wilde or tame in mi forestes, nor on mi ground, ibid. to yelde me tribute and homage. A 3%,

60

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

but also stiff with a medium not yet Here and there romances we may

the rigidity of inherited patterns executed in subdued.” in the most conventional of the early prose however come upon refreshing passages of

felicitous narrative. There are some unforgettable moments, for instance, in Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. This was 22 In the case of Wynkyn de Worde the linguistic quaintness and stiffness has an especial character, Germanic rather than Gallic. In his prose version of The Seven Sages of Rome, printed by him as Thystorye of the. VII. Wyse Maysters (London, ca 1515), the amorous stepmother begins her efforts at seduction with flattery thus expressed: “I haue moche of your persone & beaute herde,” and she assures Dioclesian that despite her marriage to the Emperor “I withput faute gyue you knowledge that I for your loue unto this day haue kepte my

vyrgynyte,” B 3’. Her direct‘invitation to the prince is: “lete vs togyder slepe™;

and after his, rejection of her advances she thus formulates her accusation a la Potiphar’s wife: “whyles I with my wordes exhorted and meued hym for to haue spoken, he hath endeuoyred hymself with me to haue synned. & by cause I wolde not to hym consente... he my vysage hath made all blody,” B 5’. De Worde’s oddities of word order may of course be English archaismsbut in any case they are not due to either the German or French version then available to him. The phrases just quoted may be compared with their equivalents in Die sieben weisen Meister (Frankfurt 1554; close to Augsburg edd.”

of 1473 and 1488) and Les Sept Sages de Rome (Geneva, 1494): Ich hab

deiner

jay beaulcoup ouyr [sic] parler de

schéne, fol. 8°.

viel gehért

vonn

ta beaulté, B 17.

darumb sage ich dir on allen zweiffel/ das ich von der liebe wegen/ die ich zu dir hab/ mich selber keusch gehalten hab, ibid. wir solten bey einander schlaffen fol. 8’. vnd da ich jm vorgesagt hat/ das er mit mir reden solt/ da wolt er mich zu Siinden vnd schanden gezogen haben/ Darinn das ich von jhm nicht so gar schendlich gelestert wiird/ so hab ich geschwiegen/ biss er mir mein Angesicht zerzert, fol. 9V.

‘Et en effait je te fais assavoir que pour l’amour de toy yay gardé ma

virginité, ibid. dormyrons ensemble, ibid. il m’a parlé et sollicité de peché, et que je deusse abandonner mon corps a pecher avec luy... il m’a ainsi dessyré le visage et faict telle effusion de sang, et m’a desrompu mes ornemens

de testes

et deschevellée

clerement

pouves veoir, B 2v,

The relations of these three versions to one another

gated in detail.

comme

have yet to be investi-

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

61

translated from the French of Raoul Lefevre,?* who was chaplain at the court of Duke Philip of Burgundy. Lefevre in turn had

followed the Latin Historia destructionis Troiae of Guido delle Colonne (13th century),”4 but with considerable freedom. Much of the Latin text, as of its French and English adaptations, is taken up with an uninspired survey of classical mythology in medieval guise, followed by an account of the Trojan war presented from an anti-Homeric, pro-Trojan point of view. In the midst of the rather dry narrative as rendered in Caxton’s English, occasional scenes are realized with memorable vividness. One of them occurs when Helen of Sparta goes to the temple, ostensibly to worship but actually to look upon the newly arrived Trojans, among whom Paris glitters in his best attire, deliberately chosen for the occasion. There follows a conversation between the pair of them—“indirectly reported—with what fateful consequences we already know. As the handsome stranger takes leave of her and goes out of the temple “helayne sente after hym her eyen also fer as she myghte” (II, p. 532). This vivid detail of behaviour®® can be matched with an equally vivid detail of reported conversation attributed to the eloping pair. Helen, according to Guido and his followers, felt a natural distress when she actually found herself aboard Paris’s ship and approaching Troy. Like more

complex heroines of later fiction, she experienced doubts about the validity of her heart’s desire when it lay within her grasp. 23 Caxton’s Recuyell has been edited by H. Oskar Sommer (London, 1894) in two volumes. For purposes of comparison the following French edition of Lefevre’s text has been used: Cy commence le volume intitulé le recueil des histoires de Troyes, composé par venerable homme Raoul Le Fevre... En I’an de grace mil. cccc. Ixiiii. It is unpaginated. The date, according to the British Museum catalogue, should be about 1476. 24 Guido’s Historia is edited by Nathaniel Edward Griffin (Cambridge, U.S.A.: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936). On the background of Lefevre’s treatment see Doutrepont, op. cit., pp. 171 ff. and Alphonse Bayot, La Légende de Troie a la cour de Bourgogne (Bruges, 1908). _ % It goes back to Guido’s Latin, which runs as follows: “quem exeuntem Helena, dum potuit eundem uidere, dulcibus est aspectibus insequta,” Griffin ed., p. 74. The French is very close: “et la demoura Helaine moult pensive qui le convoye de ses yeulx autant comme elle peut.”

62

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

Caxton’s Paris tries to reassure her with promises and sensible arguments, whereupon she makes an inspired reply unknown

in the earlier (Latin and French) versions: “Alas this caas happened me neuer to fore” (II, p. 535 f.)—quite as if elopement from one’s husband were a skill to be learned by experience.” The humour is probably unconscious and seems to arise from a faulty translation, but it unquestionably adds a dash of colloquial charm for the modern reader. That perennial favourite Apollonius of Tyre,’ put into English from the French by Robert Copland, contains one section which might well, if duly modified, fit into the framework of a modern novel. It covers the love affair between Apollonius, a shipwrecked and destitute stranger whose royal rank is unknown, and the daughter of the king who gives him hospitality. Apollonius first wins the young lady’s esteem by showing her that he can improve her performance on the harp. She thereupon persuades her father to let him give her lessons in music, and—like any Victorian miss—promptly falls in love with her instructor. Her maneuvers to obtain what she wants would have delighted Bernard Shaw, had he known about them. Both the civilized amenities and the frequent absurdities of the tale belong to a much earlier age originally. Medieval Europe had taken over the plot from a late classical text in Latin, no doubt based on a lost Greek romance.

In the English version by Copland, the romance

suffers from

stylistic awkwardness and artificiality. Here again we find Gallicisms, tautologies, strange neologisms: in short, further evidence 26 The Latin attributes to Helen merely a general resolve to submit to fate and to Paris: “Mallem deos de meis successibus aliter statuisse. Sed ex quo aliud esse non potuit, inuita tuas preces admittam, cum tue resistere uoluntati nulla sit potencia penes me,” Griffin, ed., p. 78. The French has: “Helas j’amaisse mieulx que il ne me fust oncques aduenu Mais fuis que autrement ne puet estre moult envis feray ce que me requerez combien que n’ay puissance

de resister.” Did Caxton hastily read jamaisse (Latin rmallem) as jamais? Such errors are typical of his translations elsewhere. 27 The Romance of “Kynge Apollyn of Thyre,” reproduced in facsimile by Edmund William Ashbee from the unique original printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510 (London: privately printed, 1870).

The Adaptation of Simpler Types

63

of a prose style not yet sure of itself and struggling towards realization. Apollonius laments with “lachrymate chekes” in “calamynous sorowe” (p. 22); he apostrophizes his evil fate alliteratively as “O fortune ingenyous of men/ fals/ fekyll/ and vnstedfast” (tbtd.); he is said to be victim of a whole catalogue of ills “for he hadde doubte/ thought/ melancoly/ heuines/ sorowe/ honger/ thyrst/ and inwarde care” (p. 22 f.); his desperate situation is expressed in a very French idiom: “In makynge these complayntes with many syghes and teeres the myddaye passed” (p. 25). Nevertheless there are moments when, despite the language either artless or over artful, human feelings manage to break through. Thus when Apollonius delivers to the princess the epistles of her various aspiring wooers, we are told that she took the scrolls and began for to rede them/ and whan she had redde theym she stode styll and sayd no worde/ and than she behelde Appolyn in castynge a grete sygh and after she sayd vnto hym: By the faythe of your body wolde ye not haue grete dolour in your herte yf I toke you to husbande and leue all other lordes for your sake (p. 36 =C 6’).

Her direct appeal, formulated with a kind of desperate irony, is at first evaded by the modest stranger but Jater crowned with success when her father’s consent has been won. The rest of the tale is devoted to incredible adventures typical of Greek romance as a genre. This particular plot has unusual importance in literary history, however. Retold later in the 16th century in florid Elizabethan style by Lawrence Twine, it became (as is well known) the source of the Shakespearean Pericles Prince of

Tyre.*® As a final instance of traditional romance containing some minimal elements of fiction in the modern sense we may cite the 15th-century King Ponthus and the Fair Sidone. Its ultimate source was the Anglo-Norman poem Horn et Rimel, and it was therefore 28 Twine’s romance was called The Patterne of Paineful Adventures (Lon- don, n.d.: printed by “the Widow Newman”).

64

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

also connected with the 13th-century Middle English romance of King Horn. The immediate source of the English Ponthus was a French prose text preserved in several manuscripts.” Here again we find the crusading theme re-emphasized since Ponthus localizes the struggle against Saracens in the traditional battle-ground of Spanish Galicia instead of the vague Suddene of the Middle English romance. The game of courtship played by the exiled hero and the heroine has become more elaborate than in the feudal poems composed in French and English, but the language is simple in the extreme. It is thus that Sidone makes her arrangements to meet Ponthus for the first time: Sydon, that herd the grete speche of the beautie that was in Ponthus and of his demeynyng, sche was day and nyght in grete thoght how sche myght fynd an [sic] way, with hir worschipp, to speke with hym—for drede myche of speche of menn. And when sche had thoght envgh, sche sent for Herlande the

senyschall; and when he was comen, sche gave hym a right fair palfrey, and sche made hym-ryght grete cher. Herland mervellyd of the grete cher, bethynkyng hym what sche mente, and doubted (p. 13)

—as well he might, for the young lady’s eagerness seems a bit ominous. The seneschal’s efforts to prevent the meeting come to nothing. Ponthus is however more cautious than the most modest of traditional heroes. Even his testimony to the heroine’s virtue has a note of priggishness about it, as if he were issuing her a certificate of moral hygiene when he says: ... ne trowe ye not ne thynke ye not that I wolle ymagyn ne thynke bot to your worschipp, for I haue fonde you so goode, clene, and trew, that I loue and prayse you a thowsand tymes the more —fore ther is no fayrer thyng in thys wordle then is a goode, clene lyve (p. 32). 29 See Frank Jewett Mather’s edition of KingPonthus and the Fair Sidone (Baltimore: The Modern Language Association, 1897), Introduction. Two English renderings of the French romance exist: the one edited by Mather from

MS. Digby 185 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and a printed Wynkyn de Worde (1511) of which only one copy survives (also leian Library). The relations between the two are complicated. to Mather, the most likely hypothesis is that de Worde made a the Digby version with the help of the French original.

version by in the BodAccording revision of

Society Romance in Early Prose 3. SUSTAINED

PASSAGES OF SOCIETY ROMANCE

65 IN EARLY

PROSE

Among the longer prose romances. of this period there are a few which include novelistic elements to a more generous extent that the rest. Conspicuous among them are two done into English by Caxton (Blanchardyn and Eglantine and Paris and Vienne) and one translated by John Bourchier, Lord Berners (Arthur of Little Britain). All three belong distinctly to the medieval tradition, but all of them offered material to English readers which could—and perhaps did—make some sort of contribution to the shaping of later fiction in a realistic vein. Of the three romances, Blanchardyn and Eglantine*® is the most

conventional. Its ultimate source was a 13th-century French verse romance Blancandin et |’orgueilleuse d’ Amour.*" In its simplest form the romance constituted a pleasant if not very inspired imitation of the Perceval (or Conte del Graal) of Chrétien de Troyes. An inexperienced—though in this case not entirely unsophisticated— young knight sets out to learn about the adult world of adventure against his parents’ wishes; he finds a dying knight by the roadside and rescues the heartbroken lady who had been snatched from the victim by force; he begins to understand from the example of these two what love is; he later encounters kindly advisers and hospitable hosts on his journey; he learns about the desperate plight of the proud Queen of Darye (Eglantine in the prose versions) who is besieged by an unwelcome Saracen wooer, and forthwith proceeds to rescue and marry her. All these motifs had been familiar in the Arthurian cycle since the 12th century. Blancandin’s rescue of the besieged queen, closely analogous to Perceval’s rescue of Blanchefleur, is the culminating adventure. The poet, or a continuator of the original 13th-century poet, expanded it however to include supplementary episodes resulting from the hero’s capture by Saracens and his adventures 30 Ed. Leon Kellner, EETS, ES, No. 58 (1890). A much later English trans-

lation, made independently by Thomas Pope Goodwine and published in 1595, is used by Kellner to supplement gaps in the imperfect unique copy of Caxton’s text.

31 Ed. H. Michelant (Paris, 1867).

66

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

in the East before his triumphant return and marriage to the lady.

Here again we come upon the crusading motif which was enjoying a revival of popularity in Caxton’s time. Two French prose elaborations of the poem exist, preserved in manuscripts of Brussels and Paris respectively. Neither has been edited. The

latter of them, which is the more amplified, represents the source used by Caxton. The Paris prose manuscript and Caxton agree, for instance (as against the Brussels prose) in transplanting Blanchardin’s adventures among warring Saracens to the Baltic area, and depicting both Prussians and Poles, surprisingly enough, as black-faced Mohammedans.* In general the geography is as fantastic as the adventures recorded in this latter part of the story. As far as the elements of courtly realism are concerned, they will be found concentrated in the scenes which show Blanchardyn’s first encounters with Eglantine. The heroine’s military situation may recall that of Perceval’s gentle Blanchefieur, but her epithet

(l’orgueilleuse d’Amour in the French) and her behaviour suggest rather the haughty damsel who mocks Gawain’s advances in the poem by Chrétien. She belongs to the familiar type of independent ladies at first resistant to love but later tamed to docility. At the first encounter of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, the hero overtakes her and impulsively steals a kiss from her under difficult circumstances, to the lady’s great surprise: 32 Tn the 13th-century poem and the Brussels prose, the hero is carried off as

prisoner towards Alexandria and shipwrecked near Athens; in the Paris prose ' representing Caxton’s source he is cast ashore near Marienburg in Prussia,

joins the (pagan) King of Prussia and fights against the (equally pagan) King of Poland. Unfortunately there is no edition of either French prose romance available. Kellner used the Paris MS. and introduced readings from it in his critical notes to Caxton. The historical background is not easily explained. For centuries Western Europe had been aware of some sort of warfare going on

in the Baltic area which claimed to be a crusade conducted by the Teutonic Knights against local pagans. All pagans were automatically Saracens. Turks and Lithuanians, Poles and Prussians: these were all the same, it would appear,

for French and English romancers of the time. Vague and distorted rumours of the Battle of Grunwald (1410) may explain the introduction of a Prussian and Polish milieu to replace the Eastern Mediterranean, for the news was at that time recent and no doubt interesting albeit confused.

Society Romance

in Early Prose

67

Blanchardyn... smote hys courser wyth the spore for to kysse her as he furth by her went, wherof happed, by the bruyt that his hors made, that she loked bakward for to se what he was that so hastely rode after her. And so well it fortuned Blanchardyn that bothe theyre mouthes recountred, and kyst

eche other fast/ Yf blanchardyn was right glad of this aduenture/ It is not to be axed (p. 41 f.).

At first Eglantine resents this hasty osculation: “Now knowe I not yf he be a gentyl man or not,” she cries (p. 44). Afterwards Blanchardyn’s heroic yet unpretentious services win her reluctant

admiration and finally her love. The scenes reflecting her changing attitude have elements of comedy in them, somewhat recalling the interchanges between Malory’s Gareth and the shrewish Lynet. They culminate in an interview, very much expanded from the original poem (Michelant ed., p. 55 f.), which permits Eglantine to pass skilfully from talk of wages for his services to an avowal of her feelings (Caxton, pp. 77-80). After this Blanchardyn is of course ten times more valorous than before. Paris

and

Vienne,**. also

translated

by Caxton,

is another

chivalric erziehungsroman, with the element of social comedy more conspicuous than in Blanchardyn. The English version derives by way of a French translation from what is supposed to have been a Catalan original.** The titular hero and heroine are lovers hampered by class distinction, for she as daughter of the Dauphin of Vienne belongs to the higher ranks, while he is

of the lower aristocracy, and is moreover excessively aware of his handicaps. He sighs and laments, confides in a faithful friend, serenades his beloved and wins jousts to vindicate her title to 33 Caxton’s text (1485) was reprinted by W. C. Hazlitt for the Roxburghe Library (1868). 34 The French translation was done by Pierre de La Seppéde in 1432. There are early prints of the romance in Italian, German and Flemish besides the French, which was first printed at Antwerp in 1487. Manuscripts of the French also exist: see Hazlitt’s introduction to Caxton’s version. In the present study use has been made for purposes of comparison of the French print Paris et la belle Vienne (Lyon, 15402). On the relation of versions in manuscript and print see MacEdward Leach’s introduction to Caxton’s text, EETS, OS,

Nr. 234 (1957).

68

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval’

Romance

supreme beauty— all very anonymously. He is shy and lacks the confidence to declare himself. It is Vienne who herself discovers evidence of his identity as serenader and jouster, in a series of episodes that suggest the circumstances of daily life in a castle with unusual particularity (pp. 25-29). Thus assured, it is once more Vienne who thereafter urges Paris to have her father ask for her in marriage with him. The hero is “quasi al abasshed” (in French: “quasi tout esbahy”) and doubtful of success. So is his father.*® Failing in this attempt, Vienne proposes an elopement to Paris: “and I shal pourueye some Iewels and money,” she assures him practically. There are conditions, to be sure. Her maid Isabel is to accompany her, both girls being disguised as men, and there is to be no nonsense about anticipation of conjugal rights until she and Paris are duly wedded. Vienne’s code is obviously quite different from that of Chaucer’s Criseyde, who rejected the possibility of elopement and eventual marriage with Troilus. The projected elopement comes

to nothing, as it turns out,

and the young people are forced to return home in frustration. Nevertheless the episode is a high point in the narrative. It is effectively envisioned from beginning to end: the arrangements for change of horses on the road to Aigues Mortes; the flight during a violent rain-storm, the sheltering with a good chaplain (who supervises their irreproachable sleeping arrangements) and finally their stoppage on the banks of a swollen river. The flood costs them the life of a devoted squire and forces them: to turn back. The formerly hospitable chaplain will not harbour them a second time, because messengers from Vienne’s father have in the meantime conveyed threatening instructions to him. Paris, hearing this, is again greatly daunted: “And whan vyenne sawe *5 The French Paris thus recounts the father’s reaction to Paris’ proposal:

“luy dit en le reprenant que jamais ne parlast de ce faict/ car point ne vouloit mourir pour sa fille/ et qu’il luy demandast aultre chose/ car grant follie estoit a luy de parler de ceste chose,” C 5™. Caxton here follows the 1487 French text (though that of 1520 corrects the first fille to follie): “he wold not deye for hys doughter/ and... he shold demaunde of hym somme other thynge/ for it were grete folye to speke to hym of suche a thynge,” p. 37.

Society Romance in Early Prose

69

hym entre/ and so chaunged in hys colour [she] sayd to parys/ what tydynges brynge ye whyche are so pale and your colour chaunged” (p. 44 f.). It is she who must rally his spirits and dissuade him from suicide: “Certes thys is not the courage of one so valyaunte knyght as ye be/ For now whome that ye ought to comforte/ she must now comforte you” (p. 46). Later when her father tries to compel her into an unwelcome marriage with the Duke of Burgundy, the resourceful Vienne avoids it by a most ingenious device. Before the visit of her prospective groom she had abstained from eating and instead had taken two quarters of a hen intended as her food and “put them vnder hyr arme hooles/ and helde them there so longe/ that they’ stonken moche strongely” (p. 64). The stench of the rotten fowl convinces her visitors that she is dying, and the marriage is called off. The worthy Paris, at first so passive, now asserts himself and wins the Dauphin’s favour by rescuing him from convenient Saracens during a crusade. Thus he finally obtains the enterprising Vienne as his bride. One can only hope that in later years he developed a temperament to

match hers. As for Arthur of Little Britain, as Englished by Lord Berners, the main part of it is preempted by action of the more fantastic variety, obviously inauspicious for narrative even remotely approximating the realistic vein. Here are giants and other monstrous creatures a-plenty, Dark Towers, magic storms, a perilous enchanted bed, a-.whirling castle, animated statues: in short,

the whole arsenalof adventures provided as tests for a dauntless hero en route to gain a fabulously beautiful (and quite uninteresting) bride.** In contrast to all this, a long section at the beginning and a short one at the end are devoted to young Arthur’s sentimental relations, unaffected by the supernatural, with a neigh-

bouring young lady named Jehanet, daughter of an impoverished gentlewoman whom he generously assists. The romance here conducts us on an excursion into the realm of upper-class social 3¢ The magic elements in the tale raise many interesting problems of folklore, comparative literature and even comparative mythology. They are however irrelevant to our present purpose.

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iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

life in the late Middle Ages, using human materials exclusively. How this enveloping story appeared in the lost French poem anterior to the prose, we do not of course know. The elaboration into a minor society romance grounded on contemporary

moeurs may well have been the independent work of the prose redactor himself,?’ especially since details of costume and armour

pointto the later rather than the earlier Middle Ages. Once again, as with Paris and Vienne, it is the heroine who is the more lively and complex character. Young Arthur comes upon Jehanet temporarily dwelling, together with her mother, in a deserted forest lodge, for her knightly father had died insolvent and debtors had confiscated all his property. As the mother explains, their former friends had promptly deserted them: As God helpe me syr, sayd this lady, pore folkes hath but fewe frendes; howe be it I ought to haue many, but betwene the riche & the poore there wanteth frendes, for the ryche maketh his frendes of his money & the pore is euer put out in euery place (ch. 3; p. 6).

Arthur takes prompt measures to succour these damsels in economic distress. He commands Master Piere “who was also receyuer of the reuenewes of the forest” to hand over to them “incontynente” the sum of 500 pounds recently collected, and also to resign to them the manor house in which Piere himself has hitherto been living. (The feelings of Piere, who is at the same time appointed their guardian, are not recorded.) The ladies are provided with a manor house to live in, also “abylements & jewelles, mete and drynke of the best that coude be goten, & all other thynges that 37 See the introduction to E. V. Utterson’s edition of The History of the (London, 1814), from which all quotations are taken. Utterson made use of the printed text done by Robert Redborne (1555), with variant readings from the 1582 edition. The French prose Artus de Bretaigne exists in several MSS. and a number of early prints beginning with that published by Jean de la Fontaine (Lyons, 1493). See D.C. Cabeen and others, A Critical Bibliography of French Literature, ed. U. T. Holmes, Jr., I (Syracuse, 1947), p. 122; also Brian Woledge, Bibliographie des romans etnouvelles en prose francaise antérieurs 4 1500 (Geneva and Lille, Valiant Knight Arthur of Little Britain

1954), item 116. For purposes of comparison with the French, use has here been made of Artus de Bretaigne

(Paris: Le Noir, 1514).

Society Romance in Early Prose

71

was conuenyent for noble ladys to haue” (p. 8). To them their young patron repairs frequently, accompanied by his tutor named

Governar; and the young people become involved in a | curious sort of unreal love affair—adolescently romantic (as we should say today) on his part, but perceptibly more realistic

on hers. The first of Arthur’s visits is portrayed in some detail, complete with description and dialogue. The hero rises early, dresses in green silk, dons a chaplet of flowers on his hat, sallies forth with sparrow-hawk on his hand in Governar’s company, rides to the forest manor, and finds Jehanet rejoicing in beauty newly restored by a better diet: for she “had dronken good wynes and taken her sustenaunce of good metes, and had forgoten all her sorowe” (p. 9). Though the vernal weather is propitious for romance, Arthur contents himself with a cautious inquiry as to whether Jehanet already has a favoured lover. She replies in the affirmative, “halfe smiling and beholdynge Arthur ryghte swetely”, whereupon he asks for details. Her answer is a description of Arthur himself, so detailed and circumstantial that any but the most obtuse of listeners would have recognized the portrait. The excellent Arthur, though strong in his right arm, is not particularly sharp in his wits. Like Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night (and with less excuse) he repeatedly fails to understand the most obvious hints. Yet he continues his visits and protestations of devotion, so assiduously indeed

that

Governar is impelled to remind him of the class differences between them: Syr, sayde Gouernar, as God helpe me, all that ye saye is of trouth: how be

it, myne owne dere lorde, take good hede to your honour, and remembre how grete a lorde ye be, both of lygnage, honoure, and of frendes; and thinke how that she is but a poore gentylwoman as to your knowledge. And if ye do her ony vylony to her body, as in takynge from her that he [sic; read ye] can not render agayne, syr, it were to you a grete synne, and ye ought therein to be more blamed than a nother meane persone (ch. 5; p. 10 f.).

Here is a situation based entirely upon contradictions existing in the objective social environment. It is resolved rather incongruously by the introduction of folkloristic themes among the

72

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

contemporary social factors. The combination is discordant, yet somehow a unified tone of social comedy is maintained throughout. What happens is, briefly, this. Young Arthur’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Brittany, arrange for his marriage with an heiress named Perron, a damsel of great beauty but doubtful reputation.** She has in fact good reasons for fearing the disclosures which might ensue upon her wedding night. Arthur for his part is well aware

of Perron’s reputation, and has most reluctantly

consented to the match. At this point the unknown French author had recourse to a folklore motif —that of the substituted bride— which had already been made familiar as an episode in the 12thcentury JTristan-romance (Branguene’s substitution for the non-virgin Iseult directly after the latter’s marriage to King Mark). Many incongruities result from the adaptation, but also some delightful touches of humour. Jehanet persists in her fiction of a lover exactly resembling Arthur, and she claims that her weddingday is to coincide with his. Meanwhile Arthur has publicly announced in two rather priggish speeches (pp. 17 and 22) that he will disavow his future wife if she does not conform to expected standards of previous chastity. The bride’s .nother now desperately importunes Jehanet to act as substitute bride, and she offers a cash inducement of no less than 500 pounds. The money is rejected, but Jehanet consents to the deception (as she would have us believe) out of a sense of feminine solidarity in the face of masculine demands. It is thus that Jehanet vindicates to her mother her willingness to oblige:

3° Dunlop’s History of Prose Fiction, 1, p. 250 f. (as revised by Henry Wilson) contains the suggestion that the curious affair of Arthur’s broken-off

marriage to Perron of Ostrige is based on the rejection of Margaret of Austria by the French Council after she had arrived in Paris (1489) to wed King Charles VIII. She was replaced by Anne of Brittany (1491) in an alliance which effected the union of France with the Duchy of Brittany. The parallel is striking but it can only be valid if Utterson was wrong in surmising that internal evidence points to origin of the prose romance in the 14th century. A critical edition of the French text is very much to be desired.

Society Romance

in Early Prose

73

...my lady Luke [Perron’s mother] is a greate and noble pryncesse. Therfore her velony sholde be more spoken than yf she where [= were] of a meane estate; and all women oughte to put theyr payne to couer & to hyde suche maters; and also euery woman to helpe & sustayn the blame and defame of other. And this lady requyreth not youre vylonye, for she dooth it to hyde her owne dyshenoure (ch. 12; p. 24 f.).

This astonishing declaration is followed by a defense of Perron, who “easely & swetely noryshed,” had merely succumbed to the

temptations besetting her on all sides. In any event, Jehanet persuades herself that her purpose is noble because she is to undergo

a risk in behalf of another. Her own mother can do nothing but say in effect: You will go, if you must, but at your own risk and without my consent.*® Jehanet is however not entirely quixotic. She takes good care to obtain from Arthur, under cover of darkness, the charter of

the dowry promised to Perron, namely the income from tenure of a given city together with the lands attached to it. This amounts, as Arthur assures her, “nere to the some of .x. thousande poundes” annually (p. 26). The document in question, plus the ring on her finger, serve to identify Jehanet as the substituted bride when Arthur comes visiting her the very next day at her manor house. At last she confesses that he, and only he, is the object of her

affections. Her revelation of the true state of affairs leads to the ignominious expulsion of the disqualified Perron. At this point any experienced reader of fiction, medieval or modern, has a right to expect a happy ending, but although Arthur thanks Jehanet for her kind cooperation and protests his loving devotion to her, he still says nothing about marriage. Soon

afterwards he has the fateful dream which lures him off to his extravagant adventures in the East, questing for a princess he has never seen. Jehanet remains at his parents’ court, very adequately maintained on the income from her endowed lands. At the end of the book she reappears, prepared to welcome Arthur 39 In the English: “Ye shall not go for me, nor by my wyll; for honour

surmounteth all thinges,”’ p. 25. This is close to the French: “Tu n’yras pour — moy ne de ma voulenté/ car honneur surmont tout.”

74

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

back with very mixed feelings, since she has heard that he is bringing with him the fabulous Princess Florence as bride. At this news “Jehanet cast downe her loke to the erth, and gaue a great

sigh” (p. 523). No wonder. At the sight of her successful rival “she wisshed in her hert that Florence had bene xxiili. yeres elder than she was (p. 524; a natural feminine reaction). When Florence has heard from Arthur’s mother the tale of Jehanet’s devotion,

the new bride entertains understandable doubts concerning a possible revival of affection between these two. Whan that Florence had wel vnderstande the wordes of the duches concerning Jehannet and Arthur, than in her mynd she doubted that Jehannet shold let [i.e., hinder] the loue betwene her and Arthur: than she aduised her selfe, and puruaied therfore right sagely (ch. CXI; p. 525).

The sage purveyance in question is an arrangement for the marrying off of Jehanet to Governar, with a new endowment of lands to make both parties happy. Under these conditions, no one objects. With all its manifest absurdities, the story of Jehanet nevertheless has the unusual merit of burgeoning out of a credible environment surrounding the lives of the main characters. Here we are in a world where creditors take over the property of bankrupt knights, where dowries are estimated in terms of annual rents

from specific lands, where dinners are served punctually at a certain hour.*° The traditional world of the fabulous East, delineated in the central portion of the romance, was rich in its own way but had far less to offer for the coming age of fiction. Yet even here, embedded in an unlikely setting, there is one scene that deserves appreciative comment. In a sense it recalls the encounters of English Gawain with his tempting hostess. While journeying in a remote forest Arthur meets Proserpine, fairy

godmother of the beloved Florence whom he has beheld only in a dream. In order to test his fidelity to the beckoning vision, Proserpine attempts to seduce Arthur into love-making, by a combi4°At the end of a dialogue between Governar and Arthur we read: “So they rode forthe talkyng til they came to the courte, and than went to dyner, for it was by that time nere vpon two of the clocke,”’ p. 11.

Society Romance in Early Prose

75

nation of flattery, cajolery and light mockery. The speeches are more pedestrian than those in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the feminine technique is very similar. Arthur of course repels all the overtures with polite firmness. His behaviour is

above reproach according to the chivalric code. Yet the reader must involuntarily sympathize with the comment of Arthur’s squire who, upon hearing the outcome of the interview, exclaims: “Syr, as God helpe me, ye ought to be blamed... I wolde not haue

done soo, thoughe I had lost my. head in the payne” (p. 300).4 Among the other prose romances that contain elements of what may be called courtly realism, Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte da’Arthur occupies a place apart. By stressing the human

relations

among his characters and reducing somewhat the magical and mystical themes found in his sources (even in the section derived from-the Queste del Graal), Malory can be said to have advanced

in the direction of modern fiction. The main interest may still lie in-external chivalric adventures carried out in an unreal world, a world sublimely oblivious of such mundane concerns as debts and rents, but Malory does occasionally suggest a query about the motives which actuate his people—hence an implied critique of courtly love. The critique may not always have been consciously intended, but there it is, visible at least to the modern reader. A certain.Red Knight, guilty of hanging forty-odd opponents in his warfare.against King Arthur’s knights, is finally defeated by Sir Gareth; he then explains that he had been prompted to his unmannerly feud by love of a fair lady. This gallant excuse causes Sir Gareth to spare his life: “he hath done passynge ylle and shamefully. But insomuche all that he did was at a ladyes requeste I blame hym the lesse.”4? The pretext seems so inadequate in view of the heinous deeds (for hanging was a disgraceful end for any knightly foe) that it is difficult not to suspect a dash of satire here, whether

due to Malory or his lost source. The comically realistic Sir Dina41 In French: “Sire se m’aist Dieu l’on vous devroit huer... je ne m’en fusse tenu et me deust on coupper la teste tantost,” T 5°. 42 The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, edited by Eugéne Vinaver (Oxford, 1947), p. 325. All quotations from this edition.

716

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

dan, introduced (already in the French prose romance) as a foil to Sir Tristram, contributes to the same effect, for here is a supposed exponent of the chivalrous code who actually rejoices when an untimely nap causes him to miss the dangers of a tournament (p. 749 f.), and he deplores them when he is forced to take part in them. At such down-to-earth comments by Dinadan “the kynge and sir Launcelot lowghe, that unnethe they myght sytte” (p. 758). Though himself of different social origin, Sir Dinadan is prophetic of that greatest of all foils to knighthood, Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza. Many are the outstanding passages that demonstrate Malory’s skill in presenting purely human involvements without reliance on the magic of earlier ages. These are too well known to require fresh emphasis here. There are others in which the supernaturai, only half rationalized from inherited tradition, acts as a disturbing element. A typical instance is to be found in The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney, already referred to. The titular hero, having rescued a besieged lady, loves her and is hotly loved in return. The two are properly betrothed, but the lady, eager to anticipate the pleasures of marriage, proposes a nocturnal visit to Gareth’s bed. Her sister learns of the plan, however, and undertakes to foil

it. Presumably she acts in the interests of family honour, but actually (one can not help surmising) she is prompted by feminine pique. It was she, after all, who had conducted

Gareth on his

dangerous quest to rescue her sister and had learned to respect his prowess after first doubting and even scorning it. So far Malory’s

situation is set forth in terms

of familiar,

predictable human motives. But the whole episode is suddenly transformed into a version of the magic Perilous Bed (Lit périlleux), familiar since the earliest Perceval romances (12th and 13th centuries). In these analogues,a hero like Gawain (Arthur of Brittany too) is subjected while reposing on a special sort of bed to supernatural attacks by giants or other monsters, to the accompaniment of strange meterological phenomena. Folkloristically speak-

ing, the bed is tabu.‘* Some romancer before Malory must have “* For a group of analogues, see Vinaver’s notes to this passage on p. 1427.

Society Romance in Early Prose

77

tried to adapt this theme to a different context by having the officious sister twice introduce a monstrous champion into the

room in order to frustrate Gareth’s prenuptial love-making. Both times the hero is sorely wounded, though victorious. During the combat “there was grete lyght as hit had be the numbir of twenty torchis,” but the source of the illumination is not explained. Gareth decapitates his adversary, and “he hew the hede uppon an hondred pecis, and whan he had done so he toke up all tho pecis and threw them oute at a wyndow into the dychis of the

castell” (p. 335).-This savage behaviour accords ill with the image of one hitherto presented as a complete “jantyllman,” especially in his treatment of defeated enemies. It can only be understood if we assume that the champion had some unearthly power—perhaps to resurrect himself—and his death had therefore to be made permanent by some ritual means. Such an assumption makes the esas more acceptable. It also illustrates instructively how the persistence of old motifs could hamper the adaptation of a plot to new conditions and aesthetic requirements. In a way, the separation of materials is made more successfully in Arthur of Little Britain. Lord Berners’s source presented its society romance as a self-contained

and separable envelope enclosing a different but also self-harmonious saga of a fantastic quest. The episode of the Perilous Bed is there worked into a fitting context. Malory’s sources more often interpenetrated the two types, and therefore the total effect remains— despite all innovations—so typically medieval. The world to which the Morte d’Arthur belonged, says R. W. Chambers, “had passed away before the book was finished”.*4 This may be overstatement, in view of what has been observed previously about the persistence of feudal culture and feudal ideals long after the transformation of their economic base. Nevertheless the social changes then in process of realization do help to explain «4 R. W. Chambers, Qn the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School (Oxford University Press and the EETS, 1957), p. cxxxix. This is a separate reprint from the introduction written by Chambers for the

EETS edition of Harpersfield’s Life of Sir Thomas More.

78

the

iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

nostalgic

retrospection

characteristic

of Malory’s

work,

thus marking it as the culmination and conclusion of an old style in tale-telling rather than the announcement of a new. 4. THe SPECIAL CASE OF CAXTON’S

Reynard as ANTI-ROMANCE

French romance was, it is obvious, the main if not quite the exclusive source of early English prose narrative, and it was the style of French romance and translators, even to of detail. We have had more than once in the

which shaped that of English adaptors the point of slavish imitation in matters occasion to note stylistic indebtedness preceding discussion. Moreover, it was

the adaptation of French models which to a large extent determined the taste of ensuing generations of authors and readers.

When English romancers of the middle 16th century begin to attempt the creation of original work of their own, they will be doing so under the influence of the late medieval fiction we have

just been surveying. Among the longer prose works

translated by Caxton there

was one, however, which represented non-romantic, even satirical fiction, and was therefore able to contribute in a quite different

way to the formation of English prose narrative. This was the incomparable Reynard the Fox which Caxton himself translated and published in 1481. His original was the Dutch prose version of the well-known animal epic, already available in print.“5 The text in question is the end-product of a long and complicated literary evolution, beginning with a Latin poem called Ysengrimus (12th century), continued and amplified in a cycle of vernacular “8 The earliest extant copy in Dutch is that published by Gerard Leeu (Gouda, 1479), but there is reason to suppose that a lost earlier version existed to which Caxton had access. See the introduction by J. W. Muller and H. Logeman to their

edition

of Die

Historie

van

Reynaert

de

Vos

(Zwolle, 1892). Caxton’s History of Reynard the Fox has been edited by Edward Arber (London, 1878) and recently published in a slightly modernized form by Donald B. Sands (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). The introduction to this latter edition gives a clear account of the descent of Caxton’s text and also of its literary origins; there is also a useful bibliography.

Caxton’s Reynard as Anti-Romance

719

poems, first in French, then in German and Flemish. The literary materials that went into the formation of the Reynard saga were

at first learned, but these were soon enriched and diversified by popular contributions of all sorts. The characters are animals— the royal Lion, the voracious Wolf, the sly Fox, the timorous Hare, and so on— but they also represent human types and provide the basis for a satirical delineation of human follies and foibles. The coward, the flatterer, the deceiver, the seducible wife, the dull ursine male relying on his physical strength: all these are simply exaggerations of human types seen under a feral guise. Caricatures in the sense of simplifications they surely are, but perhaps no more so than the type personages in Jonson’s later comedies of humours, or other Theophrastian characters familiar in 19thcentury novels. Dialogues among the animals have a racy quality, a colloquial ease and vigour which contrasts pleasantly with even the best conversations in the romances. Moreover, there are realistic scenes in which ordinary human beings also appear as actors, and these could well have aided in the development of a realistic literary style for English fiction. The fact is that additional popular sources of a less ambitious type were soon to make a noteworthy contribution in the same direction (see ch. 4), but the pioneering role of Caxton’s Reynard has been insufficiently recognized in this connection. ‘One outstanding example of realistic writing is to be found in the episode where the Wolf’s spouse, having been tricked by the Fox, finds herself sitting on the surface of a frozen pound with her tail caught in the ice. Breaking loose at last, she is forced to leave behind her “a gobet of her tayle” as the price of her freedom. Her cries of pain arouse the village folk near by and they organize a pursuit which is described with extraordinary vividness. The speaker is the Wolf himself, recounting his attempts to rescue

his wife:

;

she galped and cryde so lowde for the smarte that she had er she cam out/ that the men of the village cam out with stauys and byllis/ with flaylis and pykforkes/ And the wyuis wyth theyr distauis' and cryed dyspytously sle sle/

and smyte doun right/ I was neuer in my lyf so aferde/ ffor vnnethe we escap-

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iii. The Late Phase of Medieval Romance

e[d]/ we ran so fast that we swette ther was a vylayne that stake on vs wyth a pyke/ whiche hurted vs sore he was stronge and swyfte a fote/ hadde it not be nyght/ Certaynly we had been slayn/ The fowle olde que[aJnes wold fayne haue beten vs/ they saide that we had byten theyr sheep/ They cursed vs with many a curse/. Tho cam we in a felde ful of brome and brembles there hydde we vs fro the vylaynes/ And they durst not folowe vs ferther by nyght/ but retorned home agayn (ch. 33; Arber ed., p. 95).

This is excellent realization of action in a milieu remote from romance. Caxton follows his Dutch text with characteristic fidelity, which means with only minor changes and not too serious misunderstandings.**® There are other episodes depicted with the same loving attention to detail. Such for instance are the episodes following upon the summons of the Fox to King Lion’s court to answer to charges of criminal behaviour. Reynard’s evasions are unquestionably clever in a pejorative human sense, and they give occasion for lively speeches on both sides which are rare examples of colloquial writing for the period concerned. The culminating episode of the Reynard mock-epic is an hilarious burlesque of chivalrous jousts. It is a pity that we do not know the name of its genial inventor. The comic effect depends (as is often the case with literary burlesque) on a fundamental incongruity between ostensible form and actual content. The combat between the Wolf and Fox is arranged with all the formalities of medieval chivalry. Lists are prepared; the Lion as King of Beasts is to preside; various knightly rituals are observed. Nevertheless the combatants are and still remain two unpanoplied animals, and the Fox wins

his victory by a device entirely unknown to chivalry. Having over- “* Caxton introduces a typical tautological synonym in the opening sentence when he renders “si galpede” as “she galped andcryde,” and in the last one he renders the single word “braembossche” by the alliterative pair “brome and bremble.” On the other hand he shortens the first sentence to the advantage of unified point of view when he substitutes simply “er she cam out” for the Dutch “eer icse daer wt nam ende halp.” He also reduces the catalogue

of implements with which the peasants armed themselves, thus accelerating the tempo of the action. For the passage in the original see fol. 87 in the 1479 ed.; p. 125 in the Muller and Logeman reprint of it.

Caxton’s Reynard as Anti-Romance

81

charged his bladder beforehand according to the advice of his aunt the Ape, he saturates his tail with his own urine, and uses

it with devastating effect during the combat in order to blind the eyes of his adversary. The entire handling of the tournament is a brilliant example of that reversal of attitudes which constitutes the very essence of satire. Romance is here turned up side down, and by the cleverest of means is made to appear ridiculous. Even the language of courtly love comes in far a satirical thrust, for on a certain occasion the Fox Reynard, having cynically confessed to adultery with the Wolf’s wife, adds hastily that one should not of course speak villainy of women. Could Malory’s ‘Gareth or Lancelot have said more? The literary style exemplified in Caxton’s sehislnted Reynard could have provided (and perhaps did provide) a source of general inspiration for later writers of realistic prose. Unfortunately that style was not directly imitated by writers of the early 16th century. The elaboration of a realistic style for the coming age was indebted rather to a different kind of popular literature, namely to the collections of popular jokes’ and anecdotes (Jest Books) which

began to circulate in this period. Most of their materials went back to the Middle Ages, but many items are untraceable. The stories are continuations of the fabliaux and exempla noticed at the end of chapter 2. There were other minor forms of narrative besides which made their contribution. It is time now to examine the further development of this non-romantic minor stream which also leads down to the achievements of later 16th-century fiction.

CHAPTER

IV

THE RISE OF POPULAR FICTION: ITS MINOR FORMS 1. From

Exempla

to

SECULAR

ANECDOTES

In a certain sense, the late prose versions of medieval romance may be said to have become something like popular literature. As they were issued in more numerous and cheaper editions in the 16th and 17th centuries, they reached out into wider circles of the community. Still later the adventures of Valentine and Orson, of Helyas Knight of the Swan and Guy of Warwick,’ originally conceived as entertainment for an adult feudal aristocracy, became by the 18th and early 19th century the reading matter for unsophisticated persons of a quite different sort, including children. Nevertheless in style and substance even the later transformed versions of the prose romances remained alien to popular literature, if by that term we are to understand literature which is not only read by broad sections of the population but is also a reflection of their way of living and speaking in the actual world they know. In order to trace the development of such genuinely popular narrative in the 16th century, it is necessary to go back to the preachers’ warning tales—including fabliaux superficially moralized—which were discussed at the end of chapter 2. Illustrative homiletic anecdotes and short tales were originally, as we have seen,

recorded

in Latin,

and

the adaptations

for vernacular

1 Guy of Warwick was available in verse as printed by Copland (ca 1550); the text has been edited by Gustav Schleich in Palaestra, No. 139 (Leipzig, 1923). The first part of the romance is analogous to Paris and Vienne in that it describes the seemingly hopeless and very timorous love of a steward’s son for the daughter of his baronial lord. The difference in social rank plays an important part in the motivation of the action. A late and highly artificial prose version of the romance is included in Thoms, Early English Prose Romances, pp. 331-408.

From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes

83

discourse depended on the talent of individual preachers. The next step was obviously to render such edifying material into

English, so that it could be used directly. The changed medium was required by the rise of the unified national language and

the vindication of its preeminent function in all forms of literary expression.

In the 15th century, then, we find a number of exempla collections put into English, notably the internationally famed Gesta Romanorum. The available English versions of this collection? are striking in one respect, namely their omission of the more frivolous tales which had been included in the Latin Gesta, and there only superficially adapted to purposes of moral edi-

fication.* The language of the English Gesta is formal and on the whole syntactically firm (though occasionally awkward and repetitious), rather than colloquially loose. Only rarely do the cadences of living speech make themselves heard. A certain knight, husband of a lascivious damsel, departs for Rome on a pilgrimage. As he walks the streets of the Eternal City, he notices a stranger, a clerk, who is gazing upon him with intense concern. He asks the reason: “goode Sir, tell me why and what skile [i.e., reason] pat pou so beholdest me?” The clerk replies that the knight’s wife is planning to encompass his death that very day, with the aid of a necromancer, but that he, the clerk, will be glad to aid in frustrating the magic if permitted to do so. “zis, zis,” replies the knight with understandable emphasis, “I am redy to fulfill all in dede pat pou wolt sey vnto me” (Tale 1, p. 2). The iteration of “zis” is here natural and effective in the given situation; but for the most part the conversations are stilted, the style in general showing few signs of innovation in the direction of colloquial fluency. 2 Sidney J. H. Herrtage, ed. The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, EETS, ES, No. 33 (1879), based on MS. Harleian 7333, with parallel

versions from MS. Additional 9066 (both in the British Museum). 3 In his notes to the English translation of the Gesta, Herrtage points out the Latin tales omitted from it. Among them is De Vetula (No. 28 of the Latin), an analogue of the Middle English verse fabliau (of Oriental origin) called Dame Siriz. For an edition of the Latin original, with discussion, see Hermann Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum (Berlin, 1872).

84

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

Other collections of 15th-century exempla are even less promising for the development of prose fiction. The Alphabeticum Narrationum (exempla classified alphabetically according to the topics illustrated) gives rather dry summaries of tales put down in simple sentences not worked out for. full rhetorical effect.‘ The same may be said of the exempla contained in Jacob’s Well, an allegorical treatise with illustrations to be used in sermons.* Only the merest outlines of stories are given. The good French Knight of La Tour Landry (14th century) had done better, from a literary

point of view, in the book of instructions for his daughters which was made Here the translated esteemed

available to English readers in the latter 15th century.® illustrative anecdotes are more than schematic; as they possess the kind of informal grace which will be and further developed in later prose works of indig-

enous inspiration. For the origins of native popular a wee in prose we have to turn to the collections of jests and anecdotes which were widely disseminated in the 16th century. These little volumes were at first put together as a kind of continuation of the medieval exempla having morals attached, but they soon broke away from the older tradition and became a self-sufficient form of secular entertainment. The formal connection with medieval moralizing is apparent when, at the end of a lively anecdote, the author is impelled to add a half-

humorous comment: “By this tale ye may see”—some general truth about human frailty and folly. But the didactic appendices were soon dropped, and the stories became popular artistic ends in themselves. “ An Alphabet of Tales: An English 15th-Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besancon, ed. Mary Macleod Banks, EETS, OS, Nrs. 126-127 (1904-05). The attribution of the Latin Alphabetum

to Etienne de Besancon is in doubt. The English collection numbers 801 tales. 5 Jacob’s Well: An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man's Conscience, ed. Arthur Brandeis, EETS, OS, No. 115 (1900). & The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. Thomas Wright, EETS, OS, No. 33 (1868). A translation done in the reign of Henry VI is here com-

pared with Caxton’s print of 1484.

\

From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes

85

The proliferation of vernacular jest books throughout the 16th century is a curious social phenomenon. In contrast to the exempla, these anecdotes are non-ecclesiastical (in fact often anti-clerical) and only incidentally instructive. They are sometimes satirical, but most often aim at entertainment for its own sake. As. Herford pointed out long ago, they were welcomed by the merchant class of the towns, newly made affluent, as an aid for conversation

on social occasions.’ In this sense they resemble our contemporary volumes of jokes put together for the benefit of after-dinner

speakers. It is significant that the Dutch merchants resident in Gdantsk—preeminently a trading centre of the new apparently found desirable the importation of jest books as well as song books to contribute to of their social life in the distant Baltic town.® The English jest books, like all others, include

urban type— Netherlandish the amenities

items ranging from the simplest, most naive anecdote to the more complicated

type which approaches the structure of a novella. Many items are copied from one collection to another. The high point is often a “witty” reply: not seldom crude or vulgar by modern standards, but obviously widely acceptable at the time. The linguistic foundations of the humour rest on the incongruous literal understanding of a current metaphorical expression, the use of malapropisms, puns, confused homonyms, distorted

learned phrases (often corrupt Latin) and the like.® Dialect and 7 Charles H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1886), p. 243 f. 5 A number of these volumes are still preserved in the Gdansk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Typical is the Cluchtboek inhoudende vele recreatiue Propoosten ende Cluchten (Antwerp, 1576), which contains among other familiar jtems the tale of Virgil’s statue and the adulteress (p: 35 f.), the tale of the Snow Child (here an Ice Child, p. 36 f.), and the Pound of Flesh Story (here attributed to Sultan Solyman of Constantinople as judge, p.

87 f.). There are later collections too: Jok en Ernst (Amsterdam, 1664), Veorder oude Wysen (Amsterdam, 1646), De Geest van Jan Tamboer

beelden

(Amsterdam, 1660). ® On the use of these and other verbal tricks of humour in jests see André Jolles, Einfache Formen (Halle a/S., 2nd ed., 1956), pp. 206-17. Jolles would

like to see in jests (Witze) the comic antitheses of other “simple” literary forms

86

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

foreign mispronunciations

are

often treated as automatically

funny. In the pioneer collection called A Hundred Mery Talys (1526; to be referred to below as the 100 Tales),’® the following are typical instances. A Welshman

saying “Master by cottys

plut” for “God’s blood” is ipso facto ridiculous (No. 31); so is a North countryman who says “by goodys bynes” and “I isal hart” (No. 99); even more ridiculous are priests who

can not decide whether “corpus

meus”

(No.

one

should

say

“corpus meum” or

14), or who distort “Deus qui unigeniti

filii tui...” into “Deus qui vigenti filii tui...” (suggesting 20 sons out of one, Hazlitt, No. 53). A huntsman’s servant is instructed

to spare no “raskall deer” but to attack one if it were “male”; he thereupon pounces on a peaceful wayfarer who has a “male” (i.e. chest) hanging from his saddle-bow (No.31).

A smart citizen wishing to jest at a miller’s expense asks to look at his proverbial golden thumb. When he fails to see anything unusual about the profferred member, the miller replies: “there is a properte euer incydent vnto it, that he that. is ~

a cockolde shall neuer haue power to se it ”(Hazlitt, No. 10). These rather primitive sources of popular humour continue to be exploited in later 16th-century jest books such as Mery

Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres, Merie Tales of Skelton, Skoggin’s Jests, The Sack Full of Newes, Mery Jests of the Wyddow Edyth, Pasquils Jests, Merrie Conceited Jests of discussed by him: saint’s legend, saga, myth, mdarchen, etc. In the first place. however, some of these forms are not in fact very simple, and in the second,

it would be hard to find opposites of all of them among the jests. Some there are, however: inversions of the simpler exempla, of proverbs, riddles, etc. Arid it is true, as Jolles says, that ambiguity in language resulting from homonyms, dialect forms, malapropisms, and the like, is of great service in creating burlesque counterparts for the more edifying forms. For a general- survey

of the type see Ernst Schulz as cited in n. 10. 10 Hermann

Oesterley edited this collection as Shakespeare’s Jest Book

(London, 1866) from a complete text in the Gdttingen Library. Previously W. Carew Hazlitt had edited a fragmentary text in his series of the Shakespeare Jest-Books, 1 (London, 1864). See also E. Schultz, Die englischen Schwank-

biicher, Palaestra, No. 117 (Berlin, 1912). Quotations from the 200 Tales are here taken from the Oesterley edition unless otherwise noted.

From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes

87

George Peele, Tarltons Jests and Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gottam.™ In Skelton’s Tales, for instance, an anecdote which represents the ancestor of an episode in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn gains savour by use of the Northern dialect, while another introduces general Southern traits like “I cham, I chill” for “I am, I will.” In The Sack Full of Newes a man from Essex

who has been reared in Norfolk exclaims, upon hearing a cow’s

cry: “Thanked be God, that once before I die, I hear my mother’s tongue” (JB, II, p. 181). Ignorant foreign servants— Dutch, Italian and French—as well as native countrymen are made to misunderstand homonyms or near homonyms in the same collection. Skoggin’s Jests repeats the already. current anecdote from the 100 Tales about the ignorant priest who garbled unigeniti into vigenti (JB, II, 76-78). This last source of humour dies out, as is _ natural, after the Reformation substituted: English for Latiniin ‘church services. It is interesting to observe what human types ate the chief butts of the jesting anecdotes, for some of them will appear later . in more elaborated short tales and novels. First of all there are the errant wives, of course, whether shrewish or lascivious. The 100 Tales has one about the sad fate of a young husband who thought he would establish-suzerainty over his wife at the beginning, and for his pains had some hot porridge dumped over his head, all according to his own instructions literally interpreted (No.

66). Anecdotes

about adulterous

wives

are

occasionally

simplified from known literary analogues in other languages. The same collection includes, for instance, the fabliau of the Lost

Ring (No. 6), in which an illicit lover finds in his lady’s bed the ring that had been dropped there by his recent predecessor, with amusing consequences. The English tale is a bald and artless adaptation of a plot already brilliantly elaborated in the French 11 Some of these belong to the first years of the 17th century; some were first printed in the 16th but are extant only in editions of the 17th. All are reprinted in Hazlitt’s Shakespeare Jest-Books (here abbreviated JB). The Sack Full of Newes was also edited by J. O. Halliwell (London, 1861).

88

iv. The ‘Rise of Popular Fiction

Cent nouvelles nouvelles.!2 Among other butts, priests and friars are at first conspicuous. Their language continues to afford substance for merriment. There are also instances of satire against affected speakers of the vernacular. One anecdote (ibid., No. 8) deals with an Oxford student who disdained ordinary speech in dealing with his cobbler: In the vnyuersyte of Oxonford there was a skoler that delytyd mich to speke

eloquent english & curious termis/ And cam to the cobler wyth hys shoys ‘whych were pikid. before as they vsyd that seson to have them cloutyd &

sayd thys wyse/ Cobler I pray the set me .ii. tryangyls & .ii. semy cercles vppon my subpedytals & I shall gyue the for thy labor/ This cobler because he vnderstode hym not half well answerid shortly & sayd/ Syr youre eloquence passith myne intelligence/ but I promyse you yf ye meddyll wyth me/ the clowtyng of your shone shall coste you .iij. pence.

This is an enlightening bit of fun at the expense of young Jiterati practising the then fashionable extravagances of speech. Other tales concentrate their satire on representatives of various professions. Lawyers had been objects of attack in previous centuries, and the jest books carry on the tradition in their own manner. One of the 100 Tales (No. 20) deals with an itinerant justice whose stinginess is appropriately castigated by the hostess of an inn; Pasquil’s Jests depicts the plight of a poor man who has trouble in getting a lawyer to listen to his complaints until he follows his wife’s advice and offers a lamb to him as bribe. After this experience the poore man got him up into the market place, and there hauing wel cleared, made this mad out-crie: All ye that haue any matters law, get ye euerie one a fat lambe, and carry to your Lawyer; for of a lambes mouth will bee better understood of the Lawyer, and

his throat to trie in one word doe more

good, then twentie of your owne. Probatum (JB, III, p. 15).

The Jests of George Peele tell of an ignorant woman who pretends to knowledge of the art of medicine and how she is shown up by a trickster who masquerades as a physician (JB, II, pp. 277-82; an anecdote expanded to unusual length). Cleating craftsmen and 12 Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Pierre Champion (Paris, 1928), No. 62-

From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes

89

merchants, stupid countrymen and avaricious burghers are among in the jests. other stock figures Realism of a sort there is in these bits of popular literature, but it lies more in incident than in occasional realization of milieu and in details of style. In the earliest anecdotes the flow of sentences is by no means easy: monotonous parataxis abounds, and hypotaxis often results in awkward, repetitive and pleonastic constructions."* In later decades however the style becomes notably smoother; though still not innocent of anacoluthon; informal effects now begin to appear as the result of deliberate stylistic planning instead of spontaneously naive expression. At the same time, an increase ‘in learned allusions suggests that men with a classical education are being employed to turn out anecdotes

of a pseudopopular nature. The Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick Answers especially draw on ancient sources, sometimes

giving them credit by name (Aulus Gellius, Diogenes Laertes etc.).1* Among the tricks used to heighten a sense of direct inti1 Some of these weaknesses are illustrated by the opening sentences of No. 31 in the 100 Tales. A number of gentlemen, we are told, are about to go hunting: “Among which gentylmen ther was one which had a walche man to his syruaunte a good archer/ whiche when they came to a place where they

thought they shold haue game/ they made a stondyng and poynted [i.e., appointed] thys welchman to stand by a tre nygh the hye way and bad hym in any

wyse to take hede that he shot at no raskall [deer] nor medie nat without it were a male & yf it were a male to spare not,” p. 55. Besides the awkward repetitions of which in various uses, there is a crossed syntactic construction: “which when they came... they made.” Here which is left without predicate

or other function in the sentence. No. 99 offers an example of unskilful repetition: “A northen

[sic] man there was whiche wente to seke hym a seruyce. So it happenyd that he came to a lordys place whiche lord than had war with another lord. This lord than askyd this northen man yf that he durst fight,” and so on. 14 Collections of anecdotes were sometimes made for a distinctly learned as opposed to a popular or semi-popular audience. Such were for example The Foreste or Collection of Histories, originally by Pedro de Mexia and translated from a French version by Thomas Fortescue (London: John Kingston for William Jones, 1571); also The Garden of Pleasure, translated from the Italian of Lodovico Guicciardi by James Sanforde (London: Henry Bynneman, 1573). The short items here assembled make no perceptible contribution to

90

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

macy with the reader are: use of the first person singular pronouns by the narrator (the author of the George Peele jests speaks of

“my giddy hostess” of an inn; the author of those by Pasquil introduces phrases like “I read in the. records,” “I know not for what cause,” etc.); also easy shifts into historical present tense —

(“mine Hostis trudges to this Gentleman’s house” in the George Peele collection; “Well, but to his shifts he goeth” in Pasquil’s), and together with all this, the introduction of more gesture and more abundant local colour than ever before. The following sentence from George Peele’s jests shows a definite advance in this direction: “At whose arriuall, the Hostis clapt her hands, the Oastler laught, the Tapster leapt, the Chamberlaine ran to the Gentleman’s house, and told him the Doctor was come”

(VJB, II, p. 281 f.). In these minuscule forms of popular narrative, then, it is pos-

sible to observe a development of fictional art which carries them

beyond the tradition of moralizing exempla towards the requirements 7

of more

complicated forms.'®

2. ENCHAINED ANECDOTES ABOUT JESTING HEROES

In some of the collections just surveyed there appears an incipient tendency to cluster groups of anecdotes around a central figure. At first the character concerned is no more than a name—

like Scoggin—given to a clowning trickster. Even when he bears the appellation of an historical personage like Skelton or George Peele, his pranks are not recounted as a biographical sequence.

It is exceptional that in Scoggin’s case the last anecdotes deal with the nominal hero’s final illness and death.

Models for enchained anecdotes in biographical form were first imported from abroad, in the famous satiric tales of Tyll Eulenspiegel (Tyll Howleglass or Owlglass in English) and the

Pastor of Kalenberg (Kalenborowe in English). Both of these the history of English prose fiction. They offered rather illustrative materials for moral essays. 18 For a brief discussion of the jest books as contributory to later fiction, see C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 427 f.

Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes

9]

translations from the German were already available before 1530, as a matter of fact, and they served as sources for many of the separate anecdotes appearing in the jest books just described.'* Tyll Owlgtass is presented as a real personage of the 14th century, complete with Latin epitaph for his grave.!” He is a Saxon peasant trickster, a buffoon, a man who delights to play the fool by pretending to understand instructions literally. Individual episodes attached to his person can often be duplicated in the mass of other jest-book literature, but out of the sum total there here emerges a unified figure made meaningful by the satirical intention of his pranks. The victims of his clowning jests are of various kinds: craftsmen employers in the first place, members

of the clergy,

innkeepers, and also occasionally his fellow villagers.1® The anticlerical satire brings to light the well publicized defects of laziness, ignorance and lax morality among ecclesiastics. Yet it must

be admitted that Tyll’s motives are often puerile. He causes a company of monks to fall downstairs merely, it would seem, to make 16 W. Nijhoff and M.E.

Kronenberg,

Nederlandsche

Bibliographie,

1

(’s Gravenhage, 1923), item 1144, record the first English version of Tyll Howleglass (Antwerp: Jan Doesborch, ca 1519?) as probably based on a Netherlandish original. Only a fragment of 10 pages survives (British Museum,

catalogue number C. 34. f. 41, dated 15102). Nijhoff and Kronenberg, op. cit., II (1940), item 3676, record the same printer’s publication-of The Parson

of Kalenborowe (Antwerp, 15207), translated from a Low German or Netherlandish original. Citations from Tyll are here made from William Copland’s print (British Museum, catalogue number C. 21. c. 57, dated 1528), supplemented by a later copy (C. 21. c. 53, dated 1530?) which contains sig. D 1-4 missing in the earlier edition. Quotations from The Parson of Kalenborowe are from the Doesborch edition (copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford). 17 For details see F. F. Blok, “Het Latijnse Epitaphium in het Nederlandse Volksboek van Tijl Uilenspiegel,” Neophilologus, XLII (1958), 322-27.

‘-

18 Herford, op. cit., p. 283, sees in the original Ulenspiegel a representative

peasant who inverts the usual relations between country and town.

But the peasantry is not exempt from victimization by Tyll. One episode recounts “How Howleglas wan a pece of clothe of a man of the countrey” with the aid of a priest and another knave (Copland ed., H 4”). Another tells of Tyll’s cynical dealings with twelve poor blind rustics (I 1'-¥), whom he throws into a state of angry confusion by a gift of money over which they quarrel, each

of them thinking that another has taken it all-for himself.

92

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

them appear derisible. When he stages another adventure against a priest who is keeping a mistress and also violating the seal of the confessional, his purpose is no more than to help the Duke of Risenburg obtain the priest’s horse without paying for it. In this instance one’s sympathies are entirely with the clerical victim. Tyll pretends to fall ill near the parsonage; he is nursed and tended by both priest and maid; he makes a false confession— presumably in extremis—of having seduced the maid and thus provokes the priest to tax her with infidelity to him. “And than the mayde sayd naye, and the priest yes.” The incident of Tyll’s blackmailing his kindly if not impeccable host is worth quoting here: And in the morning wexed Howleglas hole, and arose and sayde it was wel amended with him. And he asked his hostise & the priest, what he had spend in his sicknes? And than reckened the priest he knewe nat what, for he was so angry in his mynde and the maid also, for she was beate for his sake. And than sayd Howleglas. Tell me what is my duty to paye? And the priest aunswered not a word. And than said Howleglas to him. Remember you not mayster parson that you haue disclosed my confession? I shal ryde to hauerstad to the byshop and I shal complaine on you: that you discried my confession that I confessed me vnto you (F 2’-3°).

Under this pressure the harassed priest can do nothing else but yield up his horse to the grasping Duke.!® Interesting for the history of the drama is the satirical tale of the one-eyed mistress of a priest who had been chosen to play the part of an angel in a Resurrection play. Owlglass instructs the interlocutors to reply to the question “whom they sought” with the words: “we seke 18 The German text (according to the Erfurt edition of 1532) runs as follows: “Vlenspiegel... stund des morgens friie auff vnd sprach es wiirde besser/ er must ynn ein ander land/ das er rechent was er verzert het. Der

pfaff rechent mit yhm vnd was so yrre ynn seinem sinn/ das er nicht wust was er thet/ und nam gelt vnd doch kein gelt/ vnd was des zufrieden/ das er nun wandert/ des gleichen auch die kellerin/ die was gleich wol vmb seinet willen geschlagen/ also was Vlenspiegel bereit/ vnn wolt gehn, Herr sprach er seid gemant das yhr die beicht geoffenbart habt. Ich will g[en] Halberstad zu dem Bischoff vnd das von euch sagen/ der pfa[ff] vergas seiner bosheit...,” I 1°. The English, it will be noticed, expands slightly on the original, but also abbreviates it at some points. Dy! Ulenspiegel (Strassburg, 1515) shows only minor differences from the Erfurt print.

Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes

93

the priests leman with one iye.” The result is a free-for-all fight. The offended lady tries to hit Tyll but instead strikes “one of the simple parsons that played one of the thre maries”; the priest and his wife (so designated) strike back, and Tyll gets away in safety during the ensuing row (B 3'-’). The situation would have

delighted Henry Fielding. Tyll’s dealings with his employers are less ambiguously satirical. In these he ts consistently aligned against the masters and on the side of the apprentices. When a stingy baker refuses him a candle to work by and says he can sift flour by moonlight, Tyll in mock obedience throws the flour out of a window, quite literally into the moonlight; he drives a shoemaker to exclaim desperately “ye do after mi saying and not after my meanyng,” and also “If that I should kepe you long: you woulde make me so poore that I muste nedes goe a beggyng” (G 1°~-2'). His tailor master is similarly baffled when Tyll interprets instructions to “cast on” the sleeves of a gown in the sense of throwing them at it; and a cook is amazed to find that Tyll executes an order to Toast some meat “coldly” (that is, not to over-do it) by transferring it to the cellar between two beer barrels. These elementary jokes are often quite unmotivated. More significant than most is the incident in which Tyll obtains reprisal on a blacksmith, a harsh taskmaster who forces his apprentices to rise at midnight to get on with their work. Tyll offers to be their spokesman and inquire the reason. The answer is curt: “That is my maner that my men the first eyght dayes suffer I not them to slepe, but halfe the nyght” (F 4°).2° On this occasion Tyll wrecks part of his master’s house before leaving it: again, by seeming to understand orders literally—but this time, under provocation. The Parson of Kalenborowe* is in a sense a clerical Owlglass, whose japes are sometimes designed as reproof for his stingy or 20 The curious word order is not due to the original, which reads: “es ist mein weis das zum ersten meine knecht acht tag nicht lenger sollen ligen dann ein halbe nacht,” I 2°. 21 Quotations are taken from the Destoras edition (Antwerp, 1520). The oldest recorded version is a poem by the Viennese Philipp Frankfurter,

94

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

stupid parishioners.

He shames his flock into buying proper

banners for the crosses, by ostentatiously using a pair of old breeches as substitute. On the other hand his tricks are often as

gratuitous as Tyll’s, and like the latter’s sometimes descend to

scatology. Close to the soil himself, he understands something of farming. He tries to persuade the peasants to hire a single cowherd for all their cattle instead of having each man in the

village—including the Parson as well—take turns at the job. His argument for efficient organization fails, and so when his turn

comes to serve under the bailiff’s orders, he insists on going out into the fields in sacerdotal attire (“in the same and selfe ornamentis and the same maner as he did masse in”), ringing a little bell as if for the sacrament and singing in a loud voice (appropriately

enough) “Ego sum pastor bonus.” The ironical behaviour fails to impress his parishioners, however, for they merely conclude that their priest is mad. ; The Parson is not above exploiting the peasants’ ignorance for his own profit. He announces that he will miraculously fly over the river from his church steeple: dressed like an angel he goes.aloft and there “flickered oftetymes with his wynges” during a long hot day, and thus keeps the people waiting until they have drunk up and paid for a stock of his spoiled wine. This being accomplished, he explains that there will be no flight after all, and they were fools to expect one: “than ware the vilayns or

paysans meruelously angry” (A 5'~). In his encounters with members of high society—Duke and Duchess, Bishop and Bishop’s “sovereign lady” (ironically so called)—the Parson continues his clowning quite unabashed, and his superiors find it amusing. The Duchess, moved to merriment by the spectacle of the Parson doing his own washing out of doors in a most undignified posture, Die Geschicht des Pfarrers vom Kalenberg, composed in the late 14th or early 15th century, See Gustav

Ehrismann,

Geschichte

der deutschen

Literatur bis

zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, Bd. V1, Teil II, 2.2 (Munich, 1935), p. 482. The original poem has been edited by Karl Schorbach (Halle a/S., 1905). It was revised in Low German, whence both the Netherlandish and English prose versions are derived.

Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes

95

decides to visit him at home, in quest of more entertainment

Her host cleverly makes use of the occasion to win her support for his maintenance of two wenches, each aged 20, in place of the one sedate servant of 40 already ordered by the Bishop. He also persuades

her to finance

the ordering of new

statues for the

church. This he does by fetching in the old wooden images of the Apostles and using them for fuel to keep her warm in his modest and chilly abode. When she exclaims at his sacrilege he replies: nay gracyous Lady I do it for your sake because that ye sholde warme you be these olde apostels for I thynke you so gode and gracious that ye wyll for these olde rotten peces geue vs goodly newe ymages for to chere our pore churche with (C 5”).

As for the Bishop, our Parson does not hesitate to mock and discomfit him in a most ribald manner. The humour is of the earthiest. As in Tyll Owleglass, it makes use of nudity, defecation and sex as topics supposed to be intrinsically funny. Simple and unsophisticated as the point of view may be, it has the advantage of being associated with a style that often becomes lifelike to an extraordinary degree. Of a rather different sort are the enchained anecdotes forming biographies of sinister personages allied with the powers of evil. True enough,

such unified collections also make

use of pranks

and jests and fabliau situations, but their main purpose is or pretends to be edification. Medieval exempla, for instance those _ of Thomas de Cantimpré, had already made effective use of single situations involving diabolical visitants. The 16th-century popular books grouped numbers of them around such figures as Virgilius the Magician, Robert the Devil, Friar Bacon (the one native English hero) and Dr. John Faustus. To these should be added Friar Rush, for although the earliest extant text dealing with him belongs to the early 17th century, his story was already known in England in the 16th. This last-named hero is himself 22 Robert the Deuyll was translated by Wynkyn de Worde (London, 1502?) from the French prose original (earliest edition by Mareschal and

Chaussard,

Lyon,

1496). On the origins of this tale see Karl Breul, Sir

96

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

a devil sent to plague the corrupt inhabitants of a Danish monastery, but in the end his activities bring about their reform. Virgilius learns magic arts from the devil in order to serve the cause

of good, and

later

reduces his master

to subservience.

Similarly Friar Bacon finally burns his books of magic and makes a pious end as an anchorite, while Robert the Devil frees himself by penance and good works from the satanic powers to which he had been committed, through no fault of his own, at the moment

of his conception. The little known story of Mary of Nimmegen was circulated in English as a prose narrative translated and adapted from the 15th-century Flemish miracle play.2? What makes this story remarkable is the unusual character of Satan’s temporary disciple. She is a young girl who, tempted in a moment of weakness, consents to become his mistress—but only if he will teach her “all maner of langages & also the. vij. free scyences” (A 6°). Rhetoric becomes conspicuous among Mary’s accomplishments: she gives a demonstration of her skill by improvising a highly mannered discourse during a rowdy scene in a tavern of Antwerp. This blue-stocking precursor of Faust is recalled from Gowther (Oppeln, 1886), Introduction, and E. Léseth, Robert le Diable, SATF (Paris, 1902), Introduction. Virgilius was printed by Doesborch (Antwerp, 15182). Fryer Bacon, though undated, almost certainly preceded Greene’s play on the same subject, and Dr. John Faustus is assigned to the period 1587-89. See Francis Oscar Mann, The Works of Thomas Deloney (Oxford, 1912), Introduction, p. xxiii. The History of Friar Rush exists in a print of 1620, but entries in the Stationers’ Register and other references

indicate previous knowledge of the subject. The English treatment of this Danish theme probably derives from one of the German editions (Nurnberg, between 1520 and 1582) according to Herford, op. cit., p. 303. All of these texts are

available

in the collection

by Thoms,

but

with

modified

spelling

and

punctuation.

*3 Mary of Nimmegen (Antwerp: Doesborgh, ca 1520); facsimile reproduction with introduction by Harry Morgan Ayres and Adriaan Jacob Barnouw (Harvard University Press, 1932). The Flemish play Marieken van Nieumeghen is conveniently available in the edition by C. Kruyskamp (Antwerp, 1954), Klassieke Galerij Nr. 66. Allusions to contemporary political events place the action in the 1460's; the time of composition was probably between 1490 and 1510, according to the editor.

Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes

97

her evil ways by witnessing a dramatic performance of a sinner’s conversion and repentance. (In the dramatic Flemish original this scene constituted a play within a play.) Like Tannhauser in similar plight, she receives little encouragement when she reveals her story to the Pope; but like Tannhauser and the legendary Pope Gregory she undertakes heroic penance and is favoured at the end with a miraculous sign of forgiveness. Only Faustus has an unhappy ending, being inexorably claimed

by Mephistopheles for eternal damnation at the expiration of his term. Loose in construction as they may be, and frequently sinking to the level of the naivest anecdotes, these tales of diabolic or devil-possessed pranksters are nevertheless clothed in language that is more consciously literary than that of the usual enchained _Jjests.

Moreover, there is a certain dramatic impact in some of the individual scenes, though they are but sketchily delineated. Robert the Devil, driven by infernal powers to many bloody acts of violence, decides in the end to return home from outlawry and

find out from his mother the secret of the curse that rests on him. All members

of the household flee from him in terror, but his

cry is desperate:

“Swete lady moder be not aferde of me/ but

stande styl tyll I haue spoken with you, and flee not me from in the worshyp of Crystes passyon!” To his urgent question she makes a reply of ultimate despair: “My dere sone I requyre you hertly that ye wyll smyte of my heed” (B 2”). The following disclosure initiates the reversal in Robert’s career which somewhat resembles a classical peripeteia, and in fact there are highly theatrical values implicit in his brief interchange with his mother. No such high point is to be found in the tale of Virgilius, which is no more than a series of magic performances lacking any climax. Friar Bacon’s comparable performances are somewhat more striking when 26 For the problem of sources and analogues see John Webster Spargo Virgil the Necromancer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934). On internal evidence Spargo concludes that the English was probably translated from the Dutch text of Virgilius (Antwerp: Vorsterman, 1518-25). Sze his

study, p. 237 f.

?

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

he is shown engaged in contests of magic with his German counterpart Vandermast. The rivalry gives a certain unifying sense to the otherwise episodic narrative. Most elaborate is the treatment of the Faustus legend, translated (London, 1592) in a language already far removed from the simple manner of the early jest books. Sentences are elaborately constructed, with many absolutes and interrupting participles to create a periodic effect. Rhetorical training is manifest at several points: in the colloquies of Faustus and Mephistopheles, in the former’s soul-searching monologues, in his farewell oration to the students of Wittenberg before he becomes forfeit to his supernatural mentor. Classical learning is brought into play to some extent in incidents like the wellknown evocation of Helen of Troy, but it is all strangely modified in the prevailing sultry atmosphere. There are some pointless tricks executed in the tradition of the simplest jest books (chapters 34-44); there is also traditional vulgar magic as well as conventional jeering at the doltishness of country clowns (for instance. chapter 46). Nevertheless there are several literary ingredients which elevate this adapted German volksbuch above the level of others here mentioned. One of them is the driving force of intellectual curiosity which—however denigrated—is powerfully felt behind the adventures of Faustus in time and space. Dragon—borne in a four-wheeled wagon, he flies aloft and circumnavigates the world in one-tenth of the time required much later by Verne’s Phineas Fogg, and also obtains an instructive view of the heavens (ch. 21); his bold questionings evoke a very lively description of Hell (ch. 15) followed by a fantastic procession of its princes. His visits to famous cities suggest a condensed 16th-century Baedeker. Contemporary interest in geography was reflected in descriptions such as this of “Cracovia in the kingdom of Polonia”: where he beheld the Academie, the which pleased him wonderful well. In this Citie the King most commonly holdeth his Court at a Castel, in which Castell are many famous monuments. There is a most sumptuous Church in the same, in which standeth a siluer alter gilded, and set with rich stones, and ouer it is a conueiance full of all maner siluer ornaments belonging to the Masse.

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In the Church hangeth the iawe bones of an huge Dragon that kept the Rocke before the Castel was edified thereon. It is full of all maner munition, and hath alwaies victual for three yeare to serue 2000. men. Through the towne runneth a riuer, called the Vistula or Wissel, where ouer is a faire woodden bridge. This water deuideth the towne and Casmere, in this Casmere dwelleth the Jewes being a small walled towne by themselues, to the number of 25000. men, women, and Children. Within one mile of the towne there is a salte mine, where they finde stones of pure salte of 1000. pound, or 900. pound, or more in waight, and that in great quantitie. This salte is as black as the Newcastle coales when it comes out of the mines, but being beaten to powder, it is as white as snowe (ch. 22; F 2¥),%5

Thus by a curious route, a piece of Renaissance

German

fiction

brought to English readers a certain impression of the fervid intellectual life in the 16th-century Polish city of Krakéw: The homely reference to Newcastle coals indicates how the translator

sought to adapt his subject-matter to a native audience. The colourful journeys of Faustus, both natural and supernatural, anticipate the adventures of English picaresque heroes which will be discussed later. Moreover the horrific supernatural ambiance and the sense of doom pervading the Doctor’s story, even at its silliest, may be said to anticipate romantic Gothic novels of a still later period. But the connections are very indirect. In general our clan of devilish tricksters and adventurers made no immediately important contribution to the development of the English novel. They were far more important for the history of the English drama, as the plays of Greene and Marlowe testify. 3. THe

ANTI-RomMANTIC

Novelle

Jests and popular fabliaux, though briefly and baldly told, often contained the essentials of a plot which could be expanded into a more ambitious literary form. By the addition of dialogue 25 This passage appeared in a much shorter form (lacking for instance such details as the account of the salt mines and of the Jewish quarter) in the earliest German volksbuch (Frankfurt a/M, 1587), ch. 26. The English prose text may be indebted at this point to additional written sources like H. Schedel’s Nirnberger Chronik, perhaps augmented by oral reports or personal observations by the translator. Such is the suggestion made by Eliza M, Butler in her general study The Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge University Press, 1952).

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

and description, sometimes with jocular commentary by the author, the familiar plots could be transformed into something new,

a type which we may call the anti-romantic novella. Like its simpler predecessors it was often satiric in intention. It differed from the similarly expanded literary fabliaux chiefly in that it was written in prose and was thus able to approximate more closely the flow of daily speech, whether in conversation or narrative. Even Chaucer, for all the suppleness of his prosody, was neces-

sarily confined by the iambic pentameter form when he was presenting the utterances of his fabliau characters. The anti-romantic novella in prose, sometimes mistakenly called the realistic novella, had already been developed by Italian writers like Boccaccio, long before it was attempted in English. As a matter of fact, the first group of such tales in English was inspired by a French source, namely the celebrated Cent nouvelles nouvelles (hereafter to be abbreviated CNN), commonly attributed to

Antoine de la Sale (mid-15th century).?® The tales, which are artistically transformed fabliaux rendered in prose, are put into the mouths of specific narrators including the author, and a number who bear the names of historically attested personages at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy. The literary art of the CNN has frequently been admired.?’ They differ from even. the most skilful of the anonymous verse fabliaux preceding them in the more extended use they make of ironical commentary and burlesque and comic contrasts: for instance, between aristocratic

satus and vulgar behaviour, between pious speech and lascivious deed. Essential dialogues are put down in a natural and easy style; these and significant gestures help to forward the action 26 Besides the Champion edition mentioned previously in n. 11, there was an earlier one by Thomas Wright (Paris, 1855). The earliest printed text was done by A. Vérard (Paris, 1486), based on a manuscript demonstrably ‘inferior to the one in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, which Champion used. 27 See in particular Walther Kiichler, “Die Technik der Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” Zeitschrift fiir franzdsische Sprache und Literatur, XXXI (1907), 39-101. This is the second of two studies on the collection. The first, devoted to sources and analogues, appeared the previous year, ibid., XXX (1906), 264-331.

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at crucial moments. Local settings are indicated and are often pinned down by concrete remarks showing special knowledge of the milieu, whether mercantile town or baronial castle. Such merits are by no means an unprecedented innovation, to be sure. They had been anticipated, as we have seen, in exempla of the preceding centuries, and they were continued on a humbler scale in the jest books. Nevertheless the CNN exploited the already familiar devices in a realistic manner hitherto unknown, even among the Italians. One is reminded of the technique of early Flemish painting, which used homely settings—fields, market places, bourgeois and noble interiors—as fitting background for universally known themes (in that case, religious), whereas Italian artists of the same period inclined to more generalized, even idealized settings. There is a similar contrast, it may be said, between the Fregch collection of a hundred tales and the comparable ones in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The English work indebted to the French was an anonymous collection bearing the intriguing title The Deceyte of Women. It was first printed by William Copland (1543-58), later by Abraham Vealé (1563-81). The plan of the book is curiously amusing. Ostensibly its author was engaged in the familiar, timehallowed task of demonstrating how horrendous are the effects 28 Champion remarks in his introduction to the CNN, p. Iviii, that the art of the tales reveals to us the actual countryside of Flanders and Burgundy. This statement should be taken with a measure of caution, since there was already an established convention favouring local references in short realistic tales, and the references did not always mean first-hand knowledge. On the contribution made by tales like CNN and others to the development of the novel, see Gustave Reynier, Les Origines du roman réaliste (Paris, 1912), ch. 6. 2° Friedrich Brie, “The Deceyte of Women; 4lteste englische Neovellensammlung (1547),” Archiv fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, CLVI (=Neue Serie LVI, 1929, Part 2), 17-52. Brie reproduces the Veale edition with critical notes and short introduction. Quotations here cited from the text are taken directly from the original (British Museum copy). The Copland edition exists in a private collection (Britwell). Both are of the same length and size; hence it may be assumed that Veale’s is a close reproduction of Copland’s.

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

of female interference

in the realm of masculine affairs. He was

thus engaged on one side in an age-long debate between the two sexes on the topic: are women to be condemned as chief seduc-

ers of men, or vice versa? As a literary form this debate enjoyed a revived popularity in the latter 15th and early 16th ceritury. Champions of both points of view plundered history and fiction, both ancient and modern, for examples to support their theses.” The compiler of The Deceyt accordingly began his collection with the hoary example of Eve causing Adam’s ruin, and thereafter used Biblical or classical themes as warning instances for all of the eleven odd-numbered tales. These are the least interesting for a modern reader. But they served as cover and pretext for the introduction of eleven sharply contrasted tales, ten of them from the CNN and all of them of a very mundane character. The stories of the French source are abbreviated and perfunctory morals are attached, but much survives of the original’s gay insouciance and non-pedantic satire. The adaptations, though inferior. still preserve such literary values of the CNN as colloquial conversation, mobile gesture, and pictorial evocation of domestic settings. In No. 2, for instance, a wife dwelling in the town of Valen-

ciennes narrowly escapes detection by her husband during an indiscreet visit to their neighbour's house. By using a back gate between the adjoining gardens she manages to return to her own home before her good man, and thus is able to present a picture of housewifely virtue when her husband arrives inopportunely: And whan that he came afore his house he sawe that there was yet lyght in it & knocked at the doore, and hys wyfe went with a brome and swept the house. and she asked who was there, and he sayd: I am he thy husban[d], and she sayd thou art not my husband for my husband is not in the towne, neuerthelesse he knocked agayne, & sayd I am thy husbande, hys wyfe answered and sayd go from my doore, for I know well the voyce of my husbande. And

also it is not my husbandes custome for to come and knocke this late at the doore. And so at the thyrde tyme he sayd so much that she knewe hym, for °° For bibliography and discussion of this literary debate in English see Francis Lee Utley, The Crooked Rib: An Analytical Index of the Argument about Women in English and Scots Literature to the End of the Year 1568

(Ohio State University, Columbus,

1944).

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103

he was sore amoued, and laid vpon the doore as though he wolde haue broken it in peeces, & so at last she let him in, & she set her handes on her side & sayde thou noughty knaue this haste thou doone for to proue me, and I tell thee that thou arte not worthy for to haue so honest a wyfe (B 1'-¥),

Though the dialogue has been reduced from CNN, certain details omitted, the essentials have

No. 1, and

been preserved:

the

details of garden gate and burning light and broom being wielded at an improbably late hour. The repetition of the word “husband” creates a comic /eitmotif in the translation, just as it does in the

French. At the moment when the husband is admitted, the English adapter carries off two minor innovations successfully: he adds the gesture “she set her hands on her side” and introduces direct speech instead of indirect paraphrase of the reproach addressed to the “noughty knave.”%! In No. 8 another ingenious wife contrives to get her husband out of their bedroom for a whole night by inducing him to enter a clothes-chest and then clapping it shut and having it carried out by her maids. The trick itself may strain our credulity, but the circumstances are presented with careful plausibility. The wife is downcast because she has been frustrated in her schemes for a rendez-vous with her lover; the husband notices her heavy mood and—as husbands will—starts to talk about the first object at. hand in order to distract her attention. The object in question happens to be a “male [chest] lyenge in the chamber in the whyche male was his wifes clothes’—and so to make conversation he asks what it is doing in their room. She says she’s willing to have it removed if he doesn’t like it there, but it contains some of her gowns; he wonders whether it is big enough to accommodate them without wrinkling: 31 In the French of CNN, No. 1, the corresponding lines run as follows: “Mais au fort, pour abaisser la noise et a son aise mieulx dire sa volunté, elle ouvrit ’huys. Et, a ‘entrée qu’il fist, Dieu scet s’il fut servy d’une chere bien rechignée, et d’un agu et bien enflambé visage. Et, quand la langue d’elle peut povoir sur le cueur tresfort chargé d’ire et de courroux, par semblant les parolles qu’elle descocha ne f:1rent pas mains trenchans que rasoirs de Guingant

bien affilez’”’, Champion ed., p. 17 f. The French does not reproduce directly the words that were as cutting as razors; the English at least gives a sample of them.

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iy. The Rise of Popular Fiction

Than sayd her husbande my [sic] semes that the male is ouer lytell for to put your clothes in wythout crokynge for they be large and longe. The gentyl woman sayde the male is great ynough, the lorde sayde my semes naye, Well sayde the gentyll woman yf it please you I wyll lay with you a dosen of reuen shertes agaynst a satyn kertyll, that we wyll put you in the male as ye be, for all that the male is so lytle. The lorde sayde I holde ye that ye doo not. Than

sayde the hande mayde, we shall see who shal wynne it (D 1°).

;

As compared with the original, this dialogue is severely truncated,®? but what remains is still effective. The same may be said of other passages in borrowed tales of The Deceyte of Women. It must be confessed that the English adapter sometimes muffed his effects and obscured his situations. No. 6 is a case in point. The plot (already known in No. 122 of the Latin Gesta Romanorum) calls for a husband who is blind in one eye, so that his

wife can cleverly obscure the sound one while her lover escapes from their bedroom.

In the CNN,

No.

16, the knight of Artois has

already lost one eye in battle before he departs to join the order of Prussian Knights in war against the local Saracens (sic!).* It is because of this infirmity that his inopportune return home can be so easily handled by the wife. But the English adapter carelessly writes: “This knight had lost in batayle one of hys eares™ (for “perdu avoit ung oeil” in the original). The mistake makes pointless the wife’s asseveration, when she finally opens the door 32 The French of No. 27 in CNN is as follows: “Mal content! dit il; nenny, par ma foy; je l’'ayme autant icy que ailleurs, puis qu’il vous plaist; mais il me semble bien petit pour y mettre voz robes bien a I’aise, sans les froisser, actendu les grandes et longues queues qu’on fait aujourd’hui—Par ma foy, monseigneur, dit elle, il est assez grand.—II ne le me peut sembler, vraiement. dit il, et le regardez bien.—Or ca, monseigneur,

voulez vous faire un gage a

moy?—Oy vraiement, dit il, quel sera i/?—Je gageray a vous. s‘il vous plaist, pour une demye douzaine de bien fines chemises encontre le satin d‘une cotte simple, que nous vous bouterons bien dedans, tout ainsy que vous estes.—Par ma foy, dit il, jegage que non.—Et je gage que si.—Or avant, ce dirent les femmes, nous verrons qui le gagnera,’’ Champion ed., p. 88. *? As the French has it, “tandiz que monseigneur aux’ Sarrazins fait guerre”

in the land of “Perusse.”’ Thus the Glasgow MS., Champion ed. p. 53 f. Vérard’s early printed text reads Prusse for Perusse. On the transplantation of Saracens to the Baltic area see ch. 3, n. 31.

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to him, that she had just had a dream concerning the means of restoring the sight to his blind eye (of which nothing has been said) by covering up the other one while her lover escapes. Nevertheless the interchange of question and answer while the impatient knight is knocking at his own door is still well handled, within the brief space allotted to it.5* One and only one of the worldly novelle in The Deceyte (No. 18) comes from an unknown source, though its basic plot is familiar enough. It tells how a merchant’s wife living in “Danswyke in Pruyse” accepted a cash fee for the enjoyment of her favours by a visiting young merchant from Lubeck; further how the delighted recipient next day boasted unwittingly to the husband (whom he did not know) of his agreeable adventure; how the husband identified the delinquent matron as his own wife on the basis of internal evidence in the tale; how he invited the traveller back to his house, confronted his wife with his knowledge, and forced her to return the sum she had received— minus trifling deductions for services and hospitality rendered. The underlying situation is well known in the storehouse of international popular fiction, being classified under the rubric “The Lover’s Gift Regained” 34 The English runs as follows: “And the wyfe taried so longe tyll that he knocked agayne and sayd open quickly. Than sayd his wyfe alas my husband is farre from hens, I beseche god sende hym well home agayne. Than sayd the lord by my knyghthod, woman I am he, and knowe ye me not. The woman said whan that it shal please my husband to com home, he wy! gyue me good knowledge before by sume of his seruanntes to thende that I maye mete hym and byd him welcome home with his cosins and his nexte kynred, & so I maye honourablye receiue him as it pertayneth to a Lorde,” C 2Y. The French is ampler and more circumstantial, as usual: “‘Madame, qui fainct d’estre encores toute endormie et non recognistre monseigneur, aprés le second hurt qu’il fait a l’huys demande encores: ‘Qui est ce la?—C’est vostre mary, dame; ouvrez bien tost, ouvrez!—Mon mary! dit elle; helas! il est bien loing d’icy: Dieu le ramaine a joye et bref!—Par ma foy, dame, je suis vostre mary, et ne me cognoissez vous au parler? Si tost que je vous oy respondre, je cogneu bien que c’estiez vous.—Quand il viendra, je le scsaray beaucop devant, pour le recevoir ainsi que je doy, et aussi pour mander messeigneurs ses parens et amys pour Ie festoier et convier a sa bienvenue. Allez, allez et me laissez

dormir’,” p. 54 f.

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

in motif-indices of folklore and novelle.*® What is interesting from the artistic point of view is the care taken by the unknown redactor of the tale to suggest the setting of a real town, the mercantile city of Dantzig (today’s Gdansk) on the Baltic Sea. The wife instructs her suitor to come to see her (with cash in hand, of

course) early in the evening: “For it is the maner in Danswyke that the most parte of all the marchaunte men have supped at .vii a clocke and than they goe to Artus gardeyn to drinke and there to take there recreacyon” (H 2°-3"), as the messenger explains to him. As a matter of fact the Gdansk Bourse was called Des Koninck Artushove (in Polish, Dw6or Artusa or King Arthur's Court) in the 16th century, having been decorated with images of the legendary British king and his knights. In the evening it served as a club where leading citizens met to drink beer and exchange news until closing time. The statutes of the club have in fact survived and confirm these details in the story. Hence the wife can be fairly sure of privacy from the hour mentioned until

eleven at night.** The meeting of husband and lover next day occurs when they are both riding towards Lubeck on matters of business. The return home is made credible when the former pretends that he has forgotten an important paper and thereupon persuades the younger man to ride back with him for company’s sake, considerately adding that he will pay the expenses involved: And whan they had rydon a lytle forther: the marchaunt held styl with his horse, and sayd, alas it is wrong with me for I should ryde to Lubeck for money, & I haue forgotten my pryncipall oblygacyon that I should requyre my money wythall, & therfore I must nedes returne homewardes again, & if ye haue no great busines: I require you that ye wyll bere me-companye

%5 Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature, 6 vols. (Copenhagen. 1955-57) classifies the plot in question as K 1581. So also D. P. Rotunda, Motif Index of the Italian Novella in Prose (Indiana University Publications, Folklore Series No. 2, 1942). The variant closest to the novella about Dantzig in The Deceyte No. 18 is K 1581.4. 3¢ The local background of this tale has been discussed by me as part of an

introduction to the text in “A Sixteenth-Century English Satirical Tale about Gdansk,” Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, IV (1957), 95-120.

The Anti-Romantic

Novelle

107

to my house, and I wyll paye for your costes and for your horse, & make you the best chere that I can. Than sayd the yong marchaunt, if I can doo you

any pleasure: I wil be glad to be at your commaundement (H 4”).

The satirical motif of cash relations is carried through to the final scene, where it becomes a subject of bitter irony for the husband in his denunciation of the wife’s mercenary intrigue. The price she has charged, he says, is too high for him to compete with: “My wyfe, ye be to costly for to be my wyfe, yf ye can wyn one night .1. nobles, for than wolde I hastely or in short tyme spend al my goodes” (I 1‘). The embarrassed guest is then sent on his way with

some good advice about the need to avoid indiscreet boasting. The local colour of the Gdansk tale, even more concretely realized than in the novelle taken from the CNN, raises an interesting question about the path by which this particular version may have reached England. A recent detailed study*’ has demonstrated that the closest parallel to it is a little-known verse tale in 16th-century German which shares many details exclusively with the English version (though not, to be sure, its localization in Gdansk).** Since the extant German tale was however not printed before the 19th century, it could hardly have served as direct source for the English. Yet somebody, somewhere, made the connection between plot and locale as we here find it. The English Deceyte of Women may very probably have appeared first in Antwerp from the press of Jan Doesborch, somewhere in the early 1520’s**; and Antwerp, as is well known, had lively commercial relations with the port towns of the Baltic in the 16th century. 37 K. Kasprzyk, “Le Motif du ‘Don récupéré par |’amant’ chez Nicolas de Troyes,’ Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, V (1958), 187-96. 38 The German text is to be found in a MS. of Valentin Holls, dated Nirnberg 1524-26 and described by A. von Keller in his Verzeichnis der altdeutschen Handschriften, ed. E. Sievers (Tiibingen, 1890), No. 45, p. 104. The verse tale, signed by one Claus Speun, was edited by von Keller in his

Erzahlungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften (Stuttgart, 1855) as “Ain gar schdne Sprach von aim, der sollt ain doctor werden, wie er sein geltt verthett.”” For these details I am indebted to the article by Miss Kasprzyk cited in the

preceding note. 39 See my article as cited above in n. 30, p. 102 f.

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

108

Either the German tale was adapted in Gdansk and thence transferred to Antwerp (where a lost Flemish version in prose may very well have been the source of the English),*° or else the adaptation was made in Antwerp itself, with local details about Arthur’s Court and the like which commercial travellers would have made familiar. However the tale reached the anonymous English redactor, his work on it was of some importance in the history of native fiction. He used or at least copied such traits as burlesque romantic metaphors, satirical irony,*! colloquial conversation, and a trick of echoing certain words for emphasis.

Another French collection with similar literary merits was made known in a partial English translation somewhat later in the century,

namely

the Nouvelles

récréations

et joyeux

devis

by Bonaventure Des Périers, secretary and valet de chambre of Marguerite of Navarre.*? A selection of 39 tales (out of 90 in the original) was offered to English readers under the title of The Mirour of Mirth and Pleasant Conceits, translated by a certain T. D.43 In substance most items of the Mirrour resemble the 4° A Dutch book entitled Dat Bedrog van Vrouwen (i.e., The Deceit of Women) was printed by Jan Berntsz (Utrecht,

1516-40). It existed in a private collection before World War I, but has since been lost. This may possibly have been a text representing the original of The Deceyte of Women. 41 Burlesque appears when the lovers’ encounter is thus described: “one began [to do] to other lyke as Venus chyldren should do’’, H 3°. Ironical use of epithets resembles that in the CNN, where /a bonne femme is often applied to one engaged in adultery. Thus the English has “the good wyfe"’ (H 3”) used for the delinquent spouse, who says “my best beloued husband” precisely when she is about to rejoin her lover. “2 The Nouvelles récréations are edited by Louis Lacour (Paris, 1874). The first edition was printed by Robert Granjon (Lyon, 1558). Marguerite’s Heptameron was rendered into English late in the century as The Queene of Nauarres

Tales (1597).

‘“* There is a convenient photocopy reproduction of this edition (London: Roger Warde, 1583), prepared with introduction and notes by James Woodrow Hassell, Jr. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959). See also Hassell’s special article on the text in Studies in Philology, LUI (1955), 172-85. The same author has published a study of the French original in his Sources and Analogues of the “Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis” of Bonaventure

Des Périers, 1 (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1957). A second

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109

earlier jest books since they are essentially anecdatal and often hinge upon a deft answer, a double entendre, a malapropism (sometimes in Latin) or other linguistic source of humour. But in execution these same items are more sophisticated than their predecessors. A group of several stories is centred about the prankish Vicar of Brow “who in many places bath beene called the Vicar of Byon” (Bron or Briosne in the French). He is a figure closely resembling the Parson of Kalenborowe already discussed. In fact, several of the French Vicar’s jesting performances are quite close analogues of the Austrian’s.** _ But although the plots of such stories may be relatively simple, they are more fully developed, with the aid of side remarks, whimsical realistic details, conversations easily passing from direct to indirect discourse and back again. The author slyly introduces bits of ‘earning, he nudges the reader with confidential side remarks, as here where he makes a brief digression in the first person on the theme of woman’s frailty: But this much may I say by the cannot tell who did inuent it, but gauit:) I wil not say that it istrue, is no faire woman but hath béene

way, that there is an vnhappy prouerbe, I it is very common, (casta quam nemo robut leaue it as it is, yet I dare say that there or shalbe assalted. Well, I am not faire wil

some say, nor I neither will another saye: I am content it be so, because I loue no strife, but this be sure, a Woman that is wyse and wily, will take héede to tell that she hath béene sued vnto by any, specially to her husband (F 1°):

—and so forth. He exploits the contrast between the language of simple people and those pedantically learned, often to the discomfiture of the latter,45 he continues the satire on clerical ignorance of Latin,** and he takes advantage of different levels of style edition of the English translation appeared in 1592, but this contains only 31 tales in all. It is, as Hassell makes clear, no more than an abbreviated and slightly edited republication of the first edition. 44 The stories in question appear on pages K 2°-L 2°. Since it is hardly likely that Des Périers read.the Austrian poem, some intermediary version, possibly oral, is to be assumed. See Hassell, Sources and Analogues, I, pp. 144-48. 45 E.g., G 2°-G 4’. 46 C 4D 1’,

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

in spoken discourse. Thus he catches very accurately the prudish hesitancies and awkward aposiopeses of a simple woman making

a petition to a cardinal (No. 10, C 3"-C 4"), and at the same time he can imitate the formal elegancies of ladies and gallants embark-

ing on a flirtation. The latter type of speech is used with burlesque effect in one of the tales (No. 16, C 4'-F 4°), which may properly be classified as a true novella rather than merely an expanded anecdote,

since it is developed with unusual amplitude. Interestingly enough, this tale is a close analogue of one from the CNN which also appears in The Deceyte of Women (I 3*-K 1"). The plot had already

been familiar in European literature since the 12th century, having figured more than once in French romances and Latin exempla.*’ It tells how the wife of a jealous husband eluded his vigilance and her duenna’s in order to meet her lover: the latter has arranged to have her doused with a pail of water thrown out of a window in his friend’s house, seemingly by accident, as she and her attendant are passing by in the street. The inundated lady thereupon takes refuge in the house and the attendant is sent home for dry . clothes, and in the interval the waiting lover and she take excellent advantage of the opportun'ty thus offered. The handling of this plot by Des Peériers closely resembles that to be found in the CNN. Both jealous husbands are (like the last spouse of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath) ardent students of the literature denouncing women’s wiles and deceits; the circumstances of the rendez-vous are very similar (although the earlier version makes the friendly accomplice a woman, not a man); both husbands realize at once what has happened when the duenna comes home alone for dry clothes. A verbal echo at the end of the

story establishes Des Périers’ debt to his predecessor.*® ‘7 On

the earlier

versions

see Hassell, Sources

and

Analogues,

I, pp.

81-86. 48. In CNN the husband exclaims that his literary sources didn’t contain this trick: ““Nostre Dame, ce tour n’estoit pas en mon livre” (in the English: “thys subtyl meanes I neuer saw nor red afore this tyme”); in the Nouvelles récréations, “voila un tour de finesse qui n’estoit point encor en mon papier” (in English: “here is a craftie devise indeed, that is not yet in my Booke’”).

Realistic Narrative in Pamphlets and Long Meg

111

Both stories gave to English readers instructive models in the technique of adapting a well-known motif as theme of.a novella. In The Deceyte, wooer and lady both make use of short letters skilfully exchanged with a minimum of hurried conversation.

Their means of communication are here well adapted to the situation, in view of the unremitting vigilance of the wife’s duenna,

familiarly called “the olde trotte.” In the Mirrour of Mirth, on the other hand, Des Périers has improbably expanded the wooing into a formal debate. between lover and lady, complete with argumentation and rebuttals. How the two managed to conduct their

discussion in private, he does not explain. There is amusing irony in the lover's demonstration that he’s really doing honour to her husband in trying to seduce her: “for you shall vnderstand, for the affection that I beare vnto you, (so far am I from doing iniurie to your Husbande) that rather I do him honor, when I loue with a good heart that which he loueth.” Such amorous sophistry brings our novella close to the more artificial style then current in courtly circles (about which more later), while at the same time the ribald context shifts the conversation into the realm of burlesque. The remaining dialogues are in contrast much livelier and easier in tone. 4. REALISTIC

NARRATIVE

IN THE SOCIAL

PAMPHLETS;

Long Meg

Somewhat apart from the main streams of 16th-century fiction,

but nevertheless distinctly worthy of attention, are the miniature stories embodied in the social pamphlets of the time. Observers of the miserable beggars, rogues and vagabonds wandering about the Elizabethan countryside and congregating in the cities, often illustrated their descriptions with reports of typical incidents presumably drawn from real life. Their value lies in the fact that they represent a form of realistic writing which could not fail to exercise some influence on that school which—for want of a better term—we have decided to call anti-romantic. Two texts are especially important in this connection. namely The Fraternitye of ‘Vacabondes by John Awdeley and A Caueat

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

or Warening for Commen Cursetors vulgarly called Vagabones by Thomas Harman, both written in the 1560’s.** First of all the style of the tracts has unusual interest, both linguistic and literary. It illustrates abundantly the colourful, unforced colloquial speech (or at least writing) which seldom finds expression in self-conscious literature, even when it pretends to deal with simple people. There are loose and repetitive sentences, shifted and non-parallel constructions, pleonastic pronouns, changes in number

from

singular to plural and the reverse, anacoluthon and the like: all of them traits of undisciplined utterance which occasionally appear in the relaxed style of less formal literary writers as well.*° In the second place, the manner of presenting types of frauds and tricksters includes such literary devices as characterization, dialogue, anecdote, and reportage of supposedly real events in novella style. The famous pamphlets on Conny-Catching (that is, cheating 4° Both the Fraternitye and the Caueat were edited together by Edward Viles and F. J. Furnivall, EETS, ES, No. 9 (1869; reprinted 1898 and 1937). Awdeley’s book was licensed in 1560-61; prints were issued at that time and in 1565 and 1575, this last being the basis of the EETS edition. The first edition of Harman’s book is lost; a second and third appeared in 1567. Harman was indebted to his predecessor but added much material of his own. These tracts were plagiarized by later writers, notably by the author of The Groundworke of Conny-Catching (1592), wrongfully attributed to Robert Greene, and by Thomas Dekker in his Belman of London (1608). 5° These linguistic traits of the pamphlets have been examined by me in “Early Tudor Colloquial English,” Philologica Pragensia, I (1958), 97-104. Here are some examples: “This simple man, beholding him wel, and sawe he was of taule personage with a good quarter staffe in his hand, it much pitied him, as he sayd, to se him want” (Caueat, p. 42; non-parallel construction of beholding and saw, also shift from personal to impersonal point of view); “These kynde of deceyuing Vacabondes... sometimes... come to buy wares of men’s Prentisies, and sometimes of their Maisters, and when he hath agreed

of the price, he sayth he hath notso much money about him” (Fraternitye., p. 11; shift from plural to singular); “When the goodman and the goodwyfe of the house hadde intreated and pacified the Counstable, shewinge vnto him that they were Proctors and Factores all of Spytell houses, and that they taryed there but to breake theyr fast, and woulde ryde awaye immediately after, for they had farre to goe, and therefore mente to ryde so earlye’’ (Caueat,

p. 45; anacoluthon, since the sentence never achieves a main verb).

Realistic Narrative in Pamphlets and Long Meg

113

and sharp practices) written by Robert Greene several decades later®' are marked by many of the same traits. The main difference is that Greene's language, though easy somewhat loose, does not lapse into the his humbler predecessors are occasionally All three authors— Awdeley, Harman,

and even on occasion incoherencies of which

guilty. Greene—rely to a great extent on the method of character-writing in the Theophrastian sense, applied to personages of the underworld. A type of deceiver is mentioned, being designated by the name given to him

in thieves” jargon, and there follows a short account of his techniques and activities: “A wilde Roge is he that hath no abiding place but by his coulour of going abrode to beg, is commonly to seeke some kinsman of his, and all that be of hys corporation be properly called Roges.” Thus Awdeley (p. 5), who does not go in for much elaboration. At most he adds descriptive details and bits of typical conversation: A Curtesy man is one that walketh about the back lanes in London in the day time, and sometime in the broade streetes in the night season, and when he meeteth some handsome yong man clenly apareled, or some other honest

Citizen, he maketh humble salutations and low curtesy, and sheweth him that he hath a worde or two to speake with his mastership. [The address to a prospective victim may take the following form:] “Oh syr, you seeme to be a man, and one that fauoureth men, and therefore I am the more bolder to breake

my mind vnto your good maistreship’’ (p. 6).

Awdetey is capable of handling, albeit not too smoothly, a transition from indirect to direct speech, as here where he describes how an innocent countryman is entrapped by some flashy “yonkers”: Thus sitting as it were alone, mumblyng on a crust, or some such thing [note the dangling participle], these other yonkers wil finde some kind of mery talke with him, some times questioning wher he dwelleth, & sometimes enquiring what trade he vseth, which commonly he telleth them he vseth husbandry {note the shifted construction]: & talking thus merely, at last they aske him, “how sayest thou, Father, wylt thou play for thy breakfast with one of vs, that we may haue some pastime as we syt?” (p. 8 f.).

31 Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Coosenage (1591); The Second Part of Conny-Catching

(1592); The Thirde

& Last Part of Conny Catching

(1592). These three texts are reprinted in one volume (London: Bodley Head, 1923).

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

Harman also introduces many generalized characters of this sort, and in addition he reports concrete incidents witnessed or testified to by himself (or so he claims) and longer stories presumably recounted to him directly by participants in the events. His presentation is thus broadened and at the same made more immediate. Thus one victim of chicanery is said to be known personally to the author: “There was a Gentleman, a verye friende of myne, rydyng from London homewarde into Kente, [who] hauing with in thrée myles of his house busynesse, alyghted of his horse... and looked aboute hym” (p. 43; note the asyndeton). On another occasion Harman reports an interview of his own with a “Counterfet Cranke” —that is, a knavish beggar who pretends to spectacular disease (here, epilepsy) in order to elicit charity: 1 called hym vnto me, and demaunded of hym what he ayled. “A, good maister,” quoth he, “I haue the greuous and payneful dyseas called the falynge syckenes.” “Why,” quoth I, “howe commeth thy Ierken, hose, and hat to be rayed with durte and myre, and thy skyn also?” “A, good master, I fell downe on the backesyde here in the fowle lane harde by the watersyde; and there I laye all most all night, and haue bled all most all the bloude owte in my bodye.™ It raynde that morninge very fast; and whyle I was talkinge with hym, a honest poore woman that dwelt thereby brought hym a fayre lynnen cloth, and byd hym.wype his face therewyth: and there being a tobbe standing full of rayne water, offered to geue hym some in a dishe that he might make hym selfe cleane; hée refuseth the same. “Why dost thou so?” quoth I. “A, syr,” sayth he, “yf I shoulde washe my selfe, Ishoulde fall to bléedinge a freshe againe. and then I should not stop my selfe:” these wordes made me the more to

suspecte hym

(p. 52).

No wonder Harman

was suspicious, for he tells us elsewhere that

he had followed another crank into a lane outside of Temple Bar. behind Clement’s Inn, and watched the man renew his gory aspect “wyth freshe bloud, whiche he caried about hym in a bladder, and dawbed on freshe dyrte vpon his Ierken, hat and hoson” (p. 53). This incident occurred,

Harman

scrupulously informs us, “about

xii of the clocke.” Such attention to details goes far to elevate Harman’s reportage to a distinctly literary level. And in several instances he adds skill in story-telling to his other gifts. There is for instance the story of

Realistic Narrative in Pamphlets and Long Meg

115

two knaves who pretended to be the long-lost nephews of a village parson in order to obtain information about his household from the local innkeeper’s wife, and thus to plan a robbery on him. The exposition of the situation is made, to be sure, in an awkward dislocated sentence:

“then they fayninge that they had an vncle

a priest, and that he should dwel in these partes, which by all presumptions it should be he, and that they came of purpose to speake with hym.... and began [note the shifted construction] to inquier of his name™ (p. 38). But this is followed by some terse and vivid narrative which comes off most effectively. At midnight the rascals approach the priest’s house and lurk near the window: the dog barks and rouses his master who thereupon “began to cough and hem”; then “one of these roges stepes forth nerer the window and maketh a ruful and pityful noise, requiring for Christ sake some reliefe, that was [note loose construction of the relative pronoun] both hongry and thirstye, and was like to ly with out the dores all nighte and starue for colde.” In a sudden, very effective transition to direct speech we get the priest’s reply: ‘where dwellest thou?’ quoth this parson.” There is also some very life-like dialogue when the parson tells the innkeeper’s wife what has happened and learns what deception has been practised on him. One appreciates her comforting advice: “Why, all your sorrowes goe with it... and sitte downe here, and | will fil a freshe pot of ale shall make you mery agayne” (p. 41). Even more effective is the story of a “walking morte” (i.e.. female beggar) whose misadventures constitute something like a realistic short story in the midst of Harman’s pamphlet (p. 68 f.). She narrates them to the author in her own person. Being at the time pregnant, she says, she “lusted meruelously after oysters and

muskels” and so went searching for them on the sea-shore of Kent. But it so happened, unfortunately, that she fell up to the waist into a water-filled hole between two rocks “and their dyd stycke,

and I had bene drowned if the tide had come”; but she called out

for help and a man passing by heard her and came to her rescue. His motives, as it turned out, were not entirely disinterested. The narrator herself realizes that her inflamed colour and desperate

116

iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

situation may have conspired to arouse unseemly desires in her rescuer: “and whether it was with stryuinge and forcing my selfe out, or for ioye I had of his comminge to me, I had a great couller in my face, and loked red and well coullered“ (p. 68). This statement may violate unity of point of view (for how could she know the hue of her own cheeks without a mirror?), but it surely makes the situation pictorial for the reader. And the situation itself is cleverly developed into a plot enabling the narrator to conspire with her rescuer’s wife (who has become her good friend) to hu-

miliate the husband and cure him of his improper designs on her.*? Robert Greene does not pretend to tell stories, whether of fact or fiction, but his type characters and situations ‘are realistically delineated against the background of specifically named streets and disreputable taverns where gulls and conny-catchers meet. As with his predecessors, Greene’s loose sentence structure sets an appropriate literary tone. Reinforcing it, the underworld terminology contributes to the local colour, and imaginary dialogue to the liveliness. No wonder that this kind of writing elicited imitators and plagiarizers. It formed an arresting contrast to the highly mannered style then being affected in courtly fiction: it dealt with urgent social problems of the times; and it offered besides a style and idiom adaptable for low-life scenes on the stage. To what extent dramatists (like Shakespeare with his Autolycus in A Winter’s Tale) may have been indirectly indebted to these sociological exempla it is impossible to say. But the booklets deserve attention by historians of English fiction as well as the 52 The language throughout this episode is mostly informal and colloquial. However, when the abused wife takes counsel of her neighbours, one “stout dame” emits a very literary sentence: “As your pacient bearinge of troubles, your honest behauiour among vs your neighbours, your tender and pytifull hart to the poore of the parysh, doth moue vs to lament your case, so the vnsatiable carnalite of your faithelesse husbande doth instigate and styre

vs to deuyse and inuent some spéedy redresse for your ease [read case with the 1573 ed.) There are other such formal literary sentences in Harman's text, and the dedication is stylistically very elaborate. Hence it may be deduced that Harman consciously availed himself of two styles: the formal-artificial and the loose-colloquial, according to his purposes.

Realistic Narrative in Pamphlets and Long Meg

117

social historians who have hitherto evinced primary interest in them. As culmination of the tradition from jest books and concatenated anecdotes to social pamphlets we may examine in conclusion

an interesting text, hitherto relatively little discussed, called Long Meg of Westminster. Though extant only in an early 17th-century form (apparently a second edition), it locates the action under the reigns of Henry VIII and Queen Mary, and moreover attempts

to recall the historical situation of that earlier period. The heroine is a strapping Amazonian lass who comes up to London from Lancashire and takes a job working in the Eagle Inn of Westminster. This is a remarkable tavern, since it is frequented by no less personages than Doctor John Skelton and Sir Thomas More. Meg becomes a mighty source of strength for the hostess of the inn and indeed a kind of female Robin Hood valorously defending the poor and abused folk of her neighbourhood. Asked what she is able to do, she replies: “Faith little mistress... but handy labour, as to wash and wring, to make clean a house, to brew, bake, or

any such drudgery: for my needle, to that I have been little used to” (p. 6). She also enjoys putting boastful or cheating customers in their place, and her mistress is fittingly grateful. More than that, Meg enjoys going abroad in man’s attire, to right wrongs, encourage the defenseless and protect the weak. Thus she defeats in formal duel an impertinent Spaniard who has been annoying the hostess; she rallies a. poor and discouraged soldier (now unemployed) by letting him demonstrate his valour in fair fight with her and later by helping him on his way; she saves a courteous but impecunious gentleman from arrest by the bailiff “for she was so generally well beloved, that none durst meddle with her” (p. 20). Her popularity is understandable, “for whatsoever she got of 53 The Life and Pranks of Long Meg of Westminster (London: Robert Baird, 1635); reprinted with minor changes by Charles Hindley in 7.he Old Book Collector’s Miscellany, 11 (1872). The text was first entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1590. See C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 597.

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iv. The Rise of Popular Fiction

the rich... she bestowed it liberally on them that had need.” On one occasion some ruffians attack her and two other maids when thay are returning home at night with Harry the Ostler. As Meg was coming down. she said to the two other maids, Come set the better foot afore, ‘tis late, and our mistress will think much we tarry so long. Lord

bless us and send us well home, quoth the other, for this is a dangerous corner. I have heard them say, that thieves lie here and rob men as they pass. Thieves, quoth Harry? fear not thieves as long as I am in your company, for I'll die before you take any wrong (p. 26 f.).

As it turns out, these words are idle boasting, for when the group is set upon by ruffians, Harry flees together with a man they have discovered and rescued where he lay bound and helpless in a ditch. Meg however beats the attackers single-handed with Harry’s abandoned staff and forces them to promise that they will never again hurt any woman or poor or helpless man, or children or innocents, or packmen and carriers of others” goods. or any “distressed persons”. She makes an important distinction: “of this I grant you exceptions, that for every rich farmer and country chuff that hoard up money, and lets the poor want, such spare not, but let them feel your fingers” (p. 29).** This kind of social separation was unknown in the medieval romances. Among her other exploits, Long Meg enlists in the English army as substitute for Harry the Ostler when he is to be impressed, and helps to defeat the French before Boulogne—with the aid of some embattled laundresses. Returned home, she marries and settles down with “a proper tall man, a soldier,” and though docile as a wife she continues her militant activities against swaggerers and brawlers and lecherous friars.*> Her talents are striking enough 54 In general the sentences of Long Meg are more clearly and coherently composed than in the pamphlets of Awdeley and Harman, but lapses do occur. Here for instance the sentence construction is shifted (“for every rich farmer... such spare not”) and also the grammatical number (“every rich farmer and country chuff... let them feel”). Informal writing still has its recognizable linguistic traits in so late a text. 55 The author, who is obviously anti-Catholic, places Meg’s last years in the reign of Queen Mary “when Friars and Monks began again to show

themselves”.

Realistic Narrative in Pamphlets and Long Meg

119

to call forth a rimed tribute by “Doctor Skelton,” not badly imitated from the verses of the real poet: Domine, domine, unde hoc? What is she in the grey cassock? Methinks she is of a large length, Of a tall pitch, and a good strength, With strong arms and stiff bones, This is a wench-for the nones. Her looks are’ bonny and blithe, She seems neither lither not lithe, But of young age... (etc., p. 5)

These lines are enough to show that the anonymous author had some learning, some knowledge of early 16th-century literature. But although his pen was a trained one, surer than those

wielded by Awdeley and Harman, he used it in a truly popular tradition. He kept his language simple and colloquial, he laced it with all sorts of current and proverbial expressions, and yet he maintained syntactic control over it.** Above all he wrote of the humble folk, including the derelicts, not from the aloof point of view of the pamphleteers, but as one who has been close to them. His sketches may be stylized and his legendary heroine indebted to forerunners in the jest books, but he has succeeded to an unusual degree in creating an image of 16th-century plebeian” life by means of his own. Meg’s saga has certain points of similarity with the picaresque novels of the period, yet it also stands apart from this more sophisticated school. As will appear later, picaresque writing had a literary ancestry of a different sort. Before discussing it, however, it will be desirable to revert to the history of romantic fiction in prose as it too developed in the course of the 16th century. ‘ 56 When

Meg and her companions, country lasses all of them, are ap-

proaching London she thus encourages them: “here shall we have good mis-

tresses, that will allow us good wages: here at London may we win gold and wear gold; and there are not so many maids before us, but we may find husbands as well as the rest: all is not broken stuff the carrier brings, and if it were, what then? that the eye sees not, the heart,rues not; let us do well, and

we shall have well,” p. 2.

CHAPTER

ROMANTIC

V

FICTION CONTINUED

1. New

SUCCESSORS

AND

TRANSFORMED

OF THE SOCIETY ROMANCE

Elements of society romance were embodied in varying degrees, as we have seen, in a number of the prose tales of chivalrous adventure issued by Caxton and his followers. Such elements were

usually subordinated to less subtle interests in the form of tournaments, domestic wars and foreign crusades. But simultaneously with, these chivalrous tales a few others were being released in print which could be classified as primarily (not just secondarily or incidentally) akin to the genre of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. There is in fact a certain connection between some of these prose works and Chaucer’s great poem, if only indirectly by way of a common indebtedness to Boccaccio. The schematic situation in the Troilus—namely the felicitous initiation of an aristocratic young lover into erotic experience, followed by his disappointment

or disillusionment—constitutes in fact a useful framework for early experiments in the direction of the novel of manners dealing with upper-class society. French literature provided an excellent prose instance in Le Petit Jehan de Saintré by Antoine de la Sale . (15th century).! The best example available in English prose of the next century was a translation of the Latin prose romance De duobus amantibus (1444) by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II. Jt was known in English as Eurialus and Lucrece.? 1 For recent discussion see Janet Ferrier, Forerunners of the French Novel, ch. 3. ? The full title is: The goodli Histori of the most noble & beautifull Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskan, and of her louer Eurialus. The Copland edition of 1567 is reproduced in the Roxburghe Club miscellany edited by Henry

New Successors of the Society Romance

121

The connection with the plot of Troilus and Criseyde is confirmed in the moral Epilogue attached to the story in one of the editions (1560). Among similar victims of love, we are told There was also the noble Troylus Whych all hys lyfe abode in mortall payne Delayed by Cresyde whose hystory is pyteous, Tyl! at the last Achilles had hym slayne.

The merest outline of the plot shows its indebtednesses. A young Franconian knight Eurialus attends the Emperor Sigismund on an expedition into Italy, and during their sojourn in Sienna he

becomes enamoured of Lucrece, wife of the wealthy citizen aptly named Menelaus. The lady responds with promptitude to his overtures. The Emperor observes the lovers’ state and twits Eurialus benevolently. But the obvious legal barriers long prevent a private mecting, the more so (as the author carefully observes) since Italians are unusually strict in guarding their wives: “This vyce is of property to the Ytalyens, to shytte vp theyr wyues as theyr treasure, and one my faythe (to my iudgemente) to lytle purpose” (p. 131 f.). Lucrece tries to establish contact by appeals to one confidant after another, and so does Eurialus. The heroine manifests more initiative than did her predecessors as portrayed by Boccaccio and Chaucer. The role of Pandarus is distributed among several characters, male and female, but the leading one

(a cousin of Menelaus) shows his literary origin by his name Pandalus. The lovers achieve their much-desired union after a series of episodes which show unexpected traits of comic realism. There is a rival lover, Pacorus, whose wooing of Lucrece somewhat H. Gibbs (London, 1873) together with the Latin original. Variant readings are given from earlier editions (ca 1549 and 1560). A French paraphrase of the story exists, but it is a free and expanded treatment in verse: L’ysroire des deux amans

Eurialus et Lucresse

(Paris, 1490?), not directly connected

with the English. Quotations from the Latin and English texts follow the Gibbs edition. It should be pointed out that the author of De duobus amantibus later repented of his early work and composed a retraction of it which recalls Chaucer’s. The Latin text is given with a French paraphrase in Le remede d’amour, Composé par Eneas Silvius aultrement dit pape Pie segond (British Museum copy 85.e.28). De duobus amantibus is specifically mentioned, D 2°.

122

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

suggests the function of Diomede, but his efforts to win the heroine remain abortive. The end of the story diverges from JI Filostrato for several reasons. First of all the presence of the heroine’s husband means that the lady herself is more restricted in her choices than was the widowed Criseida enjoying a goodly measure of social and economic independence. Secondly, events are here so arranged that it is the hero, not the heroine, who must leave the city and journey to Rome as part of the Emperor’s entourage. Finally and most important, the author has in certain respects reversed the personalities of the two lovers: it is Lucrece, not Eurialus, who suffers the extremities of love-sickness -during their separation, and it is she who desperately suggests elopement in defiance of social conventions. Eurialus, on the other hand, is the one who urges the necessity of a separation, at least temporarily. “I must rather take heede to my honoure than to my lust,”

he writes to her (p. 157). He adjures her to think what people would say if he carried her off, and he reminds her of the ties of loyalty which bind him to the Emperor’s service: “he hath made me riche and of great power, and I cannot departe from hym wythout the losse of my state, so that yf I shulde leaue hym, I coulde not conuenientlye entertaine thee, ye I shulde contynuallye folowe the courte. We haue no reast, euerye day we chaunge places” (p. 158). Our prudent hero is delayed in Rome by “an hote ague,” and even when he returns to Sienna for three days he is unable to meet his beloved. He can only gaze upon her where she is watching for him at her window as he rides through the street—a repetition of the situation described at the beginning of their courtship. After his departure she (not he) dies of a broken heart. He hears of her demise in Bohemia, and is permanently saddened by it, even though the Emperor gives him a noble lady of the country as spouse. This well-recounted tale is not easily classified in the history of European fiction. The fundamental situation—an illicit romantic love affair with a married woman in high society—takes us back to the fictional requirements of amour courtois in the earlier Middle Ages. On the other hand, the heroine’s erotic initiative and her

New Successors of the Society Romance

123

generally dominant role constitute a reversal of amour courtois, notwithstanding her concern for her reputation (e.g., p. 140). Such a transformation of relationships between men atu.d women of the upper class has been seen as characteristic of Renaissance fiction in contrast with medieval romance. The introduction of comic scenes, some of them almost farcical, also involves a departure from the genre represented by JI Filostrato. Amidst the

more conventional elements such as rhetorical love letters, amorous plaints and monologues, the contrasting non-romantic interludes stand out as a fresh innovation. For one thing, Eurialus permits himself to employ a very knowledgeable bawd—a precursor of the Spanish Celestina—as bearer of letters to his mistress, and

when he later pleads ignorance of her status his excuse sounds thin: “He aunswered than to Lucres, That she shulde not be dyspleased wyth hym, Bycause he sente an vnhoneste womanne to her, sythen hee as a straunger knewe it not, and could vse none other messangere” (p. 125). Certainly it would be difficult to imagine a 12th-century knightly lover having recourse to such an intermediary, under any circumstances whatsoever. Feudal courtly love, whatever else may be said about it, was supposed to be mnocent of the cash nexus: a go-between was then supposed to be a disinterested friend or confidant, not a purchased messenger.

Further discordant elements appear in the episodes attendant upon the deception of Menelaus, the unlucky husband of Lucrece. On one occasion Lucrece engages her step-brother to arrange

a meeting of herself and Eurialus in their mother’s house, by a device faintly suggesting the dinner-party at the home of Deiphibus in Chaucer’s

poem:

“Nowe

thys was the order of it, Eurialus

shulde be shyte in the parler and after the mother was gone to the Churche, Lucres shulde come

as it were to speke with her,

and nat fyndynge her, shulde tarye for her returne, in the meane tyme she shulde be with Eurialus” (p. 132). But the scheme comes to nothing because of the mother’s suspicions. At this point * Erich Auerbach, Zur Technik der Frithrenaissancenovelle in Italien und

Frankreich (Heidelberg, 1921), pp. 36 ff. According to hora is “ein kleiner Geck” beside Lucrece.

Eurialus

124

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

Nisus, a friend of Eurialus, arranges to have the young man

post himself at a tavern window facing Lucrece’s room. The circumstances are clearly envisioned: the two houses are separated by an open canal or gutter measuring no more than three ells in width. The two are thus able to converse across the gap, but when Eurialus suggests clambering over on a ladder, Lucrece takes alarm and points out the dangers of the situation, since spying neighbours or a corruptible tavern keeper might betray them. It is “Zosias an Almaine” (Sosias in the Latin), servant to Menelaus, who now undertakes to further the love affair, chiefly

to avoid an open scandal. He and Lucrece arrange to have Eurialus disguise himself meanly as one of the “vyle portours,” clad in sackcloth, who must carry corn to the garner. Merged among “suche raskal people,” our hero does in effect gain entrance into the abode of his beloved at the cost of a sacrifice to his sense of class status. Underneath his humble disguise he has however been careful to array himself in a fine gold-and-purple costume. His interview with Lucrece is barely begun when they are interrupted by her husband, and the situation transforms itself from high romance into farce. The lover is whisked into concealment in a closet while Menclaus starts a quest for some needed documents pertaining to the public weal. The wife’s ingenuity produces a distraction: during the search she causes a box of papers and jewels to fall out of her window into the street as if by accident, and while Menelaus and his scrivener are running down'the many stairs of the house (built typically high in the Italian fashion, the author assures us parenthetically) to collect the contents, Eurialus is able to find a better hiding place and eventually to escape. There are other quasi-comic scenes realized with equal vividness. Pacorus, the rival wooer who vainly tries to become Lucrece’s Diomede, takes advantage of an unusual icy storm in order to cast into her window a snow-ball containing a waxcovered love-letter. But chance or Fortune (the author resembles Chaucer in stressing the uncertain factor in human affairs) decrees that the missile falls into the lady’s fire-place. Both snow and wax

melt, the letters are

revealed,

and

Menelaus

reads

them.

New Successors of the Society Romance

125

As a result Pacorus is permanently discouraged from further overtures. Meantime suspicion is diverted from Eurialus, who once more has to descend into the realm of farce in order to obtain an interview with his beloved. While waiting in hiding within Menelaus’s stable he is almost discovered by a servant Dromo, who enters in order to look after the horses. The resourceful Zosias saves the situation by intervening thus: brothere quod he, geue me thys worke. I shall geue hay to the horses, thou in the meane tyme looke that oure supper be redy, we must be mery whyle our maysters is [sic] furthe...Go Dromo and make the kytchen smoke (p. 145).

To this exhortation is added a speech criticizing Menelaus stinginess, an opinion in which Dromo heartily concurs.

for

Finally Eurialus achieves union with his mistress. Even this occasion, though described with a certain lyricism, is preceded by details of comic realism. The husband is again absent, but his brother Agamemnon is a guest in the house, and his fussy concern

about locking and barring doors almost frustrates the later entry of Eurialus. The conniving Pandalus, also present as guest for the night, reproaches Agamemnon: ”Thou shuttest the dore quod Pandalus as yf the house should be beseged, are we not in a sure city? wee are at liberty in this towne, and quietness is come to vs all” (p. 153). Nevertheless the bolts and chains are put up, and Eurialus is later obliged to squeeze in by an aperture

no more than a foot wide. The scenes

-

here described are enough to indicate to what

an unusual extent the author of De duobus amantibus has permitted the matters of daily life, even of lower-class daily life, to penetrate the action of a plot originally aristocratic. The new elements

represent

an

essential

departure

from

medieval

instances

of

courtly realism, even at its best. Horses that must be fed their hay, open gutters between houses, smoking kitchens, doors that must be carefully bolted every night, wine that must be tested on delivery—these details belong to a world outside the ken of Arthurian adventurers. Not only is it a specifically urban world, but it includes the servants’ hall below stairs, a domain which had to. await

126

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

its full fictional realization until the 18th and 19th centuries. What is important is that adumbrations of this humbler sphere are to be found in Italian and English fiction of the Renaissance.

At the same time a literary historian of the period must be careful to discriminate such realistic traits as are primary (that is to say, drawn from a firsthand observation of a social and physical environment) from those derived from literary conventions (second-hand or outdated realism). Just because we find a bawd introduced into Eurialus and Lucrece, for instance, we need not automatically assume that she is a product of the author’s immediate observation. Long before the creation of Celestina (who will be discussed later) medieval literature had stereotypes for this part: the main character in the 12th-century French fabliau “Richeut,” the pseudo-Ovidian Vetula,* La Vieille in the Roman de la Rose, the female go-between in the Middle English poem Dame Siriz, and others. The same may be said of the low-life characters who offer so tonic a contrast to those of the upper class in Piccolomini’s miniature novel. Names like Sosias and Dromo betray a literary descent from persons in Roman comedy

who also talk humorously

of their work—marketing, cooking,

furthering their masters’ loves—and occasionally make sardonic comments on the stinginess of their owners. Whatever their literary antecedents may be, however, the characters and scenes of Eurialus and Lucrece are imbued with extraordinary vitality. In a scene already stereotyped and later to be endlessly repeated, Lucrece indignantly rejects the love letter brought to her by the bawd. Chaucer’s Criseyde had done the same. in a general way. But notice the brisk innovations introduced in

the case of Lucrece. Having torn up the letter and spat and trod upon it, and having sharply rebuked behaves quite differently when alone:

the

bearer, our heroine

* Leading character acting as bawd in a medieval Latin poem pretending to be Ovid’s own account of his final disillusionment with the female sex. See ch. 7, n. 23.

New Successors of the Society Romance

127

Trulye Lucres, after the woman was departed, soughte vp the peeces of the letter, and sette eche in theyr place, and ioyned soo the torne wordes that she made it legeable, whyche when she hadde redde it a thousand tymes, a thousande tymes she kyssed it, and at the last wrapped it in a fayre napkyne, and pute it amonge her Juels (p. 124 f.).

Meantime the unabashed bawd has realized from the start that the seemingly vehement rejection of Eurialus had actually meant the opposite. She reports the situation to him quite accurately: “Be of good conforte quod she, thou louer, the woman louethe more thee, then she is loued” (p. 124). The literary convincingness of this pioneer eee added

to the presence of historical personalities in it, has led to the conjecture that it is based on a real situation in noble society of the time. Such may be the case, and if so it may partly, but only partly, explain the exceptional values distinguishing Eurialus and T4&icrece from other works of the same pattern. Clearly a number of literary affinities exist. First of all there are the obvious parallels with // Filostrato,'in which a timorous lover woos a married lady, enjoys temporary bliss and is later betrayed. Secondly there are

no less obvious parallels to another plot already furnished by Boccaccio, in which the lady is the more ardent lover in a like situation, and when separation intervenes, it is she, not he, who

suffers from it. This reversed situation Boccaccio worked out in his Fiammetta, which was made known to English readers towards the end of the century.* Though the general effect is artificial and sentimental, 5 Besides the analogies already indicated, such as the name and the role o f Pandalus, the exchange of letters between the lovers, etc., mention should

be made of the alba following after the lyrical description of the lovers’ first union. It resembles the one spoken by Troilo. The opening words of Eurialus are: “But alas howe swyfte bee these houres! Thou spetefull nyghte, why goest thou awaye? abyde Apollo and tarye vnder the earth. Why dost thou so sone put thy horse into the chayret?” (p. 155f.) Typically, this conventional outburst is then followed by a bit of non-conventional concrete detail: Eurialus affirms that he has never before experienced so short a night although he has spent summers in Britain and Denmark. * Amorous Fiametta (London: I. C. for Thomas Gubbin and Thomas Newman, 1587). The title page gives the translator’s name as B. Giouano del

128

. x. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

the translation has a certain importance because it offered an early example of narrative in the first person by the heroine of

a story. Her experiences are transmitted with increased effect because of the autobiographical form. Just as Troilo had been smitten by Criseida when he beheld her at the temple’s portal, so Fiametta is suddenly inflamed with desire for the gallant Pamphilus when she sees him among a crowd at church: And beyond them all I espyed a propper yong Gentleman, leaning vpon a Marble pillar, as directly obiect to my sight as myght be. And instigated by my pursuing destinies, I beganne to marke his personage, and his behaviour, which of any other before, I had neuer to doo so much (fol 4%). [Thus preoccupied, as she tells us, she] thought the sundry speeches and discourses of the

Gentlewomen, that satte round aboot me, but a kind of buzzing and murmuring in my troubled eares (fol. 6°).

In the ensuing action the confidant’s role is played by a woman, Fiametta’s nurse, who elicits the truth of her lady’s affliction after overcoming a reluctance like that manifested by Troilo. As with Eurialus, so here also it is the hero Pamphilus rather than Fiametta who evinces slow caution and a lively sense of the dangers in their situation, although he too has succumbed to love; it is he who departs from the city (in this case, for family reasons); it is he who

resists the pleas of his beloved to remain, and who swears that he will come back as soon as he can. As in JI Filostrato and Chaucer’s poem there are numerous references to fate, fortune and destiny. On the day of Pamphilus’ departure, “accompanying him to my Palace gate, and opening my lips to bidde him farewell,” says Fiametta, “suddainly my words were taken from my tongue, M. Temp, a transparent pseudonym for Bartholomew Young. On the relation of Amorous Fiametta to its original see Herbert G. Wright, Boccaccio in England, pp. 105 ff. Wright has noted the manner in which Fiammetta comple-

ments JI Filostrato. He praises both in exceptionally high terms when he says of them:

“In both works the anguish of soul is powerfully depicted by the

hand of a master in the understanding of the human

heart,” p. 105. True

enough of // Filostrato; but Fiammetta appears in contrast to be a deliberately planned exercise. Moreover, the English version has worsened the style by

making it more flamboyant (multiplied synonyms are used for verbs, adjectives and nouns, etc.), so that the effect becomes rhetorically insincere instead of passionate,

New Successors of the Society Romance

129

and the light of heauen from mine eyes” (fol. 28’). What could be closer to the emotions of young Troilo when he accompanied. Criseide to the gates of Troy in order to deliver her to the escort headed by Diomede? And again there is an exchange of letters; again the deserted one looks forth repeatedly to see whether the lover is not yet already on the way back. Jealousy.of a possible rival begins to poison Fiametta’s thoughts. In the end she hears from a traveling jewel merchant that Pamphilus has married someone else in his own country. As it turns out, the errant lover is

not married but only enamoured of another lady, Yet the betrayal is clear enough. Fiametta thereupon declines into a state of permanent woe and repentance. Her husband, who seems to have been an amiable sort, suspects what has happened and tries in vain to console her. The tone throughout is moralizing to a high degree, as is natural in a story recounted by a-deserted heroine regretting her past indiscretions.’ Less closely bound to the Boccaccian models is a Spanish tale of frustrated love by Diego de San Pedro, Englished early in the century from a French version as Arnalt and Lucenda.® ? The sociological aspect of courtly love in upper-class society is touched upon in an interesting passage spoken by the Nurse. “Thys [i.e., love], more willingly and often séene in high and princly Palaces, is seldome or neuer

séene in poore and Country cottages. Because it is a certaine precise pestilence, which dooth chuse out onely braue and stately lodginges, as most agréeable in the ende to his wicked practices. We sée in poore and simple people, effects of good and quiet consequence, but in the rich, wallowing in pleasure, and shyning in theyr aboundaunce of gold, (insatiable as well in this as in all thinges els) that he [love] is (more then is requisite) for the most part founde: and that which he cannot doo (who can doo most) he dooth desire, and especially endeauour to bring to passe,” fol. 10Y. 8 The publisher (Robert Wyer, active in London 1530-40) gives a description rather than a title to the book: A certayn treatyse moste wyttely deuysed orygynally wrytten.in the spanysshe, lately traducted in to Frenche entytled L’amant mal traicté de samye. The translator .was John Clerc. Quotations are taken from this edition in comparison with the French original as rep-

resented in the Petit traité de Arnalte et Lucenda, autrefois traduit de langue espaignole en la francoyse, et intitulé I’Amant mal traité de s’amye (Paris: Estienne Groulleau, 1548). The Spanish original was the Tractado de Arnalte y Lucenda (written 1491).

130

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

Here again there is a story of wooing and disappointment, this time told in the first person by the hero. He had first beheld the fair Lucenda at her father’s funeral; he then attempted to communicate with her by means of a letter which she (like Lucrece) tore up on receiving it, and he later (like Eurialus) tried disguise as a means of approaching her. The helpful confidante is the hero’s sister, Belissa, who does what she can to assist him. But Arnalt

is betrayed by a false friend Yerso who pretends to aid him but actually obtains Lucenda in marriage (against her will, as it later appears). A combat between Arnalt and’ Yerso ends in the latter’s death, but the widowed Lucenda—understandably discouraged by the regrettable consequences of love and beauty—

decides to retire into a religious order rather than risk a second marriage. She becomes, as the translator oddly puts it, “a Nonne vyolate” (in French, “nonnain voylée” or veiled nun). Arnalt for his part retires to a solitary life in a desert place, and it is

here that he rehearses his tale of woe to an accidental visitor, who undertakes to communicate it to the world at large as a warning example. Thus English fiction received a pioneer model for a figure to be imitated and repeated frequently in the centuries to come: the character of the literary executor, someone who reports a tale for-another, or edits a diary, or publishes a mysteriously discovered autobiographical manuscript, with a fram-

ing explanation of the circumstances described by himself. Other literary conventions in Arnalt and Lucenda are already worn threadbare. The translator makes clear in his dedication that it is rhetoric rather than narrative verisimilitude that he esteems; he is sure that his patron, the Earl of Surrey, will appreciate “the wytty deuyse of the thynge, the maner of Locucyons, the wyse sentences and the subtyll and dyscret answeres made on bothe parties” as the primary merit of the piece. He praises himself as translator for following sense rather than the literal meaning of his original, but again and again he may detected violating his own principles, with results that are often extremely graceless.° ® There are frequent examples of French word order, as here: “And as theffectes amoreous do present to the Judgemement [sic] of men dyscrete the

Allegory and Debate Continued as Prose Romance

131

All in all, Arnalt and Lucenda represents the ultimate decline of a tradition. Original writers in English could learn little to profit them from San Pedro’s romance. Yet the structure of its plot, the story of a concealed love doomed to disappointment and betrayal, was

reworked

with fresh vigour soon afterwards

in a miniature novel by George Gascoigne. Discussion of his autobiographical romance belongs however in a later chapter, as part of the realistic innovations in later Elizabethan fiction which separate it from the medieval tradition. 2. MEDIEVAL

ALLEGORY

AND

DEBATE CONTINUED

AS PROSE

ROMANCE

’ To complete our. account of 16th-century developments it is necessary to examine the later contributions of allegory and debate to prose fiction. The type of romantic plot just analyzed was transmuted into a pattern of abstractions in San Pedro’s Carcel de Amor (1492), Englished by Lord Berners.’® Here it is the friendly go-between who assumes. the role of first-person narrator, but what he has to tell is far removed indeed from the world of literal reality. The unvisualized vague setting is supposed to be the kirgdom of Macedonia. The hero Leriano is first encountered when he is being confined in the symbolical Castle of Love, an edifice clearly inspired by medieval structures like the fortress in the Roman de la Rose. Personified Desire drags the victim into passyons of the tyme to come. So infynite sorowes and dyspleasures made me ordynarye compeny,” G 4". For the words here italicized the original has: “les effaitz amoureux” and “des hommes discretz.” Nonsense sometimes results from a mistaken rendering of French idiom, as when we are told that Arnalt could not hold conversation with Lucenda at a court dance because she had withdrawn close to the Queen where “it was not possyble for me that I colde holde her purpos,” F I". The French reads: “pouvoir tenir propos.” Lucenda, commenting on the perils to which women are exposed, exclaims: “Alas howe daungerous is the parsuayon of men towardes vs, others symple wemen,” O 4". The French phrase is ~*...envers nous autres femellettes,” a Hispanicism ~ (nosotros) further garbled in the English by mistaken punctuation and unorthodox inflection of other when used as an adjective. 10 The Castle of Love (1549%), translated from a French version by Lord

Berners. Facsimile reprint with introduction by William G. Crane (Gainesville, Florida,

1950).

132

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed.

captivity; at the entrance to the Castle he must abandon his armour representing hope, rest and “contentation”. The prison tower is founded on a stone representing faith, and its pillars represent understanding, reason, memory and will, all subject to Love’s control. The pillars themselves expound their functions in speeches of prosopopoeia. Observing the sad prisoner in the midst of his torments, the narrator is moved to pity and offers to approach Princess Laureola in his behalf. There ensue the familiar maneuvers of courtship by proxy (now literal, not allegorical), with the lady protesting concern for her honour but at the same time admitting that it would be a “great inhumanite”™ to cause the death of so valiant and devoted a knight. Pale and simple reflex of Criseida or Lucrece as she is, this heroine nevertheless seems complicated to the naive narrator: “The wordes of Laureola dyd bryng me into great confusyon, for when I thought best to vnderstand her then I knew lest of her wyl” (D 4°), he complains." After another excursion into allegory, permitting abstract characters to rescue the hero from imprisonment in the Castle of Love, the plot ambles on once more in terms supposedly human. It manages to deviate somewhat from the traditional Boccaccian plot. A jealous admirer of Laureola falsely accuses the lovers of secret meetings. Laureola is imprisoned (literally, not allegorically). Although worsted in combat by Leriano, Persio repeats his charge and produces lying witnesses to support it. The struggle now becomes forensic rather than chivalric. There are many’ speeches, letters and appeals in the form of suasoriae by the chief parties and their enlisted supporters. Behind the discourses one can somehow detect the atmosphere of a real court intrigue, 11 The Spanish original is: “Tanta confusion me ponian las cosas de Laureola, que quando pensava que mas la entendia, menos sabia de su voluntad.” The French used by Lord Berners reads: “En telle confusion me mirent les parolles de Laureole, que quand je pensoy mieulx les entendre moins je scavoy de sa volunté.” Both versions were made conveniently available in parallel columns: Carcel de Amor. La Prison d’Amour. En deux languages, Espagnol et Francois, pour ceulx qui vouldront apprendre l’un par l'autre (Paris: Corrozet, 1552). The quoted sentences appear on E 4" and E 5°. Berners as usual gives a straightforward and faithful rendering of his original.

Allegory and Debate Continued as Prose Romance

133

but only very remotely. Leriano organizes an attack on the (literal?) castle in which Laureola is confined, releases her, and thereupon promptly delivers her to the care of an uncle. Involved in warfare with his King because of these doings, he at Jast expires: none

too soon, according to the modern

reader’s

taste. To the end, Laureola has placed the preservation of her good name above all other considerations, including her lover’s

health and life expectancy. Compared to the more generous Criseida and Lucrece she seems an unmitigated prig. The narrator's sympathetic involvement makes a certain appeal, but it is expressed in terms that border on the ridiculous,, when read with the eyes of our own times.!® In judging a rhetorical-allegorical piece like The Castle of Love historically we must remember that its artifices were at the time considered a. precious asset in the literary vogue of aristocratic fiction. A similar convention is to be noticed when the action revolves about a formal debate on the virtues and vices of women. The theme is an old one, having been widely exploited in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance (see ch. 4, n. 30), but the techniques of its elaboration become rhetorical in a manner characteristic of the latter period. San Pedro introduces such a debate into The Castle of Love when he creates a character named Teseo for the express purpose of having him defame women and thus evoke a defense of them by Leriano. Though close to death himself because of a woman’s cruelty, Leriano pronounces a long discourse (L 8” to M 4°) giving “profe by ensample, of the bounte & goodnes of women.” No wonder that “All suche as were present had great maruayll of his wordes” spoken in extremis. Debate on the virtues and vices of both sexes is the essential element of another very rhetorical Spanish romance likewise made available to English readers at this time. It is the tale of Grisel y Mirabella by Juan de Flores, which had a wide European 12 Finding Laureola obdurate, the narrator tells us that he left her “with sobbynge, and gulpynge in my throte,” nearly strangled; “I began to wepe

in suche wyse, that I coulde not retayne my voyce fro brayng,’”’ K 5’.

134

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

vogue in the 16th century.’ In the English translation, following the French,-the main characters are renamed Aurelio and Isabel. Here the fictional values are very much subordinated to those of the

forum. The Princess Isabel of Scotland, heiress to the kingdom, is loved by two friends. Rivalry turns them into foes and one kills the other. Aurelio,

the survivor,

wins her favour:

but the

King her father (who like many mdrchen kings doesn’t want his daughter married in any event) discovers their illicit union. Nowa severe law of the land has decreed that whichever one of such a guilty pair has been the seducer must be put to death. The debate which springs from this situation is actually a contest in generosity, for each of them claims to be responsible in order to save the other. The arguments pro and con are further elaborated by a lady and a gentleman of the court chosen to present the cases for the two sexes. They do so at length but in general terms, not falling back on exempla in the usual medieval way. In the end Aurelio is condemned to death and despite numerous speeches of appeal, protestations, and so on, also very rhetorical, the King insists on the execution. The hero gladly suffers it since Isabel is to be saved, but she thereupon speedily dies of grief. The use of an imaginary law upon which to hinge a dramatic, life-and-death debate is a device that carries us straight back to Roman controversiae as practised in classical schools of oratory. Despite its romantic trappings and medieval theme, Aurelio and Isabel is closer to the forensic exercises collected by Seneca the 18 For general discussion see Barbara Matulka, The Novels of Juan de Flores and their European Diffusion (New York: Institute of French Studies, 1931). Present remarks are based on Juan de Flores, La historia de Grisel y Mirabella (Sevilla, 1529), compared with the French version Le Jugement d’amour (date and place lacking in the British Museum copy). An edition giving English,

French and Italian versions along with the Spanish was issued in Flanders, the English title being Historie of Aurelio& Isabella (Antwerp: “en la casa de Juan Steelsio,” 1556). A curious redaction appeared early in the 17th century as A Paire of Turtle Doves: or, the Tragicall History of Bellora and Fidelio (1606). On the general subject matter of the debate see Francis Lee

Utley,

The Crooked

Rib, Introduction.

Allegory and Debate Continued

as Prose Romance

135

Rhetorician than to the late medieval romances anticipating the modern novel. Similarly, although certain late variations on medieval allegory sometimes show acute realization of environment and action within a narrative setting, they belong to a tradition only tangentially affecting the novel. An example worth mentioning is The Wandering Knight, translated by one William Goodyear (otherwise unknown) early in the 1580’s.'4 The scheme is the familiar allegorical pilgrimage of a man’s life through symbolic adventures representing spiritual dangers, temptations, lapses and victories. Minor antecedents of the type reach back to French poetry of the 13th century. A hundred years later English literature had produced its masterpiece of the genre in Piers Plowman, preceded and influenced by Guillaume de Deguileville’s ambitious Pélerinage de vie humaine. John Lydgate paraphrased the French poem as The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man in the 15th century. The vitality of the medieval tradition is attested by Robert Wilson’s play Three Ladies of London (1584), in which Fraud travels to London to encounter the characters called Lucre, Love and Conscience, all reminiscent of figures in Piers Plowman. It is clear that de Cartigny, author of Le Chevalier errant,

knew and in part imitated Deguileville, but he introduced two important modifications in the inherited form. He wrote in prose, not in verse, and he made

his Knight tell the story in the first

person. Both modifications entail an approach towards the manner and style of the romantic novelettes of the period. Taken in conjunction with the substance of the tale, they also clearly foretell Bunyan’s masterpiece,!® which however belongs to a quite different genre. 14 The original is Jean de Cartigny’s Le Voyage du Chevalier Errant (Ist ed.. 1557). The English first edition (London: Thomas East, 1581) has been edited with introduction and notes by Dorothy Atkinson Evans (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1951; reprinted 1960). For present purposes this has been

compared with de Cartigny’s Chevalier Errant 15 It is not clear whether Bunyan knew despite similarities in form and content. The English precursor, namely Stephen Batman's

(Antwerp: Jean Bellere, 1572). de Cartigny’s Chevalier errant, same is true of a 16th-century The Trauayled Pylgreme (Lon-

136

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

Yet the allegorical prose narrative of moral edification is not as remote from the novel proper as might be supposed. Long after the Middle Ages, in fact down into the 18th century and beyond, individual human beings were still envisaged for the purposes of fiction primarily as embodiments of universal concepts. Particularity was slow in being recognized, as Ian Watt has shown, as an aesthetic desideratum in fiction.!* Characters ranging from Fielding’s Squire Allworthy in the 18th century to Dickens’s Steerforth and Murdstones in the 19th testify to the enduring strength of the medieval allegorical tradition (fortified, to be sure, by the Theophrastian technique of “character” delineation).

In the midst of his abstract portrayals of character and action, de Cartigny managesto transform certain of his episodes into pictures of genre realism. That is to say, he conceives of scenes having typical and universal significance, but he executes them with an abundance of sensuous detail. The dual technique recalls medieval allegories like Piers Plowman on the one hand, and from

a later period Flemish religious paintings on the other. An excellent example in de Cartigny’s work is the scene where the don, 1569). On these and other English analogues to Cartigny’s work see Dorothy Evans as cited in the preceding note. Spenser’s Faerie Queene is directly indebted to Le Chevalier errant but since the allegory is in verse and adheres to the third-person form of. narrative, it is far less pertinent than Bunyan’s for the history of the novel. 16 See the stimulating first chapter of Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (University of California Press, 1957). The author draws interesting analogies between the transformations occurring in the world of science and philosophy on the one hand, and the innovations being realized in the art of prose fiction on the other. In both realms Watt sees a shift from a preoccupation with universals and abstractions to a concern with individuals and their particular environments. He regards Defoe’s use of the first-person memoir as a defiant assertion of the individual's primary role in the novel, a phenomenon peculiar to the 18th century. In a general way this is true. Yet the convention of a first-person narrator had already been well established much earlier, as we have seen in Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, not to speak of the works of Christine de Pisan and San Pedro. The situation is perhaps less simple than Watt sees it.

Separate Romantic

Novelle: First Group

137

Wandering Knight, attended by companions such as Folly and Voluptuousness, goes hunting on his ‘horse Temerity. The abstract moral and allegorical significance remains inescapably clear, but the hunt is also a real hunt, loud with appropriate cries and noises. There came the huntsmen with greyhounds and mastiffs, whooping, hallooing, and galloping altogether, some one way, some another. The dogs were at a back, up starts the hare, and the cry was heavenly to hear. But in the midst of all our pastime, I chanced to breathe my horse, and turning towards the

Palace of Worldly Felicity, suddenly I saw it sink into the earth, and everybody therein. But what lamentable outcries they made, you that have reason are

to judge. Then did there rise amongst us a whirlwind with an earthquake. which set us all asunder, in so much that I and my horse sank in mire up to the middle; only remained with me, all this while, my mistress Folly. This earthquake yielded such an air of brimstone that the like hath not been felt. Then I perceived that I was far from the pleasant palace, gardens, orchards, and vineyards of Voluptuousness, but rather in a beastly bog sticking fast, and nothing near me but serpents, snakes, adders, toads, and venomous worms (Evans ed., p. 50 f.).2”

Writing like de Cartigny’s does not pretend to be realistic as we understand the term, but by its very intensity it carries with it the sort of conviction that is achieved by other means in the modern novel.'® 3. SEPARATE

ROMANTIC

Noyvelle:

FIRST GROUP

Beginning in the latter 1560’s, English literature was inundated by a flood of foreign romantic novelle, mostly of Italian provenance (either directly or indirectly). Whether translated 17 This is close to the sense if not the wording of the French. See Le Chevalier errant, ch. 13; in the edition cited (Antwerp, 1572), fol. 95'-¥. 18 The same cannot be said of the elaborate pseudo-classical allegory Hypnertomachia by Francesco Colonna (Latin original published by Aldus Manutius, 1499), the first book of which was translated into English as The Strife of Love in a Dreame (London: William Holme, 1592). Andrew Lang made a modern edition of it (London, 1890). The allegorical abstractions, dressed in classical attire, are here completely frigid; the learning stifles a reader’s faint interest in the love story. Moreover, the English rendering is both artless and ignorant, often unintelligible. Certainly this Renaissance allegory had much less to contribute to the evolution of the novel than its

livelier precursors

in the medieval

tradition.

138

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

or freely adapted they attained a remarkable popularity among native readers. Inevitably, these stories exercised a strong influence upon creative writers of English fiction. It is desirable there-

fore to examine the nature of that influence and the source from which it sprang. At this point a word of definition will be in order. In the preceding chapter, certain anti-romantic, satirical or quasi-realistic tales were spoken of as novelle, in contradistinction to medieval exempla and fabliaux. The distinction rested on two main differences. First of all, the novelle were written in prose, not verse (as with the fabliaux); second, they were not obviously designed for homiletic purposes (as with the exempla). They were aimed at a new group of readers and were elaborated with much more detail than their medieval predecessors. They advanced at a more leisurely pace, making use of the stylistic decorations fashionable in the Renaissance. The setting is typically urban and mer-

cantile even when the characters bear aristocratic titles.1° The same sort of innovations mark the romantic novelle when compared with their medieval predecessors such as Jais and short verse romances. As for rhetorical elements, they are as conspicuous here as in the longer prose narratives, though on a smaller scale. Boccaccio’s Decameron, the model collection which contained

both romantic and anti-romantic novelle, was not put into English in full until 1620.2° But one tale in it of the former type was adapted into English at an early date. Sir Thomas Elyot included the story of Titus and Gisippus (Decameron, Day X, Tale 8) in his book The Governour (1531)as an example of devoted friendship between

19 Jens Rasmussen discusses these innovations. in his Prose narrative francaise du XV® siécle (Copenhagen, 1958), pp. 59 ff. On the novella as a typically Renaissance form see Henry Seidel Canby, The Short Story in English (New York, 1909), ch. 6. The author emphasizes the contribution of urban

life as a newly important background

in many novelle.

20 On this first complete version see Herbert G. Wright, The First English Translation of the ‘Decameron’ (1620) in Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature No. 13 (Upsala, 1953). Wright concludes from details of style and modifications in the text that John Florio may have been the translator.

Separate Romantic Novelle: First Group

139

two men.*! This it certainly is. From a common-sense point of view it must be regarded as an instance of unmitigated absurdity in plotting. The titular heroes are fellow students in Athens when Gisippus falls in love with and becomes engaged to a shadowy young lady named Sophronia. Upon discovering that Titus loves her even more, he resigns Sophronia to his friend without bothering to consult her, and arranges an elaborate substitution on the wedding night which gives Titus a de facto husband’s

claim on her when the affair becomes known. Later Titus repays the self-sacrifice of Gisippus by pretending to be guilty of a murder that the latter is wrongfully accused of committing. Moved by the noble behaviour of these two, the real murderer then freely confesses to his crime, and he is pardoned in the orgy of generous : posturing that thereupon ensues. Only as an excuse for rhetorical exercises can the machinery of this plot be properly appreciated. Just as the lengthier novelette Grisel y Mirabella (Aurelio and Isabel) was based on a contest in generosity between lovers, plus a debate on the vices and virtues of the two sexes, so Titus and Gisippus is based on a contest in generosity between friends, twice enacted. The action is more economically reported, as befits a novella, but the literary purpose is similar. Elyot’s treatment is free in matters of detail, since he employs his own techniques in the discourses, omits and adds various ornaments of style (rhetorical questions, mythological allusions, sets of balanced sentences, etc.). He heightens the gestures of emotional friendship between the two men while leaving the heroine as pallid as ever. The language, though studied and highly literary, is at the same time pleasingly fluent. A neat contrast to the artificial Titus and Gisippus will be found in another single romantic novella which was separately introduced to England about the same time, but by a different route. Frederick of Jennen (Jennen meaning Genoa) is closely connected with Boccaccio’s story of Bernabo of Genoa who rashly makes a wager about his wife’s chastity (Decameron, II, 9). The most 21 The story constitutes Bk. II, ch. 12 of Elyot’s The Governour; in the edition by Foster Watson (London: Everyman’s Library, 1907), pp. 166-89.

140

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

celebrated treatment of the theme is that to be found in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. The anonymous Frederick, made available in English early in the century,” is apparently translated from a Flemish version of the novella which was disseminated in the form of a volksbuch in both High and Low German before it reached the Netherlands.** All of these popular texts, taken together, represent a lively and unstilted handling of the plot which Boccaccio had treated more formally. The volksbuch is thought to have come independently from a lost source which Boccaccio also used.24 Whatever their ultimate genealogical relationships, these popular anonymous tales have certain qualities of particular interest in their own right. New realistic details are introduced, conversation is made more life-like than in Boccaccio, and the exposition is also phrased in a loose style much closer to daily speech than in the Italian analogue. The English translator adds his own idiosyncrasies, which include a fondness

for verbal repetition not

characteristic of the Flemish.*> Both

22 Frederyke of Jennen (Antwerp: Doesborgh, 1518), later reprinted by John

Veale (London, 1560?). The second edition has been used for present purposes. There is a copy of the earlier one in the Morgan Library, New York. Although the first extant Flemish print dates from 1531, the probability is that a previous one now lost furnished the basis for the English. 23 The German title is Die Historie von vier Kaufmdnnern (Liibeck, ca 1493; Magdeburg, ca 1495; Leipzig, 14955, Hamburg, 1510). The two main studies of the volksbuch, both published under the title of the text, are by Kurt Mechel (Halle a/S., 1914) and Josef Raith (Lepzig. 1936). The latter scholar gives full details concerning the English version, which had previously been insufficiently considered by students of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. W. W. Lawrence, in his Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), had based his remarks on a fragmentary copy of Frederick of Jennen (London, ca 1520) preserved in the Bodleian Library and reprinted by Frederick J. Furnivall in his Preface to Robert Laneham’s Letter (London: New Shakespeare Society, 1890). 24 Thus Mechel, op. cit., ch. 1. 28 The earliest extant print in Flemish is Van heer Frederick van Jenuen in Lombaerdien'(Antwerp: Willem Vorsterman, 1531), postdating the English version; but both Mechel and Raith assume that some form of this text must already have been available to the English translator. The traits of style peculiar to the English are also characteristic of The Deceyt of Women, likewise issued

Separate Romantic Novelle: First Group

141

Boccaccio and the anonymous author of the volksbuch emphasize the mercantile setting of the tale. The unfortunate wager takes place during a chance encounter of commercial travellers (as we should now call them) at an inn; the tone of their conversation is worldly, even cynical. There are sustained speeches,

but whereas

Boccaccio’s

are formal

or the lasciviousness of women,

discourses

on the virtues

once again in the manner of set

debates, those in the volksbuch are not so organized. The very syntax contributes to their informal effect, for clauses are casually joined together in loose and repetitive parataxis, pronouns appear with doubtful or non-congruent antecedents, and coordinate constructions occasionally slip out of their proper grooves. A number of racy Flemish idioms are well carried over into colloquial English. In addition, there are some minor scenes and characters unknown to Boccaccio’s more compact presentation. These, although they may retard the action, nevertheless heighten its air of unforced reality. Before’ engaging in their debate about women, the four merchants arrange a dinner party and invite guests from the town; the host bustles about delivering invitations, buying and preparing the meat, and laying the table. After the feast he takes a candle and conducts the men to a room with four beds where they have ample opportunity to talk. None of this appears in the Decameron tale. Left alone, the travellers begin to discuss their wives’ probable activities at the moment. The villain of the piece, John, not only expresses cynical distrust but suggests that they themselves should take advantage of their present

opportunity:

we may all well be called fooles and ydeotes that trust our wiues in this maner as we do for a womans hert is not made of so harde a stone but that it wyll melte, for a womans nature is to be vnstedfast & tourneth as the wynde dooeth and careth not for vs tyll the time that we come agayn. And we labour dayly by Jan van Doesborgh in Antwerp. Hence it is probable that the same person translated both works from Flemish into English. He may have been Lawrence Andrewe, an associate of van Doesborgh. See Utley, The Crooked Rib, p. 122; Raith, Die Historie, p. 44.

142

vy. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

both in wynde and in raine and put often our liues in ieopardy and in auenture on the sea for to fynde them withall & our wyues syt at home and make good chere with other good felowes, & geue them parte of the money that we get. And therefore and ye wyll do after my counseyll, let euery one of vs take a faire wenche to pas the time withall as wel as our wiues do, & they shall knowe no more of that than we knowe of them (A 3'~%).?¢

Later, when this same John is arranging (like Shakespeare’s Iachimo in Cymbeline) for transportation into the heroine’s bedchamber within a chest, he makes use of a personage unknown to the Italian novella. He first seeks out a corruptible old woman in the clothes market and permits her to cheat him shamelessly in the’ matter of selling a silken coat of his. This is their conversation: and [he] said yf that ye coude sel this cote I shold gyue you a good drinkynge penny for it is al to heuy for me. The woman saide to hym. How wyll you sel your sylken cote, than answered he yf that ye may sel it for .ii. ducates let it goo. But the cote was well worth seuen ducates. Than was the olde woman glad in her mynde and bad that he shold come agayne the morowe after and he sholde haue his monye and she sayd to her selfe, this is my marchaunt (B 1'~Y).??

26 The same passage appears with minor differences in Furnivall’s edition, Preface

to Laneham’s

Letter,

p. XXVii

f. (from

the

1518

edition). It is

interesting to note that the husband’s plaint concerning the dangers to which he has been exposed while his wife sat at home in safety is no new invention peculiar to the age of mercantilism. The same sentiments were expressed by the husband called Peregrinus Negotiator in Seneca’s Controversiae, II, No. 7: “Cum ego tamdiu peregrinatus sim, nullum periculum terra marique fugerim, plus ista intra unam vicinam quam ego toto mari quaesivit.” See the edition by Henri Borneque (Paris, 1932), p. 312. The charge that the wife can earn more than her hard-working spouse, though by less honest means, anticipates the complaint by the merchant husband in the Tale of Gdansk, Deceyte of Women, No. 18. See above ch. 4, sec. 3. 27 This may be compared with the Flemish original: “ende [hij] seyde: ‘Desen roc is mi te swaer om draghen. Condy dien vercopen, ic soude v geuen eenen goeden drincpenninc.’ Doen seyde die vrouwe: ‘Hoe veel sal hi moeten ghelden?’ Jan antwoorde: ‘Ist dat hi gheen vier gulden en-mach ghelden, so geeften om drie gulden.” Nochtans was hi weerdich xii gulden. Doen wert

dat oude wijf verblijt, ende si hiet den coopman des morghens weder comen, ende si'sprac tot haer seluen ende seyde: ‘Dats recht mijn coopman’” Raith ed. (following the Antwerp print of 1531), p. 85. The prices are different but the principle is the same.

Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group

That last expression seems

to mean,

143

idiomatically: This is the

merchant for me! And no wonder. The hag naturally sells the coat for its full value and pockets the difference. The transaction disposes her favourably towards the role of bawd, by which she initiates the innocent heroine's sufferings and jeopardies. -

By modifications such as these, the plot of an essentially romantic novella once exploited for rhetorical display is brought close to popular story-telling in a satirical vein. 4. SEPARATE ROMANTIC Novelle: Major Group

Most novelle of Romance origin came into English in a more literary, less popular form then the volksbuch of Frederick of Jennen. Boccaccio continued to be drawn upon, but beginning in the 1560’s Matteo Bandello was used even more frequently as ultimate source.2* Two widely read English collections were prepared and issued practically simultaneously: William Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure and Geoffrey Fenton's less bulky one entitled Certaine Tragicall Discourses.” Both writers had recourse to a vast collection in French begun by Pierre Boaisteau or Boisteau (1559) and carried on through many volumes by Francois de Belleforest under the continuing title of Histoires tragiques. ® Though Bandello was a main source for the French 28 For detailed information concerning the sources of individual English novelle, see Emil Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle in der englischen Literatur des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts (Strassburg, 1892) in Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen

Volker, Heft

70. The

that by René

Pruvost, Matteo Bandello and Elizabethan Fiction (Paris, 1937).

** Painter's Bynneman, Fenton

Palace,

1567);

offered

standard

1 (London:

Fenton's

a total of

3° For bibliographical A Selection (Columbia,

monograph Henry

Discourses 13

tales;

on

Bandello’s

Denham,

(London:

Painter.

details see Frank

1566),

Thomas

many

contribution

is

II (London:

Marshe,

1567)-

more.

S..Hook, The French

Bandello,

Missouri, 1948) in The University of Missouri Studies,

XXII, No. 1, pp. 46-51. Fenton, as Hook points out, used Belleforest for all 13 of his Discourses; Painter used him for 16 of the Bandello tales but went directly to the Italian for nine others. Painter also used other sources, for instance Marguerite of Navarre for his tales 50-65.

144

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

novelle, he was by no means the only one. His version of the Amleth-Hamlet story, taken from Saxo Grammaticus, is well known because of its pertinence to Shakespeare’s play. In order to exemplify the sort of foreign romantic novella offered to English readers it will suffice however to examine four typical tales expanded by Belleforest from Bandello and then further modified by both Fenton and Painter.*! In the successive renderings, the stories become progressively more elaborate: not in the essential plots, which remain constant, but in the stylistic aspects. The plots are as a matter of fact relatively simple though spun out at great length. In “The Lord of Virle” a heartless beauty imposes three years’ voluntary dumbness on her besotted and desperate lover as a condition for the ultimate granting of a single kiss; later when his speech alone may be the means of saving her from death he abstains from exercising it until the last moment, but having thus humbled her he rescues

her—

and loves her just the same. In “Don Diego and the Fair Ginevra” another hopelessly enamoured gentleman is alienated from his beloved by the intrigues of a jealous rival. When the young lady turns hostile to him, Diego retires to a grotto in the wilderness,

thus becoming one of the many anchorites for love’s sake who thickly populate romantic literature. Yet his friend Roderico effects a reunion of the two lovers by means as improbable as they are dramatic: he frustrates Ginevra’s elopement with a second suitor, to whom she had turned after rejecting Diego; he ambushes the fleeing couple, kills the abductor, and guides Ginevra to Diego’s cave. After an explosion of natural anger on her part and deadly threats on Roderico’s, she is mollified by Diego’s generosity and at last reconciled to him. “The Countess of Celant” is simply

the tale of the moral degeneration of a beautiful

widow

who,

having tasted “the licorous baites of sutch liberty” as her first 31 The four Histoires tragiques conveniently reprinted by Hook, op. cit., appear as follows in English: (1) “Filiberto da Virle,” Painter II, 27, Fenton No. 11; (2) “Don Diego and Ginevra,” Painter II, 29, Fenton No. 13; (3)

“The Countess of Celant,” Painter II, 24, Fenton No, 7; (4) “Anselmo Angelica,” Painter II, 30, Fenton No. 1.

and

Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group

145

husband‘s death had made possible, indulges in a series of addi-

tional spouses and lovers, sequentially causing their ruin and finally her own downfall by her scandalous behaviour. “Anselmo and Angelica” is, somewhat like the Italian precursors of Romeo and Juliet. \t too is the tale of a bitter family feud ending in a reconciliation. The Salimbenes and Montaninis of Tuscany had quarreled during a hunting party in the past; the latter family, now reduced to poverty, survives only in two persons, Charles (Carlo in the Italian) and his sister the fair Angelica. Anselmo, heir of the Salimbenes, falls in love with Angelica. His opportunity presents itself when he is able to rescue her brother Charles from financial ruin and death due to the intrigues of a malevolent rich citizen, someone who resented Charles’s refusal to sell his last bit of landed property at the price offered. The economic motive is made very clear. Anselmo quietly pays the fine which saves Charles’s life. The brother and sister are overcome with conflicting emotions when they learn the identity of the rescuer. The brother urges his sister to make recompense in whatever form Anselmo may wish, but to the relief of both of them Anselmo proposes marriage and a felicitous end of the family feud. Numerous techniques of expansion are applied to the Bandello plots first of all by Belleforest and then by his English followers. Bandello had concentrated on narrative values and permitted his stories to move fairly rapidly. But Painter and Fenton and the rest drew on the French version of Belleforest who, as a recent

commentator has said, “seems to have had a positive genius for destroying the narrative movement of a story.”°? He indulged in lengthy moral comments and exclamations; he illustrated them with numerous digressive illustrations; he exploited every opportunity to introduce or at least multiply the enframed rhetorical forms. No wooing without epistolatory exhortations; few conversations not blown up into solemn debates. Yet there are many details which serve to heighten the pittoresque qualities in the English. The Lord of Virle sees the fair Zilia for the first 32 Hook,

The French

Bandello, p. 11.

146

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

time in church since, as Painter says, she had put off her veil “that she might the better beholde the good father that preached, and receyve a little ayre, because the day was extreame hot.”% Roderico, engaged in pumping news from Ginevra’s page, attains his objective in a sentence containing two lively metaphors, one of them taken directly from the French and one added by Painter: Roderico “dandled him so with faire words, as by lyttle and lyttle he wrong the wormes out of his nose, and understode that when Ginevra began once to take pepper in snuffe against Dom Diego [i.e., be angry with him], she fell in love wyth a gentleman of Biskaye, very beautyfull, young and lustye.”*4 Lying in ambush for Ginevra and her Biscayan, Roderico’s company at last hear the sound of “the tramplinge of horsse, and a certaine whispring noise of people riding before them.”** Amidst all of Belleforest’s verbosity, such miniature gems of description are given full justice by the translator. Fenton’s treatment differs somewhat from Painter’s. His style is padded even beyond Belleforest’s, and his sentences tend to be long and meandering; yet he too adds some telling details of his own. The licentious widowed Countess of Celant, enjoying her new liberty, devotes all of her time to the adornment of her person:

“for her chief and common exercise there, was, to force a frizilacion of her haire, with the bodkind, conuerting the naturall coollour in to a glistering glee suborned by arte,” besides painting 88 Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, ed. by Hamish IV, p. 27. All quotations are taken from this edition.

Miles

(London,

1929),

Here Painter remains

close to the French of Belleforest: “laquelle s’estoit un peu osté le voile de dueil, et pour voir mieux a son aise le beau pere qui preschoit, et pour prendre encores quelque peu d’air, car il faisoit un chaud fort extreme.” See Hook, The French Bandello, p. 57. *4 Painter, IV, p. 107. In Belleforest: “il l‘aprivoisa de telle sorte, que peu a peu il luy tira les vers du nez, et entendit, que dés lors que Genievre eut prins Dom Diego a contre coeur, elle s’estoit amourachée d’un gentilhomme Biscain, assez pauvre, mais beau, jeune, courtois, et dispos...,” French Bandello, p. 116. ** Painter, IV, p. 109. In Belleforest: “ils entendirent le trac des cheveaux, et un murmure de gens, qui venoyent devant eux,” French Bandello, p. 117.

Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group

147

her cheeks and pursuing other frivolous practices.** Belleforest’s statement is shorter and less concrete, with no reference at all to the lady’s tresses. The villain who schemes Charles’s ruin in the tale of feud and reconciliation becomes visible as “a longe nosed marchaunte” and “hungrye burgeys” in place of Belleforest’s shadowy

“riche

expressed

merely a vague partisan sympathy

citoyen

de

Sienne.”

Where

Fenton’s

source

for impoverished

nobles as against upstart townsmen and prosperous peasants, Fenton portrays the situation in much sharper terms. Those aristocrats who managed to survive despite the competition of the nouveaux riches, he says, “lyued not only under the awe of Towneclarks & Catchepowles chosen by the rurall crew,” but were also exposed to a new danger since “this villanous sect of cursed caterpillars” made a special fiscal law aimed at the subjection of gentlemen, including impoverished ones like the unhappy Charles.*” Picturesque catchpolls and human caterpillars are unknown to Fenton’s source in this context. To be sure, Fenton’s innovations are not always of the most felicitous. Anticipating Lyly, he leans stylistically on decorative alliterative phrases and comparisons drawn from fabulous natural history. The enamoured Anselmo feels his love for Angelica “no lesse then the Cankered styng of the cruell Cockatrice” and reflects that “onlye the regardes and glauncis of thy glisteringe eyes have made a breach into the hart whiche earste hathe defyed the malice and vttermoste of all force” (fol. 15™~’). The French has none of these euphuistic elaborations.** 36 Geoffrey Fenton, Certaine Tragicall Discourses (London: Marshe, 1567), fol. 141°. All quotations from this edition.

Thomas

37 Belleforest says merely that “la noblesse n’estoit gueres asseurée par les villes, ains estoyent les populaires, et roturiers chefs, et gouverneurs des principautez: de sorte, que la plus part des nobles, aumoins les plus puissans, estant chassez, ceste lye de vilennie et grossiere populace fit une loy....”” p. 160; fol. 8™-Y in Fenton. 38 In the first instance Belleforest merely states that “il luy sembloit advis que son coeur sentoit les tourments d’une cuisante flamme,” p. 159; and in

the second,

“Que mon

coeur donc face apparoir

quelle est Amour

m’a fait tributaireet subject a la belle Angelique,” p. 167.

qui

148

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

Even more stylized is the language of George Pettie, whose collection of twelve novelle was alliteratively entitled A Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure.** With good reason Pettie has been looked upon as the main creator of the euphuistic style, possibly under the influence of Guevara’s Libro Aureo*® (already known in the English of Lord Berners). He abounds in antitheses, senten-

tiae, patterns of paronomasia, and allusions to fabulous natural history, as when one virtuous heroine writes discouragingly to her lover comparing him “to the Caterpillar which cleaveth only to good fruite, or to the Moath which most of all eateth the best cloath, or to the Canker which commonly breedeth in the fayrest Rose, or to the Woulfe whiche by his will wil kill the fattest sheepe” (p. 23). The characters are most conventional. The wives are very virtuous indeed or else completely lascivious; the husbands are fortunate or betrayed, the lovers rejected or accepted—and little more. Two bawds appear with the readily stereotyped name of Pandarina (Tales 1 and 7). What is original in Pettie’s collection is that he has taken love stories from classical myth and history

and retold them as Renaissance novelle, with all the devices appropriate to the genre. The story of: Cephalus and Procris is, for instance, enacted at the court of a Duke of Venice; the classical Simorix signs a rhetorical letter to Camma (in a story ultimately out of Plutarch) with the Spanish honorific Don. The one nonclassical story is a secularized version of the life of St. Alexius. in which an unsuccessful courtly wooing by the hero precedes his renunciation of all worldly vanities, including women. Considering the exhausting tests imposed by such a literary wooing, one can

only sympathize with Alexius’ final choice of the ascetic life. In the midst of Pettie’s conventional writing there is one passage which stands out with startling effectiveness. That is the one in 8° Pettie’s Pallace has been edited by Herbert Hartman (London: Oxford University Press, 1938). References are to this edition. The original one was issued by R.B. (otherwise unknown) in 1576. “° Thus Koeppel, Studien, p. 25 f. See also John Dover Wilson’s study Jofin Lyly (Cambridge University Press, 1905) on Pettie as a forerunner of Lyly.

Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group

149

which the child Itys speaks with natural simplicity to Progne and Philomela, the mother and aunt who are already planning to use him as the instrument of their dreadful revenge on the accursed Tereseus: ...in came Itys the prety elfe beeing two or three yeeres of age, and seeing his mother sit sadly sayd to her, Mam how doost, why doest, [sic] weepe,

and tooke her about the necke and kist her, saying I will goe and call my dad to come and play with thee: but shee like a tirannous Tiger fong him from her saying: Away impe of impiety, how like thy father thou art, not onely in favour, but in flattery also: I will make thee make thy Dad sport shortly: the infant rose againe, and came run[ning] dugling to her saying, why do you beate me mam, I have learned my Criscrosse today so I have, and my father sayth hee wil buie mee a golden coate, and then you shannot kisse me so you shannot, but this trifling daliance could not turne her divelishnesse (p. 54).

One can imagine this little scene powerfully enacted on the stage, with the child’s prattling colloquialisms (how well Shakespeare could have used them!) offering a stark contrast to the artificial speech and the horrid intentions of the two women glowering upon him. A somewhat later collection of eight tales by Barnaby Rich*! is remarkable in a different way. Although the style is highly literate and the sentences often built on elaborate syntactic constructions, they run smoothly and succeed in avoiding the fashionable distortions of language. Besides, Rich often addresses his readers— “the right courteous Gentlewomen, bothe of Englande and Irelande”—in a disarmingly direct and chatty manner which anticipates some of the 19th-century novelists. He exhorts the ‘\ The title is[Barnaby] Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession. It was reprinted from the second (1581) edition by the Shakespeare Society (London,

1846), under the title of Eight Novels Employed by English Rramatic Poets in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. It has recently been edited afresh by Thomas Mabry Cranfill (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959). Cranfill gives the 1581 text in photographic reproduction with an introduction and explanatory and textual notes. Quotations are taken from this facsimile of the original. Rich should also be remembered for his adventure stories of the type discussed below, ch. 6, sec. 2: his Don Simonides (Part I, 1581; Part II, 1584) and his

Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria (1592).

150

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

ladies not to worry too much when one of his heroes is temporarily in distress: “I beseche you gentilwomen, yet to comfort your selues, I knowe your gentill hartes, can not endure to heare of suche vngentill partes, but these are but the frumpes of ordinarie Fortune”

(D 1"). He also directs questions to them, sometimes

directly, sometimes rhetorically. At one point he asks: “But I pray gentlewomen, how like you by this souldier?”—after recording what is evidently a burlesque defense of women’s virtue by a member of the military profession (Tale 5, R 4’). Speaking of a page named Silvio—actually a girl disguised as one, like Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night—he asks: “who but Siluio then was moste neare aboute hym, in helpyng of hym to make hym readie in a mornyng, in the settyng of his ruffes, in the keepyng of his Chamber”? (K 1"). And later comes the direct query, when the disguised girl, again like Viola, is made the emissary of her lord's suit to another: “Now gentilwomen, doe you thinke there could haue been a greater torment deuised, wherewith to afflicte the harte of Silla”? (K 1°). Other stylistic devices for creating an effect of closeness with the reader are: the use of the first person possessive pronoun in referring to characters (e.g., “my Captaine” in Tale 2, I 4"); shifts to the animated present tense (“comes Maister Doctour disguised like a right Porter,” S 3" and “thus forthe of dores he goes,” S 3”); colloquial pleonastic pronouns (“and the Doctour he tooke his waie,” ibid.); and humorously ironical turns of expression (“that honest dame” applied to a scheming courtesan, X 1"). Interestingly enough, these are devices already made familiar in the jest books, some of them having been imitated from the French (see ch. 4, sec. 1). Rich’s use of them

indicates a certain

approximation between popular and sophisticated literature. As for his plots, Rich does not so much borrow or even adapt directly from single sources, as he combines and freely interweaves motifs from more than one novella or romance to produce new narrative units.4? Among his Italian sources are Bandello, Cinthio and Straparola, immediately or by way of Belleforest, Painter and Pettie. Two of the tales are built on the schemes of «2 On this problem see the Cranfill edition, pp. 339-50.

Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group

151

medieval romances, though much shortened and otherwise trans-

formed. Tale No. 1 resembles Valentine and Orson in general outline, while No. 7 follows the plot of an Accused Queen story as exemplified in analogues to Florence de Rome. In execution as well as style Rich shows greater independence than most of his peers. He stresses human frailties as mainsprings of action; he creates homely English environments despite his use of exotic proper names; he dwells occasionally on economic motives. An exiled Duchess in Tale 1, living in poverty, is the victim of a legal trick by an unscrupulous merchant who wants to marry her, and his methods are described in detail. In No. 3 (from Cinthio) Rich dilates upon the circumstances of poverty which cause the mother of a beautiful girl to aid a young nobleman’s efforts to seduce her. In No. 8 another girl whose father wants her to marry a rich but elderly wooer meditates on the advantages her new state would bring her. She would not need “to beate her braines aboute the practising of housewiferie,” but could always rise late and then she might stirre about the house, and looke to this, and see to that, and where she found any thyng amis, not to touche it with her owne fingers, for marryng the beautie of her hande, but to call for Cicelie, Ione, or Cate, and to chide them like sluttes, that thei could not spie a faught but when thei must be tolde: this likewise pleased her very well (Aa 4").

She might well enjoy the rare food, the fine society and diversions, she thinks, but finds less pleasure in the thought that she “must goe to bedde to be lubber leapt” by her elderly husband. Numerous touches of the sort give to Rich’s novelle a specific savour of reality, with all their artifices. The author has been relatively unappreciated as a contributor to the history of English fiction, no doubt because scholars have been more interested in tracing his connections with the drama than with the novel. There are other instances of collected novelle, but they offer less stimulating material than those just discussed.** Occasionally 43 Robert

Smyth’s Straunge, Lamentable

and Tragicall Hystories (1577)

contains four Italian tales by way of Belleforest. I have not had an opportunity to consult this collection. There is a copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Douce HH 207). See Koeppel, p. 41 f.

152

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

an author tried to create his own plot with Spanish or Italian setting, but the results were usually disastrous. Thus George Whetstone’s tale about Rinaldo and Giletta of Bologne,** forged on the trite model of a secret love almost ruined by a jealous and unscrupulous rival, deviates from its precedents only in being more absurd than they. A certain H. C., otherwise unknown, rather awkwardly adapted three familiar Italian tales, and in addition tried his hand at the composition of rhetorical discourses and epistles of his own, of the sort that might readily be fitted into the framework of any conventional novella.4® What is interesting about these exercises is that they imply fictional situations which could readily be developed into stories. There is a model letter of consolation, an admonition from a brother to a sister and several epistles addressed to a rich widow by a candidate for her hand. A parallel is suggested to the early hack-work of Samuel Richardson which blossomed into the 18th-century epistolary novel. But the differences are also obvious. The 16th-century model letters are couched in the courtly artificial style, and are directed to social groups which had little taste for natural discourse and action. A middle-class culture was necessary in England to ensure the success of modern novels, epistolary and other, which aimed primarily at some sort of realism in preference to rhetoric. 5. FRAMED

Novelle

When short stories of various kinds are put into a framework, the enveloping narrative may not only unify the whole but impart to it a dynamic development affecting each part. The supreme example of such achievement is offered by Chaucer, whose framing tale about Canterbury pilgrims as narrators, with their humorous ** Contained in Whetstone’s The Rocke of Regard (London: Robert Waley, 1576). This collection also includes some experiments in versified novelle, among them Bandello’s tale of the Countess of Celant, already retold by Fenton and Painter. The riming pentameters are most pedestrian. “° H.C., The Forrest of Fancy (London: Thomas Purfosote, 1579). The source novelle are: Boccaccio, Decameron, III, 5 and V, 7; Straparola, Piacevole Notti, 1,1; H.G. Wright, Boccaccio in England, p. 156, points out that H. C, used Le Magon’s French version of the Decameron.

Framed Novelle

153

interchanges, their debates and quarrels and reconciliations, is surpassed by none of the individual tales. Several Elizabethans tried the same technique, being influenced

by Boccaccio or Chaucer or both. Tilney’s Flower of Friendship** gives us a group of ladies and gentlemen, including known personages such as Erasmus and Vives, who undertake a spring-time discussion of marriage as representing the rarest kind of friendship. The hostess asks a certain Don Pedro to become master of ceremonies: “being so well languaged as you are, we shall haue good sporte, to heare you interlard our countrie speech, wyth some

Spanishe tricks” (A 6°).*” The discussion deals with the advantages of the marital state, with the factors which may strengthen it, the dangers which may threaten its harmonious continuance, the duties and obligations involved in it. Most of the illustrative tales are taken from ancient history and like sources, and they are very concisely told. They are thus rather in the nature of learned exempla served up in Renaissance style. But Pedro himself tells a genuine novella about a resourceful wife who reclaimed her husband from an extramarital adventure with a poor widow’s daughter, “a simple wench, but somwhat snowte fayre” (E 5°), by pretending to aid him in its prosecution. The plot is simple enough, but the execution is pleasantly deliberate. An odd collection of enframed “tragicall historyes” was presented to the public in the form of a debate concerning the responsibilities of men and women in precipitating wars. A Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels is announced as a translation “out of French,” and the translator was, according to the dedication,

named Henry Wotton.* The topic and the situation promise some 46 Edmund Tilney, A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Marriage, Called the Flower of Friendshippe (London: Henry Denham, 1568). 47 The person in question is Pedro de Luxan, well known as the continu-

ator of the Spanish chivalric romance Amadisde Gaula. See F. L. Utley, The Crooked Rib, p. 116 f. 48 The British Museum catalogue lists the item as: H[enry] W[otton]. A Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels... translated out of French by H. Wotton (London: Coldocke and Bynneman, 1578). The title page is missing from this copy. The work as a whole appears to have escaped the attention

154

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

measure of originality, for there are initial references to an actual war ended by a royal marriage “so as our ryghte vertuous Queene gyueth vs iuste occasion to saye, that oute of Germany issued the warre, or at leaste the warriours, and from thence also sprang the peace” (E 2"). But the discussion soon reverts to the conventional problem of amorous relations between upper-class men and women in peace as well as war, and thence to the eternal question of the relative merits of the two sexes in respect to fidelity and devotion. The Courtlie Controversie thus belongs among the numerous debates of the time centred on that very fashionable topic.*® As for the illustrative novelle, they are romantic in the unreal manner of belated chivalry. The style is highly mannered though not specifically euphuistic. One example of the artificiality will suffice. The hero of the first tale suffers an exaggerated agony when he realizes that he has lost the chain and jewel given to him by his lady; he exclaims that he must now die of shame and wishes to do so quickly: Pronouncing these wordes, hée fell by little and little into a colde sweate, the whiche through the chargeable burthen of hys intollerable tormentes, encreased a deaw ouer all his body, so as his limmes possessed wyth a mortall agonie, constrayned hym to drawe hys breathe verye painefullye (G 2¥).

But why all the torments? Young Erastus had lost the chain in a perfectly honourable, even laudable way. The modern reader wonders why did he not simply explain to Persida (the donor) that it had been snapped off his neck while he was being abruptly of historians of 16th-century fiction. It is not mentioned by E.A. Baker nor indexed in the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (including the last supplement). C.S. Lewis does not list it in his bibliography or index to English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. The well-known poet-diplomat Henry Wotton (1568-1639) could not have been responsible for it in view of

the date. The Courtlie Controversie is to be recommended future investigation.

as a subject of

4° This item is too late for inclusion in Utley’s extensive bibliography of such controversies in The Crooked Rib. Is it possible that the Courtlie Controversie and the Flower of Friendshippe are both somehow connected

with current speculations about a marriage of Queen Elizabeth?

Framed

Novelle

155

unhelmed at the end of a very successful tournament. Expendable agonies such as these have nothing vital to contribute to the course of later fiction. ’ George Whetstone sketched out his framing situation with unusual care for details in his Heptameron collection.*° The narrator is an English traveller in Italy who accidentally finds himself being entertained jn a hospitable palace during the “dead season” of winter. He participates in Christmas festivities which include the telling of stories. The guests are of various countries and the host, Whetstone carefully explains, is an Italian Protestant educated. in France, presumably among Huguenots. Between stories we are given glimpses at the week's other activities: a mask with songs, a show by mountebanks, light conversation, and

attendance at chapel. The last occasion features a sermon by a friar which evokes mildly critical remarks by the narrator. The influence of Castiglione’s The Courtier, already available in Hoby’s English translation, is evident in the plan of the setting, but the atmosphere also suggests something of a comfortable English country house at holiday time. The novelle themselves are partly original efforts, partly free adaptations of tales or separate motifs taken from Boccaccio, Cinthio and Marguerite de Navarre. As for the original ones, told on Days II and VII, they are uninspired concoctions, each mixed for a specific purpose: the first to illustrate the evils of enforced marriage, and the second to show the beneficent effects of a harmonious one, which may even be the instrument for ending a war. The author’s intentions may have been good, but the results are too laboured to be edifying. The most famous borrowing is.the story of Promos and Cassandra (Day IV), well known to students of Shakespeare as the main source of Measure for Measure. It is Cinthio’s VIII, 5. (Both Cinthio and Whetstone, by the way, used the same plot for verse plays as well.) There is rhetoric aplenty in both the English novella and in Shakespeare’s play, but the differences in its employment could hardly be more glaring. _ 5° G, Whetstone, An Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses (London: Richard Jones, 1583).

156

vy. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

Whetstone applies it externally but fails to exploit its resources in the scenes involving persuasion. His heroine, interceding for her brother’s life, simply appeals to the mercy of Lord Promos without calling in question the harsh law which he has revived, and he for his part abruptly announces his evil designs on her (he “demaunded the spoyle of her Virginitie, for raunsome of her Brother’s lybertie,” N 3”) without the careful preparations of Shakespeare’s Angelo. Another tale of Day IV is a variant of Boccaccio’s Decameron IV, 2 (and other analogues) in which a friar or hermit abuses a simple woman’s religious credulity in order to convince her that sleeping with him will be in the nature of a divinely sanctioned miracle.5! The style becomes rather animated in this short tale, with occasional dips into present tense with inversion: “Away goeth the Fryer, with a light hart and a heauy Cowle,” and “Frier Inganno mountes into Farinas Chamber, and without light or leaue, leaps into her bed” (N 1’). These two clauses also show that Whetstone was quite abreast with the fad for alliteration. He even interspersed rimes in his prose, as when Lord Promos artfully balances virginitie and libertie in the sentence already quoted; or here, where a deceived husband (Day III) begins to wax suspicious “seeing his Wife to exceede in brauerie, and knowing himselfe, to declyne with pouertie, he resolued vppon this certentie: this cost coulde not come from the emptie Coffers of her vndone Parentes” (L 1’, italics added). For the most part, though, Whetstone avoids excessive verbal decoration. His strongest point, at least for a modern reader, is his occasional regard (resembling Barnaby Rich’s) for the external

economic factors motivating the actions of his characters. The wreck of a marriage as depicted in Day III is clearly related to the lack of the young couple’s financial resources, so that the wife (herself imbued with regrettable aspirations for fashionable show) becomes vulnerable to the persuasion of a lover’s gold: 51 The same sort of plot appears in CNN, No. 14. See the bibliographical notes given to this tale in the translation by Rossell Hope Robbins, The Hundred Tales (New York, 1960), p. 382.

Framed

Novelle

157

And what shoulde faire Felice doe in this extremitie [asks Whetstone ironical-. ly}? liue vpon her husbandes travel [i.e., travail], and be idle her selfe? that were no good Huswiferie: and yet poore Malipiero loued her so dearely, that hee woulde haue ventured vppon a thousande infamies, to maintayne her in the state of an honest Gentlewoman: but although his shiftes helped, they defrayed not her desire to be braue (K 3°).

It is for this reason that Felice takes to gadding about in the

market place and succumbs to the temptations of “that Archinchaunter, Marino. relations. terms of

Golde,” as exemplified in the person of a wooer named . The cash nexus is again clearly revealed in the human The situation could most readily be translated into the 20th century.

The liveliest, most animated

framing tale for 16th-century

novelle is unquestionably that provided for The Cobler of Canterburie, a minor anonymous masterpiece of the period.®? It has hitherto been insufficiently appreciated. The author had certainly read and admired Chaucer, and he like others drew upon already available plots for his novelle, but he was much more than a routine imitator, both in his framing tale and its separate units. The narrators are mostly persons of the lower social classes. They are assembled on a Thames River barge, and the element of physical motion is imparted by the voyage downstream from Billingsgate to Gravesend. Within the group of passengers there are rivalries and disputes recalling those among Chaucer's pilgrims. The Cobbler tells a story about a cuckold smith, whereupon the Smith who is present “tooke pepper in the nose, because he was of the same fraternitie” (C 3") and replies in kind with one about a victimized cobbler. A Gentleman adds to the merriment with his saga of frivolous doings among Cambridge students; a Scholar contributes the one romantic love-story; an Old Woman (having wept sentimentally over it) counterbalances it with a very broad fabliau indeed. As they approach Gravesend a Summoner balances the Cobbler’s initial tale by offering another which resembles it 52 For the first edition of The Cobler of Canterburie Esdaile, A List of English Tales, gives the date 1590; present citations are taken from second edition (London: Nicholas Okes for Nathaniel Butter, 1608).

the

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

158

in being both ribald and anti-clerical. The speakers are introduced in curious descriptive passages of verse written in an attempt to imitate Chaucer’s Middle English. The versification is inevitably limping, but the phraseology at least testifies to a devoted perusal of the Canterbury Tales.5* The framing situation is pictured in rapid strokes as the narrator comes aboard the barge, finds a crew of “mad companions” already seated, takes his place amongst the thickest of the crowd, and as they sail downstream on a strong

ebb tide with a favouring wind, he inquires of a passenger close by him what booklet the man is reading. The text, it appears, is the famous jest book Tarleton’s Newes out of Purgatorie. Various opinions are expressed about it, some in praise and some in blame. The point is made (and it is a valid point **) that some of the anecdotes are stolen from Boccaccio’s Decameron. The titular Cobbler now speaks up: Maisters, quoth he, I haue read the booke, and tis indifferent, like bottle ale, halfe one and halfe the other: but tis not merrie enough for vaine, nor stuffed with his fine conceits: therefore it shall passe for and no more. No, no, what say you to old father Chaucer? how of his Caunterburie tales? Are they not pleasant to delight; and instruct, and full of conceited learning to shewe the excellency of

a cup of Tarltons a booke like you wittie to his wit?

(B 1°).

The Cobbler now suggests that they imitate Chaucer and enliven their voyage as his pilgrimage had once been enlivened.

After his remarks

about lifting from

Boccaccio in Tarleton’s

News, our unknown author does not scruple himself to borrow plots and subplots from the Decameron. Perhaps there is some ironical self-satire here, quite in Chaucer’s own vein. In any event the Italian material is creatively handled and well adapted to an English audience. Least interesting is the Scholar’s romantic novella of two Sicilian lovers and their tribulations, following the 88 These lines for instance

come

from the author’s

description

of the

Cobbler: “He loued well a cup of strong ale,/ For his nose was nothing pale:/ But his snout and all his face,/ Was as red as Ruby or Topace:/ A voyce he had cleare and lowd,/ And well he gan sing to a crowd,”’ B 2°. 54 See H.G. Wright, op. cit., pp. 161-63.

Framed

Novelle

l59

pattern of Decameron V, 6 (which in turn reveals a general likeness to medieval romances of the type of Floris and Blanchefleur). A more elaborate and successful adaptation is to be found in the Gentleman’s tale of a Cambridge student named Rowland, his painful humiliations suffered at the hands of a girl named Marian, daughter of a country gentleman, and his subsequent revenge on her. One of the humiliations® is carried out by having Marian

pretend that she will grant Rowland a secret interview and then keeping him waiting ‘outside her house throughout a freezing winter's night. on various pretexts, while she disports herself comfortably indoors in the arms of her preferred suitor. So also in Boccaccio. In both tales the victim is a scholar, but in the Italian model the cruel beauty is a sophisticated urban widow, not a hoydenish country girl, and the revenge taken is quite different.

Boccaccio was evidently influenced by the medieval tale of Virgil's humiliation by a Roman matron, and in his Decameron he turned it against the heartless widow.** The English author has substituted a new reprisal, conditioned on the precise circumstances of Cambridge university life. After her marriage, Marian casts her eyes upon another young scholar named Awdrey and begins an intrigue with him. But this new candidate for her favour confides in Rowland and thus learns about her previous heartless behaviour. The two men plan a joint revenge. Over a mess of cream consumed at Trumpington they win over a friendly Proctor who agrees to help them in their plans. On a Saturday night Marian joins Awdrey in a house of assignation, as previously arranged. She has been made tipsy at supper and does not notice when Rowland takes 55 Boccaccio has only one such incident in Decameron VIII. 7; the English adds a second to it. 56 According to the medieval legends, Virgil was to have been hoisted up into the lady's bedchamber by a basket, but she left him suspended midway, so that he had to endure the heat and flies and mockery of passing citizens during the long hours of daylight. Boccaccio visits an analogous fate upon the cruel widow of his tale. The episode of Virgil’s humiliation was independently known in English. It was contained in the volksbuch of Virgilius (Antwerp: Doesborgh, ca 1518), and it was treated in The Deceyt of Women, E \"-E 2%. See Spargo, Virgil the Necromancer, p. 342.

160

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Transformed

the other scholar’s place beside her in bed. Meantime the Proctor and masters of Peter’s Hostel (Peterhouse) are joined by Marian’s husband and relatives, who have been tipped off by an ambiguous letter promising that poor Rowland is to be humiliated once more. This motley company then raids the house. The scene of discovery which consummates Marian’s humiliation and Rowland’s revenge is pictured in detail. The college Proctor pretends to surprise at finding Rowland in this disreputable place: “well sir Rowland, had it beene any other but you that had bin taken abroad, and in such a suspected house he should have gone to the Towle-booth.” It is Awdrey who prompts the husband to discover the identity of the female culprit: tush M. Proctor quoth he, but I maruel you examine not who it is that lies with him, it may be a prettie wench. What? is there one lies with him?

Yea mary is there sir quoth he, and with that stepping to the bed, threw off all the cloathes, and there lay his wife in her smocke (G 4”).

The last tale, told by the Summoner, runs close to Boccaccio’s III, 8. Here too the jealous husband is a farmer; the wife and amorous

abbot use the same device to trick him, namely a sleeping powder inducing a trance-like state in which he is made to believe that he is in Purgatory, being punished for his inordinate suspiciousness. The milieu is transferred from Tuscany to Wickham in England, and there are minor changes in the action (for instance,

the “coy and fearfull” wife complains of her unhappy plight during an accidental encounter with the abbot, not during confession as in Boccaccio). Still, the treatment is less independent here

than

in the

Gentleman’s

Tale.5?

The

Smith's

dealing with a jealous husband, is a clear analogue of

Tale,

also

CNN, No. 37

57 The Summoner'’s Tale is sometimes verbally close to its source. When the drugged husband awakens from his sleep he finds a monk at hand, ready to convince him that he is dead and assigned to Purgatory, about to undergo

punishment for his jealousy: “Dead? quoth the Farmer: can dead men speake?’’—Yes, he is told, and eat and drink too (K 3°). In Boccaccio, the monk first brings food and drink to the victim: “Al quale il monaco portd alquanto da mangiare e da bere. Il che veggendo Ferondo, disse: O, mangiano

i morti? Disse il monaco:

Si’’—and he goes on to explain that Ferondo

owes this benefit to his wife’s prayers.

Framed Noyvelle

161

(the story of the wife doused with a pail of water; see ch. 4, sec. 4). The plot was already known in English in the concise versions contained in The Deceyt of Women and The Mirrour of Mirth. But our unknown author again transplants the action to England, expands it, and shifts it from the wealthy upper class of gentlefolk to simple villagers. The clever seducer is now a smith who visits the shop of his neighbour, a cobbler, while the latter is “yearking of his shooes” and the wife is busily spinning at her wheel, watched over by a strict guardian. The smith’s chance comes one day when the cobbler has gone out to buy leather and “the old woman not hauing slept the last night, was heauie and fell asléepe, and the young woman sate singing at her work” (D 2°). By touches like these the transfer of milieu is very successfully realized. No such effort is made to anglicize the themes of the Old Wife’s Tale. a free combination of two fabliau plots (analogues but not close copies of Decameron, VII, 1 and VIII, 8). The style of these framed stories harmonizes well with the subject matter. Again we find linguistic traits characteristic of the jest books: idiomatic inversion sometimes accompanied by present tense (“away goes her mother in law,” D 3°; “vp hee got, and on with the Sculls apparrell,” C 1‘); conversational adverbs of transition (“Well, home he went to his chamber,” B 2°; “Well,

within two dayes after came the Prior againe,” B 4"); an occasional pleonastic pronoun (“The Cobler he marked all very diligently.” H 1° and

“The Cobler he commended

all,” K 4’); and homely

proverbial sayings (“the blind eates many a flie, and much water runnes by the mill that the miller wots not on,” B 4°). The choice of verbs adds to the sprightliness. A lover is bidden to whip or skip into a chest for concealment (G 1°); an old woman, “short winded,” comes “stumbling home” (D 3”); the cobbler of the Smith’s Tale “was woont, on working daies, to chaunt it out at his worke, and on holydaies to bestirre his stumps in the Churchyeard so merrily after a crowd, that he was welbeloued of all the country wenches” (D 1°). The general effect is thus very colloquial. But there are some sophisticated elements as well. Classical and other learned allusions

162

v. Romantic Fiction Continued and Ttransformed

appear from time to time, as in the more solemn Renaissance novelle, but in these stories they nearly always have an effect of deliberate satire or burlesque. The Cobbler remarks of the Cambridge student’s misadventures that “there was not a more sound historie for his turne in all the Legenda Aurea” (H 1°); the smith of the Cobbler’s Tale cries out to the prior who has cuckolded him “Before you and I part, I will learne you how to make Vulcan of me, without you were more like Mars then you be” (C 1%). The Cobbler himself finally expresses the hope that when he comes to write up the tales he has heard en route, his English will be sufficient to “match Lilly, Greene, or any other in excellency of prose” (K 4”). This must be very conscious irony, since there are several previous passages in which courtly writing, as practised by Lily and Greene, is very obviously burlesqued. Thus the Old Wife, of all unlikely people, delivers herself of an absurd Lylyan simile fitted out with both interlinked and linear alliteration: “And as the beastes most gréedily gaze at the Panther’s skin, and the birds at the Peacocks plumes: so euery fair feminine face is an adamant to draw the obiect of mens eyes” (I 3°). The loveletters written by the Cambridge student Rowland to his country nymph Marian are a clear burlesque of the rhetorical effusions in high-toned novelle. The girl had said that she does not understand the fine terms and classical allusions studding the addresses of young scholars. In her reply to Rowland she compares him to “a Sow in pig under an Apple-tree,” and then hastens to apologize for her rural simile. More than this, the abject devotion of Rowland, his patient acceptance of the long bitter vigil outside of her house, his willingness to suffer any rigours in order to preserve secrecy and protect her good name,—all these amount to a mordant satire on all the long-suffering gallants celebrated in the tradition of courtly love. (Boccaccio makes no such use of his analogous situation.) On one occasion—though this may be accidental—a conversation staged between an adulterous wife and her lover in order to mislead her eavesdropping husband (E 1°) actually suggests a burlesque version of the meeting of Tristan and Iseult under the tree in which King Mark sat spying

Framed Novelle

163

and listening to the lovers. Our author could not have known the 12th-century verse romances in French by Béroul and Thomas, nor any unpublished prose redaction of them. Instead it would

seem that he stumbled on a like situation which helped him to emphasize his critical attitude to the heritage of medieval romance. Whoever composed The Cobbler of Canterbury was exceptional not only in his negative attitude to inherited romance but also in his positive effort to create a new type of non-courtly novelle centred on craftsmen and villagers. That he was not unappreciated in his own time is apparent from the fact that his collection was adapted and refurbished in the early 17th century as The Tinker of Turvey.® It was also imitated in Westward for Smelts (1620).*° Later readers, including scholars, have given less attention than he deserves to this entertaining and vigorous narrator, one of the few representatives of a popular, anti-courtly technique in the fashioning of novelle. Profoundly original and realistic he may not have been, but he tried a promising mode which, if it could have found a wider social patronage, might have hastened the early development of the English novel.

58 James O. Halliwell has edited

The Tinker of Turvey (London,

1859)

from the original print (London: Nathaniel Butter, 1630). Two of the original tales—those by the Old Wife and the Summoner—are omitted, and two new ones added, put into the mouths of the Tinker and a Seaman. 59 Here the narrators are fishwives. Again there are loans from the Decameron. See Baker, History of the English Novel, Il, p. 221.

CHAPTER

COURTLY

ROMANCE,

VI

ELIZABETHAN

1. NEO-CHIVALRIC TALES TRANSLATED

STYLE

INTO ENGLISH

By the last decades of the 16th century the feudal system had already become outmoded in practical life, and mercantilism was the dominant pattern in economic relations. Elizabeth’s reign was marked by the rise of plebeian merchant princes and of all sorts of adventurers enriched by exploits of thinly disguised robbery on the lands and seas of the New World. Displacements occurred in the old ruling class throughout the entire Tudor period. Trade became important as never before, the wares produced for it and imported by it were greatly diversified as were also the materials and methods used in production. The social consequences of these changes have been discussed by writers as diverse as Marx and Thorold Rogers, Trevelyan and Maurice Dobb. In sum, the result was the extension of cultural advantages to much wider circles of the commions than had been possible in Caxton’s day. One might well expect that the taste of the reading public would have undergone a corresponding shift in the same period of time from old-fashioned feudal themes and ideals towards something more contemporary. And so it did, to a considerable extent, as the next chapter will indicate. But as is so often the case,

the shift was slow in taking place. As a matter of fact, the literary historian must at this point record some regressive phenomena. There was a resurgence of interest in chivalric prose romance in the latter 16th century, fortified perhaps by the desire of nouveaux riches to assimilate themselves to a dignified older tradition. That the Tudor sovereigns liked to heighten their prestige by adopting the outward trappings of archaic medievalism (tournaments and the like) is well known. Only in the light of this revived fashion

Neo-Chivalric Tales Translated into English

can

we

adequately

understand a literary work

165

like Spenser’s

Faery Queen.' But it is less easy to understand why and how the recently literate middle class, and even those in the lower ranks, evinced

such enthusiasm for the jejune romantic concoctions then being offered to readers in the guise of fictional entertainment. The tales in question were, whether translated or original, belated representatives of the medieval school, sometimes pretending to a connection with Charlemagne or King Arthur, sometimes independent of these revered figures, but always imitative in plots and social

attitudes. They are far inferior to Caxton’s offerings of the same genre. If literary merit were the sole test, one might readily pass them by. But they stand for a curious and rather important stage in the history of English prose fiction, or perhaps rather a detour in that history. Because of its oddity it may well be of greater interest to sociologists than to philologists. Nevertheless it is worth scrutinizing, if only for. historical reasons. The translated romances of this period are, briefly speaking, of the type that drove the good knight of La Mancha mad. It will be remembered that when Don Quixote’s library was examined by the delegation consisting of a priest, a barber and a hou%ekeeper, it was found to contain, among other things, such romances as Amadis de Gaula, Palmerin de Oliva, Palmerin of England, and Sir Belianis. Thanks to the labours of Anthony Munday? and others, these romances were made available to English readers in the 1590’s. And they seem to have been beloved in econom1 On this see Charles Bowie Millican, Spenser and the Table Round (Harvard University Press, 1932). 2 Munday’s output as translator of these formidable creations was prodigious. Within one year (1588) he published two of them: Palmerin d’Oliva, Part I, and Palladine of England. The following year appeared the

Historie of Palmendos. In 1590 came Aradis of Gaul, Part I; then Primaleon of Greece (1595) on which Munday was only a minor collaborator, and Palmerin of England, Part I (1596). Sequels, revisions and reeditions continued well into the 1600’s. A convenient summary of the Palmerin series is given by Henry Thomas in The Palmerin Romances (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1916).

166

v1. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

ically advanced mercantile England just as they were in feudal, tradition-loving Spain: a baffling and. challenging fact for the social historian of literature. Plots are loosely constructed in most of these romances. Adventures usually follow adventures in a straight-line sequence, with but few instances of interweaving or doubling back. The motifs had already been made repetitiously familiar in prose romances of the type of Valentine and Orson: foundling youths in abundance are reared by strangers and, being ignorant of their ancestry, find themselves in combat (usually happily resolved) with fathers, brothers or uncles. Or they may aid their kinsmen unknowingly. Beautiful princesses are worshipped from afar, subjected to many perils, carried off into captivity by giants or sultans or treacherous villains, but are invariably rescued as virgines intactae, quite safe and sound. Quests are undertaken for magic objects which are invariably obtained. Heroes are repeatedly subjected to temptation by amorous Saracen ladies but invariably reject them. Premature happy endings are forestalled on the flimsiest of pretexts in order to drag out the already attenuated plot, including fresh incursions by an enemy, storms at sea, shipwreck, treason: anything, any device to separate a hero and heroine once more when they are about to be happily united. The ancient machinery creaks rustily. It is however more highly decorated and emblazoned than ever before. A heightened artificial rhetoric is what chiefly distinguishes these creations from their predecessors in the high Middle Ages. When marchen themes are introduced they are elaborated and distorted almost beyond recognition. From one romance to the next, and through sequel after sequel, trite situations are so relentlessly repeated that the public’s endless appetite for these fictitious marvels seems all but incomprehensible to us—unless we judiciously recall the stereotypes of cinema narrative, Westerns and thrillers and other popular forms in our own times. Sometimes indeed the translated romances achieved unconscious humour in the presentation of their trite situations. The mother of Amadis de Gaul conceives that hero as the result of a private adventure with King Perion, a guest at her father’s

Neo-Chivalric Tales Translated into English

167

court. Although her lover has sworn to marry her (some day), he departs precipitately for no better reason than because he has had a bad dream, and is convinced that only the astrologers in his homeland can properly interpret it. Left alone and very much in the lurch, the Princess Elisena finds that she is pregnant, and she knows that her life will be forfeit if her condition is discovered. (Once more we have a fictional Jex invoked in the manner of the Roman controversiae.) Elisena tries to reach the elusive Perion but is unable to do so, because somehow he is always away on adventures “and therefore he was the harder to be found.”® Naturally! Mark Twain could hardly have put the situation more trenchantly in his unforgettable Connecticut Yankee. Later on, a giant is rather unexpectedly described as kind and gentle except: when provoked: “He was not a bloodye man as manye other were, but of gentle and peaceable conuersation, except when he was offended, for in his fury he would doo great cruelties” (fol. 18%). The juxtaposition of traits seems comic to us. Comic also is the scrupulous hesitation of Don Belianis of Greece to fight against any foe, whether a threatening giant or a knight challenger, before he has been himself properly knighted. Spanish punctilio must be observed at the risk of one’s life. Malory had not emphasized the social qualifications of his champions to this extent: the scruples are pseudo-chivalric rather than genuinely feudal.4 On the occasion in question, Belianis is threatened by a vast misshapen monster when he is attempting to read the words of a prophecy engraved on-a pillar: But hee with a neuer daunted minde, made this replie. I maye not enter battell with thee (thou fearefull beast) hauing not yet receyued the order of Knighthoode, which if I had, although thou shouldest neuer so much gainesay it, yet I woulde not go hence, vntil such time as I had read them.‘ 8 Anthony Munday, The First Book of Amadis of Gaule (London, 1590), fol 8Y. “ This point is well made by Charlotte E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911), ch. 1. 5 The Honour of Chiualrie... Don Belianis: Sonne. vnto the Emperour Don Bellaneo of Greece. Englished out of the Italian by L.A. (London: Thomas

168

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

This coy evasiveness suggests nothing so much as the behaviour of Chaucer’s Sir Thopas, when that doughty champion asks to be excused from combat with a giant until such time as he can go home and get himself properly armed. Some odd pronominal constructions add to the quaint effect of this particular text Occasionally, though rarely, one finds a passage in one of these stilted translations of stilted originals where the people behave like human beings. One such exceptional interlude is the scene in which Elisena, fated to become the mother of Amadis of Gaul, succumbs to the charms of her father’s handsome guest at a banquet. A dropped ring for which they both stoop brings their hands together under the table, and the encounter is fateful

for both

of them:

...She let fall a Ring, which she had put in her bosome when she washt her handes, and so had forgot it, by reason of this new loue, that made her think. on other matters. Now was King Perion somewhat néer her, and desirous to let her know how willingly he would be hers, stooped downe as soone as she to take it vp, and so right did their handes meete together, as the King had the meane to close her fingers, yet feigning to take vp her Ring. Wherupon Creede, 1598),p. 9. The English renders the Italian quite faithfully: “ma con animo intrepido gli rispose. Io non posso far battaglia con te, bestia smisurata. poi che per ancora non son armato Cavalliero, che se io fossi, anchorche tu contradicessi, io procuraria ad ogni modo di leggerle,” Historia del magnanimo, et invincibil Principe Don Belianis (Ferrara, 1586), fol. 6%. This in turn is faithful to the primary source in Spanish: “mas con esforcado animo le dixo. No puedo contigo hazer armas, bestia desemejada, a causa que no soy armado cavallero; que si lo fuera, aunque tu lo contradixeras, los procurara ver.” Quoted from Libro Primero del valeroso e invencible principe don Belianis de Grecia (Medina del Campo, 1564), fol. 3°. ® A damsel just rescued from a giant promises to explain in due time who she is: “After shall you know... whom I am,” she says, p. 13. Another character speaks of “the Emperour of Greece, whom your companion saith is absent from Constantinople,” p. 28. The same Emperor, speaking of unknown

rescuers, says, “I cannot thinke... whome those so valiant Knights may be’’; and again: “Who can beleeue... that if they were them, they would so departe from me,’’ p. 49. When the identity of the knights is guessed, the Empress naturally asks: “May it not... be known... if they were them?” p. 51. (All italics added.)

Neo-Chivalric Tales Translated

into English

169

this amourous Lady began to change collour, and (notwithstanding) by a swéet regarde humbly thanked him. Ah Madame, quoth he, this shall not be the last seruice I hope to doo you, for my whole life time shall be imployed to

obey you. Constrained was Elisena (without answering him) to followe the Queene her mother. so surprized and altered, as very néere she had forgotten her selfe (4madis, fol. 3°).

Elisena’s confidante Darioletta is a wench of some sprightliness. whose conversations with the leading characters actually sound like living human speech. But these passing approximations towards novellistic traits are soon lost in the torrent of heroics and supernatural marvels. These translated neo-chivalric romances usually have a vaguely Arthurian colouring and a theatre of operations somehow based in England, or they are located in fabulous Eastern realms, or they shift back and forth between the two areas. This last is true of the Amadis and Palmerin romances. The Arthurian and Carolingian cycles are oddly united in the tale of Sir Mervin. reputed to be the son of Charlemagne’s peer Ogier the Dane by King Arthur's sister Morgan la Fée. After conventional adventures in search of his unknown father, Mervin obtains as bride a converted Saracen princess named Berea, later known as Matabrune. The couple are thus made direct ancestors of Godefroy of Boulion by way of their grandson Helias, Knight of the Swan.’ ? The historye of Sir Meruyn son to Oger the Dane was licensed in 1595/96 and referred to by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598). See Esdaile. A List..., p. 100. The earliest extant copy of Sir Mervin, under a slightly different title, is of a later date (London: R. Blower and Val. Sims, 1612). The translator was “I.M., Gent.,” identified as Gervase Markham. His French source was L’histoire du Preux Meurvin filz de Oger le Dannoys (Paris: Pierre Sergent and Jehan Longis, dated 1539 on the title page and 1540 in the colophon). At the end the French redactor states that he used a verse text as source:

“Si feray fin a nostre Hystoire du gentil Meurvin laquelle fut composee en Tithme ou lay de present prinse,” fol. 255". The French and English texts have not been studied in detail. Both are mentioned by Léon Gautier, Bibliographie des chansons de geste (Paris, 1897), p.131; Emile Besch makes only passing reference to Meurvin in his survey of “Les adaptations en prose des chansons de geste au XV® et XVIE siécle,” Revue du Seiziéme Siécle, Il (1915), 155-81; but on this see also Georges Doutrepont, Les Mises en prose

des épopées et romans chevaleresques, ch. 2.

170

vi. Courtly Romance,

Elizabethan Style

The style of Sir Mervin is both awkward and highly artificial. The English translator seized upon every example of fine writing to be found in his source and exaggerated it with that unbridled love of verbiage which, as exemplified in minor Elizabethan writers,

has become

all but incomprehensible

to our

modern

taste. The following example will suffice to illustrate I. M.’s misguided zeal for expansion. The subject is Ogier’s reception by Morgan la Fée and the circumstances of Mervin’s origin: English

French Original

Translation

luy d’elle par son subtil moyen (tellement que la dame qui moult

But many tedious nights nor daies had not runne out the labouring circuit of their minutes, before the beautiful Morgue, sister to king Artus, became all inuironed with

estoit

his [Oger’s] loue, and by the excel-

nonobstant gueres n’y fut [Oger] la

demourant

que Morgue

soeur du

roy Artus fut de luy amoureuse et

sage

congnoissant

ce

que

estoit advenir d’eulx deux) pourchassa tant qu’elle eut du bon duc Oger compaignie charnelle (en si bonne heure que par la voulenté de

encie of her subtill skill int angled him asmuch or more with her

Dieu

prophet like knowing what in after

elle fut enseincte

d’enfant)

dont le bon duc Oger fut au cueur moult resjouy. Si en tindrent leur parlement les faees disans les unes

aux autres: Bien est apparant que Morgue na pas tousjours dormy auprés le preux Oger son amy, car elle est de son faict moult fort enseincte (fol. 1%).

affection, in so vehement sort, that the Lady who was passing wise, time should befall them two, purchased so much her own blessednes, that she was carnally accompanied of the good duke Oger, & that in so good an houre, that by the prouidence of the Highest, she became with child, the very sight . wherof added an vnspeakable ioy to the heart of Oger: and all the fairies of princely estimation, holding a counsell amongst themselues. said one to an other: Now, and not too soone, is it sufficiently ap-

parant that the Fairie Morgue hath not euer in vnprofitable slumber consumed her time with Oger, because by her waking déed she hath giuen testimony to vs all, that now she hath conceiued, and is great with childe (p. 2).

The English

Imitators

171

A most casual analysis of the English version will show how mercilessly it has obscured the traces of courtly badinage shining through the French original. 2. THE’ ENGLISH IMITATORS

The same is true of attempts by English writers to produce original fiction in the same genre. The ultimate in absurdity is perhaps Chinon of England, a pseudo-Arthurian concoction made almost unintelligible by its turgid language and confused plot.® Although Lancelot and Tristram are prominent among its heroes, neither Guinevere nor Iseult appears in the tale. Lancelot’s amie is Laura and Tristram has none at all. The author himself seems to forget who is supposed to love whom, for in chapter 12 he surprisingly introduces “Sir Cador, who was sonne vnto Sir Lancelot du Lake and the beauteous Celestina daughter to the King of France,” previously rescued by Chinon from a treacherous Soldan. But Celestina is supposed to be Chinon’s beloved. Had the impeccable Lancelot misbehaved with her? If so, the betrayal of his friend and his own mistress has not been recorded. It is all very confusing. There were other belated Arthurian concoctions of the type of Chinon. Early in the next century Richard Johnson produced his Pleasant History of Tom

a Lincoln,

the Red Rose Knight,°

introducing its hero as a bastard son of King Arthur, who distinguishes himself in many adventures curiously combining classical mythology with data from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other medieval sources. Here again the story is recounted in language

of extreme turgidity. 8 The Famous Historie of Chinon of England. with his strange aduentures for the loue of Celestina daughter to Lewis King of Fraunce. By Chr. Middleton (London, 1597); ed. W.H. Mead, EETS, OS, No. 165 (1925 for 1923). .® Johnson’s Tom a Lincoln was entered in the Stationers Register in 1607; the earliest extant copy is that of the seventh edition (1635). So many reprint-

ings in so short a time testify to the popularity of this literary oddity. The text is contained in Thoms’s Early English Prose Romances, pp. 600-90. For summary see Mead’s Introduction to Chinon of England, pp. xxxivXXXVii.

172

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

Somewhat

more

coherent

and

restrained

in language

are

the romances of Emanuel Forde, but they are drearily imitative of the tribe of Amadis and Palmerin. Just before 1600 this hardworking writer had produced Perismus, Prince of Bohemia and

its sequel Parismenos, as well as Ornatus and Artesia;!© much later came

Montelion,

Knight of the Oracle

(1633).

In one respect Forde showed a certain advance over his predecessors, namely in the complications of his plot structure. Whereas the previous neo-chivalric tales had depended mostly on the intertwining of two simple, forward-moving themes (“Now leave we Sir X and return to Sir Y”), Forde likes to introduce a baffling situation suddenly, to leave it in partial suspense, and

to reserve development and explanations for a much later point in the story. This means taking care of retrospective action chiefly in the form of enframed autobiographies. The technique brings Forde close to the imitators of Greek romance (see the neat section), but despite this and other affinities he is not to be identified with their school. Forde’s manner of plotting may be illustrated by the interwoven tale of the distressed damsel Dina, introduced at the very beginning of Parismus. The titular hero, arriving in Thessaly to visit its monarch, unexpectedly comes upon a badly wounded knight Osiris. After an interval devoted to the budding amours of Parismus and Princess Laurana, the wounded Osiris recovers enough strength to describe his mishap. It befell him, as one might have guessed in advance, while he was trying to rescue a lady threatened with ravishment by one of a band of outlaws in the forest. Superior numbers had overwhelmed the would-be rescuer and the damsel’s fate remains for the time being unknown. Much later Parismus, having been nearly assassinated by the mercenaries employed by his rival, is picked up in 19

Emanuel Forde, Parismus, the Renowned Prince of Bohemia (London:

Thomas Creede, 1598); Parismenos: The Second Part of... Parismus (London: Creede, 1599). The Most Pleasant History of Ornatus and Artesia was first printed in 1598; for purposes of this study a later edition has been used (London: Alsop and Fawcett, 1634). A brief account of Forde’s relation to 17th-

century fiction is given by Charlotte E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners.

(See above, n. 4.) See also Baker, The English Novel, Il, pp. 123-25

The English Imitators

173

the forest by these same outlaws and brought to their cave. Here he finds (first surprise) the kidnapped lady Dina, respectably established as cook-housckeeper for the band. She is still quite intacta (second surprise) thanks to the fact that one of the outlaws had intervened in her behalf and proposed a policy of general hands-off, It is only at this point that Dina herself speaks up and reveals the antecedent story of troubles which have led her to her present

plight. This subplot will serve to illustrate not only Forde’s structural technique but also the absurdity of his material, in no way more plausible than that of his predecessors. Originality appears but seldom, as when for instance the hero of Ornatus and Artesia reverses a familiar situation of disguise and assumes the garb of a girl in order to serve his beloved, who is separated from him by a family feud.’! As to the style and manner of presentation, these too are artificial and cumbersome in the extreme. Nevertheless Forde does not belong to the euphuistic school. His sentences may be long, but they are innocent of the fashionable decorations of the time: they show complexities without balance or other coherent pattern; endless subordinations without plan. Very often Forde recounts a would-be dramatic incident in a long summary statement which suggests the outline of a scenario rather than straightforward narrative. Repeatedly when such a statement seems to be approaching its long-delayed extinction, a new participial phrase (sometimes quite adrift) or a relative construction will inflate it with a new semblance of vitality. The stilted dialogues are, as is to be expected, in complete harmony with the unreal action. 11 Forde, Ornatus and Artesia, ch. 4, C 3%. This sounds like a conscious inversion of the situation in Barnabe Rich’s novella “Apolonius and Silla’ (see ch. 5, sec. 4), where the shipwrecked heroine, disguised as a page, falls in love with the duke she serves. Forde’s Ornatus pretends to have been shipwrecked before taking service with Artesia. It is also to be noted that in his Arcadia Sidney had already exploited the piquant situation of a man passing . himself off as a woman (see below, sec. 2), but there the context was very different.

174

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

With Forde’s output we find ourselves in one of the blind alleys of early modern fiction. Yet, as has been noted, these romances of his were often reprinted and must have been widely read. They made their contribution to the vogue for “heroick”

romances (influenced by French models) later in the 17th century. 3. THe NEO-HELLENIC

ROMANCES:

ARCADIAN

TYPE

A fresh impulse was given to the art of elaborate plotting, and new models were made available for English writers, when Greek romances of the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods were introduced to Western European readers. The stream of influence flowed mostly by way of Latin translations in Western Europe.

throughout the 16th century. Three celebrated texts were of chief importance for English romancers: the Aethiopica or Theagenes and Chariclea by Heliodorus (fourth century?); Clitophon and

Leucippe by Achilles Tatius (probably somewhat later); and the Daphnis and Chloe of a writer known as Longus (probably before A. D. 400, the author’s name as well as the date being in doubt).!2 The first two are intricate adventure stories, while the third is a relatively simple pastoral romance. In due time vernacular translations of these came out also, but cultivated Elizabethan writers did not have to wait for them, so long as they had the Latin versions at hand.'®

In a certain sense these Hellenic sources employ materials that cannot be called new. In them lovers, spouses and relatives are separated by shipwreck and war and go seeking each other; children are exposed or stolen or captured; ambiguous oracles and supernatural interventions add further to the confusions —but in the end lost ones are found, recognitions occur and families are happily reunited. The formulas are as old Homer’s 12 The standard work on this subject is Samuel Lee Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (Columbia University Press, 1912). For general background it is still. useful to consult Victor Chauvin, Les Romanciers grecs et latins (Paris, 1864) and E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorldufer (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1914). 13 Wolff gives a table of editions and translations, op. cit., pp. 8-10.

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type

175

questing Telemachus and returning Odysseus at first unrecognized by his wife. Attic drama contributed much to the romances, especially to their scenes of identification. Heliodorus in fact makes his indebtedness to the drama explicit, for he observes

of one episode that “it was like the prologue or pre-act of a play jn the theatre,” and one of his characters, witnessing a reunion of lovers, “wondered what this could be which had the air of a recognition on the stage.” None of the formulas taken separately

was unknown to medieval story-tellers or unexploited by them. That perennial favourite Apollonius of Tyre had helped to dissem-

inate a group of them widely at an early date. The Latin Recognitions of Clement, when stripped of its didactic elements, is seen to be constructed on the same plan of a family scattered and reunited.1* So were a number of romances like Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and Valentine and Orson; so were a number of saints’ lives like those of Eustace and Placidus. Yet these medieval

adaptations and continuations, indebted to intermediaries like the Latin Apollonius, were on the whole rather simple in their technique. What the Elizabethans could learn directly from the Hellenic tales was, first of all, a trick of diversifying adventurous action with interludes of pastoral tranquillity, and secondly, a methodology for producing heightened intricacy in the plot. The use of pastoral in English prose narrative was directly stimulated, no doubt, by the translations of Daphnis and Chloe: the French by Amyot in 1559 and the English by Angel Day in 1587. Less directly the same influence was conveyed by foreign imitators of the genre like Sannazaro in Italian and Montemayor in Spanish. And of course the Eclogues of Virgil made a direct 14 The Greek original is not extant. The Latin version is due to Rufinus of Aquileia (ca 345-ca 410). Told in the first person by Clement, who claims to have been associated with St Peter in his missionary activities, the narrative contains episodes analogous to the cycle of romances about Accused Que ens, of which Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale is the best known. See the introduction to the translation by B.P. Pratten and Marcus Dods in the series of The An teNicene Christian Library (Edinburgh, 1868).

176

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

contribution of their own, reinforced at this time by continental imitations of them. ; The pioneer English experiment in combining pastoral with chivalric adventure in a complicated plot was Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. To be sure, this romance was not published until after

the appearance of pastoral novelle by Greene and Lodge (see the next section), but it had been circulating in manuscript well before these, and had clearly exercised an influence on them.!® Sidney’s debt to Sannazaro’s Arcadia was apparently slight, being limited to the title and the (by no means unique) combination of prose narrative with passages of verse in a vein of bucolic lyricism. But the Diana of Montemayor, which combined pastoral with chivalric romance, that is to say classical with medieval elements, in a highly wrought synthesis, was a major influence on the English writer. The translation of Diana into English was completed by Bartholomew Young by May of 1583. Althoughit was not published until 1598, Sidney could have known it beforehand in written form, and besides he could have read the Spanish original. Most of the ingredients in the Diana had already been familiar enough before Montemayor put them together: star-crossed loves and lovers, disguises, a journey diversified by included tales. an allegorical palace, descriptions of an ideal pastoral landscape."® Among the literary devices which are here transmitted to English readers, and which would tend to fortify the Heliodorian influence, is the abrupt beginning: the sudden presentation of 18 Walter W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), p. 142. 16 See Juan B. Avalle-Arce, “The Diana of Montemayor: Tradition and Innovation,” PMLA, LXXIV (1959), 1-6. This article gives useful bibliographical references to earlier studies. The author concludes: “This type of novelistic construction, in which the action advances by leaps and bounds, being stopped at times by the anecdotal crossroads, is derived from the tradi-

tional narrative technique of the Byzantine novel,” p. 5. In this connection see also Bruce W. Wardropper, “The Diana of Montemayor: Revaluation and Interpretation,” Studies in Philology, XLVIII (1951), 126-44, a study which demonstrates the careful symmetry with which the plot is constructed.

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type

177

a character or a situation without preparatory explanation (aside from the Argument, which is not supposed to count). “Downe from the hils of Leon came forgotten Syrenus,” Montemayor informs us without preamble. Only gradually do we learn from

the unhappy shepherd’s lamentation what are the causes of his misery.!” Sidney’s Arcadia likewise begins with the lamentation of a shepherd Strephon, also introduced without previous explanation (though the initial sentence is much more deliberate than Montemayor’s). A second characteristic trait is the great heightening of ambiguity-and confusion in erotic relationships. It is not enough that a girl disguises as a page and later falls in love with

her

master,

as in Barnabe

Rich’s

novella

which

helped

Shakespeare to create the Viola of his Twelfth Night. Piquancy is raised. to a higher degree by a doubling of deception. In the Diana, one supposed shepherdess confides to another that she is really a man, but in fact she is a woman pretending to be a man (her own cousin who resembles her exactly) disguised as a woman. Poor Selvagia, the deceived and emotionally confused second shepherdess, thus loves all too passionately the fair Ismenia who

claims to be Alanius disguised as — herself. But Ismenia actually loves the aforesaid cousin, her double, and Alanius reciprocates her feelings to a moderate degree until he himself becomes interested in Selvagia and offers her heterosexual love in his own person. Jealous Ismenia, the doubly disguised one, now transfers her affections to a previously rejected suitor named Montanus, and ends by really loving him. The male cousin then returns to Ismenia and Montanus deserts her for Selvagia, so that a complete reshuffling has occurred. As Selvagia concisely sums up the situation: “it was not possible for me to beare greater affection to Alanius,

nor

Alanius

to Ismenia,

nor

Ismenia

nor Montanus to loue me more, than in very (Young translation, p. 23). 17 Such is the E. Bollifant, 1598). Perez (pp. 161-375) phrase is: “Baxava

to Montanus,

trueth he did”

opening of Bartholomew Young’s translation (London: The volume also contains the sequels to Diana by Alonzo and Gaspar Gil Polo (pp. 376-496). Montemayor’s opening de las montafias de Leon el olvidado Sireno...”

178

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

It would require a geometrical diagram to present these complicated erotic relations: a figure of solid geometry, in fact, because of the extra dimension introduced by transvestition. It would be foolishly irrelevant to think of the characters mentioned as images of people. They correspond rather to Euclidean points in a highly supposititious scheme of abstractions. Moreover, the language of the English translation, which adds to the rhetorical and acoustic patterns of the Spanish original, underscores the impression of an art removed from representational images and statements.!8 Young’s linguistic decorations are in fact very similar to those affected by his successor Sidney. In Sidney’s Arcadia likewise the central erotic relations are geometrically intricate and the construction of the plot has all the complications of Greek romance crossed with chivalric. As is well known, Sidney first composed his pastoral-knightly romance in a relatively simple and straightforward form. This early version circulated in manuscript. The author then undertook an extensive revision which provided new convolutions of the plot by the interweaving of new stories and subplots. The revision was only partly completed, however. The fragmentary revised text was offered to the public in 1590; three years later (1593) this partial text was combined with a supplement based on the latter part of the old, unrevised Arcadia.’® Thus

18 For instance, Young introduces verbal echoes unknown to the original: “the prosperous and preposterous successe of fortune” renders “los malos, o buenos successos de la fortuna”; he adds alliteration to intensify verbal repetition: “In the field was he borne, bred, and brought vp: in the field he fed his flockes, and so out of the limits of the field his thoughts did neuer Tange” corresponding to the simpler Spanish “En el campo se crio, en el campo apascentava su ganado, y assi no salia del campo sus pensamientos” ; he introduces parallel alliterating participles where the original has but one colourless one: “lying and lamenting in this sort” for “y estando en esto.” All of these examples come from p. 2 of the English version, compared with the text in Jorge de Montemayor, Los siete libros de la Diana (Valencia, n.d.). 19 The basic study of the textual relations is that by R.W. Zandvoort, Sidney's Arcadia: A Comparison between the Two Versions (Amsterdam, 1929). The author also discusses changes in the structure of plot, style, ideas expressed

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type

179

a rejected version was used to supplement one partially reworked but left uncompleted. What interests us here is the revised version. | as far as it went. The structural complications introduced into the latter serve to increase its resemblance to the Aethiopica of Heliodorus.2° The central group of characters are related in a pattern of amorous confusions a la Montemayor. Prince Pyrocles disguised as the Amazon Zelmane enjoys the intimate friendship of his beloved

Philoclea and arousesin her emotional responses of a teasingly ambiguous nature. The girl’s father King Basilius—comic dotard of a familiar type—falls in love with Zelmane believing her to be a woman in fact as well as appearance, while the girl’s mother Gynecia (akin to the aggressively amorous matron Melitta in the Clitophon and Leucippe of Achilles Tatius) senses the disguise and falls in love with Zelmane as a man. Meantime the cousin of Pyrocles, Musidorus, has disguised himself as a shepherd to woo

Pamela, the sister of Philoclea. The two princesses are

being kept in rural isolation because an oracle has caused their father Basilius to believe that marriage for them would mean death for him. Throughout a long series of shared adventures —single combats, sieges, rescues, a kidnapping and a long imprisonment— Zelmane incredibly contrives to keep secret the matter of “her” simulated sex until in good time she chooses to reveal it. Only Philoclea had guessed the truth, and that rather by instinct than otherwise. Circling about this central situation and passing in and out of it are many other wefts of plot. Some are introduced early and then dropped for long stretches before being picked up again; others appear and reappear more frein the two treatments, besides problems of sources and influences. For a short account of the situation see C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, p. 331. Quotations are taken from the edition by A. Feuillerat (Cambridge University Press). 20 On the sources of the Arcadia see especially S.L. Wolff, op. cit., pp. 262 ff. In his study L’Arcadia de Sidney dans ses rapports avec |’Arcadia de Sannazaro

et la Diana de Montemayor

(Montpelier,

1928), Hector

Genouy

has traced Sidney’s relation to the pastoral tradition, rather overstating, however, the case for indebtedness to the two writers mentioned.

180

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

quently. Autobiography alternates with third-person narrative and enclosed tales spawn others. The techniques are not new, but they are exploited with unusual refinement and complexity. At times the mysteries and mystifications seem to be gratuitous. Why, we ask ourselves, must the shipwrecked cousins, the two heroes, give false names when they are rescued by patently friendly shepherds and generously entertained by a benevolent host (1. 1-8)? It is not as if they had fallen into the hands of enemies. Again, the machinery of causation is often irreconcilable with probability, as in the sequence where the wicked Cecropia, auntin-law of the two princesses, submits them to physical privations and mental torture, publicly inflicted, in order to compel one or another of them to become a wife for her son. This youth is

represented as a paragon of knightly virtues who presumably would never have approved of his mother’s doings had he known of them. Yet he is somehow kept ignorant of them, though resident in the same fortress at the time, merely because he has been temporarily invalided by a wound. Gossip must have been conspicuously absent from Sidney’s castles. ‘Many types of fiction are represented in the Arcadia. Pastoral themes and characters are combined with adventures recalling both the Hellenic and the medieval romances. There are also rhetorical debates, eclogues in verse, and some episodes which focus the interest on problems of state and political theory. The last-named element is well exemplified in the incident of the war in Lacedaemon (I, 6-8). The conflict had had a class character, Sidney tells us, for it began with a revolt of the oppressed Helots against the oppressive “Gentlemen” of the country. Our arcadian heroes intervene on the side of the ruling class, since they want

to free

Clitophon,

a prisoner

of the

Helots;

but

when

they have obtained victory for their own side they dictate a peace which includes some urgently needed social reforms. Addressing the Helots, Pyrocles informs them of the following articles in the treaty of peace between gentlemen and former slaves:

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type

181

Your selves are made by publique decree, free men, and so capable both to give and receive voice in election of Magistrates. The distinction of names between Helots and Lacedaemonians to bee quite taken away, and all indifferently to enjoy both names and priviledges of Laconians. Your children to

be brought up with theirs in Spartane discipline: and so you (framing your selves to be good members of that estate) to be hereafter fellowes, and no longer servaunts (I, 7; p. 46 f.).

Other examples of the same socio-political interest are to be found in the accounts of a tyrant’s deposition in Phrygia (II, 8; p. 200 f.) and of a churls’ rebellion in Arcadia (II, 25-26; pp. 308-19). The uprising is put down with the forensic aid of the Amazon Zelmane (actually Pyrocles in disguise), who addresses the “unruly sort of clownes, and other rebels” during a lull in the fighting. The discourse is replete with text-book devices for persuasion such as apostrophes, rhetorical questions and argumenta ad homines. A conflict of interests among the rebels facilitates. victory for the rulers. In all of these episodes the dependence on Greek models is clear. Comic relief is afforded at several points by the doings and sayings of lower-class personages, especially those of the countryman Dametas, his wife Miso and his daughter Mopsa. Among the royal characters playing at being shepherds, this trio is supposed to represent the real thing. Dametas is surly, Miso is shrewish,and Mopsa is stupidly simple. In other words, the three of them are stereotypes just as much as their social superiors, but they stand out with a certain sharpness because of the contrast they afford with the others. In connection with the rustic trio Sidney has attempted an interesting experiment in style. Amidst the highly mannered discourses of royalty, he has here made an effort to approximate the colloquial speech of unlettered folk. The wife and daughter of Dametas being present during one of the long al fresco colloquies among the central characters, these two are allowed to make

brief contributions of their own. First Miso rambles on for a while, somewhat like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, reviving memories of her young days as a village belle and a conversation she had with

182

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

an old woman on the subject of love. With gusto she recalls the effect she had once exercised on country swains of her age: I was a young girle of seven and twenty yeare old & I could not go thorow the streate of our village, but 1 might heare the young men talke; O the pretie little eies of Miso, O the fine thin lips of Miso; O the goodly fat hands of Miso: besides, how well a certain wrying I had of my necke, became me. Then the one would wincke with one eye, & the other cast daiseys at me: I must confesse, seing so many amorous, it made me set up my peacocks tayle with the hiest. Which when this good old woman perceived (O the good wold woman, well may the bones rest of the good wold woman) she cald me to her into her house (II, 14; p. 238).

There is comic irony here, for the traits singled out for praise are the reverse of beautiful, and by Tudor reckoning Miso would hardly be a “young girle” still at the age of twenty-seven. But we do see Miso

as she had

been, and in motion at that, preening

herself and twisting her neck in self-satisfaction. We even catch an echo of her dialect. When other characters are described the portraits are static and the epithets most conventional. Miso’s daughter Mopsa is now called on for a tale: the same Mopsa who had previously been described with a certain humorous realism as “swallowing of sleepe with open mouth, making such a noise withal, as no bodie could lay the stealing of a nappe to her charge” (II, 11; p. 215). Appropriately, Mopsa begins to recount an unsophisticated folk tale on the Lohengrin-motif of a wife forbidden to ask the name of her supernatural husband. Some of the sentences are infected with fashionable alliteration and clausal complexities, but there are many instances of authentic marchen formulas and repetitions, and the constructions are generally simple and paratactic ones, as they should be. Mopsa, like Chaucer telling about Sir Thopas, is not allowed to finish her tale, but she says enough to prove that her creator had an ear for levels of discourse, and on occasion could make an effort to differentiate them in his characters’ speech.

Yet such efforts are exceptional. Almost all of the Arcadia is written in the formalized style which has made the title proverbial. This is true even of the dialogues, but especially of passages of description and narration. Sidney does not use antitheses

The Neo-Hellenic Romances:

Arcadian Type

183

reinforced by alliteration as frequently as did the euphuists, but he does go in for extremely complex sentences, often periodic and often interrupted by delaying parentheses. The construction rarely gets out of hand, however, despite all impediments. A modern reader must cultivate a taste for the manner as. well as the matter of this formalized art, but he will be rewarded ‘by the discovery of unexpected felicities which transcend historical changes in taste. Mythology, allegory, personification and the like are for us outmoded devices, but who can resist the charm of this statement (referring to Philoclea’s awareness of love for Zelmane even before she knows the Amazon to be a man in disguise): “For now indeed, Love puld of his maske, and shewed his face unto her, and told her plainly, that shee was his prisoner” (II, 4; p. 171). Another sentence referring to the same situation is shaped in the more elaborated arcadian mould, complex yet clear: But as that sweet & simple breath of heavenly goodnesse, is the easier to be altered, because it hath not passed through the worldlie wickednesse, nor feelingly found the evill, that evill carries with it; so now the Ladie Philoclea (whose eyes and senses had receaved nothing, but according as the naturall course of each thing required; which from the tender youth had obediently lived under her parents behests, without framing out of her own wil the forechosing of any thing) when now she came to appoint, wherin her judgement was to be practized, in knowing faultines by his first tokens, she was like a yong faune, who coming in the wind of the hunters, doth not know whether it be a thing or no to be eschewed ;whereof at this time she began to get a costly experience (ibid., p. 169).

And

this sentence

neatly summarizes

a reported speech:

But Miso having now her authoritie encreased, came with skowling eyes to deliver a slavering good morrow to the two Ladies, telling them, it was a shame

for them to marre their complexions, yea and conditions to, with long lying 31 Here is one example of an untypically loose relative clause: “It was the appearing of a Ladie, who because she walked with her side toward him, he could not perfectly see her face; but so much he might see of her, that was

a suretie for the rest, that all was excellent,” I, 12; p. 75. Not only is the whoconstruction abandoned, but the point of view is shifted in mid-course.

184

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

a bedde: & that, when she was of their age, she trowed, she would have made a handkerchiefe by that time of the day (II, 6; p. 183).

Aside from problems of structure and style there is the question of a possible deeper meaning underlying the entertainment value of the Arcadia as a whole. Obviously it holds up for our admiration certain attitudes and codes of behaviour becoming for persons of the aristocracy: heroic friendship, bravery, a ruler’s responsi-

bility (in a condescending

way) for the welfare of those ruled,

and above all fidelity and devotion to ladies of the same aristocracy. Familiar enough in medieval literature, these virtues are now much coloured by Renaissance Platonism.”* The arrangement of themes and episodes has suggested to a recent writer that there exists a pattern of meanings beyond the obvious moralizing directly expressed by author and characters.** Book I may be said to illustrate the power of love to throw a preeminent man or woman into complete psychological confusion, there being three types of love represented in the various subplots. Book II introduces a series of studies in the abuse of power, a kind of diminutive Mirour for Magistrates, as well as instances of crimes against love. Private passion is here shown to be the cause of public chaos. (It is in this section that Shakespeare found the tale of the blind King of Paphlagonia, which he transmuted into the subplot of Gloucester in King Lear.) Book III returns to and amplifies a number of themes held in suspense since Book J, at the same time continuing the interest represented in Book If, and emphasizing the over-all theme of reason versus passion. The moral steadfastness of the two heroine sisters in the face of temptation and mental torture is a prolonged illustration of Sidney’s main preoccupation with this theme. 2 A clear example is the story of Parthenia, whose lover Argalus remained

faithful to her even when her face was disfigured by poison cast upon it by a rejected suitor. Parthenia’s physical beauty is restored by skilful surgery. She then tests Argalus in order to assure herself that it had been her soul, not her body, that he had loved. Only then does she reveal that she is the

original Parthenia, not a duplicate resembling her. See I, 5 for this episode. *® Walter R. Davis, “Thematic Unity in the New Arcadia,” Studies in Philology, LVII (1960), 128-48.

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Euphuistic Type

Seen thus, Sidney’s revised romance

185

assumes a kind of sym-

phonic unity and artistic balance even in its unfinished state. But the manner of execution reveals itself as fundamentally allegorical. Not allegorical in the old medieval way, to be sure, for Sidney had new concepts and techniques at his disposal thanks to Renaissance learning; but still largely occupied with -human beings as symbols rather than as persons. Character delineations in the tradition of Theophrastus and imitative Roman comedy and satire only emphasize the abstract effect: for instance in the case of Chremes, father of the unhappy Queen Dido, a man who is depicted as a very typical unpleasant elderly miser (II, 19)> a formula rather than an individual. The Arcadia is a consummate work of its kind. It has a formal attenuated beauty peculiar to itself, especially in the verse interludes which, though important, do not directly concern us here. It possesses both aesthetic and intellectual interest for a reader schooled in the ideology of Sidney’s environment. But for all its literary virtues, we must admit that the Arcadia has less kinship with the modern novel than some of the late French prose romances which Caxton had put into robust English back in the 15th century. 4. THe

NEO-HELLENIC

ROMANCES:

EUPHUISTIC

TYPE

The same may be said of a somewhat different school of Hellenistic romances which go by the name of euphuistic. The term is of course derived from Lyly’s strangely popular Euphues, together with the sequels and imitations of it. The literary traits of Euphues are known to every undergraduate. The language is as artificial as Sidney’s, though in a somewhat different manner. The plot is based on Greek formulas, whether directly or indirectly obtained, but is less complicated than the polythematic Arcadia or its model the Aethiopica. Even before Lyly launched his highly successful tale, his manner and style had been anticipated by others such as Pettie (see ch.

5, sec. 4). Just a year before the publication of Euphues, John Grange issued his Golden Aphroditis, a full-length romance,

186

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

which may be regarded as the initial example of the whole school.* Its author calls it a “discourse,” and the term accurately indicates the predominant importance of rhetorical elements contained in it. There are hyperbolic letters and speeches cast in a familiar form; there are set pieces of description for palaces and the like, imitating favourite topoi of the Greek romances. Most of the characters are taken from Greek mythology, but they are very Elizabethan and at times express themselves with ribald double entendre (e.g., C 2”). The heroine is supposed to be a daughter of Diana by Endymion. She and her rival suitors are designated by initials only. Behind all this there may lurk an elaborate masquerade of contemporary personages and their relations. All that happens is a wooing, a misunderstanding between lovers, a combat between rivals, and a marriage as happy ending. In between the few events there are numerous “Veneriall disputations” on the effects of love and the relative constancy of men and women when enamoured. (Chaucer had treated the same subject in his Legend of Good Women, two centuries earlier.) There are besides some quite precise portrayals of social evenings spent by these 16th-century nymphs and swains, including lavish dinners, flirting conversations, music, singing and fashionable dances. These glimpses of social life add a new interest to very old themes. They recall something of the literary values noted in the framing story of Whetstone’s Heptameron.

The euphuistic traits of Grange’s style include the usual gnomic sayings, ornamental antitheses, alliterations, allusions to mythology and the pseudo-scientific lore of stones and animals. But the sentences are far less compactly organized than Lyly’s. They are often obscure and when pretending to periodic structure

are often without plan.* The efforts at rhythmical prose often 24 The Golden Aphroditis: A pleasant discourse, penned by John Grange

Gentleman (London: Bynneman, 1577). The importance of this work in the history of English fiction was pointed out by P.W. Long in his article “From Troilus to Euphues,” Kittredge Anniversary Papers (Boston, 1913), pp. 367-76. 25 Here is an example: “At sir N.O. his first entraunce into the house, Alpha Omega taking him by the hande and bidding him according to the rules of courtesie most hartely welcome, shewed him all the commodities of the

The Neo-Hellenic Romances:

Euphuistic Type

187

slip into regular verse incongruously disguised as prose: we are told for instance that pastimes are undertaken “to driue away with hastie foote the long and weary winters night” (H 3'-*). Lyly’s Euphues (1578) is also uncomplicated as to plot. Essentially it is, as has been long since noted, an inversion of Boccaccio’s Decameron X, 8: the tale of Tito and Gisippo, already treated in English as a.prose novella by Elyot. Whereas Boccaccio had delineated a pair of friends who were loyal to the point of bandying

about a passive heroine between them in the name of amicable devotion, Lyly’s Euphues and Philautus are alienated by their rivalry in the same sort of situation: Euphues wins Lucilla away from his friend, only to be himself deserted by her in favour of a third candidate. Boccaccio’s ultimate inspiration was Greek,

whether directly from a lost Byzantine source or indirectly through the French romance of Athis and Prophilias;?* hence all that

Lyly did was to turn Boccaccio’s Greek formula upside down. In the sequel, Euphues and his England (1580), the reconciled friends leave home and visit Queen Elizabeth’s realm, precisely in the year 1579. Here Philautus conducts a long, unsuccessful campaign to win the favours of a haughty girl named Camilla. As in Grange’s Aphroditis and in Euphues itself, the wooing gives

rise to formal debates on the behaviour of men and women in love.?”7 Embodied within the two slight romances or loosely attached house, and ladde him into a fayre large gallerie lying on the west side of the house, where first desirous to know his name, his natiue country and linage, and after great parlance more (which were to tedious here to recite:) the borde beyng couered after a stately manner, supper drewe neare, whereof beyng warned by the Steward of the house, she desired him to take a smal repast, who (thanking hir for hir curtesie) sat downe as he was placed of the

Grome, whiche was at the vpper end of the borde nexte to his Ladie, on whome he many a sheepish eye did cast,” D 1°. 26 S.L. Wolff, op. cit., pp. 248 ff. Euphues appears in John Lyly’s Complete Works, ed. R. Warwick Bond (Oxford, 1902), I. 27 Italian literature of the early 16th century abounds in such discussions, whether embodied in essays or in narratives. Violet M. Jeffrey in John Lyly and the Italian Renaissance (Paris, 1928) has pointed out many debates on questioni d’amore which are analogous to those in Euphues. Since the fashion was so general, the establishment of source relations is difficult, but this

188

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

to them Lyly has composed tracts, essays, and digressions on such subjects as education, theology, and political theory. Throughout, the narrative interest is but slight. Courtly didacticism sugared with stylistic ornamentation was what enraptured Tudor readers of the Euphues cycle. But the successors of Lyly adapted his style to plots more closely approximating the Hellenistic structures. Melbrancke puts the story of his titular hero Philotimus* into the framework of a long, didactic conversation between two philosophically minded gentlemen discussing the afflictions visited on them by fortune, and within that main story are further discussions and debates; persuasive letters, anecdotes and illustrative tales. Philotimus resembles Euphues in that he interrupts his university studies in order to woo and win the favour of a lady named Aurelia who later abandons him for another. After his disillusionment with her, Philotimus embarks on adventures a la Heliodorus: mishaps while travelling, refuge in a cave, encounter with outlaws:

conversation with a shepherd much inclined to autobiography. Heliodorus is in fact mentioned by name (p. 204). Melbrancke’s ornate style, showing the usual Lylyan traits in exaggeration, is nevertheless relieved at times by happily fresh turns of expression and lively interchanges of conversation. The hero’s father, advising his son about his university studies, says: “I would not haue thée merchandize degrées, as some are accustomed now a dayes, but win them by labour, & deserue them by learning” (p. 42). A very significant exhortation. Among the minor characters is a pert and witty attendant

on the hero, Parmenio

by

name, a lad not averse to jesting word-play and ribald double entendre. (See for instance the reference on p. 48 to the broth spilled on Aurelia’s gown.) In fact he is a precursor of Shakestudy makes plausible the claim that Lyly was at least inspired by Italian models if indeed he did not directly borrow from them. #8 Brain Melbancke, Philotimus, The Warre betwixt Nature and Fortune (London: Roger Warde, 1583). A similar imitation of Lyly, with borrowing of characters from Euphues, is to be found in Barnabe Rich's Don Simonides, Part IL (London: Robert Walley. 1584).

The Neo-Hellenic Romances:

Euphuistic Type

189

speare’s pages of the same type. He thus reports to Philotimus his

successful

Daunger

mission

to arrange

an

interview

with

Aurclia:

yonder kepes the doore, and mistris Modesty the house. I knockt

so softly at the gates, as if they had bene my graundfathers soule, then comes mistris Antigone [Aurelia’s confidante] with her whispering who 1s there. I tould her who, and with what arraunde. Assoone as shée had certified hir mistris, she toulde me her mistris woulde haue you come, and in stead of gréene rushes, she would prouide a banquet made of thrée lettis (Letters I would

saye), w, e, Il, which meant by my construction, that you shoulde be wellcome (p. 45).

The pun on /ettuce: letters may speare’s time it would surely a reconciliation between the judgment is that both are to night doing penance between Aurelia exclaims:

not be very clever, but in Shakepass. This same Parmenio effects lovers after a minor quarrel. His blame and they should spend the sheets. The shamelessly delighted

O God, O God, O Parmenio, thou doest me so much good I can not abide thée. Alas said he, I hurt you God thanke me, but when coltes crye wyhye, they are commonlye lustye. I will not kicke quoth Aurelia, least I seme to be gauled, but thou art too hasty for a parish priest, that consummates a mariage,

before the banes be asked, and brings vs to bed, before we be married (p. 48).

Although it has been demonstrated that Melbranche plagiarized whole paragraphs, even pages, from other works to adorn his own, the result is at least unusually vivacious.”® Melbancke’s lively and fickle Aurelia is akin to other negative heroines of the euphuistic school. They are used,:as Lyly had used Lucilla, to exemplify what a lady should not be. Similarly John

Dickenson,

following

both

Lyly

and

Greene,

set forth

in rhetorical narrative the warning tale of Valeria of London, the flighty wife of an elderly husband, who caused the death of both father and spouse but was properly paid off by the riotous gallant she wedded in second marriage. The only original trait 28 On these borrowings, which are very numerous, see Hyder E. Rollins,

“Notes on the Sources of Melbancke’s Philotimus,’ Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, XVIII (1935), 177-98 and also ibid., XIX

(1937), 220-29.

190

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

about this piece of euphuistic didacticism™ is the extreme punishment visited on the wayward heroine, who sinks into destitution and beggary after her second husband dies in prison. Dickenson

was also the author of a miniature romance combining pastoral with adventure in the Hellenic manner: Arisbas, subtitled Euphues amidst his Slumbers.*! The ingredients are the usual ones. A minor

character named Hyalus, introduced in a tale recounted by the shepherd Damon, attracts attention chiefly because he suggests a literary analogue with Shakespeare. He is represented as that fabulous type of classical male beauty who arouses love in representatives of both sexes. The passage about the goddess Pomona’s wooing of Hyalus and his obstinate resistance to her . inevitably suggests comparison with Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Among Lyly’s followers Robert Greene was certainly the most famous, and also the most prolific. Accounts of his non-dramatic work have been given many times, and it will be sufficient here to touch upon the main romances significant for the development of English fiction. The euphuistic romances include some that were clearly put together in a most perfunctory way. In Mamillia (published 1583)? the heroine is approached, like so many others, by two rival wooers. One of them is a model of constancy, while the other shifts back and forth between Mamillia and her cousin Publia. Surprisingly enough, it is the fickle one who, duly reformed,

wins the heroine

in the end. The

model

lover

is simply forgotten, while Publia obligingly withdraws from the contest and joins the Vestal Virgins: Although Mamillia makes a somewhat garbled reference to the main characters of the Aethiopica — “be thou but Theagines, and I will try my selfe to be more 8° Greene in Conceipt: New Raised from his graue to write the Tragique Historie of faire Valeria of London (1598), edited by A.B. Grosart in John Dickenson’s Prose and Verse (London, 1878), pp. 93 ff. 31 Arisbas (London: Thomas Creede, 1594) is reproduced by Grosart, op. cit., pp. 33-90.

32 Robert Greene, Life and Complete Works, ed. A.B. Grosart (London:

Huth Library, 1881-83). References are to the volumes of this edition. Mamillia is to be found in Vol. II:

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Euphuistic Type

19]

constant than Caniclea [sic]” (II, p. 67)—Greene’s plotting is not here influenced by that of Heliodorus. Slightly more complicated is the fable of Greene’s Arbasto, in which the hero loves one of two sisters (daughters of an hered-

itary foe). The

one he favours

is at first unresponsive, while

the other sister, who loves him in vain, manages to liberate him from prison and thus (like many a Saracen heroine in the medieval

chansons de geste) to win from him a promise of marriage. Obviously tiring of his plot, Greene suddenly cooks up a conspiracy which opportunely dethrones Arbasto and causes his retirement, thus fully releasing him from his amorous dilemma. Still more complicated, in a manner now approaching the Greek, is the plot of Greenes Carde of Fancie (1587?). Two rulers have a son and daughter each; though the parents are on hostile terms

their progeny form a quadrilateral relationship such that each youth falls in love with the heiress of the opposing house, and vice versa. To add further to the complications, one of the girls has a rival wooer who threatens to cause trouble, and one of the youths is a prodigal who needs to be reformed by love. He is so reformed, of course, and all ends happily. Greene’s Pandosto (1588), renowned because of Shakespeare’s use of it in A Winter’s Tale, is noteworthy for its combination of a quite charming pastoral sequence with traditional romantic threads including an exposed child and a family reunion. A new complication threatens to arise towards the ‘end when the heroine’s father, not knowing who she is, manifests an incipient (necessarily incestuous) passion for her, but fortunately true relationships are tevealed in time to prevent disaster. Much closer to arcadian plotting is the intrigue in Menaphon (1589). Here the threat of possible incestuous unions is doubled. The action begins in the middle with a shipwreck, as in Sidney's work, and it includes the associated machinery of piracy and an ambiguous oracle to effect the scattering of a family. Focus of all the ramified relationships is the Princess Sephestia, living

a bucolic life disguised as a shepherdess. She is beloved by a brace of real shepherds, also by a neighbour who is actually her lost

192

vi. Courtly Romance,

husband (for each had credibly, had recognized in due time by her own she had been separated

Elizabethan

Style

thought the other dead and neither, inhis mate in the new environment), and son and her father, from both of whom for a full generation. Sephestia sits thus

in the geometrical centre of a whole spider’s web of complications. She knows more of the familial relationships than she reveals. She keeps silence, even when in danger of her life, until she is sure

that the oracle’s sinister prophecy has been fulfilled and she may speak with impunity. Revelation of her identity means disappointment for a whole cluster of admirers, but most of the frustrated parties are married off to minor characters and the ending is somehow made felicitous. There is more than a little prurient sensationalism in Greene’s exploitation of classical themes, and the same taste is appealed to in some of his shorter tales featuring Ovidian horrors.** Greene was in fact remarkable for his willingness to combine the most varied materials in the making of quasi-classical plots. In Perimedes the Blacke-Smith (1588) he recounts among others two stories patched together from elements of the perennially popular Apollonius of Tyre and its derivatives in romances of Accused Queens and hagiography. To these he has added details drawn afresh from Greek sources (personal and geographical names and the like). The formulas were well known in-the Middle Ages, but in accordance with the taste of the time they are here revarnished in a new style pretending to make them Hellenic.** In Tullies %3 Planetomachia (1585) contains two framed tales of the sort. In the one told by Venus, the fathers of a young couple are bitter enemies. One of the parents causes the murder of the other, together with his son-in-law; the

bereaved daughter thereupon kills her father and herself. In Saturn’s tale, a lascivious stepmother seduces her stepson; the wronged husband then kills the two lovers and himself. Theseus, Hippolitus and Phaedra are just around the corner. Similar materials, pretending to be classical, appear in Greene’s Euphues his Censure to Philautus (1587). The style points to very hasty composition. ** In the story of Mariana of Tyre the heroine’s husband is supposedly killed when enemies take her native city and her two sons are carried off by pirates. She endures the usual sufferings of an exile and enjoys the usual

The Neo-Hellenic

Love

(1589) the classical

Romances:

Roman

Euphuistic Type

193

names and oratorical

forms

are combined with a typical Renaissance situation of courtly love conflicting with the claims of friendship. Very exalted sentiments are expressed, of course, and in the end presumably happy marriages are provided for both Tully (Cicero) and his friend Lentulus. Both here and in his Philomela Greene was inspired by motifs found in Boccaccio. His Never too Late (1590), with its second part called Francesco’s Fortunes, is another farrago. of inherited motifs. It is-set in the

Britain of a fictitious King Palmerin and recounts the elopement of a pair of lovers, their impoverishment and other trials, the young husband’s temporary infidelity, and their final reconciliation. The form is first-person narrative by the husband, placed in a most

improbable

frame,

for the author

pretends

that he met

Francesco in Italy, attired as a pilgrim and discoursing fluently to himself as he sits by the wayside. The monologue is continued for the author’s benefit. What is interesting about this romance is the introduction of some few elements related to contemporary real life. Two female characters, though obviously of purely literary descent, are delineated with fresh touches perhaps due to Greene’s own experiences and observations. They are the mercenary old woman, a typical bawd such as we have met before, and the courtesan Infida who lures Francesco away from his wife and then cynically rejects him when he has spent all his cash on her. Later when he recoups his fortunes by writing plays for some actors she tries to lure him back again. Even more interesting are the contemporary details connected with the lovers’ elopement. The heroine Isabel is the daughter of an English country gentleman who rouses his tenants and calls happiness of a family reunion. The story of Constance reveals kinship with Chaucer’s Man of Law's Tale not only in the name of the heroine but also in her adventures: exile, drifting in a boat at sea, harborage in a Christian home among non-believers (here, Saracens), employment in a humble capacity to earn her living, rediscovery of her betrothed and marriage to him. Chaucer’s

Constance was already a wife and had a child when she went into exile; this is the chief difference between the circumstances of the two heroines.

194

vi. Courtly*’Romance, Elizabethan Style

on. the town mayor to help him in the pursuit; but the mayor

actually comes to their aid and makes it possible for them to begin to earn their living: the husband by teaching, the wife by sewing. In an earlier shorter tale contained in Penelope’s Web (1587) Greene had similarly taken pains to realize very English people and conditions against an exotic background: in this case, the Ithaca of Greek Odysseus. The heroine of the inset story is wife to a poor tenant farmer in copyhold; their landlord tries in vain to seduce her and then brings economic pressure to bear: therefore seeing her husband had no lease of his house, but was a Tenant at wil, he commaunded his Steward, whom he made priuie to his practise, to giue him warning: but with this prouiso, that if his wife were found tractable, ‘then he should remayne there still (V, p. 211).

The tenant farmer is obliged to become a collier; the wife escapes from

the lustful landlord, disguises as a youth, and joins her

husband motifs

(of all places) as a fellow-worker at the coal-pit. The of virtue

in distress, of flight and

transvestite

disguise

are as banal as the language is often artificial, but Greene envisions his heroine in reduced circumstances as none of his others are shown. She steps forth “whistling with her cart” and “hauing her lether Coate

all dustie, and her sweete

face al besmeared

with coales” (V, p. 215 f.), thus increasing the effectiveness of her disguise and at the same time placing herself in a category quite apart from the arcadian and euphuistic nymphs with their unvarying complexions of lily and rose. Greene had it in him, in fact, to make brilliant literary use of aspects of contemporary life directly known to him. The conny-catching pamphlets had already testified to this. In his last year (1591) he published anonymously his famous Greene's Groats-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance, a piece of fiction which towards the end breaks down into genuine autobiography. The style is non-euphuistic. There is a vivid picture of old Gorinius

the usurer,

Roberto’s

father: thanks

to his ill-

gotten wealth Gorinius is a parish dignitary and he sits “as formally in his fox-furred gown, as if he had been a very upright dealing

The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Euphuistic Type

195

burgess,” full of religion and wise maxims. But his religion, says Greene, is self-love. Before his death he calls his sons before him and makes a speech which throws considerable light on the changing class relationships.in Tudor England. what is gentry [he asks], if welth be wanting, but bace seruile beggerie? Some comfort yet it is vnto me, to thinke how many Gallants, sprunge of noble parents, haue croucht to Gorinius, to haue sight of his gold: O gold, desired gold, admired gold?™*

Gorinius concludes that “to be rich, is to be anything, wise, honest,

worshipful, or what not?” His advice to his sons is correspondingly cynical. It brings us close to the astringent satire of Ben Jonson in Volpone, itself a combination of traditional Roman satire and Elizabethan reality. The adventures of the two brothers

on the nether levels of society are delineated in: the same manner. Especially towards: the end it becomes clear that Greene has been drawing on his own experiences for certain of his incidents. These passages are of a quality to make us regret that he did not more often abandon the realm of arcadian personages and make use of those he knew so well in the world about him. The nadir of the euphuistic school when divorced from any such contact with reality is to be found in one of its last representative texts, namely the Fantiro and Penillo of Nicholas Breton.* It is worthless as literature, but it can serve the historian as a culminat-

ing horrendous example of the vogue. Each of the heroes is received at the other’s home court in disguise, the one being shipwrecked and the other in flight from attempted assassination by an ambitious uncle. Each falls in love with the other’s sister, although the parents are at feud over the matter of an unpaid debt. Despite

this and other divisive factors, the proper marriages occur and all ends well. Imitation of that hoary adventurer Apollonius of Tyre is perceptible here, whether directly or indirectly, and there 35 Greene’s Groats-worth

of Wit (London: William Wright, 1592), B 2°.

%6 Nicholas Breton, The Historie of two Princes, Fantiro and Penillo (London: P. Short for Nicholas Ling, 1600); reprinted in Breton’s Works in Verse and Prose, ed. A.B. Grosart (Edinburgh University Press, 1879), where the text is separately paginated.

196

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

are also resemblances (probably accidental) to the medieval Tristan romance.*’ But Breton’s plotting is careless in the extreme. He changes the name of one of his heroines from Senilla to Bilanta in mid-course, and then later begins to call the second one, Merilla,

by the rejected name of the first. He zigzags back and forth between the adventures of two heroes very mechanically, and devotes but a single perfunctory paragraph to a summary of events which would normally require pages of narrative. The style, which haphazardly overlays ill-organized sentences with moth-eaten ‘Lylyan decorations, also attests to hasty composition. Fantiro and Penillo exhibits in short all the worst defects of the euphusiticHellenistic school without any of the redeeming traits of satire. narrative skill and charm which Greene had displayed at his best.** 5. EupHuismM

Pius SATIRE:

LODGE

AND

CHETTLE

Two other writers of the period, Thomas Lodge and Henry Chettle, deserve separate attention because they, like Greene at his best, alternated euphuistic mannerism

with a certain kind

37 When Fantiro turns up at the court of his father’s enemy he assumes a false name by changing the order of letters in his own. He thus becomes Rantifo, somewhat as Tristan passed himself off as Tantris in Ireland. Fantiro is then dispatched by his host to collect the debt owed by the other duke, who is his own father. This faintly suggests the debt of tribute owed by King Mark to the King of Ireland, which Morholt tries to collect. 38 Here is one of the ill-constructed sentences by way of illustration. It tells about Fantiro newly arrived on the island of his father’s foe: “Now being come.to the Court, and there well entertained by some not of the meanest sort, with whom he had to deale with in his businesse, crossing the Court, there happened a Noble man of the Duke’s chamber, to cast his eie vpon this young Prince, the Merchante’s imagined prentise, whome calling to him, after a fewe wordes had with him, affecting verie much both his person and spirit, made such meanes to the Merchant, that for a small samme of crownes, with promise

of a greater friendship, he obtained him at his handes, and entertaining for his page, and finding in him such fine qualities, as did much deserue the encrease of his good liking of him, he helde him in such account, as was not commonlie seene nor by him expected. vpon so little knowledge.” p. 9. The shift of point of view from Fantiro (the first he) to the nobleman who takes an interest in him at the foreign court leads to great uncertainty as to grammatical relations between

pronouns

and antecedents.

Euphuism Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle

197

of social satire. Significantly enough, both of them were concerned. like Greene in his last work, with the problem of usury. It was in fact a very serious problem in the period of mercantile capitalism, and an awareness of the ruthless practices of money-lenders at the time will help a modern student to understand the grim resentment directed against Shakespeare's Shylock. Lodge’s contribution to the literature of the subject is his early work An Alarum against Vsurers (1584).** By means of typical charac-

ters—a youth Nard up for cash, a broker who entices him into dealings with a usurer and also eggs him on to spend extravagantly, a rapacious courtesan who contributes to his downfall— Lodge preaches a sermon on the subject of financial connycatching. It is only slightly disguised as a story. The featureless hero ends by becoming an instrument in the usurer’s hands: just another broker used to lure further victims to ruin. Lodge expresses himself in a vigorous idiom akin to the language of the jest books. He calls the hero “my youth,” he slips readily into the historical present tense, he picks up and incorporates phrases of brokers’ cant, he makes the broker speak with natural persuasiveness when he is urging the youth to buy a new suit: What saith he? my young master, what make you with this olde Satten doublet? it is soilde, it is vnfit for a Gentlemans wearing, apparell your selfe as you shoulde bée, and ere fewe dayes passe, I will acquaint you with as braue a dame a friend of mine, as euer you knew. Oh how swéete a face hath she, and thus dilating it with rethoricall praises (fol. 3°)

—the broker ensnares his victim. “Rethoricall” technique is here, but it is not of the euphuistic stripe. For Lodge’s chief experiment in the more artificial mode ~ we must turn to his Rosalynde (1590). justly famous because it furnished most of the materials for Shakespeare’s As You Like It. 3° Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society (1853). Quotations are taken from the original edition of 1584. In connection with Lodge’s Alarum and other tales dealing with this urgent economic problem it is instructive to read Thomas Wilson’s A Discourse upon Usury, presented in the form of a dialogue, which has been edited with a long introduction by R. H. Tawney (London, 1925).

198

vi. Courtly Romance,

Elizabethan Style

Published (with the subtitle Euphues Golden Legacie) in the same year as Sidney’s revised fragmentary Arcadia, it has similar pastoral elements which may be due to a common acquaintance with Montemayor’s Diana.*® There is also a debt to the Middle English Tale of Gamelyn, formerly attributed to Chaucer, which means that a family quarrel among members of the landed nobility motivates the exiles and disguises carried out in a rural setting. The language is extravagantly Lylyan. The charm, such as it is, lies in the very perfection of the artifices employed. In Lodge’s The Margarite of America *! (1596; so called because the text purports to be translated from a Spanish original found in the New World) we are again confronted with a complex intrigue, political, invidious and amorous. The pastoral strain is minimal and is besides forcibly introduced. On the other hand war and cruel violence play a greater part than in any other of the pseudo-Hellenic romances. Hating is stressed much more than loving. Arsadachus Prince of Cusco is betrothed to Princess Margarita of Musco or Muscovy, partly to patch up an ancient feud and partly because Margarita actually loves him. But Arsadachus turns out to be an unmitigated villain. At first he lusts after Philenia, Margarita’s companion, and his intrigue to gain forcible possession of her results in the death of herself and her bridegroom on their wedding day. Frustrated here, Arsadachus eliminates by murder the accomplices who had aided him in this plot, and transfers his sinister attentions to Diana of Moravia. This annoys our hero’s father for political reasons, so he promptly

if rather illogically has Diana’s father killed by having him torn to pieces by wild horses. Margarita’s father is also annoyed, so he kills Diana with a carving knife. Arsadachus dethrones his own father, being annoyed by a long parental speech of reproof, and submits the old king to torture and mutilation. When Mar*° There are several modern editions of Lodge’s Rosalynde. The one followed here is that by W. W. Greg (London, 1931). Lodge’s complete works were edited by.Sir Edmund Gosse in four volumes (Hunterian Club, 1883). “1 Edited by James O. Halliwell (London, 1859) from the print of 1596; also in the Gosse edition of Lodge’s works, III (1883).

Euphuism Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle

199

garita and Philenia’s father Arsinous confront him and denounce

him for his crimes, Arsadachus turns upon her and “drawing a rapier out of the sheath of one of those who ministered fast by him, he ranne Margarita quite thorow the body” (p. 130). All that would seem to be left is for someone to run a rapier through him too. But we have reckoned without the power of thetoric, at least in these romances. Arsinous, father of the late victim Philenia, addresses a speech of vituperatio to Arsadachus,

denouncing him for his bloody deeds. What conscience could not, oratory at last accomplishes. Arsadachus is inspired to make

a long speech in reply: True it is that Plutarch about the floore among that weapon wherewith

“he brake out into these bitter words.... saith...” (p. 134) and then “he grapled the dead bodies, and at last he griped he slew Margarita, wherewith piercing his hated bodie he breathed his last.” And high time, too. This monstrous product is interesting to us chiefly as testimony to a prevalent sensationalism in literary taste which found much more impressive expression in the drama of the time.*? Thomas Lodge also wrote a couple of pseudo-historical romances: Robert Duke of Normandy (1591) and William Longbeard (1593). They are of minor importance. The former is based on the medieval legend about Robert the Devil already adapted into English with stark effectiveness by Wynkyn de Worde (see ch. 4, sec. 2). Lodge has reduced: the significance of his hero’s 42 Reluctantly but with emphasis I must record my dissent from the favourable estimate of this work given by C. S. Lewis in his English Literature of the Sixteenth Century, p. 424 f. He finds it “if not realistic, at least real,”’ and he sees originality where I can see only convention thrice shop-worn. Lodge even imitates himself: when Margarita, disguised as a man, departs from her father’s court with her faithful maid Fawnia (a name probably borrowed from Greene’s Pandosto), she is acting like Rosalynde accompanied by AlindaAliena; when Fawnia is suddenly set upon by a lion and killed off (for no good reason), she is subjected to the same melodramatic peril as Saladyne in Rosalynde—only, with less happy result. Certainly neither qualities of originality nor of subtle imagination are here in sufficient evidence to justify the surmise that Lodge could not have written The Margarite without dependence on a Spanish original.

©

.200

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

plight by depriving him of diabolical parentage. All that is said in comment upon Robert’s unbridled violence is that “it was by some supposed that his mother at such time as he was begotten [by his human father] was inchaunted.” Repentance and reform occur suddenly, for no explicit reason. The language is inflated in the extreme; only occasionally, as in the hermit’s adjurations to Robert and the hero’s allegorical adventures following upon his repentance, does Lodge achieve certain kind of eloquence.** William Longbeard is a pedestrian pseudo-historical romance of a type that appealed to middle-class readers at this time. (See ch. 7, sec. 5.) Uniquely interesting is the attempt by Henry Chettle to interweave pastoral motifs with acrid satire. Usury and other economic relations loom large; also political intrigue, envisioned to be sure in terms of classical Greek society, but at the same time valid far beyond ancient times. A modish dash of threatened incest is added in a subplot of the pastoral section. The expositional form is a first-person autobiographical narrative by Piers Plainnes,** a “satirical” and bitter shepherd of Thessaly. He appears in a typically abrupt beginning, by now a recognized convention, as companion of familiar pastoral characters named Corydon and Menelaos. But Piers is, contrary to precedent, no prince or nobleman in disguise. He is a poor man, and has spent seven years of his life in servitude to a succession of masters. * A curious echo of Greek romance is to be heard in this adapted medieval legend. A Soldan who is attacking Rome thus defends his love for its heiress: “Princes woonder not, THEAGENES a Greeke, loued CARICLIA a Moore, & your Souldan a Mahometist, EMINE a Christain,” G 4¥. ** H.C. fi.e., Henry Chettle], Piers Plainnes seauen yeares Prentiship (London: JI. Danter for Thomas Gosson, 1595). Note that Chettle forgets the autobiographical form on one occasion and lapses into the third person: “Piers poasted to the Poticaries,” we are told, but later on the same page Chettle writes “and by then I returned.” G 1°. Chettle’s composite tale is connected

by title and schematic material with Thomas

Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse His

Supplication to the Divell (1592). This was a satire in the vein of medieval allegory, with usury figuring prominently among the vices attacked. There is a vivid description of a typical usurer portrayed as a character widely recognized and widely disliked.

Euphuism

The

first was

Plus Satire:

Thrassalio

Lodge and Chettle

a boasting

liar, coward

201

and

miser:

the second was Flavius, a rich man eventually ruined by a broker and a bailiff urging him to extravagant expenditures. After Flavius’ bankruptcy Piers has also worked as bookkeeper for a broker, in a job which affords him intimate knowledge of financial swin-

dlers and their practices. When his master is imprisoned for perjury, Piers is next transferred to the usurer Ulpian, who has been employing his daughter Ursula as a lure for young spendthrifts. She is willing enough

to play the common

courtesan

to this end,

like Infida in Greene’s Never too Late or the young woman

in

Lodge’s Alarum for Usurers, but whippings and- malnutrition drive her to revolt against her miserly parent, with the help and

support of Piers. After new Petrusio

service under the corrupt bailiff

(the one who had ruined Flavius), and involvement in

Thracian political affairs, Piers finds himself shipwrecked in Crete, and thereafter plunged into the midst of the Hellenic romantic plot which has been mechanically interwoven with the satirical one throughout the narrative. At several points Piers has most implausibly been represented as reproducing verbatim conversations which he could not possibly have overheard or even known about. This is a literary penalty paid by Chettle for trying to present a multi-layered Hellenic plot in the form of autobiography. In neither of the two main interwoven plots are the characters more than shadowy conventions. The satirical one uses figures and situations which are clearly indebted to Latin comedy and satire. Thrasilio owes much to literary figures like the miles gloriosus and the jesting parasite; in fact he is called “as smooth a tongued Gentleman,

as euer Terences Gnatho

was a parasite”

(B 4°). Nevertheless a wealth of contemporary detail is lavished on the separate incidents, transmuting their time into the Elizabethan. When the bailiff and his broker-confederate are scheming for the financial ruin of Flavius, Piers tells us the precise sums of

money involved and how they were invested and spent. Flavius is an absentee landlord, a “non-resident on his lands, and a remainer at court.” His bailiff proceeds to put pressure on the tenants:

202

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

(He] courted it so long, and sparde it so fast, that the tenaunts, woont to be forborne sometime a whole yere, now were the[y] forst to pay their yeres rent aforehand. Well, how euer they sighed to part with it and swet to get it, my master and his merie companions swild it in and swore it out, til the cat able to yéeld no more than her skin, we were faine to follow a new course

(D 3"). Here is no Roman situation, but one specifically English. So too are the types of gilded youth, fresh from the university, who are ruined by persuasive agents of the brokers.4® Unmistakably Tudor is the punishment visited upon the usurer Ulpian and his partner when they are caught through a plot hatched by their debtors: ...the innocent were releast, the periurde Broker and his forsworne companions promoted to the pillorie, their eares pared off, their heads crowned with paper, condemned besides to restitution and imprisonment, their goods solde at open outcrie before all the people that openly cried out against their bad life and diuelish practises (E 2°).

Like 16th-century England, fictitious Thrace also had severe punishments for the “clipping” of gold coins. It is for this crime that Ulpian is arrested, having been denounced by his vengeful daughter, and he dies cursing her on the scaffold. She for her part does not profit from her betrayal of him, for the estate is confiscated and she dies scorned and miserable. Very revealing are the activities of the corrupt bailiff Petrusio when he gets himself put in charge of “customage,” or as we should say, customs control, replacing his master Flavius. He is supposed “to see to [ie., watch out for] the transporting of forbidden commodities” (D 4"). How he took advantage of his situation is precisely recorded: Corne, leather, mettall, nay forbidden commodities, might passe if he were paid, spices were vngarbled, letters close packed, fugitives, outlawes, any thing, powder, ordinance, artillery, so they paide him priuy customs (G 4”). «°“TLackt ye a smooth tungd hypocrite to intrap ‘young Gentlemen newly come from the Uniuersitie? Hee [i.e., the broker] was for ye. Hee had a swarme of slye companions, that shuld haue been attyred secundum formam, and not a word out of their mouths but pure Priscian,” (E 1% — 2°).

Euphuism

Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle

203

It is to be remembered that in the period of mercantile capitalism duties were imposed on various articles being exported from the country, including foodstuffs and raw materials. Our customs officer connives at and profits from the untaxed export of “vittels” on outward bound vessels, under the pretext that they represent food for the voyage: “three times more than due proportion hee let passe, vnder colour to serue the voyage” (H 1°), but only if he were properly paid off. It is the effort to transport a political fugitive in the same illegal manner which here ties up the satirical plot with the romantic one. The political intrigue also has a certain interest, though less striking than that connected with the economics of Piers’s various experiences. There is a successful plot to dethrone King Hylenus of Thrace and replace him with the less worthy of his two sons, an instrument in the hands of the ambitious Celidon, who succeeds in making himself regent. There may be analogies to Tudor court intrigue, but the mechanisms are imitated from classical literature. As regent for Prince Celinus, Celidon makes a speech (indirectly reported) in which he demagogically wins over the mass of the people by relaxing strict old laws and permitting license (D 2°). When he usurps complete power he makes another speech hypocritically justifying his act, condemning Prince Celinus as a tyrant (this is an ancient rhetorical cliché) and disavowing any part in the dethronement of the old king. The “Senate” is won over by the speech, but only temporarily. Celidon is later attacked by an orator, the city magistrates turn against him, and he dies in a civil skirmish (H 2"). There is an affinity

here to Plutarch and to the political themes in Sidney’s Arcadia. Just as Chettle alternates his contrasted themes, the romanticpastoral versus the satirical, so he alternates two styles of discourse in no less incisive contrast. In developing the plot of Hellenic romance he is sublimely indifferent to probability, whether in causation or stage settings. Queen Aeliana of Crete, a huntress incestuously desired by her own uncle, is pursued by him in the depths of a wild forest, and there beside a sylvan brook most incongruously provided with marble seats he tries to carry out

204

vi. Courtly Romance, Elizabethan Style

his nefarious designs upon her. Any reader acquainted with the genre will be assured in advance that the lady must surely escape unscathed, and so she does. She is duly rescued by one of the two princes of Thrace (the virtuous one, of course). In such romantic sequences Chettle employs a very rhythmical prose style. markedly iambic, with the expected embellishments of word-play. alliteration and other sound patterns. Here are some examples: for neuer shall Prince of Thrace of his birth-right be dispossest, while Celidon hath power to lift a sword (B 4°; Celidon himself speaking). Aeliana

{was] with striuing breathles, with weeping sightles, with crying voyceles, and sorowe senseles (D 2°). ...that is the period indeed of my lament. More haplesse is this life to me than ani death can be. Curst be those lawes that binde men from that which Nature denyeth not to beasts (F 3°; the incestuous villain Rhegius speaking).

Such artificialities are not entirely unknown in the satirical sections, but in them the language is prevailingly vigorous, racy, and even at times colloquial. Indebtedness to the style of the jest books and the conny-catching pamphlets is clear. The corrupt brokers’ confederate is called “Our honest Bailie”, illustrating at once the colloquial possessive pronoun and the ironical epithet often found in popular anecdotes and fabliaux. Adjectives and nouns are generally far more concrete than in the romantic section: the bailiff*s half-brother is a “pretie pale faced squire” who had set up a shop in the suburbs, consisting “of olde shooes, stockings and swords,” estimated to be worth no more than precisely six shillings and eight pence (D 3‘). The money-léender is “a man of meane stature, with a sulphurous face richly beset, his eyes sanguine, his breath strong, his gate stately: for he would scarcely haue gone his owne length in an hower he was so well timbred beneath” (ibid.). Details like these stand out with bizarre effect when compared with the trite descriptions in the arcadian sections. Thus in style as well as content the two strands of Chettle’s opus remain irreconcilable. There is no question as to which of them appeals the more to modern taste. That Chettle must have been aware of the discrepancy in his materials is evident in the awkwardness

Euphuism Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle

205

of his transitions. The omniscient narrator Piers breaks off his

report of events and conversations unwitnessed by him, and picks it up again with phrases like: “We left Aemilius landed at Hydrutum” (D 1*) or “I remember wee left Aeliana rescude from the savage” (E 3°). The listening shepherds sometimes prod Piers to remembrance of his themes, and he admits that he needs the reminders as he shuttles back and forth between Crete and Thrace, always leaving one or another of his characters in a perilous situation. One shepherd in fact undertakes to keep track of the doings in the former kingdom while the other watches over those in the latter so that no thread will be lost. The defects in this sort of fabulation spring to the eye. Yet the achievement in Chettle’s satirical sections quite overshadows the laughably conventional remainder. That achievement, if it could be taken alone, would place him in an honoured place among the innovators to be considered in the next chapter.

CHAPTER

TOWARDS

THE FORMS

VII

OF MODERN

FICTION

1. THE IMPACT OF THE SPANISH PICARESQUE

Into the hot-house atmosphere of artificial Hellenistic narrative, as represented by the schools of Lyly and Sidney, there blew a fresh wind of influence emanating from Spain in the 1570’s. Its prime source was the anonymous classic Lazarillo de Tormes, a vigorous adventure story written in autobiographical form (first printed in 1544), which was translated into English by David Rouland of Anglesey and published several times beginning in 1576.1 Lazarillo is in many ways the direct antithesis of the Hellenistic romances just surveyed. Using the simple autobiographical form, it necessarily follows a linear development. The only unity is that supplied by the person of the fictional narrator. The author in fact disavows all complicated structures when he announces in the Prologue: “I haue thought good not to begin [in] the midst of my life, but first to tel you of my birth, that al men may haue ful knowledge of my person” (close to the Spanish). Since Lazarillo leads the life of a vagabond, not even once returning to visit his widowed mother, the plot is innocent of any complications. Largely made up as it is out of elaborated tricks and deceptions, it evinces a clear kinship with the enchained jests 1 The Spanish original has been edited with introduction by H. J. Chaytor (Manchester University Press, 2nd ed., 1951). Rouland’s Pleasaunt Histoirie Of Lazarillo de Tormes was apparently not the first version. Ursula Habel refers to a lost earlier one, The Marvelus Dedes and Lyf of Lazaro de Tormes

(1568), in her dissertation Die Nachwirkung des pikaresken Romans in England (Breslau, 1930), p. 15. Quotations are here taken from Chaytor’s edition of the Spanish and from Rouland’s Pleasaunt Historie (2nd ed., London: Abel

Ieffes, 1586). Chaytor’s text

is based

on

1544) supplemented by the second, expanded latter has been used here for comparison.

the

one

first edition

(Alcalé,

(Burgos,

1544).

The

The Impact of Spanish Picaresque

207

attributed to popular figures like Tyll Owlglass and the Pastor of Kalenborow.? But Lazarillo is a literary piece conceived and executed on a much higher plane than were these popular precursors. It differs from them qualitatively because it is more coherent and purposeful, for all its simplicity of structure, and because it achieves much greater substance through its use of concretized incident and milieu, dialogue, and delineation of

character. Moreover, it is far more deeply rooted in the specific conditions of its homeland than were the German or English or Netherlandish jest books with which it has been compared. Although Lazarillo makes use of some materials preserved in internationally

current

exempla

and novelle,?> as a whole

it is

profoundly and essentially Spanish. One needs to understand the social background of 16th-century Spain in order to appreciate the pungency of its satirical realism. As hero—or better still, as anti-hero—Lazarillo belongs to the social group known in Spanish as picaros, meaning light-hearted vagabonds of easy conscience, not necessarily sinister in character. Hence the term picaresque applied to Lazarillo and imitations of it in various languages.* Certainly every country of Europe at the time had its quota of uprooted folk, its beggars and vagabonds, not least of all England, but the conditions obtaining on the Iberian peninsula were a necessary soil for the growth of such a product as Lazarillo. Spain, as is well known, was suffering from the paradoxical curse of too many riches notoriously ill distributed and unproductively applied: from the burden of an exceptionally large number of parasitic 2 This literary kinship has been pointed out by Frank Wadleigh Chandler in his two studies of the type: Romances of Roguery (1899) and The Literature of Roguery (1907). Chandler defines the type as “the comic biography (or more often autobiography) of an anti-hero who makes his way in the world through the service of masters, satirizing their trades and professions,” Literature, p. 5. The term “anti-hero” is important. 2 On these debts see the introduction and notes to the Chaytor edition, also Chandler, Romances, p. 201.

* Ursula Habel, op. cit., gives aclear account of the social origins of the type. As she points out, it was only after Lazarillo that heroes of picaresque tales became downright rogues and robbers, as exemplified by The English Rogue written by Richard Head and Francis Kirkman (1665-66).

208

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

members of society, clerical and aristocratic, living upon the toil of greatly impoverished peasants and craftsmen. Hunger and beggary existed side by side with a great contempt for manual labour in wide circles of the community. The expulsion of Moors and Jews from Spain late in the 15th century deprived the country of two important cultural communities which had not succumbed to the aristocratic contempt for socially productive work.® Only in the light of this prevailing attitude can one fully grasp the satirical portrait of the impoverished proud hidalgo whom Lazarillo serves as third master. Here as elsewhere literary conventions are perceptible, to be sure, but the constant emphasis on themes of hunger and miserliness springs from an effort to come to grips with a known environment of the day. Almost automatically that effort engendered a language and style directly opposite to that of the courtly prose romances: simple. racy. idiomatic rather than rhetorical and highly mannered. The English rendering of Lazarillo was well adapted to serve as a tonic influence, tending to counteract the extremes of fashionable euphuism and arcadianism. The rendering is usually accurate. though there are some mistakes, omissions, and seemingly needless amplifications.* Rouland’s translation permitted English readers 5 These pertinent sociological factors have been more than once stressed in connection with Lazarillo, notably by Chandler, Romances, ch. 1. * Some of the mistakes can be explained as printer's errors. For instance. the English says of Lazarillo’s mother, who washed shirts for a company of horse-keepers, “Thus she had accusation to make often resort vnto the stables,”’ A 5’. The original has simply: “de manera que fué frecuentando las caballerizas.” Very probably Rouland wrote “...had occasion to frequent,” and the printer misread it. In the same way Spanish phrases like “Beso las manos

de vuestra merced’’ may have been corrupted when imported into the English text, e.g., F 6%. The translator is sometimes, but not often, unduly influenced by Spanish grammatical usage, as when he more than once refers to a snake as she, following the gender of culebra and its pronominal substitute esta.

Occasionally there is downright misunderstanding of the original, as when Rouland writes: “he and his Sergeant wente to playe for theyr breakefast,” G 4", for “pusiéronse a jugar la colacién,” p. 40. Here Chaytor’s notes remind us that colacidn does not mean breakfast, but sweetmeats usually served after

supper.

The Impact of Spanish Picaresque

209

to view and enjoy a gallery of brilliantly executed genre portraits seen against backgrounds visualized in the manner of painting in the Low Countries rather than that of the Mediterranean area in the same epoch. The personages encountered by Lazarillo during his wanderings are basically general characters in the

Theophrastian sense: first of all representatives of a type, and only secondarily individuals. But what vivid characters they are nevertheless! The blind miser, the equally miserly priest, the proud starving nobleman, the rascally, very Chaucerian pardoner and others less elaborately sketched— all of them come to life thanks

to the author’s talent for observation and reportage. Unforgettable for instance is the episode of the bunch of overripe grapes which Lazarillo’s master was supposed to share with him, or the incident of the sausage which our hero .cadged from the same master, or the prolonged episode of the hoarded food which the miserly priest kept in a locked chest, vainly supposing it inaccessible to the resourceful Lazarillo. In all these episodes there is evident an abundant and joyous love for the earthy phenomena of daily life. A sausage roasts sizzling on a spit and is replaced by a bit of worm-eaten root, to the discomfiture of the blind beggar; a wandering tinker undertakes to open up the priest’s locked chest and appears to Lazarillo like an angelic visitant;’ the priest in due course notices that the duplicate key, concealed under Lazarillo’s tongue, causes him to emit a whistling noise at night while he sleeps; the starving hidalgo served by Lazarillo has a mania for cleanliness, especially for clean hands. This trait, which has both sociological and psychological meaning, appears in symbolic gestures. He carefully blows away the dust on a bench before sitting on it; though hungry he hesitates to partake of bread obtained for him before asking “was it moulded with 7 In the English: “the heauenly tinker began to assay, nowe one key, now another, of this great bunch,” C 7°; in the Spanish: “Comenzé a probar

el angelico calderero una y otra de un gran sartal que de ellas trafa,” p. 17. On this and other literary merits of Lazarillo see Norma Louise Hutman, “Universality and Unity in Lazarillo de Tormes,’ PMLA, LXXVI (1961), 469-73.

210

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

cleane hands.” His haughty punctilio in the midst of poverty is concretized in both speech and gesture: He began then with his hand to brushe away a fewe crummes, which had falne vpon his breast, & after that entred into a chamber that was there, and thence broughte forth an olde potte broken mouthed, & dranke wel, & then he offered me the potte. But I to seeme sober and modest, said sir 1 drinke no wine: it is water, said he, thou maist well drinke of it (E 2%).

Lazarillo himself is a character out of the ordinary, much more human than the jest-book heroes who had preceded him. He is first of all portrayed as a victim of early childhood circumstances and thus made comprehensible as Tyll and Skoggin and Skelton had never been. We learn about his father the miller (a cheater like Chaucer’s Miller) who was killed in war with the Turks; about his widowed mother who while trying to make a living by hard work as a laundress took up with a Moorish horseman and bore a child by him; about the home conditions which drove Lazarillo into vagabondage. All this attention to early environment is something new. New also, as compared with the jest books, is the use of sustained dialogue and single speeches. The most brilliant manifestation of this skill is to be found in the section where Lazarillo serves “an utterer of Pardons [buldero], the deceitfullest marchant and

most shameless, that euer I did see.” A quarrel breaks out between this rascal and his Sergeant, causing the latter to denounce his employer publicly, with abundant vituperation, for selling false pardons. The barbed speech is accompanied by appropriate gesture. for the Sergeant casts down his staff of office as a sign of rejection. “As for me,” he exclaims, “I will neither bee partaker with him, one way or other, therefore from this time foreward, I doe forsake the rodde of them [i.e., the pardons], which I nowe cast to the grounde.”® The Pardoner turns the tables on his accuser by enunciating from the pulpit a prayer which, together with expressions 8G 5’; close to the Spanish, which reads: “os declaro... que yo directe ni indirecte no soy parte en ellas [i.e., las bullas], y que desde ahora dejo la vara y doy con ella en el suelo,” p. 47.

The Impact of Spanish Picaresque

211

of high-minded forgiveness, calls upon God to perform a miracle

as vindication of the -bulls’ genuineness. And God obliges the petitioner—or seems to—by striking the Sergeant with a punitive epileptic fit, curable only by placing one of the maligned bulls upon the victim’s head. Meantime the Pardoner again prays “holding vp his handes, and his eies bent towards heauen, that one might see nothing of them buta little white” (G 8"). The Sergeant confesses himself in the wrong, and the people naturally make a rush to buy up the Pardoner’s remaining merchandise. Only later does Lazarillo (or the reader) ledrn from “the Jesting and scoffing that my master & the Sergeant would make at the matter by the waye” (H 1‘) that it was all a put-up job, well planned in’ advance by the two of them. The plot of this episode is not original,® but the treatment is alive: with its own ironic vigour far more racy than that to be found and is realized in a language even in the most successful of jests or novelle.

Finally a word should be said about the personality of the narrator. As he recounts his adventures Lazarillo reveals a distinc-

tive character of his own. Compared with him, Chettle’s Piers Plainnes remains but a shadow even when he too is recounting episodes of trickery and embezzlement. Lazarillo, for all his involvement in similar escapades, shows himself to be warm-hearted

as well as sharp-witted and very observant with eye and ear. Although harshly victimized by his first masters, he maintains a certain detachment from the corruption around him, and even a sweetness of disposition evinced in his devotion to the impecu-.. nious hidalgo. It is with a kind of protective love, he confesses,

that he steals food for this master as well as for himself. At the

same time he never lapses into sentimentality. He conveys the full absurdity of an aristocrat’s pride of class so jealously upheld under adverse circumstances, and at the end he lets the reader sense the irony of his protestations about the virtue of the wife he has received at the hands of the Archdeacon of San Salvador. * Chandler, Romance, p. 201, points to its source in Masuccio’s I! Novellino, Tale 4.

_

212

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

For all its loose construction, then, Lazarillo possesses the unity imparted by an autobiographical form consistently and most individually conceived. 2. SOME

ENGLISH

PICARESQUE

Before the turn of the century English literature produced two noteworthy examples of picaresque fiction: Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) and Nicholas Breton’s The Miseries of Mavillia (1599).1° Nashe’s story may have been influenced or at least inspired by Lazarillo, which was already available in English, but if so it is still a very independent contribution to the type. Jack Wilton, the hero-narrator, serves one master throughout, instead of a series of different ones. Yet his adventures are unusually variegated because they take place, like Tyll Owlglass’s and Faust’s, in several countries of the European continent. In this respect he differs from the usual picaresque hero. Moreover, Nashe has launched another innovation by placing the action of his story in an earlier period, namely the reign of Henry VIII, and introducing authentic historical personages among his actors. Thus he has crossed the picaresque type with the pseudo-historical novel which was coming into popularity among middle-class readers (see below, sec. 5). It is the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, whom Wilton serves on an educational grand tour of the continent. In Rotterdam they meet Erasmus and More; at Wittenberg they have a taste of Lutheran disputations; at the court of the Hapsburg emperor they watch Cornel1° The early decades of the 17th century brought in several translations of further

Spanish

picaresque

novels,

for instance

Gonzales

de Cespedes

y

Meneses’ El Espanol Gerardo, done into English by L.D. as Gerardo the Vnfortunate Spaniard (1622); Mateo

Aleman’s

Guzman

de Alfarache translated

by James Mabbe as The Rogue (1623); Carlos Garcia’s Desordenada Codicia de los Bienes Agenos done by W. M. as The Sonne of the Rogue (1638). Juan de Luna’s sequel to Lazarillo de Tormes was englished separately in 1622. The outstanding original English contribution to rogue literature is The English Rogue, referred to above in n. 4.

Some English Picaresque

213

ius Agrippa perform feats of magic.™ Their experiences recall the wanderings of Faust with Mephistopheles. But here they are recounted in the first person by the Earl’s attendant. Once again, as in Lazarillo, the autobiographical form served to heighten the effect of realism, even when the incidents were patently fictitious.'2 Nashe has often been praised for his satirical realism, and he deserves all credit for his accomplishments in this field. At the same time it must be recognized that he offers a bizarre combina-

tion of artificiality and naturalness which was by no means uncommon in the fiction of the time. Both his manner and his matter are heavily indebted to rhetorical precepts. There are long passages which read like exercises worked out according to the prescriptions of the handbooks. Nashe burlesques a formal oration in high style (stylus altus) when he puts one into the mouth of a bursten belly inkhorne orator called Vanderhulke, ... one that had a sulpherous big swolne large face, like a Saracen, eyes lyke two kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide every time he spake, as one of those old knit

trap doores, a beard as though it had ben made of a bird’s neast pluckt in peeces, which consisteth of strawe, haire, and durt mixt together (p. 49),

The prosopographia is full of exaggerated epithets and similes. It is followed by a turgid speech comically exemplifying many of the hoary tricks of the rhetoricians: paradox (“and yet it is, and yet it is not”), climax, parenthesis, anaphora, apostrophe, periodicity, alliteration, verbal repetition and inflectional rhyme 11 Agrippa is said to be able to make the heroes of ancient times reappear in an illusory magic show. For the edification of Sir Thomas More he had evoked “the whole destruction of Troy in a dreame.” See the edition of The

Unfortunate Traveller based on the 2nd issue of 1594 (London: Lehmann, 1948), p. 54. Agrippa also summons up the Nine Worthies for the diversion and edification of his audience. Such performances suggest not only the Faust story but also that of Maugis d’Aigremont. The French epic hero, transmuted into a magician in later prose redactions of his story, is credited

with similar powers. They are strikingly elaborated in the Icelandic Magus saga Jarls, ultimately derived from Maugis d’Aigremont. 12Arthur Jerrold Tieje, “A Peculiar Phase of the Theory of Realism in Pre-Richardsonian Fiction,” PMLA, XXVIII (1913), 213-52, has discussed the history of this device, mostly in relation to 17th-century fiction.

214

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

(similiter cadens). A typical sentence of such inflated discourse is this rhetorical question: “Why should I goe gadding and fisgigging after firking flantado amfibologies, wit is wit, and good will is good will” (p. 50).?% Nashe also incorporates a eulogy of Aretino which reads some-

what like burlesque—though it is difficult to say just what the author really thought when he put this tribute into Wilton’s mouth: “Princes hee [Aretino] spared not, that in the least point transgrest. His lyfe he contemned in comparison of the libertie of speech” (p. 65). A very clear example of artificial rhetoric, amounting (whether consciously or unconsciously) to most risible burlesque, is the inflated speech of a Roman matron who has been widowed during the plague. This lady, Wilton’s kindly hostess, has been attacked by ruffians and raped on the very corpse of her husband. Wilton is supposed to have been locked up in another toom of the house at the time, yet he is somehow able

to describe the outrage in detail and to report the widow’s lamen-

tations word for word. And what lamentations they are! The lady most improbably has recourse to rhetorical figures, classical allusions and Latin quotations in order to express her grief. She refers to Agamemnon and Aegisthus as precedents; she indulges in word-play and repetition.’* In the welter of oratorical display,

true realism has no chance of survival. Instead of natural talk we get speeches of exculpatio and suasoriae. Even when he is 18 It may be noted that Vanderhulke speaks of an oration “with his eight partes,” a reference not easy to explain. Both classical and medieval rhetoric (as transmitted by Alcuin in his Dialogus de Rhetorica) recognized six parts only: exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, reprehensio and conclusio. Was Nashe here augmenting satire by means of inaccuracy? 14 “My selfe doo but behold my selfe, and yet I blush,” she says, and “My distressed heart as the Hart when as he looseth hornes is astonied,” p. 90f. Like a schoolboy declaiming, she introduces her Latin tag in the midst of the torrent: “Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu,” ibid. On the combination of fantasy and artificially mannered style on the one hand with elements of strong realism on the other as a characteristic of much Renaissance literature see the article by R. Samarin, “K IIpo6meme Peanusma B 3aNagHo-esponeiickux JIlurepatrypax Snoxu Bospooxmenna” in ITpobsemu

Peaausma b Mupoboii JIumepamype (Moscow, 1959), pp. 369-99.

Some English Picaresque

215

clearly striving to create a life-like image by means of sensuous

impressions, Nashe often does so in a periodic sentence blooming with the “floures of rhetorique,” as here in the description of a dull army captain being flattered into a spying adventure which is to cost him his life: Oh my Auditors, had you seene him how he stretcht out his lims, scratcht his scabd elbowes at this speach, how hee set his cap over his ey-browes like a politician, and then folded his armes one in- another and nodded with the head, as who would say, let the French beware for they shall finde me a divell: if (I say) you had seene but halfe the action that he used, of shrucking up

his shoulders, smiling scornfully, playing with his fingers on his buttons, and biting the lip; you would have laught your face and your knees together (p. 24). ®

Yet with all the obtrusions of linguistic decoration, with all the burlesque and improbability and exaggeration, Nashe does create aEuropean panorama answering in some way to the realities of his age. The degradation caused by warfare, the clamour of religious disputations, the- nightmarish panic of the plague in Rome, are all brought into sharp focus by Jack Wilton’s descriptions. The account of the plague is especially effective. It belongs among classics of its kind like Boccaccio’s in the Prologue to the Decameron (by which it may have indeed been influenced) and Dekker’s pamphlets on the same subject!® and Defoe’s Journal. Nashe may have shaped his account in partial dependence on literary models and he certainly clothed it in some of the familiar tropes of rhetorical discourse, but those tropes as well as the selected details are striking beyond the ordinary. He speaks of the walls of people’s homes being furred as if by hoar-frost from the exhalations of their misery; he recalls the carters crying in the streets “Have you anie dead bodies to bury”; and he describes the approach of death in the following unconventional metaphor teinforced by anecdote: 15 Not long after Nashe, Thomas Dekker published his series of pamphlets on the plague in London, beginning with The Wonderful Yeare in 1603. They have been separately edited by F.P. Wilson (Oxford, 1925).

216

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

Even as before a gun is shot off, a stinking smoake funnels out, and prepares

the way for him, so before any gave up the ghost, death araid in a stinking smoak stopt his nostrels, and cramd it selfe ful into his mouth that closed up his fellows eyes, to give him warning to prepare for his funeral. Some dide [i.e., died] sitting at their meat, others as they were asking counsell of the phisition for theyr friends. I sawe at the house where I was hosted a maide bring her master warme broth to comfort him, and shee sinke downe dead her selfe ere he had halfe eat it up (p. 84).

Not all of this may be the result of first-hand experience on the part of Nashe, but it sounds as if it were, and

more one

cannot

demand of a work of art. The other piece of English fiction comparable to Lazarillo within the same period is Breton’s Miseries of Mauillia..* Here again the form is episodic autobiography and the contents feature many low-life scenes of violence and fraud. But the narrator is a girl rather than a youth, and moreover a virtuous long-suffering character rather than a picaro or a rogue. The influence of Greene's

sentimental novelle is to be reckoned with, and there are doses of artificial rhetoric as was the case with Nashe. But there are also touches of a new kind of realism, and in a number of passages the language is easy and colloquial, far more so’than at any point in The Unfortunate Traveller. The plot of Mavillia is divided into five sections or “miseries”.

It begins with the sacking of a city and the violent death of the heroine's parents at the hands of the captors. It proceeds with the adventures of the childish orphan as she wanders about the warravaged countryside; it lingers for a time in a pastoral setting among shepherds and villagers. But these last are far from being kindly arcadian countrymen. On the contrary, they are fawning and cruel by turns, most adept at exploiting the labour of the hapless waif who has turned up amongst them. Mavillia’s sojourn among them only add’ to her titularly announced miseries until close towards the end of her account. Her hosts, at first hospitable 16 Nicholas Breton, The Miseries of Mauillia (London: Thomas Creede, 1599) has been reprinted by A. B. Grosart in The Works in Verse and Prose of Nicholas Breton, \t (Edinburgh, 1879). Quotations are taken from the Grosast edition.

Some English Picaresque

217

and later ruthlessly harsh, remain in the reader’s memory with a persistence unachieved by any of the Damons or Corydons figuring in contemporary pastorals. Their language aids in no small measure in causing them to materialize as persons. The crabbed and grasping wife of an old shepherd, having first tried to dismiss Mavillia rudely from her door, suddenly manifests a bustling helpfulness when her daughter points out that the supposed beggar is a distressed gentlewoman finely dressed and attended by a wounded page. The beldame then becomes garrulous about remedies for the page’s wound, and urges them to partake of refreshments. “Come,” she cries in a passage of appropriately simple speech, “shall we have a messe of milke and a peece of cheese? I tell you, though I be but a poore woman, I have a cup of good ale in my house; my good man

loves it, and hee will

have it, and he is worthie, for why? he gets it” (p. 40). Even more natural are the sentences of direct discourse occurring in the later, less happy part of Mavillia’s rural experiences. The colloquialisms include popular locutions such as berlady for “by our lady”and twittle twattle in the sense of foolish talk; here also are rambling sentences, loose and shifted and ,unfinished grammatical constructions characteristic of undisciplined speech.?* Mavillia informs us in detail about the jobs she was forced to 17 Being asked how to treat a wound, the old shepherdess replies with eager incoherence: “Tarre, mistresse (quoth shee), we commonly use when the wound is not deepe: but, berlady, for this I can tell you what we will doo, a little flagre, and the white of a new laid egge, mingled with a little honey, you shall see, I will make a medicine for him: but let him take a sleepe first, oh it will do him good, and against he awake, wee will have some warme thing

made for him,” p. 40. The speaker never finds a verb for the names of the remedies ‘proposed. Another shift in construction appears in Mavillia’s own speech when she says: “and so we went to meete the olde man, whom when

we came neare, we perceived it [namely, what he was carrying] was a hogs

head,” p. 41. She can be careless about verbal agreement: “Now was my poore pages words forgotten,” p. 42; and she slips in pleonastic pronouns from time to time: “Yet the olde man... he would come and pluck her off me,” p. 43.

These syntactic idiosyncrasies are in a sense stylistic virtues. The evidence of other writers such as Deloney (see below, sec. 5) indicates that people really talked this way, including literate ones.

218

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

perform on the farm after she has been robbed of her resources and deprived by death of her page’s protection. She must spin, rule, card, knit, brew, bake and prepare malt indoors, and besides reap, bind sheaves and weed in the garden out of doors. Heroines

of conventional pastorals were never so productive economically. The most difficult task of all is teaching the old woman’s stupid and impudent daughter how to read. In describing this thankless task, Mavillia elliptically echoes fragments of direct speech: This baggage I must go teach her but [must say] Good mistresse, of her, then, Oh vou thinke much as well as you the first daye? Go, then go to the gyrle, Ha, mouse, she lyes.. Holde heere, wilt thou is a good gyrle (p. 43).

booke, and forsooth touch her I must not, looke on your booke.... If I complained of your paynes; would you have her reade come not to mee with such twittle twattle; doth she say thou wilt not learne? Marrie have a plum or an apple? yea marrie, it

Somehow the very ellipses, the omissions of overt transitions and

connectives, add to the informal charm of such a passage. There are glaring defects in Breton’s miniature novel. Senti-

mentality, which was entirely alien to Lazarillo de Tormes, here foists itself into the portrayal of several characters. One of them is Mavillia’s romantically devoted page, and another is the unpleasant daughter of the shepherdess, who eventually undergoes a swift and incredible change of heart leading to a complete reform of her character. Mavillia’s final misery—having her nose bitten off by a rejected elderly lover—is comically grotesque instead of harrowing, as it is apparently meant to be. Even the details of ostensible realism are at times discordant with the context because they are forcibly introduced and all too clearly of derivative literary origin.1* Nevertheless Mavillia represents a serious 18 The elderly suitor whom the heroine rejects and who takes such melodramatic revenge upon her is a “rich chuffe in the country” who irresistibly suggests the dotard in Chaucer’s Merchant's Tale. “But the foole will be kissing, and the stubble of his olde shaven beard new come up so pricks mee and tickles my lippes, that I am ready to scratch them after every kisse,” says Mavillia, p. 48. Cf. Canterbury Tales, E 1823 ff. The old chuff also has an inordinately long nose, which makes kissing difficult as well as unpleasant.

Celestina and the Elizabethan Bawds

219

effort to create fiction in a vein opposed to the arcadian. It stands in sharp contrast to Breton’s own Fantiro and Penillo, already discussed (ch. 6, sec. 4). The debt to Lazarillo de Tormes may be slight, but without its general literary stimulus Mavillia can hardly be imagined. ‘ 3. Celestina AND

THE ELIZABETHAN

BAWDS

Among the currents tending to direct English fiction into new

channels, special mention should be made of the effects of another Spanish classic, the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, otherwise known as La Celestina, written (presumably) by Fernando de Rojas and first published at the very end of the 15th century (Bur-

gos, 1499).1° This fascinating creation, about which much has been written by specialists, was known at least to limited circles in 16th-century England. A short portion of it was adapted into English and published about 1530. References to it by later writers indicate that the substance of the text was known widely. No doubt many had read all of it in Spanish, even though no complete translation appeared until 1631.*1 The work is extremely difficult to classify, both as to form and content. Though divided into acts instead of chapters, it was certainly not meant for any stage and is best described as a novel set forth exclusively in dialogues. A curious medley of ribaldry and romance, burlesque -

and

seriousness, comedy and tragedy, earthy and high-flown

Jest books by Thomas below, sec. . 19 Later

furnished precedents for such a situation. It was also exploited Deloney, with a difference, in Thomas of Reading, ch. 10. See 5. editions expanded on the original one. Whereas that of 1499 has

14 autos or acts, the third (Sevilla, 1502) has 21 and still another (Valencia, 1514) has 22. For present purposes use has been made of the modern edition

by Julio Cejador y Frauca (Madrid, 1913) in 2 vols., compared with a fac-

simile’ of the earliest (1499). The most recent one is by Antonio Pérez y Goémez (Valencia, 1958). 20 4 new Comodye of an Enterlude wherein is showed the Bewte and Good Properties of Women (attributed to John Rastell). This included only the first four acts. 21 For instance, Rich in his Farewell to Military Profession speaks of a

bawd as “a disciple of the Spanish Celestina,” T 4° (1581 ed.).

220

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

language, it is likewise varied in its literary debts and origins. Of these one may briefly mention the debt to Roman comedy (as instanced by the name and role of Calisto’s servant Sosia); to the whole library of medieval romances featuring timorous lovers who require the offices of a go-between; to the classical and medieval handbooks of love (artes de amore)* from Ovid onwards; and to medieval satirical portraits of superannuated gay ladies turned procuresses. Among these last we may reckon a lady known in 13th-century Latin as Vetula, as well as her successor La Vieille in the Roman

de la Rose. Vetula is a poor neighbour and former nurse of the heroine. The narrator, who identifies himself as none other than the Roman

poet Ovid (an identification made comic for us by

some glaring anachronisms), empleys her as mediatrix in approaching his dilecta. She accepts bribes and runs back and forth between the two, but she abstains from any autobiographical speeches of regret for her past youth. She simply avails herself of an opportunity and takes the place of Ovid’s desired mistress on the occasion arranged. The poet then records in merciless detail #2 On this relationship see most recently Edwin J. Webber, “The Celestina as an Arte de Amores.” Modern Philology, LV (1957-58), 145-53 and also

A.D. Deyermond, “The Text-Book Mishandled,” Neophilologus, XLV (1961), 218-21. The various literary traditions which have contributed to the shaping of this masterpiece (Roman comedy, medieval forms, etc.) are set forth by Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, The Book of Love and the Celestina (University of Ulinois Press, Urbana, 1961) chs. 4-6. ?3 The poem De Vetula has plausibly been attributed to Richard de Fournival, author of the Bestiaire d’Amour. If this is correct, the text antedates Jean de Meung’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose. There is no modern critical edition; use has here been made of an edition of 1661 (Wolferbyti, “typis Sterniis”). A French version was made in the 14th century by Jean Lefevre: La Vieille ou les derniéres amours d’Ovide, ed. Hippolyte Cocheris (Paris, 1861). See J.H. Mozley, “Le ‘De Vetula,” poéme pseudo-ovidien,” Latomus, 11 (1938), 53-72. The importance of this satirical work seems to have been underestimated; intensive study of it might well reveal significant evidence of its influence on vernacular literature. In any event it belongs in the gallery of entertaining medieval satires, interesting for their own

Sake.

.

Celestina and the Elizabethan Bawds

the physiological characteristics by which he substitution. They recall details of other Latin against women. Vetula’s corruptibility is made standable if not condonable by the emphasis on

221

recognized the medieval satires humanly underher poverty, but

her aspiration to a night of love under false pretences is purely farcical.

La Vieille of the Roman de la Rose is on the other hand a very communicative hag, who delights to recall the pleasures of her past youth but does not make any absurd attempt to repeat them in her old age. Both ladies are highly literary creations, resulting from a combination of Roman with medieval monastic satire on the subject of women’s wiles and vices. But both of them contributed (along with others) to the formation of a character like

Celestina. That Spanish lady is herself a character as mixed as are her literary antecedents, and her ways of expressing herself are similarly varied. When pleading Calisto’s suit to the reluctant Melibea (Act 4) she talks like a conventional disinterested intermediary of the romances, pleas and flattery being couched in euphuistic terms. (Pelicans and storks show kindness, thus Melibea ought to show pity to a despairing lover.) On the other hand when she talks with Elicia, a girl living in her house, she is made by her knowing author to prattle with that unselective delight in heapedup detail which is characteristic of many colloquial speakers: Goe, hye you up quickely [she says] to the top of the house, as high as you can goe, and bring me downe hither the bottle of that oyle of Serpents, which you shall find fastned to that piece of rope, which I brought out of the fields with me that other night, when it rained so fast, and was so darke: then open my chest where the paintings be, and on your right hand you shall find a paper written with the bloud of a Bat, or Flitter-mouse; bring it downe also with you, together with that wing of the Dragon, whereof yesterday we did cut off the clawes. And take heed, you do not shead the Maydeaw, which was

brought me for to make my confection (Act 3).™ 24 This is James Mabbe’s rendering (1631) as given in the edition by James Fitz-Maurice Kelly (London, 1894), p. 75. It is not entirely accurate. For a close rendering see that of Mack Hendricks Singleton: Celestina (Uni-

versity of Wisconsin Press, 1958). The Spanish is: “Pues sube presto al sobrado “

222

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

The irrelevant remarks about a dark rainy night and other contin-

gent circumstances suggest the digressive babbling of Shakespeare’s wonderful Mrs. Quickly. Yet it is difficult to reconcile this babbler with the Celestina who elsewhere studs her discourse with learned

classical allusions and indulges in a formal rhetorical style: for instance, in her burlesque eulogy on the pleasures of drinking, with its numerous

parallel constructions

marked

by anaphora

(esto and desto repeatedly used as initial. word, Act 9). In such

instances the vocabulary and subject matter are in amusing contrast to the form and style. Such discrepancy is of course a familiar well-spring of burlesque effects. The author of Celestina is particularly fond of assembling catalogues of nouns helterskelter as a means of achieving this end. When he does so, his

technique may be said to be both popular and literary. Celestina makes use of rhetorical questions and other wellworn devices when she is elaborating on the theme of carpe diem,

beloved of superannuated ladies like herself, in all ages and civilizations. La Vieille in the Roman de la Rose had recalled the pleasures of her youth with gusto and regret, as did Chaucer’s Wife of Bath: D 469 But, ‘Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee, It tickleth me aboute myn herte roote.

Heart-tickling of the disabilities of a bawd urges a Celestina advises

this evocative kind, fortified by warnings old age, is used for purposes of persuasion younger woman to yield to illicit love. young people under her tutelage to make

about when Thus good

use of their time; she regrets that she did not herself make full alto de la solana é baxa aca el bote del azeyte serpentino que hallarés colgado del pedaco de la soga, que traxe del campo la otra noche, quando Ilovia é hazia oscuro. E abre él arca de los lizos é hazia la mano derecha hallarés un papel escrito con sangre de morciégalo, debaxo de aquel ala de drago, 4 que sacamos ayer las ufias. Mira, no derrames el agua de Mayo, que me traxeron a confecionar,” Cejador y Frauca ed., I, pp. 142-45 = C 8°-¥ (with mi-

nor changes).

Celestina and the Elizabethan Bawds

223

use of it when she was of their age.** A very old theme played with skilful variations. In these passages one finds a curious combination

of learned rhetorical, informal and colloquial lan-

guage. They are full of stylistic contrasts, adding to the satirical. ambiguities characteristic of the whole work. Among these may be noticed such strange combinations as the attribution of a highly romantic love passage, complete with alba-like lamentations on the quick coming of day, to two low-life characters: Calisto’s servant Parmeno and one of Celestina’s girls (Act 8).* Sempronio, another servant of the hero, offers humorously cynical comments on his master’s passion, accusing him of too much amorous bab-

bling (Act 7) and from the start deploring his dangerous mood of desperation: Shall I leave him all alone? or shall I goe in to him? If I leave him alone, he will kill himselfe. If I goe in, he will kill me. Let him bide alone, and bite upon the bit, come what will, come I care not (Act 1; Mabbe, p. 23).27

The contrast with older attitudes towards courtly love is heightened by the introduction of a menial servant named (of all things) Tristan, who works side by side with Sosia, hailing obviously from Roman comedy. A comic miles gloriosus, appearing towards the 25 The Spanish has a simple exclamation: “Que ya jmal pecado! caducado he, nadie no mé quiera,” II, p. 41 (Act 9). Literally: “Now here I sit, a withered old woman, alas! and nobody loves me,” Singleton, p. 147. Mabbe’s English here amplifies significantly: “I am a decayed creature, I waxe old, withered, and full of wrinkles; no body will now looke after mee, yet my minde is still the same; and [I] want rather ability, then desire,” p. 165. The added clauses

have a certain poignancy

it must be admitted.

36 Mabbe, in expanding slightly on the alba, has perhaps inadvertently introduced an analogue to the speech of Chaucer’s Troilus under like circunistances. Mabbe’s Parmeno says: “No, no; I knew it was broad day, when I saw the light come thorow the chinks of the door,” p. 145. Compare Troilus:

“For every bore hath oon of thi bryghte yén!” III, 1453. The Spanish has simply: “...en ver entrar luz entre las puertas,” G 4”. 8? This passage, like many others, shows minor stylistic accretions due to the translator. There is no source, for instance, for the phrase “bite upon the bit” in the Spanish: “gDexarle he solo 6 entraré alla? Si le dexo, matarse ha; si entro alla, matarme ha,” I, p. 37 = A 2”.

224

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

end after the action has turned tragic, adds to the incongruities (Act 18). From minor details of rhetorical antithesis up to the major juxtapositions of characters, moods and events, Celestina in fact relies throughout on contrasts, implied and explicit, to gain its satirical effects. It is anti-romance featuring an anti-heroine.* Its effect, wherever it was read, must have been to reinforce critical attitudes towards conventional tales of romantic love. So far

as English fiction is concerned, the effect was probably of a general pervasive sort hard to identify. No direct imitation of Celestina can be traced in the fiction or drama of the time. English bawds can be otherwise explained, both literarily and sociologically, in the light of sources elsewhere available (including for instance Eurialus and Lucrece). Nevertheless Celestina may well have encouraged writers to look outside the romantic traditions of the Middle. Ages and Renaissance for materials and attitudes. 4. HARVEY AND GASCOIGNE:

TWO EXPERIMENTERS IN A New STYLE

There are two works of the latter 16th century which show marks of individual genius far beyond the ordinary, and which clearly anticipate certain aspects of the modern novel. One is A Nobleman’s Suit to a Country Maid by Gabriel Harvey, and the other is The Adventures of Master F. J. by George Gascoigne. Both are intriguing to the literary historian because they appear to contain records of personal experiences more or less transmuted for the purposes of art. Both are outstanding because of stylistic skill and originality. Harvey’s work is preserved in the form of notebook jottings. transcribed letters and tentative drafts for a narrative that might have produced a first-rate novel prophetic of the manner of 38 Chandler’s term “anti-heroine,” applied to Celestina, is just. But it is difficult to agree entirely with his comment on the book as a whole that “it stood and still stands a faithful study of the human heart and of external reality,’” Romance, p. 188. The large element of pure literary convention drawn from known sources has to be reckoned with along with the results of

observing “external reality.”

.

Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters

225

Thomas Hardy.” The record concerns the adventures and misadventures of Gabriel’s own sister Mercy, an honest and fairly resourceful country girl,*° in parrying the advances of a married nobleman who tried to seduce her. The action is carefully pinned down to the late months of 1574. Mercy is first approached several times by the lord’s servant P., who pleads his master’s case and conveys gifts to her. Later the lord himself devises a number of interviews, to some of which the girl accedes and from some of which she manages to escape under various pretexts, always trying to preserve her virtue while avoiding a public scandal. She had suggested that letters for her should be sent to her home addressed to her brother, then absent as a student at Cambridge,

but in this way one of them falls into the hands of Gabriel and he thus learns about the whole affair. His record of its course is studded with well chosen details. He tells just what was eaten and drunk (a bottle of Malmsey and some short cakes) at a picnic to which the servant P. lures her. While the old woman accompanying her went off to collect sticks, P. explained that his master had noticed her one day when “her hatt blue of, and she therewith sumwhat chaungid her colour.” After numerous evasions on Mercy’s part the young lord decides to seek her out at home. He looks into the malt-house where ‘she usually works and finds all sorts of relatives and servants there, busily engaged—but no Mercy. The peering and spying of P. and his master are humorously described. In the end they are obliged “to gett themselves homewards as they cam, being well mirid and weried for ther labour, besides that it was the mistiest and foggiest night that was that winter” (Scott ed., p. 146). 2® Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, ed. from MS. by Edward John Long Scott (London: Camden Society, 1884). The title ANoble Mans Sute to a Cuntrie Maide appears on fol. 71” of MS. Sloane 93 in the British Museum; Harvey’s

first memoranda on the subject begin on fok 70’. °° Harvey, it must be remembered, was the son of a rope-maker. See biographical data ‘in the introduction to his Works as edited by Alexander B. Grosart, 3 vols. (London, 1884-85). The affairofHarvey’s sister is accepted as authentic by Hans Berli, Gabriel Harvey, der Dichterfreund und Kritiker, (Ziirich, 1913).

226

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

There follows an epistolary exchange between the lord and the maid, formally eloquent on his side and not without rhetoric on hers, artless as she is supposed to be.*! Being strongly urged, Mercy finally agrees to an interview at a neighbour’s house. She finds her noble suitor all too obviously prepared for a scene of seduction. The image is unsparingly depicted: Milord stud reddie in a litle parlour in his dublet and his hose, his points untrust, and his shirt lying out round about him. And after a short salutation, a twoe or thre kisses would needs have laid the maide on the bedd (p. 152).

A scene worthy of Pamela! Fortunately the maid has had foresight enough to arrange for a timely interruption: the good wife of the house, briefed in advance, bangs on the door at this critical moment and shouts that Mercy’s mother has sent for her in all haste. The lord swears and pleads, echoes of his fulminations and supplications being put down in indirect discourse, but Mercy insists on going at once. All other attempts on the maid’s virtue are likewise frustrated, and the final triumph of lower-class morals over aristocratic wiles is embodied in the long reproachful letter indited to the noble lord by Harvey himself. This he writes after he has intercepted the one sent to his sister with his name used on the envelope. From the point of view of: literary technique Harvey's chron- © icle is interesting in many ways. It evinces an amazing sensitivity to factors of time, place, weather and other circumambient conditions. The reconnoitring of the malt-house where Mercy works occurs on a Wednesday precisely at five o'clock in the afternoon. Similarly concrete is the account of the factors which prevent a promised meeting between the maid and noble lord on the Sunday which is the day after Christmas. “The raine continued the whole day,” causing floods, and so the wooer is cut off. To her 31 She is in fact a quite skilled correspondent, if we may believe the texts as recorded. She takes pains to evoke a past situation, as when she reminds

the lord of the “mistie foggie” evening when he failed to meet her. When she strives for rhetorical effect she writes parallel clauses with rhyme, and occasionally slips into rough versification.

Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters

227

delight, it may be added. But being cautious, she undertakes a journey of seven miles, leaving before six o’clock in the morning in the midst of the downpour, just to be on the safe side.

Even more worthy of note are the echoes of colloquial speech to be detected in the Harvey fragments.**

Rarely in this pre-

Shakespearean period is any attempt made to mimic informal speech, especially in narratives. But Harvey permits us to overhear his dialogue with a simple countryman Who is carrying a message from the noble lord, falsely inscribed to Harvey himself. The colloquy begins in indirect discourse, then easily shifts to direct: The plain fellowe amongst amanie other goodly matters tould me he had a letter in his pocket, that should ons have been sent me to Cambridg, but that I cam home to miefathers that verie time it should have bene sent me. I pray the, said I, from whome? I warrant you, syr, quoth the fellowe, from on that loovith you full well, your sister Marcie. And her letters, said I, ar sumwhat daintie, they cum so sildom (p. 156).

The same fellow, being questioned, evinces his concern for a tip in punning language: And I prey the, what have we here beside (an God will) in this prettie paper? said [ to the fellowe. Marry, syr, I wud it were an ould angell for me, quoth he. Na then, for me, said I; but I feare me, when all is dun, it will rather proove sum crackd grote in the opening; take it thou for a tester at all aventure Not so, master, quoth he, Ile none of the pig in the poke, thanke you. Wel

then, Ile unpoke the pig for this ons, said I (p. 157).

Harvey then charges the man with a warning message to his sister, cryptically expressed: “And for a tokin, will her in my name to looke ere she leape. She maie pick out the Inglish of

it herself.” The slight but animated intrigue sketched in Harvey's notebook is very probably the reflection of incidents in the real life of his family. They are of much more than biographical interest, however. They are prophetic of the kind of plot often successfully developed in future novels like Pamela—a middle-class girl’s % To this aspect Virginia Woolf has called attention in her essay “The

Strange Elizabethans,” ed., 1935), pp. 9-23.

The Common

Reader, Second Series (London, 2nd

228

vii. Lowards the Forms of Modern Fiction

virtue besieged by an unscrupulous aristocrat—here clothed in language singularly appropriate to it. Gascoigne’s effort at fiction anticipates a different type of later novel, namely the one based on intrigues among week-end

guests at an upper-class landed estate. On the surface all the social amenities

are observed,

but there is a marked

contrast

between external decorum and the play of concealed passions disclosed by the author. The scenes may be handled with the delicate, teasing allusiveness of a Henry James or with the satirical frankness of an Aldous Huxley. No matter what style is adopted, the materials lend themselves readily to effects of social comedy. However, although much in The Adventures of Master F. J. represents innovation, even brilliant innovation in the execution, it must be recognized that the basic situation is one already made familiar in a whole series of English treatments from Chaucer’s Troilus onwards. An ardent and trusting youth of the aristocracy falls in love with an experienced married woman of his own sphere, enjoys her love for a time, and is later rejected, to his profound distress, in favour of another candidate. The entire action here takes place in the setting of a hospitable country house, a setting already exploited in the framework situations of Renaissance novelle collections such as Whetstone’s Heptameron. Familiar also are such devices as the introduction of debates with illustrative tales told by the main characters. So far, so good; the pattern seems to be a very traditional one. Even the style is in certain passages glaringly dated, showing decorative tricks fashionable at the time which were later to be called euphuistic. The course of the affair is delineated by an observer (designated as G.T. in the first edition) who must have had access to poems and letters exchanged between the principals. He is an amused and detached observer, somewhat like Chaucer’s

Pandarus. At the same time he tells the story quite consistently from the point of view of Master F. J. and with complete sympathy for him.** 33 Robert P. Adams has made some valuable comments on G. T.’s role in “Gascoigne’s ‘Master F. J.’ as Original Fiction,” PMLA, LXXIII (1958),

Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters

229

The unity of point of view and the local colour imparted to the whole are among the traits which mark Master F. J. as something special. As first published anonymously (1573) it presented scenery and characters unmistakably English; the second (1575) edition threw a veil, but a very transparent veil, of distance over the whole by transferring the action to Lombardy in Italy and supplementing or substituting (but not consistently) Italian names for the English ones. Besides, the narrator’s part is minimized.** The motive for the changes may well have been a desire to avoid scandal and even charges of libel. Apparently gossip had been busy in an effort to identify the principals of the tale, to the embarrassment of the author. Hence Gascoigne’s disclaimers, his attribution of the whole to an otherwise unknown Italian named Bartello, and the toning down of erotic details included in the first version.* Whether or not his disclaimer is genuine or motivated by caution or formulated in accordance with a literary convention is not too important. What is important is the demonstrable fact that Master F. J. was so effectively written that people were at the time inclined to accept it as reportage of genuine events. At the beginning Master F. J. gets off to a somewhat awkward start. The hero is invited to spend-several months at the home of a nobleman (Italianized as the Lord of Valesco), enjoying country sports and pastimes, with the understanding that he may become a suitor for his host’s unmarried daughter. Instead he falls in 315-26. On the unity of point of view see C. T. Prouty, George Gascoigne: Elizabethan Courtier, Scholar, Poet (Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 205 ff. This work summarizes the results of previous researches. 34 The earlier version appeared in A Hundreth Sundrie Floweres (London: Richard Smith, 1573), edited separately by C.T. Prouty (Columbia, Missouri, 1942). The later one (1575) is used by John W. Cunliffe in his Works of Gascoigne (Cambridge, 1907), vol. I, with notes indicating differences between the two. 35 See Leicester Bradner, “The First English Novel: A Study of George Gascoigne’s Adventures of Master F. J.,” PMLA, XLV (1930), 543-52. In substituting Italian names for the English Gascoigne is reversing the procedure to be followed later by Ben Jonson in the two versions of Every Man in his Humour. :

230

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

love with a second daughter Elinor (Leonora). already married.

whose husband is absent. So much information is summarily and rather artlessly given at the beginning. With the first exchange of letters between F.J. and Elinor the action quickens: F. J. thrusts a message into the bosom of her dress (shades of Uncle Pandarus!): when she returns this and others to him in pretended anger he “in great rage began to wreake his malice on this poore paper, and the same did rend and teare in peeces” (Cunliffe ed., p. 385). We have come across this act of letter-tearing before, for instance in Eurialus and Lucrece. But on second glance F. J. realizes that the handwriting on the paper is not his, for the lady has in fact conveyed a message of her own to him under pretext of virtuous indignation. That message, though ostensibly discouraging, is actually ambiguous and therefore encouraging. The style is such that F. J. at first suspects some clerk to be the composer of the letter: a clever indication in advance of his coming well-justified disillusionment. Daily life proceeds in the lordly house. F. J. and Elinor meet and talk in one of its galleries (how many aristocratic characters in English novels are going to do the same in centuries to come!); at a dinner party the host rallies his guest on his lack of appetite and others join in teasing him; there are dances, country rides, garden conversations. The incident which precipitates a closer relationship between hero and heroine is engagingly homely. The fair Elinor suffers

a humdrum

nosebleed, and F.J. (Ferdinando)

offers to cure it. He finds her “set in a chayre, leaning on the

one side over a Silver bason” (p. 390). The cure he proposes sounds folkloristic rather than scientific, but at least it gives him an opportunity to exchange whispered remarks with her and

to deposit another

message

beside her. The

narrator

says

he thinks she was glad to get it, and he also knows, somehow, that she is tickled through all her veins “with an unknown humour™ which leads her to invite F.J. to daily visits. The style of this letter is strikingly different from her first. The sentences are for the most part loosely paratactic instead of formally hypotactic.

Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters

231

The narrator explains indeed that this text was really written the lady herself, whereas the first one had been drawn up by ugly, dwarfish secretary, a man who had perversely won favour and even her friendship by his epistolary skill. Here have the second warning note about the villain of the piece. is thus described, with obvious hostility:

by her her we He

He was in heighth the proportion of two Pigmeis, in bredth the thicknesse of two bacon hogges, of presumption a Gyant, of power a Gnatte, Apishly wytted, Knavishly mannered, and crabbedly favord (p. 392). ;

At this point a third character is introduced. Frances

(otherwise

Francischina),

sister-in-law

She is Lady

of Elinor, who

sees through that lady’s artificialities, recognizes her weaknesses, sympathizes with F. J. and therefore does not want to disillusion him although she herself loves him. She is in a truly complex emotional situation. She tactfully indicates that she has noted F. J.’s preoccupation and guesses its cause. At the same time she hints that Elinor is already committed to her “Minion Secretary”. Nevertheless she helps the lovesick youth to meet Elinor and arrange their first secret meeting together. The encounter occurs in a deserted moonlit gallery. Both are clad in their night-gowns. The lady Francis later drops hints to indicate that she knows what is going on, and complicates matters by removing from F.J.’s room the sword he had carried on his nocturnal excursion. There are many arch references and oblique allusions, and as the two ladies now clearly compete for his attention, the motif of the mislaid sword becomes almost symbolic in their bandied conversation. When F. J. falls ill with jealousy and frustration, taking to his bed like any medieval Troilus, both Frances and Elinor visit him. Their

conduct is meticulously delineated, together with their badinage and an embarrassed silence which at one point interrupts it. That

evening

the recumbent

hero

is entertained

by a courtly

debate on a question of love, with illustrative tale, after which Elinor urges him to sleep and begins to fuss over his comfort like an overly solicitous hostess:

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vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

... and therewith commaunded hir handmayde to fetche a payre of cleare sheetes, the which being brought (marvaylous fine and sweete) the Ladies Fraunces and Elinor dyd curteously unfold them, and layd them on the bed. which done, they also entreated him-to uncloath him and go to bed, being layd, his Mistresse dressed and couched the cloathes about him, sithens moistened his temples, with Rosewater, gave him handkerchewes and other freshe linnen about him, in doing wherof, she whispered in his eare, saying: Servaunt, this night I will bee with thee, and after with the rest of the Dames gave him good night and departed, leaving him in a traunce

between hope and dispayre, trust and mistrust (p. 432 f.).

She is as good as her word. Her arrival that evening between 10 and 11 o’clock, her rallying of the swooning F. J., her pressing herself upon him “with the whole weight of hir bodye, & byting of his lips with hir friendly teeth,” promise to be the overture to a night of ecstatic love like that described in Troilus and Criseyde. If F.J. is as timorous as Chaucer’s hero, Elinor is far more aggressive than Chaucer’s heroine. Ferdinando now awaked, could no lesse doe, than of his curteous nature receive his Mistresse into his bed; Who (as one that knewe that waye better, than how to help his swooning,) gan gently strip of hir clothes (p. 434).

But the consummation so -carefully prepared and seemingly so well.assured at this point is to be frustrated after all. Elinor presses for an explanation of F. J.’s doubts and torments. He unwisely reveals the nature of his suspicions concerning her, and on hearing : them she turns angry and abruptly leaves his bed “swearing that he shoulde never (eftsones) take her at the lyke advauntage”. Elinor’s Secretary, previously hinted at as a possible rival hovering in the background, has meantime returned after a short absence, and despite his physically repellent features he wins the lady’s entire favour and she becomes his mistress. Her changed attitude towards F.J. becomes a matter of gossiping repartee among the ladies of her circle. “Well, quod Dame Elinor, you knowe not what I knowe. Nor you what I thinke quod Dame Fraunces” (p. 440). It is Frances who contributes a warning novella about a wife’s adultery discovered and subtly punished, a tale obviously directed against her sister-in-law. And it is now Frances

Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters alone who attends the

233

invalid, carries him “a dish of chikins

boiled in white broth,” rallies his spirits, listens to his confidences, and tries to comfort him. When he presents himself to Elinor in her room, he is rebuffed and publicly humiliated. The Ladye [who is receiving visitors, according to custom, while still in bed] seemed litle to delight in his dallying, but cast a glance at hir Secretarie, & therewith smiled, when as the Secretarie and Dame Pergo burst out into open laughter (p. 450).

All that is left is for the unhappy F.J. to obtain ocular evidence of Elinor’s amour with the Secretary. He does so. When he taxes her with it she at first denies everything and then puts a defiant question: “And if I dyd so (quod she) what then?” (p. 451). He walks away without replying. The end follows rapidly. F. J. returns to his home and, full of disillusionment, plunges into a dissolute life. Frances dies after three miserable years of .illness, and Elinor continues in her old ways.** The conclusion is thus an implicit

exemplification of the thesis, beloved of modern novelists, that character is fate. The literary values of this odd and yet not unprecedented piece of Elizabethan fiction have only in recent times earned just appreciation. One critic has claimed for it a kind of realism approximating Jane Austen’s, which depends on the choice of a few characters set in a restricted milieu (here, that of the landed gentry) and subjected to an unhurried analysis.*”7 Another has emphasized the psychological factor, asserting that Master F. J. is not only the first English novel, with far sounder right to that title than the later Euphues, but also the first psychological novel in the language, unique for its time in the interweaving of sub36 Thus the revised (1575) version. In the earlier one the conclusion is less pessimistic and some hope is held out that Frances and F. J. may be united.

Other differences between the two versions include the suppression in the second of incidents and details which might have been considered offensive. Thus the 1573 version contains an episode of a hunting party, suppressed in 1575, during which Elinor’s husband participates and is made the butt of a double entendre jest concerning a bugle (horn) which Elinor’s lover lends him. 37 Bradner, loc. cit., p. 547.

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vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

jective -and objective factors.** Literal biographical truth is not necessary to explain the excellencies of this or any other good tale. Earlier works like Eurialus and Lucrece could have offered guidance as to matter and manner, and a gifted imagination would suffice to project the people and events with a fresh convincingness. What is important for literary history is the fact that Gascoigne has here ...Wittily created the artistic effect of life in reality passing before our eyes. The overwhelming probability seems to be that the discourse [about Master F. J.]

represents and should be enjoyed as a brilliantly conceived and ingeniously executed work of imaginative fiction, incomparably the most entertaining comic narrative of the Elizabethan age.*°

In view of the hero’s agonies and sad end, the epithet “comic” may be challenged, especially if it is used in the medieval sense. As in Chaucer’s Troilus, a sense of doom overhangs the hero from the very beginning. Nevertheless it is doubtless true that Master F. J. contains many passages of social comedy and for this reason it may be counted as a predecessor of later schools headed by Jane Austen, George Meredith, John Galsworthy and others. The characters’ social world is limited, but it is at

least recreated with exemplary attention to its mores and its modes of speech. Within the restricted area chosen by him, Gascoigne was in touch with the realities of his age. 5. FICTION FOR THE NEw

MIDDLE

CLASSES

The late 16th century witnessed a great expansion of the middle class, which had been assuming more and more economic importance during the preceding decades. The phenomenon has been so often and so carefully analyzed by economic historians that documentation may be dispensed with here. The expansion referred to was naturally reflected in the amount and kind of fiction offered to the reading public. The newly prosperous were 38 Prouty, Gascoigne, p. 200 f. 8° Adams, loc, cit. p. 326.

Fiction for the New Middle Classes

235

among those who took over and continued some of the literary fashions originating in the Middle Ages (see ch. 6, sec. 1). But in addition they began to search for themes close to their own origins and interests.4° So doing, they fostered some new forms in fictional prose narrative. Very* conspicuous is the pseudohistorical novel, which reflects the desire of a newly risen social group to establish bases and precedents for its recently achieved status and prestige. Placing humble or at least non-noble protagonists such as artisans,

craftsmen,

burghers

ard

the like against a dignified

historical background is a device employed in several works of the 1590°s.41 Thomas Lodge tried his hand at it in his William Longbeard,** which purports to trace the career of an ambitious, low-born demagogue during the troubled times of King Richard I. Having first ruined and betrayed an elder brother who had risen to the status of burgess by frugality and merit, William gains the King’s ear with the help of a clerical confederate (an abbot) by pretending solicitude for the wrongs inflicted on the poor by rich men and corrupt royal officers. His aim is actually to stir up trouble for his own ends. The gist of his demagogic speeches is reported indirectly. William is shown exhorting and stirring the commons to love and imbrace libertie, to fight and labour for freedome; brieflie to detest and blame the excesse and outrage of ritch men, whoe, as he tolde them, reaped the sweet, whilst they, poore soules,

sweat for it. Heereunto wrested he manie stories of antiquitie: first the Laconian state, next the popular governement of Athens, wherein peace never flourished better, said he, than when ‘the commons had freedome of speech (p. 9 f.).

40 Abundant details are furnished by Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (University of North Carolina Press, 1935).

Wright’s survey is a valuable compilation of facts and materials, but it does not offer any over-all interpretation of the phenomena presented. 41 Charles W. Camp, The Artisan in Elizabethan Literature (Columbia University Press, 1923), discusses drama, ballads and other forms besides the novel. 42 Lodge, The Life and Death of William Longbeard (London: R. Yardley and P. Short, 1593), reprinted by J. Payne Collier, Illustrations of Old English Literature, 11 (London, 1866), with separate pagination here followed.

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vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

Though presented as a medieval rabble-rouser, William knows his facts about the conditions of Elizabethan England and he has

recourse to yery humanistic adornments for his eloquence (the classical allusions to Sparta and Athens; the fashionable word-

play on sweet: sweat). The chronicle of his rise to power is diversified by instances detailing the means he used “whereby he might insinuate himselfe amongest the poorer sort, and winne the credit of a good justicier at his princes hands” (p. 15). One of them involves the story of Peter Nowlay, a cobbler, victimized

by the appropriately named Robert Besant, then Bailiff of London. Peter had worked hard and saved 40 marks which he asked Besant to invest for him. (A very Elizabethan touch, this.) But the Bailiff held the money for ten years, and on Peter’s death the widow finds herself penniless. Abusing her ignorance, Besant tricks her during a visit of condolence into letting him handle the document recording the cobbler’s loan to him. Telling her “that all of it was but wast paper” he casually tears up the receipt, but the widow saves the pieces and appeals to William Longbeard for aid. He exploits the opportunity to the full. Justice is gained for the widow, and William’s prestige soars once again. Such episodes are based on direct knowledge of contemporary abuses, and they reflect some understanding of the plight of poorer folk. But Lodge is unequivocal in condemning William’s aims and methods. He puts a speech into King Richard’s mouth which no doubt expresses his own attitude: The labouring men, that were kept from innovations by their works, are now capable of all chang [sic] and novelties in their idlenesse. In living as they doo they rather are drawne to detest labor then to follow it; wherthrugh the offices and mechanicall crafts in the cittie doo cease, and by the omission of industrie riseth the pretermission of dutie. For this cause, as you have care of my love, incite them not to too much libertie. Further than [sic; read them?] what you may, if they be wronged, bot let not justice be a colour to winne them to wickednes (p. 27).

William ignores this advice and is finally hanged as a traitor, to the author’s patent satisfaction.

Fiction for the New Middle Classes

237

Among the writers who projected lower-class characters against a background of earlier history,** real or imagined, Thomas Deloney is outstanding. Himself a weaver and official spokesman of weavers’ interests, he must somehow have obtained a solid education including knowledge of Latin and French. He also possessed an exceptionally keen ear for living speech in nuances ranging from broad dialect to formal discourse.** His four pioneer works in the field of the novel were printed between 1597 and 1600; Deloney himself died in 1600. Thus his contribution represents a neat conclusion to the present study. It is a contribution representing many debts to the past, but at the same time foretelling many vital developments in the future. - Two of Deloney’s novels are devoted to a glorification of the clothiers’ industry. They are fairly consistent in their indications of an historical setting: the age of Henry VIII for Jack of Newbury, and the age of Henry I for Thomas of Reading. Yet they pulse with the life of Elizabethan England as observable in streets and shops, taverns and highways and fields. The point of view is almost exclusively plebeian.*® The characters include such types as the aggressive affluent widow, the gay, boasting and quarrelsome 43 Efforts along this line continued into the 17th century. An instance is The History of George a Green, Pindar of the Town of Wakefield, author unknown, published in 1632 and reprinted by Thoms in his Early English Prose Romances, pp. 557-99. The hero is a farmer, son of an impoverished gentleman; the action takes place in the reign of Richard I, who at one point engages in staff play with some shoemakers while himself disguised as a yeoman. Robin Hood figures among the characters. 44 See the introduction by Merritt E. Lawlis to The Novelsof Thomas Deloney (University of Indiana Press, 1960). On the likelihood that Deloney translated Des Périers’ Nouvelles Récréations see J. W. Hassell as cited in ch. 4, n. 43. 45 Deloney’s innovation in this respect is well appreciated by Abel Chevalley, Thomas Deloney: Le Roman des métiers au temps de Shakespeare (Paris, 4th ed., 1926). The author makes a pointed contrast between Deloney’s work and that of Richard Johnson, also an artisan in origin, who wrote The Nine Worthies of London and The Seaven Champions of Christendom. These were volksbiicher looking backward to the traditional medieval romances of adventure, meant for the newly literate workers but by no means about them.

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vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

apprentice, the newly rich and highly respected master guildsman, the provincial master’s wife who is intent on aping elegant city dames, the jovial or grasping or jealous or even murderous inn-

keeper and his usually subservient wife. The types are repeated with variations, always closely related to social background and required action. Sometimes there seems to be a burlesque in-

version of the romances, as when the prentice of Jack of Newbury meditates on the desirability of responding to his widowed mistress’s overtures, and she on her part reports an allegorical dream

she says she has had about her desolate

situation

(ch. 1)—as

clear an invitation as any propounded in like circumstances by Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The part played by royalty in these historical novels is symptomatic of the times. The kings appear as paternal figures, champions of the oppressed when once appealed

to and properly informed of current abuses. They are especially sensitive to the needs of guild producers and traders. Thus Henry I in Thomas of Reading is first of all impressed by the great show of affluence on the clothiers’ part when he and his royal train are forced to stand close to the hedges while more than 200 carts full of textiles pass by. Similar encounters are repeated in the course of the King’s journey, impressing him more and more: And thus the farther he trauelled Westward, more Waines and more he met continually: vpon which occasion he said to his nobles: that it would neuer grieue a King to die to the defence of a fertile Countrie and faithfull subiects. I alwaies thought (quoth he) that Englands valor was more than her wealth, yet now I see her wealth sufficient to maintaine her valour...**

In Thomas of Reading, King Henry I consults his clothiers on the need to establish a uniform standard of measurements, to reform the currency, and to prosecute cloth-thieves severely. Royal personages graciously accept the hospitality of clothiers and listen tolerantly to their jests (Jack, ch. 3; Thomas, chs. 5 and 7). The comradeship portrayed between kings and burghers reflects with some fidelity an alliance against feudal landowners which, though 46 Francis Oscar Mann, The Works of Thomas Deloney (Oxford, 1912), p. 215. From Thomas of Reading, ch. 1. Quotations are taken from this edition, checked for essential readings with that of Lawliss, already cited.

Fiction for the New Middle Classes

239

limited in scope and duration, was real enough in the world of 16th-century English politics and economics. Members of the nobility and gentry are on the other hand

rather frequently portrayed in situations which compel them gratefully to accept aid from resourceful members of the lower class. Speaking of the clothing industry Deloney explains that “the yonger sons of Knights & Gentlemen, to whom their Fathers would leaue no lands, were most commonly preferred to learn this trade” (ch. 1). Such a situation is treated sentimentally (ibid., ch. 3) where Margaret, impoverished daughter of a banished earl, finds herself seeking employment as a servant and being twitted by other girls at a fair because of her deplorable lack of training. She has to confess that she can neither brew nor bake, churn butter nor reap corn. Her response to the girls’ suggestions is eloquent of Deloney’s attitude:

“alas, what

shall I do? I was

neuer brought vp to these things.” It is in the dialogues and comic situations that Deloss is most successful as an artist, and here too he most obviously refutes his pretension to be a writer of historical fiction. His people not only act like the common folk of the 16th century, with their horseplay and practical jokes and quarrels and flirtations and conniving tricks; what is more, they talk like such people. The amount and nature of the dialogue brings Deloney’s novels into close relation to the technique of the drama. Among the nuances of popular speech will be found local dialect, comic distortion of English as spoken by foreigners, comic malapropisms resulting from both of these aberrations from the standard language, loose and repetitious discourse resulting from the speaker’s befuddlement (Jack, ch. 10), the nagging iterations of women trying to get something out of their husbands (Thomas, ch. 6). The fluent narrative sections also represent a high stylistic achievement.?’ Of course Deloney’s accomplishment, remarkable as it is, was not unheralded. The chief debt, as has been stressed by modern 4? For a linguistic analysis see T. Dahl, An Inquiry into the Language of Deloney (Copenhagen, 1951).

240

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

critics, is to the jest books of the preceding decades. Many are the similarities between Deloney’s linguistic usage and that of his anonymous predecessors.4* Many also are the instances of

borrowing or imitation of materials occurring in the jest books: ° smart answers, irrelevant comic incidents, episodes resembling medieval fabliaux. In general they are strung together in linear order, without elaborate complications of plot. The sequence in which an energetic widow ensnares Jack of Newbury as spouse culminates in the well known fabliau situation of a husband locking his errant wife out of the house at night and then being himself locked out in turn (ch. 1). What makes this incident

memorable, like.others of the sort, is the-combination of homely descriptive detail with rapid conversational interchange. When Jack finally goes downstairs to admit his wife he first “slipt on his shooes, and came downe in his shirt,” whereupon the wife

“whipt into the house, and quickly clapping to the doore, she lockt her husband out.” Then after jeering at his pleas for readmittance “shee clapt to the casement, and got her to bedde, locking the chamber doore fast” (p. 18 f.). More elaborately integrated with the general plot in Thomas of Reading (ch. 5) is the story of Cuthbert the clothier, who engages —

in a hazardous flirtation with a married hostess of an inn. The two pretend in public to be bickering enemies, in order to deceive her husband. Their encounters are interwoven with other episodes. But the canny host has his suspicions, and his discovery 48 Such traits include emphatic placement of adverbial expressions in head position (to breakfast they went, p. 16) sometimes followed by inversion (to supper will I invite Ione, p. 51) and accompanied by a shift to the historical present tense (about midnight shee comes to the doore, p. 17). Deviations from strict syntactic usage add to the effect of informality, for instance when the nominative case of pronouns replaces the objective (between her and I, p. 7; to make her and I sure, p. 14) or concord of number is violated (all things was prepared, p. 22; is your wars ended, p. 28; this tidings was brought, p. 58). Sentences are sometimes loosely organized, too (and after some faint deniall, meeting with a Gossip of hers, to the Tauerne they went, which was more court esie than the Taylor could euer get of her before, shewing her selfe very pleasant and merry, p. 10). All of these examples come from Jack of Newbury.

Fiction for the New

Middle Classes

241

of the compromised pair is pulled off in a fine farcical vein. Cuthbert is strung up in a basket, the object of public ridicule and physical discomfort recalling the punishment visited on the medieval necromancer Virgil in a similar situation. The episode is made graphic very much as isolated ones of the same sort were realized in the vagabond pamphlets of Awdeley and Harman. Although mirth prevails throughout most of his writing, Deloney is also capable of sombre effects, including the tension of a foreseen impending tragedy. He demonstrates his gifts along this line in the tale of Thomas of Reading’s murder by a rapacious innkeeper and his wife. There is a hint dropped well in advance to the effect that evil will come of Thomas’s trusting association with these people (p. 221). When it comes to the actual deed, the atmosphere is worked up and the machinery of murder functions in a way to compel admiration from any modern writer of thrillers. The first two attempts are frustrated, the suspense increases, the prospective victim is subject to well founded premonitions. Recalling a desperate cry of his daughter’s when he left home, Thomas asks his hosts for pen and ink so that he may write his will; he hears an owl hoot, observes the deadly pale faces of his hosts and suddenly asks them why their hands are bloody. Illusion and reality are blended in a manner suggestive of Shakespeare’s technique in Macbeth. After the murder the course of detection is followed closely. The silent evidence offered by Thomas’s horse plays an important part. Humorous relief is afforded by the comically exaggerated gossip, verbatim reported, which is said to be circulating about the circumstances of the murder. Here again Deloney’s technique suggests Shakespeare. The humorous colloquial dialogue throws new light on a tragic event, presents it from a new angle but does not in the end destroy its serious implications. Truth comes to light and severe justice is done, to the satisfaction of all. The literary excellencies noted in Deloney’s shorter novels about clothiers are also manifest in his third and best known one,

242

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern

Fiction

The Gentle Craft, designed to glorify the shoemakers’ trade**. The ingredients are here even more diversified than in the other two works. Hagiography is drawn on but strangely transformed for the vitae of Saints Crispin. and Crispianus, patrons of the guild, and also Saints Hugh and Winifred. In defiance of all

orthodox legendaries, Hugh and Winifred are made hero and heroine of a stilted euphuistic romance before suffering martyrdom together. As for St. Crispin, a prince disguised as a shoemaker, he conducts a successful love affair with Ursula, daughter of the very Roman emperor, the tyrant Maximinus, who threatens his and his brother’s lives. What is more, in a sequence strongly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (produced just previously in 1596) Crispin succeeds in winning her in a secret marriage. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history of Britain has obviously contributed some of these characters. Coming closer to his own times, Deloney now imports the historical figure of Simon Eyre, a rich 15th-century draper who rose from the ranks and became Lord Mayor of London. At the same time he introduces by name a number of identifiable figures belonging to his own time or the recent past. One of them is Sir Henry Neville, actually Sheriff of Berkshire in 1560, who is here shown

as an impoverished gentleman only too glad to learn the shoemaker’s craft from Tom Drum, a boasting apprentice.*” The framework is most casually put together and there is little unity of theme. The literary techniques are as varied as the materials. Yet here particularly Deloney delights the reader with passages rich in novelistic qualities. Two comparable episodes will serve to illustrate his methods once more. In both, a young woman exploits a visit to a shoemaker’s shop in order to lure him towards an amorous relationship. Onc of them is the imperia 4° Published in two separate parts. The first was registered in 1597, the second was probably issued in 1598. The Gentle Craft has been separately edited by Alexis F. Lange in Palaestra, XVIII (1903), with introduction and notes. 5° Gentle Craft, If, ch. 6. Documentation on Sir Henry and others is given by Mann in his notes to the text.

Fiction for the New

Middle Classes

243

princess Ursula, the other is our old friend Meg of Westminster, imported from the jest books and popular oral tradition. Both women speak an unmannered and seemingly artless English, but

with a difference. Ursula’s is informal but decorous. Her colloquies with Crispin are brief and correct, yet they involve some archness connected with the act of trying on her shoes: “she sitting down, lifted vp her well proportioned legge vpon his gentle knee” (I, ch. 6, p. 95). As if in deliberate burlesque, a similar encounter is later shown in more elaborated form when Long Meg visits the

master shoemaker Richard Casteler. She employs far more provocative language (including double entendre) and gesture (lifting of skirts) in a vain effort to excite his interest. — There is both my foote and leg (said Meg) 1 am not ashamed to snew either of them for I am not legged like a Crane nor footed like a Flie,and therewith

lift vp her cloathes to the knee, whereat Richard smiling said, a little higher Meg and shew all (II, ch. 2, p. 146).5

Long Meg of The Gentle Craft is made in fact much more ludicrous and morally far less admirable than her namesake of the jest-book tradition. In Deloney’s novel she comes in fact to a bad end. Dialogue in The Gentle Craft is if anything more brilliantly lifelike and better sustained than in the other two works. Worthy of the best stage comedy is the colloquy between Crispin the prentice and his master’s wife when he confesses that he has got Ursula with child but delays the statement that he has been secretly married to her. The good dame, virtuously indignant, roundly denounces him for his folly and his “quean” for seducing him to it. Then she abruptly begins to express sympathy as she gives a comical catalogue (Celestina would have loved it) of the troubles and expenses he will have in connection with the child’s birth. Very characteristic is her incoherent report of the situation to her husband. She begins with a sniffling exclamation of Crispin’s name: 51 The double entendre, which follows immediately after, hinges on ambiguous use of craft words like /ast and tool, obviously with sexual connotations.

244

vii. Towards the Forms of Modern Fiction

Oh man (said she) Crispine! Why, why, what of Crispine? Tell me. Why speakest thou not? We shall lose a good seruant, so we shall.

What seruant shall we lose foolish woman (quoth he?) Tell me quickly. O husband! By Cock and Pie I swear, Ile haue her by the nose. Who wilt thou haue by the nose? What the Deuill, art thou mad, wilt thou not answer me? (I, ch. 8, p. 103).

With a minimum expenditure of words, Deloney here registers effectively the husband’s impatient confusion when confronted with his wife’s disorganized ejaculations. Similarly lifelike are the marital interchanges between Simon Eyre and his wife when he is planning the smart commercial trick, typical of the mercantile age, which enriches him by purchase of a damaged Greek vessel on doubtful marginal credit. At first she is cautious: “Now God help you (quoth she) I pray God make us able to pay euery man his own, that we may liue out of debt and danger, and drive the Woolf from the doore, and I desire no more” (I, ch. 10, p. 112). But the good lady easily succumbs to the allurement of heightened social status and is soon

actively helping Simon in his financial intrigues. There are very vigorous flytings between Meg of Westminster and Gillian of the George, rivals for the affection of Richard Casteler. Comic action is developed in the wooing of the widow Farmer of Fleet Street, during which the boasting prentice Tom Drum, the gentleborn Harry Nevill and a doctor named Burket are alike worsted by a modest member of her household named William. This man, a kind of male Cinderella, wins her in the end by his patient devotion including service in her kitchen. Here we have something like a transposition of knightly romantic service into the realm of middle-class domesticity. William’s victory over Sir Henry is also significant of a transposed point of view. The Gentle Craft displays the previously noted tricks of colloquial style, plus others like garrulous aposiopesis and epizeuxis.®* 52 Gillian breaks down into aposiopesis when she is trying to win Richard away from Meg: “Amen I pray God, for it is a sinfull thing to leade a sinfull life, except:”, II, ch. 2, p. 151. Simon Eyre’s wife produces the same effect

Fiction for the New Middle Classes

245

Loose syntactic structures are apparent in the conversations, which often feature asyndeton, vague pronominal reference and shifted constructions.** The total effect is extraordinarily vital, for here the multiple representatives of ordinary people have begun to find a voice in fiction. They argue and boast, engage in endearments and vituperation and sentimental soliloquies as never before in print. Sometimes they ape the inherited romantic forms of the upper classes, but this too has its historical justification. Whatever their mode of speech and action, Deloney’s characters are prophetic of whole galleries of human types to be found in the works of Defoe, Richardson, 19th-century successors.

Fielding and their

when garrulously reporting an overheard statement by the mayor:

“this is

the gentleman that bought, and so forth,” I, ch. 11, p. 117. Comic epizeuxis

appears in the midst of Gillian’s argument with Meg when she exclaims “I doubt I doubt if there be any rat in the field,” II, ch. 3, p. 160. 53 Asyndeton is exemplified in Meg’s remark about Gillian: “I will lead her a dance shall make her weary,” II, ch. 3, p. 159. Shifted construction appears in Tom Drum’s remark “Ile tell thee what, hunger asswageth loue, and so doth time, but if thou be not able to doe any of these, then to take an halter, which if thou doest vse as it ought, if euer thou complaine more of sorrow or care, neuer trust my word for a cupple of blacke puddings,” IT, ch. 7, p. 184.

CHAPTER

RETROSPECT

AND

VIII

SUMMARY

LOOKING backwards, it is possible to observe an extremely variea course followed by English fiction in the time separating Chaucer from Deloney. The period here taken as point of departure represented the highest kind of artistic achievement. Its narrative was however embodied

in verse, and prose was to be the form

used when consumers of fictional narrative became silent readers for the most part instead ‘of listeners, and when their number greatly increased. The ensuing period (15th century) saw a decline in literary qualities, especially in originality. The important

contributions were without doubt translations or at best adaptations of foreign works in various languages. But the act of translating and adapting was an instructive one. It compelled attention to the methods of creation employed by other writers, and also to stylistic and linguistic details essential for the rendering of one text into the language of another. It was not Malory alone who accomplished a feat of transposition and modification which has well founded claims to artistic success. Caxton, Berners, Copland and others dealt with similar problems and also made estimable contributions, especially in their renderings of scenes of social comedy among members of the courtly classes. Meantime the minor forms of anonymous popular narrative, developing out of the exempla and fabliaux, continued to be cultivated and samples of them were gathered into collections. As some of these tended to cluster around comic heroes, rogues or jesters, they were beginning to evolve into a form already suggestive of works ranging from Lazarillo de Tormes to Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. The trend was a promising one but required the impetus of a single creative talent for the realization of genuine artistic unity. At the same time courtly romance continued to

viii. Retrospect and Summary

247

enjoy an enormous vogue. It existed in several forms. Some of the tales were short, some long; some rehashed familiar plots while some, like the fabrications of Emanuel Forde, made efforts

towards originality. Whether translated or merely imitated from known models, many of these latter-day romances were clothed

in a new kind of elaborated style and their plots were forged with a new intricacy. A school of mannered writing was cultivated far removed from the speech of ordinary which affected styles men—unless indeed Hamlet’s Osric is to be counted an ordinary man. Intensive cultivation of rhetorical devices, both ancient and medieval, produced the style known as euphuistic some time before Lyly wrote his famous didactic novel. Imitation of.Greek romances, both directly and-indirectly known, led to the construction of artificially complex plots typically represented by Sidney’s Arcadia. Sometimes charming in a purely decorative way, often absurd, these creations certainly did not open up a fruitful line of development in the history of the English novel. The experiments of Harvey and Gascoigne stand apart from the fashionable trends of the day. Distinguished as they were, thcy failed nevertheless to exert any perceptible influence on contemporary writing. To find the major channel of fiction reaching to our own age we have to follow the sequels of the jest-book tradition. Having received fresh nourishment from Spanish realism, especially the picaresque, that tradition was able to flower in English works to which the term realism may be applied. at feast in a limited sense. Nashe and Breton display what may be called second-hand realism, indebted to literary sources quite as much as to life. Deloney too, the best of the group, is by no means a pioneering innovator, as his use of the jest books’ Long Meg may alone indicate. But he sought his inspiration as well as his patronage in the ranks of a newly rising, newly proud and even boisterously vocal economic class. When King Henry's Queen Katherine salutes Jack of Newbury as a gentleman he gives her a spirited answer which has a cultural significance extending beyond the realm of fiction and the writing of novels:

248

viii. Retrospect and Summary

Most gracious Queene (quoth hee) Gentleman I am none, nor the sonne of a Gentleman, but a poore Clothier, whose landes are his Loomes, hauing no other Rents but what I get from the backes of little sheepe: nor can I claime any cognisance [i.e., heraldic bearing]: but a wodden shuttle (Jack, ch. 2, p. 24).

By drawing on the spirit which animates these words, Deloney was able to infuse new life and vigor into the very promising inherited materials he had at his disposal.

INDEX Note:

Titles of works (unless anonymous) are listed under names and are not repeated separately.

A accused queens 56, 151, 175n., 192 Adams, R. P., on Gascoigne’s Master F. J. 228n., 234n.

alba 127n., 223 & n. Alcuin, Dialogus de Rhetorica 214n. Aleman, Matheo, Guzman de Alfarache 212n. allegory 20, 40, 131, 133, 135, 136f., 176, 183, 185, 200 & n., 238 alliteration 28, 54n., 80n., 147, 156, 162, 178n., 182, 183, 186, 204, 213 Almquist, C. L. J., Sara Videbeck 2 Alphabet of Tales, An 84n. Alphabeticum Narrationum 84 Amadas et Ydoine 15 Amadis of Gaul 153n., 165n., 166f. amour courtois: see courtly love

Amyot,

tr. Daphnis and Chloe

175

anacoluthon 52 & n., 89° anaphora 213, 222 Andreas Capellanus, De Arte Honeste Amandi 14n., 15 Andrewe, Lawrence, translator 141n. anecdotes 40, 45, 84f., 90, 109f., 112,

188, 204, 215, 240 — enchained 90ff. — see also jests anti-hero 207 & n. anti-heroine 224 & n. anti-romalnce 39n., 45, 78ff., 99f., 111, 138, 224

the authors’

antithesis 54n., 148, 182, 186, 224 Antoine de la Sale: see Sale, Antoine de la Apollonius of Tyre 62 &n., 175, 192, 195 apostrophe 17, 213 aposiopesis 110, 244 & n. Arber, E., ed. Reynard the Fox 78n.

Aretino 214 artes de amore 220n. Arthur, King 106, 108, 165 Arthur of Little Britain 5n., 65, 69ff., 77 Arthurian

romances

14, 18ff., 23ff.,

45, 75ff., 165, 169, 171 Artus de Bretaigne 70n., 72n. Ashbee, E. W., ed. Kynge Apollyn of Thyre 62 asyndeton 245 & n. Athis and Prophilias 187 Auerbach, E., Mimesis 8n., 19 — Zur Technik der Friihrenaissancenovelle 123n. Aurelio and Isabel: see Juan de Flores, Historia de Grisel

Aurner, Nellie S., Caxton 50n. Austen, Jane 3, 16, 234 autobiographical form 22, 128, 130f.,

136n.,

172, 180, 188, 193f., 200,

206, 212, 213, 216, 233 Avalle-Arce, Juan B., on mayor’s Diana 176 n.

Monte-

250

Index

Awdeley, John, Fraternitye of Vacabondes \\\ff., 118f. Ayres, H. M., and Barnouw, A. J., ed.

Mary of Nimmegen 96n. Ayrton, M., ed. Nashe,

The Unfor-

Besch, Emil, “Les Adaptations en prose des chansons de geste” 169n. Beves of Hamtoun 12 & n. Birney, Earle, on Chaucer’s irony ‘32n. Blancandin et l’Orgueilleuse d’ Amour

tunate Traveller 213n.

65 Baker, E. A., History of the English Novel vii, 4f., 154n., 163n. Baltic area 66 & n., 85, 104f., 107, 142n. Bandello, Matteo, Novellieri 143ff., 150, 152n. Banks, Mary Macleod, ed. An Alphabet of Tales 84n. Barnouw, A. J.: see Ayres, H. M. Barrow, S. F., Medieval Society Romances \7n. Bateson, E. W., Cambridge Biblio-

graphy viiin. Batman, Stephen, The Travayled Pyl-

greme 135n. Baum, Paull F., Chaucer: A Critical Appreciation 39n., 46n. bawd as type character

123, 126, 143,

148, 193, 219ff. Bédier, Joseph, Les Fabliaux 44n. Bedrog van Vrouwen, Dat \08n. Belianis of Greece 167f. Belleforest, Francois, Histoires tragiques 143ff., 150 Bellora and Fidelio 134n. Benoit de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie 19n., 30 Berli, Hans, Gabriel Harvey, der Dichterfreund 225Sn. Berners, John, Arthur of Little Britain

— — —

65, 69ff., 77, 246 Castle of Love 131 ff. Golden Book 148 Huon of Burdeux 54 & n., 55n.

Béroul, Tristan 163

Blanchardyn and Eglantine 65ft. Blok, F.F., on the epitaph of Tyll - Uilenspeghel 91n. Boaisteau, Pierre 143 Boccaccio, G. 100, 120f., 153, 193 —

Decameron

101, 138f., 141, 152n.,

156f., 159 & n., 160& n., 187, 193. 215 —

Fiametta

—

Filostrato 29f., 34n., 37, 122, 127f.

127ff., 136n.

—

Tito and Gisippo 138, 187

Boethius 37, 39 Boeve de Hauntone 12 & n. Bond, R., ed. Lyly’s Works 187n. Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry, The 84n.

;

Borneque, Henri, Les Déclamations 142n. Bossuat, Robert, Manuel bibliograPhique S8n. Bradner, L., The First English Novel 229n., 233n.

Brandeis,

A., ed. Jacob's Well 84n.

Breton, Nicholas 247

—

Fantiro and Penillo 195 & n., 196, 219

—

Miseries

of Mavillia

212,

216ff.

Brie, Friedrich, ed. The Deceyte of Women 101n. Bronté sisters 16 Brown, Carleton, ed. The Pardoner’s Tale 43n. Bunyan, John 40 — Pilgrim’s Progress 135 & n. Burgundy, court of 48ff., 61 & n., 100

Index burlesque 13, 44, 86n., 92, 100, 108

& n., 110f., 150, 162, 214ff., 219, 222, 238, 243

Burney, Fanny 16 Butler, Eliza M., The Fortunes of Faust 99n. Byzantine source 187

C Cabeen, D. C., Critical Bibliography of French Literature 70n. Cambridge Bibliography viiin., 154n. Camp, C. W., The Artisanin Elizabethan Literature 235n. " Camus, Philippe, Oliver of Castile 56n. Canby, Henry Seidel, The Short Story 138n. Cartigny, Jean de, Le Voyage du

Chevalier Errant 135ff.

251

Champion, Pierre, ed. Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles 88n., 100n., 101n., 103n., 104n. Chandler, F. W. —

—

Literature of Roguery 207n.

Romances of Roguery 207n., 208n., 211n., 224n.

Chanson du Chevalier au Cygne, La 58n. : chansons de geste \\ff., 47£f., 169, 191 characters

and typical characterization 113f., 116, 136, 185, 197, 200f., 207, 218, 237f.

Charlemagne 47, SOff., 165, 169 Chatelain de Coucy, Le 17n. Chaucer, Geoffrey vii, 5, 44, 46, 100,

121 & n., 152f., 157f., 198, 210, 246 —

Canterbury

Tales 45, 46n.,

152,

157, 218n. — Man of Law’s Tale 175n., 193n.

Castiglione, The Courtier 155 - — Merchant’s Tale 218 n. Castle of Love, The 131f. — Pardoner’s Tale 42f. Caxton, William 48ff., 60ff., 65ff., — Sir Thopas 168, 182 78ff., 84n., 120, 164f., 246 — Wife of Bath’s Prologue 110, 181, — Blanchardyn 52n., 65ft. 222, 238 ; — Charles the Grete 50 & n., 54 — Legend of Good Women 186 — Foure Sonnes of Aymon, The 5\ff. — Troilus and Criseyde 22f., 28ff., 68, — Jason 49 & n. 120ff., 186n., 228, 232, 234 — Paris and Vienne 65, 67ff. — Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye Chauvin, V., Les Romanciers grecs 60fF. 174n. — Reynard the Fox 78ff. Chaytor, H. J., ed. Lazarillo de Tormes 206n., 207n., 208n. Cejador y Frauca, Julio, ed. Celestina 219n., 222n. Chettle, Henry 196 — Piers Plainnes 200ff., 211 Celestina 123, 126, 219ff., 243 Chevalier au Cygne, Le 58n. Cent nouvelles nouvelles, Les, 88 & n., Chevally, Abel, Thomas Deloney.237n. 100ff., 156n., 160f. Chinon of England 1711 & n. Cervantes, M. de, Don Quixote 76, chivalric. adventure in Elizabethan 165 romance 164ff. Cespedes y Meneses, Gonzales de, chivalry 31, 47ff., 75ff. El Espanol Gerardo 212 n. — see also courtly love Chambers, R. W., On the Continuity chivalry burlesqued 80 of English Prose 77n.

Index

252

Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charette 14

Copland, Robert 51 & n., 58f., 91n.,

— Perceval 65f., 76 — Yvain 8n., 18ff. Christine de Pisan, Le Livre du Duc des Vrais Amans 22 & n., 40n.

— Apollonius of Tyre 62 — Guy of Warwick 82n. Copland, William 58n., 91n., 101 Courtly Controversie, A: see H[enry]} W[otton] courtly love 13ff., 17n., 22, 27, 29, 31 &n., 75, 81, 122f., 129n., 162, 223 courtly realism 8, 17, 66, 75, 125

Cinthio, novelle 150, 155 class factors 69f., 93, 161, 180, 193f., 207ff., 226, 238f., 247f. —

see also middle class elements

classical tradition 41, 148, 162 —

see also Greek romances, Hellenic literature, Roman comedy

Clementine Recognitions: nitions of Clement

see Recog-

Clerc, John, tr. Arnalt and Lucenda

129n. Cluchtboek (Dutch) 85n. Cobbler of Canterburie 157ff. Cocheris, H., ed. La Vieille 220n. Collier, J. Payne, ed. Lodge, William Longbeard 235n. colloquial speech 21, 32, 62, 79ff., 83, 100, 102, 108ff., 116n., 119, 141, 149f., 161, 181f., 204, 208, 217f., 221ff., 227, 237, 240ff. Colonna, Francesco, Hypnertomachia 137n. combats of relatives 56, 166 comedy and comic elements 16, 25f.,

31ff., 123ff., 167, 181, 185, 201, 218, 223, 234, 239, 246 Comfort, W. W., tr. Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances 18n.

conny-catching pamphlets 112ff., 194, 197, 204 Conrad, Joseph 3 contest in generosity 134, 139 controversiae

134, 142n., 167

conversation 17, 19, 21, 25, 33ff., 61, 103, 109, 140, 145, 188, 201, 205, 231f., 240

120, 246

:

courtly romance 164, 246 Crane, R. S., The Vogue of Medieval Romance 50n. Crane, W. G., ed. The Castle of Love 131n. Cranfill, T. M., ed. Riche his Farewell

149n., 150n. crusades 11, 54, 56, 58, 64, 66 & n.,

68, 104, 120 Cunliffe, J. W., ed. Gascoigne, Works 229n.

D Dahl, T., on the language of Deloney 239n. Dame Siriz 83n., 126 Daphnis and Chloe 174f. Davis, Walter R., “Thematic

Unity in the Arcadia” 184n. Day, Angel, tr. Daphnis and Chloe EIS Day, Mabel and Serjeantson, Mary S., ed. Sir Gawain 25n.

debate 20, 131, 133f., 139, 141, 145, 153, 180, 186ff., 228, 231

" — see also rhetoric Deceyte of Women, The 101ff., 110f., 140n.,

142n.,

159n., 161

Defoe, Daniel 4, 44, 136n., 245 — Journal 215 Dekker, Thomas, Belman of London, The 112n. — Wonderful Yeare, The 215 & n.

Index

Deloney, Thomas vii, 237ff., 241ff. —

Gentle Craft,.The 242ff.

— Thomas of Reading 219n., 237t., 240f. — Works 96n. description 24f., 71, 79, 90, 100ff., 113, 145ff., 176, 182, 186, 204, 225f., 231, 241 — of characters 182, 194, 204, 209, 213 Desrey, Pierre, Genealogie du Prince Godefroi de Boulion, La 58n. Deyermond, A. D., on Celestina 220n. dialect, use of 28, 85ff., 239 dialogues 19ff., 36, 41, 43f., 56, 59, 61, 67, 71, 79, 83, 100ff., 111, 115f., 134, 173, 182, 207, 219, 227, 239, 241, 243ff. vs — see also conversation Dickens, Charles 3 — David Copperfield 136 — Pickwick Papers 246 Dickenson, John, Arisbas 190 & n. — Valeria of London 190n. Dickson, A., ed. Valentine and Orson 56n., 57

didacticism 17n., 84, 136f., 175, 184, 188, 247 discourse, direct 53, 103, 109, 113, 217f. — reported 61, 109, 183, 203, 218, 226, 235 — see also speech and speeches disguises 68, 173 & n., 176f., 179, 191, 194f., 198 Dobb, Maurice 164 Dods, Marcus: see Pratten, B. P. Doesborch, Jan 107n., 141n. Dos Passos, John, 42nd Parallel 7 double entendre 109, 186, 188, 233n. 243 & n. Doutrepont, Georges, La Littérature francaise 48n., 61

253

— Mises en prose, Les 169n. drama 92, 172, 239 Dujardin, Les lauriers sont coupés 3 Dunlop, J. G., History of Prose Fiction 9n., 44, 72n.

eclogues 175, 180 economic factors 70ff., 106, 145, 147, 151, 156, 164, 200, 204ff., 218, 236ff., 244 Ehrismann, G., Geschichte der deutschen Literatur 94n. Eleanor of Aquitaine 13 . Elyot, Sir Thomas, The Governour 138f., 187 Enéas, Roman de 19n. epics 7, 11, 27, 5Of. © epistles: see letters

epistolary novels 152 epithets 108n., 182 Erasmus 153, 212 Esdaile, A., A List of English and Prose Romances

157n.,

Tales 169n.

Etienne de Bezancon 84n. eulogy 214, 222 euphuistic style 147f., 154, 162, 173, - 183, 185f., 190, 195f., 208, 228 Eurialus and Lucrece 5n., 120ff., 224, 230, 234 Evans, Dorothy A., ed. Cartigny,

The Wandering Knight 135n., 136n. Everett, Dorothy,

Essays on Middle

English Literature 27n. exempla 40ff, 81ff., 90, 95, 101, 110,

116, 134, 138, 153, 207, 246

F fables 40 fabliaux 8n., 40f., 44ff., 81f., 95, 99ff., 138, 157, 161, 204, 240, 246

254

Index

Faustus legend 44, 95f., 97ff., 212f. Fenton, Geoffrey, Certaine Tragicall Discourses 143 & n., 144ff., 152n.

—

ed.

Laneham’s Letter 140n., 142n. ; — ed. Three Kings’ Sons 54n.

Ferguson, A. B., The Indian Summer of English Chivalry 49n.

Ferrier, Janet, Forerunners of the French Novel 44n., 120n. feudalism 8n., 18, 26, 30, 47ff., 69ff., 77, 82, 123, 164 Fielding, Henry

3f., 93, 136n., 245

— Joseph Andrews 56 Fierabras \2f.

de Grisel

133ff., 139 Floris and Blanchefleur 159 18n.

folklore 18, 41, 56, 58, 69n., 72, 76, 86n., 106 & n., 134, 166, 182 ‘Forde, Emanuel 172ff., 247 — Mantelion 172 — Ornatus and Artesia 172f. — Parismenos 172 & n. — Parismus 172 & n. Fortescue, Thomas, Mexia 89n.

tr.

Gallicisms 52, 57, 59f., 62, 130n. Galsworthy, John 3, 234 Gamelyn 198 Garcia, Carlos, Desordenada Codicia 212n. Gascoigne, George 131, 229n., 234n.,

Firumbras 12n. Florence de Rome 15\ Flores, Juan de, Historia

Foerster, W., ed. Yvain

G

Pedro

de

foundlings 56, 166, 174 Foure Sonnes of Aymon, The S\ft. framed novelle 152ff. 172, 176, 192n. — see also: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; Cobler of Canterbury Frankfurter, Philipp, Der Pfarrer von Kalenberg 93n. Frappier, J., Chrétien de Troyes 19n. Frederick of Jennen 139ff.

French, W. H., and Hale, C. B., Middle English Metrical Romances 20n.

Friar Bacon 95ff. Friar Rush 95 Furnivall, F. J., ed. Caueat — cd. Fraternitye 112n.

247 — Adventures of Master 224 & n. 228ff.

F. J.

— Hundreth Sundrie Floweres 229 Gaskell, Elizabeth 16 Léon, SBibliographie des - Gautier, chansons de geste 169n. Gellius, Aulus 89 Genouy, Hector, L’Arcadia et la Diana 179n. Geoffrey of Monmouth 171 — Historia Regum Britanniae 242. George a Green, The History of 237n. German literary influence 85f. Gesta Romanorum 44, 83 & n., 104 gestures 27 & n., 32, 53, 61, 90, 100,

102f., 139, 240, 243

194, 209f., 226, 231,

Getty, Agnes K., on “Chaucer’s Changing Conceptions of the Humble Lover” 31In.

Gibbs, Henry, ed. Lucrece 120n. Gist, Margaret 15n.

Godefroy

Eurialus

A.,

Love

of Boulion

S8n.

and

and War

Goodwine, T. P., tr. Blanchardyn and

112n.

Eglantine 65n. Goodyear, W., tr. Le Chevalier Errant 135 Gosse, E., ed. Lodge, Works 198n.

Index

Grange, John, Golden Aphroditis 185ff. Graves, R. E., ed. Oliver of Castile $6n.

Greek romances 174ff., 185¢f. — see also Hellenic literature Greg, Walter, Pastoral Poetry 176n. — ed. Rosalynde 198n. Greene, Robert 99, 112n., 113, 116,

162, 176 190ff., 216 —

Arbasto

191

—

conny-catching pamphlets 112f. — Euphues his Censure 192n. — Francisco’s Fortunes 193 — Groats Worth of Wit 194f. —- Mamillia 190 & n. — Mariana of Tyre 192n. — Menaphon 191f. — —

— Penelope’s Web 194 — Perimedes 192 — Philomela 193 — Planetomachia 192n. Griffin, N., ed. Historia Destructionis Troiae 61. —

—

see also Myrick, A. B. Works

ed. Dickenson, Prose and Verse 190n.

—

ed. Greene, Life and Works 190n. — ed. Harvey, Works 225n. grotesque 218

Guerara, Libro Aureo

148

Guicciardi, Lodovico, The Garden of Pleasure 89n.

Gui de Warewic

Guillaume de Deguiteville, Pélerinage de la vie humaine 135 Guy of Warwick 15, 18, 82 & n. Guyer, F. E., on Chrétien de Troyes 19n.

H H. C., The Forrest of Fancy 152n. Habel, Ursula, Die Nachwirkung des pikaresken Romans 206n., 207n. Habicht, W., Die Gebdrde in englischen Dichtungen des Mittelalters

27n, hagiography 24, 56, 86n., 148, 175, 192, 242 Hale, C. B.: see French, W. H. Halliwell, J. O., ed. Margarite of America —

ed.

198n. Sack

Full

of News,

The

87n. — ed. Tinker of Turvey, The 163n. Hardy, Thomas 3, 225

Never too Late 193, 201 Pandosto 191, 199n.

Grossart, A. B., ed. Breton, 195n., 216n.

255

18

Guido delle Colonne, Historia Destructionis Troiae 61

Harman, Thomas, A Caueat 111ff., 118n., 119, 241 Harpersfield, Life of Sir Thomas More 77n. Hartman, H., ed. Petite Pallace 148n. Harvey, Gabriel, A Nobleman’s Suit 224f. Hassell, J. W., Jr, ed. Nouvelles récréations 108n., 237n. — Sources and Analogues of 108n.., 109n., 110n. Hausknecht, E., ed. Sowdone of Babylone 12n.

Havelok the Dane

15

Hazlitt, W. C., ed. Paris and Vienne 67n.

—ed. Shakespeare Jest-Books 86n., 87n. Head, Richard, and Kirkman, Francis, The English Rogue 207n.

256

Index

Helias 169 — see also Helyas Heliodorus 9n., 176, 188, 200n. — Aethiopica 174, 179, 185, 190. Hellenic literature (romance) 174f., 179f., 190, 192, 198, 201, 203, 206 Helyas S7ff., 82 Herford, C. H., Literary Relations of Germany and England 85n., 9\n., 96n. ; Herrtage, S. J. H., — ed. Gesta Hindley, Charles, tor’s Miscellany

ed. Firumbras 12n. Romanorum 83n. Old Book Collec117n.

Hispanicisms 131n., 208n. Historie von vier Kaufmdannern, Die 140n. Hoby, Sir Thomas, tr. Castiglione, The Courtier 155 Holmes, U. T., ed. Critical Bibliography of French Literature 70n.

Homer, Odyssey 174f., 194

Horn et Rimel 63

31, 36, 38, 63, 94, 100, 107f.,

111, 150, 157f., 162, 182, 204, 211

J Jack of Newbury 237ff., 247f. Jacob’s Well 84 & nJames, Henry 28, 228 Jan Tamboer 85n. i Jeffrey, Violet, John Lyly and the Renaissance 187n. jest-books 46, 81, 84ff.,°109, 117, 119, 150, 161, 197, 204, 206f., 210, 219n., 240, 243, 247 jests 40, 84f., 211, 238 jests, enchained 90ff., 206 Jests of George Peele, The 88 Johnson, Richard, Nine Worthies Viiin., 171, 237n.

— Seaven Champions viiin. — Tom a Lincoln 171 Jolles, A., Einfache Formen 85n. J., and

Lacour,

L.,

ed.

Nouvelles récréations 108n.

— see also exempla homonyms 85, 87 — see also puns

Jonson, Ben 79 —

Hook, Frank S., The French Bandello 143n., 144n., 145n., 146n. humour 85ff., 166, 225, 241 Hundred Mery Tales, A 86 & n., 88, 89n. Huon de Bordeaux 54 & n. Huon of Burdeux 54f. Hutman, Norma Louise, on Lazarillo de Tormes 209n. Huxley, Aldous 22, 228 hypotaxis 89

Every

Man

in

180,

188,

his

Humour

_ 239n.

— Joyce,

Volpone 195 James,

;

Finnegans

Wake

2f.

— Ulysses. 2f. Jugement d'amour: see Flores, Grisel 134n.

Juan

de

K Kafka, Franz 2f. — Amerika 3 — The Castle 3 — The Trial 3. Kasprzyk, K., “Le

I

194, 228, 23if.

irony

Jonaust,

homiletics 41, 44, 82

Icelandic realism 16 included tales 172, 176,

Tok en Ernst 85n.

motif

du

récupéré par l’amant” 107n. Keller, A. von, Erzahlungen

Don

aus

altdeutschen Handschriften 107n.

Index

Kellner, Leon, ed. Blanchardyn and Eglantine 52n., 65n., 66n. Kelly, James Fitz-Maurice, ed. Celestina 221n. : Kemp-Welsh, Alice, tr. Christine de Pisan, Le Duc des vrais amans 22n. Kilgour, L., The Decline of Chivalry 48n., 50n. : King Horn 15, 64 King Ponthus and the Fair Sidone 64 & n. Kirby, J. A., Chaucer’s Troilus 30n. Kirkman, Francis: see Head, Richard Knight of La Tour Landry, The 84 & n. Knight of the Swan, The 56 Koeppel, Emil, Studien 143n., 148n.. Kroeber, A. and Servois, G., ed. Fierabras 12n. Kronenberg,

M. E.: see Nijhoff, W. Kruyskamp, C., ed. Marieken van Nieumeghen 96n. K6élbing, E., ed. Beves of Hamtoun 12n.

Kichler, Walther, Die Technik der Cent nouvelles nouvelles 100n.

L LWA: tr. Belianis of Greece 167n. L. D., tr. Gerardo the Unfortunate Spaniard 212n. Lacour, Louis: see Jouaust, J. Laertes, Diogenes 89 Lang, Andrew, ed. Hypnertomachia © 137n.

Lange, Alexis F., ed. The Gentle Craft 242n. Latin 41ff., 62, 109, 174

Lawlis, Merritt E., The Novels of Deloney 237n. Lawrence, W. W., Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies 140n.

257

Lazarillo de Tormes 206ff., 216, 246 Lee, S. L., ed. The Boke of Huon 54n. Lefevre, Jean, ed. La Vieille Lefevre, Raoul 49 — Recuyell of the Historyes of 61, 62n. Legenda Aurea 162

218f., Duke 220n. Troye

letters, use of 123, 145, 152, 162, 186, 188, 224, 226, 230 Lewis, C. S., Allegory of Love, The —

14n. English Literature in the Sixteenth

Century 58n., 90n., 117n., 154n., 179n.,. 199n. — “What Chaucer Really did to I/ Filostrato” 30n. Libecus Desconnus 15 Liber Exemplorum 42n. ‘litotes 36, 38 Little, A. G., ed. Liber Exemplorum 42n. local colour 90, 101 & n., 107f.. 116, 161, 207, 229 Lodge, Thomas 176, 196ff., 235f. — Alarum against Usurers 147 & n.,

201 — Margarite of America 198 — Robert Duke of Normandy 199. — Rosalynde \97f. — William Longbeard \99f., 235 & n. Lohengrin 58, 182 Logeman, H.: see Muller, J. W. Long, P. W., “From Troilus to Euphues” 186n. Long Meg \\7ff., 243f., 247 Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 174 Loomis, Laura Hibbard, on Sir Gawain 23n.

— tr. Medieval Romances 25n. Loomis, R. S., ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages 23n.

Index

258 .

— Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes 18n. , — tr. Medieval Romances 25n. lover’s gift returned 107n.

Mead, W. H., ed. Chinon of England 171n.

Luna, Juan de, sequel to Lazarillo de Tormes 212n. Luxan, Pedro de, sequel to Amadis

Mecch, Sanford B., Design in Chaucer’s Troilus 31n., 32n.

de Gaula 153 Lydgate, John, Pilgrimage of the Life of Man 135 : ‘Lyly, John, Euphues and sequels 5, 40, 147, 185ff., 206, 247

Menéndez y Pelayo, Origines de la Novela 9n. Meredith, George 3, 234 Meres, Francis, Palladis Tamia 169n. Merie Tales of Skelton 86 Merie Tales of the Mad Men 87

M Mabbe, James, tr. Celestina 22In., 223n. . — tr. Guzman de Alfarache 212n. Macon, Le, tr. Decameron 152n.

magic 69 & n., 76, 96ff., 166, 213 & n. Magus saga Jaris 213n. Maitland, F. W.: see Pollock, F. malapropisms 89, 109, 239

Malkiel, Maria Rosa Celestina 220n.

Lida

Malory,

67, 81,

Sir Thomas

de, on 167,

246

Mechel, Kurt, on Die Historie von vier Kaufmdannern 140n.

Melbranche,

Brian, Philotimus 188f.

Merrie Conceited Jests 87 Mervin 169n.

Mery Jests of the Wyddow Edyth 86 Mery Tales 86, 89 metaphors 146, 215 Meun, Jean de 220n.

Mexia, Pedro de, The Foreste of Histories 89n. Michelant, H., ed. Blancandin 65n. middle class elements 31, 48f., 93, 141, 152, 212, 234ff., 244f. Middle English metrical romances 20ff.

— Morte d’ Arthur 5, 67, 75ff. Mann, Oscar, ed. Deloney’s Works

miles gloriosus 201, 223

96n., 238, 242n. Mann, Thomas, Zauberberg 2 Marguerite of Navarre, Heptameron 108 & n., 143n., 155 Marie de Champagne 13 Marieken van Nieumeghen 96n. Marlowe, Christopher, Faustus 99 Mary of Nimmegen 96 & n. Masuccio, J/ Novellino 211n. Mather, Jewett, ed. King Ponthus 64n. Matulka, Barbara, The Novels of Juan de Flores 134n. marchen 58, 134, 166, 182 — see also folklore Maugis d’ Aigremont 213n.

ure, The 146n. Millican, C. B., Spenser and the Table Round 165n. Mirrour of Mirth, The 108, 111, 161

Miles, Hamish,

ed. Palace of Pleas-

Mirrour for Magistrates 184 mock-epic 80 Moller, Herbert, “The Meaning of Courtly Love” 14n. monologues 19f., 34, 56, 123, 193 Montemayor, Juan de, Diana 176ff.,

198 More, Sir Thomas 117, 212 Morgan, Charlotte E., The Rise of the Novel 167n., 172n. Mosher, J. E., The Exemplum 41n.

Index

259

Mozley, J. H., on De Vetula 220n. Muller, J. W., and Logeman, H., ed.

Reynaert de Vos 78n., 80n. Munday, Anthony 165ff. — Amadis of Gaule 165 & n., 166f. — Palladine 165n. — Palmerin d’Oliva 165n. — Primaleon 165n. Munro, John, ed. Zhe History of Jason 49n. Muscatine,

Charles

—

Chaucer and the French Tradition 31n.

—

“The Emergence of Psychological Allegory in French Romance” 20n. -

Myers,

A. R. England in the Late Middle Ages 49n.

Myrick, A. B., and Griffin, N. E., _ ' tr. Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato 30n.

mythology 18, 61, 86n., 148f., 171, 183, 186, 192n.

N ‘Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, La 58n.

:

Nashe, Thomas 247 Pierce Penilesse 200n. — Unfortunate Traveller, ‘The 212¢f. neologisms 62 Nicholas de Troyes 107n. Nijhoff, W., and Kronenberg, M. E., Nederlandsche Bibliografie 91n. novel, epistolary: see letters — Gothic 99 —

— pseudo-historical

199f., 212f.,

237ff.

novelle 85, 99ff., 137ff., 143ff., 152¢f., 162, 187, 207, 216, 218 Nirnberger Chronik: see Schedel, H. Nykrog, Per, Les Fabliaux 44n.

Oo Oesterley, Hermann, ed. Gesta Romanorum 83n. — ed. Shakespeare’s Jest Book 86n.

Ogier the Dane 169 Oliver of Castile 56n. oracles 174, 179, 191 oratory

134,

180f.,

193,

199, 203,

213f. oriental sources 41, 44, 74, 83n. O’Sullivan, M., ed. Firumbras 12n. Ovid 126 & n., 192, 220 & n. Owlglass: see Tyll Howleglas Owst, G. R., Preaching in Medieval England 4\n.

— Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England 41n.

P Painter, William, Palace of Pleasure 143 & n., 144f., 146n., 152n. Paire of Turtle Doves, A: see Bellora and Fidelio palinode to Chaucer’s Troilus 39n. Palmerin romances 165n., 169, 172 parasite as character 201 parataxis 89, 141 _ Paris and Vienne 65, 67ff. Paris et la belle Vienne 67n. Parry, J. J., tr. The Art of Courily Love 14n. Parry, R., Moderatus viii n. Parson of Kalenborowe, The 90, 93ff., 109, 207 Pasquils Jests 87, 90 pastoral 174ff., 180, 190ff., 200, 203, 216f. Pastor of Kalenberg (Kalenborow): see Parson of Kalenborowe pedantry satirized 88, 109 Peele, George, Jests of 87f., 90

Index

260 Perez, Alonso, sequel mayor’s Diana 177n.

to

Monte-

Pérez y Gémez, Antonio, ed. Celestina 219n. Périers, Bonaventure des, Nouvelles récréations 108ff., 237n. personification 132f., 135, 183 Pettie, George, A Petite Pallace 148f. Pfarrer von Kalenberg, Der 94n.

picaresque narrative 206ff., 247 Piccolomini, Aeneas

46,

99,

119,

Sylvius,

De

duobus amantibus 120ff. Piers Plowman 135f.

pleonastic constructions 112,. 150, 161

8% &

n.,

plots and plot structure 51, 100, 131,

144, 150, 166, 172ff., 184, 191ff., 201ff., 206f., 216, 227, 240 Plutarch 148, 199, 203 point of view 1, 3, 6, 27f., 32, 39, 116, 196n., 214, 228f., 237 Poland 66 & n., 98f. political intrigue 200ff. political theory 180f., 188 Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., History of English Law 15n. Polo, Gaspar Gil, sequel to Monte: mayor’s Diana 177n.

Ponthus and.Sidone: see King Ponthus portraits: see descriptions of charac-

ters pound of flesh story 85n. B. P.

and

prosopographia 213 prosopopoeia 132 Proust, M., A la Recherche du temps perdu 2 Prouty,

G. T.,

George

Gascoigne

229n., 234n. —

ed. A Hundreth Sundrie Floweres 229n.

proverbs Pruvost, bethan puns 85,

32, 86n., 119, 161, 186 Matteo Bandello and ElizaFiction 143n. 189, 227

Q

Planetomachia 192n. Platonism 184 & n.

Pratten,

pronouns, use of 150, 161, 217n., 245

Dods,

M.,

tr.

Recognitions of Clement 175n. preaching friars 41ff. present tense, use of 90, 150, 156, 161,

197, 240n. Price, T. A., on Troilus and Criseyde 3In. . Promos and Cassandra 155 f.

.

Quatre fils Aymon, Les 51ff. quests 47, 69, 73, 77, 166 Queste del Saint Graal, La 75

R Raith, Josef, on Die manner 140n., 141n.

vier

Kauf-

Rasmunssen, Jens, La Prose narrative francaise 138n. Rastell, John, tr. Celestina 219n.

realism 6ff., 16, 45ff., 57, 79f., 89f., 100, 111ff., 121, 126, 137, 152, 182, 207f., 213ff., 218, 233, 239ff., 247 Recognitions of Clement 175 recognition scenes 174 Redborne, Robert, ed. Arthur of Little Britain 70n. Reid, T. B. W., ed. Yvain 18n. Reméde d’amour, Le 121n. Renaud de Montauban 51 repetitions 52n., 59, 89, 213, 239 reunions of characters 56, 166, 174,

191f., 193n. de Vos 78n. the Fox 78ff. Gustave, Les Origines du réaliste 101n.

Reynaert Reynard Reynier, roman

Index

rhetoric 17, 19ff., 32, 52, 54n., 96, 123, 128n., 130, 132f., 138f., 143, 145, 162, 166, 178, 181, 197, 2136f., 222ff., 226 & n., 247 — see also euphuistic style rhythmical prose 156, 186f., 213f., 226n. Richard de Fournival, Bestiaire de l’Amour 220n. — Richardson, Octavia, ed. The Foure Sonnes of Aymon S\n., 52n. Rich(e), B. 156, 177 — Apolonius and Silla 173n. — Brusanus viii n., 149n. —

261

romance, medieval 9, 11, 14ff., 23¢f. 47ff., 110 Roman comedy 126, 223 : Roman de la Rose, Le 20n., 126, 131, 220f. Roques, Mario, ed. Yvain 18n. — on editing Yvain 19n. Rotunda,

D. P, Motif Index of the

Italian Novella 106n. Rouland, David, Pleasant

A 206n., 208 Roy, Maurice,

ed.

Historie,

Christine

de

Pisane, Oeuvres poétiques 22n. Rufinus de Aquileia 175n.

Don Simonides 149n., 188n.

Farewell to Military Profession 149ff., 219n. Richardson, Samuel 3f., 16, 40, 136n., 152, 245 — Pamela 226, 227 riddles 86n. Ridley, M. R., tr. Sir Gawain 25n. Robbins, R. H., tr. The Hundred Tales 156n. Robert Laneham’s Letter 140n., 142n. Robert the Devil 95 & n., 97 Robin Hood 117, 237n. Robarts, Henry viii n.

Ss

—

Robinson, F. N., ed. Chaucer, Works 33n.

‘

Rogers, J. E. Thorold 164 rogues and roguery 46, 207ff., 216, 246 Rohde, E., Der griechische Roman, 174n.

Rojas, Fernando de, Celestina 219 Rollins, Hyder E., on sources of Melbranche’s Philotimus 189n. romance (general) 4f., 44, 50 & n., 82 romance, Elizabethan 164ff. romance, Greek 9n., 62f., 172, 174ff.,

185ff., 200 & n., 247

Sack Full of Newes, The 87 & n. Saintonge, Constance, “In Defense of Criseyde” 36n. Sale, Antoine de la, Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles 100 & n. — Jehan de Saintré 40n. San Pedro, Diego de 136n. — Arnalte y Lucenda 129ff. — Carcel de Amor 131ff. Sands, D. B., ed. Reynard the Fox 78n.

Sanforde, James, tr. Guicciardi, The Garden of Pleasure 89n. Samarin, R., on Renaissance realism 214n. Sannazaro, Arcadia 176 Saracens

11ff., 54ff., 64ff., 166, 191,

193n., 200n. satire 75, 81, 88, 91ff., 99ff., 107f., 138, 143, 185, 195, 196ff., 207, 213, 220ff. — anticlerical 85, 88, 91, 109, 158 — anti-courtly 162f. — Roman 195, 221 — in jest books 85, 87ff. Saxo Grammaticus 144 Schedel, H., Niirnberger Chronik 99n. Schlauch, M. 106n., 112n. Schleich, G., ed. Guy of Warwick 82n.

Index

262

— ed. Ywain and Gawain 20n. Schultz, Ernst, Die englischen Schwankbiicher 86n. Scoggin’s Jests: see Skoggin’s Jests Scott, E. J. L., ed. The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey 225 & n. Scott, Sir Walter 4 Seneca the Rhetorician, siae 142n.

Controver-

139, 173, 182, 183n., 186, 196, 215, 217n., 226n., 230, 239f., 245 sentimentality 218, 239

separations and reunions: see reunions Seppéde, Pierre de la, tr. Paris et Vienne 67 Sept Sages de Rome, Les 60n.

Mary

S.:

Sir Gawain and Za 55 1S

the Green

Knight

Sir Mervin: see Mervin

Skelton, John 90, 117, 119, 210

sentence structure 52, 89, 116, 119,-

Serjeantson,

Sievers, E., ed. Verzeichnis der altdeutschen Handschriften 107n. Sinclair, Upton 7 Singleton, M. H., Celestina 221n., 223n.

see Day,

Mabel

sermons: see homiletics and exempla Servois, G.: see Kroeber, A.

Seven Sages: see Sept Sages, Les Shakespeare, William 222 2 — As You Like It 197 — Cymbeline 140 & n., 142 — Hamlet 144, 247 — King Lear 184 — Macbeth 57, 241 — Measure for Measure 155f. — Merchant of Venice 197 — Pericles 63 — Romeo and Juliet 145 — Twelfth Night 71, 150, 177 — Venus and Adonis 190 — Winter's Tale 116, 191 Shakespeare’s Jest Book 86n. Shaw, G. B. 62 Sidney, Sir Philip 5, 206 — Arcadia 173n., 176f., 178ff., 185, 191, 203, 247 Sieben weisen Meister, Die 60n.

Skelton’s Tales 86. Skoggin’s Jests 86, 90 Slaughter, E., Virtue According Love in Chaucer 38n.

to

Smyth, Robert, Straunge, Lamentable and Tragicall Hystories 151n. snow child 85n. social background 152, 193, 207, 210, 218, 234, 237, 244, 247 social comedy 22, 31, 36, 40, 56, 47 72, 228, 234, 246 social pamphlets 111 ff. society romance 17ff., 23ff., 39n.. 65ff., 70, 120ff. Sommer, O., ed. Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye 61n. Sonne of the Rogue, The: see Garcia, Carlos, Desordenada Codicia

Sowdone of Babylone 12 & n. Spanish literary influences 133, 165ff., 175, 178 & n., 206, 247 Spargo, J. W., Virgil the Necromancer 97n. Spaun, Claus 107n. speech and speeches 32, 52f., 56, 59,

75, 80, 88, 132, 134, 141, 180f., 186, 199, 203, 210, 214f., 220, 235f. Spenser, E. 40, 165 & n. — Faerie Queene 136n. Sterne, L. 3 Stimming, A., ed. Boeve de Haumtone 12n. Straparola, Piacevole Notti 150, 152n.

Index style 53, 59, 62f., 78f., 83, 90, 98, 100, 109f., 1124, 128n., 130, 137n., 139ff., 146ff., 154, 161, 181ff., 203, 213f., 217 & n., 221ff., 224, 228, 230, 246 — see also colloquial speech, euphuistic style Swasoriae 132, 214

substituted bride 72 syntax 53 & n., 59, 83, 98, 112, 115, 118n., 141, 150, 217 & n., 240n., 245 & n. T T. D., tr. The Mirour of Mirth 108 tabu 76 Tannhauser 97 Tarlton’s Jests 87 Tariton’s Newes 158 Tatius, Achilles, Clitophon and Leucippe 174, 179 tautologies $2n., 59f., 62, 80n. Tawney, R. H., ed. Thomas Wilson,

Discourse on Usury 197n. Terence, comedies of 201 Teutonic knights 66n. Thackeray, W.M. 3, 35 Theagenes and Chariclea: see Heliodorus, Aethiopica Thebes, Roman de 19n. Theophrastus, Characters 79, 113, 136, 185, 209 Thomas, Henry, on the Palmerin romances 165n. Thompson, Stith, Motif Index of Folk Literature 106n. Thoms, W. J., Early English Prose Romances

58n., 82n., 96n.,

171n.,

237n. : Thomas de Cantimpré, Bonum Universale 42ff., 95 Three Kings’ Sons 54 & n. Tieje, Arthur J., “Theory of Realism” 212%n

263

Tilney, E., Flower of Friendship 153 & n.

Tinker of Turvey, The 163 & n. Tolstoi, L., Anna Karenina 2 transvestite disguise 173 & n., 177, 179 Travelyan, G. 164 Tristan romances 72, 196 & n. Twain, Mark, Connecticut , Yankee 167

— Huckleberry Finn 87 Twine,

Lawrence, The Patterne of Paineful Adventures 63 & n. Tyll Eulenspiegel 90f. Tyll Howleglass 90f., 207, 210, 212

U usury 194f., 197 & n., 201f. Utley, F. L., The Crooked

Rib

102n., 141n., 153n., 154n.

Utterson, E. V., ed. Arthur of Little Britain 70n.

Vv Valentine and Orson S6ff., 82, 151, 166, 175 Verne, Jales, Tour of the World 98 verse and versification 5, 28, 100, 152n., 158, 246 Vetula, De 126 & n., 220 & n. Vickers, K. H., England in the Later Middle Ages 49n. Viles, E. and Furnivall, F. J., ed. Caueat and Fraternitye 112n. Vinaver, Eugene, ed. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory 75n. Virgil, Eclogues 175 — legends of 85n., 97 & n., 159 & n.,

241 Vives 153 volksbiicher

98f.,

140f.,

143,

159n.,

237n. Voorbeelden der oude Wysen 85n.

264

Index

Ww W. M., tr. The Sonne of the Rogue 212n. Wardropper, Bruce W., on Montemayor’s Diana 176n. Watson, Henry, tr. Oliver of Castile and Valentine and Orson 56n. Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel 136n. ‘Webber, Edwin J., on The Celestina 220n. ; Welter, J. Th., L’Exemplum 41n. West, C. B., Courtesie in Anglo-Norman Literature 18n. Westward for Smelts 163 Wharton, Edith, Ethan Frome 2 Whetstone, George, Heptameron 155 & n., 186, 228 — Rocke of Regard, The 152, 228

Wilson, F. P., ed. Dekker'’s plague pamphlets 215n. Wilson, John Dover, John Lyly 148n. Wilson, Robert, Three Ladies of

London 135 Wilson, Thomas,

A

Discourse

on

and

Quicke

An-

Usury 197n.

Wittie sweres

Questions 86, 89

Woledge, Brian, Bibliographie des romans 58n. Wolff, Samuel Lee, The Greek Romances 174n., 187n.

Woolf, Virginia 16

— Common Reader, The 227n. word order 59f., 93n., 130n., 240n. word play 188, 204, 214, 236 Worde, Wynkyn.de 51 & n., 54n.,

56n., 60n., 62n., 64n. W[otton],

H[enry], A Courtly Con-

troversie 153f. Wright, H.G., Boccaccio in England 29n., 128n., 152n., 158n. — First English Translation of Boccaccio, The 138n.

Wright, Louis B., Middle Class Culture 235n. Wright, Thomas, ed., The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry 84n. — ed. Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles 100n.

x Xenephon the Ephesian 9n.

Y Young, Bartholomew, tr. Diana 128n., 176ff. Young, Karl, “Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde” 30n. Ysengrimus 78 Ywain and Gawain 20ff.

Zz Zandvoort, R. W., on Sidney's

cadia 178n.

Ar-

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etl

CO

lyWat ty} tee

ng =~

er