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EPIC AND ROMANCE

ESSAYS ON MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

BY

W. P. KER

FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
LONDON

Contents

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1931

COPYRIGHT
First Edition (8vo) 1896
Second Edition (Eversley Series) 1908
Reprinted (Crown 8vo) 1922, 1926, 1931

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH

PREFACE

These essays are intended as a general description of some of the principal forms of narrative literature in the Middle Ages, and as a review of some of the more interesting works in each period. It is hardly necessary to say that the conclusion is one "in which nothing is concluded," and that whole tracts of literature have been barely touched on—the English metrical romances, the Middle High German poems, the ballads, Northern and Southern—which would require to be considered in any systematic treatment of this part of history.

Many serious difficulties have been evaded (in Finnesburh, more particularly), and many things have been taken for granted, too easily. My apology must be that there seemed to be certain results available for criticism, apart from the more strict and scientific procedure which is required to solve the more difficult problems of Beowulf, or of the old Northern or the old French poetry. It is hoped that something may be gained by a less minute and exacting consideration of the whole field, and by an attempt to bring the more distant and dissociated parts of the subject into relation with one another, in one view.

Some of these notes have been already used, in a course of three lectures at the Royal Institution, in March 1892, on "the Progress of Romance in the Middle Ages," and in lectures given at University College and elsewhere. The plot of the Dutch romance of Walewein was discussed in a paper submitted to the Folk-Lore Society two years ago, and published in the journal of the Society (Folk-Lore, vol. v. p. 121).

I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr. Paget Toynbee for his help in reading the proofs.

I cannot put out on this venture without acknowledgment of my obligation to two scholars, who have had nothing to do with my employment of all that I have borrowed from them, the Oxford editors of the Old Northern Poetry, Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson and Mr. York Powell. I have still to learn what Mr. York Powell thinks of these discourses. What Gudbrand Vigfusson would have thought I cannot guess, but I am glad to remember the wise goodwill which he was always ready to give, with so much else from the resources of his learning and his judgment, to those who applied to him for advice.

W. P. KER.

London, 4th November 1896.

POSTSCRIPT

This book is now reprinted without addition or change, except in a few small details. If it had to be written over again, many things, no doubt, would be expressed in a different way. For example, after some time happily spent in reading the Danish and other ballads, I am inclined to make rather less of the interval between the ballads and the earlier heroic poems, and I have learned (especially from Dr. Axel Olrik) that the Danish ballads do not belong originally to simple rustic people, but to the Danish gentry in the Middle Ages. Also the comparison of Sturla's Icelandic and Norwegian histories, though it still seems to me right in the main, is driven a little too far; it hardly does enough justice to the beauty of the Life of Hacon (Hákonar Saga), especially in the part dealing with the rivalry of the King and his father-in-law Duke Skule. The critical problems with regard to the writings of Sturla are more difficult than I imagined, and I am glad to have this opportunity of referring, with admiration, to the work of my friend Dr. Björn Magnússon Olsen on the Sturlunga Saga (in Safn til Sögu Islands, iii. pp. 193-510, Copenhagen, 1897). Though I am unable to go further into that debatable ground, I must not pass over Dr. Olsen's argument showing that the life of the original Sturla of Hvamm (v. inf. pp. 253-256) was written by Snorri himself; the story of the alarm and pursuit (p. 255) came from the recollections of Gudny, Snorri's mother.

In the Chansons de Geste a great discovery has been made since my essay was written; the Chançun de Willame, an earlier and ruder version of the epic of Aliscans, has been printed by the unknown possessor of the manuscript, and generously given to a number of students who have good reason to be grateful to him for his liberality. There are some notes on the poem in Romania (vols. xxxii. and xxxiv.) by M. Paul Meyer and Mr. Raymond Weeks, and it has been used by Mr. Andrew Lang in illustration of Homer and his age. It is the sort of thing that the Greeks willingly let die; a rough draught of an epic poem, in many ways more barbarous than the other extant chansons de geste, but full of vigour, and notable (like le Roi Gormond, another of the older epics) for its refrain and other lyrical passages, very like the manner of the ballads. The Chançun de Willame, it may be observed, is not very different from Aliscans with regard to Rainouart, the humorous gigantic helper of William of Orange. One would not have been surprised if it had been otherwise, if Rainouart had been first introduced by the later composer, with a view to "comic relief" or some such additional variety for his tale. But it is not so; Rainouart, it appears, has a good right to his place by the side of William. The grotesque element in French epic is found very early, e.g. in the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, and is not to be reckoned among the signs of decadence.

There ought to be a reference, on p. 298 below, to M. Joseph Bédier's papers in the Revue Historique (xcv. and xcvii.) on Raoul de Cambrai. M. Bédier's Légendes épiques, not yet published at this time of writing, will soon be in the hands of his expectant readers.

I am deeply indebted to many friends—first of all to York Powell—for innumerable good things spoken and written about these studies. My reviewers, in spite of all differences of opinion, have put me under strong obligations to them for their fairness and consideration. Particularly, I have to offer my most sincere acknowledgments to Dr. Andreas Heusler of Berlin for the honour he has done my book in his Lied und Epos (1905), and not less for the help that he has given, in this and other of his writings, towards the better understanding of the old poems and their history.

W. P. K.

Oxford, 25th Jan. 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I

The Heroic Age

II

Epic and Romance

III

Romantic Mythology

IV

The Three Schools—Teutonic Epic—French Epic—The Icelandic Histories

CHAPTER II

THE TEUTONIC EPIC

I

The Tragic Conception

II

Scale of the Poems

III

Epic and Ballad Poetry

IV

The Style of the Poems

V

The Progress of Epic

VI

Beowulf

CHAPTER III

THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

I

Iceland and the Heroic Age

II

Matter and Form

III

The Heroic Ideal

IV

Tragic Imagination

V

Comedy

VI

The Art of Narrative

VII

Epic and History

VIII

The Northern Prose Romances

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

(Chansons de Geste)