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_THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE_
43
MEDIEVAL
ENGLISH LITERATURE
_EDITORS OF
The Home University Library
of Modern Knowledge_
GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., D.C.L., F.B.A.
G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A.
G. R. DE BEER, D.SC., F.R.S.
_United States_
JOHN FULTON, M.D., PH.D.
HOWARD MUMFORD JONES, LITT.D.
WILLIAM L. LANGER, PH.D.
_Medieval
English Literature_
W. P. KER
_Geoffrey Cumberlege_
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
_First published in_ 1912, _and reprinted in_ 1925, 1926, 1928 (_twice_),
1932, _and_ 1942
_Reset in_ 1945 _and reprinted in_ 1948
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I INTRODUCTION 7
II THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 16
III THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1150-1500) 43
IV THE ROMANCES 76
V SONGS AND BALLADS 107
VI COMIC POETRY 124
VII ALLEGORY 137
VIII SERMONS AND HISTORIES, IN VERSE AND PROSE 150
IX CHAUCER 163
NOTE ON BOOKS 187
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE _by_ R. W. CHAMBERS 188
INDEX 190
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Readers are drawn to medieval literature in many different ways, and it
is hardly possible to describe all the attractions and all the approaches
by which they enter on this ground. Students of history have to learn the
languages of the nations with whose history they are concerned, and to
read the chief books in those languages, if they wish to understand
rightly the ideas, purposes and temper of the past ages. Sometimes the
study of early literature has been instigated by religious or
controversial motives, as when the Anglo-Saxon homilies were taken up and
edited and interpreted in support of the Reformation. Sometimes it is
mere curiosity that leads to investigation of old literature—a wish to
find out the meaning of what looks at first difficult and mysterious.
Curiosity of this sort, however, is seldom found unmixed; there are
generally all sorts of vague associations and interests combining to lead
the explorer on. It has often been observed that a love of Gothic
architecture, or of medieval art in general, goes along with, and helps,
the study of medieval poetry. Chatterton’s old English reading and his
imitations of old English verse were inspired by the Church of St. Mary
Redcliffe at Bristol. The lives of Horace Walpole, of Thomas Warton, of
Sir Walter Scott, and many others show how medieval literary studies may
be nourished along with other kindred antiquarian tastes.
Sometimes, instead of beginning in historical or antiquarian interests,
or in a liking for the fashions of the Middle Ages in general, it happens
that a love of medieval literature has its rise in one particular author,
e.g. Dante or Sir Thomas Malory. The book, the _Divina Commedia_ or _Le
Morte d’Arthur_, is taken up, it may be, casually, with no very distinct
idea or purpose, and then it is found to be engrossing and
captivating—what is often rightly called ‘a revelation of a new world’.
For a long time this is enough in itself; the reader is content with
Dante or with the _Morte d’Arthur_. But it may occur to him to ask about
‘the French book’ from which Malory got his adventures of the Knights of
King Arthur; he may want to know how the legend of the Grail came to be
mixed up with the romances of the Round Table; and so he will be drawn
on, trying to find out as much as possible and plunging deeper and deeper
into the Middle Ages. The same kind of thing happens to the reader of
Dante; Dante is found all through his poem acknowledging obligations to
earlier writers; he is not alone or independent in his thought and his
poetry; and so it becomes an interesting thing to go further back and to
know something about the older poets and moralists, and the earlier
medieval world in general, before it was all summed up and recorded in
the imagination of the Divine Comedy. Examples of this way of reading may
be found in the works of Ruskin and in Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold,
rather late in his life (in the introductory essay to T. H. Ward’s
_English Poets_), shows that he has been reading some old French authors.
He does not begin with old French when he is young; evidently he was
brought to it in working back from the better known poets, Dante and
Chaucer. Ruskin’s old French quotations are also rather late in the
series of his writings; it was in his Oxford lectures, partly published
in _Fors Clavigera_, that he dealt with _The Romance of the Rose_, and
used it to illustrate whatever else was in his mind at the time.
Thus it is obvious that any one who sets out to write about English
literature in the Middle Ages will find himself addressing an audience
which is not at all in agreement with regard to the subject. Some will
probably be historical in their tastes, and will seek, in literature, for
information about manners and customs, fashions of opinion, ‘typical
developments’ in the history of culture or education. Others may be on
the look-out for stories, for the charm of romance which is sometimes
thought to belong peculiarly to the Middle Ages, and some, with ambitions
of their own, may ask for themes that can be used and adapted in modern
forms, as the Nibelung story has been used by Wagner and William Morris
and many others; perhaps for mere suggestions of plots and scenery, to be
employed more freely, as in Morris’s prose romances, for example. Others,
starting from one favourite author—Dante or Chaucer or Malory—will try to
place what they already know in its right relation to all its
surroundings—by working, for instance, at the history of religious
poetry, or the different kinds of story-telling. It is not easy to write
for all these and for other different tastes as well. But it is not a
hopeless business, so long as there is some sort of interest to begin
with, even if it be only a general vague curiosity about an unknown
subject.
There are many prejudices against the Middle Ages; the name itself was
originally an expression of contempt; it means the interval of darkness
between the ruin of ancient classical culture and the modern revival of
learning—a time supposed to be full of ignorance, superstition and bad
taste, an object of loathing to well-educated persons. As an example of
this sort of opinion about the Middle Ages, one may take what Bentham
says of our ‘barbarian ancestors’—‘few of whom could so much as read, and
those few had nothing before them that was worth the reading’. ‘When from
their ordinary occupation, their order of the day, the cutting of one
another’s throats, or those of Welshmen, Scotchmen or Irishmen, they
could steal now and then a holiday, how did they employ it? In cutting
Frenchmen’s throats in order to get their money: this was active
virtue:—leaving Frenchmen’s throats uncut was indolence, slumber,
inglorious ease.’
On the other hand, the Middle Ages have been glorified by many writers;
‘the Age of Chivalry’, the ‘Ages of Faith’ have often been contrasted
with the hardness of the age of enlightenment, rationalism, and material
progress; they are thought of as full of colour, variety, romance of all
sorts, while modern civilization is represented as comparatively dull,
monotonous and unpicturesque. This kind of view has so far prevailed,
even among people who do not go to any extremes, and who are not
excessively enthusiastic or romantic, that the term ‘Gothic’, which used
to be a term of contempt for the Middle Ages, has entirely lost its
scornful associations. ‘Gothic’ was originally an abusive name, like
‘Vandalism’; it meant the same thing as ‘barbarian’. But while
‘Vandalism’ has kept its bad meaning, ‘Gothic’ has lost it. It does not
now mean ‘barbarous’, and if it still means ‘unclassical’ it does not
imply that what is ‘unclassical’ must be wrong. It is possible now to
think of the Middle Ages and their literature without prejudice on the
one side or the other. As no one now thinks of despising Gothic
architecture simply because it is not Greek, so the books of the Middle
Ages may be read in a spirit of fairness by those who will take the
trouble to understand their language; they may be appreciated for what
they really are; their goodness or badness is not now determined merely
by comparison with the work of other times in which the standards and
ideals of excellence were not the same.
The language is a difficulty. The older English books are written in the
language which is commonly called Anglo-Saxon; this is certainly not one
of the most difficult, but no language is really easy to learn.
Anglo-Saxon poetry, besides, has a peculiar vocabulary and strange forms
of expression. The poetical books are not to be read without a great deal
of application; they cannot be rushed.
Later, when the language has changed into what is technically called
Middle English—say, in the thirteenth century—things are in many ways no
better. It is true that the language is nearer to modern English; it is
true also that the language of the poetical books is generally much
simpler and nearer that of ordinary prose than was the language of the
Anglo-Saxon poets. But on the other hand, while Anglo-Saxon literature is
practically all in one language, Middle English is really not a language
at all, but a great number of different tongues, belonging to different
parts of the country. And not only does the language of Yorkshire differ
from that of Kent, or Dorset, or London, or Lancashire, but within the
same district each author spells as he pleases, and the man who makes a
copy of his book also spells as he pleases, and mixes up his own local
and personal varieties with those of the original author. There is
besides an enormously greater amount of written matter extant in Middle
English than in Anglo-Saxon, and this, coming from all parts of the
country, is full of all varieties of odd words. The vocabulary of Middle
English, with its many French and Danish words, its many words belonging
to one region and not to another, is, in some ways, more difficult than
that of Anglo-Saxon.
But luckily it is not hard, in spite of all these hindrances, to make a
fair beginning with the old languages—in Anglo-Saxon, for example, with
Sweet’s _Primer_ and _Reader_, in Middle English with Chaucer or _Piers
Plowman_.
The difference in language between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English
corresponds to a division in the history of literature. Anglo-Saxon
literature is different from that which follows it, not merely in its
grammar and dictionary, but in many of its ideas and fashions,
particularly in its fashion of poetry. The difference may be expressed in
this way, that while the older English literature is mainly English, the
literature after the eleventh century is largely dependent on France;
France from 1100 to 1400 is the chief source of ideas, culture,
imagination, stories, and forms of verse. It is sometimes thought that
this was the result of the Norman Conquest, but that is not the proper
explanation of what happened, either in language or in literature. For
the same kind of thing happened in other countries which were not
conquered by the Normans or by any other people speaking French. The
history of the German language and of German literature in the Middle
Ages corresponds in many things to the history of English. The name
Middle English was invented by a German philologist (Grimm), who found in
English the same stages of development as in German; Anglo-Saxon
corresponds to Old German in its inflexions; Middle English is like
Middle German. The change, in both languages, is a change from one kind
of inflexion to another. In the ‘Old’ stage (say, about the year 900) the
inflexions have various clearly pronounced vowels in them; in the
‘Middle’ stage (about 1200) the terminations of words have come to be
pronounced less distinctly, and where there is inflexion it shows most
commonly one vowel, written _e_, where the ‘Old’ form might have _a_ or
_o_ or _u_. Changes of this kind had begun in England before the Norman
Conquest, and would have gone on as they did in Germany if there had been
no Norman Conquest at all. The French and the French language had nothing
to do with it.
Where the French were really important was in their ideas and in the
forms of their poetry; they made their influence felt through these in
all Western Christendom, in Italy, in Denmark, and even more strongly in
Germany than in England. Indeed it might be said that the Norman Conquest
made it less easy for the English than it was for the Germans to employ
the French ideas when they were writing books of their own in their own
language. The French influence was too strong in England; the native
language was discouraged; many Englishmen wrote their books in French,
instead of making English adaptations from the French. The Germans, who
were independent politically, were not tempted in the same way as the
English, and in many respects they were more successful than the English
as translators from the French, as adapters of French ‘motives’ and
ideas. But whatever the differences might be between one nation and
another, it is certain that after 1100 French ideas were appreciated in
all the countries of Europe, in such a way as to make France the
principal source of enlightenment and entertainment everywhere; and the
intellectual predominance of France is what most of all distinguishes the
later medieval from the earlier, that is, from the Anglo-Saxon period, in
the history of English literature.
The leadership of France in the literature of Europe may be dated as
beginning about 1100, which is the time of the First Crusade and of many
great changes in the life of Christendom. About 1100 there is an end of
one great historical period, which began with what is called the
Wandering of the German nations, and their settlement in various parts of
the world. The Norman Conquest of England, it has been said, is the last
of the movements in the wandering of the nations. Goths and Vandals,
Franks, Burgundians, Lombards, Angles, Jutes and Saxons, Danes and
Northmen, had all had their times of adventure, exploration, conquest and
settlement. One great event in this wandering was the establishment of
the Norwegian settlers in France, the foundation of Normandy; and the
expeditions of the Normans—to Italy as well as to England—were nearly the
last which were conducted in the old style. After the Norman Conquest
there are new sorts of adventure, which are represented in Chaucer’s
Knight and Squire—the one a Crusader, or Knight errant, the other (his
son) engaged in a more modern sort of warfare, England against France,
nation against nation.
The two forms of the English language, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English,
and the two periods of medieval English literature, correspond to the two
historical periods of which one ends and the other begins about 1100, at
the date of the First Crusade. Anglo-Saxon literature belongs to the
older world; Anglo-Saxon poetry goes back to very early times and keeps a
tradition which had come down from ancient days when the English were
still a Continental German tribe. Middle English literature is cut off
from Anglo-Saxon, the Anglo-Saxon stories are forgotten, and though the
old alliterative verse is kept, as late as the sixteenth century, it is
in a new form with a new tune in it; while instead of being the one great
instrument of poetry it has to compete with rhyming couplets and stanzas
of different measure; it is hard put to it by the rhymes of France.