Medieval Narrative: A Symposium 8774922998, 9788774922995

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Medieval Narrative

Medieval Narrative A Symposium

Odense University Press ■ 1979

Proceedings of the Third International Symposium organized by the Centre for the Study of Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages. Held at Odense University on 20—21 November, 1978 Edited by Hans Bekker-Nielsen Peter Foote Andreas Hoarder Preben Meulengracht Sørensen

© 1979 by Odense University Press AiO Tryk as, Odense ISBN 87-7492-299-8

Contents

Preface .............................................................................................. Tabu in early Irish narrative. By D avid G r e e n e ................................. Early Icelandic imaginative literature. ByH ermann Pá l sso n .......... The Moralisation of the fable: from Æsop to Romulus. By M orten N øjgaard ..............................................................................

The emancipation of story in the twelfth century. By G. T. S hepherd ................................................................................... The narrative art of Beowulf. By E. G. Sta n ley ................................. Trajectory of the hero: Gauvain paragon of chivalry 1130-1230. By P er N ykrog ............................................................................. The double scene of Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest. By Lars Lönnroth ................................................................................... Varieties of tradition in medieval narrative. By R obert Kellogg .

Discussion ......................................................................................... Members and associate members of theSymposium.......................

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20 31 44 58

82 94

120 130 136

Preface

The Symposium on Medieval Narrative was held at Odense University on 20—21 November, 1978. The books as here presented contains the papers in the order in which they were read and a summary of the general debate at the end. The Symposium was the third international event of its kind, organized by the Centre for the Study o f Vernacular Literature in the Middle Ages. We wish to express our sincere gratitude both to Odense University and to The Danish Research Council for the Humanities for the generous help and support that made possible the arrangement of the Symposium and the publication of the proceedings. The Editors

Tabu in early Irish narrative by D avid G reene

Early Irish narrative literature, here defined as that of the period AD 700—1200, is unique among those of western Europe, at least, in posses­ sing a concept called geis which, in a certain number of cases, corresponds to Margaret Mead’s restrictive definition of the technical term ‘tabu’ as “a prohibition whose infringement results in an automatic penalty without human or superhuman mediation”. It is possible to trace a gradual widening of the meaning, firstly, to describe that which is appropriate to a person’s status, and, finally, to a positive obligation imposed by one per­ son upon another, usually appearing in the plural geasa in this latter meaning. As my friend James Carney has put it, these latter geasa “are usually nothing more than an author’s lazy method of motivating action; such geasa are artistically, but hardly anthropologically, primitive,” Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955), p. 193. The existence of this motif in Irish literature is, of course, well known, and in a book entitled The Survival o f Geis in Medieval Romance (Halle, 1933) John Revell Reinhard put forward the view that many motifs in the English and French medieval romances derive from Irish —he uses the word ‘Celtic’ but the geis is specific to Irish and, to the extent that Welsh shows anything similar, it is probably due to borrowing from Ireland. The relations between the literatures of Ireland and Wales were close enough during our period for such borrowing to be quite possible. The situation is, of course, very different indeed when we come to English and French; we are back again with the intractable problem of the Celtic contribution to Arthurian romance. Reinhard does not show much assurance in dealing with the Irish sources, and he draws his evidence promiscuously from material covering a period of five hundred years. In one sense, that does not affect his main contention very seriously, since even the twelfth-cen­ tury Irish developments are not too late to have influenced the romances of England and France, if such influence could be proved. I will make no attempt to do so here, and I mention Reinhard’s book only because those

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working on literatures other than that of Irish should at least consider whether there may be any substance in his arguments. My aim in this paper is to outline the development of the concept of geis in early Irish literature, and to consider what influence that development had on the art of narrative. Perhaps we should not be too hard on Reinhard for failing to see that geis evolved considerably in the course of Irish literature, for the greatest of all the scholars who dealt with that literature, Rudolf Thurneysen, showed some uncertainty in his discussion of geis in the introduction to his Irische Helden- und Königsage (1921), pp. 80-1. Having discussed the paramount importance of the concept of honour (enech) in ancient Ire­ land, he goes on: Ausserdem ist die Ehre, ja das Leben des Einzelnen fortwährend be­ droht durch ges oder geis . . . Das bezeichnet etwas, was jemand —für jeden gibt es verschiedene, oft sehr eigenartige ges — unter keinen Umständen tun darf, ein Tabu, ein absolutes Verbot. Manchmal be­ stimmt ein Einzelner, dass etwas für den anderen ges sei. Aber meistens wird ein ges . . . einfach als bestehend angenommen, wir würden sagen, als vom Schicksal bestimmt. Die Erzähler benutzen das ges mit Vor­ liebe, wenn es sich darum handelt, ein Helden dem Untergang finden zu lassen, indem er durch die Umstände gedrängt wird, sein ges zu verlet­ zen. Er sucht dem natürlich auf jede Weise vorzubeugen, oft selbst mit Aufopferung seines Lebens. Aber häufig ist auch die Vorstellung, dass die Verletzung des ges selbst seinen Tod herbeiführt. It is this last observation which sums up the essence of geis; in Margaret Mead’s words, the infringement results in an automatic penalty, which is always death. No such terrible results are brought about by loss of honour for, in early Irish society, honour and status were so closely linked as to be indistinguishable and the same word, enech, is used for both. Here we have a common Insular Celtic inheritance, for Welsh uses the cognate wyneb, and both of them have the basic meaning ‘face’, being cognate with Greek enopia and Sanskrit ánikam. As far as I know, it is only Insular Celtic among the languages of Europe which uses this metaphor, which has entered English, in the phrases ‘losing face’, ‘saving face’, quite re­ cently from Chinese. In Irish, the usage is to speak of a man’s face being soiled by an insult given to him; it could be cleansed by suitable compen­ sation being paid to him. The compensation depended on his status in society, and the Irish laws lay down minute provisions for calculating it,

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but nowhere do they mention geis. The contrast between the nature of kingship as it existed in Early Christian Ireland, on the one hand, and the antiquarian concept of it as preserved by the literary men, on the other, is well illustrated by some passages in the laws. The tract on status called Crith Gablach, compiled about AD 700, at the very beginning of our period, lays down that a king who is wounded in the back of the head when fleeing from battle is entitled only to the compensation due to a commoner. It does not say that it is geis for him to run away, but only that his honour is diminished; the king’s cowardice is no longer an offence against the order of the universe, but simply a failing to carry out the duties appropriate to his sacred status. This rule is not essentially different from another which lays down that, if the king chooses to take part in menial labour and is injured while so employed, the compensation due to him is that of a simple labourer. And, if the laws show no trace of the concept of geis, neither does any kind of writing which lays claim to contemporary authenticity, such as the annals. Geis belongs solely to lit­ erature and, as Thurneysen saw, it offered considerable scope to the story-teller. Where did the story-teller find it? Certainly not from the Bible, nor from the restricted range of secular Latin literature which was available in Ireland in the seventh century. The word itself gives us no help. Etymologically it appears to be derived from the verb guidid ‘prays’ and Thurneysen (loc. cit.) gave its original meaning as ‘Bitte’, adding “aber diese Bedeutung ist vergessen” ; even if he is right, the semantics remain obscure. We must look for outside parallels, and this was done for us many years ago by Sir James Frazer in that section of The Golden Bough (II, ch. i) entitled “the burden of royalty”, which deals with the restraints under which the sacred king was required to live in many societies. Frazer took his Irish evidence from a text on the tabus of the kings of Ireland first published by John O’Donovan in 1847; it has since been edited by Myles Dillon, Proceedings o f the Royal Irish Academy, LIV (1951), C 1. This is a compilation which can hardly be older than the ninth century, and which possesses no historical value whatsoever; we can say with absolute confi­ dence that in the ninth century the king of Tara was not prohibited from entering north Tethba on a Tuesday, or from breaking a journey in Brega on a Wednesday. Indeed, it is as certain as can be that such prohibitions are the mere imagining of antiquarians, for the use of the days of the week is a Christian element which cannot have been taken over from the pagan past. What we must retain, however, is the tradition that Irish kings of that

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pagan past had tabus as part of their sacral function. In his paper Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Kingship (Oxford, 1970), D. A. Binchy says (p.9) that the Irish king is credited with all the powers and functions of the sacred king identified by Frazer in other primitive societies. While this is quite true, we must remember that the evidence for his possession of many of these powers and functions is found only in literary sources. An outstand­ ing example of this is the king’s supernatural power of looking into the past so as to adjudicate on an incident as though he had been present when it took place. I recently published in Saga och Sed (1976) a twelfth-cen­ tury story which uses this Act of Truth, as Myles Dillon called it, as its central motif, and it was Myles Dillon who showed that this Act of Truth had a precise parallel in early Indian tradition. That story comes at the end of our period, and five hundred years before, at the beginning of our period, we know with absolute certainty that the king had long since abandoned the function of adjudication, which had been taken over by a professional class of lawyers. In fact, the Irish king had in course of time shed many of his sacral functions, thus avoiding being reduced to a mere fetish, as happened in so many of the cases described by Frazer, but the memory of his former powers was maintained by the literary class, and provided motifs useful to them in story-telling. There can be little doubt that Dillon was right when he suggested (op. cit., p. 2) that “these royal taboos seem to belong to an earlier stratum of tradition and it may be that the wider application of geis in the literature derives from them”. Indeed, we are fortunate in possessing one saga in which it seems likely that we can see the quasi-magical use of geis to replace what was originally a much more profound reflection on the duties of kingship. This is Togail Bruidne Da Derga ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’. The story concerns Conaire, later king of Tara, who had a miraculous birth, his mother having been impregnated by a man in the shape of a bird, who leaves her with the words “You will bear me a son, and that son may not kill birds, and Conaire shall be his name.” Conaire becomes king of Tara in a curious way. The divinatory rite used to find the new king had pre­ scribed that he would be a naked man carrying a stone in a sling coming after nightfall along the road to Tara. At this precise time, Conaire is hunting birds, which is one of the many inconsistencies in the story; ap­ parently his mother had not told him of the geis his father had put on him. The birds change into human form, and one of them tells Conaire that he is his father, and that he is forbidden to kill birds; he further tells him to go to Tara, naked with his sling, where he will be accepted as king. Conaire

Tabu in early Irish narrative

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does so and, when he has been inaugurated, he announces that he has received quite a different set of geasa, eight in all, a set which recalls in its strangeness those of the tract on the geasa of the kings - not to go righthanded round Tara or lefthanded round Brega and so on —though one of them relates strictly to the duties of a king: not to permit any piracy during his reign. It is this geis, which is sixth in the list, which he breaks first. His fos­ ter-sons, the sons of Donn Désa, take to piracy, and he pardons them, while condemning their accomplices to death; as we see, we are in the prehistoric period when the king still acts as judge. When he had uttered the sentence, however, he changed his mind, saying “The judgment I have given is no extension of life to me” —a typical example of Irish meiosis, meaning “This judgment will shorten my life”. He expels all the offenders to carry out their piracy abroad. The story then proceeds with the viola­ tion of the seven other arbitrary geasa. But the death of Conaire is brought about by the pirates he had expelled, who come back to Tara with allies whom they had made in their marauding. We are indebted to Máirín O Daly (Irish Sagas, ed. Myles Dillon (Cork, 1968), p. 114) for seeing through the mass of elaboration to the core of the story. “Conaire’s fate,” she says, “was brought about, not by his successive and sometimes unwitting violations of all his geasa but by the one act of injustice of which he was guilty —his condemning to death the companions in rapine and plunder of his three foster-sons and his sparing the latter although they were the leaders of the robber-bands.” His death was already foreseen by himself when he gave the unjust judgment, and his partial recalling of it could not save him. A king who gave false judg­ ments was no true king, and there could be no prosperity in his reign. As O Daly says, the emotional force of the story is greatly heightened by Conaire’s continuing concern for the foster-sons whom he has banished, and by the fact that, although they are forced to bring about his death, they do so with the greatest reluctance under pressure from their allies to whom they are deeply committed. More recently, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh has taken up the discussion of the story in Éigse, XVII (1978), 142—47, analysing it along the lines used by Dumézil in his Mythe et épopée. He says: Conaire’s offence here has two parts: he offends against the Otherworld in transgressing a taboo, and against fir flathemon ‘the Truth of the Ruler’ in giving a false judgment. This provides us with an

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Irish example of an old Indo-European theme, what Dumézil has called the ‘single sin of the sovereign’: single but irreparable, for it destroys either the raison d’être of sovereignty, namely the protection of the order founded on truth . . . or the mystical support of human sovereignties, namely the respect for the superior sovereignty of the gods and the sense of limitations inherent in every human delegation of the divine sovereignty. The king falls prey to one or other of these risks which . . . are at bottom reducible to the same thing. Ó Cathasaigh sees the ‘single sin of the sovereign’ realised in our story in both the ways suggested by Dumézil; the false judgement destroys the protection of the order founded on truth, while the breaking of the tabus destroys the respect for the Otherworld beings who have delegated sovereignty to the king. He may well be right, but it seems to me that O Daly was nearer the mark in seeing a great difference between the two ways in which the ‘single sin’ was committed. The false judgement was indeed a classical example of the destruction of the very raison d’être of sovereignty, and was enough by itself to ensure the downfall of Conaire. The enumeration of eight geasa, and the description of the violation of each of them in turn, is a literary device of a much lower order; it is a descent from the plane of the moral to that of the magical. It seems very likely that the austerity of the original story was too simple for the storyteller who gave us the saga in its present form. While the literary men preserved the tradition of the king as judge, and the fearful doom awaiting the king who gave a false judgment, the king of their own times was a very different kind of thing. The memory of the tabus associated with the sacred kingship was called upon to supply a magical motivation for the fall of Conaire. However much the theme of the geis may have been elaborated in this story, the geasa are still ritual prohibitions imposed on a king, and thus strictly comparable to those studied by Frazer. But we find cases, in sagas which appear to be just as old as Togail Bruidne Da Derga, where the meaning of the word has been greatly weakened. Thus, in the first recen­ sion of Táin Bó Cúalnge, we find the phrase, 1. 806, to-soí-som íarom dår dé a charpait fri hEmain ocus ba gess di ani sin, which Cecile O’Rahilly translates as: “Then he turned the left side of his chariot towards Emain, which was tabu for it.” This is of course the literal meaning of the words, but the idea that a place could have a tabu is certainly not in accordance

Tabu in early Irish narrative

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with the earlier tradition. And in fact, O’Rahilly comments in a note that turning the left side of the chariot to an opponent is simply a challenge to battle; when Cú Chulainn’s charioteer tells him that a chariot is coming towards them and that it has turned its left side to them, Cú Chulainn says “That is an obligation (fiach) which must be met”, and prepares for battle. Indeed, we find the word geis used again in the same recension of the Táin in connection with a challenge to battle, this time by leaving a withe on a pillar-stone with an Ogam inscription on it; its removal by an enemy indicated acceptance of the challenge. When Cú Chulainn removed the withe thus placed by the sons of Nechta Scène, this is described as coll ngeisse ‘violation of a tabu’ to them. But when they arrive on the scene they merely tell him to go away, and Cú Chulainn has to taunt them into fighting him. Clearly geis in these passages has nothing to do with a tabu the infraction of which has fatal consequences; it is nothing more than a word for a challenge to battle. It should be noted that these two examples come from the section of the Táin which describes the boyhood deeds of Cú Chulainn and which is written in a simple naturalistic style; it may well be that the writer of this section had no very clear ideas about the nature of geis. In the later literature the word can be used about anything inap­ propriate to status although, as we have seen, it is never used in this way in the legal tracts in which status is discussed. Thus, in a Middle Irish poem, the fact that the warrior, like the king, was not expected to take part in menial work is expressed in a series of geascr, we know from the laws that there was no such prohibition, but only the legal provision that he lost his higher status while so engaged, and we may conclude that he was there­ fore likely to avoid such work. But the most important innovation of the later literature is that one individual is represented as placing geis upon the other. In the few exam­ ples in the earlier literature in which the placing of geis is recorded, the circumstances are supernatural, as in the case of Conaire’s bird-father, who prohibited him from killing birds; elsewhere the geis is, as Thurneysen put it, “als bestehend angenommen, als vom Schicksal bestimmt.” This is consistent with the royal tabus listed by Frazer, where there is neither any indication of how these prohibitions came to be imposed nor of what purpose they might serve. In his book L ’héritage indo-européen à Rome (1949), Georges Dumézil has taken up the problem of the tabus of the Flamen Dialis (pp. 23 ff.), and shown that there are certain correspon­ dences between them and the positive and negative obligations of the

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Brahmans of India as set out in the Laws of Manu. Some of the re­ semblances might be extended to Ireland, though not with any great exactness. There would appear, for example, to be a basic difference between the prohibition on the Flamen Dialis against riding in a vehicle and the prohibition on the Brahman against pursuing their studies on horseback or in a vehicle. The latter of these immediately reminds us of the ‘breach of poetic etiquette’ committed by the sixteenth-century poet Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird by composing poems on horseback (see Bergin, Irish Bardic Poetry (1970)), which was certainly nothing as serious as the violation of a tabu. It is true that the Brahmanic student is not allowed to permit the sun to rise or set on him while he is sleeping, but the penalty is no more than that he should fast the following day. Even if we are prepared to admit some distant connection between these prohibi­ tions, it is clear that those attached to the sacred king, the violation of which is an offence against the order of the universe, have very different weight from those which involve the daily life of members of a given class of society; from the Irish point of view the latter belong to the area of enech or status. As far as the early Irish tradition is concerned, the geis simply exists, but is not imposed. In that early tradition the theme of sexual passion is well developed, and there are several instances of women who persuade men to elope with them, even though the men are, for one reason or another, reluctant to do so. One of the best-known examples is that of Deirdriu and Noisiu, in the story known as the Exile of the Sons of Uisliu. At Deirdriu’s birth, the druid Cathbad had prophesied that she would bring great harm to the kingdom of the Ulaid, and the nobles of the Ulaid wanted the child to be killed. Conchobar their king, however, ordered that she be brought up in secret until she should be old enough to sleep with him. However, when she was marriageable, and before she had slept with Conchobar, she caught sight of the young hero Noisiu, and fell in love with him. She managed to meet him, and told him that she had chosen him: “By no means!” he said, “because of Cathbad’s prophecy.” “Do you say that in order to reject me?” “Yes, indeed,” said he. Therewith she leaped at him and grasped both ears on his head: “These are two ears of shame and of derision,” she said, “unless you take me away with you.” That was enough, and Noisiu was forced to yield.

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This is the only story in which this curious ritual is described, but T. C. Charles-Edwards has recently devoted a closely-argued article to “Hon­ our and Status in some Irish and Welsh prose tales”, Ériu, XXIX (1978), 123—41, in which he analyses another story, Fingal Rónáin, in which the young wife of the father of the hero, Mael Fhothartaig, falls in love with him, and sends messages seeking a meeting. Mael Fhothartaig goes to great lengths to avoid such a meeting and Charles-Edwards comments: For the story-teller and his audience, at least, to reject a presentable woman’s advances is a dishonourable act. That is to say, it will expose the man to ridicule, but it is also likely to dishonour the woman. No doubt there were things which, if true of a particular woman, exoner­ ated any rejection of her and were in themselves shameful. Hence, to reject any woman might imply that these shameful characteristics applied to her, and this would be deeply insulting. But it was hardly possible to insult a woman without also insulting her husband; the value of her face was dependent on the value of his. We have, then, an explanation of Mael Fhothartaig’s avoidance of the woman; he was afraid that, if he met her, she would carry out the cere­ mony which would force him either to dishonour himself or dishonour his father. These concepts are strange to modern thought, but they do not involve the supernatural. Now, we have already seen that the rules of the behaviour appropriate to those of a given status came to be described asgeasa during our period; where the laws merely prescribed loss of compensation for those who behaved in ways which did not accord with their status, the later literature describes such behaviour as geis to them, using exactly the same formula as that used for the prohibitions attached to the sacred king. We have seen that, even in the oldest recension of the Táin, the warrior’s obligation not to refuse a challenge to single combat is already described as geis, though, significantly enough, Cú Chulainn himself is made to describe it as fiach, which simply means a legal obligation. In a similar way, the obligation of honour which a woman was able to put on a man is described in the later literature as a geis - or, more usually, the plural geasa - and the concept of one person laying geasa on another makes its appearance for the first time. By far the best-known example of this ritual is found in the Early Modern Irish story Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (ed. Ni Shéaghdha, 1967) which, in spite of its late date, continues older material.

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The episode with which we are concerned is that in which Gráinne, daughter of the King of Ireland, offers herself first to Oisin and then to Diarmaid; both refuse her, but she then puts Diarmaid under geasa áigh agus aighmhillte ‘tabus of strife and destruction’. Before Diarmaid finally yields to the tabus, he consults his comrades; the variety of their responses shows well the composite nature of the story. Oscar gives what we might call the traditional reply: “I say to you to follow Gráinne, for he is a doomed man who violates his geasa.” The words tm ‘doomed man’ and coll ‘violation of a law or obligation’ belong to the oldest vocabulary of Irish belief; we have here a succinct statement of the gm as “a prohibition whose infringement results in an automatic penalty without human or superhuman mediation”, to use Mead’s definition quoted above. Mac Lughach sees things differently; he advises Diarmaid to take Gráinne, “for it is not becoming of you to refuse the daughter of the king of Ireland.” Here we have the concept which lies behind such episodes in the earlier literature: to insult the king’s daughter is to insult the king himself. Others of the comrades give their advice in terms free of religious or legal concepts; for example, Caoilte’s words are “Everybody says that I have a fitting wife and yet I would rather than the wealth of the world that it were to me that Gráinne had given that love”. Such realism comes strangely from a romantic storyteller, and, when Diarmaid finally lies dying and Fionn reproaches him for his breach of loyalty in abducting Gráinne, he says only: “I was not guilty; Gráinne put geasa on me and I would not violate my geasa for the gold of the world.” He dies, not for love, not even for respect for a woman’s honour, but simply because a spell has been laid on him. As Carney (op. cit., p. 192) points out, magic tends to replace humanity as Irish literature proceeds: It is written to the taste of a wider and less cultivated audience which is more interested in wonderful happenings and action than in careful delineation of character. For example, in Táin Bó Fraích, Ailill asks Froech to fetch a branch of a rowan-tree because he thinks the berries beautiful. This was dull stuff for a less cultivated mind, so, in the four­ teenth century, certain changes are introduced; the berries are needed because they are magical, they have curative properties, and Medb will die unless she obtains them.

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In our earlier stories, the characters are fully human and we can, to a large extent, understand their motivation. Not completely, of course; to under­ stand the fatal consequences of a false judgement we need to know some­ thing about the traditional concept of the sacred kingship, and to under­ stand why Noisiu had no choice but to accept Derdriu we need to know something of the concepts of honour and status as they existed among the early Irish and Welsh. But neither kingship nor honour nor status has any element of the magical or of the miraculous; they are all concepts related to the right ordering of society. In the case of the sacred kingship, how­ ever, we know that there was an enormous gap between the concept as preserved and elaborated by the literary men, on the one hand, and the realities of political structures in Early Christian Ireland, on the other. There is less evidence for the survival or otherwise of the concepts of status and honour, but we may assume that attitudes which were selfexplanatory when Irish literature began became less comprehensible as time went by. To invoke the supernatural to account for what had for­ merly been normal was an obvious way of getting out of this difficulty and to extend geis, firstly to replace the moral obligations of the king, and those of honour and status, was a simple device. It was, however, costly in the long run, since the crude workings of tabu replaced the interaction of human beings. It is a matter of great interest to the anthropologist that it is possible to recover from Irish literature something like the original con­ cept of royal tabus; the development of that concept as a literary motif, however, resulted merely in an impoverishment of that literature. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Early Icelandic imaginative literature by H ermann P álsson

Since the title of my paper will probably baffle some of its potential readers, I should like at the outset to clarify the situation and state my intention. To begin with, the term ‘early’ in this context refers to the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth. The phrase ‘im­ aginative literature’, as I understand the term, denotes narrative structures whose themes and characters are subordinated to a plot, which means that two major types of medieval narrative are precluded from consideration: the lives of the saints and other devotional stories, where the message dominates the form, and chronicles and other descriptions of the past where the course of events, rather than literary convention, determines the ultimate shape of the narrative. To put things differently, my paper is concerned with secular fiction in Iceland during the period c. 1200—1350 and its primary purpose is to identify some of the problems facing the student of that literature. I shall begin by considering the crucial question of literary kinds and then proceed to take a cursory look at certain aspects of the stories involved. The total range of secular fiction in the period of my choice shows a remarkable diversity of purpose, mode and content, and probably the simplest way of classifying the literature into separate categories is to use the quality of the world to which the hero belongs - or in which he exists — as our principal criterion. The literary cosmos of early Icelandic fiction divides into three primary worlds. First, there is the timeless, hypothetical world of myth, inhabited by gods and other extramundane beings. All the myths of the period in question appear to have come from the pen of Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), who included several stories about pagan deities in his Edda (c. 1225). The fact that he based his myths on poetry going back to a pagan, preliterate age need not concern us here: what is more important for our immediate purpose is that prose stories of that kind were created in Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century. Second, we have the alien, aristocratic world of heroic legend and ro-

Early Icelandic imaginative literature

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mance, a world which is essentially human, though it shares certain obvious features with myth: some of the heroes are of divine origin; pagan gods make an occasional appearance, and the hero may travel to purely imaginary places; various laws of nature are suspended at will. As in the case of myth, most of the hero-tales in Snorra-Edda are prose renderings of ancient poetry, but other legends and romances reached beyond native tradition for some of their raw materials, including descriptions derived from foreign models, such as Icelandic and Norwegian translations of Latin and French literature. In broad geographical terms, the heroic world of romance corresponds to Europe (outside Iceland), though the hero’s adventures may take him to even more distant parts: south to Ethiopia and east to India. Under the blanket term ‘romance’ belong the so-called Legendary Sagas (fornaldarsögur), Sagas of Chivalry (riddarasögur) and Lying Sagas (lygisögur), as well as vernacular versions of the chansons de geste, romans d’aventure and certain other foreign works. Third, there is the familiar world of experience, mirroring the physical and social realities of the author’s own environment. Stories like Bandamanna saga and Porsteins þáttr stangarhçggs, which are set entirely in Iceland and which are free of fanciful elements, can be classified as ‘naturalistic fiction’, but since the heroes are modelled on real personages belonging to a not too distant time (c. 930—1050), the label ‘historical fiction’ appears to be no less appropriate. However, the term ‘historical fiction’ applies equally well to other stories based on that period even though the hero leaves the world of experience in search of adventure in the world of romance. In Njåls saga, Laxdcela saga and a good many others, there may be no lack of realism in episodes set in Iceland, but as soon as the hero leaves his native shore, the narrative mode tends to change and drift in the direction of the idealised landscape of romance, with its royal splendour and heroic exploits. Another romance feature of such stories is the occasional sus­ pension of natural law, in which case the description fails to yield a literal sense and should therefore be treated figuratively; as an example we might mention the ghosts and monsters in Grettis saga, which are essen­ tially symbols of the powers of evil. The so-called ‘Sagas of the Icelan­ ders’ (íslendingasögur) exemplify two distinct, though closely related, literary kinds: ‘naturalistic fiction’ and ‘historical romance’, but taken as a whole, they could best be regarded as ‘historical fiction’. To sum up: on the basis of how closely each fictive story corresponds to what the author could observe and experience in his native land, the entire corpus can be seen as a spectrum, with myth and naturalistic fiction at the two opposite

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extremes, while hero-legend, romance and historical romance occupy the central grades of the total literary order. Scribes in medieval Iceland making observations on the nature and function of imaginative literature singled out for special comment three aspects which they called skemmtan (‘entertainment’), fróðleikr (probably best translated as ‘factual knowledge’), and nytsemd (‘utility’). The term skemmtan refers to the sheer delight we take in the story-teller’s art; a modern critic would of course be more analytical and talk about plot, character, mode, suspense, humour and any other relevant feature of a well-told tale. In other words, we identify skemmtan with the fictional aspect of narrative art, which is the quintessence of imaginative literature and therefore of a universal kind. The factual knowledge implied in the term fróðleikr relates not only to particular events, but also to other kinds of information, such as social customs and geography. Historical fiction, whether or not the naturalistic mode is sustained throughout the narrative, differs radically from the other literary grades in so far, as indeed the term indicates, as it deals with specific happenings of the not so distant past, while romance presents imitations of other stories rather than of actual happenings. And, not suprisingly, the adventures of the Icelandic hero in foreign parts tend to be modelled on legend and romance. However, romances are by no means devoid of fróðleikr; many of them show a remarkable knowledge of geography, and in this connexion we might mention the descriptions of England and Denmark in Gçngu-Hrôlfs saga. The utility (nytsemd) of a secular story consists essentially in certain basic humanistic assumptions, in what it tells us about the human condition in general. In sacred stories, which lie beyond the scope of the present paper, the utility element relates to God rather than Man. When we analyse a story from the point of view of its utility, we find that we are in fact exploring its thematic aspect. A story with a powerful thematic element will teach us what to desire and what to avoid; like people elsewhere in medieval Europe, the Icelanders would rather be instructed by fable than by sermon or homily. Whereas the historical aspect relates to fact, the thematic aspect relates to truth and has therefore a universal significance. The description of an actual event may serve as an exemplum or a cautio­ nary tale, but a miracle story and any other kind of fanciful narrative will be found lacking in historical dimension, however clear its message may sound. Compared to the more sophisticated historical fictions, such as Njáls saga, Hrafnkels saga and Grettis saga, the legendary romances are thematically impotent. Their real strength lies in their fictive quality but

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on the whole they do little by the way of helping us to see ourselves as we are or as others see us. In romance literature, whether historical or legendary, one of the characteristic features is that the protagonist undertakes a journey or a quest, typically for the purpose of self-advancement; he emerges from his adventures a greater man than when he set out. In contrast, naturalistic fiction is concerned more with justice and other related moral problems and the quest element is either totally absent or else relegated to a minor role. The hero of romance is in fact essentially a traveller, who sets out to see the world, to defend a kingdom against an intruder, to rescue a damsel in distress, or to put himself to some test or other. The hero’s journey has two inherent elements: first, a goal, which is usually, though not always, defined before he leaves home; and, second, adventure, including all the hazards and obstacles he must face before attaining the desired goal. The identification of the goal is often a major factor in the analysis of romance: “Tell me where you come from and where you’re going, and I’ll tell who you are and what kind of story you deserve to have written about you.” Looking at the Icelandic saga hero who leaves the intimate world of experience to explore the alien world beyond the sea, we find that his goals vary from one narrative to another: to seek fame and fortune, to gain recognition from a potentially hostile grandfather, to win a name for himself as a court poet or a warrior, to attain promotion above his own social level through associating with royalty, or even to do something for the benefit of his soul. Again and again, we see him taking part in danger­ ous, if sometimes profitable, campaigns against vikings in the Baltic or the British Isles. In early Icelandic literature, the viking season invariably corresponded to the summer months, which left the adventurer plenty of opportunity to indulge in other forms of heroic enjoyment for the rest of the year, such as drinking and feasting at a royal court, killing the odd berserk (always regarded as winter sport), or even to woo a lady to relieve the monotony of the otherwise masculine form of heroic existence. The Icelandic hero abroad is a highly conventional figure, incapable of freeing himself from the romance convention. Notwithstanding all the attempts that have been made to identify the hero’s adventures abroad with actual history, I can see little reason why the descriptions of Egill Skallagrimsson in England or Bjqrn Hftdoelakappi in Russia should be regarded as any­ thing but potential history, which is one way of saying that they are not imitations of real events. For the purpose of illustrating some of the recurrent features of secular

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fiction in early Iceland, I have chosen a short tale about a pilgrim.1 But before I come to that story, there are three points I should like to make. First, when we try to make sense of the sagas and study them in critical terms, we should relate them to the total literary experience of educated men in medieval Iceland. Second, the thematic aspect of the literature should be explored in terms of the medieval world of ideas and for that purpose the extant vernacular literature is an inadequate guide. Third, apart from the obvious assumption that elements failing to give a literal meaning should be treated figuratively, we should also reckon with the possibility that even realistic descriptions are capable of symbolic interpretation. So, when we read the story of our pilgrim, we should bear in mind that the notion of a journey invites not only a literal acceptance but also a metaphorical interpretation: the course of a person’s life was often pre­ sented as a journey from the cradle to the grave, and, conversely, a single journey could symbolize the shape and purpose of the total life of an individual.

A Pilgrim from the East Fjords There was a man called Thorstein, a lively young fellow belonging to a family in the East Fjords. He set off for Rome, travelling first to Denmark where King Magnus the Good was fighting one major battle after another. It happened one day, as Thorstein was walking on his way, that he saw a man standing beneath an oak defending himself with spirit against four attackers. He seemed to Thorstein a great-hearted man. “Wouldn’t it be the more soldierly thing,” Thorstein asked himself, “to help the one on his own rather than the four fighting against him?” So he went up to them and drawing his sword he struck hard and fast, quickly killing three men while the one under attack killed the fourth. He was a good-looking fellow, youthful in appearance with a silk jacket over his coat-of-mail, and he was quite worn out from the fight. “What would be the name of the man I’ve been helping?” asked Thorstein.1 1 The following translation is based on Porsteins þáttr austfirzka in Jón Jóhannesson's edition, íslenzk fornrit, XI (Reykjavik, 1950). By way of justifying the title of the English translation, I should like to point out that the name Þorsteinn was very common and there­ fore non-distinctive; in some of the versions of Porsteins þáttr sçgufrôda, the hero is name­ less.

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“My name’s Styrbjorn,” he replied, “one of King Magnus’s retainers. Things weren’t looking so well for me when you came to my rescue: my companions have scattered into the forest. The great service you’ve done me won’t be easy to repay. But tell me about yourself.” “I’m an Icelander,” said Thorstein, “on my way to Rome.” “Are you sure you’ve not delayed your pilgrimage?” asked Styrbjorn. “Maybe,” answered Thorstein, “but if I have I’d rather do it for King Magnus or one of his men than for anyone else.” “You’ve a high opinion of him?” asked Styrbjorn. “Very high indeed,” answered Thorstein. “As a ruler he’s outstanding and his reputation has spread to every land.” “I think you’d best get on with your journey, since it’s a necessary one,” said Styrbjorn, “but come and see me on your way back. You can always find me at the court of King Magnus.” With that they parted. Thorstein travelled to Rome and was back north in the spring. He came to the place where the King was feasting, walked up to the door and asked to be allowed in. The doorkeepers replied that it wasn’t the custom for strangers to walk in where the King was at table. “Then ask a man called Styrbjorn to come out,” said Thorstein. Then one of the doorkeepers ran in shouting with laughter, “Styrbjorn’s wanted outside.” At that all the retainers leapt to their feet calling “Out you go, Styrbjorn, an Icelander’s asking for you. He’s surely making no mistake over our names, but we don’t know anyone in here with a name like that.” They went on mocking and jeering, each of them keeping to his own place and calling “Styrbjorn’s wanted outside.” Then the King spoke. “This isn’t much to joke about,” he said. “A man’s name can be used in many ways: you’re not to mock at this one any more.” The King’s wishes were obeyed, whereupon he rose from his seat, wearing a precious robe, and went outside. “Welcome to you, Icelander,” he said, “put on this cloak and come inside. A bath will be made ready for you, you’re welcome to stay with us at court, and let no-one dare harm you.” This was a surprise to everyone. Thorstein stayed on at court, but kept very much to himself and rarely mixed with the others. On one occasion the King asked “Who do you think our Styrbjorn could be?” “You’re the likeliest one to have used that name,” he answered.

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“And it would also be true if you thought of yourself as the man who saved my life,” said the King. “You should be well repaid.” At that, the King related the whole story, starting with their first meet­ ing in Denmark. Afterwards they all travelled to the north of Norway, and on one occasion, when their ship was berthed at a certain harbour, some of the crew went ashore to cook a meal of porridge. When the bowl was passed to Thorstein, he lapped up all the contents. This raised a laugh. “You know a thing or two, Icelander,” said the retainers, “when it comes to porridge.” The king smiled and made this verse: At a single swoop the spear-wielding warrior felled three in the fray: he rose above the rest. And grasping the gruel-bowl, he gobbled three shares, rowing to the northlands: he rose above the rest.

“He was the one who gave me such great backing when you were nowhere near,” said the King, “gave it, indeed, to someone he didn’t know, which must make him a real warrior. It’s never wise to make fun of a stranger, and you’d have to search far to find a man of greater mettle and courage. Some people will say that what happened in his case was a stroke of luck.” “My lord,” answered Thorstein, “it’s plain to see that I must have been sent by God to protect you. I was so impressed by the look of you that I knew you were no ordinary man, and that’s why I thought I’d help you.” The King was very good to Thorstein. On one occasion, he asked him, “What can be done that will suit you and please you best? Would you like to marry and settle down here?” “That’s a generous offer,” said Thorstein. “While you live, I’ll be paid the greatest respect here, but long life is guaranteed to no-one, and as soon as I lose your protection people will start to envy me. But I know that as long as I have your patronage I’ll be safe.” “You’ve spoken wisely,” said the King. And afterwards, he provided generously for Thorstein’s voyage back to

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Iceland, including plenty of money. There Thorstein settled down and people thought him the most fortunate of men. And that’s the end of our tale about him.

Like the more celebrated Audunar þáttr vestfirzka, which also describes a pilgrimage, our story has a simple plot: at the beginning we are told that the hero sets off for Rome, and later on we learn that his second goal is to get back to Iceland. He succeeds in both, so the tale describes a round trip and is itself cyclical in shape, the completion of the total journey marking the end of the tale. Thorstein’s adventures and trials are revealed in four successive scenes, but the actual journey is indicated rather than de­ scribed. The first scene, set here in Denmark, corresponds to the heroic phase of the Icelandic protagonist abroad: Thorstein’s valour is put to the test and he proves his fighting ability by killing three assailants and saving the life of a stranger. The other three scenes, all set in Norway, are essentially concerned with the revelation and recognition of personal identity and character. The stranger in Denmark turns out to be none other than King Magnus the Good and Thorstein himself, in spite of his uncouth behaviour and low social background, is shown to be of true heroic mettle and capable of completing his journey and attaining the ultimate goal. In romance, our sympathies usually lie with the hero and the other characters tend to divide into two opposite camps, depending on whether they are helping or hindering him in the all-important task of achieving his goals. Apart from the protagonist, the only other character mentioned by name is Styrbjorn/King Magnus, who acts out several dif­ ferent roles in relation to the hero: after encouraging the pilgrim to go to Rome and then protecting him and explaining his worth to the detractors in Norway, the King appears as a tempter, placing unexpected obstacles in his way back to Iceland. The rest of the cast are nameless people who are against the hero: his victims in Denmark as well as the King’s retainers who do their best to humiliate him. In a story of this kind, we expect the author to use such conventional devices as contrasts and parallels: Thorstein comes to the King’s rescue in Denmark and gets his rewards in Norway; he kills three villains in Den­ mark and later gobbles up the food intended for three retainers in Norway. Such recurrent fictional features as the concealment and revelation of a person’s identity serve to sustain our interest in the story. When we con­ sider the overall pattern, we can hardly fail to recognize its affinity with

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other accounts of Icelandic saga characters travelling to Norway and beyond, even where the ultimate goal is different in kind. Leaving aside the potential historical relevance of this simple tale, we can now proceed to its thematic aspect. As I have already indicated, journeys are often used symbolically as well as in a literal sense; the message of the story is ultimately inseparable from its form. As I see it, our story exemplifies three themes which run like quick-silver thread through the literature I have called ‘historical fiction’. Readers of the sagas who fail to isolate and identify the elements in question are, to put it plainly, not looking at the literature critically or analytically. The three themes I have in mind are happiness, integrity and alienation. All three are of course interrelated, and they keep recurring not only in the stories vulgarly known in English as Family Sagas or Sagas of Icelanders, but also in Norwegian and Icelandic translations of medieval works of learning. There is no need for me to mention here the well-known fact that the basic notion of a goal is closely related to that of good fortune; the desire of the virtuous ends in happiness. In the ultimate analysis the two concepts ap­ pear inseparable: happiness consists in choosing the right kind of goal and in pursuing that goal with steadfastness. Our hero exemplifies that ideal: he lets no obstacles, neither humiliation nor temptation, divert him from his chosen goal. The basic idea of integrity, that it is everyone’s moral duty to protect not only his own wholeness but also that of others, is of course closely related to the ideal of self-knowledge. Thorstein defends the stranger’s integrity in Denmark, and later his own by refusing to settle in Norway. Finally, there is the theme of alienation, which in early Icelandic literature as elsewhere is a notoriously complex matter to deal with, not least in a short paper. It is by no means unlikely that the actual historical and cultural experience of my forebears during the first generations after emigrating from Norway created a sense of alienation which lasted for centuries. But looking at the extant literature in the vernacular, foreign and native, secular and sacred, fictive and thematic, of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, there is ample evidence to show that alienation, in the medieval as well as the modern existentialist sense, was a concept to be reckoned with in the kind of story we are considering here. As I indicated earlier on, in order to make sense of secular fiction, we should try to see the literary creation in terms of the total intellectual experience of medieval Iceland. The thirteenth-century Icelandic terms for alienation, ørlendi and ørlending, convey not only the literal sense of being alienated or banished from one’s country, but it also denotes various degrees and

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kinds of isolation from anything one loves and ultimately from God. Our tale presents a person who is temporarily alienated from his native land and who, through his pilgrimage and reintegration into his own society, is ultimately fated to attain happiness. As we have seen already, this theme is presented as the major informing element in a tale cyclical in form. But there is also a linear narrative form, as for example in Grettis saga, where the alienation theme controls a totally different pattern. In medieval writings, and here I am thinking in particular about works still extant in Icelandic translations, human life was sometimes presented in terms of three phases in relation to alienation. In early childhood we belong to a certain place, which is the only part of the world we know and love; anything beyond our unguided vision is an alien world to us. But when we reach a certain age, we are sent off to school, and travelling from country to country we gradually learn that we are at home wherever we happen to be; we belong to the whole world. We attain the third phase once we have acquired the true wisdom of old age, when we realise that we exist in an alien world and are therefore strangers in a foreign land. In contrast to our story, elsewhere in medieval Icelandic fiction we have characters who willingly undertake the outward journey of no return, seeking the kind of happiness that can be achieved only after the three stages of alienation through which the perfect man must pass. Exploring the thematic aspect of historical fiction, we find it necessary to distinguish between what we might call the major informing elements, such as the three themes I have just mentioned, and certain explicit sen­ tentious statements in the dialogue, which add to the total semantic con­ tent of the story. In our tale there are three sentences of that kind: one, echoing a maxim in the Distichs o f Cato and the precept in Exodus urging people not to mock a stranger; another on the uncertainty of life, reminis­ cent of Job; and the third on the inconstancy of people’s names. Sentences like these (Er þat vitrligra at gera eigi mikit spott at ókunnigum manni. Engum er langlifi heitit. Megu manna nçfn marga vegu saman bera) serve to indicate the kind of education and book-learning the author received. The tale of our pilgrim is evidently an exemplum, though it has been left to us to work out its message. When we compare this story to other secular fictions in medieval Iceland, we find that not only are the basic formal qualities the same here as in saga episodes describing a journey abroad, but also that from a thematic point of view we are dealing with a common stock of ideas, which are essentially humanistic in outlook. While there can be little doubt that a major purpose of Njåls saga, Egils saga and the

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rest was to attempt an acceptable description of the past, they were in­ tended also for exemplary and edificatory ends. The modern reader will enjoy the sagas as manifestations of narrative art, but we owe it to their nameless authors not to forget that historical fiction in early Iceland had several different facets and that medieval audiences were probably better equipped than modern man to appreciate the simple fact that serious saga authors used their narrative skill for the purpose of encouraging people to make sense of themselves and of the world to which they belonged. University of Edinburgh.

The moralisation of the fable: from Æsop to Romulus by M orten N øjgaard

Throughout the long history of the antique fable we can observe a con­ stant tension between fable and moral, between anecdote and exemplum, between artistic creation and ethical precept. In this talk I shall try to show how the matter of the Æsopean fables underwent constant change as different authors adapted them in the service of moralising ideologies that are themselves endlessly changed and renewed. It was an abiding prob­ lem, in classical and medieval times (and still today?), how to amalgamate narrative and moral, and we can think of the antique fable as a form which represents a never-ending search for an integration of moral and structure within the framework of the didactic animal tale. The moralisation of the fable can be defined in the (rather trite) words of the Italian critic Zoppi as ‘Tarmonia dell’onesto coll’utile”. In the world of the antique fable the values of justice and virtue are ignored and the only positive qualities are strength and cunning. In these terms the fable is neither moral nor immoral - that is not a division recognised by its outlook - but it has happened in every age that the didactic writers who were responsible for the fable collections we know attempted to refine the gold of the moral from the dross of the fable and did so not least under the influence of their own social conditioning. In their presentation of these miniature tales they have tried to modify the play of forces in them in such a way as to confirm in the reader some notion of an immanent justice. The fable thus becomes an ideological justification of a society founded on the earthly existence of transcendental values - the values of justice and virtue - and it is here that the moralisation of the fable has its being. Or one could formulate it differently and say that the task of the didactic author was to introduce the world of the fable, where the instincts have free and savage play, into the world of human society, whose very existence de­ pends on learning the lesson that the instincts must be subdued. This nagging problem seems to have been put in the lap of moralists of the Greek world by the folklore that surrounded them, and their remedy

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was always the same —the remedy of moralisation. Instead of ignoring a genre which challenged society, they set about transforming its perilous elements to suit received ideas. It is certain for instance that we can find evidence of such moralising in the tales Herodotus built into his history. His sources were archaic, amoral and often obscene, but he idealises and humanises them in accordance with his own view of life and everywhere tries to show that the events possess an inherent justice. A standard exam­ ple may be seen in the well-known story of Candaules’s wife in Book One, where the theme, which is decidedly improper, is that of a fabliau decked out with the marvellous elements of the popular wonder-tale. But Herodotus omits all the indecency and suppresses all the supernatural, lifting the story to a high, ideal level where it becomes a glorification of honour and the dignity of woman. Similarly we find that when Plato, for different reasons, includes the story in his Republic, he keeps some of the marvellous elements but takes good care not to dwell on the obscenities. Given this background it seems likely that the moralisation of the fable is as old as the first literary treatment of the fable. As soon as the fable was accepted as a genre that could be legitimately included in works aspiring to the rank of literature, moralisation began. In extension of this brief introduction, I should like to consider three stages in the ideological transformation of the matter of Aesop, first in the collection called Augustana, from the first centuries of our era, second in the collection of Phaedrus, securely dated to the first century, and third in the collection attributed to Romulus, written in the fifth century. I shall begin with an analysis of the structure of the antique fable, using the fable of the wolf and the lamb in its several ancient versions as my example. Undertaking such an analysis I shall limit myself to an analysis of the syntagmic level. We can distinguish three types of fable, classified ac­ cording to the complexity of the narrative. First a simplex fable with two characters and three acts; second a simplified fable with only one charac­ ter (and with one or two of the usual three acts missing); and third a complex fable, with three characters, several scenes and so on. The first element in the narrative sequence is the setting of the scene - 1 call it la donnée, the datum, the situation that is given. It introduces the antagonists and establishes a relationship - often a spatial one - between them. The second element in the sequence is the act of choice. The given situation puts the two personae at odds with each other, there is a conflict. Now, the conflict of the fable is of the simplest possible kind, which can

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and must be resolved, or definitively settled, by a single act. This is the turning-point which I call the act of choice. The raven, for example, must choose either to open his beak or not to open it. Once the choice has been made, the relationship between the characters is definitively established - it is always a relationship between someone stronger and someone weaker - and then the third and final stage is reached —I call it the evaluation. Consonant with its allegorical and moral function, this is the most complex part of the Aesopian fable. Once the conflict is established, the point is obviously to find out which of the antagonists is going to win, but until the end of the fable we cannot appreciate the definitive relationship between the forces involved - only at the end can we say, for example, that the frogs who wanted a king were fools. We know this then because the final scene clearly establishes their inferiority —they get eaten! This I call the final action but we should note that this can often be doubled by a final speech, and sometimes replaced by it. The character who has the upper hand ridicules the one who is vanquished or duped with some sarcastic words that mercilessly lay bare the stupidity of his antagonist. The final speech is also often uttered by a newcomer on the scene, someone who simply happens to turn up —I call him the chance comer. It is the Aesopian convention to follow the narrative with a final verdict, the moral. This is not part of the fiction and it can assume various forms. Basically it enunciates a rule of conduct, but we cannot detect any con­ nection between the type of moral and the type of fable, between moral and theme. Naturally, this narrative scheme permits the fabulists a good many va­ riations. For example, if we restrict ourselves to the end of the fable, we find that the role of the chance comer is often assigned to one of the protagonists, normally the stronger of the two. Further, it is rather rare that a version introduces both the final action and the final speech: the one or the other is enough to ensure the evaluation. Finally, in texts which have the final speech, there is a variant which seems at first sight to contradict the structural system altogether. It would seem that if the fable represents a play of forces, a trial of strength, where the relative worth of the two sides is finally demonstrated by the establishment of a superiority, then the weaker character ought not to be in a position to proffer the concluding evaluation. But this does occur, and that is when the loser blames himself for his failure. So this variant in fact only confirms the nature of the trial of strength we have witnessed: the evaluation is assured

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by the merciless self-criticism of the persona who is vanquished or de­ ceived. Once the constituents of the narrative chain have been isolated, the next step is to understand how they build a fictional universe —that is to say, we now pass on to a paradigmatic analysis. Of course I start here from the hypothesis that in order to achieve the individual communication of the fiction from the author to the reader it is necessary for the objects re­ presented —the instruments by which the communication is made —to imitate, as it were, the mode of existence of objects that the reader has accessible to him in his own experience. So it becomes the aim of the narrative sequence to create for the reader an imagined world whose peculiarity is that it only fully exists when the sequence comes to an end. In a genre so extremely simple we find the elementary dimensions of this imagined or narrative universe, as it were, in a raw state. I am afraid that what I can say about this is bound to appear commonplace to some de­ gree. We shall not be surprised to learn that in the fable we find the implicit presence of an author —but on the other hand, it seems to me that literary critics, unlike analytical folklorists, have tended to ignore the significance of the person of the auditor or reader who is equally involved in the text and who is responsible for the value-judgments which the actual auditor or reader is skilfully persuaded to pass on the represented objects. These objects —characters, feelings, settings etc. - are seized through the categories of time and space. The relation between space and time presupposes the existence of yet another ‘dimension’ which allows the objects to be distinguished as specific entities, that is, as a system of forces (we may compare if we like the forces of nature). It is a matter of knowing what the constants are which set in motion the things realised for us in time and space. I have already referred to the existence of a physical system in the fable (I mean the final action) and of an intellectual or spiritual system (compare the final speech) and in both of these there is a single pair of opposing forces: strength - weakness, cunning —stupidity. Let us now look more closely at the fable of the wolf and the lamb. From a historical point of view, it is more or less certain that all three versions are derived from the same source. They split into two groups, Phaedrus and Augustana —neither is a descendent of the other - make one branch against Babrius on his own. Phaedrus and Augustana locate the lamb close to the spring, and the wolf above him —a fact which provides the lamb with his first argument. Babrius has no indication of place, but line 8 in his text presupposes the existence of the spring - the

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argument based on this appears here as the third. Phaedrus and Augus­ tana have only two arguments, identical apart from the fact that in Au­ gustana the reference to the father belongs to the wolf, in Phaedrus to the lamb. This detail is absent in Babrius, where however three arguments are used. On the other hand, Phaedrus and Babrius have the same final action (in the former transposed to follow the final speech), while Augustana has a final speech which only implies the final action of the others. The plot is interesting, because it is rather more complicated than usual. We can start by saying, in all brevity, that Augustana demonstrates a moral truth ‘objectively’ in the form of a spiritual or intellectual conflict. On that plane the wolf must confess himself overcome. Phaedrus presents a conflict between vice and virtue of an ethical (or transcendental) nature: the ethical inferiority of the wolf is complete, just as his real superiority is complete since in the end he gets the better of the lamb, both spiritually and physically. Phaedrus thus ends the fable with a demonstration which is not objective, but where sides are taken. Finally Babrius gives us a psychological portrait of a vicious and brutal man, combining in this way the attitudes of both his predecessors. But his subtle irony evokes a truth which is not one of fact, but one of law. The amusement provoked by the final speech of the wolf recalls per antiphrasim what line of conduct one should follow in a real situation. One could say that if Phaedrus makes the two kinds of Aesopian forces equal in moral terms, the distinction be­ tween them has lost its significance in Babrius, who makes the conflict more psychological than either intellectual or physical. These differences between the versions can be demonstrated in every detail of the structure, even to the presentation of the plot. In Augustana the neutral observer states that the wolf sees the lamb drinking. Phaedrus, on the other hand, insists on the lamb’s legitimate raison d’être, and makes himself the defender of the innocent: spurred by hunger, the lamb places himself well below the wolf. Babrius arouses our compassion for the lamb strayed from the flock - he (Babrius) is the sensitive observer of a natural situation. This interpretation poses however some interesting problems as far as the Augustana version is concerned. As I have already said, one of the essential problems in the trial of strength is that the two opposing forces appear equal. Theoretically the two personae have just the same re­ sources, as in the “wolf and the crane”. But here we meet one of the prime difficulties faced by the fabulists —their need to recreate reality. In the real order of things the wolf is stronger than the crane. This difficulty becomes

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particularly acute when the conflict is an intellectual one and the last word is given to the physically weaker character - that is, when the material victory is at odds with the intellectual or spiritual victory. Given that the two kinds of strength can co-exist in the same fable, then it is necessary to make clear that they cannot both exist in the same character: the one who is physically stronger cannot also have the spiritual or intellectual advan­ tage, for that would make him invincible from the outset. If he does not succeed in one way, he could always bring his other armament to bear, because the fables acknowledge no other kind of strength. If in any case the wolf can use his physical strength, it is absurd for him first to try other means. It would be natural for him to use his strength, and that means that in this fable we witness a struggle between the natural and the fictional. The lamb’s resistance is not overcome by arguments, so the wolf gives a twist of his own to the conflict. It becomes a physical conflict, as we see from the final speech which implies the final action: the wolf devours the lamb. Seen in this light, the true moral of the story is that of Phaedrus: nothing prevails against ‘uis’ and ‘nequitia’. As we have seen, that is not the Augustana moral, which makes the wolf the target, even though he is much stronger. That implies that the lamb is in reality the stronger of the two and his misfortune is merely physical. It must be this interpretation that our author wished to suggest by his intro­ duction into the fable of the formula, “with a plausible reason”. He meant to eliminate the ambiguity of the plot by transferring the whole conflict not only that of the first part - onto a purely intellectual or spiritual plane. The act of choice is then the wolfs decision to use his mental rather than his physical powers, and it is to emphasize this function of the initial decision that the author divides it up into two, that is, he doubles the argument. According to the rules, as we have seen, the evaluation should come at the end in a final speech in which the stronger mocks the weaker or the weaker blames himself for his failure. We know therefore that in the case of this particular fable the interpretation offered would require a sarcastic final speech from the lamb which the author has found no way of introducing (the lamb after all has been eaten!). Consequently the pre­ sentation brings us up short. It may however be possible to interpret the wolfs words as meaning that what the author of Augustana intended us to understand was that the conflict was not really between the wolf and the lamb but that this external struggle was merely a means of introducing us to the real struggle which went on inside the wolf. It was thus of an intellectual or spiritual nature.

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The wolf tries to step outside himself and once he finds himself compelled to have recourse to physical force he is in effect acknowledging his defeat. In the event he admits that the lamb is superior to him in strength of mind (or whatever) —“However great your facility in justifying yourself.” If there is no stress on the complete innocence of the lamb (as in Phaedrus) but only on his ability to refute the wolfs charges, we may perhaps be allowed to interpret the final speech of the wolf not as that of the stronger but as a variant of the self-critical kind of conclusion. The first part of the Augustana moral fits this, since it begins, “With people bent on doing evil . . .” But what follows, “the most righteous defence is of no avail,” suggests that we should see the lamb as an active persona who has been stupid enough to offer a defence. The true moral would be, “Any­ body is foolish who, being only a brute, tries to display intelligence.” This third interpretation is in fact the one offered by Lorenzi in his 1955 edition of Phaedrus: “La ragione rimane moralmente riconosciuta, anche se ció non serve a niente.” If we accept this interpretation, then we can say, by way of summary, that Augustana adopts the simplest solution, placing the conflict explicitly and exclusively on the non-material level. The author emphasizes that the wolfs intention is to eat the lamb — “having found a specious pretext” - and makes him admit his defeat on this intellectual level in a conclusion which logically adopts the form of a speech. This fable thus presents a model of the way in which the Augustana author moralises an Aesop story. He avoids any basic alteration of the old narrative scheme (though in some instances he does change it), but on the other hand he busies himself with explaining the actions of the characters as dependent on the dictates of immutable ethical principles. In this way he elevates the import of the fable. Instead of a utilitarian and casuistical morality, we find that the fable accords with a universal and eternal ethic. The author is particularly concerned to introduce the concept of justice into his collection of fables, and to do this he avails himself of the moral more than anything else. It is not difficult to “retrieve” the fables in which a weak character behaves foolishly - the amusement is easily converted into condemnation of moral weakness. It is more difficult to “normalise” the fables - and there are a good many of them - in which a strong “bad” character triumphs over a weak “good” character, who according to the best moral rules acts wisely but nevertheless fatally. In such cases the author adopts a different tactic: he either neglects the weak persona or merely uses him as a stepping-stone. The moral is then reduced to a

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violent attack on people who are irredeemably wicked, blind and deaf to every good action, against whom it inessential to guard oneself at all costs. Here the moral of the wolf and the lamb is typical: the author makes no mention of the lamb’s sad end but gives all the more vehement a denun­ ciation of the wicked wolf. I may remind you of the moral: “This fable shows that with people determined to do wrong, the most righteous de­ fence avails nothing.” Here the interpretation is acceptable because the narrative itself is less than perspicuous, but in the ordinary way the au­ thor’s efforts throw narrative and moral badly out of gear. In Chambry 225, for example, the Wolf and the Heron, we find that in the final speech the wolf mocks the heron for his crass stupidity, and there can be no doubt that the fable itself is more concerned with the naiveté of the bird than with the cunning of the wolf. But the moral voices just the opposite —it is the wolfs baseness that is reproved. “This fable shows that the greatest benefit one can expect from any return on the part of the wicked is that they do not add injustice to ingratitude.” The moral which really follows from such a plot is found at the end of the analogous story in Chambry 40: it makes the weaker of the pair involved the target of criticism and re­ minds us that, before undertaking an action, we should examine all the consequences. In Chambry 314 the shepherd knows perfectly well why he should slaughter the wolf-cubs: as they grow up, they will escape from his control - but in the moral, which naturally sees the shepherd as a be­ nefactor, the wolf-cubs represent vicious people who will always repay good with evil. . . The true lesson would be that one should not undertake something beyond one’s powers. Time does not permit discussion of the numerous other cases and kinds of moralisation in the Augustana collection. I should like only to mention the author’s efforts to suppress all the indecent elements in the episodes he treated. You may recall that in Chambry 38 the monkey is elected king of the animals and then gets himself caught in a trap as a result of the wily and far from disinterested advice of the fox. The fox then mocks the monkey with the utmost scorn —only his actual words do not seem at all amusing. He says, “Oh monkey, and you, with the sort of luck you have, you want to be king of the animals!” Now, by chance, we have a fragment of Archilocus which preserves the authentic text. Here the fox says, “Oh monkey, and you, with the sort of arse you have, you want to be king of the animals!” This regard for propriety on the part of the Augustana author is evidently part and parcel of his efforts in favour of a moral subjugation of the instincts.

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39

Let us move on to Phaedrus. He, we can say, goes back to the Aesopian conception of life as it emerges from the ancient anonymous narratives. He rediscovers the individual and amoral forces of existence and sees that the ancient fables are a perfect incarnation of them. But at the same time he is clear-headed enough to associate with this perception a set of ethical values, whose worth he recognises while fully understanding that they are often diametrically opposed to the message of the fables. His artistic genius carries him along, so that he both draws the inevitable conse­ quences and transforms his sources in order to reveal this basic antimony, hitherto unexpressed and perhaps even unperceived, sometimes restruc­ turing the fable for his purpose. So he succeeds in bringing alive and keeping alive certain antitheses whose co-existence taxes our experience of the world. He creates a fictional universe which embodies human morality insofar as that morality can be seen to hinge on the precarious life virtue must lead. Or, to put it in another way, the problem is that of reconciling two value-systems of which one is ethical, the other physical, the opposition, that is, of virtue and strength. And finally, Phaedrus leads us to understand that in an actual society this problem is inextricably bound up with social or class organisation. In other words, it becomes a matter of understanding whether the lesson of the fable can provide a solution to the opposition of class interests inherent in a hierarchical sys­ tem. We can return to the fable of the wolf and the lamb. In order to abstract the moral, Phaedrus combines the final speech (which is all there is in Augustana) with a final action, necessary to show the absolute superiority of the wolf, here presented, that is to say, as a strong character in every sense of the word. It follows that the defeat of the lamb is not in itself the meaning of the fable. This lies rather in the ethical values introduced into the text, beginning with the motive assigned to explain the wolfs be­ haviour - “fauce improba latro incitatus” —here the wolf becomes the very symbol of wickedness. In Babrius the wolfs point of departure resembles that of Augustana. The wolf renounces the use of force and then looks for a reason, specious of course, to justify his predetermined action. But because of this presen­ tation one sees clearly that the wolf recognises the moral superiority of the just. Babrius is able to make use of the final speech from Augustana, but only because he brings in a new ironic element. In his version it is not the persona who speaks to us and admits his inferiority but rather it is the author who ridicules the clumsy bandit, basically more absurd than

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terrifying. This gives an example of the suavité of the Greek fabulist, the only one to make extended use of irony - we can note that in this La Fontaine is closer to Babrius than to Aesop and Phaedrus. I said earlier that Phaedrus is the only author who draws a “correct moral from the wolf and lamb fable”. This is no accident for, among the great fabulists, it is precisely Phaedrus who gives the moral a narrative function - something which has been seen by older critics as an awkward dislocation of narrative and maxim. In fact, Phaedrus makes the moral an integral part of the evaluation in the fable by virtue of the fundamental principle of moral duality which he discovers in the world. The fable of the ox, lion and brigand may serve as an example. Here, without the final word, we should not understand the text. It is not that it merely confirms the value-system. What we find as a whole is rather the systematic con­ frontation of two worlds, the world of physical reality, dominated by the cruel tenets of the ancient fable, and the world of moral conscience, whose values depend on justice as a metaphysical principle. So we understand that the moral is there to affirm the tragic relationship that exists between these two worlds, since the ideal has no hope of transfer from the maxim (the voice of moral conscience) to the narrative (the reproduction of the natural world). The nature of this “double-take” comes out clearly in the moral drawn by Phaedrus in the Wolf and the lamb: “Haec propter illos scripta est homines fabula / Qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt.” And we find the same lesson in the promythium of II 6, the eagle and the crow: “Contra potentes nemo est munitus satis; / Si uno accessit consiliator maleficus, / Vis et nequitia quicquid oppugnant, ruit.” And again in IV 13: “Utilius homini nihil est quam recte loqui: Probanda cunctis est quidem sententia, Sed ad perniciem solet agi sinceritas.” These last quotes put Phaedrus's outlook in a really new perspective —a social one. In the wolf and the lamb he prudently frames a general and unspecific rule of conduct. In II 1 he limits himself to an abstract state­ ment on the corrupt state of the world. Here he makes his attitude more precise by unveiling the tragic aspect: this impossible struggle between ‘iustitia’ and ‘uis’ takes place at the expense of the poor, the people of low degree who are condemned to suffer oppression. Now - and here we come to Phaedrus’s outstanding boldness of thought - a feeling for the ideal, for justice, is something which lives solely among the weak and downtrodden, who suffer oppression simply because they are unable to adapt themselves to the corruption of the material world. It is in the same way that Aesop

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the slave bitterly claims that he is whipped for refusing to tell lies: “Flagris sum caesus, uerum quia dixi modo.” To recapitulate, we can say that Phaedrus’s art expresses a tragic vision of human existence. The tragedy lies in the fundamental duality of a world governed by physical force but judged by ethical values. This duality marks every element in the structure of the fable, which means that the duality of the world is not an accident, to which an aposteriori moralisa­ tion can be applied, but a primordial fact, a given precondition of exist­ ence. It is in this sense, in sum a negative one, that Phaedrus succeeds completely in making his moralising purpose part of the narrative itself. In conclusion I should like to consider Romulus and his special place in the Aesopian tradition, taking the fable of the peasant and the mascot snake as a starting-point. Romulus established the norm, artistic and moral, for the medieval European fable. He played the same game as Phaedrus in achieving a structural moralisation of the fable, but he did it by quite different methods. We have to think not so much of a return to the primitive Aesopian fable as a novel alliance of animal tale and the popular wonder-tale. It is the action rather than the structure that is moralised as Romulus turns to the tried methods of the popular story, where the wicked are punished and the good prevail. In this connection it is important to note that Romulus was very probably inspired by a non-Aesopian tradition, possibly of oriental origin, and introduced a number of themes hitherto unknown in the Aesopian canon. These first medieval fables can be characterised by four original features: (1) a novel treatment of Aesopian matter; (2) a certain eastern tinge; (3) inspiration drawn it seems from literary sources and in any case the admixture of traditions previously unconnected with the fable; and (4) a structural moralisation which attests an unshakeable faith in the moral worth of everyday life. As an example of originality of treatment we may recall Romulus’s version of the “crane who doctors the wolf’. Romulus is the only fabulist who makes the wolf a kind of prince who seeks a physician by public decree, and has the crane negotiating with him by means of a go-between messenger. Romulus thus makes the story much more “epical” and action and moral coincide all the more easily: the solemn and public agreement between the wolf and the crane emphasizes what a come-down any gratuitous breach of the pact will be. To grasp Romulus’s deep originality we may look at the fable of the

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“mascot snake”. It is of interest because it exists in a number of antique forms (though not in Phaedrus) às well as in an Indian version in Pantchatantra III 6. Romulus is characteristically independent, conform­ ing neither to the Indian version nor to the Greek source from which Augustana and Babrius are derived (independently of each other, as it happens). We can see from the theme that the fable is out of place in the Aesopian canon because it contains traces that clearly have a religious origin: the snake is a magic animal and the story tests man’s relations with the occult powers of nature. One suspects that the Aesopian tradition did its best to get rid of such elements: its interest lay not in the religious but in the social import of the narrative, concerned as it was to establish a society ordered on a basic idea of immanent justice. Thus, Augustana presents the snake as just another animal and discards any notion of the expiatory gifts offered to the snake to affect its baleful influence. Now, this character of the tale which is quite clear in the oriental version, is not at all obscured by Romulus, there is no doubt of the magic power of the snake. All the same, we should note that Romulus is not at all inclined to put all the action on the religious plane: the poor man who becomes rich offends the snake by failing to toss it its usual breadcrumbs, but it is not greed that leads him (or his son) to commit sacrilege but simple carelessness and bad temper. So at the end possibility of a reconciliation can be contemplated: he has offended and wounded the snake but the snake, implacable in the “reli­ gious” version (where the man has sinned against magic tabus and can expect terrible vengeance from the demons), agrees to return to the sub­ ject “when the wound is healed . . . ” Romulus thus moralises the matter of the fable by fitting the religious element into an entirely human span. He does not look for a clearcut situation where laughter, cruel laughter, can explode, but a relatively complex situation which allows the characters to recapture an elementary sense of virtue and justice. Romulus thus never allows a strong character, who misuses his strength for material gain, to escape from the just punishment that is his due. His treacherous plans often come to nothing: the weaker escapes from his foils or even succeeds in turning the tables. We can see it, for example, in the fable of the stag, the horse and the man - whose transmission otherwise offers much of interest, if only because recent research has discovered the pre-Aesopian source in a Sumerian fragment (“The horse, after he had thrown off his rider, (said): ‘If my burden is always to be this, I shall become weak!” ’). Using one of the most venerable of Aesopian motifs (the cheat cheated), Romulus assigns the horse an active role - and

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in this he is alone among the fabulists of antiquity. Tempting the man with the hope of a rich prey, the horse gets him to drive the stag out of his meadow. Romulus thus leads us to believe that the stag will be des­ patched, as in the true Aesopian tradition, and all the more so as the horse gives careful instructions to the man on how to kill the stag. But it is precisely in this point that the creative originality of the Romulus author is indubitable. The traditional cause for the setting in the first place, the donnée, is the speed of the stag which keeps him out of the horse’s reach, but Romulus transfers this to the end of the narrative. He can thus intro­ duce a new scene in which the horse naively invites the rider to dismount, since the pursuit is of no avail and after all he cannot succeed in catching up with the stag. So the stag survives the chase: the weaker party is not consigned to destruction. Keen suspense is the keynote of the conclusion in other ways too. What reply will the man give to the horse panting and sweating? Powerfully, and with that picturesque precision characteristic of him, Romulus resolves our suspense in the final speech of the rider: suddenly the man changes from the horse’s ally into a harsh and cruel master, who not only handles the reins but now brandishes a whip. So the horse is justly punished and in its entirety the fable becomes an apology for taming, breaking in, the task of making the creature fit for social existence, without any need for re­ course to the artificial moralisation found in Augustana. We can only acknowledge the justice of Thiele’s observation on this fable: “wir stossen hier auf eine ganz andere Sphäre als Phädrus, als Babrios, ja als alles, was uns bisher von antiker Fabelerzählung bekant geworden ist . . .” The moralisation of Romulus differs fundamentally from that of all the other fable collections: it is not a veneer but works as a profound transformation of the very structure of the narrative.1 Odense University

' For bibliographical references see Morten Nøjgaard, La fable antique, I: La fable grecque avant Phèdre (Copenhagen, 1964) and II: Les grands fabulistes (Copenhagen, 1967).

The emancipation of story in the twelfth century by G. T. Shepherd

In any general survey of our different but closely related western Euro­ pean literatures it is striking that from the first Christian millennium there are very few compositions surviving in a written form, securely dated to those early centuries, which we would call plainly and simply stories. There is plenty of reliable testimony we may think to the existence of oral stories then: indeed some of us medievalists live by this belief; but the evidence for the existence of stories is not the written text of the stories themselves. If Bede knew what stories had been circulating round Whitby in the 680s when Caedmon first enters into the annals of English poetry, he did not think it necessary to tell us what any of them were. This reticence in script about stories common to early Europe was part of the tradition of Latin letters. There are of course the Aesopic fables and their adaptations and derivatives which were to constitute an immensely influential body of short narrative familiar in schools for centuries: the existence and cultivation of these fables contributed to the emergence of independent story; but they were primarily products, instruments and models of a novitiate in literacy. They served purposes beyond that of story-telling. Literary history has dealt somewhat uneasily also with the narrative materials of Valerius Maximus, Apuleius, Aulus Gellius and Petronius; still more indirectly with a purer Roman than them all —a Roman ac­ counted the first characteristically medieval author of the West —with Gregory the Great, as author of the Dialogues. Here is certainly a book of stories, tales of wonder and the imagination, endlessly read, copied out and translated throughout the Middle Ages. Four MSS of the AngloSaxon translation can be dated from before 1100. Nevertheless, though the Dialogues can be used profitably as a text within which to study the assimilation of oral story into written and eventually into vernacular form, more commonly they have been taken as products of the simple-minded didacticism of a dark age. We need not therefore feel obliged to take them

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as more than an arguable exception to the general rule that collections of stories and indeed individual self-subsistent stories scarcely exist, either in Latin or in the vernaculars, in written form during the first millennium in the West. The old stories do not exist for us in as much as they were not written down. They were not written down because they were regarded as unfit for transcription. Especially in the converted barbarian countries, Chris­ tianity and literacy became closely linked and writing itself possessed a reserved and sacred function. But in the Latin educational system also, which Christianity inherited and exploited, stories were not usually writ­ ten down unless they could be presented as something more than stories: as contributions to history sacred or profane, or as didactic illustrations. The clerics who could have written stories down but did not write stories down were, it should be remembered, the clerics who developed the whole art of letters and were responsible for the development of Western litera­ ture. For them as for their pagan predecessors as literary men, a story was nuga, ineptia, trupha, jocus - all derogatory terms, at best fabula, and fabula by definition is untrue. Story-telling was condemned with the other presentational arts as per­ sonally and socially dangerous. “Men who receive story-tellers, actors or acrobats into their houses do not realise what a host of unclean spirits follow after.” We might like to think that such condemnation was partial or philistine. It was not: it was the judgement of those who most cared for and fostered the art of letters: in their eyes it was total and rational. In the Elucidarium Honorius, who had a talent for popular recapitulation, posed the question: “Have story-tellers (joculatores) any hope of salvation?” The answer is comprehensive and incisive: “None at all: for they are ministers of Satan in their whole intention, concerning whom it is written, ‘They knew not God; and so God spurns them and the Lord will laugh them to scorn.’ 5,1 Story lacked theoretical as well as moral justification. A treatise as fundamental to medieval writing as the Pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium (I, vi, 10.13) is completely dismissive of fabula. Macrobius in his com­ mentary on the Dream o f Scipio, directly confronting story by virtue of his prime text, reduces its role to a minimum. No serious man of letters could1 1 See E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (London, 1903 and reprints), I, 36 note 1; Honorius (of Autun), Elucidarium, lib. ii, 18, PL 172, col. 1148; and further, J-T. Welter, L'exemplum dans la littérature religieuse et didactique du moyen âge (Paris-Toulouse, 1927), p. 102, note 70.

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be expected to compose fabulae, to listen to them, or to discuss them in their own right. Stories could have a passing interest for children perhaps. They might have a very limited use in expounding psychological states and ancient mysteries. In themselves they are trivial and deceitful.2 This was standard doctrine. As late as the mid-twelfth century a well-read schoolmaster, Conrad of Hirschau, in his Dialogus super auctores, explaining in approved fashion how to approach literary studies and develop interest in the great writers, maintains the standard position even more rigorously. An enquiring student in the Dialogue suggests that perhaps more should be said in favour of story but the master puts him down promptly and emphatically. The student’s plea may indicate that Conrad knew that standards were changing; as indeed they were.3 From this time, say from the beginning of the twelfth century, Europe was to be flooded with written stories. The flood rolled on for centuries —a full tide, backwards and forwards from Ireland and Africa, from India and Iceland. The expansion of stories is one of the great literary processes in the formation of European civilisation. By the sixteenth century the mass is vast, even oppressive, as Cervantes recognised. No single reader now in his lifetime could possibly get through all the books of medieval stories that still survive, from France, Italy, Germany, and other countries, and most astonishingly perhaps, from Iceland - the remains of a huge fossilis­ ing reef upon which modern European fiction has been built. Why was there this explosion of story? We can invoke responses to many social, economic and political changes to explain it —the stabilisa­ tion and pacification of Europe with the incorporation of the barbarian peoples into a new concert; the emergence of organised kingdoms and of central courts; the growth of towns and populations and trade; the spread of literacy and the multiplication of sheepskins; an incipient secularisation of values; an increase in luxury, leisure and mobility and all the intercultural consequences of crusade and pilgrimage. But literary activities are not simple, not even complex epiphenomena of social and political changes which can in some way or other claim to be more real than life. If literature is worth studying it is because it has some internal forces and lines of development of its own. 2 Peter Dronke, Fabula: explorations into the use of myth in medieval Platonism (Leyden-Cologne, 1974), chap. 1, pp. 13-78. 3 Conrad of Hirschau, Dialogus super auctores, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Collection Latomus 17; Berchem, 1953), and further Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthétique médiévale (Brussels, 1946), II, 307-10.

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It is with this inner line of development that we are concerned. From early medieval writing about literature, a consideration of story was excluded and this attitude died hard. There were consequences for the history of the verbal arts which were to be visible for centuries and perhaps in vestigial form are still visible today. But in the twelfth century, story is virtually emancipated. There was no grand theory announced to effect or proclaim the liberation. Nevertheless many writers of the twelfth century express piecemeal their concern with problems raised by their own activities as storytellers. Many comments could be drawn from a variety of authors, in Latin and in the vernaculars. An investigation of French and Anglo-Saxon storytellers would prove highly informative. The approaches of three writers working in England can be taken as exemplary. The essential problem however can be best set up by a brief preliminary consideration of Disciplina Clericalis, the short Latin dialogue by Petrus Alphonsi, a Spanish Rabbi converted to Christianity in 1106, later for a time physician to Henry I of England. Petrus Alphonsi has an importance in the scientific awakening of Europe but it is only the Disciplina Clericalis that concerns us here. Implicit even in the title is the book’s claim to retrieve story-material from the joculator and to treat story as no longer wholly nugatory. Petrus purports to be teaching a non-monastic audience a course in prudence, applicable in private and in public affairs. “For that reason,” he writes, “have I put together this book, partly from the sayings of wise men, and their advice, partly from Arab proverbs, counsels, fables, and poems and partly from bird and animal similitudes.”4 The book gathers together the gnomic, proverbial, illustrative material which is the normal inheritance of a closed community dependent for its learning upon oral transmission. In his dialogue Petrus Alphonsi stylises the material and the situation. Master and disciple appear to lead each other on in converse and to range widely. Yet the materials are discreetly and cleverly grouped. The path of high prudence is best learned by a man instructed in the seven liberal arts and well-versed in the seven rules of good conduct and well practised in the seven knightly skills - by a man who lives by the book. A formal didactic scheme is imposed with a Christian purpose. Petrus Al­ phonsi is seeking to make popular material educational quite as much as to make education popular. 4 The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi, ed. Eberhard Hermes (Eng. trans, London, 1977), p. 104.

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Disciplina Clericalis was quickly and immensely successful. It survives in dozens of Latin MSS. In the twelfth century it was translated into An­ glo-Norman and later into Spanish, Catalan, Italian, German, English, Icelandic. Its extra-monastic programme was attractive and its individual stories were frequently extracted and adapted. The compilers of the Gesta Romanorum and the composers of the fabliaux are indebted to it. In English, the semi-dramatic piece of the thirteenth century, Dame Sirith, draws on it; so it is suggested does theþáttr of Kálfr in Víga-Glúms saga. Such adaptations can perhaps be understood as a sign of Petrus’s success in transforming somewhat exotic oral materials into what could come to be treated later as a treasury of legitimised story. The living situation in which oral story was assimilated into script can be more clearly discerned in the records of Anselm of Canterbury (1033— 1109). Sir Richard Southern in dealing with the Prayers and Meditations has spoken of the “Anselmian revolution” in the spirituality of the twelfth century and its new modes of verbal expression. It may be noted in passing that these prayers and meditations can so strongly invoke a dramatic situation, that it would be easy to invent stories round them. But without recourse to invention we can assert Anselm’s importance in the develop­ ment of story. He had an extraordinary success and reputation as a monastic teacher at Bee and later at Christchurch, Canterbury. In the spirit though not perhaps according to the strict letter of the Benedictine Rule, Anselm was forever talking to his monks. Eadmer reports how he talked at meal-times, scarcely bothering to eat, and the biographer gives an extended example of an occasion when Anselm illustrated his talk with an ingenious parable of a watermill, and adds: 'Tf I were to describe him as he discoursed . . . on . . . any other of the innumerable and profound subjects on which I heard him talk almost every day, I should have to compose another work and put aside the one which I have undertaken.”5 There were more formal occasions in church and chapter when Anselm taught his monks. Monastic education had always been basically oral even if it aspired also to be something more. But here was oral instruction of a very superior kind. His disciples attempted to preserve and record it. In their record we have a clear example of discourse in a realizable and authentic setting being processed into written form. s Life o f St Anselm Archbishop o f Canterbury, by Eadmer, ed. and trans. R. W. Southern (London, 1962), p. 78.

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We can observe what happens. Anselm’s living utterance splits apart. The situational relevance which is strongly marked in Eadmer’s account of what actually went on and which in Disciplina Clericalis Petrus Alphonsi had attempted to stylise is now completely evaporated. A compiler in his preface to Dicta Anselmi explained: “You ask me to transmit to you something of what the great Anselm said when he talked with us: and this I have put into writing as briefly as possible. The material gathered at different times and places I have put into writing without bothering about what proceeded or followed; reducing it all to maxims (sententiolae), af­ fording matter for edification.”6 The power and the effectiveness of the original discourses can be sensed in odd phrases and in the ingenuity of organisation. It did not satisfy all Anselm’s disciples, and there is another collection of Anselm’s sayings, the Similitudes, a book which became highly popular in English monasteries and is made up largely of the illu­ strations, parables and apologues which were never, it seems, designed as consistent allegories. They are usually stories in embryo, which still, de­ spite their editing, retain a vividness of detail and a dramatic shape which demands development and invites interpretation. For example: Butterflies in flight never hold a straight path, but flutter hither and thither. When they settle somewhere, they never stop for long. When boys want to catch them, some of them start by dashing after them, and because they watch the butterflies and not where they are going, some­ times they fall into holes and hurt themselves badly. But most of the boys when they see the butterflies settle, proceed gently and cautiously to get into a good position to catch them. While they are doing that, they clap their hands and shout to each other ‘Watch us, we’ll catch them, we’ll catch them!’ But when they come up nearer and try to snatch them, the butterflies shake their wings and they are off. If indeed the boys do catch them, they make a big song and dance as if they were extraordinarily clever. The behaviour of those who seek worldly hon­ ours is similar.7 And the similarities are drawn out. This surely is a nuga; but not exactly a trifle as Anselm presents it. The effectiveness of this kind of illustration is obvious and the influence 6 Memorials o f Saint Anselm, ed. R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt, (London, 1969), p. 107. 7 ibid., p. 63.

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of the Anselmian method was powerful. Of course the Anselmian similitude is in application a variety of exemplum, which we have always known came to dominate medieval preaching in the later Middle Ages. But exemplum as a rhetorical device refers to the manner in which an illustration functions, not to its kind or quality. Anselm’s similitudes have a particular sharp character of their own and combine compact narration, a distinctive point of view, and precision of observation and detail. In a less devout and less concentrating mind than Anselm’s the illustrations would readily achieve independence. There is no better example in the English vernacular of the influence of Anselmian narration than the fa­ mous illustration in Anerene Wisse (throughout which the influence of Anselm is strong) of the King’s wooing of the disdainful maiden which the author introduces as a tale, a written uorbisne. The vernacular author is plainly aware that the tale could be taken as a free-standing story of romantic chivalry. He tells it to a group of women religious. In general the emancipation of story and its emergence into script takes place first in this cultural context, in the monastic world. That is where the important cultural movements of the twelfth century all be­ gin. It is within the records of this world that stories accumulate, notably among the Cistercians, in the Exordium Magnum, for example, which often reads like oral gossip lightly edited into script. The Dialogi Miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach early in the thirteenth century shows what more artistically could be made of such anecdotes. The forces of literary culture were already escaping from monastic con­ trol during the latter years of the twelfth century. Culture remains of course clerical but is associated more with courts and schools, with ad­ ministrators both secular and ecclesiastical. It is among these secular clerks and their employers that story came to be legitimised. The de­ velopment is an aspect of the general literary history of the time; but it can be sharply illuminated in the work of two eminent litterateurs - friends and in some sense rivals —at the end of the century; Gerald of Barry and Walter Map. Gerald, son of a Norman baron and a Welsh princess, was educated at Lincoln and taught in Paris and early became archdeacon of Brecon. Much of his middle life was spent in contending unsuccessfully for the bishopric of St David’s. He wrote brightly and voluminously with a concern for self-display characteristic of men-of-letters of later date. He borrowed largely from other authors, ancient and modern. His own favourite author was undoubtedly himself. His own favourite work was

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Gemma Ecclesiastica, which he took to Rome to present to the Pope, who kept it jealously as his bedside book, so Gerald says. But he had written Gemma, primarily, as he explains, for the instruction of his Welsh secular clergy. He grants that they have a proper formal knowledge of the sacraments and administer them effectually. What they lack is any theological or psychological understanding of their modes of operation; the use of the sacraments is constrained by habit and custom and observance of outward form. Gerald will seek to deepen and enrich understanding, to explain the mechanisms of sin and penitence and the working of grace. So to explanations and precepts, he adds examples. From the former his priests may gain learning and understanding; from reading the stories, consolation and models for emulation. Educated men will already know what he has to teach; but his book, he insists, is designed for his own district of Wales, where little learning is to be had. Very few copies of the holy fathers are available there for reading.8 Gerald elaborates everything he talks about; but he was dealing with a recognisable situation, only in detail peculiar to Wales and in most re­ spects comparable with that in other parts of Europe similarly remote from new secular courts and highly developed centres of literacy where story was seeking entry into script. In Wales, though an old Christian country, a high degree of literacy in Latin had never been sought or achieved. Vernacular culture was still vigorous, passed on through the generations, but in its art and practice becoming increasingly formalised and archaic. It was a vernacular culture which Gerald could on some occasions write of with affection. But in the Gemma Gerald is condescending to bring book-learning to an oral community; and his explanation of what he was trying to do may be counted relevant to what was happening elsewhere in Europe where communal ways of thought confined to oral expression were being in­ vaded by impersonal literary methods which dictated new forms and at the same time fossilised older practices. Aspects of the transformation can be detected in narratives of William of Malmesbury and Henry of Hunt­ ingdon in England: they are more clearly demonstrated in the history of Saxo Grammaticus. They are displayed most expansively in the develop­ ment of the rich literature of Iceland. 8 Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma Ecclesiastica, in Opera, II, cd. J. S. Brewer (Rolls Series, 1862), 5-7.

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In his Proemium Gerald recognises the respective strengths of the two techniques of instruction by word-of-mouth, and through reading script.9 In face-to-face encounters of the traditional kind, between master and disciple where one generation speaks directly to another about an en­ closed shared wisdom, Gerald admits the superior persuasiveness of the oral mode. It has greater plausibility and vividness as Jerome had noted. Written material commands different resources. It is more stable. Its in­ creased impersonality makes it more widely acceptable. It can generalise communal particularity into a more universal truth and at the same time permit the individual member of any community to transcend habitual references and ties. The power of the eye in reading script can actually reinforce the apprehension of the ear in hearing it read. Writing can give access to an accumulation of material richer and more various than oral transmission could ever compass. It can also ensure greater power and influence and a more permanent distinction for a writer than a tribal bard or storyteller could ever win. The Gemma was organised in two parts, in academic Distinctions. First Gerald deals formally and legalistically with the administration of the sacraments; in the second Distinction with the sins and indeed the crimes to which the clergy were specially addicted. But the bulk of each Distinc­ tion is made up, chapter after chapter, page after page, with stories and anecdotes intended as illustration. One suspects that the Pope found some of the stories astonishing. Gerald’s principle of organisation is similar to that in the Manuel des Pechiez, or to Gower’s in Confessio Amantis. Sometimes stories seem to drift clearly away from the precept; and the principle of simple accumulation that Gerald follows ensures that the stories that Gerald tells out of his own knowledge - his own oral stories and there are many of these - produce an effect little different from the effect of those which he draws from old books or contemporary historians. Old stories and new stories all look alike. For Gerald, achievement and fame depended upon the production of written texts. It was different with Gerald’s colleague, Walter Map, clerk of the royal household, chancellor of Lincoln and archdeacon of Oxford. Like Gerald, Walter was a child of the Welsh marches which, from Gloucestershire northwards to Cheshire, knew a vivid cultural spring in the late twelfth century. In this western province and in a broader European world of which it was selfconsciously a part, Walter Map remains a potent but 9 ibid., pp. 3 - 5 .

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elusive figure. He long held a reputation for intelligence and wit. Many of the Goliardic poems were attached to his name in the fourteenth century. There have been attempts to associate his name with the formation of the Arthurian cycle. Gerald had long urged him towards serious authorship, for Gerald well understood the way things were going. Shortly after Map’s death, Gerald wrote: “The Archdeacon Walter Map a man of outstanding merit (on whose soul may God have mercy), with all his accustomed wit and especial courtliness used to repeat again and again whenever we met, something like this: ‘You have written many writings, Master Gerald, and you’ll go on writing much more; and I have talked a lot; you have pro­ duced the books, I the words.’ ”10 Gerald’s books remain; Map is a name of little substance now. But he produced one book, or at least the conglomerate fragments of a book - De nugis curialium, set out in five Distinctions, but each of them looks like a new attempt to start the same work. The variety of material with much repetition can produce an impression that Map has one pur­ pose but cannot find the design by which he can fulfil it. As a result De Nugis is now usually treated as a random collection of tales, invective, gossip and history, often bitter and virulent, relieved from dulness by virtue of its miscellaneous nature. But though nugae are its matter it is also a book about stories and about their status. There is an ambiguity about Map’s treatment of story which is reflected in the irony of his title, and less happily perhaps in the disorganisation of its content. Constantly through­ out the book, sometimes directly in his Prologues, often by his selection and juxtaposition of material, sometimes even in the frustration of his abrupt conclusions, Map is posing the question: is it possible to present nugae seriously? What should a modern man of letters do in the twelfth century who is urged to write a book appropriate to his times? Map is very conscious that he lives in a new world, a world dominated by the royal court and peopled by active talented men. The court appals and fascinates him. It is the very image of hell, sensational, bitter, frenzied, a swirl of rootless and restless competitiveness and brilliant improvisation. In the past, useful arts and profitable knowledge had been developed slowly and handed down from person to person, from master to successor. No such process can operate now. Map himself has a small administrative department to run: he finds its members unteachable and unmanageable. How little control can be1 1oed.cit., I (1861), 271-89; V (1867), 410-11.

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exercised then in a royal court even by a king who seeks to rule thousands? The court is managed impersonally by script and rescript: it is informed only by rumour. In this situation of restriction, as Map sees it, out of such intractable material must a modern writer seek to celebrate his age; and it is, Map recognises, a great and novel age, an age worth cele­ brating. But the material is essentially nugae, the gossip, the news-stories, the froth of affairs generated by frantic motion; the nugae of a court which could be frightening but was not trivialising or insignificant. Map was responding to a reality. The emergent achievement of medieval literature from this time on is not based on monasteries, nor on a collective folk nor on a bourgeoisie, but on the court. The cultural appetite of courts was hungry for story. Again and again in De Nugis, Map returns to different aspects of this new situation. The demands for story raised problems of art and technique as well of ethics difficult to solve, difficult perhaps to formulate. In the Preface to the third Distinction Map gives the most precise indication of his general intention: When courtiers come down from court business, tired out with the whole wide range of royal affairs, they like to relax in talk with lesser people and to shrug off serious issues by being entertained. In such a mood, when you draw breath after deliberating over a passage of philosophy or of the Bible, you may be pleased either to hear or read the insignificant and undistinguished trivialities of this volume for the sake of recreation or diversion. I am not concerning myself with the struggles in the law courts or serious matters of suits. I take up my stand in the theatre and arena, a naked and defenceless contestant, whom you have thrust thus amid the armed ranks of my detractors. Yet even if Cato or Scipio, or both of them together, visit this theatre or arena, I hope for pardon, as long as they are not over-censorious. You com­ mand me write exempta for posterity, such as may either arouse pleas­ ure or reinforce morality. Although it is impossible for me to fulfil the command - for the poor poet knows not the haunts of the Muses —yet it is easy enough to read or write something of which the worth may work to the profit of the good - since with the good all things work together for their good - or to commit to good soil seed which will flourish.111 11 Gualterus Mapes, De Nugis Curialium, ed. T. Wright (Camden Society 50; London, 1850), dist.iii, cap i, p. 107.

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Map offers secular stories for courtiers’ interests. He recognises that the stories must have some claim to substance and significance. By traditional standards they cannot claim to be products of high art. They are not material for such treatment; in any case a modern writer has neither time nor training to match the achievement of the old authors. A modern writer can do no more than offer decent matter for recreational purposes. The audience has to decide how to use, apply and interpret the stories pre­ sented. This diversion of responsibility from author to audience is an important innovation in literary history. The good reader relishes every poet in some respect, and comes away wiser from every page he has turned. He studies and concentrates on the letter, counts nothing useless until perused, nothing negligible as long as it is legible; if an author sets out something sensible, he approves; if (which Heaven forbid) he is completely unusable, he does not impute it to the frivo­ lousness of the author, but to his own dulness though unsuccessfully he struggles to extract something which is helpful and profitable, he stum­ bles upon new refinements, better than the author himself intended.12 To emphazise the novelty and importance of the position taken up by the storyteller at the end of the twelfth century it is perhaps necessary to rehearse the general argument. It can be assumed that stories of ancient things and modern instances existed in the oral repertoire of many peoples before literacy was estab­ lished. For centuries after the introduction of literacy such stories were rarely written down either in the learned language or in any European vernacular. Context-less stories were counted trivial, mere storytellers vicious. But after a vast accession of story material in the eleventh and twelfth centuries stories quite commonly came to be written down; and the status of storytellers who can now command manuscripts had obviously been greatly enhanced. These changes proceeded slowly and involved many shifts of use and intention in stories, storytellers and their public. Story had to disentangle itself from a narrow enclosure within oral conditions. It ceased to be merely a mnemonic of traditional values and old achievements. It came to be used to explore and suggest new situations and new values, with 12 ibid., d ist.iii, c a p .iii, p. 1 30.

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Anselm for example as an instrument for ingenious and original teaching. Such uses reflected back on the standing of story itself and dignified it. An increase in literacy itself meant that stories acquired an increased stability and impersonal permanence, as Gerald saw. Once a story was written down, in theory at least, it existed for ever as an addition to an everincreasing store. A body of story material came into existence that was bound to exceed the scope of recall of any single oral community. The new storytelling broke down the boundaries of linguistic culture, but also the boundaries between the monastic and the secular, between religious and lay interests. It was a development particularly appropriate to and fos­ tered by the new confused cosmopolitan life of large courts, where per­ sonnel and policies were ever-changing, time was short, business was pressing, expertise more usable than traditional wisdom, and a cursive literacy essential for an expanding clerical administration. In a court a storyteller was no longer a teacher of the old tribal mnemonics, nor could he remain there as an outside mocker or as intru­ sive buffoon. He could, as Map realised, become a lubricator of the new social confusion; an entertainer with a recognised if still modest function. Among the moralists of the late thirteenth century the storyteller is no longer a certainty for damnation: he is allowed a useful social role. He could offer stories to a public that took its values from the court; he did not, if he wished to flourish, dictate or even decide what his stories must mean. It is necessary to schematise the development, but of course no stage in the development obliterates earlier stages. Plenty of folk-stories survive into the later medieval centuries, so we are told. Plenty of stories are used as moralities or memorials and are turned into allegories of one sort or other. Plenty of stories are conflated and lost distinct identities, we may suspect. Nevertheless the ultimate manifestation of story development in medieval times is a kind of storytelling which is offered to the audience without interpretation, and is controlled simply by narrative values ex­ pressed through such devices as serve to arouse expectation in the audi­ ence, engross them in the action, and encourage their identification with the main agents of the story. There is a whole poetic and rhetoric of late medieval narration still to be written. The good late medieval storyteller is also concerned with some inner shapeliness to his story and with its verbal organisation. He gives it to his audience to make what they will make of it in terms of moral values or of a coherent interpretation. He guides them, does not decide for them. “I set before you a whole forest, a mass of

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material,” wrote Map, “I will not call them fables, rather voices” . . . “I am but your huntsman. I bring you the wild game, you will have to serve it up.” 13 The best storytellers in the later middle ages work in this way; Chrétien de Troyes, the best saga-writers, and most assuredly Chaucer. They do not tell their audiences what to make of the stories they present. They leave that task to us. University of Birmingham

13 ibid ., d ist.ii, ca p .x x x ii, p. 106.

The narrative art of Beowulf by E. G. Stanley

Narrative, it may seem, is as obvious and natural a form of discourse as can be found; but it is difficult to gloss except as ‘story’ which is in some happy languages the same as history. It may be either grounded in truth or invented, and that distinction, important to us, is not always to be made in early literatures including that of the Anglo-Saxons. For defining the liter­ ary term narrative not much help is given in O.E.D. ; the 1976 Supplement does a little better for narrative line which is defined as ‘a consecutively developed story’. That at least draws attention to the central quality of narrative, consecutiveness, and implicit in developed may be the thought that consecutiveness is contrived, that it has been developed by art. Because narrative art relies on steady advance the much-quoted head­ ing in the great edition of Beowulf by Klaeber, ‘Lack of Steady Advance’,1 points to a lack which is cardinal in so far as the poem is to be regarded as narrative. H. M. Chadwick well summarizes the poem and also mentions the interruptions which led to Klaeber’s complaint: The longest poem of this class is Beowulf, an epic of 3183 verses, the subject of which briefly is as follows: Hrothgar, king of the Danes, has built a splendid hall, but is unable to enjoy the use of it on account of the ravages of a monster named Grendel, who attacks the hall by night and devours all whom he finds there. Beowulf, a nephew of Hygelac, king of the Geatas, hearing of Hrothgar’s distress comes to his help and destroys first the monster himself and then his mother who had come to exact vengeance. He is thanked and rewarded for his exploits by Hrothgar, and returns to his own home. After this a long period is 1 In all three editions of Fr. Klaeber’s Beowulf, 1922, 1928, and 1936 (and reprints of the third edition), the heading comes at p. lvii, in the section of the introduction headed “Struc­ ture of the Poem”. All quotations from the text of Beowulf as well as from the text of The Finnsburg Fragment follow (sometimes with alterations) Klaeber’s third edition.

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supposed to elapse. Hygelac has perished in an expedition against the Frisians, and his son Heardred has been slain by the Swedes. Beowulf has succeeded to the throne and reigned many years. In his old age he resolves to attack a dragon which is ravaging the land, and in spite of the cowardice of his followers, of whom all except one forsake him, he eventually succeeds in destroying it, though not before he has himself received a mortal wound. The poem ends with an account of his funeral. The action is interrupted a good many times by references to inci­ dents in the history of the royal families of the Danes and the Geatas, particularly to Hygelac’s fatal expedition and to the dealings of his family with the Swedish kings Ongentheow, Onela and Eadgils. We find also a number of allusions to heroes of the past such as Sigemund, Eormenric, Finn and Offa, who are known to us from other sources.2 Since Anglo-Saxonists are, it seems, unwilling to accept either that their greatest poem is no narrative or that it is a narrative centrally flawed, it is customary to defend it from Klaeber’s charge; in that they follow J. R. R. Tolkien’s example, usually by suggesting, intentionalistically or otherwise, that the poem has no need of steady advance; in Tolkien’s words, “But the poem was not meant to advance, steadily or unsteadily.”3 Another mode of defence of a poem which is clearly no straight-line narrative is to describe the nature of its continuum as ‘interlace pattern’ drawing an analogy with the visual arts of the Anglo-Saxons.4 In doing so the differ­ ence in the materials used and how the artistic effect is perceived has not been sufficiently emphasized. Such an explanation of the lack of chronological tidiness in the poem attempts to turn what may be a pleasing analogy into a rationale: but a poem is no carpet-page. Beowulf has many occurrences of the adverb þa ‘then’, on average the word comes once every fifteen lines.5 Quite often the word comes at or near the begining of one of the numbered sections into which the poem is 2 H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (1912), pp. 1-2. 3 J. R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Proceedings o f the British Academy, XXII (for 1936), 271 (p. 29 of separate). 4 See John Leyerle, “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf,” University of Toronto Quar­ terly, XXXVII (1967), 1-17. 5 See J. B. Bessinger, Jr., and Philip H. Smith, h .,A Concordance to Beowulf (1969), pp. 228—30; p. 339 shows that only on, ond, he, wees and þœt occur more frequently. I have treated þa adverb as separate from þa conjunction and without regard to the problem of establishing at each occurrence which is which.

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divided.6 If we translate the poem into German we cannot just leave it at ‘then’; for every þa we have to make up our minds, not merely whether the word is conjunctival ‘when’ or adverbial ‘then’, but for the adverb, whether it has the sense ‘thereupon’ or the sense ‘at that time’; von Schaubert tells us in her excellent glossary that it has the sense ‘at that time’ only twice in the poem.7 I am not sure if she is right; for if þa can mean either, I wonder if an Anglo-Saxon would have made the distinction as it has to be made for German. We are on firmer ground with ond þa ‘and then’, and I notice that a recent, careful study of a piece of Old English prose as narrative distinguishes between ondþa introducing a new action and þa which is regarded as linking more minor events.8 Beowulf has ond þa only seven times, and perhaps twice more might be allowed, i.e. once every 354 lines at most. That infrequency reinforces the sense that the poem lacks narrative urgency. Another to us ambiguous adverb is siððan, which can look forward and mean ‘thereupon’, but in the poem, if von Schaubert’s glossary is right, it looks backward a little more often and has the sense ‘from the time that’. The word is similarly ambiguous when used as a conjunction. A language in which some of the main bearers of grammatical looking forward or backward are so ambiguous may give, it might be thought, its speakers little help towards achieving steady advance. I think there is perhaps an element of truth in that; and yet, surely, Old English, for all its Janus words, is not elsewhere so Janus-like as in Beowulf. In the progression from the young Prince Beowulf of the first half of the poem performing great feats of strength in Denmark to the aged King Beowulf who in the second half of the poem defends Geatland the central action moves forward in time, but the reflective interspersals of events and wisdom look elsewhere than forward, most commonly towards formulat­ ing an ethic. For example, near the end of the poem after the dragon fight and the gaining of the treasure, the poet adds without regard to time: 6 See Klaeber’s glossary, s.v. þ á ,1 I. adv. (pp. 409-10). 7 E. von Schaubert, Heyne-Schiickings Beowulf\ III Glossar, 17th edition (1961), p. 216, s.v. The continuative sense ‘da, darauf (i.e. ‘thereupon’) is distinguished from the recollect­ ing sense ‘damals’ (i.e. ‘at that time’). 8 Joan Turville-Petre, “The Narrative Style in Old English,” in Iceland and the Mediaeval World (Studies in honour o f Ian Maxwell), (University of Melbourne, 1974), pp. 116-25. Mrs Turville-Petre analyses carefully and profitably the “Cynewulf and Cyneheard” account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The incidence of ond þa in Beowulf is obviously less frequent relatively than in “Cynewulf and Cyneheard”. (The sense ‘at that time’ does not seem to occur for þa in “Cynewulf and Cyneheard”.)

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Sine ëaôe mæg, gold on grunde gumeynnes gehwone oferhigian: hÿde sê ðe wylle!9 (2764-6) [“Treasure, gold on earth, can easily overbear everyone of human race. Let him hide it who will!”] As the story of Beowulf in Danish lands draws to its end, at the very end of the first half of the poem, the poet looks backwards to the time before the hero’s youthful exploits just related, to his inglorious youth (2183-8); he had been a sluggard in early youth, had been despised before he was honoured: Edwenden cwöm tïrèadigum menn torna gehwylces. (2188-9) [“A change came to the glorious man from every one of his troubles.”] The intercalation of Beowulfs ignominy in earlier youth between the glorious double adventure in Denmark and the glorious but fatal last battle indicates most clearly that the poet is not advancing steadily in time; his poem is not an incipient Bildungsroman : no neat narrative progression leads out of earlier experiences to shape the man from tears and fears through manly glory to a royal end. We may perhaps seek a pattern for the discontinuities, especially those involving moral reflections and edifying examples and contrapositions, in the Christian narratives of the early Middle Ages. It has been powerfully argued that the audience for whom the poet wrote may well have been accustomed to listen to vernacular Christian poetry.10 Or at least, it is 9 Klaeber’s note calls these lines “An apparently uncalled-for ethical reflection on the pernicious influence of gold”. He gives some of the interpretations that have been proposed for oferhigian and hyde. It is not clear if the injunction “Let him hide it who will!” refers to hiding the gold, or, as I think, to the truth that gold overpowers - that truth will emerge however much a man may choose to try and conceal it. 10 See D. Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (1951), p. 8. - It has been suggested (by T. B. Haber, A Comparative Study of the Beowulf and the Aeneid (1931), pp. 49, 127-8) that the interruptions of steady narrative progression to relate events earlier in the hero’s life, the Breca episode (506-86) and Beowulfs inglorious youth (2183-8), are in imitation of the delays in narrative found in the Aeneid. Lack of steady advance is, however, too negative a feature to provide a convincing parallel; none of the other Virgilian parallels adduced by Haber seems very striking.

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likely that the poet could have derived his narrative mode from saints’ lives with their balance of panegyric and edification; prose lives would be sufficient precedent for that.11 The single virtuous protagonist, secular or dedicated explicitly to the service of Christ, would do well for a mirror for princes, a book to teach kings wisdom. That, unlike biographical fiction, would be a medieval form; not a tight narrative structure, but rather a form into which to weave princely excellence by example and contraposition helped by direct moral reflection, such as in Beowulf is supplied at long delaying length by Hrothgar in his so-called ‘sermon’ (1700-84). The tenor of Hrothgar’s ‘sermon’ is so centrally applicable to the action of the poem that the narrative looks almost as if it were its exemplification.1 112 Beowulf in its many-stranded reference to a central moral theme is a subtler structure than is to be found, for example, in another secular narrative known to the Anglo-Saxons, ge wea ge wela Apollonius fees Tiriscan [“both the woe and the joy of Apollonius the man of Tyre”].13 That is held together, as is Beowulf by the central figure. In Beowulf however, that is not the only unifying force. Disconnected adventures in various sea-bounded places,

11 Cf. B. Colgrave, “The Earliest Saints’ Lives Written in England,” Proceedings of the British Academy, XLIV (for 1958), especially pp. 36, 38. Cf. also Charles W. Jones, Saints’ Lives and Chronicles (New York 1947), ch. iv; B. Kurtz, From St. Anthony to St. Guthlac (University of California Publications in Modern Philology, XII; 1926); and Marie Schütt, “Vom heiligen Antonius zum heiligen Guthlac,” Antike und Abendland, V (1956), 75-91, though I should not wish to go beyond certain generic similarities between Beowulf and Athanasius’ Life of St Anthony. 12 As John Earle well said (in The Deeds o f Beowulf (1892, pp. lxxxvii f.), “The unity of the poem is manifested by the readiness of every part, whether of action or discourse, to be interpreted by reference to this thought,” i.e. the thought expressed in Hrothgar’s ‘sermon’. 13 The Old English Apollonius of Tyre, edited by P. Goolden (1958), p. 42, line 29. For the connection of the Latin MS. of Apollonius, Laurentian MS. LXVI. 40, with Anglo-Saxon England, see E. A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers, edited by L. Bieler (1972), I, 316. - That the beginning and end of the discursive story of Apollonius can be brought towards a moral connection, though not a close narrative unity, is shown by the treatment given to the story in the Shakespearean Pericles (and its analogue or source, George Wilkins, The Painfull Aduentures o f Pericles, ed. K. Muir (1967); see esp. pp. vi-xv). As the play begins with royal incest the court of Antioch is revealed to be a sty; but when “our fast growing scene” is set for the end in the Mytilenaean Brothel, purity in the person of Marina inhabits the vilest house on Lesbos. The contrast is, however, not made explicit: the reader can, if it pleases him, invoke a unifying contraposition in a work which, superficially at least, has no unity other than that of the central figure.

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like those in Apollonius, are drawn centripetally towards a single moral centre, unlike anything in Apollonius o f Tyre. The poet of Beowulf makes use of contraposition, perhaps for com­ parison, perhaps for contrast, on many occasions; and that too leads to a feeling of lack of steady advance.14 Such characterization as there is in the poem is often achieved by means of contraposition. Most notably Beowulf himself is shown in relation to Sigemund the dragon-killer and Heremod the tyrannical slayer of his own liegemen (874—915); Beowulf s wisdom and strength are set in contraposition to Unferth, mindless and peaceless in name,15 and deedless in fact, yet high in rank at Hrothgar’s court. Light is shed, though in our ignorance of the story darkness visible rather, on Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s queen, by seeing her in contraposition to Hildeburh, saddest of queens in Friesland (1071-1191). Hygd, Hygelac’s young and gracious queen, is seen in contraposition to Offa’s queen (Mod-)Thryth,16 a fierce shrew however fair, but tamed in marriage (1926-57). In the dragon-fight the valour and loyalty of Wiglaf are set in contraposition to the cowardly abjection of the Geats (2596-2891), a contrast, however, so directly linked to the action that it does not give the effect of delaying advance as do the other examples. Perhaps the con­ traposition of valour and cowardice describes the circumstances of Beowulf s last stand more than the character of his sole kinsman Wiglaf. In Beowulf s own narration of the premature victory feast after the fight with Grendel the circumstances of disappointed hopes are given poig­ nancy by setting them proleptically in contraposition with the cir­ 14 Over the whole poem, youth and age are put in antithesis. Beowulf is first seen as a young man at the height of his powers and then as an old man fighting his last battle; as a young man in Denmark he stands in contraposition with the aged Hrothgar. In young Beowulf both wisdom and strength are found together (1842-3). Strangely, Beowulfs liege-lady, Hygd, is similarly wise though young (1927). That it would have been a good match is of course insufficient reason for following Sophus Bugge’s suggestion (“Studien über das Beowulfepos,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, XII (1887), 110—11; cf. E. v. Schaubert, Beowulf, II Kommentar, 17th edition (1961), p. 176) that Beowulf may have married her. For the idealization of heroism in the poem, that wisdom and fortitude go hand in hand, see R. E. Kaske’s excellent paper, “Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf," Studies in Philology, LV (1958), 423-57, reprinted in L. E. Nicholson’s An Anthology o f Beowulf Criticism (1963), ch. 13. ,s Cf. Fred C. Robinson, “Personal Names in Medieval Narrative and the Name of Un­ ferth in Beowulf," Essays in Honor o f R. G. Me Williams, (Birmingham (Alabama) 1970), pp. 43—8. Cf. also H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age, (1912), p. 64. 16 The form of the name is uncertain. See Klaeber’s notes, pp. 195-9.

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cumstances of the bloodstained wedding-feast of Heathobards and Danes (2009-69). As we have seen, H. M. Chadwick, who knew about heroic narrative when handled well, complained about some of these interruptions and of others too: “The action is interrupted a good many times by references to incidents in the history of the royal families of the Danes and the Geatas,”1718he begins his complaint. The poem starts with incidents in the history of the Danish royal house: but a narrative work cannot start with an interruption except in a strange, academic view which subjects litera­ ture to repeated re-reading and is forgetful of an important consideration in judging literature, at least secular, narrative (and also dramatic) litera­ ture, that literature was written to be read or heard for the first time. Our poem opens with Denmark, and the incident in the history of the Danish royal family, the coming of Scyld after a lordless time, is incidental to the poet’s introducing of Denmark in the grand manner. He is saying, “There’s glory for you” ; and when he says ‘glory’ - þrym —he, unlike Humpty-Dumpty, does not mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’. The passage (4-52) has been described as “the very first digression in Beowulf'16 by an error, like Chadwick’s, which is the result of forgetting that till the direction of the narrative advance is established digression has no more meaning than interruption, not in a first reading.19 Even so, it is disconcerting to the modern reader that the paths of glory in the poem - they too lead but to the grave - are so aimlessly entered upon by the poet. Every modern reader must feel at least regret, perhaps annoyance, that he has been made to fall into the Slough of Despond before he has been shown the wicket-gate beyond. Considered merely in terms of its main action, the three fights with the monsters, the poem is curiously lacking in point to most modern taste except the taste of Ang­ 17 See p. 59, above. 18 A. Bonjour, The Digressions in Beowulf ; Medium Ævum Monographs, V (1950), pp. xvi, 1-11. 19 Bonjour explains his “very first digression’' as put in to connect with Beowulfs own funeral and he further connects the lordless time of the Danes (14-16) with the Geats’ lordless time feared by the messenger after Beowulf s death (2999-3027). On first reading about Scyld’s burial and the lordless time before the next king one cannot look to Beowulfs burial and the lordless time that follows him perhaps; and at the end of the poem one is hardly likely to think back to Scyld. This is quite different from my reading of Pericles as exemplifying sin in the highest places and purity in the lowest: that moral would not be incidental, but central and balanced.

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lo-Saxon scholars of a literary inclination.20 I do not mean that the poet rambles on. He is, in fact, tight with words; and yet he gives no indication — neither in the few enigmatic remarks he may have about narrative theory (871—4, 2105—10), nor ambulando —that he knows how to turn a narrative poem. In analysing his narrative art I do not wish to make use of modern critical theory, such as is practised especially in France,21 partly because I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the theory, partly be­ cause I have not read many of the novels on which the critics expend their subtle art, but chiefly because I think Beowulf too far distant from the novels and the more relevant but even more self-conscious anti-novels which have been interestingly analysed in recent years. For a medieval analysis of narrative one might go to Chaucer’s Squire. He understands the theory of plot-construction well, though Chaucer makes him fail in the rule he has him utter, that a good narrator sholde to the knotte condescende, “must proceed to the point, to the crux of the story” (Canterbury Tales, V [F] 407) ;22 and a definition of knot is given, as why that every tale is toold (ibid. ,401). The knot is therefore the ‘point’ or ‘crux’ of the story, or perhaps better, for our sense of language, the knot is that in the story which the dénouement unravels. Beowulf not merely lacks steady advance; it lacks knot too. There is no dénouement, though at the end, as a result of the poet’s skilful playing with the tone, we experi­ ence an unwinding in the final lament over Beowulf. The reader sympathetic to the poem, once he concedes that the essen­ tials of plot-construction are lacking in Beowulf, is driven to looking elsewhere, and to claiming perhaps that it is foolish to dispraise a poem in terms which presuppose what is lacking. Perhaps so, but W. P. Ker, whose sympathetic criticism of Germanic verse was among writings that led Tol­ kien to undertake his defence of Beowulf, noticed that our poem lacks the “tragic contradiction” he found in some Eddaic poetry, and in the story of Ingeld (which comes into Beowulf), and in The Fight at Finnsburg (that too is told incidentally in Beowulf), but he did not find it in the main story

20 Cf. K. Sisam, The Structure o f Beowulf (1965), ch. ii, for the view that some modern interpretations of the poem read into it greater literary sophistication than seems appropriate to him. 21 For a convenient introduction, cf. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (1975), especi­ ally ch. ix on the novel. 22 See M .E.D., s.v. condescenden.

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of Beowulf.23 According to Ker, the “tragic contradiction” leads inevita­ bly to what he calls “the critical point of the action”. Though we may like the poem, we can see deficiencies in its narrative art: lack of steady advance; lack of narrative turning-point demanding resolution; lack of the critical point of the action. Is nothing left us for the demonstration by analysis of the Beowulf poet’s narrative art? I do not mean here analysis to bring out in structuralist terms, as T. A. Shippey has done with surprising results,24 how the narrative elements are strung to­ gether, but a more evaluative approach. Here in Hans Christian Ander­ sen’s country, it is fitting to assert that narrative art is brilliantly exemplified in the kind of tales in which he achieved mastery. It is not surprising, therefore, that Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the great brother philologists and editors of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, should have contributed what seems to me to be a peculiarly satisfying approach to medieval narrative art. He is writing about the late twelfth-century anonymous poet of the Middle High German Graf Rudolf, a work re­ garded by him as not folk-poetry but sharing with folk-poetry in artless ease, Unbefangenheit: “In folk-epic resides a power of presentation to which the work of an individual author does not attain; yet our poet keeps good measure in tarrying and in advancing, he shows ease [Unbe­ fangenheit] and skill in breaking off and in linking together.”25 The poet of Beowulf is particularly inventive in tarrying. His set pieces 23 W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1896), ch. II,i. The Tragic Conception. 24 T. A. Shippey, “The Fairy-Tale Structure of ‘Beowulf," Notes and Queries, CCXIV (1969), 2-11. 25 “In dem volksepos ruht eine gewalt der darstellung, die das werk eines einzelnen nicht erreicht: doch unser dichter hat schönes mass im verweilen und fortschreiten, Unbefangen­ heit und geschick im abbrechen und verbinden." Graf Rudolf edited by Wilhelm Grimm, 2nd edition (1844), p. 53. Grimm's view that folk-poetry is composed communally and achieves powerful excellence beyond the reach of any individual poet’s art colours the statement - which goes on in the same sentence to say that the poet of Graf Rudolf has “an underivative sensibility which does not pick out and search, but rather the right word occurs to it of itself’ [. . . ein unerborgtes gefühl, das nicht wählt und sucht, sondern dem das rechte wort von selbst zufällt]. - In the first edition, W. Grimm, Grave Ruodolf (1828), p. 29, Grimm has not listed the art of breaking off among the things in which the poet succeeds with natural skill; and there is even greater emphasis on the romantic notions of the poet’s artlessness: “Denn täuscht mich nicht Vorliebe . . . so offenbart sich hier ein wahrer dichtergeist von unerborgtem, ungekünsteltem gefühl, der nicht wählt und sucht, sondern dem das rechte wort von selbst zufällt. Er hat ein schönes maß im verweilen und fortschreiten, Unbefangenheit und natürliches geschick im anknüpfen und verbinden und geht nicht in jene redseligkeit über, die man den besten dichtem des dreizehnten jahrhunderts, Wolfram

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belong here, the burials, the arrivals over the sea and the departures with leave-taking. Much of what might in another poet seem to constitute an advance in the action is handled in Beowulf as if to delay our reaching the pre-announced outcome. It is not just because pre-announcing the out­ come dissolves suspense - which, at a simple level, is the aim of narrative action; —his habit of exploiting for reflection every situation and every potentially exciting conflict may have led him to dissolve suspense by pre-announcement of the outcome. When just over a hundred years ago Henry Sweet selected for his Ang­ lo-Saxon Reader Beowulf s fight in the mere, he thought he had got for his students “one of the most vivid and picturesque passages in the whole poem”, and he introduced the extract with a summary of the preceding, exciting events big with the promise of even better excitements to come: Grendel breaks in, seizes and devours one of Beowulf s men, is attacked by Beowulf, and after losing an arm, which Beowulf tears off, escapes to the fens. The next night Grendel’s mother avenges her son by carrying off Æschere. Here the present piece begins.26 The crescendo of violent events as described by Sweet is not merely an adventitious application of adventure-story spirit to a poem curiously drained of it; Sweet falsifies the reflective handling of adventure by the poet. Sweet’s clarion-call is followed by the opening words of the extract: Sigon þa tö slæpe “Then they sank to sleep” (1251), applicable as much to the brave warriors in Hrothgar’s hall as to Sweet’s audience disappointed of the hoped-for excitement. As we listen for “Hang out our Banners on the Outward walls, The Cry is still, they come,” we hear “How sleep the Brave, who sink to rest”. For all the scholarly and critical trumpetry of Beowulf and the heroic age there is little true martial clangor in the poem. In Andreas Heusler’s important article on dialogue in Germanic narrative verse a central distinction is made between active and reflective

ausgenommen, manchmal vorwerfen muß.” My use of what Grimm says is confined to his remarks about narrative pace, breaking off and linking; what he says about the poet’s originality and artlessness and about his freedom from the verbosity of (in Grimm’s view) most of the better poets of thirteenth-century Germany is irrelevant for my purpose. 26 Henry Sweet, Anglo-Saxon Reader (1876), p. 119. His selection consists of lines 1251-1650.

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speech.27 Active speeches carry narrative movement within; every line leads forward towards the climax of the external action. Reflective speeches look back narratively, express foreboding, reflect on action; they delay action. According to Heusler, Hildebrandslied and The Finnsburg Frag27 Andreas Heusler, “Der Dialog in der altgermanischen erzählenden Dichtung,” Zeit­ schrift für deutsches Altertum, XLVI (1902), 189-284, reprinted in Heusler’s Kleine Schrif­ ten, II (1969), edited by S. Sonderegger, pp. 611-89. The following is from pp. 634-5: Der Blick auf die einzelnen Denkmäler verriet schon, daß die Rede sehr verschiedenen Aufgaben dient. Die wichtigste Unterscheidung ist die zwischen h a n d e ln d e r und b e ­ sc h a u lic h e r Rede. Jene schiebt die epische Fabel vorwärts, ist selbst ein Stück Action. Die andre blickt erzählend zurück, weissagt, stellt Betrachtungen an: sie hält die Fabel auf. Die Grenze deckt sich, in der eddischen Poesie, ziemlich genau mit der zwischen Ereig­ nisgedicht und Situationsgedicht. Man stelle einander gegenüber: erstes Atlilied und erstes Gudrunlied; unter den ganz aus Rede bestehenden: Hervçrlied und Helreið; Ingeldslied und Víkarsbálk. Gedichte, welche handeln und beschauliche Rede vereinigen, stehn ihrer gesamten poetischen Würkung nach auf der Grenze: zweites Atlilied und kurzes Sigurds­ lied. . ., dazu das große Sigurdslied, das aus V qIs. Saga c. 26. 28-30 zu erkennen ist. Unter den westgermanischen Stücken vertreten das Hildebrandslied und das Finns­ burgfragment ausgeprägtermaßen die handelnde Rede. Wenn dort Vater und Sohn von der Vergangenheit erzählen, so ist kein beschaulicher Rückblick: es trägt die epische Bewegung in sich; jede Zeile führt dem Gipfel der äußern Handlung entgegen. Auch die Reden des Byrhtnóð haben im ganzen diesen Charakter; selbst das Gebet des sterbenden Helden (Z. 173 ff.) würkt dramatisch. Anders der Waldere mit seinen stoffreicheren Anspielungen auf Zurückliegendes und breiteren Betrachtungen, die die dramatische Spannung lockern. Der Béowulf kennt beide Arten, die handelnde und die beschauliche Rede. Eine äußere Grenze läßt sich nicht überall ziehen, oft sind die beiden Elemente in einander verwoben. Als Reden, die die Handlung fördern, kann man nennen: das Gespräch zwischen Béowulf und dem Strandwart 237-300; die Verhandlung Wulfgärs mit Béowulf und Hróðgár 333-398; Béowulfs Anerbieten an den König, den Kampf mit Grendel aufzunehmen 407-455; Hróðgár vertraut ihm die Halle an 656-662; Béowulf verspricht, Rache für Æschere zu nehmen 1385-1397 ; Béowulf erklärt sich zum Angriff auf den Drachen bereit und verabschiedet die Gefährten 2512-2538; Wígláf fordert zur Hilfe auf und ermutigt Béowulf 2634-2669; Béowulf spricht seine letzten Wünsche aus 2730-2752. 2795-2817; Wígláf verwünscht die Ungetreuen 2865-2892; er befiehlt den Leichenbrand 3115-3120. Auch in diese Stücke hat das beliebte Ausmalen der Vergangenheit manchen, hemmen­ den, beschaulichen Zug hineingetragen. Am meisten verkörpert sich epische Action in den Repliken zwischen Wulfgär und Béowulf 333-355, in Hróðgárs Abschiedsworten vor der Grendelnacht 656-662, in Béowulfs kurzer Erklärung vor dem Drachenkampf 2512-2516, in Wígláfs Zuspruch an seinen Fürsten 2664-2669. Alle übrigen Reden - ihre Masse ist bedeutend in der Oberhand - fallen auf die beschauliche Seite, d. h. sie dienen nicht zur Abwicklung der im Béowulfepos behandelten Fabeln.

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ment contain active speech; so, on the whole, does The Battle o f Maldon, though I wonder if Heusler is not taking too realistic a view of the speeches; I cannot agree with Heusler that Byrhtnoth’s dying speech gives the im­ pression of the dramatic. The Waldere fragments seem to Heusler to contain more general reflections which loosen the dramatic tension. Of Beowulf Heusler says that it contains speeches of both kinds, and since the two elements are often intertwined in the poem he does not always find it possible to draw clear limits. He lists fifteen speeches in the poem which he thinks of as wholly or mainly active; all the rest, and their volume (Heusler says) is significantly more substantial, are of the reflective kind, i.e. they do not serve to develop the story-matter. In principle, Heusler in his analysis of speeches is similar in critical direction to Grimm’s analysis of a poem in terms of delaying or advancing the action. But in practice, as he himself is aware, hardly a single speech in Beowulf is wholly active, and except for short whole speeches Heusler has to single out lines to exemplify action in dialogue. The passage of action selected by Sweet (1251—1650) contains several speeches. It includes Hrothgar’s abrupt and dramatic reply when Beowulf asks (in reported speech) if Hrothgar has had a pleasant night (1322 ff.). It looks at first as if the action is going to be carried forward by dialogue. Then it loses speed in description, weighted with moral implications, of Grendel and his mother and their dwelling in the mere (1345—79). Action is resumed in Beowulfs promise to avenge Æschere (1385—97) which Heusler has in his list of active speeches; but in Beowulf’s great vow before battle (1474—91) reflection preponderates. Of course, in the actual fighting with Grendel’s mother, as with Grendel and with the dragon, action comes to the fore; but even in these fights with monsters reflective gravity supervenes. Wilhelm Grimm praised his poet’s good measure in advancing the ac­ tion and in tarrying. It is easy to see that the poet of Beowulf tarries often; but, of course, he also advances the action though in his characteristic way action and reflection are everywhere intertwined. In the main, he uses the monsters to advance the action. Their function in the plot is that of the villain in literature. In Shakespeare it may be the villain’s only function, as is the case with Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, or, not quite the only function, Iachimo in Cymbeline. Of course, Shakespeare is superla­ tively good at investing characters, even villains, with a human verisimili­ tude —not much, I think, in the case of Don John; a little more in Iachimo’s case; and Iago in Othello a great deal; yet even so, Coleridge was led

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to his all too well-known complaint about the “motiveless malignity” of Iago, motiveless, that is, in terms of .characterization; but for the plot the motive is clear enough.28 For the function of advancing the action there is no need of many words. As he is introduced in the play, Don John says, “I am not of many words.” The monsters in Beowulf say nothing at all. That the dragon is not reord-berend ‘speech-bearing’ will not surprise us: it is a brutish dragon, however justified in human terms his anger. But Grendel is of human shape, and his mother is ladylike. We know, for the poet has told us (1349—53). The silent incursions of these three advance the action. Oddly enough, that action seems little more than a connecting device for the riches of the poem. In a good narrative work or in a good play the plot is the vehicle for much else; it moves forward —by definition. The plot of Beowulf seems not much of a vehicle to me: barely a chassis, a baseframe, a mere convenience for linking together story-matter and re­ flection. The poet has let reflection nobble action. Even the most active bits of the poem are not told as Sweet in his synopsis makes them sound. In Sweet’s own passage - “one of the most vivid and picturesque . . . in the whole poem” - there is the long description of Grendel’s mere charged with overtones of the hell of the Apocalypse of St Paul. The poet gives us that instead of immediate and red-hot battle following upon the incur­ sion in which Grendel’s mother bore off Æschere. The poem in the three fights is not devoid of the rush of forward-moving action; the noise of battle, the blood, the sight of notable wounds are present in some detail, but balanced always against descriptions as well as against those parts called by writers on Beowulf the digressions and episodes. On them the poet has deployed his many skills so clearly that it seems almost as if he has undertaken the voyages of heroic narrative because they enable him to delight in the landing-places of reflection. Some of the landing-places have been often praised, especially the elegy (2247—66) spoken by a last survivor of his kin as he buries a nation’s treasure;29 the poet has invented

28 See Coleridge on Shakespeare, edited by T. Hawkes (Penguin Shakespeare Library; 1969), p. 190. 29 It is typical that J. Hoops in his dry Kommentar zum Beowulf (1932), pp. 244, 246, breaks out into literary criticism amounting to shamefaced enthusiasm. He calls the elegy “a speech full of atmosphere [Diese stimmungsvolle Rede]”, “a beautiful example of an Old English elegy,” and, to crown all, “By the way, the whole passage is poetically extraordina­ rily beautiful [Die ganze Stelle ist übrigens poetisch ungemein schön].”

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the scene and the words to be such as might have been witnessed when the dragon’s hoard was buried. I doubt if any one of the speeches listed by Heusler as an “active” speech would be selected for special praise. One might allow some praise of Wiglafs speech in which he dedicates himself to the service of Beowulf, his kinsman and liege-lord: ‘Lèofa Blowulf, læst eall tela, swâ ôü on geoguôfëore geâra gecwæde, þæt ôü ne âlæte be ôê lifigendum dôm gedrêosan; scealt nü dædum rôf, æôeling anhÿdig, ealle mægene feorh ealgian; ic ôê fullæstu.’ (2663-8) [“Achieve it all well, beloved Beowulf, as long ago when young you said that you, as long as you had life would not let glory perish. Now, resolute prince, strong in deeds, you must defend your life with all your strength. I will support you.”] This is a speech into battle, yet less stirring than the opening speech of The Finnsburg Fragment by a less good poet: 'Në ôis ne dagaô ëastnn, në hèr draca ne flëogeô, në hër ôisse healle hornas ne byrnaô; ac hër forþ beraö, fugelas singaô, gylleô græghama, güôwudu hlynneô, scyld scefte oncwyô. Nü scÿneô þes môna waôol under wolcnum; nü àrisaô wëadæda, ôë ôisne folces nlô fremman willaô. Ac onwacnigeaô nü, wîgend mine, habbaô ëowre 1/nda, hicgeaþ on ellen, win/taô on orde, wesaô on mode!’ [“This light is not the light of dawn; no fiery dragon flies overhead; The gables of this hall are not lit up with licking flames; But men draw near with shining weapons. The birds of battle screech, The grey wolf howls, the spear rattles, Shield answers shaft. The pale moon wanders On her way below the clouds, gleaming; evil deeds will now be done Provoking pitched battle.

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Wake up now, my warriors! Grasp your shields, steel yourselves, Step forward and be brave!”]30 What is more, the poet of Beowulf is not merely peculiarly skilful in tarrying; when he introduces one of his resting-places he demonstrates his mastery of the other side of narrative art as seen by Wilhelm Grimm, “skill in breaking off and in linking together”. He was not referring, I think, to linking by means of favourite themes. There are such in the poem, pervasively the emphasis on the untroubled repose of warriors, for example, both sleep after drinking, without a thought of the enemy ap­ proaching, but also in death - “How sleep the Brave” was not adduced by me without relevance or reverence. Scyld is laid to his rest in a ship-burial. The poet uses it to break off a narrative thread that has only just begun, for a reflection on the central question for the pre-Christian world of the poem: Men ne cunnon secgan tö söðe, selerædende, hæleð under heofenum, hwá þæm hlæste onféng. ( 5° - 2)

[“Men cannot say in truth, counsellors in the hall, heroes out in the field, who received that cargo.”] The poem, however, gives no hint that this burial has any significant relationship to the pyre on which Hnaef and his nephew are burnt in “The Finnsburg Episode”, or the pyre at the end of the poem which consumes the dead Beowulf. The poet has other favourite themes; human strength, for example, especially Beowulfs strength, his overstrength through which swords fail, as in the dragon-fight (2575-86). When themes recur it is tempting for a modern reader to look for thematic linking, and surely he is right to regard recurring themes as a sign of a poet’s special emphasis, deliberate probably, rather than the expression of a deep-seated but in­ voluntary preoccupation, a King Charles’s head. Either way, there is the further temptation to go to the excellent glossaries and concordances and elevate recurring words to keywords. 30 The translation by Kevin Crossley-Holland (appended to his translation of Beowulf (1968), p. 127), which 1 quote, recaptures something of the vigour of the Old English poem.

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Grimm was not referring to thematic linking. I think; the poetic skill in linking together (which Grimm had in mind in considering it one of the basic ingredients of a poem for an assessment of the poet’s narrative art) is how the poet reaches the next stage in the narrative, i.e. how he finds his way to a new but connected topic. A good example is the use of the changing of the seasons in “The Finnsburg Episode” : Hengest ôâ gÿt wælfâgne winter wunode mid Finne [ea]l unhlitme; eard gemunde, þéah þe he meahte on mere drifan hringedstefnan, — holm storme wëol, won wið winde, winter ýþe belëac ïsgebinde, oþ ðæt ðþer c5m gëar in geardas, — swä nü gÿt dêô, þá ðe syngâles sèle bewitiað, wuldortorhtan weder. Dä wæs winter scacen, fæger foldan bearm; fundode wrecca, gist of geardum; hë tö gyrnwræce swlðor þðhte þonne tð sælâde, gif hë torngemöt þurhtéon mihte, þæt hë Ëotena beam Inné gemunde. (1127-41)31 [“Hengest stayed on with Finn . . . that slaughter-stained (?) winter —he remembered his homeland —though he could have put out to sea his ring-prowed ship. The sea surged up in the storm, contended with the gale; winter shut in the waves with bonds of ice, until a new year came to mankind: and so it still does, the glorious bright weather observes its seasons always. Winter was gone then, the teeming earth was beautiful; and the exiled visitant eager to go from those dwellings. He thought more strongly of vengeance for his wrongs than of the voyage over the sea, thought if he might bring about battle in which to remember the sons of the Jutes.”] 31 I quote the text from Klaeber, but without the usual emendation oihe (1130) to ne. It is a slight emendation, but radically alters the sense in a passage of which we do not understand enough for such a change. See Klaeber’s note on the line. I have also retained the manuscript reading inne (1141); see von Schaubert’s note. All I am concerned with in quoting this passage is the changing of the seasons as a device.

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Two campaigning seasons are encompassed in the hundred lines of the digression; first, that of the fighting between Finn’s men and the men of whom Hengest is one; in that battle both sides are weakened so that they have to come to terms. Secondly, the season when Hengest avenges his lord and Finn is killed. The change of the seasons emphasizes the passage of time: in due time the miseries of winter will lead to the next campaign­ ing season when vengeance becomes possible. All manner of connections are made, especially the play on Hengest’s double remembrance, of home from foreign lands and also of kinsmen slain who must be avenged before the voyage homeward is begun. Thus the poet produces narrative conti­ nuity out of a universalized particular situation: for the seasons which changed that winter for Hengest change for us still. The same device of the seasons links at the time of the battle with Grendel’s mother the despair of the Geats at the edge of the mere with Beowulfs glorious re-emergence from the abode of monsters. As the Geats gazed into the mere the sword-blade with which it had been granted to Beowulf to achieve victory melted in the monster’s blood: Fa þæt sweord ongan æfter heaþoswate hildegicelum, wïgbil wanian; þæt wæs wundra sum, þæt hit eal gemealt Tse gellcost, ðonne forstes bend Fæder onlæteð, onwindeð wælrâpas, sê geweald hafað sæla ond mæla; þæt is sðð Metod. (1605-11)

[“Then the sword dwindled away with blood of battle, the war-blade into battle-icicles. It was something to marvel at that it all melted away quite like ice whenever the Father loosens the bond of frost, slackens the wa­ ter’s deadly fetters, he who has power over times and seasons: that is the true Lord.”] The opposition of the irregularly miraculous of a particular event central in a narrative and the regularly miraculous in God’s order of the world is, of course, not confined to Beowulf, though it is made striking use of in the poem at this point. St Augustine contrasts the miraculous and exceptional Feeding of the Five Thousand with the ordinary miracle of feeding the

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world; and Ælfric follows him.32 However, the use made by Ælfric in his Augustinian handling of the miracle is a central part of the demonstration of God’s power; the poet of Beowulf uses the ordinary miracle of the annual loosening of the bond of frost to emphasize that the hero is assign­ ed victory by one who works miracles greater even that the unusual and miraculous sword-melt. The linking device advances the action; it is at the same time an aggrandizing ornament. In all Old English it is common to make generalizing statements in a way difficult for a modern reader to understand fully, because Old English had forms of the verb to be like bid and beod which mean ‘is’ or ‘are’ without reference to a particular point in time.33 Thus at 2277 the dragon is described after its finding the buried treasure and guarding it, ne byd him wihte dÿ sei “he or it (the dragon) is none the better for it”. The form of the verb is that without reference to time. The generalizing statement comes just before we are told that the dragon held guard over the treasure for three hundred years when it was roused from its slumbers. The state­ ment has an air of finality, part of the poet’s art of breaking off before moving on. It may be that the nature of the Old English substantive verb contributed towards the sense of chronological suppleness which I find in the poem, and think unusual in Old English literature. It seems doubtful, however, if the grammatical fact of the use of byd makes a major contri32 St Augustine, ln Joannis Euangelium, XXIV, 1 [Corpus Christianorum, Scr. lat. 36 ( 1954), 244]. For Ælfric’s use of Augustine see the text of British Library MS. Royal 7 C. XI, fol. 63 recto and verso [reproduced in Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, XIII (1966); cf. B. Thorpe’s edition of The Homilies of Ælfric, for the Ælfric Society, I, ii (1843), 184—5]: “Fela wundra worhte God, ond dæghwamlice wyrhð. Ac da wundra sind swiðe awacode on manna gesihðe forðan þe hi sind swiðe gewunelice. Mare wundor is þœt God Ælmihti ælce dæig I fet ealne middaneard ond gewissað þa godan þoivze þœt wundor wære þœt he ða gefylde fif þusend manna mid fif hlafum. Ac þæs wundrodon men, na forôi þœt hit mare wundor wære, ac forði þ'e1 hit wæs ungewunelic: hwa syld nu wæstm urum æcerum ond gemænigfylt þœt gerip of feawum cornum, buton se de þa gemænigfylde þa fif hlafas?” [“God has worked many miracles, and daily works them; but in the eyes of mankind those miracles are greatly lessened because they are very ordinary. That God Almighty each day feeds all the world and gives guidance to the good is a miracle greater than was that miracle that he then filled five thousand men with five loaves. But mankind marvelled at the latter, not because it was a greater miracle, but because it was extraordinary: who gives fruit now to our fields and multiplies the harvest from a few grains, if not he who multiplied those five loaves?”] 33 See K. Jost, Beon und wesan, Anglistische Forschungen, 26 (1909), passim, and for the concept “without reference to a particular place or point of time”, called “abstract” by Jost following H. Paul, see especially §§ 22-5.

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bution. After all such statements asþœt wœs göd cyning “That [Scyld] was an excellent king” (11) is very similar in giving an impression of finality in a summarizing statement before the narrative moves on to the next stage, and that statement uses the past tense wœs ‘was’. Besides, the handling of chronology is normal in both cases, an exposition of events conceived of in orderly historical terms, though how dragons take to gold may seem to us outside sober historical causality. When the poet draws on the future to illumine causally, as it seems, the narrative present we are witnessing a display of exceptional acrobatics in poetic chronology. The poet has told us at length (194—1903) what hap­ pened to Beowulf in Denmark, and then the poet makes the hero repeat what happened in his own words rather more briefly (2000—2151).34 Beo­ wulf tells us that he has met Freawaru, the Danish princess,35 at Hrothgar’s court. She is betrothed to Ingeld, the Heathobard, a match from which Hrothgar promises himself political advantages as well as hoping for the happiness of his daughter. In fact, there was at some time in the future, bloodshed at the wedding-feast, and it all ended in disaster. The poet could have made Beowulf allude to the disaster vaguely ne wœs hit lenge þá gën “the time was not yet at hand”36 (83), words with which the poet himself speaks of the destruction of the royal Danish hall at some time in the future. He chooses instead a subtler manœuvre; he makes Beowulf foretell the events out of his wisdom, a greater wisdom than Hrothgar’s. The poetic skill in linking narrative elements, which Wilhelm Grimm calls for, cannot be better exemplified in this poem: Sio gehäten (is), geong goldhroden, gladum suna Frðdan; (h)afað þæs geworden wine Scyldinga, rices hyrde, ond ðæt ræd talað, 34 What the reason may be for the repetition is too speculative a matter for profitable discussion. It may be best to accept the undemonstrable and, equally, undisprovable expla­ nation that by means of the repetition the poet would enable a reader or hearer who comes in for the second half of the poem to have the benefit of the first half for only a little expendi­ ture of time. Those who have read or heard the poem from the beginning have the advantage of a change of ‘point of view’ and the repetition is enlivened by including the tale of Ingeld, favourite subject-matter of the Anglo-Saxons. 35 On Freawaru and her name, see J. Hoops, Beowulfstudien, Anglistische Forschungen, 74 (1932), pp. 71-2, as well as the references given there. 36 For the translation, see Klaeber’s note on line 83.

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þæt hë mid ðý wife wælfæhða dæl, sæcca gesette. Oft seldan hwær æfter lêodhryre lÿtle hwlle bongär bügeö, þéah sëo brÿd duge! (2024-31) [“She [Freawaru], young and gold-adorned, is promised to the gracious son of Froda [Ingeld]. The lord of the Scyldings [Hrothgar], guardian of his realm, has determined so, and deems it politic that through the woman he should settle the feud, a great and mortal enmity. As a rule, however, it rarely happens anywhere that the deadly spear rests after a national cala­ mity even for a little time, however good the bride may be.”] Beowulf goes on to tell of the events in the future, how the feud engulfs Ingeld: . . . (syð)ðan Ingelde weallað wælnlðas, ond him wîflufan æfter cearwælmum cölran weorðað. Þy ic Heaðo-Bear[d]na hyldo ne telge, dryhtsibbe dæl Denum unfæcne, frëondscipe fæstne. Ic sceal forð sprecan gën ymbe Grendel . . . (2064-70) [“. . . from the time that mortal hate stirs Ingeld, and the love for his wife grows cool in his seething cares. Therefore, I do not think the loyalty of the Heathobards to be without deceit for the Danes, the great alliance of princes, firm compact of friendship. I must speak on further about Gren­ del . . .”]

It is one of the patterns of narrative in Beowulf to build a structure of action out of a universalizing statement, as here where moreover the poet returns to the universalizing. Another example is the coastguard’s speech (287-300) which similarly moves from proverbial wisdom to relevant action to concluding wisdom. The Heathobard episode, however, is distin­ guished in having as its action an event in the future, not the present or the past. The future is involved in the coastguard’s concluding wisdom, for he

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foretells in generalized terms the outcome of the visit of the bold warriors whom he questions on arrival: gödfremmendra swylcum gifeþe bið, þæt þone hilderæs häl gedlgeð. (299-300) [“It shall be granted37 to one who thus does bold deeds that he comes unscathed from the storm of battle.”] The moods of the utterances with which the poet ends narrative passages are very varied. Wä bid þœm de sceal. . . Wèl bid þœm þe m ö t. . . [“Woe to him who must . . . Happy he who may . . .”] sums up (183-8) the Danish lack of spiritual resources when Grendel inhabits their hall by night and they turn to idolatry. The poet succeeds in combining the tone of commination with something akin to the Beatitudes —though the latter, we are to understand, are not for the heathen.38 The whole of Beowulf s adventures in Denmark are summed up by the poet strangely; the words, spoken by Beowulf, could apply more specifi­ cally to the untried Danish prince Hrethric, invited by him to Geatland: feorcýþðe beoð sëlran gesöhte þæm þe him selfa déah. (1838-9) [“foreign parts are very well resorted to by a man of virtue.”] I take that to be the kind of lesson thought applicable to a young man abroad. If it had been the age when English gentlemen went on the grand tour it might have been expressed thus: Each man will come back from such a journey with those qualities enhanced with which he was endowed on going out, a new world of excellence for the man of taste and feeling; but for the rake, habitual vices, debts and the pox. In the heroic age, a man of valour brings home glory from abroad; the coward, shame. Quite often in the poem we may recognize a tone of grim jesting about 37 Though bid can be future in Old English, it can equally well be here without reference to time - ‘it is at all times granted . . 38 On the context of these lines, cf. E. G. Stanley, “Hœþenra Hyht in Beowulf,” in Studies in Old English Literature, in Honor of A. G. Brodeur, edited by S. B. Greenfield (1963) p. 196.

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horrible things. Grendel’s arm left behind is described (970-2) in terms of a rearguard left to cover retreat, a mocking device reiterated in Beowulf s own account (2098-9). A different aspect, mocking both Grendel and the beholders perhaps, seems to underlie the description of how the Geats carried in Grendel’s head where the Danes were sitting in the hall drink­ ing, Queen Wealhtheow among them: egesllc for eorlum ond þære idese mid, wlitesèon wrætllc; weras on säwon. (1649-50) [“a terrible and wondrous spectacle before warriors and before the lady with them: the men gazed on it.”] With that a numbered section of the poem ends. It makes a good ending, and as often in Beowulf, the ending is also a good transition to the next stage, in which Beowulf makes a speech about the hard-won booty he has brought them from the mere. There is some irony in that; and perhaps there is a hint of it in the concluding lines of the previous section as the head is carried in by four Geats labouring under the weight: a grisly sight for men to look upon as they drink - but for the lady, what horror! At the end of a numbered section at the end of Beowulf’s fight alone with the dragon, helped only by his young kinsman Wiglaf, there is a good generalizing conclusion: Nealies him on hèape handgesteallan, æðelinga beam ymbe gestödon hildecystum, ac hÿ on holt bugon, ealdre burgan. Hiora in änum wèoll sefa wið sorgum; sibb’ æfre ne mæg wiht onwendan þám ðe wél þenceð. (2596-2601) [“Not at all did his [Beowulfs] comrades, the sons of nobles, take their stand in a troop about him with warlike courage, but they slunk to the forest to save their lives. The mind of only one of them surged with sorrows: nothing can ever turn aside the call of kinship in a man who thinks aright.”] In medieval literature the point of moving from one of the divisions or distinctions of a book to the next does not systematically fall in the place

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where a modern writer might begin a new chapter. Often it may at first look to us as if a little before the end of a division is the better breaking-off point; but then we see that the last passage of a division is at the same time a link preparing us for the matter of the next division. So it is here: these words characterize bitterly the loneliness of Beowulf as he takes on the dragon, and they prepare us for the dynastic ideal which comes to the fore in the next section. Advancing the action and tarrying, breaking off and linking, with these in mind we may gain some insight into the narrative art of the poet of Beowulf. Perhaps we may go beyond that to the recognition that Wilhelm Grimm did well to select these areas to demonstrate narrative art, but we must not try to believe as he did that an ideally good measure can keep the ingredients in the right proportions. ‘Right proportion’ varies from good poem to good poem, and is merely one way of saying that we think a poet’s art is successful. Grimm’s ‘schönes maß’ reminds me of something R. W. Chambers said, and he was among the most sensitive scholars of Beowulf, though I think he was wrong in this: The main story of Beowulf is a wild folk-tale. There are things equally wild in Homer: Odysseus blinds the Cyclops, and Achilles struggles with a river-god: but in Homer these things are kept in their right places and proportions. The folk-tale is a good servant, but a bad master: it has been allowed in Beowulf to usurp the place of honour, and to drive into episodes and digressions the things which should be the main stuff of a well-conducted epic.39 I do not know if Beowulf is an epic as Homer’s poems are, and I do not mind the wildness; that is well controlled by poetic arts which turn wild fables to universal truths: Mährchen, noch so wunderbar, Dichterkünste machen’s wahr.40

39 “Foreword: Beowulf and the Heroic Age in England/’ in A. Strong’s translation of Beowulf { 1925), p. xxvi; reprinted in R. W. Chambers, Mans Unconquerable Mind (1939), pp. 64-5. 40 Goethes Werke, Grossherzogin Sophie edition, I (1887), 159. The lines first appeared (without comma at the end of the first line of the couplet) in Goethe's Gedichte; Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta, 1815; I, 105, as the motto for his “Balladen”.

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[“Tale of wonder through and through, Arts poetic make it true.”] ‘Bound in truth’, söde gebunden (871), is the Beowulf poet’s own, enig­ matic description of an ideal poetic art. Whenever he delays the steady advance of narrative action he is binding it in truth. University of Oxford

Trajectory of the hero: Gauvain paragon of chivalry 1130—1230 by P er N ykrog

My purpose with this contribution to the Symposium is not to express or to propagate any particular love for or fascination with Gauvain as a charac­ ter —nor is there actually anything new or hitherto unknown in the infor­ mation that I bring to the fore. I have selected Gauvain because he is an important and well-defined element, a sort of constant, in the literary Arthurian myth, and because, therefore, a succession of sketchy outlines of his function, role and nature in various successive Arthurian tales, can throw a quick but sharp light on the transformations of the myth from one (set of) text(s) to another - can bring succinctly into evidence the similarities and dissimilarities of the respective, successive interpretations, or rather uses, that have been made of the myth by the successive writers throughout the period considered. Thus, I am not concerned with narrative itself, understood as plot and narration. What I want to bring to attention is a well-developed medieval practice, in which the setting for narrative - the traditional framework for narrative - is being used as a carrier of significance : the “trajectory of the hero” Gauvain is in itself part and parcel of the significances attributed to the court of Arthur in general, and so, by analysing Gauvain, one takes a shortcut to results that have a larger, more general validity. To speak of “significance” in connection with medieval Arthurian lite­ rature, is of course not an anachronism, in spite of the modernistic, “sémiologie” connotations of that word. It is well authenticated in the texts, especially in the famous lines from the opening remarks to Lancelot, where Chrétien de Troyes says: “the (subject) matter and the sense have been given by the countess (Marie de Champagne) —he (Chrétien him­ self) is only concerned with the handling of it, for he contributes next to nothing but work and care”: 26 matière et san li done et livre la contesse, et il s’antremet de panser, que gueres n’i met fors sa painne et s’ataneïon.

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In all the writings from the twelfth century, Arthur’s court is proposed as a model - as a mythical ideal world - but the structure, and hence the function, of this ideal is not the same from one version to the other: by following the “trajectory” of Gauvain, the reader can follow the transfor­ mations of a certain ideal of chivalry and of aristocratic society. It is important, however, to note that this “trajectory” is nothing like a ballistic curve. What we have to deal with, is a succession of single, coherent states, each of which is a transformation, a reinterpretation, of the preceding ones. —A particular facet of this introductory consideration is that as we are dealing with individually known, rather freely creative writers, the evolution we can perceive appears clearly as discontinuous: in an un­ known, anonymous, oral tradition, a similar development, known only from sporadic written manifestations, might be understood as the work of the people creating by imperceptible and gradual transformations. Con­ fronted with a well-authenticated, written tradition, such a view cannot prevail. The question naturally arises whether these two types of tradition are really very different in that respect —a question which, for obvious reasons, cannot be met with a well-founded answer.

The subject really starts with Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Historia Regum Britannia (1135) —especially, the topic I have chosen does not call for a foray into the development that turned the earliest Arthur, a leader in war against the Saxons, into the mythical King of Britain. Yet, in order to add a brief perspective towards the antecedents, a sort of prologue, a few words should be said about Culhwch and Olwen (tenth century? Welsh), the oldest full-scale Arthurian tale. It is different in the extreme from the later French narratives, in plot-structure as well as in style and atmosphere. In a (stunningly magnificent) opening sequence, a young lad comes to Arthur’s Court and asks for help to win a certain maiden (that he wants, even though he has never set eyes on her . . .). The main body of the tale relates the series of fantastic exploits the expedition has to per­ form in order to reach this goal. But one does notice a few traits that this story has in common with its French successors: Arthur is the supreme and supremely magnificent —king, who has waged wars all over the world, to whom an ambitious young man carries his wild and ardent wish —and who sets out himself, personally, at the head of the adventurous expedi­ tion. The expedition is undertaken by a number of brilliant warriors - Cei, Bedoer, etc. - including Gauvain (Gwalchmei), as one of the last on the list:

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He called Gwalchmei son of Gwyar, because he never came home without the quest he had gone to seek. He was the best of walkers and the best of riders. He was Arthur’s nephew, his sister’s son, and his first cousin. We never hear about him again in that tale: he is not remembered as playing any significant part in any of the exploits. He must have existed in the narrative tradition (since he is mentioned), and he may even have had a more important role in other, lost versions of the tale. But here, at his beginnings, Gauvain certainly appears as a rather modest figure: two hundred years later, once introduced into a tale, he would not be left out again in what follows. Another short word on another vestige of Arthurian myth earlier than Geoffrey: on a vault sculpted before 1120 in a church in Modena (Italy — these tales must have been widely known very early), a scene pictures Arthur, Cei, Gauvain and a few others preparing an attack on a castle in which Arthur’s queen is held prisoner. (There is no Lancelot: this might reflect an original form, closely related to Indo-European solar myth, cp. the Indian epic Ramayana, of what may at one moment have been the tale about Arthur.) At this stage, Gauvain has certainly moved up the ranks: on the Modena vault he appears as one of Arthur’s closest and most important companions and warriors. These two very early works have at least two important traits in com­ mon: Arthur is himself an active warrior, and his nearest man is Cei. Gauvain is a secondary character, though from one version to the other, he seems to gain considerably in importance. This last difference could, of course, easily be entirely fortuitous. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, the times of Arthur are told in Part 7, by far the largest in volume of the twelve parts: 20 pet. of the total text. Arthur appears, here as in Culhwch and Olwen, as a strong personal leader, foremost in battle and in conquest, and in times of peace sur­ rounded by festive and lavish splendor. He is active, rich (by conquest) and generous. Compared to Charlemagne, the ideal king in the older or contemporary French epic, he is clearly a secular ruler - not the weary but untiring soldier of Christ, but young, splendid, magnificent and chivalrous. He represents, in pseudomythical narrative, an Alexander-like and princely ideal, to whom duty or moral imperative is less important: his aim is to win expansion and glory, for himself, for his men, and for his king­ dom.

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The chronology of his reign according to Geoffrey is first the conquest of the British Isles and of Ireland (18 pet. of the total narration about him), followed by twelve years of peace. Then follows the conquest of Norway and Gaul, shortly told, followed by nine years of peace spent in courtly splendor. Then comes the main story (60 pet. of the total): the Roman emperor challenges Arthur’s power - warfare in France - treason of Mordred - final murderous and fratricidal battle on English soil. Besides the King himself the main heroes are Cei, Bedoer and Hoel. Gauvain appears, twelve years old at the beginning of the conquest of Norway, and he appears again, twenty years old, fiery and violent, in a bloody incident with the Roman embassy in Gaul. He is glorious in battle against the Romans - and only there: he is killed on the beach (short mention) during the landing operation directed against the rebellious Mordred. So here again, he is a relatively minor figure —youthful and petulant, but of limited importance: one memorable episode, and one glorious battle. Wace’s translation of Geoffrey —the Roman de Brut, 1155 —tells basically the same story, and has the same Alexander-like Arthur figure. There are, however, interesting additions, one of which concerns Gauvain. During the twelve years of peace, we are told, Arthur instituted the Round Table —in order to avoid quarrels over precedence: seated in that way, with no head-end and no tail-end of the table, all were placed equally well: 9747 Pur les nobles baruns qu’il out, Dunt chescuns mieldre estre quidout, Chescuns se teneit al meillur, Ne nuis n’en saveit le peiur, Fist Artur la Roiinde Table Dunt Bretun dient mainte fable. Illuec seeient li vassal Tuit chevalment e tuit egal; A la table egalment seeient E egalment servi esteient; Nul d’els ne se poeit vanter Qu’il seist plus halt de sun per, Tuit esteient assis meain, Ne n’i aveit nul de forain.

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(Note that “the Britons tell tales” about this institution: so Wace did not invent it himself — his explanation of it might even very well be a rationalisation.) —This moment, the twelve years of peace, was also the time when the celebrated and marvelous adventures took place, of which story-tellers tell many tales: not altogether true, not altogether fable, not altogether folly, not altogether wisdom —the story-tellers have elaborated so much that they have made it all look like fable: 9787 En cele grant pais ke jo di, Ne sai si vus l’avez oï, Furent les merveilles pruvees E les aventures truvees Ki d’Artur sunt tant recuntees Ke a fable sunt aturnees. Ne tut mençunge, ne tut veir, Tut folie ne tut saveir. Tant unt li cunteür cunté E li fableür tant flablé Pur lur cuntes enbeleter, Que tut unt fait fable sembler. I insist on this because in the chronological framework of Geoffrey-Wace, Gauvain must have been an infant at the time of these adventures: there is absolutely no room for him where he could have been the familiar impor­ tant figure at Arthur’s court. In Wace he appears, “young and small”, at the beginning of the conquest of Norway: he is sent to Rome for his education. However, to the portrait of the petulant twenty-year-old given by Geoffrey, Wace adds one interesting element. During the council held concerning the challenge from the Roman emperor, most advisers speak in favor of a “hawkish” answer. But Gauvain holds another view: peace is better than warfare, it is nice to conduct loveaffairs (drueries), and knights become chivalrous by cultivating their lady-loves (amies): « Sire cuens, dist Walwein, par fei, De neient estes en effrei. Bone est la pais emprés la guerre, Plus bele e mieldre en est la terre; Mult sunt bones les gaberies

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E bones sunt les drueries. Pur amistié e pur amies Funt chevaliers chevaleries. » It is a ladies’ man speaking, advocating a tendency towards moderation, and pleading openly in favor of courtliness. As a consequence of this, Gauvain’s violent behavior later on, with the Roman envoys, is prompted by others. From Geoffrey and Wace —writing in England or Normandy resp. up to 1135 and 1155 - we move to Champagne and Flanders about 1170—80, with no known intermediary between the narrations considered up to now, and the romans of Chrétien de Troyes. Did Chrétien know Geoffrey and/or Wace? Probably. But his main sources must have been different: those very “story-tellers” to which Wace makes his half-derogatory references. Anyway, the Arthurian uni­ verse in Chrétien does not fit into the chronological framework of the (pseudo-)chroniclers, and he has no reference to the stories told by his predecessors - with the possible exception of the one alluded to in the Modena vault, which becomes, totally transformed (whether by himself or, as he says in his prologue, by Marie de Champagne), the story of Lancelot, the Tristan-like lover of the Queen. King Arthur himself is transformed. In place of the Alexander-like conqueror, active and outgoing, we meet a sacred king, dignified, re­ spected and essential, but fundamentally passive and aloof. He is old, white-bearded like Charlemagne, too distinguished to act personally, and his ensuing passivity makes him at moments pitifully vulnerable (Lancelot - Perceval). He is more like a king of chess: the upholder of the order of the world for which he is responsible, the soul and the center of his realm but for activity in the field he is entirely dependent on his knights. He is to be found in his court and only there - if he wants to move, the entire court moves with him, majestically and laboriously, to the place where some­ thing particularly important is going on (Yvain —Perceval). The earlier (known) tales about Arthur tell his own initiatives and exploits. For Chrétien’s Arthur to rush around on horseback flashing his sword is unthinkable. His knights do - they are the ones who are busily active all over the mythical landscape - and they report back continuously to Arthur in his court, either by sending their vanquished opponents to testify and to constitute themselves “prisoners”, or by coming back in

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person to tell their adventure. The narrative structure in Chrétien’s ro­ mans is deeply different from that of the chronicles: each roman has its own particular, local hero —the court is no longer the acting center, it is a setting, a background, a world-order, constant, stable and identical from one story to another. Chrétien’s Gauvain has the well-defined function of being the principal figure (next to the King and his Queen) in this static court thus defined. Bedoer and Hoel have disappeared: the predominant figures at the court, intermediaries between the King (constant as he) and the rank and file of the knights, are Cei and Gauvain. They form a pair, but not a couple: they are not opponents, they are opposites, in all respects. Cei has official function: he is sénéchal. In older stories, he is the Arthurian hero number one —in Chrétien, he personifies the bad noble knight: boastful, boisterous, arrogant, tyrannical, unmindful of his own shortcomings. In Perceval, he ill-treats a defenseless girl, thereby calling a humiliating punishment on himself (for the girl had spoken in admiration of Perceval). In Yvain, and in Perceval, too, he tries his hand at roughing up a stranger whom he takes to be an easy victim — but his judgment is poor, the stranger is a great warrior, and Cei reaps defeat and shame. - In marked opposition to him, Gauvain shows fine judgment, valor and excellent human qualities. He is regularly the one who acts as the welcoming representative of the Court toward newcomers (trying to get ahead of Cei who cannot be trusted in that function). He is peaceful —in Erec he warns against the Hunting of the White Stag because this tradition invariably brings out jealousies and envies among the ladies. He is civil, prudent, elegant and tactful in speech and manners, the model of distinguished behavior. Often he is the one who has to be sent in order to set right a situation that has been messed up by Cei. In fighting and in tournament, he is unsurpassed: it is impossible for anyone to win over him - the supreme consecration of a knight is to fight even with him (Erec—Yvain —in Cliges the hero overthrows Lancelot and Perceval before he fights even with Gauvain). But this has only partly to do with the plot of each roman: Gauvain is part of the world-order, a constant element, comparable in that respect to Arthur himself - in a way he is Arthur’s alter ego. The local hero’s brushing Cei aside and measuring himself with Gauvain (sometimes without knowing who he is up against) is almost a measurement, an indication of level: Gauvain is the paragon, the ideal measure of courtly knighthood, exquisite in manners and glori­ ous in fighting.

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How was this structural transformation brought about? Was it Chrétien who ideated it, or did he merely continue a structure, different from that of his literary predecessors, that he found in oral (or otherwise lost) tradi­ tion, and that he simply took over? Impossible to know, but whatever its origins, one thing is certain: the English-Norman versions written for the royal successors to William the Conqueror, present an Alexander-like, acting and active Arthur, who is himself a charismatic leader —the Conti­ nental versions, written for the very independent Lords of Champagne and of Flanders (not for the King of France: he probably stuck to Char­ lemagne), picture an Arthur who is sacred and passive king, entirely de­ pendent on his greatest men. Whoever shaped the two versions, the writ­ ers made their choice between them, and their respective choices seem to fit so nicely into what must have been the historic reality of their respec­ tive protectors and Maecenases, that the choice they made can hardly have been fortuitous. A final note before leaving Chrétien de Troyes’ Gauvain. His function as an acting constant in the Arthurian World according to Chrétien, has assigned to him a very special role in a narrative device that opens an important perspective in the history of narrative forms. Typically, Chre­ tien’s narratives are of the beads-on-a-string type: a succession of episodes starring an individual knight, a new one in each story, the episodes tied together by an overall narrative structure. Thus also in Yvain and in Lancelot. But at one moment, these two separate tales are tied together by a link personified in Gauvain: he plays a part in both, and the part he plays in one interferes with his possibility to play a part in the other. When in Yvain Lunete needs his help, he is not available: he is out following Lancelot in another story. Later on, we learn that he is back again, so that he can be the champion of one of the two sisters of Noirespine. This embryonic intertwining of plots - or entrelacement — is made possible because Gauvain is an important, but secondary, character in both. As a part of the background, he has relations with Yvain as well as with Lancelot —the local heroes themselves never interfere in each other’s adventures. In Perceval, written after the two others, there is a very con­ siderable Gauvain-action, extremely involved in itself, and full of episodes one set inside another, and this Gauvain-action is, as a whole, braided into the Perceval-action so as to form a most disconcerting narrative struc­ ture. If the reader compares this structure, on the one hand to earlier, linear narrative, and on the other hand to later, highly involved, highly “interlaced” romance-structure, he is left with the feeling that in

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Y vain-Lancelot, and even more in Perceval, he is witnessing Chrétien’s experimentations - based on his constant Gauvain-figure - with an new and enthralling art of long story-telling, a type that was to dominate the art of romance-composition for some 500 years to come. In the process - and as Chrétien’s enthusiasm for his local hero seems to grow from one roman to the next —Gauvain seems to lose some of his formerly unassailable perfection. He is no more immune to a visible tinge of ridicule. This observation may be important —but on the other hand, it should probably not be over-emphasized: Chrétien de Troyes had a taste for the humorous that is too often overlooked: his Cligès looks at mo­ ments like a parody, and both Perceval and Yvain contain episodes that must have been written tongue-in-cheek. Third act: the Queste du Saint Graal and the Mort le Roi Artu, final parts of the vast “Vulgate”, the Lancelot-Graal from about 1220-30, an enormous prose-epic written neither for the Anglo-Norman Angevin dynasty, nor for the high feudal lords of the French kingdom, but by writers of clerical inspiration —probably as part of the sweeping ecclesias­ tical counteroffensive 1210—30 against the secular civilization created half a century earlier or more, for the benefit of the highest aristocracy, on the cultural background of the “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century” . In the Queste we see the mystery of the Grail —(it proves to be closely related to the Eucharist, specifically it demonstrates the dogma of the Transubstantiation, which was freshly promulgated at that time) - pre­ sented to Arthur and his court: they are completely taken aback and helpless. This adventure is not for them, but only for Galahad, accom­ panied by Perceval (his father), by Lancelot (another repentant sinner) and by Bohort. The total impotence of the court is brought into evidence from the very beginning by the episode of the Sword in the Stone, by the appearance of the Providential Seat, etc. (We only catch a short glimpse of Cei as an uninteresting master of ceremonies.) Gauvain sets out, optimistically, with the others on the quest, but by supreme irony, his search for adventure is vain: he finds none at all, except on one occasion when he kills one of his own friends by mistake. He does however benefit from a dream-vision, whose senefiance is explained to him by a holy man: he dreamt of bulls feeding from a fodder-rack —they want to graze a fresh and flowery meadow, but only a few are able to find food there —the others must return to their artificial feeding-place. Only the elected ones can find the authentic spiritual substance during the quest

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- the others will have to return to their purely social existence at the court. Gauvain is doomed to a vain and empty existence, because he is too deeply steeped in worldliness. The same denunciation of Gauvain as a human type is evident in the Mort - less explicit, but more deeply marked by disgust. The plot-struc­ ture of the story combines Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story about the Ro­ man challenge and the treason of Mordred, with a continuation of the Lancelot story: the threat from the South strikes at an Arthurian reign that is internally weakened by fratricidal feuds caused by the sequels of this famous and scandalous love affair. Here again, it is illuminating to follow Gauvain throughout the text: as in Chretien’s tales, he is the typical exponent of the court’s way of life. In the opening scene, Arthur and Gauvain talk quietly about the quest that has just ended: the survivors have taken up again their normal life at the court. “How many knights did you kill,” asks Arthur. - “Eighteen, much to my regret,” says Gauvain (the Mort is not aligned on the Queste in detail). “Was king B. among them?” says Arthur. —“Yes,” says Gau­ vain, “that is what I feel most sorry about.” And they agree, sadly, that he was indeed a very fine man. Some time later, we see Gauvain as a cocksure Don Juan: he routinely courts the maiden of Escalot (made famous in recent times by Tennyson), and is somewhat surprised by her lack of interest - until he realizes that she has just fallen in love with Lancelot. Back at the court, Gauvain spreads this gossip-story, thereby triggering off implacable jealousy in the Queen, with endless complications as a result. - Later, hatred against Gauvain inspires a devious murder attempt by poison. Another man dies, and the Queen is falsely accused of the murder. She is ultimately saved by Lancelot, who wins, as her champion incognito, a judicial duel about her guilt, and peace is restored all around. - But the lovers are once again carried away by their passion: it is Gauvain who discovers it and who spills the news to the King. The Queen is condemned to death, but Lancelot manages to save her in a last-minute armed attack, killing in the process some of Gauvain’s close relatives. From that moment on, Gauvain re­ mains relentlessly engaged in an all-out vendetta against Lancelot. The Pope intervenes and gets everyone to agree on a truce and on forgiving only Gauvain insists and pushes his vengeance, so that when the Roman invasion occurs, the Arthurian forces are seriously weakened, many of their best men being either killed or wounded in the course of Gauvain’s blood-feud.

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In Geoffrey and in Wace, Arthur’s final defeat is brought about by regular, large-scale warfare, and simple treason by an envious usurper. In the Mort, his reign is undermined beforehand by chains of action whose motives and origins are clearly to be found in illicit love-passion, in the concept of honor, and in the fact that for aristocratic society, glory is essentially gained in battle, i.e. by fighting to kill. The earlier version of the Arthurian World offers a “euphoric” vision, in which these three elements are presented as positive values. In the Mort, they appear clearly as de­ structive forces, as the underlying causes that ultimately bring about the death of Arthur and the downfall of his glorious reign. Their main re­ presentative is Gauvain —together with Lancelot, who has, however, the excuse of desperate passion: Gauvain, on the contrary, is all the way through his normal self, the shallow and mundane carrier of those deadly “values”. The positive forces that might have saved the Arthurian world, are the Christian (ecclesiastic) values: forgiveness, mildness, truce, the conciliatory intervention by the Pope. The last major survivors after the catastrophe all find a haven within religious institutions. There is a bitter irony of fate in the fact that this tale has been accepted, in modern times, as the final, the absolute version of the Arthurian myth. A perversion would be a more appropriate word, considering that the significance of this narrative is the opposite of the one advocated in the authentic, twelfth-century versions of the myth. The Queste and the Mort are ideological war-machines directed against the very civilization of which Geoffrey and Chrétien had been important narrative exponents: they had extolled secular Man in all his modern glory - their ecclesiasti­ cally inspired successors demonstrate what Pascal has called “la misère de l’Homme sans Dieu”. Thus, to sum up, the trajectory of the hero Gauvain 1130-1230 moves, discontinuously, through three stages: A first stage dominated by an Alexander-like conqueror king, under whom even the best men play only a secondary part. Thus Gauvain, who distinguishes himself by one or two deeds, not more. This stage is con­ ceived and favored in the circle around the Anglo-Norman Angevin dynasty. A second stage dominated by the activities of the great knights, Arthur himself being a sacred and venerable, but passive figurehead. At this stage, Gauvain reaches his zenith, as the model and paragon of all knightly

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virtues. This stage is conceived and favored in the circle surrounding the highest lords on the Continent. A final stage picturing Arthur’s world as doomed because of inner destructive forces, which the carriers of this world take to be supreme values. In this interpretation, conceived and favored in ecclesiastic circles (where?), Gauvain still plays a key role —as the typical courtly knight: murderous, sleek, vain, vindictive and shallow, a deadly dangerous type, socially and spiritually, who has personally contributed as much as any other, though unwittingly, to the downfall of the glorious reign of Arthur. This final Arthurian tale is intrinsically anti-Arthurian. At least it is ill advised to enter into the study of Arthurian literature through this monu­ mental gateway: it is an ideological booby-trap, set by the enemy. Aarhus University —Harvard University

The double scene of Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest by L ars Lönnroth

In this paper I shall first present a theoretical model for analyzing oral literature in general and medieval oral literature in particular. Next, I shall attempt to show how this model can be used in the study of certain motifs within Germanic and Early Norse heroic narrative. Finally, I shall apply the model in the analysis of one particular text, the story of Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest (below, pp. 110-19). My theoretical model is built on the assumption that texts meant for oral delivery - regardless of whether they were composed in writing or not - should primarily be analyzed as performances and not as written texts on a piece of paper. This assumption is obvious to any student of drama or television, but it has not been quite so obvious to students of medieval narrative until the oral-formulaic approach to epic narrative was intro­ duced by Milman Parry and Albert Lord.1 In recent years, however, medievalists have become increasingly aware of the fact that most medieval texts in the vernacular are meant to be orally performed just as much as a TV play or a musical.2 It has already become a commonplace to say that we cannot fully understand a romance, a saga, or an epic such as Beowulf without knowing how, when and why the text was meant to be communicated to its original audience. This in turn poses such questions as: Who were the performers? How was the audience composed? What kind of techniques were used, what kind of stage props, instruments (if any)? Was the text meant to be sung or recited, enacted or just read, memorized or improvised? Everybody agrees of course that these questions are exceedingly dif­ ficult to answer when we are dealing with medieval texts, but it would nevertheless seem better to make educated guesses than just to ignore the 1 See in particular Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960, and later editions). 2 For a convenient survey of the modern discussion about “the oral-formulaic approach” and related matters, cf. Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 1977).

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questions or to dismiss them altogether for lack of sufficient evidence. Refusal to discuss medieval texts as performances may perpetuate the old tradition of reading sagas and epics as if they were modern novels meant for silent armchair reading —which they certainly were not. In a recently published book I have focused attention on one particular aspect of the oral performance, one which I have chosen to call “the double scene”.3 A double scene is something that occurs in the course of an oral performance whenever the narrative appears to be enacted by the performer or his audience on the very spot where the entertainment takes place. Every theatrical performance provides a double scene in this sense: the actor playing Hamlet is, at one and the same time, appearing on a modern stage and in the ancient castle of Elsinore. But the same phenomenon may occur in a non-theatrical performance, for example when a mother is telling “Little Red Riding Hood” as a bedside story to her child: in the course of that performance, the bed of the listening child may, through the conjuring art of the storyteller, be transformed into grandmother’s bed in which the Wolf is waiting to eat Little Red Riding Hood. The illusion is partly based on the fact that there is a similarity between the scene of performance (the nursery) and the fictional scene of the narrative (grandmother’s cottage); they both contain beds. Certain oral genres, for example the drinking song and the serenade, are based on a systematic exploitation of such “double scene” effects. Drinking songs are performed by people engaged in the very activity that they are singing about, namely drinking, thus making the imaginary drinking table in the song merge with the real drinking table of the singers. Serenades are performed by lovers outside the windows of their mistres­ ses, and they normally are about the love felt by such lovers while waiting outside the windows of their loved ones, making the girl in the window imagine that she is Donna Elvira listening to the passionate outbursts of Don Giovanni instead of just an office girl listening to some travelling salesman with pimples. The device of the double scene may thus provide a convenient escape from reality. And so it did in the Middle Ages just as much as it does today. It appears likely that the transmission of oral narratives in medieval societies generally, and certainly in medieval Nor­ way and Iceland, was to a large extent based on similar devices for trans­ forming the scene of performance into an imaginary world of epic and romance. 3 Den dubbla scenen. Muntlig diktning från Eddan til ABBA (Stockholm: Prisma, 1978).

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The scene of action in sagas and Eddie poems often corresponds to the kind of scene where sagas and Eddie poems are said to have been per­ formed, according to medieval sources. There are thus many Eddie poems and saga episodes dealing with various types of recitations, games, con­ tests and other entertainments at the drinking table, usually in some kind of large hall with benches, high seats and other stage props suggesting a feast of courtly dimensions.4 And we know from numerous sources that this was the kind of social context in which such texts were in fact per­ formed, even though the performance was more likely to take place in the farmhouse of a chieftain than in a royal hall. For this reason, saga pro­ logues may contain warnings such as the following from Elis saga: Now listen carefully! Learned entertainment (fçgrfrœði) is better than over-eating. One is certainly allowed to eat during the recital but not drink excessively. It is an honor to recite if the audience is attentive but it is a waste of time if they do not care to listen.5 One of the most popular “mead-hall motifs” in the Edda and in the fornaldarsçgur is the arrival in the royal hall of some mysterious wander­ ing beggar who gets permission to sit on one of the lowest benches while the warriors are drinking and bragging about their exploits. The stranger is treated scornfully at first, but he later turns out to be surprisingly know­ ledgeable about ancient lore and/or skilful at various games, and he is eventually revealed to be Odin himself or some great legendary hero in disguise, capable of utterly defeating even the greatest of the king’s men. We may call this motif the Ulysses Motif, since the Norse stories are in fact reminiscent of Ulysses’ return to Ithaca in the Odyssey. We may also call it the Widsith Motif, since the hero is often pictured as a traveller who has met various legendary kings, participated in famous battles and is able to tell about his experience in song. One function of this motif is evidently to make the audience identify the performer with the traveller and hence to see their own drinking party enhanced and glamorized by the presence of a poetic messenger from a lost world of myth and legend. Another, more

4 See my article “Hjálmar’s Death-Song and the Delivery of Eddie Poetry,” Speculum, XLVI (1971), 1-20. 5 Elis saga, ed. E. Kolbing (Heilbronn, 1881), quoted and commented on by Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen in: Norrøn fortællekunst (Copenhagen, 1965), p. 108.

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trivial function of the Ulysses/Widsith Motif is to let the traveller’s revela­ tions serve as a narrative framework for condensed versions of mythical or legendary lore which the performer wishes to use for some reason. I shall return to both these functions later. Suffice it to say in this context that the theme occurs both in gnomic poems, such as the Eddie Vafþrúðnismál, where it is mainly an excuse for sheer didacticism, and in heroic sagas, where it serves as a starting point for heroic confrontations (as is the case in the story of Arrow-Odd). Another traditional motif allowing “double scene” effects when per­ formed at a drinking party is that of the senna, ‘flyting’, or mannjafnadr, ‘comparison of men’.6 The senna is a competitive exchange of boasts and insults, while the mannjafnadr is a somewhat more formalized version of the same sport, usually taking place at the drinking table and sometimes referred to as çlteiti, ‘beer entertainment’, in which case it may be com­ bined with a drinking contest. The senna and the mannjafnadr are similar enough to be treated as more or less identical, but we shall here be mainly concerned with the mannjafnadr form, which is more closely associated with the traditional “mead-hall setting”. Regarded primarily as a “party game”, the mannjafnadr is a battle of wits, in which the contestants take turn in making boasts and insulting each other according to certain formal rules. The fun of the game consists in finding witty and formally “correct” repartees, matching the opponent’s previous boast while at the same time turning it to ridicule. As a literary motif, on the other hand, the mannjafnadr is used to bring out the differ­ ences in character between two warriors and to prepare for the revelation of some hero’s true identity. In nuclear form we find this usage of the motif in the so-called “Unferth scene” of Beowulf: the hero, Beowulf, quarrels at the drinking table of Hrothgar’s hall with a certain Unferth, one of the king’s retainers. By letting Beowulf match his own claims of heroic deeds against Unferth’s insults, the difference between the two speakers is emphasized, and their true identities are revealed as a

6 See the articles “Senna” and "Mannjevning”, both by Anne Holtsmark, in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, XV (1970) and XI (1966); sec also Joaquin Mar­ tinez Pizarro, “Studies on the Function and Context of the Senna in Early Germanic Narra­ tive,” Diss. Harvard, 1976; Carol J. Clover, Hárbarðsljóð as generic farce,” Scandinavian Studies, LI (1979), 124-145, and “The Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode,” forth­ coming in Speculum (Spring, 1980); Joseph Harris, “The senna : From Description to Liter­ ary Theory” (unpublished).

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preparation for later events.7 A more formalized but similar battle of wits is presented in the Eddie poem Hárbarðsljóð, in which Thor and a ferry­ man, Hárbard, are exchanging boasts and insults; here the main point is that the ferryman’s enumeration of his deeds gradually identifies him as Odin himself (in one of his innumerable disguises).8 Another famous example is found in Heimskringla, where the kings Eystein and Sigurd confront each other in a similar flyting at the drinking table; the main point here is to establish an effective literary contrast between king Eystein’s wise statesmanship and king Sigurd’s bravery on the battlefield.9 In all of these examples the mannjafnadr gives opportunities for an oral performer to act out, in an amusing manner, conflicts which are likely to be present in a Norse audience consisting of drinking party guests. By playing the roles of contesting and quarrelsome heroes, who belong to the world of myth but behave as if they were members of the audience, the performer is able to bridge the gap between the heroic dream and the considerably less heroic reality of the drinking table. This is also, I think, what the story of Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest is trying to accomplish. It combines the Ulysses/Widsith Motif with the mannjafnadr motif in a way which enables the performer to establish a “double scene” according to the following pattern: 1. Scene o f the narrative Performer Audience Setting

Arrow-Odd The court of king Herraud Drinking party in a royal hall

2. Scene o f the performance Storyteller The household of an Icelandic farm Drinking party in a farmhouse

Before analyzing the story, however, we must briefly consider its textual history. Our text dates from the late fourteenth century, but it is clear that 7 Cf. Clover (note 6); James L. Rosier, “Design for Treachery: The Unferth Intrigue,” PM LA , LXXVII (1962); Norman E. Eliason, "The Þyle and Scop in Beowulf," Speculum, XXXVIII (1963), 267-284. 8 Cf. Clover (1979); Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest is referred to in this article, p. 128 f. 9 Cf. chapter 3, “En kunglig kontrovers,” of my book, Den dubbla scenen.

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it has developed over several centuries. There is, first of all, an earlier redaction from the late thirteenth century containing basically the same story and identical verses, presented in the same order, but with consid­ erable differences in the wording of the prose. A comparison between the verses and the prose indicates, furthermore, that the verses must be older than any extant version of the prose saga itself; although they may well be later than most poems in the Elder Edda, their original composition is considered by most scholars to have taken place not later than about 1200, i.e., well before the classical age of saga-writing. There are refer­ ences to Arrow-Odd and his exploits in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum and other early sources suggesting that there were stories circulating about him at least as early as the twelfth century, and the episode of the drinking contest was probably one of them, as we shall soon see.10 In order to understand this episode - chapter 27 of our saga text - the following is necessary to know. Arrow-Odd, a great legendary hero, who has already completed a long series of adventures and heroic deeds, has arrived at the court of a certain king Herraud, whose kingdom is located somewhere in Russia, Garðaríki, or possibly - according to another saga version —in “The Land of the Huns”, Húnaland. Since the hero does not want to have his identity revealed, he covers himself with birch-bark and appears at the court as a half-witted beggar, “The Barkman” (Noeframadr). He is despised by the king’s most prominent warriors, two un­ pleasant toughies by the name of Sjólf and Sigurd, and he is placed dis­ honorably in a far-away corner of the hall. In this humble corner he makes friends with two pleasant but lesser men, Óttar and Ingjald, whose main weakness is that they drink more than is good for them. Odd helps Óttar and Ingjald to shape up and improve their skill as warriors, but in so doing he reveals his own capability as a hero and impresses them so much that they start boasting about the powers of their new friend the next time they get drunk. As a result of these boasts, Odd is challenged by Sjólf and Sigurd to various contests, which he wins, one after the other. He first defeats them in shooting with bow and arrows, then in swimming. At this point the king becomes suspicious and starts worrying about the identity of this mysterious beggar. Odd’s identity is 10 See in particular R. C. Boer’s edition, Qrvar-Odds saga (Leiden, 1888), the basis for all later editions and studies of the saga. Concerning the earliest references to Arrow-Odd in Gesta Danorum, etc., see also Christopher Tolkien’s introduction and notes to The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (London, 1960).

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finally revealed in chapter 27, which tells about the third and final contest between Odd and his two adversaries. The contest is a kind of mannjafnadr in which the participants are supposed to recite poems about their own exploits for each round of drinking. In order to win, Odd must drink and recite more than both of his opponents together. The stakes are now higher than before, since Óttar and Ingjald stand the risk of losing their heads. After a long and dramatic battle, Sjólf and Sigurd are finally defeated, Odd’s true identity is re­ vealed, and the king invites him to sit in the high seat. Shortly afterwards he marries the king’s daughter, the beautiful Silkisif, who thus turns out to be the real prize brought home by the winner of the previous contests. This marks the high point of Odd’s career. Chapter 27 may therefore be said to represent the climax of Qrvar-Odds saga as a whole, and it is certainly one of its most “stable” and faithfully preserved parts, as can be seen from the fact that its content is roughly identical in all manuscript versions, most particularly in the wording of the poetry recited at the drinking table by Odd and his adversaries. The verses furthermore contain archaic features indicating that the chapter has a firm basis in early tradi­ tions about Arrow-Odd.11 The action takes place in a large “mead-hall”, where people are seated according to their position within a social hierarchy, based on honor, nobility and heroic achievement. It is essential to have a clear under­ standing of this hierarchy and the way it affects the relations between the main characters. In the following model I have tried to represent the social structure within the hall of King Herraud at the beginning of the chapter. HONOR, FAME

The king Silkisif Hárek

Sigurd

r

Sjólf

t

Óttár

Ingjaid Odd (Barkma n) DISHONOR, OBSCURITY

11 The verses have been separately edited with commentary by A. Heusler and W. Ranisch in Eddica Minora (Dortmund, 1902).

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The king is at the top of the hierarchy; his position, symbolized by the High Seat, remains unchanged throughout the chapter. His main function during the contest is to serve as a judge and to bestow honor upon the winner. The king’s daughter, Silkisif, comes next in the hierarchy. She plays an entirely passive role in this chapter - so much so that she is not even mentioned by name —but her function is nevertheless important, since she is later going to be Odd’s wife and the ultimate reward for his various achievements. Next comes the king’s adviser, Hárek, who is also presented as the foster-father of Silkisif. He represents the wisdom of the kingship (in contrast to the foolishness of Sigurd and Sjólf) and is the first to suspect that Odd is really a great hero. In this redaction of the saga his role is entirely passive, but we can see from the earlier redaction that he was originally meant to play a more active role as the wise old counsellor who spies on the hero and reports back to the king, proposes new methods for testing the hero’s true identity, and so on. This role is quite traditional and not uncommonly combined with that of being the heroine’s foster-father. We now come to Odd’s two opponents, Sigurd and Sjólf, the tough and arrogant retainers, characterized in the text as the king’s çndvegishçldar ‘first men’, literally those who sit in the çndvegi, i.e. in the high seat opposite to that of the lord of the house. They are characterized according to a stereotyped berserk pattern, often found in the mythical-heroic sagas: berserks often come in pairs; they usually go around bullying people weaker than themselves, and they normally challenge the hero to various dangerous contests which they invariably lose in a most humiliating fashion. The two brothers Óttar and Ingjald function as the opposite numbers of Sigurd and Sjólf at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It has been made clear in the previous chapters that they are honorable men who owe their low social position to the fact that they drink too much and hence tend to be clumsy at sports and to engage themselves in foolish wagers. This is also a traditional role in mythical-heroic sagas - that of the hero’s weak com­ panions, who bring him into trouble but are nevertheless rewarded in the end for their loyalty by being promoted at the expense of some berserk bullies. Hjalti in Hrólfs saga kraka is another example of this type, who may eventually develop into a hero in his own right. Characters of this sort are ideal as identification objects for the audience. As they rise from obscurity and disgrace, the audience will feel edified and strengthened in their belief that such rise from obscurity is indeed possible.

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Finally, there is Odd himself, who in his role as the humble beggar, Barkman (Nœframaðr), is at the very bottom of the hierarchy but who is of course really, as the audience will know from previous chapters, the greatest man in the hall, well worthy of succeeding the king to the throne. According to Paul Edwards and Hermann Pálsson, the fact that he is covered in birch-bark should be interpreted as meaning that he is in reality some kind of tree-spirit associated with fertility;12 it may well be, how­ ever, that the bark in this case merely signifies low social standing; to­ wards the end of the chapter, it is contrasted to the beautiful and princely garments that Odd wears under his humble disguise. For the major development in this chapter is of course that those at the bottom of the social hierarchy - Odd, Óttar and Ingjald - are moving u p , while the two unpleasant çndvegishçldar, Sigurd and Sjólf, are moving d o w n . These movements are symbolized in my model by the arrows. We shall try to follow Odd’s rise from obscurity to fame and greatness step by step as we analyze the development of the chapter. At the same time, we shall try to follow the experience of a medieval audience listening while the story is unfolded. The chapter may be divided into subsections as follows: I. Introduction: The Contest is prepared. II. The Contest: 2x2 stanzas and drinking horns per round. The match is ended after Round 8. III. Conclusion: Revelation and Reward. The Contest is prepared in two different ways. It is first prepared by Hárek’s and the king’s speculations about Odd’s identity, speculations which set the stage for some kind of dénouement. It is secondly and more directly prepared by Sjólfs and Sigurd’s wager with óttar and Ingjald concerning Odd’s ability to drink. This is the third time that the brothers, under the influence of drink, make wagers about Odd’s ability to defeat the two retainers, and the scene is thus a repetition of scenes that have been presented earlier. Like the two earlier times, Sjólf and Sigurd start out by offering drinking horns to Óttar and Ingjald, thereby making them drunk enough to accept a new and daring bet. The motif of the drinking horns is later repeated in the contest itself, thereby emphasizing the dif­ 12 See their introduction to Arrow- Odd: A Medieval Novel (New York and London, 1970), p. XV f., cf. below note 18.

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ference between Odd and his two companions with regard to drinking. Odd knows how to drink; Óttar and Ingjald do not. In the conversation between the two couples, two different rules con­ cerning drinking are contrasted. The first rule expressed in the beginning by Óttar and Ingjald, says that it is better not to drink at all than to drink oneself silly. The second rule, implied in Sjólfs scornful remark about Odd’s practice of lying out among the trees and lakes, says that an ac­ complished hero should be able to drink a lot; by not drinking at all one may thus risk being regarded as a person of low social origin who sleeps outdoors and is not accustomed to courtly manners. Although these two rules would seem to contradict each other, they were probably both known and accepted by the audience of the saga. As it turns out, Odd wins because of his rare ability to mediate between these two conflicting norms: on the one hand, he does not drink unless he has to; on the other hand, he can hold his liquor better than anybody else if he really has to drink. By letting Óttar and Ingjald bet their lives on Odd’s drinking ability, the saga narrator provides him with an excellent excuse for drinking more than the established norm allows. The audience may thus freely indulge the al­ coholic excesses that are soon to follow without feeling particularly guilty about it. The contest itself is divided into eight rounds. Since Odd is contesting against two opponents, four drinking horns are supposed to be emptied and four mannjafnadr stanzas recited in each round, two by Odd, one by Sjólf and one by Sigurd. The conventional mannjafnadr stanza consists of a boast about a heroic deed followed by an accusation that the opponent was doing something dishonorable at the same time - typically something that shows cowardice, sexual perversion or preoccupation with “low status work” at a farm. The most common formula is: “You were not present at place X when I and my comrades did Y, because you were then home doing Z.” In this formula X is always a well-known battlefield in a faraway country, Y is a battle or duel of some kind against a terrible opponent, and Z is a non-heroic occupation such as begging food from farmers, milking cows, or gossiping with the servant girls. (Cf. Clover (1979), p. 127 f.) In the first two rounds all the participants manage to do everything that is expected of them, i.e., Odd empties two drinking horns and recites two stanzas, while Sigurd and Sjólf each empties one horn and recites one stanza. Eight stanzas have thus been recited after the completion of the second round. In the third round, Sigurd is unable to recite more poetry, while Sjólf gives up the poetry in the fourth round - either because he is

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too drunk or because he does not have any more accomplishments to brag about. Both retainers, however, are still able to drink. Odd, on the other hand, continues to recite his two stanzas per round, so that 20 stanzas in all have been recited after the completion of the seventh round. At this point Sigurd and Sjólf collapse and are unable to drink more, but Odd goes on drinking while reciting six more stanzas. These concluding stanzas are not mannjafnadr stanzas like the previous ones - they do not contain boasts about specific deeds - but summarize Odd’s heroic career by listing his various comrades-at-arms and opponents and expressing some final thoughts about his own accomplishments. The stanzas recited by Odd may also be read as one continuous poem, in which case his first stanza may be interpreted as the exordium and his last six stanzas as the conclusion. If one reads the verses in this way, one will find that they sum up the content of the previous saga chapters by listing Odd’s major adventures in an order roughly (but not quite) corresponding to the chronology of the saga itself, beginning with the hero’s youth and ending with his most important battles as a grown man. His early adventures in Bjarmaland (Permia), described at the beginning of the saga, are thus referred to in one of the first mannjafnadr stanzas, and his participation in the famous battle of Sámsey, which in the saga takes place shortly before his arrival at King Herraud’s court, is mentioned towards the end. But there are several discrepancies between the verses and the prose text, indicating that the verses had a tradition of their own, evidently older than the present form of the saga. It is interesting to observe the relationship between some of the stanzas and previous episodes of the saga, not only because the audience’s knowl­ edge of at least some of these episodes must have been taken for granted by the saga-writer (and the oral performer), but also because the dis­ crepancies can give us some insights into the way oral tradition about Arrow-Odd functioned before the saga was written. Sigurd and Sjólf start Round One by claiming to have fought two sepa­ rate battles for their lord, Herraud. They picture Odd as a beggar who goes from farm to farm asking for food. The contrast emphasizes their high status as royal retainers against Odd’s low status as the Barkman. Odd counters by accusing Sigurd and Sjólf of being sessunautar, ‘seat warmers', reluctant to leave their comfortable life at the drinking table in the king’s hall. He also accuses them of lying flat on the kitchen floor (sodgdlfi) while Odd himself was killing four adversaries in Aquitaine. This

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contrast emphasizes heroic deeds abroad against staying comfortably at home —a contrast which is then repeated several times in the later stanzas. It is thus evident that Odd represents another heroic ideal than that of Sigurd and Sjólf. Their ideal is to stay with their lord; Odd’s is to fight as a free viking far away from home. The story about Odd’s adventure in Aquitaine is told in prose earlier in the saga, but it is told so completely differently in the two redactions that the versions have almost nothing in common apart from the basic infor­ mation contained in the poetic stanza: that Odd fought against four opponents in Aquitaine and killed them. The identity of the opponents and the circumstances of the killing, however, are quite different.13 This fact suggests that at least one of the two versions, at some point in the oral transmission or in the textual history of the saga, was either deliberately changed or freely made up on the basis of the information contained in the mannjafnaðr poem. This in turn suggests that the poem may have functioned as an aid to the storyteller’s memory and as one of the main sources of the saga itself. On the whole, poetry appears to have been much more faithfully preserved than saga prose in the oral tradition, and in fornaldarsçgur verses often form the nucleus around which the entire saga is built up. This may well be the case in Qrvar-Odds saga, which is very loosely structured and contains episodes which often appear to represent free renderings of various verse lines quoted within the narrative itself.14 In the second round of the mannjafnaðr Sigurd and Sjólf counter Odd’s boast about having fought abroad by claiming that they themselves have fought the Greeks and the Saracens. Odd replies by first referring to a fight against a certain Qlvir,15 a warrior who, surprisingly enough, is not mentioned elsewhere in the saga; the story about Odd’s battle against him may have been lost in the course of the oral transmission. He then boasts about his fights in Bjarmaland (Permia), related in the first chapters of the saga. This is the first clear indication of his true identity, for —as the saga makes clear several times and again at the end of our chapter —Odd was 13 Cf. Boer’s edition (1888), pp. 115, 117 (earlier redaction), 116, 118 (later redaction). 14 For a more detailed discussion about the relationship between prose and poetry in fornaldarsçgur generally and Qrvar-Odds saga in particular, 1 refer to my paper about Hjálmar’s Death-Song (note 4). 15 Our text also mentions a certain Hadding as Odd’s adversary in this stanza, but this must be a secondary reading introduced by some scribe who thought that the stanza dealt with the famous battle of Sámsey (where one of Odd’s adversaries had this name). The earlier redaction has the adjective “harðan” instead of Hadding, which makes better sense. Cf. Boer’s edition (1888), p. 161.

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particularly known as “the man who went to Bjarmaland”, a legendary land full of great dangers. “Are you the Odd who went to Bjarmaland” is the question asked of Odd over and over again throughout the saga. The audience may be expected to remember this from previous episodes and thus to appreciate the fact that he is here almost telling who he really is. It is not necessary to comment on all the mannjafnadr stanzas recited by Odd in the following rounds. The examples already given should suffice to show how intimately their content is associated with the narrative as a whole, even though the poetry presents a somewhat different picture of Odd’s career than the prose does. It also appears evident that the recita­ tion of the verses is intended to build up suspense for the dénouement at the end of the chapter, i.e., for the unraveling of “the Barkman’s” identity as Arrow-Odd. The hero’s risk of becoming “exposed” naturally in­ creases as his recitation moves on from his less well-known to his most famous exploits, which all members of the audience (the one in the story as well as the one listening to it) can be expected to have heard about. As the mannjafnadr escalates towards bigger and more revealing boasts, the audience is also gradually persuaded to accept Odd’s particular heroic ideal (that of the free viking) instead of that of the royal retainers. In the seventh round, the last and culminating boasts are made. Odd here describes the Battle of Sámsey, one of the most celebrated battles in Norse legendary history - and one that was fought far away from the splendor and comfort of the royal mead-hall, as one of the previous chap­ ters has made clear to the audience. For we have learned in this chapter that Odd and his best friend, Hjálmar, had to fight on the island of Sámsey against twelve berserks until all the berserks were dead and Hjálmar sank down mortally wounded, in his last words reminding his friend Odd of the contrast between their heroic suffering and the pleasures of the mead-hall: Drekkr með jöfri jarla mengi öl gladliga at Uppsölum. Mœðir marga mungát fira, en mik eggja spor í eyju þjá. 16

The earls are all drinking ale, taking their pleasure in the king’s company at Uppsala. Many a man is wearied by drink; alone, weakened by wounds I endure on this island.16 (Translation: Hermann Pálsson)

Cf. my article in Speculum (note 4), p. 14 f.

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It is this same rhetorical antithesis which Odd uses against Sigurd and Sjólf and which constitutes the basic theme of the entire chapter about the mannjafnaðr. His last insult against the two retainers again emphasizes their all-too snug and comfortable way of life: “I took eighteen lives, while you, poor wretch, were reeling your way late at night to the bondmaid’s bed” (en þú gjögraðir, / gárungr vesall, / síð um aftan / til sœngr þýjar). As we have seen, the six concluding stanzas are not regular mannjafnaðr strophes, but they sum up Odd’s message in a final speech over his de­ feated opponents (this speech may be regarded either as Round Eight or as an epilogue). The first three of these stanzas enumerate Odd’s com­ panions in his various fights, beginning with his last and most famous companion, Hjálmar, who is favorably contrasted to Sigurd and Sjólf ac­ cording to the same pattern as before. The conclusion to be drawn from the previous stanzas now turns out to be, paradoxically, that the royal retainers, through their very reluctance to leave the royal court, have made themselves unworthy of serving their lord: ‘‘Nowhere will you be considered worthy company for a king.” Although Odd himself and his old companions are not royal retainers, they have in fact been of better use to the kings they served in their days: “Many the times I managed a spear when kings clashed in war.” Odd next enumerates the various peoples he has fought against: “I’ve fought against the Swedes and the Saxons, the Irish, the English . . .” (Hefk à Saxa I ok a Svía herjat, / íra ok á Engla, etc.). The formulas as well as the general situation are reminiscent of Widsith: Mid Wendlum ic wees ond mid Wærnum ond mid Wicingum, etc.17 The poems evidently belong to the same mead-hall tradition and are meant for a similar kind of per­ formance, in which the role of performer merges with that of the Old Wanderer lecturing to the “seat-warmers” at the royal drinking party.18 In the very last stanza of the poem Odd says that he has now listed all the exploits that he and his comrades-at-arms performed in the past: aftr gengum vér til öndvegis, sigri gæddir; látum Sjólf mæla!

rich in victories we returned home to the high-seat. Let Sjolf speak now!

17 Cf. Kemp Malone’s edition of Widsith (Copenhagen, 1962). 18 It may be noted that in the early redaction of the saga Odd does not call himself Nœframaðr (Barkman) but Vidfçrull (The One Who Travels Widely), a name which almost exactly corresponds to Widsith; See also Margaret Schlauch, "Widsith, Víöförull and some other analogues,” PM LA, XLVI (1931), 969-987.

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These concluding lines recall in the minds of the audience the motif of seating arrangements, the starting point for the whole chapter. The point is of course that Odd and his companions, by fighting in far-away coun­ tries, have earned the honor of being placed in the high seat, which until now has been occupied by Sigurd and Sjólf. Since the prose text has already indicated that the two qndvegisholdar are too drunk to speak, the last line (“Let Sjólf speak now”) must be interpreted as purely rhetorical and ironic. Odd is merely emphasizing the fact that his opponents have lost and should move down in the hierarchy of the mead-hall, while he and his comrades should move up. And that is exactly what now happens, except for the fact that Odd’s former and truly heroic comrades-at-arms (Hjálmar and the rest) have suddenly been replaced by his not quite so heroic friends Óttar and Ingjald, the two despised drunkards. This replacement is essential, for it is only by means of Óttar’s and Ingjald’s (undeserved) promotion to the high seat that a medieval audience consisting of ordinary drunkards can bridge the gap between their world and the glorious mythical world of great kings and heroes. It is evidently for this reason that Odd’s former com­ rades-at-arms are referred to so many times throughout the mannjafnadr poem, even though they should not really be there, since Odd is contesting alone against Sigurd and Sjólf. By including them nevertheless, the great hero gives an opportunity for lesser men to ride on his coattails to the top of the Hierarchy of honor. The reversal in social position which results from winning the contest is neatly symbolized in the scene where Óttar and Ingjald help Odd to rid himself of his Barkman disguise, so that the beautiful clothes that he wears under the bark can be revealed. One is reminded of the scene in the Odyssey (song XVI) where Ulysses reveals himself to his son in the home of the swineherd Eumaios. In both cases the contrast between humble appearance and heroic identity is represented through different sets of garments, one poor and one rich. In both cases the desired transition from low status to high status can only be accomplished through an alliance between the disguised hero (Odd, Ulysses) and those who are truly at the bottom of the social hierarchy (Óttar and Ingjald; the swineherd Eumaios). For the audience, the motif may serve as an argument for belief in the idea of upward social mobility, but it is first of all a beautiful dramatic model for understanding (and perhaps accepting) the Ginnungagap between appearance and reality in one’s own world.

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The story of Arrow-Odd’s drinking contest represents an archaic narrative form in Germanic tradition, even though its present version dates from the fourteenth century. Some of its basic structural elements and formulas are present in Beowulf and Widsith. Like both these early Anglo-Saxon poems the mannjafnadr stanzas and their surrounding prose deal with the world and the basic values of the royal mead-hall, and they were probably meant to be performed in front of an audience who cherished these values and who could be expected to play the roles of drinking hall-dwellers as the performance went on. The “double scene” effects of the performance may have given the listeners a chance to reinforce their self-confidence and basic values. Their drinking party could be transformed into a mead-hall in which anybody true of heart could receive the honor of sitting in the high seat. The mannjafnadr may in turn have been the traditional nucleus out of which the saga - or at least a part of it - developed in the course of oral transmission. It could have served as a convenient plot summary for the performers, thus making their storytelling easier. Other mannjafnadr poems and stories based on the Ulysses/Widsith Motif may have served the same function. Behind the mask of the obscure wandering poet, Widsith or Barkman or whatever he may call himself, we are likely to find a medieval performer conjuring up an illusion before the eyes of his audience. Aalborg University Centre

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Appendix: Q r v a r -O d d s sa g a , chapter 27

FRÁ KAPPDRYKKJU

A DRINKING CONTEST

Maðr er nefndr Hárekr, er þar var með konungi. Hann hafði mikla virðing af konungi. Hann var gamall maðr. Hann fóstraði konungsdóttur. Jafnan hjalaði konungr við hann um þetta mál, en hann kveðst eigi vita ok sagði svá, at honum leizt þat líkligt, at maör sjá mundi vera stórrar ættar. Pat var eitt kveld, þá er konungr var til svefns farinn, at þeir Sjólfr ok Sigurðr ganga utar fyrir þá bræðr ok færa þeim horn tvau, ok drukku þeir af þeim. Pá tók Sjólfr til orða: »Liggr Oddr inn mikli?« »Já,« segja þeir, »þat er svinnligra en at drekka frá sér vitit allt, sem vér gerum.« »Pat mun valda, at hann mun vanari vera at liggja úti á mörkum eða vötnum en at drekka með góðum mönnum eða hvárt mun hann mikill drykkjumaðr?« »Já,« segja þeir. »Hvárt mun hann meiri drykkjumaðr einn en vit báðir?« sagði Sjólfr. »Pat ætlum vit,« sagði Óttarr, »at hann drekki miklu meira.« »Hér skulum vér veðja um,« sagði Sjólfr, »ok munum vit leggja við hring þann, er stendr tólf aura, en þit skuluð leggja við höfuð ykkur.« Þetta mál festa þeir með sér sem in fyrri. Nú spyrr Oddr um morguninn, hvat talat væri. Þeir segja honum.

There was a man called Harek staying with the king, held in high honour. He was an old man and had fostered the king’s daughter, and the king used to talk over this mystery with him. Harek told him that he didn’t know the answer but thought it likely that this man came from a noble family. One evening after the king had re­ tired, Sjolf and Sigurd went down to the brothers with two drinking horns, and they finished them off. Then Sjolf said, “ Is Odd the Great asleep?” “ Yes,” they answered, “ and it makes a lot more sense than drinking yourself silly like we were doing.” “ It could be he’s had more practice at lying out among the trees and lakes than drinking with respectable people. A great drinker, is he?” “ Yes,” they said. “ Would he be a greater drinker than the two of us together?” asked Sjolf. “ We think he could drink a lot more,” said Ottar. “ We’ll have a bet on it,” said Sjolf. “This twelve-ounce bracelet against your heads.” They made a binding agreement about this just as before. In the morn­ ing Odd asked the brothers what they’d been discussing and they told him.

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»Nú hafi þit svá heimskliga veðjat,« sagði Oddr, »at miklu hafi þit nú við aukit um þær, er fyrri váru, en lagt hér við höfuð ykkur, en eigi er vist, at ek sé því meiri ílögum sem ek em meiri vexti en aðrir menn, en ek skal eigi at síðr til ráða drykkjunnar við þá.« Síðan er sagt konungi, at hann vill til ráða drykkjunnar, ok skal konungsdóttir hjá sitja ok Hárekr, fóstri hennar. Nú ganga þeir Sigurðr ok Sjólfr utar fyrir Odd. »Þar er horn,« sagði Sigurðr, ok varð honum ljóð á munni:

»Oddr, klauft eigi at orrostu, hrökk hjálmat hð, Hamðis skyrtur: guðr geisaði, gekk eldr í bæ, þá er á Vindum vá sigr konungr« Sjólfr færir honum annal horn ok biðr hann af drekka ok kvað visu: »Oddr, vart eigi at eggroði, þás seggi allvalds svelta létum; bark sár þaðan sex ok átta, en þú með byggðum batt þér matar.« Síðan ganga þeir til sætis sins, en Oddr reis upp ok gekk fyrir Sigurd ok færir honum horn, en annat Sjólfi ok kvad sina visu til hvárs þeira, ådr hann gekk i burtu:

“ Now you’ve made a really stupid bet,” said Odd. “ Risking your own heads is adding a lot to the previous stakes. I’m not at all sure I can hold all that much more than other men, though I’m a lot bigger than they are. Still, I’ll go to the drinking match and take them on.” The king was told that Odd was wil­ ling to compete. The king’s daughter and her foster-father Harek were to sit with him and watch. Sigurd and Sjolf went up to Odd. “ Here’s a horn,” said Sigurd, and then he sang this verse: Odd, you’ve never split mail-coats in battle when the helmed warriors took to their heels. The war was raging, fire raced through the town when our king won victory over the Wends. Sjolf gave him another horn and asked him to drink up. He recited this verse: You weren’t there, Odd, at the clash of weapons when we let the great king’s men taste death. From there I brought home fourteen wounds, while you were out begging food from the farmers. Then they went back to their seats. Odd rose to his feet and went before Sigurd with a horn and gave another one to Sjolf. He sang one verse to each of them before he went away:

112 »Pit skulud hlýða hróðri mínum, Sigurðr ok Sjólfr, sessunautar, ykkr ák gjalda greypan verka, hróðr harðsnúinn huglausum tveim. Pú látt, Sjólfr, soðgólfi á dáða vanr ok dýrs hugar, en ek út Ákvítánum fjóra menn fjörvi næmdak.« Þeir drukku af hornunum, en Oddr gekk at sitja. Síðan ganga þeir enn fyrir Odd, ok selr Sjólfr honum horn ok kvað visu: »Þú hefir, Oddr, farit með ölmusum ok bitlinga af borði þegit, en ek einn af Úlfsfjalli höggvinn skjöld í hendi bar.« Sigurðr færir honum annat horn ok kvað þetta: »Oddr, vart eigi út með Girkjum, þá er á Serkjum sverð vár ruðum; gerðum harðan hljóm ísarna, fellu firðar í fólkroði.«

Lars Lönnroth

Listen to my song, you seat-warmers, Sigurd and Sjolf; time to repay you for a nasty piece of knotty poetry, you pair of milksops. You, Sjolf, were flat on the kitchen floor, not a single deed, one mark of courage had you dared, when from those four men in Aquitaine I took their lives.

They drained their horns, and Odd went back to his seat. Then Sigurd and Sjolf went over to him again, and Sjolf gave him a horn with this verse: You, Odd, have been wandering with the beggars, taking tidbits from the table. But on my own I bore back my hacked shield from Ulfsfell. Sigurd brought him another horn, and said: Odd, you weren’t with the Greeks, when we reddened our swords on the Saracens; we made the harsh music of steel, in the battle we felled the fighters.

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Nú drekkr Oddr af hornunum, en þeir gengu at sitja. Síðan riss Oddr upp ok gekk með sitt horn at hvárum þeira ok kvað þetta:

Odd drained the horns, and they went back to their seats. Then he stood up and went with a horn to each of them, and sang this:

»Slótt við meyjar málþing, Sjólfr, meðan loga létum leika um kynni; unnum harðan Hadding drepinn, ok Ölvi var aldrs of synjat.

Sjolf, you were gossiping with girls, while we sent the flames raging through the fortress. The hard man, Hadding, we defeated; we denied long life to Olvir.

Þú látt, Sigurðr, í sal meyja, meðan við Bjarma börðumst tvisvar, háðum hildi hauksnarliga, en þú, seggr, í sal svaft und blæju.«

You, Sigurd, were lying embowered with the ladies, while twice we clashed in combat with the Permians. Hawk-minded we fought our war like heroes, while you lay dozing under the linen.

Nú gekk Oddr at sitja, en þeir drukku af hornunum, ok þótti mönnum þetta mikil skemmtan, ok gåfu allir hljóð til þessa. Eftir þat gengu þeir fyrir Odd ok færa honum horn. Pá kvað Sjólfr:

»Oddr, vart eigi á Atalsfjalli, þá er fenloga fengit höfðum; vér berserki binda gerðum, þá var af kappi konungs lid drepit.« Nú drekkr Oddr af hornunum, en þeir setjast niðr. Oddr færir þeim horn ok kvað þetta:

Then Odd went back to his seat and drained the horns. Everybody thought this great entertainment and was giving it a good hearing. Next, Sigurd and Sjolf went up to Odd and gave him two horns. Then Sjolf said:

Odd, you weren’t on Atalsfell when we won the bright gold. We bound them up, the berserks, many the king’s men that we killed. Then Odd drained the horns and they sat down. Odd brought them a horn and said:

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»Sjólfr, vart eigi, þar er sjá máttum brynjur manna blóði þvegnar; hrukku oddar í hringserkjum, en þú höll konungs heldr kannaðir.

Sjolf, you weren’t there when we watched the mail-coats washing in blood. Spear-points explored deep in the chaincoats; more to your taste exploring the king’s hall.

Sigurðr, vart eigi, þar er sex hruðum hábyrðuð skip fyr Hauksnesi; vart ok eigi vestr með Skolla, þá er Engla gram aldri næmdum.

Sigurd, you weren’t there when we cleared the six high-pooped ships off Hauksness; you weren’t around in the west, in England, when Skolli and I shortened the king’s life.

Oddr settist nú niðr, en þeir færa honum horn ok fylgir engi kveðskapr. Hann drekkr af, en þeir setjast niðr. Ok nú færir Oddr þeim horn ok kvad þetta:

Then Odd sat down, and they brought him the horn, but with no poetry this time. He drank up, and they sat down. Odd brought them a horn and said:

»Sjólfr, vart eigi, þar er sverð ruðum hvöss á jarli fyr Hléseyju; en þú hallaðist heima á milli, kynmálasamr, kálfs ok þýjar.

Sjolf, you weren’t there when we reddened sharp steel on the earl off Læso. Mad about sex, you sat at home wavering, whether to have the calf or the slave girl.

Sigurðr, vart eigi, er á Sælundi felldak bræðr böðharða, Brand ok Agnar, Ásmund, Ingjald, Álfr var inn fimmti; en þú heima látt í höll konungs, skrökmálasamr, skauð hernumin.«

You, Sigurd, weren’t on Zealand when I felled the battle-hard brothers Brand and Agnar, Asmund and Ingjald, and Alf the fifth of them. But you were lying at home in the palace, the tail-story teller, the comical captive.

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Nu gengr hann at sitja, en þeir standa upp ok færa honum horn. Oddr drakk af þeim báðum. Síðan færir hann þeim horn ok kvað þetta:

Then he went back to his seat. Sigurd and Sjolf stood up and carried over to him the drinking horns. Odd finished them both off, then he brought them a horn, and said:

»Sjólfr, vart eigi suðr á Skíðu, þar er konungar knúðu hjálma; óðum dreyra, svát í ökkla tók; vig vakta ek, vart eigi þar.

You weren’t there, Sjolf, south at Skien when the kings were crushing the helmets; ankle-deep we waded in blood, I killed men, you weren’t around.

Sigurðr, vart eigi í Svíaskerjum, þá er Hálfdani heiftir guldum; urðu randir rógmiklaðar, sverðum skornar, en hann sjálfr drepinn.«

You weren’t there, Sigurd, at Svia Skerries, when we paid Halfdan for his hostility; swords carved war-seasoned shields and Halfdan himself fell, dead.

Nú sezt Oddr niðr, en þeir færa honum hornin, ok drekkr hann af, en þeir fara at sitja. Pá færir Oddr þeim horn ok kvað:

Odd sat down, Sigurd and Sjolf brought him the two horns, and he drank up, and they went back to their seats. Then Odd brought them a horn, and said:

»Heldum aski í Elfarsund, teitir ok reifir, at Trönuvágum; þar lá Ögmundr Eyþjófsbani, trauðastr flugar, á tveim skipum.

We sailed our ship through Elfar Sound, contented, carefree, to Tronu Creeks, where Ogmund lay, Eythjofs-Killer slow to flee, in two fighting ships.

Þá létum vér lindi barða hörðu grjóti, hvössum sverðum;

We pelted the shields with hard stones, with sharp swords we hewed them.

116 þrír lifðum vér, en þeir níu. Hrókr hernuminn, hví þegar þú nú?« Þá gengr Oddr til sætis, en þeir færa honum horn. Hann drekkr af þeim ok færir þeim önnur ok kvað þetta:

Lars Lönnroth

On our side, three, and nine on the other survived. Why so silent, captive scum. Then Odd went back to his seat and Sigurd and Sjolf brought him two horns. He drained these down, then offered them two more, and said:

»Sigurðr, vart eigi Sámseyju í, þá er við Hjörvarð höggum skiptak; tveir várum vit, en þeir tólf saman; sigr hafða ek, sazt kyrr meðan.

Sigurd, you weren’t on Samso Isle when I hewed blow for blow with Hjorvard; two of us only, twelve of them. I conquered, you sat quiet.

Gekk ek um Gautland í grimmum hug sjau dægr í samt, áðr Sæund fyndak; knáttak þeira, áðr þaðan færak, átján lýða aldri næma, en þú gjögraðir, gárungr vesall, síð um aftan til sængr þýjar.«

I went across Gotaland grim at heart for seven days till I met Sæmund. Before I left I took eighteen lives, while you, poor wretch, were reeling your way late at night to the bondmaid’s bed.

Þá varð óp mikit í höllinni af þessu, er Oddr hafði kveðit, ok drekka þeir af hornum sínum, en Oddr sezt niör. Konungsmenn hlýða skemmtan þeira. Enn færa þeir Oddi hornin, ok vinnr hann skjótt um þau bæði. Eftir þat riss Oddr upp ok gengr fyrir þá ok þykkist vita, at mi sígr at þeim drykkrinn ok allt saman.

There was loud cheering in the hall when Odd had spoken this, then Sigurd and Sjolf drained their horns and Odd sat down. The king's men couldn’t get enough of this entertainment. Sigurd and Sjolf gave Odd two more horns, and he finished them off in no time. Then he rose to his feet, went up to them and saw that the drink had completely defeated them, and that

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at þeir váru fyrir lagdir í skáldskapnum. Hann selr þeim hornin ok kvað þetta:

poetry was beyond them. He gave them the horns and said:

»Þit munuð hvergi hæfir þykkja, Sigurðr ok Sjólfr, í sveit konungs; ef Hjálmars getk ins hugumstóra, þess er snarpligast sverði beitti.

Nowhere will you be considered worthy company for a king, Sigurd and Sjolf. But I bear in mind Hjalmar the Brave, who brandished his sword more briskly than anyone.

Gekk snarpr Þórðr fyr skjöldu fram, hvar er orrostu eiga skyldum; hann lét Hálfdan hníga at velli, fræknan stilli, ok hans fylgjara.

Thord would stride forward each time we fought, no protection, never a shield; the brave king Halfdan and all his companions, Thord laid the lot of them low on the earth.

Várum vit Ásmundr oft í bernsku fóstbræðr saman báðir litnir; bar ek stundar oft stöng darraðar, þar sem konungar kappi deildu.

In our boyhood together, blood-brothers Asmund and I, we were always there. Many the times I managed a spear when kings clashed in war.

Hefk á Saxa ok á Svía herjat, íra ok á Engla ok endr Skota, Frisa ok Frakka og á Flæmingja; þeim hefk öllum óþarfr verit.

I’ve fought against the Swedes and the Saxons, the Irish, the English, and once, the Scots; against Frisians, Frenchmen, and against Flemings. To all these peoples I’ve been a plague.

Nú hefk dýra drengi talda, þá er forðum mér fylgdu úti;

Now I have listed them the glorious warriors who once followed me;

Lars Lönnroth

118 munu vist eigi verða síðan frægri firðar í fólkroði.

surely never again will such brave ones go out to battle.

Nú hefk órar íðnir taldar, þær er forðum vér framdar höfðum; aftr gengum vér til öndvegis, sigri gæddir; látum Sjólf mæla.«

Now I have listed all the exploits we performed so long ago; rich in victories we returned home to the high-seat. Let Sjolf speak now!

Eftir þetta settist Oddr í sæti sitt, en þeir bræðr fellu þar sofnir niðr, ok varð nú ekki af þeim meira um drykkjuna, en Oddr drekkr lengi, ok eftir þat leggjast menn niðr ok sváfu af nóttina.

En um morguninn, er konungr kom í hásæti, þá hefir Oddr úti verit staddr ok þeir félagar hans. Hann gengr at vatni einu ok þvær sér. Þeir bræðr sjá, at rifnuð var næfrastúkan á hendi hans annarri, ok kom þar fram ermr rauð ok gullhringr á armi, ekki mjósleginn. Ok síðan rífa þeir af honum allar næfrarnar. Hann brauzt ekki við þessu, en hann er svá búinn undir, at hann er í skarlatskyrtli rauðum, hlaðbúnum, en hár lá á herðum niðr. Hann hafði knýtt gullhlaði um höfuð sér ok var allra manna vænstr. Þeir tóku í hendr honum ok leiddu hann inn í höllina fyrir hásæti konungs ok segja svá: » Þat ætlum vér, at vér vitum eigi allgerla, hvern vér höfum hér í fóstri haft.«

After that Odd went back to his seat. Sjolf and Sigurd collapsed and fell asleep, and had nothing more to do with the drinking, though Odd kept going for a long time. Then everyone went to bed and slept through the night. In the morning, by the time the king had come to the highseat, Odd and his companions were already outside. Odd went down to one of the lakes to wash himself, and the brothers noticed that the bark cuff on one sleeve was torn. Underneath there was a red sleeve and a thick gold bracelet on the arm. Then they tore all the bark off him, and he didn’t try to stop them. Under the bark he was wearing a red tunic of costly material, lace-trimmed; his hair fell down over his shoulders, there was a gold head-band round his forehead, and he looked very handsome indeed. They took him by the hand and led him into the hall up to the king’s high-seat, and said, “ It looks as if we haven’t entirely appreciated who it is we’ve been entertaining here this win­ ter.”

A rrow-O dd’s drinking contest

»Svá má vera,« sagdi konungr, »eða hverr er þessi maðr, er svá hefir dulizt fyrir oss?« »Nú heiti ek Oddr, sem ek sagða yðr fyrir löngu, sonr Gríms loðinkinna norðan ór Noregi.« »Ertu eigi sá Oddr, er fór til Bjarmalands fyrir löngu?« »Sá er maðrinn, er þar hefir komit.« »Pá er eigi kynligt, at öndvegishöldum mínum felli þungt við þik um íþróttirnar.« Nú stendr konungr upp í móti honum ok fagnar Oddi vel ok býðr honum í hásæti hjá sér. »Þat mun ek eigi þiggja því at eins, nema vér förum allir félagar.« I>at er mi sagt, at þeir færa mi sæti sin ok sitr Oddr it næsta konungi, en Hårekr færir byggð sina fram á stól fyrir konung. Konungr leggr svá mikla virðing á Odd, at engan mann mat hann meira en hann.

119 “That could be,” said the king. “ But who is this man who’s been hiding his identity from us?” “ I still call myself Odd, as I told you a while ago, and I’m the son of Grim Hairy-Cheek of Hrafnista in North Norway.” “Are you that Odd who went to Permia a long time ago?” “That’s the one. Yes, I’ve been there.” “ It’s no wonder then that my leading men didn’t do so well against you at games.” Then the king stood up and wel­ comed Odd and invited him to sit on the high-seat beside him. “ I’ll not accept the offer unless we three comrades all go there together,” said Odd. It’s said that they moved their seats and Odd sat next to the king, while Harek moved over to a chair in front of the king. The king heaped honours upon Odd, showing greater respect for him than for any other man.

Icelandic text: Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, II, ed. Guðni Jónsson (Reykjavik: íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1959), pp. 310-321 (reprinted by permission of the publisher). English text: Arrow-Odd: A Medieval Novel, translated with an introduction by Paul Edwards and Hermann Pálsson (New York and London, 1970), pp. 85-94 (reprinted by permission of the translators).

Varieties of tradition in medieval narrative by R obert K ellogg

Traditional art is communal and conservative. Within modern European culture, where it still plays some role, traditional art may be distinguished from its opposite, which I call “high” art. Whereas traditional art is com­ munal and conservative, high art is personal and innovative. In the seven­ teenth century John Milton sounded the motto of the modern high artist when he said his adventurous song would pursue “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”. Ezra Pound in our own century repeated the idea with his injunction to make it new. Mediating between traditional art and high art is popular art. Like traditional art it is communal ; like high art it is innovative. Some of us here have managed to escape, by luck or by discipline, the full effects of mod­ ern popular culture. But for the younger people, brought up in front of television sets, there is a huge body of fiction and music to which, no matter where they may live in Europe or North America, they can allude with the intimacy of recall once reserved for traditional folktales, ballads, and romances. Canons of taste, even of esthetic judgment, are not only possible but are inevitable within popular culture, requiring (as in the other two cultures) intelligence, sensibility, and active connoisseurship for their development. In my part of the world, the great theoretician of popular culture has been Marshall McLuhan, who speaks of modern means of communication as producing a global village, but who does not disguise the fact that what we share as we sit before our radios and televi­ sion sets is primarily news. The most conspicuous technological advances in mass communication, and hence in popular culture, in Europe before the twentieth century were improvements in book production or, in the case of music and poetry, the single broadsheet. We do not ordinarily, at least in English, use the words tradition and traditional in as narrow and restricted a sense as I will be using them in this lecture, to distinguish them from the other two great cultural and esthetic

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modes, popular and high. Some years ago, T. S. Eliot wrote an essay on “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in which he did justice to what I am calling the personal element in high art. But he opposed that personal element not to the communal element of tradition but rather to “tradi­ tion” in the sense of a recognized canon of high art, in which the individual artist attempts to make a place for his work, and on which he aspires to leave an impression. Similarly, F. R. Leavis, in speaking of the “Great Tradition” of the English novel, uses the word to mean “historical canon”, not tradition in the more basic sense. Such modern literary uses of the word tradition are convenient, and therefore somewhat treacherous, metaphors. The distinctions among traditional art, high art and popular art are not easy for any of us to maintain. In my own case it has helped my thinking about traditional art to recognize the very limited extent to which I have personally experienced it and, conversely, the great extent to which I must have been conditioned by popular art and high art. The English language, rich as it is in most respects, fails to provide ready-made in its lexicon the kinds of distinction that for me have been hard won. The most trouble­ some problem comes at the very beginning, with the word literature. This is not an old word by any means, in English or in any other language. It has become, however, so widely understood that we can use it every day unmindful of the fact that we cannot define it. We cannot make satisfac­ tory distinctions between writing that is literature and writing that is not literature. One suspects that lurking beneath the surface in most of our minds is a distinction between “discourse about a hypothetical world” and “discourse about an actual world”. But such a distinction cannot be for­ mally sustained in a convincing manner. Adhering to the word literature is the notion of letters, both in the sense denoted by the phrase “a man of letters” and, prior to that, in the sense of letters of the alphabet. This latter derivation of the word literature is particularly paradoxical and inconvenient for the student of traditional literature, which develops precisely in the absence of letters and writing. More paradoxical still, only in a traditional, oral culture can a distinction be made between literature and non-literature. For the moment we can consider a traditional culture to be an oral culture. The qualification of this identity will come later in the form: all oral cultures are traditional, but not all traditional cultures are oral. The literature —or if we are linguistic purists, the “verbal art” —of an oral

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culture is, in addition to being traditional, also invariably rhythmic and formulaic. These three characteristics —rhythmic, formulaic, and tradi­ tional —are aspects of the same thing. The aspect about which I am least competent to speak here is the rhythmic. In oral performance, rhythms of the performer’s and the audi­ ence’s bodies and modulations of the performer’s voice correspond to rhythms in the verbal text so subtle that they can in some instances defy discovery in mere transcription, without an accompanying video-tape of the visual performance. Also there are larger structural rhythms of recur­ ring sound patterns, as in refrains and stanzas, or recurring patterns of imagery. We all recognize the phenomenon as an element of poetry, and I suppose that it might be fair to say that oral literature is always in some very broad sense poetic. (In rigorous thought none of our normal categories will serve. It would be just as accurate to characterize tradi­ tional oral performances as forms of dance or of music as of poetry.) Traditional art is, to a degree not true of high art, continuous with the past. High art is discontinuous with the past, like a museum that contains much that it values from ancient times and from many different parts of the world, but in discontinuous relationship to its various “pasts” and to its distinctly separate sense of the present. Popular art tends to be only vaguely concerned with the past as distinct from the present, valuing the present so highly in fact that it turns easily to the future as a kind of super-present, where things are even newer that new. Traditional art amalgamates the present and the past, preserving elements it no longer clearly understands because they have been passed down, comfortable with archaism and anachronism, and yet continuously avoiding a de­ bilitating decadence by gradually filling old images with new significance when intelligibility and relevance require it. The most striking fact about traditional literature, one that most readily opens to us a distinction with high literature, is the absence of authors. The performer is not an author. He transmits the work out of the past and into the present. Through him, the tradition is made manifest. In this sense his performance is analogous not to authorship - that belongs to the tradition - but to the presentation of an author’s work through a book or other text. The performer is more nearly akin to a reader than to the author of a book. His performance is one “reading”, one “interpretation” of the tradition. This analogy is an arresting one. In a literary culture that is based on writing, books preserve the utterances of the past. In an oral culture, performances serve this function. An incorporation of writing into

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a culture in a manner sufficiently sustained to base an educational system on books rather than on oral performances has two profound effects. First, it provides the occasion for authorship and for the personal aspect of high art. Second, it provides a physical means of recovering or reconstituting individual utterances and hence can dispense with the rhythmic, for­ mulaic, and traditional performances so inimical to innovation. In an oral culture the only utterances that can be preserved are those which are made in the traditional form. Everything else is ephemeral, said once and then forgotten, in other words “non-literature”. With books, any form will do, nothing is necessarily ephemeral, and there is no discourse, however individualistic and innovative, which is necessarily non-literary. It is this necessity in an oral culture to fit every utterance into a tradi­ tional form in order to preserve it that constitutes the distinction I men­ tioned earlier between oral literature and oral non-literature. Writing makes possible an attack on both this distinction and on the traditions that sustain it. With the transformation of a literary culture from oral art to written art comes a break-down of traditional narrative into a variety of new and purer components. With books a great many new kinds of utter­ ance can be preserved, and out of the old tradition develop history, sci­ ence, philosophy, and all of the other kinds of writing that we can no longer distinguish from “literature”. The most striking example of the transition from an oral to a written literature to be inferred from historical and textual evidence took place in archaic Greece. Unlike such transitions in more recent times, it resulted from the single technological revolution of writing within a continuous culture, rather than from the imposition of an alien written culture on an oral one. Evidence seems to indicate that the mere existence of writing is not sufficient to produce this revolution. It was a deeper cultural and intellectual disposition of the Greeks, when the time was right, to copy down non-literature and to experiment with opposing the accumulation of such personal utterance to the performances of tradition. We can only guess how all of this came about. We assume that through some huge, sustained cultural effort a sufficient element of traditional narrative was preserved in the works ascribed to Homer to give us some basis for com­ paring traditional narrative to the newer forms of what I have been calling “high” narrative art. But I would guess that the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have come down to us are distinctly bookish in important ways. In his lecture on Beowulf yesterday Mr Stanley touched on one of these. He quite rightly warned us, as teachers and as critics, to respond to narra-

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tive as if it were being read for the first time. And he did so because of an essential element in story that he called, I believe, its consecutiveness. No matter how often we read a narrative we must always consider it as “cheating” when we interpret an element at the beginning on the basis of something we can only know from having read a part that comes later on. Readers of Chaucer’s Troilus, as of many other long medieval narratives, make this mistake with disastrous results. The whole metaphor of “inter­ lacement” is based on this critical error. It substitutes a visual model of a work of art in space for something that can only happen one sound, one morpheme, one image, one sentence at a time, sequentially. I will return to this point later. For now, however, let me pause over the advice to read it as if we were reading it for the first time. We read the Iliad and the Odyssey sequentially, but could they, or whatever traditional prototype they may represent, ever have been performed that way? Surely not in their larger elements. I wonder, in fact, what could be the status of an epic in an oral tradition. How would such a large body of story exist for its performers and its audience? This question was raised for me in considering two modern examples of collecting and transcribing bodies of traditional narrative. The first is the Kalevala. In almost no sense as we normally use the term can Kalevala be called a national epic. Its central characters are not aristocratic, heroes in the technical sense of being men with exceptional human powers that are disciplined to serve a politically and socially defined community. It lacks the consecutiveness of epic, and so on. But there it is, a book made up of selections from a vast amount of traditional narrative that was taken down from oral performances. The second example is the so-called Mwindo epic recorded much more recently in Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo. The performer of the Mwindo epic was baffled when he was asked to perform this work consecutively, starting at the beginning and going on, in order, to the end. It had never been performed that way, existing in performance only as episodes - longer one supposes than a single runo of Kalevala but still only as episodes whose relationship to some never-performed “whole” had to be constructed by its audience. Clearly the necessity for sequence applies to some elements of single performances, but allusions of every sort to the whole never-performed epic are not only possible but necessary. Every performance of a traditional narrative takes place in a vast context of story, and must be understood so by the critic, to exactly the same extent that the opposite assumption must be made about “high”

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narrative art. I am left, therefore, with skepticism that a long narrative can exist in oral tradition as a single “work” separate from the tradition as a whole. At best it is an idea of an epic, but not one bound to the rules of long written narratives. The usual instructions to the performer would be “sing us the episode of such and such”, with its fit into the unperformed whole being a task for members of the audience, accomplished more or less satisfactorily depending on their knowledge of the whole tradition. With their twenty-four books, each called by a letter of the alphabet, the Iliad and the Odyssey are clearly bookish productions. While they afford us with the richest possible materials for speculating about the distinction between traditional narrative and high narrative they are far from being transcriptions of oral performances. They, like Beowulf, are traditional, rhythmic, and formulaic, but not oral. How did their production come about? We should be interested in this question because we can ask the same question of Beowulf, Edda, The Song of Roland, Nibelungenlied, and similar narrative works from the earlier Middle Ages. The answer I propose is that traditional narrative was to such a large extent preserved in our earliest written narratives because only the traditional form and substance could qualify such works as being “literature”, in contrast to “non-literature”. Only with the somewhat later invention of authorship is high narrative art a possibility. And even then our medieval authors carried on a long and often ironic love affair with traditional art. The association of formulaic composition with oral composition in Anglo-Saxon literary culture was dealt a death blow by Larry Benson’s demonstration some years ago in Speculum that the translation of the Meters of Boethius was just about as formulaic as other poetic texts. Pa­ tently, however, it was not traditional art. It sounded traditional but it wasn’t. Why? Because, if it wanted to be considered art, it had to. When we come to the Old Saxon Heliand we confront a more complex case, on a par with the Anglo-Saxon Old Testament poetic narratives. Here it is not a question, as with Boethius, of traditional versification and traditional diction only. Heliand tells the story of the life of Christ with whole episodes conceived in traditional terms. He is a leader of men, who enters the high hall, presides while the noble lady (in this case his Mother, the Virgin Mary) pours out clear wine as she moves among the guests on the floor of the hall. The very words themselves are traditional, identical to words and formulas in Beowulf, as though heall and flet and idese and

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seende scir win were elements of some ancient Germanic ritual. For the poet of Heliand narrative art and traditional narrative art were synony­ mous. These early medieval narrative poems bear another resemblance to the Homeric poems. Because they do not have authors they cannot have narrators as distinct from the narrator of an oral performance. This was a feature of Homer much admired by Aristotle. He likened the effect of an authorless narrative to that of drama. There is no mediating ego between the imitation of an action and the response of the audience. The ego is all on the side of the heroes, while the narrator is diffident and self-effacing, completely absorbed in his job of story teller, of transmitting the story in the traditional way. I deeply regret being prevented from hearing Mr Shepherd’s lecture yesterday, which I have heard so highly praised, because I come now to an aspect of traditional narrative to which I am sure his ideas are highly relevant. Whatever a traditional culture values will be given literary form to preserve and transmit it. Narrative seems frequently to serve this func­ tion. It holds in rather undifferentiated solution the culture’s history, ethics, myth, and miscellaneous lore of all sorts. With the development of non-traditional forms of discourse in writing will come an attack on the validity of tradition. Plato’s attack on Homer is probably typical of the break-down of a traditional culture into a number of competing sub-cul­ tures. Traditional truths are subjected to newer, more rigorous tests of validity. The culture in general loses its ability to do its best thinking in narrative. Great narrative art, whether traditional art or high art, must have an ability to sustain intelligent and vigorous thought. The production of great narrative requires no less intelligence, only a different kind, than does the production of philosophy, history, or even literary criticism. There is something about this holding of ideas in solution, so to speak, that makes traditional narrative art so frightening to thinkers of a more specialized kind. Any form of systematic thought will be uneasy with “pure” story. It will allegorize it, annotate it, do anything to reduce it to some form of analytic control. The more limited a system of thought is in its approach to the world, the more limited it is in the ways it can find narrative to be meaningful. This is precisely the way in which the Icelandic family sagas are so remarkable. Whatever else they may share with traditional narrative they neither exploit the narrative potential of authorship nor do they take out of pure narrative solution the high degree of intelligence with which they

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think about deeply significant social, political, legal, and ethical issues. Yesterday Hermann Pálsson remarked that the writers of the íslendingasQgur did not have much time for systematic philosophical thought. They would take a good idea from Christian or pagan alike and dissolve it into the narrative “solution”. This absorption of the individual artistic ego into the communal traditions associated with those great heroic egos is one of the features of medieval narrative we here in this room must all find most appealing, as though the true spirit of humanity speaks out to us more clearly through the characters in an old story and the events of their lives than it does through the personal vision of a single man. This effect in much traditional narrative strikes me as a form of pastoral. I can illustrate from a few scenes in the fictions themselves, when heroes temporarily retire from their great exertions to quiet places good for the telling of stories. In these moments of recuperation they keep the old heroic desire alive by telling and listening of older heroes. How better for the Danes to contemplate the victory of Beowulf than to sing of other heroes? But I mean something more than this. Along with such an au­ thorless narrative come by implication countless audiences who have heard the story before us. We join them. As did they, and the performer who entertained them, we too allow ourselves to be absorbed back into the communal mind. For high art we aspire to become the ideal reader, reconstructing the work as it went forth from the author’s mind. For traditional art we have a more modest aspiration: listening while the per­ former reconstitutes the work for us. The heroic ego of the high artist, with whom we collaborate as readers, is replaced in traditional art by the heroic egos of the characters alone. Their fates, their meaning, are no less significant to us than are those of the characters in high art. But they are beyond our control, or that of any human agent, in a truly autonomous world of story that suffers no mediation between its relentless energies and our “retirement” as audience. We must, in our imaginations, conform ourselves to the story rather than the story to us. Traditional narrative manifests itself in various ways in earlier medieval literature. Our response to a work or to an element of it will be deter­ mined in part by the degree to which we consider it traditional. This critical problem was illustrated yesterday in an exchange between Her­ mann Pálsson and Lars Lönnroth on the status of the idea “Do not mock a stranger”. This motif is at the center of many memorable scenes in litera­ ture. Albert Lord, in fact, wrote a little excursus in The Singer o f Tales on the motif in the Odyssey, which is most memorably exhibited in the mock­

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ery of Odysseus in the palace of Alcinoös, followed by a rebuff of the mocker and then a demonstration of Odysseus’ strength. It is possible that this is a traditional idea in Icelandic literature. It is also possible that, as Hermann suggested, the idea was borrowed from outside Icelandic tradi­ tion. So what? Well, maybe not so much in this case, although even here one suspects that a conscious borrowing of a learned phrase, in contrast to a traditional association of action and gnomic wisdom, should have in­ terpretive consequences. The former alternative implies authorial media­ tion, a consequent obligation on our parts as readers to concern ourselves with the author’s mind rather than a pure and autonomous world of story, un-analyzed, -annotated, -allegorized. The repetition of certain motifs, such as “Do not mock a stranger”, is one of the many rhythmic features of traditional narrative. Such repetition assists composition and memory, as well as being pleasant in itself. The three slaps that Hallgerd receives from her three husbands in Njáls saga is such a traditional feature of composition. This kind of repetition can be harmonious with larger structural rhythms or repetitions. In Njáls saga there is a parallel between the actions of the three heroes, Gunnar, Njall, and Flosi. Their stories contain many of the elements of plot formation analyzed by Theodore Andersson in íslendingasqgur generally. In fact, a diligent search might reveal startling symmetries if we were to count, for example, backward and forward by chapter from the Kristni þáttr. I have not done this. I only mention that it would produce results of a sort. But what to make of the results? Are such structural symmetries merely typi­ cal of those we have come to expect in traditional narrative? Or do we have the quite different and quite bookish phenomenon of numerological composition, analogous to the thirty-three cantos of terza rima in each of the three books of Dante’s Commedia? We are, in medieval studies, be­ ginning to find out quite a lot about the theory of such numerology in narrative art, as well as about such other learned structural features as the calendar in Wolfram’s Parzival or the ritual significance of the events in the Queste del Saint Graal. The interpretive implications are, I should think, rather seriously affected by whether the structural rhythms of this sort are there because it was always done that way and it helps hold a story together, to give it its inner shapeliness, or whether they are cunningly hidden beneath the surface in order to turn the perceptive reader’s mind toward more universal harmonies and philosophical truths lying outside of the world of the story, in the mind of the artist who wrote it. A further difficulty derives from the fact that a given image can be traditional in one

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work and freighted with allegorical significance in another. The evolution of Arthurian literature illustrates this ability of Christian art to use tradi­ tional images in new ways. The Vulgate Cycle of prose romances in France is a work of cultural collaboration analogous to the accretion of Homeric song into the Iliad and the Odyssey. They draw on a tradition strong enough to assure that although particular works were written by individual writers the story that lay behind them was the same in each author’s mind. There is a consist­ ency of theme and plot and character that is communal, autonomous. Each romance has its own appropriate mode and meaning, depending on its place in the Cycle, and these modal shifts are still evident in Malory’s English book. This phenomenon, both innovative and communal, suggests a transition from traditional to popular art. This may be a condition of all genre formation. What makes a genuinely new form appear suddenly, something really new under the sun? Are these great leaps forward in literary history, such as the Provençal lyric or the romances of Chrétien, always the product of such cultural collaboration, providing both audi­ ences and artists, trained by their tradition to share sensibilities, stories, literary conventions of all sorts, and yet secure enough in this communal knowledge to sustain some crucial innovation made possible by a new technology. As we contemplate the varieties of tradition in medieval narrative it may be helpful to consider the possibility that nowhere will we find a traditional performance in its pure form, although we will find convincing imitations. Nor until we come to Dante can we expect to find high art in its pure form. Some features of traditional art characterize all narratives from Beowulf to the Commedia. To whatever extent medieval narrative is communal we must aspire to membership in that community. Where it is new, we should look less to the personality of the artist than to the technology which allowed him and his audience to enjoy the old stories in a new way. From traditional art to high art the road in the Middle Ages passed through popular art. University of Virginia

Discussion

1. It was pointed out that the change apparent in Ireland from a more authentically “heroic” form of story to one where the irrational in the shape of geis becomes a ready narrative instrument —a change to be associated with-social and ethical alteration, a failure on the part of sub­ sequent ages to understand the motivation of the actors in ancient story — might be paralleled to some extent in Iceland. There the composition of “serious” íslendinga sögur was succeeded by composition of fornaldarsögur and lygisögur, where the binding spell (álag, usually pi. álög) is a frequent device and where misfortune may be related to objects endowed with supernatural power rather than to innate tendencies of human character. It was not perhaps so much that Icelanders in the fourteenth and fifteenth century did not appreciate the ethical principles implied in early sagas, but they had small room to apply them in daily life; and it was certainly unlikely that they understood the motivation in some translated romances, since their first translators into Norse had hardly done so themselves. But the external, the sensational and the magical could readily be adopted from such works. Tabu as a narrative device might lie somewhere between the heroic tale of a more archaic aristocratic kind, where the protagonist is doomed but as it were chooses to meet his fate, and the later märchen-like saga, where álög are merely suffered until the happy ending is more or less mechanic­ ally achieved. Characters in Irish story know they are breaking the tabus The recorded proceedings of the discussion that followed the papers printed above were transcribed by Mrs Katja Tims and Miss Sheila Rust, of the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London. Peter Foote, chairman of the discussion, then made the following selection and summary of the contributions, with some deletion to make them printable, some clarification to make them intelligible, and some reorganisation to make them sensible. Only weightier comment is attributed to named speakers. It is hoped that no grave injustice has been done. The numbers refer to the order of the papers as they were given and as they are now published.

Discussion

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laid upon them, and Heiðrekr in Hervarar saga deliberately sets out to disregard the good advice he has been adjured to follow. This can be seen as a challenge to what is imposed (and perhaps to the superstition that lies behind it?). The hero behaves like a hero but no longer lives in a heroic world. 2. It was questioned whether the theme of the outsider was not as much a fact of the Icelandic condition as a motif in Icelandic story. When Icelan­ ders returned to Norway or elsewhere they journeyed útan “from out­ side”. In connection with Hermann Pálsson’s observation that the farther the action took the hero from Iceland, the more “romance” entered the story, it was noted that the Irish word for “adventure” is echtra, the same word as Latin extra - it is something that belongs outside, elsewhere. It was suggested that this was consonant with the idea of the quest; and pointed out that Georges Duby has said that underlying the quest theme of romance may be detected the realities attendant upon the predicament of younger sons without land to succeed to. On the other hand, Old Icelandic seemed to have no native word for “adventure” ; it might in some instances be implied in the word ferd, but útanferð meant merely a “voyage abroad” . Geoffrey Shepherd said that in a saga like Egils saga he detected an element of admiration for courtliness and kingship and wondered whether an element of some force in early Icelandic literature might not be a feeling that the Icelanders were behind Europe, enviously or cheerfully so; Hermann Pálsson could accept this in the sense that he saw in Egils saga “an intellectual force gravitating away from reality” —and kings are among the things that could be counted beyond reality. Sagas move to­ wards an idealised situation, and it was a cardinal critical principle that Icelandic sagas should on no account be identified with any sort of reality —like other stories, they exist on their own terms. It was objected that in sagas we find various ideas and attitudes taken seriously, and ideas and attitudes are also part of reality. 3. In Robert Henryson’s fables, written in the latter part of the fifteenth century, Marianne Powell found a “return” to a fable form in which the story is self-contained and the moral added, but that moral is sometimes at odds with the fable itself and contains a Christian application or impera­ tive rather than a sympathetic human interpretation of the message of the fable.

132

Discussion

Morten Nøjgaard replied that animal tales can be shown to have existed in Sumerian times, 3000 years ago, and were already in collections meant for didactic use. The fable probably always lived in some sort of tension between animal tales, attractive but savage, and a moral translation of them to suit specific social conditions. In the early middle ages they moralised the plot of the fable itself, but for ethical, not religious pur­ poses. Religious interpretation of fables must be a later novelty. It was observed that the bestiaries often have an allegorical Christian explanation added to their descriptions, but there appeared to be almost no interaction between bestiary and fable tradition. 4. Walter Map’s phrase, “I set before you a whole forest, a mass of material,” was related to words used by King Alfred in his introduction to the translation of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, to the Silvae of Statius and to Ben Jonson’s Timber; and probably most relevantly to Cicero’s use of silva in De inventione and De oratore (see e.g. Lewis and Short, s.v. II. Trop, a crowded mass, abundance or quantity . .. omnis ubertas et quasi silva dicendi ab illis (Academicis) est, Cic. Or. 3, 12 ...). Morten Nøjgaard enquired how Geoffrey Shepherd reconciled his claim that the situation of story was radically changed in the twelfth century in view of the existence prior to that age of an abundant and strong fable tradition. Both agreed, however, that tradition was a single bookish tradi­ tion maintained in the schools, and Geoffrey Shepherd further thought that since the fable was primarily a consciously exemplary story with a moral to it, it differed from the independent self-subsistent story that came into literary being in the twelfth century. Story in his use of the term meant a self-conscious narrative with a sequence, unified and complete (and accepted as such by the listener), with an internal elegance and cohesion. It was suggested that for the twelfth-century emancipation of story (in these terms) the existence of court circles was especially important, not a few big courts but many small courts, where women were also influential members of the audience. 5. The question was raised of the relevance of history to a reading of Beowulf; and the obfuscation condemned of people who have insisted on separating history and myth in the poem as if they could have been so separated at the time the poem was made. It was suggested that history might not be totally irrelevant because of the impression one gets from the

Discussion

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poem of a world of narrative - of narrated events - far greater than the actual text or any performance of it as a whole or in part. Eric Stanley claimed though that this was precisely the unique achievement of the Beowulf poet; it is he who makes the world appear larger than the poem. It was recommended that everyone should read more non-Germanic (= Irish) literature. 6. The impression of a “larger” world and the relationship between lit­ erature and life were topics that recurred in the discussion of Per Nykrog’s paper. The sense of a larger world could also be related to the fact that, though in approaching a poem you should always try to read it “for the first time”, nevertheless the medieval poet in a given milieu knew that, while you had not heard his poem before, you had certainly heard, or soon would hear, others with some of the same people and matters in them. Tore Nyberg asked whether one could confidently relate the portrayal of King Arthur in the texts discussed by Per Nykrog to twelfth-century ideas about kingship. He thought in particular of the moves toward the canonisation of Edward the Confessor and Charlemagne, not to mention Knud Lavard of Denmark and Erik of Sweden, all in the 1160s and ’70s. Per Nykrog stressed that the groups of texts he had discussed were not to be taken as developments one from another; and it could be that the sources they followed were different too. But it did look as though the “active” Arthur was an older model, while the Continental group with a “passive” Arthur might reflect the monarchical ideal of great French vas­ sals in relation to a comparatively weak king. He was convinced that it is possible in favourable circumstances to reach people’s minds through their stories: one could discover how they pictured reality, the conceptual net through which they perceived reality. Compare Balzac: it is difficult to get at his stories through his biography, but you can sometimes gain insight into his behaviour through his novels, which in some measure show us how he thought and perceived. The ideals expressed in any set of Arthurian narratives must be related to the ideals of the people among and for whom they were made, however much or little the reality around them con­ formed to those ideals. Carl Stief wondered whether it was essential to think of the differences between the texts discussed in connection with Gauvain as conditioned only by the factors of time and place and the implied “development” dictated by the climate - social, political, philosophical, artistic - of the age in question. Could it be that a major factor was the desire of the

134

Discussion

poet/performer to “make it new”? He cited a parallel in Russian byliny. In the oldest there are various heroes who appear as warriors pure and simple but who are later given differentiated roles. Dobrynya Nikitich becomes a diplomat, Alesha Popovich a rather brutal lady-killer. Perhaps such new roles had something to do with environment —but perhaps not? Per Nykrog observed that there were significant differences between the material utilised by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and Chrétien —they fill in Arthur’s career but with remarkably little overlap. Chrétien also says explicitly at the beginning of Erec that this is a story which has been messed up by various storytellers before him but which he is going to tell in a new way - and it will live as long as Christendom survives. Again, after Chrétien, in versions from the 1220s or so, storytellers avoid the stories Chrétien had finished but bo on elaborating the two open-ended tales of Lancelot and his love for the queen and of Perceval. One finds not so much a development of the theme itself as a restatement of the setting in which the theme is treated. Chrétien may have invented the contrast between the good and the bad knight —but he may have inherited it. One can see, for example, how a polarisation must have taken place at some pre-literary stage in the Rencesvals story to make Roland preux and Olivier sage. 7. Dietrich Hofmann pointed out that as a scene-setting the drinking contest came very late in Qrvar-Odds saga - not until ch. 27. Lars Lönnroth did not however, think of the “double-scene” effect as necessarily introductory. It was a device that could be used at any stage to establish rapport between the world of the narrative and the world of the audience. He agreed with Geoffrey Shepherd that one might have a “double-scene” effect when a schoolbook in colloquy form was actually used in the class­ room - and this indeed seemed a good reason for the popularity of the dialogue for didactic purposes. Reference was also made to French stories where the narrator appears within the fiction as a traveller who is following local custom in entertain­ ing his hosts after supper; and to the circumstances of the setting in Boc­ caccio’s Decamerone and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. These last works, distinctly literary in origin, came under Lars Lönnroth’s de­ finition of “oral” as any work performed orally, though not necessarily composed under oral conditions. 8. Per Nykrog thought that in the past not enough attention had been paid

Discussion

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to the fact that the medieval response to narrative was not an awareness of structure but an appreciation of experience, of episodes sliding past, de­ veloping, merging, branching. It could be seen that the first literary fic­ tions in twelfth-century France were tight-knit and drew on remote sources, with subjects from Greek mythology and Celtic or pseudo-Celtic material. It took a generation or two, it was not much before 1200, that the literary makers began to take in narrative material from the current oral tradition. Then, with the last of Chrétien’s stories and subsequently, we have the complicated meanderings of romance, where the pleasure of the audience lay not in an intellectual domination of the material but in the flow of the episodes moving past in a complexity difficult to overview. Romance could be a hybrid bred from the marriage of the early tight-knit literary tale and the matter of current oral narrative now given written form. Robert Kellogg observed that the whole question of innovation and genre formation deserved closer study. It had happened perhaps eight or ten times in the Western world that makers of any literary kind had found something new under the sun. Chrétien did for one, and what the condi­ tion of that novelty were, what kind of ferment and intense collaboration must have existed to create it, merited the attention of another sym­ posium. “Chrétien,” said Per Nykrog, “wrote for maybe ten or fifteen people who were living round him” - but those people “knew that they were the top of the world”. The Chairman said that members of the Symposium felt in the same privileged position, and closed the proceedings.

Members and associate members of the Symposium

Jens Peter Ægidius Brynjulf Alver Aagot Andersen Lise Præstgaard Andersen Karen Ascani Annelise Bach Kirsten Sass Bak Hans Basbøll Lisbeth Baumgarten Else Bekker-Nielsen Hans Bekker-Nielsen Melissa Berman Paul Bibire P. O. Brøndsted Peter Buchholz Gunilla Byrman Anny Bøttger Hans Henrik Bøttger Graham D. Caie Birte Carié Anker Clausen Jógvan Dahl Nanna Damsholt Niels Danielsen Dorrit Einersen Davíð Erlingsson Peter G. Foote Karen Margrete Fredborg Birgit Fuglsang David Greene

Angela Guski Andreas Haarder Kirsten Haarder Jan Ragnar Hagland Björn Hagström Bothild Hagström E. F. Halvorsen Súsanna Hammer Suzanne Hanon Birgit Hansen H. M. Heinrichs Porbjörg Helgadöttir Svend Hendrup Michael Herslund Jögvan Høgnesen Lilliane Højgaard Kirsten Beck Hørby Dietrich Hofmann Agnete Holm Otto Holzapfel Shaun F. D. Hughes Lanae H. Isaacson Helle Jensen Jytte Jensen Povl Johs. Jensen Jørgen Højgaard Jørgensen Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj Robert L. Kellogg Jonna Kjær Det Kongelige Bibliotek

137

Karin Lideli Lars Lönnroth Claus Lund Ole Lund-Hansen Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen Bent Søby Madsen Hallvard Magerøy Brian Patrick McGuire Jørn Moestrup Ole Munch-Pedersen Else Mundal Hans Frede Nielsen Lene Rauff Nielsen Søren Noe-Nygaard Morten Nøjgaard Nordisk Institutt, Bergen Tore Nyberg Per Nykrog Þórhildur Oddsdóttir Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen Torkil Olsen Ivar Orgland Hermann Pålsson Birthe Pedersen Rita Pedersen Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen Inge Petersen Iørn Piø Marianne Powell Julie Randlev Gunnar Ries Eva Rode Anna Birgitta Rooth Lars Ole Sauerberg Kurt Schier

Lene Schøsler Bridget Shepherd G. T. Shepherd Svavar Sigmundsson Bjarki Bjarkason Skaale Claus Bech Skadhauge Christian Sørensen Preben Meulengracht Sørensen Ulla Sørensen Viggo Sørensen Peter Springborg E. G. Stanley P. K. Stein Carl Stief Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavik Flemming Talbo Stubkjær Jan-Öjvind Swahn Arnfinnur Thomasen Sverrir Tómasson Aage Trommer Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen University College London, The Library Gudrun Utterström Ole Vesterholt Elsebeth Vinten Hans-Uwe Vollertsen Mette Wad Gerd Wolfgang Weber Erik Koed Westergaard Eivind Weyhe Ole Widding Kirsten Williams

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Oral Tradition —Literary Tradition. A Symposium. Edited by Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Peter Foote, Andreas Haarder, Hans Frede Nielsen. Odense: Odense University Press, 1977. 121 pp. The European Medieval Ballad. A Symposium. Edited by Otto Holzapfel in collaboration with Julia McGrew and Iørn Piø. Odense: Odense Uni­ versity Press, 1978. 121 pp. Hans Frede Nielsen, De germanske sprog. Baggrund og gruppering. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1979. 130 pp.