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The Unity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry Author(s): David A. Lawton Source: Speculum, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 72-94 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2846614 Accessed: 25-08-2015 18:57 UTC

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The basic unity of the Middle English alliterativeverse corpus has often been asserted. In the 1970s, GeoffreyShepherd conceded the enormous varietyof alliterativepoems in styleand outlook, but argued that"they stand in a continuum" whose terms are "moral insight and historical truth'';1 Thorlac Turville-Petreclaimed that "we are here dealing with a 'school' of poets, though one that embraces a huge varietyof styles and subjects";2 Derek Pearsall, while warning against "over-emphasis on . . . an alliterative 'school'," agreed that "the existence of an alliterative'school', comprisinga central 'classical' corpus of poems closely related in formal and stylistic character and with a definitelyWest Midland and North-Westernregional bias, can hardly be denied";3 and Arlyn Diamond postulated a new or redefinedgenre, the "alliterativeromance."4 Several different approaches coincide here: Shepherd's is thematic, Diamond's generic, and that of Pearsall and Turville-Petre metrical and dialectal,or regional. The verynumber of approaches raises problems: these seem heterogeneous,not always harmonious,ways of reaching agreementon a fundamentalunity. What kind of unityis meant, and what is the force of the quotation marks placed around the word "school"? (Pearsall's "classical" corpus, after all, comprises thirteen unrhymed aalax alliterative poems spread over a century;5even in the distinctivecase of translationsfrom the

I GeoffreyShepherd, "The Nature of AlliterativePoetry in Late Medieval England," Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Proceedingsof theBritish Academy 56 (1970), 57-76; p. 72 for thisand subsequent references. 2 Thorlac Turville-Petre,The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge, Eng., 1977), p. 27. 3 Derek Pearsall, Old Englishand Middle EnglishPoetry (London, 1977), p. 150, for this and subsequent references. 4 Arlyn Diamond, "Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight: An AlliterativeRomance," Philological Quarterly55 (1976-77), 10-29. 5 The "classical" corpus is defined not by genre but by styleand approximate date. It includes works composed between the mid-fourteenthand the mid-fifteenthcenturies which are of a stylemore ornate than Piers Plowman and poems of the Piers Plowmantradition, notably Mum and theSothsegger and Piers thePloughman's Creed, in which Langland's influence on styleand subject is direct. The members of the unrhymed "classical" corpus, which I have preferred elsewhere to call the "formal" corpus ("formal" in terms of style and matter) are: the three alliterativeAlexander poems, St. Erkenwald,Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight, Cleanness, Patience, the Destructionof Troy,the Siege ofJerusalem, Morte Arthure, Winner and Waster,the Parliamentof theThree Ages, and - less formal,probably because of earlier date - Williamof Palerne. To this listJ. P. Oakden (below, n. 11) adds Josephof Arimathea and CheuelereAssigne, neither of which adheres to the aalax staple line form.The other unrhymedalliterative poems are Death and Life 72

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Latin, AlexanderA and B, themselvesprobably unrelated, may be separated by as much as half a centuryfrom the Warsof Alexander, which is based on a differentrecension of the source.)6 In reality,there are two (admittedlyoverlapping) questions which should be kept as separate as is possible,of contentand form.Those whose concern is with the alliterativemeter in the fourteenthand fifteenthcenturies, with its numerous "modes and affiliations,"7prose as well as verse, or with the old, unresolved issue of "revival" against "continuity,"are likelyto feel that the Middle English alliterativecorpus should not be defined too strictly,and to shy away fromclaims, however qualified, for homogeneity.This tendency reached its extreme in N. F. Blake's article-lengthreview, in 1979, of Turville-Petre'sbook.8 Blake went so far as to assail the very concept of a book on the "alliterativerevival" on the grounds that no other corpus of Middle English poetryis defined for studyby its meter,and that the resultis a grave distortionin English medieval studies. Pearsall had already shown sensitivityto such a charge, having been at pains to deny any implicationthat "there is a body of poetry in Middle English which, on the basis of its metrical characteristics,can be completely isolated either socially or re- gionally or in terms of subject-matter."9Blake's challenge deserves an answer. I believe that there is one, although it is one that must echo Pearsall's caution against completelyisolated studyof the alliterativecorpus, especially, it seems to me, in genre. The concept of unityin Middle English alliterative verse composition is valid: in criticalterms, because of its unique temper, what Shepherd called "theme and treatmentof theme"; and in termsuseful to the literaryhistorian, because of the indebtedness of that temper in the "classical" corpus as a whole to Piers Plowman.This essay deals mainlywith content;but I should also like to suggest that the alliterativeform in the late

and the CrownedKing, both directlyinspired byPiers Plowman; Scottish Field, of sixteenth-century date; and Dunbar's Tretisof theTwa MeriitWemen and theWedo, all of which are to be excluded fromthe "classical"or "formal"corpus on grounds of styleor date. 6 The Gestsof King Alexanderof Macedon, ed. F. P. Magoun (Cambridge, Mass., 1929); The Wars of Alexander,ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS ES47 (1886). See Turville-Petre,Alliterative Revival, pp. 94-104, and my article,"The Middle English AlliterativeAlexander A and C: Form and Stylein Translation from Latin Prose," Studia neophilologica53 (1981), 259-68. The authoritativetreat- ment of sources is that of Hoyt N. Duggan, "The Source of the Middle English The Wars of Alexander,"Speculum 51 (1976), 624-36. 7Elizabeth Salter, "Alliterative Modes and Affiliations in the Fourteenth Century," NeuphilologischeMitteilungen 79 (1978), 25-35; see also N. F. Blake, "RhythmicalAlliteration," ModernPhilology 67 (1969), 118-24. 8 N. F. Blake, "Middle English AlliterativeRevivals," Review 1 (1979), 205-14. 9 This is a sensible disclaimerin view of the fact that individual alliterativepoems have been examined fruitfullyto characterizethe spiritof the age in which theywere composed, notably by J. A. Burrow,Ricardian Poetry (New Haven, 1971), and Charles Muscatine,Poetry and Crisisin theAge of Chaucer(Notre Dame, 1972); nevertheless,a synopticview of a whole period runs the risk of minimizingdifferences among individual works and authors, and I argue below that alliterativepoetry is of a distinctivetemper in the contextof Middle English literature.

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fourteenthcentury owes its temporaryvogue, or revival, to the success of Langland's poem. I begin by consideringwhat is perhaps the most humble of relationsto the "classical" alliterativecorpus, Joseph of Arimathea,in order to characterizea temper which, I think,is common to most of the corpus and which findsits inspiration,I shall argue, in Piers Plovman. The two issues in Piers Plovman central to my argument are penance and the role of vernacular writingin inducing it. After a brief exploration of these themes I proceed to an examination of the more formal poetry of the "classical" corpus, where Langland's program, adapted to material more connected with serious romance and so involvingthe development of topics such as the ubi suntmotif, is activelyexecuted: in Winnerand Waster,the Parliamentof theThree Ages, the MorteArthure, and Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight. My treatmentof this subject is not intended to be comprehensive, but I hope that it will be suggestive of new approaches to Middle English alliterativepoetry. The concentrationon unrhymed alliterativepoetry is a necessary limitationof space; as I shall note in a reference to the Awntyrsoff Arthure, stanzaic alliterativepoems are closelyrelated in spirit.

Josephof Arimathea'I is, on the face of it, the most implausible member of the alliterativecorpus as constitutedby Oakden: the number of aalax lines is under nine percent of the whole, and at least sixteen percent of its 709 long lines lack alliterationof any kind.1"The sole extant copy is to be found in the Vernon manuscript,Bodleian LibraryEng. Poet. a. i, a massive collectionof miscellaneous English compositions with a devotional purpose. On stylistic grounds, scholars have generally proposed an early date forJoseph,12 but there is nothingto support this.The only evidence for the date ofJosephis a terminus ad quem, the date of the Vernon manuscript (c. 1400). In its unique extant copy,Joseph presents three major problems: of form (was it ever, or ever intended to be, a full alliterative poem?); of context (what justifiesits inclusion in a manuscriptentitled salus animeor sowlehele?);and of content (what principle underlies its highlycondensed and apparentlyarbi-

10Josephof Arimathea:A CriticalEdition, ed. David A. Lawton (New York, 1983). This edition, in the series Garland Medieval Texts, has recentlybeen published. I take this opportunityto note a late change by the publisher to the pagination of the (camera-ready) introduction.This has the effectof disruptingall cross-referencesto pages in roman numerals. Eight should be added consistentlyto all such references. II J. P. Oakden, AlliterativePoetry in MiddleEnglish (1930-35), 2 vols. reprintedas 1 (Hamden, Connecticut,1968), 1:185-86. On the importanceof the aalax pattern,which alone enables us to constitutea corpus, see also myintroduction to Joseph, pp. xxiii-xxv; Robert W. Sapora, A Theory of MiddleEnglish Alliterative Meter with Critical Applications (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); and Joan Turville-Petre,"The Metre of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,"English Studies 57 (1976), 310-28. 12 W. W. Skeat, ed., Josephof Arimathie,EETS OS 44 (1871), p. x; Turville-Petre,Alliterative Revival, pp. 23-24; D. J. Williams,"Alliterative Poetry in the Fourteenth and FifteenthCen- turies,"The MiddleAges, ed. W. F. Bolton (London, 1970), p. 128.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 75 traryredaction of its source, L'estoiredel Saint Graal?). I shall not repeat here argumentspublished elsewhere,but I have concluded thatJosephis probably an unrevised firstdraft of a full alliterativepoem, commissionedperhaps for Vernon itself:the evidence for this lies in comparison with the source and the discoverythat alliterationin the English is particularlydefective where the redactor is engaged in drastic precis or large-scale structuraltransposi- tion. It owes its place in Vernon (which is, among other things, a comprehensive English legendary)13 to a burgeoning interest in Joseph of Arimathea inspired by Marian devotion,and to its conformitywith a specialized genre in which the Vernon compilerwas much interested,works dealing with the conversion of pagan princes. It owes its attempted meter, if I am right,to the work which immediatelyprecedes it in Vernon, the A-text of PiersPlowman. The idiosyncratictreatment of the source is due in part to the factthat the English author is workingin the firstplace from a highlysummary account of Joseph in La questedel Saint Graal, in which the White Knight explains to Galahad the significanceof his magic shield, and merely raiding the Estoire for sporadic detail.14 It is also due, however, to a strong difference in temperamentfrom the Estoire, which results in a consistentliterary program in the English. The major emphasis in Josephfalls upon Christian action and simplicity.Complex mysteriesin the source are rendered as breathtaking, showcase merveilles.Evalac is converted not by long and convoluted Trinitar- ian arguments,for which the English author has no stomach,but by practical divine help in war, the magic shield which he uses to call up the all-conqueringWhite Knight (who is really an angel); by the Christiantalent for prophecy; and by the active example of Joseph himself.In the English, Joseph is much magnifiedat the expense of his son Josephes, and presented not as an infallible patriarch but as a humble, merciful apostle, whose teaching of the Christian faith is practical and catecheticrather than, as in the French, abstruse and dogmatic. In these respects,Josephsits well enough in a manuscriptwhich contains much that is sensational or marvellous,like the Trentalof St. Gregory;saints' lives, and homileticromances like theKing of Tars or Robertof Sicilyparticularly concerned with pagan conversions; much Marian material; and much popular devotional or catechetic material ceaselesslycommending such active Christianvirtues as the Seven Works of

13 Manfred Gorlach, The Textual Traditionof the South English Legendary,Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s. 6 (Leeds, 1974), pp. 102-4, and for Vernon generally,see M. S. Serjeantson, "The Index of the Vernon Manuscript,"Modern Language Review 32 (1937), 222-61, and A. I. Doyle, "The Shaping of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts,"Chaucer and Middle English Studiesin Honorof Rossell Hope Robbins(London, 1974), pp. 328-4 1. 14 The crucial passage occurs in La questedel Saint Graal, ed. A. Pauphilet, Classiques francais du Moyen Age 33 (Paris, 1949), pp. 32-33. For the Estoire,see Le Saint Graal, ed. E. Hucher, 3 vols. (Le Mans, 1874), vol. 2, and W. R. J. Barron, 'Josephof Arimathieand the Estoiredel Saint Graal," Medium Evum 33 (1964), 184-94.

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Mercy,as well as more specialized treatiseslike Rolle's Formof Perfect Living and Hilton'sEpistle on theMixed Life (of whichJoseph's son is a type). Its debt to Piers Plowman is evident in the special status given to prophecy, in the concentrationon action, true charity,doing well, in the exaltation of simple catechetic verities over dogmatic profundities,and in the choice of meter itself. That choice is a spiritual value, identifyingJoseph with Piers as an allowable vernacular fictionin the articulate,devout, thoughtfulyet practical Christianculture forwhich Vernon as a whole provides the program. In assessing the influenceof PiersPlowman on other alliterativepoems, it is importantto remember that it offered not only a miscellanyof genres and topics to be imitated or debated, but also, by example and by precept, an alliterativeaesthetic. The issue is less its direct influenceon other alliterative poems, which is incontrovertible,'5than its value as a precedent; and it is worth rememberinghere too that only one poem of the corpus, Williamof Palerne, probably antedates the Piers PlowmanA-Text.16 The dating of Mid- dle English alliterativepoems is inexact: as with,for example, the Canterbury Tales, there is a hiatus between presumed dates of composition and the earliest extant manuscript. Scholars must therefore make do, somewhat unhappily, with a combinationof palaeographical evidence, the date of the earliest manuscript,and internalevidence to establish an approximate date of composition. Thus, while the earliest extant manuscript of the Piers PlowmanA-Text may be Vernon itself,there is general agreement that the textwas composed (and presumablycirculated) in the 1360s (and the B-Text in the 1370s).'7 There would be few today who would feel sure of an earlier date for any poem of the "classical" corpus except Williamof Palerne. In my brief discussion of Piers I therefore give first place to the A-text on chronological grounds, but I have also considered the two later versions, since it is not improbable that they also, especially B, exerted some influence. 18

15 See Ruth Morse, ed., St. Erkenwald(Cambridge, 1975), esp. pp. 15-18; Pearsall, pp. 181-83, especially for the views of Death and Life as "a gloss on B XVIII" (p. 183); and my essay, "Lollardy and the PiersPlowman Tradition," Modern Language Review76 (1981), 780-93. 16 Williamof Palerne, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS ES 1 (1867), p. xi; see also Thorlac Turville- Petre, "Humphrey de Bohun and Williamof Palerne," NeuphilologischeMitteilungen 75 (1974), 250-52, and AlliterativeRevival, pp. 40-41 and p. 135, n. 32. The strongcase for a date prior to 1361 rests on the identificationof "Pe hende erl of Hereford, Humfray de Boune" (5530), mentioned as the poem's patron, with Humphrey IX, sixth earl of Hereford, who died in that year. 17 See George Kane, ed., Piers Plowman: The A Version(London, 1960), pp. 1-18; J. A. W. Bennett,"The Date of the B-Text of PiersPlowman," Medium Evum 12 (1943), 55-64, and "The Date of the A-Text of Piers Plowman,"PMLA 58 (1943), 566-72: the A-textcannot be earlier than 1362, but there appears to be substantialsupport today fora date earlier than 1370. 18 I have used Skeat's edition, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1886), for the A-text since it is based on Vernon; quotation to the end of B VII is fromJ. A. W. Bennett's edition of the Prologue and Passus I-VII (Oxford, 1972), and thereafterfrom The Visionof Piers Plowman: A CompleteEdition

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Penance, both on the individual and the social level, is Langland's primary concern in Piers Plowman.As Holy Church explains in A Passus I (139-42) and as Repentance reiteratesin the confession sequence (A V; B V, especially 478-506), man's major responsibilityis to "amende," to turn from sin through "kynde knowyng"(the heart's knowledge of truthor the ymagoDei innate in man as a creature) and through the grace made possible by the incarnationand atonement.Salvation is made possible only by grace which is given freely,and can be repaid only, in a harmony of faith and works, by contritionleading to genuine change. Or as Piers explains in his firstap- pearance, Grace is Truth's doorman, "Amende-3ow" is his man, and the Virgin Mary,the human carrierof divine mercy,is the opener of the gate (A VI, 82-83; B V, 603). The quest for Dowel is thereforeestablished as the way to penance (A VIII, 147-84; B VII, 165-201), with Mary as the intermediary;and the ultimatefailure of the quest (B XX, 333-87), at least on the social level, is caused by the corruption of Contritionby the facile absolution of Sirpenetrans-domos. It is, as it were, a question of kingship:man must govern himselfin a wise and godly fashion as a king should govern a country. The ideal, on the social level, is clearly not the actuality: Piers's failure to keep order in his half-acreis a sure sign of this,and Piers himself articulates the precondition, individual penance on a universal scale: "Of preyeresand of penaunce my plou3 shal ben hereaftir"(A VIII, 106). Disdain for a presentin which people have failed gives rise to nostalgia for a wiser past - for Dame Study, the time of Plato and Aristotle (A XI, 130-31); for Ymagynatyfthat of Solomon, Samson, Job, Virgil, or Alexan- der (B XII, 40-44); for Anima that of St. Francis (B XV, 225-32) - which is itself checked by the realization that man in history is by postlapsarian nature a creature fallen inescapably into materialism:after listingthe great proud men of the past, in a summary of the ubi sunt topos, Ymagynatyf concludes that "catel and kynde wit was combraunce to hem alle" (B XII, 45). Yet the aspiration to be good, kindling the internal reformationin penance, remains an eternal if contradictoryhope. Langland's poem is such an aspiration; and it aspires furtherto induce penance in its readers. Cru- cially, Langland does not offer an orderly, neatly subdivided, penitential manual. It is not that he scorns such materials - indeed, he wishes that parish priests made more use of them (B XIII, 12-13; XV, 73-79) - but rather, I think,that these are the overfamiliartools of his plausible friars, and he seeks to disturb his audience into awareness by means altogether more drastic: morallyabsolute, structurallyanarchic, intellectuallydemand- ing, and, not least, willfullypoetic. The ambition,comparable with Dante's rather than Chaucer's, is unprec- edented in English poetry. Langland shows throughout an uneasy awareness that it is hazardous: early in the A-prologue, for example, he distin- guishes between two typesof what we would now call creativeartists: of theB Text,ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London, 1978). My source for C is the edition by Derek Pearsall (London, 1978).

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And summe[chosen, 31] murthhesto makenas munstralscunne, And getegold with here gle giltles,I trowe. Boteiapers and iangelers,ludas children, Foundenhem fantasyes and fooleshem maaden.... (A Prol.,33-36)

In the equivalent passage of C only the second categorysurvives; the view of C here is that of Dame Study in A, who distinguishesin propheticlanguage between clerks who have holy writ ever in their mouths and "harlotrie" which gains greater reward than "makyngof Crist" (XI, 32). Dame Study is quite clear about the consequences of such modern minstrelsy:if only after the minstrelsare silent, people at high table speak in pseudolearned blas- phemies about the Trinitywhile poor men starve at the gate (XI, 35-50). The aestheticproblem is succinctlystated: how to ensure thatas a poet one is "giltles"? How, that is, can one make vernacular poems which are not in themselves blasphemous betrayals of Christ, the devil's work, and which corrupt neitheroneself nor others? To some extent this is a wider problem of the European vernaculars, implicitin the word "goliard" (see B Prol., 139), which meant both versifierand "any clerk who had abandoned or dishonoured his vocation."'19As Langland treats it, it is more than a commonplace. The debate established in A grows in B to include Sloth, who is indeed a goliard, a renegade priest(B V, 422), and who ... can nou3te perfitlymy pater-nosteras Pe prestit syngeth, But I can rymesof RobynHood and Randolferle of Chestre, Ac neitherof owreLorde ne of owreLady Pe lestePat euerewas made. I havemade vowes fourty and for3etehem on Pe morne; I parfournedneure penaunce as Pe prestme hi3te, Ne ry3tesori for my synnes 3et was I neuere. (B V, 401-6)

It receives its fullesttreatment in "Haukyn the Actif Man" (B XIII, 272), whose soiled coat can only be cleaned by a process beginning with "cordis contricio"(XIV, 17), and who is, of course, introduced as a minstrel.At this juncture in B Langland makes his distinctionbetween "kynges minstrales" and the good type of poor beggars who are "Goddes minstrales" (XIII, 437-39), which provides the basis for the most complex, and richly metaphorical,differentiation of all in C IX, where the true beggars, "Goddes minstrales,"are in factitinerant evangelists, "lunatyk lollares" withthe power "To profecye of Pe peple, pleyinge, as hit were" (C IX, 114).2 Yet the essential point about poetryis clear enough even in A: bad secular poetryis a distractionfrom faith and destroyscontrition. The only valid activityis that directed to the salvationof oneself and others.

19 Bennett edition,p. 99. 20 See E. T. Donaldson, PiersPlowman: The C Textand Its Poet (New Haven, 1949), pp. 136-55.

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Can a poet then presumeto be an evangelist?The workitself gives a positive,though painful answer. Langland's dreamer is in one sense every- man,in anothersense an abstraction(Will); but he is also an alterego of his self-deprecatingauthor, a poet who clingstenaciously to his craft,whose quest is to cease frombeing "unholy of werkes"and become"trewe of his tonge.""Amende thee whilethow myght," advises Ymagynatyf (B XII, 10), insteadof which"thow medlest thee withmakynges" (B XII, 16). But the dreamer'sproblem is not poetrybut pride. Dame Study,after all, is attacking Will for being overintellectualat the expense of penitence,just as in C Reasonand Consciencecriticize his pretensionto "parfitnesse"(C V, 90). His pretensionis like Haukyn's- to be a wisepoet (B XIII, 286-314), his penancecorrupted by thought of hisown material good ratherthan grace (B XIII, 396-98). Significantly,Patience does not recommenda change of professionfor Haukyn but says instead that contrition will make him the best of all minstrels(B XIV, 27-28) - and, no doubt,a betterwaferer. For poetry can be an instrumentof penanceto benefitthe soul; as Lewte has already advised (I accept Schmidt'sgloss on "reden . . . in retorik"as "teach in poetry"): Thyngthat al theworld wost, wherfore sholdestow spare To redenit in retorikto aratededly synne? (B XI, 101-2)

And Anima,the most reliable internal voice, goes so faras to permithimself a contemptuousreference to newfangledclerks which concedes a secure defenseof thecraft of poetry: Grammer,the ground of al, bigilethnow children: For is noonof thisenewe clerkes - whosonymeth hede - That kanversifye faire ne formalicheenditen. (B XV, 370-72)21

So the work,by exampleand by precept,justifies and establishescriteria for good poetry.Good secularand vernacularpoetry must be simple(no Trinitariancomplexities to confuse the lewed),yet moral, conducive to a truly Active Life, and itselfa spiritualforce for contrition.The licence granted to "clean" secular entertainmentis a scholasticcommonplace, but for Langland, and for many English alliterativewriters of the late fourteenthcentury, it is at once a spiritual anxiety and an artisticimperative; and it stands at the center of that literaryself-consciousness so often diagnosed in their poetry. It is not so much Langland's discussionof the question he poses thatresolves the issue as his example, the constructionof a vernacular poem of consider-

21 The word "enditen" appears to have a differentmeaning from "versifye."It may be that "versifye"refers to Latin verse compositionand "enditen" to English writing,or that "enditen" refersto dictaminal (as opposed to poetic) composition. It is not inconceivable that the phrase "formalicheenditen" may mean specificallyalliterative composition.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry able popularityand a high order of imaginativeinvention which is unargu- ably in tune with the "makyng of Crist," which induces penance and, in spiritual humilityand artisticgrandeur, seeks to come to terms with the agonizing process, and exemplary failures,of human historyin the shadow of divine grace. AfterPiers Plowman, for an English vernacular poet to write alliterativepoetry is to do well. The aestheticdebate in Langland is conducted in terms strikinglysimilar to those of the controversysurrounding drama as edifyingChristian enter- tainment,and it may be that when, for example, the York Realist uses his alliterativerhymed stanzas he is, by his choice of meter, contributinghis answer to the question.22It would not be true,however, to say that the terms of debate, or the values they represent, are common to all self-conscious English poetryof the late fourteenthcentury. Gower achieves his high moral tone in a differentway altogether,in an ostensibly,and ambiguously,peni- tentialstructure which enables him to include in the ConfessioAmantis stories and episodes which would have shocked any alliterativepoet, and there is nothingbeyond the commonplace in his shreds of theoryabout sentenceand solace. Chaucer's Retractionssuggests a ratherfacile acceptance thatany truly secular poems, sooner or later, "sownen into synne."23For the alliterative poets, however,not only should a poet avoid corruptingtopics: afterWilliam ofPalerne the only sustained love scenes in the entirecorpus occur in Gawain, and of course they are antilove scenes, for the hero demurely desires, and gains, nothing but escape. Even in a secular narrative a poet should be "God's instrument,"24his work in itselfa force for contritionin the reader. This is implied, I think, in alliterative poets' or their scribes' occasional appropriation of the morally elevated term "tretys"to refer to their own works.25 The terms of Langland's debate occur in the prologue to Winnerand Waster,which presents somethingmore than a "conventional pose" or "nostalgia for the days of old."26 It is possible that this prologue antedates the Piers PlowmanA-text, in which case Langland's indebtedness to it is so great as to justify description of the prologue as his source; but considerable skepticismhas been directed recentlyat Gollancz's evidence for dating Win- ner and Waster 1352-53,27 and I for one feel that the formerlyaccepted

22 See J. B. Reese, "AlliterativeVerse in the York Cycle," Studies in Philology48 (1951), 639-68. 23 The CompletePoetry and Prose of GeoffreyChaucer, ed. John H. Fisher (New York, 1977), p. 397. For Gower, see The Worksof John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1901), vols. 2 and 3, especiallythe second and later Prologue to the ConfessioAmantis. 24 Turville-Petre,Alliterative Revival, p. 27, discussingthe MorteArthure, lines 9-1 1: see below, pp. 85-86. 25 See my article"Gaytryge's Sermon, Dictamen and Middle English AlliterativeVerse," Modern Philology76 (1979), 329-43, p. 331, n. 9. 26 The words are Turville-Petre's,Alliterative Revival, p. 28. 27 Elizabeth Salter, "The Timeliness of Wynnereand Wastoure,"Medium Evum 47 (1978),

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 81 relationship between Piers Plowman and Winnerand Wastershould be re- versed. Winnerand Wasterseems to me to followPiers Plowmanin exploring allegoricallythe nature of kingship,political and private(one's moral regula- tions of oneself), in one choice of values relatingto the Christianlife, to win or to waste. At any rate, the distinctionsare the same as Langland's, made in similar,sometimes prophetic, language, and witha similarmoral seriousness and apocalyptic urgency. Literature has become treacherous,destructive of morals and so of caritas: For nowealle as wittand wylesthat we withdelyn, Wysewordes and slee,and icheonwryeth othere; And now es no frenchipein fere but fayntnesseof hert. ...28

Doomsday, the author feels,must surelybe imminent;for formerly werelordis in londePat loued in thairehertis To heremakers of myrthes,Pat matirscouthe fynde, Wyse wordes withinn. . . (20-22) but now men prefer to honor the inexperienced boy who "can jangle as a jaye, and japes telle" (26) but who, if we can accept Gollancz's bold emenda- tion to line 25, cannot compose alliterativepoetry.29 The same distinctionis dramatized in The Parliamentof the ThreeAges, which used to be regarded as an early work but is now generallyaccepted to be a later virtuoso pastiche of other alliterativepoems,30 juxtaposing the formalhigh styleof Gawain and the MorteArthure with the lower, less ornate and morally austere style of Piers Plowman. In the dream of this poem, Youth, Medill Elde, and Elde too debate what today we should call lifestyles. Since Medill Elde's preoccupation is exclusivelywith accumulating material

40-65, and my article,"Literary History and ScholarlyFancy: The Date of Two Middle English AlliterativePoems," Parergon (A.N.U., Canberra) 18 (August, 1977), 17-25. Both echo the original skepticismof J. R. Hulbert, "The Problem of Authorshipand the Date of Wynnereand Wastoure,"Modern Philology 18 (1920), 31-40. For Gollancz's dating,see his edition of Winnerand Waster(1921; repr. Cambridge, Eng., 1974), preface: "Date of the Poem." 28 Lines 5-7 in Gollancz's edition, but Gollancz took line 7 from its place in the Thornton manuscript,BL Additional 31042, between his lines 21 and 22. I have retained the manuscript readings. 29 Thornton reads: "Pat neuer wroghtethurgh witt thies wordes togedire"; for "thies,"which makes littlesense in context,Gollancz substitutes"three," with its suggestionof aalax composition. Cf. n. 21 above. 30 Ed. M. Y. Offord,EETS OS 246 (1959); and also by Gollancz (London, 1915), who wrote: "One's firstimpression is thatThe Parlementis a sort of summaryof longer poems - an epitome reminiscentof lines and passages in the chief alliterativepoems in the second half of the fourteenthcentury" (preface: "General Characteristicsof the Poem"). Oakden accepted an early date (1:51-55, 182-84), and thisis accepted as late as 1965, by S. S. Hussey, "Langland's Reading of AlliterativeVerse," ModernLanguage Review 60 (1965), 163-70; but see R. E. Lewis, "The Date of TheParlement of the Thre Ages," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 69 (1968), 380-90.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry assets (149), he has nothing to say about literature.There is, however, a sharp contraston this subject between Youth and Elde. Youth puts forward an idealized and poeticallyrich portraitof the courtlylife: the hunt,revels in hall, games of chess, carols in open company and private dances with "damesels dere" (249) in theirchambers, lovemaking, and RicheRomance to rede and rekkenthe sothe Of kempesand ofconquerours, of kyngesfull noblee, How thaywirchipe and welthewanne in thairelyues.... (250-52)

Elde, dressed in black and hideously disfigured,speaks solely on one theme, for "now es dethe at my dore that I drede moste" (292); he too has been a courtier in his youth and a winner in middle age, but now he is faced with the inescapable judgment and himselfjudges his own life,and the process of human history,with reductive despair. His speech occupies more than half the poem and is, in intention and effect (on the dreamer), a disguised penitentialtreatise. It is preciselysecular literatureused to induce contrition in its readers, by its gloomy demonstrationthat "doghetynes,when dede comes, ne dare noghte abyde" (583). Yet there is somethingapproaching a paradox in Elde's speech, for his last words, "Dethe dynges one my dore, I dare no lengare byde" (654), indicate that he has devoted the last moments of his life to his descriptionsof the Nine Worthies,the three wise men (Aristotle,Solomon, and Merlin),and the long-dead lovers of history.The near-paradox is inherent in the ubi sunt topos, the use of which as a structuralprinciple is fullyrevealed in Elde's finalexamples: Wharees nowDame Dido wasqwene of Cartage? Dame Cand[ac]ethe comly was called quene of Babyloyne? Penelopiethat was priceand pas[sed]alle othere, And Dame Gaynorethe gaye, nowe grauen are thaybothen; And otheremoo thanI maymene, or anyman elles. (626-30)

This topos involves both a nostalgicresponse to the glories of the past, laus Deo, and an affirmationof mortalityso potent as to turn the reader's mind actively to his or her unpreparedness for the inevitable end - hence to contrition.The emphasis is penitential(583), not, as Youth saw it, vainglori- ous (252). At the same time,however, the ideal facetsof courtlylife and the fantasiesof earthlyconquest are lingered over withoutapology and enumer- ated in detail, as desirable imaginingsin theirown rightand, morally,as the hook upon which the poem's audience is to be caught. The poem's own intended audience must be presumed to have combined in actualitywhat the two stylesof the poem imply: social elevation and spiritualseriousness. The poet plays Patience to his audience of courtlyHaukyns.

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The theme of the Nine Worthiesadumbrated in the Parliamentof theThree Ages is not at all common in fourteenth-centuryEnglish literature,though it becomes more so later.31There are only two major English treatmentsfrom the late fourteenthor early fifteenthcentury, the other of which occurs in the MorteArthure, in Arthur'sdream of Fortune's Wheel which foretellsthe fall of his pride.32Both instancesare alliterative,and it would seem that the motif has also had some effectin determiningthe shape of the "classical" corpus itselfand the "matirs"to which its authors turned. Three of the Nine Worthies are extensivelyrepresented in the corpus: Hector (in the Destruc- tionof Troy),Alexander, and Arthur.The cyclesof two others,Charlemagne and Godfrey de Bouillon, are drawn upon to provide the material for two alliterativepoems slightlyoutside the "classical" corpus, Rauf Coil3ear and CheuelereAssigne respectively;33 and Caesar's appearance in the Parliament (407) is immediately associated with the Brut material that, for example, supplies the historical frame for Gawain and the conclusion of the Morte Arthure.In a sense, then, only the threeJewish worthies are whollyunrepre- sented in the corpus. Another factorin this selectionis the association of an apocalypticconsciousness, common to many of the poems in the corpus and latent in the Nine Worthies theme itself,with notions of the fulfillmentof Britain's spiritual and historicaldestiny: the capture of Jerusalem by Titus and Vespasian, described in the Siege of Jerusalem,releases Joseph of Arimathea to effectthe conversionof Britain34and to begin what the author of Joseph calls "Pe auenturus of Brutayne" (232). But there is no scope here to explore a philosophy of history,even though this would probably shed lighton the claim by some alliterativepoets to have revivedan "old" meter.35

31 See Offord, pp. xl-xlii, and p. xlii, n. 1. See also R. S. Loomis, "Verses on the Nine Worthies,"Modern Philology 15 (1917), 19-27, and J. H. Roberts,"The Nine Worthies,"ibid. 19 (1922), 297-305. 32Morte Arthure, ed. Valerie Krishna (New York, 1976), lines 3218-3467. All quotation is from thisedition. 33Rauf Coil3ear, ed. F. J. Amours, ScottishAlliterative Poems (Edinburgh, 1897); Cheuelere Assigne,ed. H. H. Gibbs, EETS ES 6 (1868). Like Joseph,the latter is a selective and' much condensed epitome of its source. There are also sinmilaritiesof formbetween the extant version of Josephand that of CheuelereAssigne. Although Josephis probably an unrevised firstdraft lacking its final alliterativeembellishment (see Derek Pearsall, "The 'Ilchester' Manuscript of PiersPlowman," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 82 [1982], 181-93 [p. 192]), the same is not true of CheuelereAssigne. The sole survivingcopy is in BL MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, and the scribeof this manuscriptregularly deletes alliterationwherever possible in his copy of the Siege ofJerusalem. Aftercomparing thisscribe's text of the Siege withall other manuscriptsof the poem, it seems to me all but certain that he worked from a full-scalealliterative poem when he copied Cheuelere Assigne.During my forthcomingediting of the Siege ofJerusalem, I hope to offer some sug- gestionstowards a conjectural"restoration" of CheuelereAssigne. 34Siege ofJerusalem, ed. E. Kolbing and Mabel Day, EETS OS 188 (1931). My referencehere to Joseph effectingEngland's conversionis in tune with theJosephauthor's determineddiminu- tion of the Grail, which also is not mentionedin the MorteArthure. 35 See the Winnerand Wasterprologue, cited above, and Gawain, lines 35-36: "With lel letteres loken / In londe so hatz ben longe."

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It is sufficientto note that the clerklyseriousness with which the alliterative poets approached the task of rendering their "matirs" is mirrored,in the case of the Alexander and Troy material,by the highlyunusual selectionof Latin prose sources for English verse translations,and in the case of the Arthur poems, which I shall examine in greater detail, by a consistentand particularseriousness, a moral earnestnessof tone and structure,which sets the alliterativeworks apart fromArthuriana in any other form. This separateness fromother Arthurianahas led John Finlaysonto argue that the MorteArthure is not a romance at all, but a chansonde geste.Finlayson draws definitionsof the two genres from Dorothy Everett and Erich Auer- bach.36 In romance the knightrides forthin pursuit of his ideal of chivalry, has recourse to arms to win personal pris, lives in a world of courtoisie practicing mesure,and is placed in a deliberately unreal context by the narrator. In the chansonde geste,he is seen in strictlysocial terms, as a member of a comitatus,is placed in a real world, and engages in real warfare; he has an overriding sense of the justice of his cause, and his heroism is uncurbed by the restraintsof eithercourtoisie or mesure.An immediateobjec- tion is that by this definitionof romance, there is hardly any Middle English romance. Another is that there is littlein the MorteArthure of the so-called chansonde gestequalities not already present in the chronicleswhich, by their nature,are concerned with(at least the illusionof) a real world, real warfare, real causes. The convictionthat God is on the hero's side is a cliche as much of chronicle and romance as of chansonsde geste.The chronicles themselves propagate the idea of Arthuras head of an order of men and their storyof Arthur'sdeath is also the historyof that order's annihilation.No more than the Morte Arthureare the chronicles concerned with courtoisie,and the exemplary moral of Arthur'sfate concerns the breach of mesure.To call the MorteArthure an English chansonde gesteis also to overlook the amount of romance material which the poet has interpolated,and the extent to which genuine chansonde gestematerial, Gawain's encounter with Priamus, receives a romance treatment.37Moreover, the English poet, like the author ofJoseph, actually plays up the merveillesof his source - Arthur's dreams, the fight with the giant of St. Michael's Mount - wherever they can be said to rein- force the work's moral tone and meaning. Attemptsto locate the distinctive qualities of the MorteArthure in its genre are misconceived,as are characteri- zations of the poem as an atavisticreturn to a more heroic spirit:in many of

36 John Finlayson, ed., Morte Arthure,Selections (London, 1967), pp. 5-13, citing Dorothy Everett,Essays on MiddleEnglish Literature, pp. 8-19, and Erich Auerbach, Mimesis,trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), pp. 135-36; see also Finlayson's unpublished Ph.D. thesis, "The Sources, Use of Sources, and Poetic Techniques of the Fourteenth Century AlliterativeMorte Arthure,"University of Cambridge, 1963. 37 For romance interpolations,see Arthur's leavetaking from Guinevere (712-13), and Ga- wain's concealment of his identityfrom Priamus: the entire Priamus episode (2501-2716) is derived from Fierebrasor its English translation,Sir Ferumbras;the romance nature of the English poet's treatmentis conceded by Finlaysonin his note on 2567-70.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 85 itsdetails, the poem apparentlyshows some sophisticationof contemporary reference.38 The moralintention of theMorte Arthure is preciselystated in itsimposing and highlywrought prologue: Now grettglorious Godd, thurghgrace of Hym seluen, And the precyousprayere of Hys prysModyr, Schelde vs fro schamesdede and synfullwerkes, And gyffevs grace to gye and gouerne vs here, In thiswrechyd werld, thorowe vertous lywynge, 5 That we may kayretil Hys courte,the kyngdomof Hevyne, When oure saules schall parte and sundyrefra the body, Ewyreto belde and byde in blyssewyth Hym seluen; And wysseme to werpe owte som worde at this tym That nothyrevoyde be ne vayne,bot wyrchiptill Hym selvyn, 10 Plesande and profitabillto the popule Pat them heres. 3e thatliste has to lythor luffesfor to here Off elders of alde tymand of theireawke dedys, How theywere lele in theirelawe and louede God Almyghty, Herkynesme heyndlyand holdys30W styll, 15 And I sall tell 3ow a tale Pat trewees and nobyll, Off the ryeallrenkys of the Rownnde Table, That chefe ware of cheualrye and cheftansnobyll, Bathe ware in thirewerkes and wysemen of armes, Doughty in theirdoyngs and dredde ay schame, 20 Kynde men and courtaysand couthe of courte thewes; How theywhanne wythwere wyrchippismany, Sloughe Lucyus Pe lythyre,that Lorde was of Rome, And conqueryd thatkyngryke thorowe craftys of armes; Herkenes now hedyrwardeand herysthis storye. 25

This falls into sections: the poet's initialprayer to God (1-1 1) and his rather stern attempt to gain the attention of his audience (12-25). In the first section,God is omnipresent,invoked grandlybut almost intimatelyas "Hym seluen" (1, 8, 10); in the second, the time-switchis effectedfrom "this tym" (9) to "elders of alde tym"(13), and the firstthing we learn is that theywere "lele in theire lawe and louede God Almyghty."The virtual command to listen is repeated ( 11, 15, 25), and the nobility of the story and these

38 See Finlayson'sown article,"Morte Arthure: The Date and a Source for the Contemporary References,"Speculum 42 (1967), 624-38, and Larry D. Benson, "The Date of the Alliterative MorteArthure," Medieval Studies in Honor of Lillian HerlandsHornstein, ed. Jess B. Bessinger,Jr., and Robert R. Raymo (New York, 1976), pp. 19-40: Benson's demonstrationof the poet's Lancastrian sympathies is especially interesting.However, there is an altogether different reading of the poem's contemporaneityin John Barnie, War in MedievalSociety (London, 1974), pp. 147-50, and in Juliet Vale, "Law and Diplomacy in the AlliterativeMorte Arthure," Notting- ham Mediaeval Studies 23 (1979), 31-46. It seems we can agree that the poem alludes to contemporarypractices and events,but not on the period in which such events are to be found.

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"cheftans"with their ultimately tragic hubris is repeated (16, 18). It may well be no accident, tag or not, that their existence, skill,and power are located twice in "armes" (19, 24), the whole poem adopting an ambivalentattitude, admiring and reproving,to their use. More strikingare the reverberations between the two sections,frame and narrative.Line 3 is a prayer to God to shield us from "schamesdede and synfullwerkes"; line 19 shows the "cheftans" as "ware in thire werkes," and line 20 tells us that they "dredde ay schame." The poet prays to God thatthrough his and Mary's grace (1, 4) and "thorowevertous lywynge / ... we may kayre til Hys courte, the kyngdomof Hevyne" (5-6). Line 21 tells us that the "cheftans" were "Kynde men and courtaysand couthe of courte thewes." But was it the demands of God's court or Arthur'sthat egged them on so that they slew the lorde of Rome "And conqueryd that kyngrykethorowe craftysof armes"? The court of chivalry,unlike the court of God, is exposed to sin, and when at the end of the poem the dying Arthur deals with the disposition of his kingdom after firstsending for his confessor, he has learned that the kingdom of God, unlike that of Lucius, cannot be taken by storm and requires other less flamboyantvirtues than prowess "in armes." To be more exact, it is an altogetherdifferent type of "armes" that Arthur needs in his dyingresolve: Doo calleme a confessourwith Criste in hisarmes; I willbe howseldein haste,whate happe so betyddys. (4314-15)

Arthur's dying act is one of contrition,on which the poem has laid much emphasis.39 The horror of Gawain's death, for example, is that he dies unshriven,a fate normallyreserved for wicked characters.The prologue has promised as much, withits invocationto God and Mary for grace to achieve salvation "thorowe vertous lywynge,"and a prayer that the "worde," the poem, will be no empty bauble but in this supreme activity"Plesande and profitabillto the popule Pat them heres."40 The moral of the poem is thereforethe same as Elde's moral, and the moral intentionsof the Parlia- mentand theMorte Arthure are identical. The moral is generated by the author's use of the Nine Worthies motif, which extends its influence well beyond Arthur's key dream of Fortune's wheel. Twice Arthuris compared directlywith Alexander (2634, 4160), and twicewith Hector: in line 2635 and at the veryend of the poem, which links Arthur with the Brut traditionand describes him as "of Ectores blude, the

39 See George R. Keiser, "The Theme of Justice in the AlliterativeMorte Arthure," Annuale mediaevale16 (1975), 94-109. 40 See Susan Wittig,Stylistic and NarrativeStructure in the Middle English Romances(Austin, Texas, 1978), pp. 54-57, for a convenient collection of romance prologues which may be contrastedwith that of the MorteArthure.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 87 kyngeson of Troye" (4343). The poem's ambivalence is thereforethat of the ubi sunt topos which informsit. With this in mind, it is worth noting lines from the MorteArthure which have not received adequate explanation. The lines occur at the end of Arthur'slament for Gawain, and certainlyought, in a threnodyof thispower, to be climactic: "Here I makemyn avowe," quod theKynge than, "To Messie,and to Marie,the mylde Qwene of Heuen, I sall neuerryvaye, ne racchesvncowpyll At roo ne raynederePat rynnesappone erthe; Neuergrewhownde late glyde, ne gosschawkelatt flye, Ne neuerfowle see fellidePat fliegheswith wenge; Fawkonne formaylleappon fistehandill, Ne 3ittwith gerefawcon rejoyse me in erthe; Ne regnein myroyaltez, ne halde myRownde Table, Till thidede, mydere, be dewlyreuengede; Bot euer droupeand dare,qwylls my lyfe lastez, Till Drightenand derfedede hafedon qwatethem likes." (3997-4008)

Finlayson'seditorial commenton these lines (p. 111) operates on the miscon- ception that the key to them is to be found in Edmund, duke of York, or the Roman de toutechevalrie: "Arthur's vow of abstinence from hunting may not seem very self-sacrificingto a modern reader. Hunting was, however, the principalroyal sport of the Middle Ages. What Arthuris saying,therefore, is that he will not enjoy himselfuntil he has avenged Gawain." A more appropriate parallel for the ending of Arthur's lament is to be found in short religious lyricson the ubi sunttheme, in which huntingbecomes emblematic of the courtlylife from which the proud have fallen, glorious even in their transienceyet unprepared for death; for true knighthoodis the penitential warfareagainst the fiend: UuerebeP Peybiforen vs weren, Houndesladden and hauekesberen And haddenfeld and wode?... Wereis Pat lawingand Patsong, Pat traylyngand Pat proude3ong, Po hauekesand Po houndes?. . . Hoere paradishy nomen here, And nou Peylien in helle1-fere.. .41

This indebtedness to the ubi sunt topos, developed by alliterativepoets into the theme of the Nine Worthies,expresses a penitentialand didactic intention, no less in the MorteArthure and the Parliamentthan in PiersPlowman or

4" EnglishLyrics of theXIII Century,ed. Carleton Brown (Oxford, 1932; repr. 1971), no. 48, fromBodleian MS Digby 86, pp. 85-87, lines 1-3, 13-15, 19-20.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry the lyricsthemselves, especially those fromVernon and BL MS Harley 2253 withwhich the alliterativepoems have affinitiesin language and style. The use of huntingin the MorteArthure is identicalin aim with that in the Parliament.The dreamer in that poem is a huntsman,and the poem opens in a May settingwith a totallynaturalistic account of his shooting of a noble hart with great antlers. There follows an extensive and technicallycorrect account of the brittlingof the deer, reminiscentof Gawain, until,wearied by this and the day's heat, the hunterfalls asleep. At the end of his dream, with Elde's grimwarning ringing in his ears, he is awoken by the sound of a bugle blast: Than thesone was sett and syledfull loughe; And I foundedappon foteand ferkedetowarde townn. And in themonethe of Mayethies mirthes me tydde.... There dere Drightynethis daye dele vs of thiblisse, And Marie,pat es myldeqwene, amende vs of synn.Amen. Amen. (658-60; 664-65)

The dreamer, the happy huntsmanin May, has undergone a somber refor- mation. After a backward glance at the joys of May, both wistfuland final, the poem ends with an earnest prayer, to God the judge and Mary the intercessor,of the typewith which the MorteArthure opens. The emphasis in the prayer is on "this daye" (664; cf. MorteArthure, 9). Together with the bugle blast which is so like the Last Trump, and the view of the world as sere and darkening,it leads inevitablyto a considerationof the last things,death and judgment. The poem's meaning is implicit and covert: the dreamer embodies in himself the three ages which all meet annihilationwith Elde. The hunting episode integratesclosely with the rest of the poem.42 The dreamer as huntsman,in bringingdeath to animals, has imitatedon a lower level of creation the functionof divine providence in relation to himself.At the end of the poem he is aware that the huntsman is Death, and mankind the quarry. The dreamer has realized the full implicationsof the moral taughtby Elde in his peroration (631-54), which is magnificent,sweeping, and overtly homiletic; an explicit formulationof the vanity of earthly life contrasting with the essential reticence of the formal dream framework; an urgent exhortationto contritionand confession(641-46); and an authenticimitation in style,tone, and moral urgencyof PiersPlowman. Yet the verydetail of the hunting sequences reveals the direction of these more formal poems to an aristocraticlay audience, but one that,while it enjoys its pleasures, is commit- ted to a genuine moral code grounded, as with Langland, in contrition.Not

42 See R. A. Waldron, "The Prologue to The Parlementof the Thre Ages," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen73 (1972), 786-94; Anne Kernan, "Theme and Structurein The Parlementof the Thre Ages,"ibid. 75 (1974), 253-78.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 89 for nothingdid Elizabeth Salter, in this context,draw attentionto Henry of Lancaster'sLivre de SeyntzMedicines. The motif appears in three of the rhymed, stanzaic alliterativepoems shown by Turville-Petreto be a later derivationfrom the unrhymedpoems: De tribusregibus mortuis; Summer Sunday, in both of which the hunt leads to a mementomori; and Awntyrsoff Arthure (A).44 The last of these gives more than a mementomori to its huntsmen: it also gives a stinging indictmentof the Arthurianway of life, put in the mouth of the ghost of Guinevere's mother and drawing its major details, in all probability,from the depiction of purgatoryin the SouthEnglish Legendary. As Ralph Hanna's excellent com- mentaryon the poem makes evident, it is as if the poet of AwntyrsA has returned to the context of the Vernon manuscript: for his legendary material; for his homiletic use of merveilles(Joseph); for his preoccupation with salvation,the Seven Works of Mercy,and the Last Judgment(Piers Plowman, Mirrorof St. Edmund); for penitential,antifeminist, and ubi suntlyrics; for his Marian devotion (226-29); for much of his plot (the Trentalof St. Gregory,with which there are verbal parallels); and perhaps even for his meter (Susannah). Much of the alliterativeArthuriana is penitential narrative,and all is concerned with"vertous lywynge" that leads to "sowlehele." Is Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight an exception? Most criticswould appear to feel so; but there must be somethingwrong witha modern criticismwhich fails to see thatat the end of the poem Gawain is suffering,exactly, an acute attack of contrition,and which mostly refuses to accept the poet's own explanation of his plot,which entails Sir Bertilak'senchantment as the Green Knight by Morgan le Fay out of her implacable malice towards Guinevere personally and the Arthurian court.45 It seems to me that to dismiss this

43 See Elizabeth Salter,"The AlliterativeRevival," Modern Philology 64 (1966), 146-50, 233-37, and the same author's review of Marcelle Thiebaux, The Stag of Love: The Chase in Medieval Literature(Ithaca, 1974), in MediumzEvum 45 (1976), 222-23; and also Thiebaux's article,"Sir Gawain, the Fox-Hunt and Henry of Lancaster,"Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 71 (1970), 469-79. There is a valuable examination of the Anglo-Norman precedents for this aspect of alliterative poetryin Rosalind Field, "The Anglo-Norman Background to AlliterativeRomance," in Middle EnglishAlliterative Poetry and Its LiteraryBackground: Seven Essays, ed. David A. Lawton (Cam- bridge, Eng., and Totowa, N.J., 1982), pp. 54-69. 44De tribusregibus mortuis in The Poems of John Audelay,ed. E. K. Whiting, EETS OS 184 (1940); SummerSunday in HistoricalPoems of theXIV and XV Centuries,ed. R. H. Robbins (New York, 1959), no. 38; The Awntyrsoff Arthure, ed. Ralph Hanna III (Manchester, 1974); Thorlac Turville-Petre,"Summer Sunday, De tribusregibus mortuis, and The Awntyrsoff Arthure: Three Poems in the Thirteen Line Stanza," Reviewof EnglishStudies, n.s. 25 (1974), 1-14. This article demonstratesthat these poems are the work of a school operating in the early fifteenthcentury; but it should not be taken to include all rhymed alliterativepoems in the thirteen-linestanza: Susannah,which is found in Vernon, Simeon, and three other manuscripts,is obviouslydistinct and chronologicallyantecedent. Susannah is edited by Amours (n. 33) and more recentlyby A. Miskimin (New Haven, 1969). I hope to deal with this subject at greater length in a forthcomingessay on thirteen-linestanza poems. 45 Diamond (above, n. 4), p. 25, says that "criticswould agree" that it is an "unsatisfactory explanation." See this article for furtherreferences, and cf. J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawainand theGreen Knight (London, 1965), pp. 125-27.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 90 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry solutionas an improvisedafterthought is to miss the poem's moral point, and to ignorea substantialclue providedin FittII's accountof dinnerat Hautdesert: De olde auncianwyf he3est ho syttez, De lordelufly her by lent, as I trowe... (100 1-2)46

Attemptsto read theselines as sayinganything but thatMorgan is placed at the head of high table seem forced,and a fourteenth-centuryaristocratic audiencewould not have been slowto appreciatethe clue thatthis unwonted respect for a dowager presages an unusual power structureat Hautdesert. The moral point has to do with the frustrationof Morgan's designs, and Bertilak's apparent disenchantment,by Gawain's virtue. The emblem on Gawain's shield, the pentangle, claims perfectionand so offersGawain as a perfecttype of a lay, spirituallyactive life; but Gawain himselfis in no doubt on his return to Camelot that his virtue has been irreparablycompromised, and in his statementhe uses the imageryof the "endeles knot": "For Per hit onez is tachched twynnewil hit neuer" (2512). He realizes, moreover, that his fault lay in his superstitiousacceptance of the green lace, for which the nick in his neck, "Pe token of vntrawPe" (2509), is retribution,and which Gawain resolves to wear foreveras, explicitly,a penitentialdevice: WhenI ridein renoun,remorde to myseluen De fautand Pe fayntyseof Pe fleschcrabbed, How tenderhit is to entyseteches of fylPe.... (2434-36)

Gawain's failure,as Burrow suggests,is in "trawpe"; or, as Bertilakputs it, in a word of great religious significancein PiersPlowman, "lewt'e" (2366). It is a failurenot just in perfection,but in faith. How then is Morgan frustrated,and Bertilak disenchanted, by Gawain's virtue? The answer lies in Gawain's shield, which is not merely an emblem (on the outside) but a talisman (on the inside, which contains a portraitof the Virgin Mary) that operates in much the same way as the ring given by Rymenhildto Horn, or the magic shield given byJoseph to Evalac: And queresoeuerPys mon in mellywatz stad, His proPo3te watz in pat,Pur3 alle oPerPyngez, Pat alle hisforsnes he fengat Pe fyuejoyez Pat Pe hendeheuen-quene had of hirchylde; AtPis cause Pe kny3tcomlyche hade In Pe inorehalf of hisschelde hir ymage depaynted, Pat quen he bluschedPerto his belde neuer payred. (644-50)

46 Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd edition, ed. Norman Davis (London, 1967).

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 91 It is as ifthe English poet has takenliterally the Marian closing stanza of the penitentialubi sunt English lyric from MS Digby86 (citedabove, p. 87): Maydenmoder, heuene quene, Pou mi3tand constand owestto bene Oure shelda3ein Pe fende....47

This is a strikinginnovation in Gawain: Gawain'swaxing strength is nor- mallysaid to be derivedfrom noontide or sunlight.The sunlighthas been absolutelyChristianized, and Gawain'sstrength becomes an aspectof Marian devotion.48In a specialsense, Gawain is Mary'sknight; he praysto her in difficulty;and, it seemsto me, he is saved by her mercydespite his lapse of beliefin thepower of hisshield. Mary's guardianship of Gawainis constantly iterated.In thebedroom scenes, for example, Gawain and thelady ... lancedwordes gode, Muchwele pen watzPerinne; Gretperile bitwene hem stod, NifMare of hirkny3t mynne. (1766-69)

Commentingon lines 1768-69, Hulbertand Knottrejected the interpreta- tionof the manuscriptreading, "mare," as a formof Mary,saying that "the interferenceof theVirgin would spoil the whole crucial part of the test,and seemsunconceivable from such an artistas our poet."Norman Davis adds to thisjudgment: "The pointis well made"; but concedesthat the alternative interpretation"requires too muchstraining of languageto be acceptable."49 This showsan extraordinaryresistance, common in moderncriticism, to the poem's plot. Yet the implication,that Mary looks afterGawain constantly throughouthis quest and saves his life in spite of his spiritualinfidelity, makesexcellent sense of the plot and the disparity,on Gawain'sreturn to Camelot,between his shame,a privatecontrition expressed in his substitu- tionof shields,and the hilarityof the Arthuriancourt, a publicrelief. The plotof Gawainis thereforean extremelysophisticated conflict between good and evil, as externalagencies (Mary,Morgan), and as internalforces, in Gawain'sflawed efforts to lead a trueChristian life. The moralof Gawainis more subtlyexpressed than thoseof the alliterativehomilies Cleanness and

4 See n. 41 above; lines 55-57. On the close relation among Marian and penitentialthemes, and ubi sunt and mementomori topics, see F. A. Patterson,The Middle EnglishPenitential Lyric (191 1; repr. New York, 1966). 48 In the alliterativeMorte Arthure, it is Arthur who carries as his special device a representa- tion of the Virgin Mary (3648-49); thisimage is said to have been painted inside Arthur'sshield in an English sermon quoted by G. R. Owst, Literatureand Pulpit in MedievalEngland, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1969), p. 161. 49Davis, 2nd ed., n. on 1768-69, citing Hulbert and Knott,Modern Language Notes30 (1915), 107.

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Patienceor of the MorteArthure and the Parliament,but it is the same moral: salvation can be attained only through grace, and grace can be repaid only by contrition. And in Gawain, too, the ubi sunt motif,with its apocalyptic undertones, is present in the historicalframe, which distances the reader from the Arthu- rian court just as Gawain is detached from it by his experience of solitary quest and moral failure. The hunting scenes, while lacking the overt moral significancesuch scenes attain in other alliterativepoems, act surely as an index of Gawain's spiritual danger, and are as much a mementomori to the reader as the Green Knightis to Camelot. In Gawain there is also an element of mock hagiography,especially in Gawain's sufferingson his journey. This is appropriate, for Gawain is only a mock saint; for all his aspirations to perfectionin a lay version of the active life, his escutcheon is no less blotted than Haukyn's white coat. Gawain's achievement on the level of entertain- ment is masterlyand appeals to modern taste, but we should not therefore conclude that it is a differenttype of alliterativepoem. It has the same moral, contrition,and a plot which like that of other alliterativepoems takes a serious delight in merveillesand is based on the conflictof good and evil, moral dilemmas, and man's incapability to live up to his high Christian ideals. Like many other alliterativepoems it is devout, particularlyMarian, and does not eschew such romance motifsas enchantmentand disenchantment. Indeed, like the so much humblerJosephof Arimathea, its plot revolves around the Christianomnipotence of a magic shield. In short, there is no relenting from an immediate penitential focus in alliterativeArthuriana. It is the business of alliterativepoets to compose valid vernacular entertainmentand simultaneouslyto help save souls by inducing penitence. From this aim theycan hardlybe said to deviate, and in pursuing it they are fulfillinga particular set of moral specificationsestablished for vernacular literaturein the aestheticand the example of PiersPlowman. The only worthwhileactivity, in literatureor in life, is that which pertains to salvation. Insofar as alliterativepoets subscribeto this aim, theycan be called a "school," even though individual alliterativepoets may never have met others for reasons connected withregion or date; but the word "movement" is probably apter, for I suspect that the two factors preeminent in the cohesion of Middle English alliterativepoetry were manuscripttransmission and the tastes of a common audience. There is room for more study of a manuscript such as Cambridge UniversityLibrary Mm.5.14, which brings together an alliterative poem, the Siege of Jerusalem,with copies of the sources for alliterativepoems translated from Latin prose, the Historia de preliisand Guido's Historiadestructionis Troiae;50 or TrinityCollege, Dublin,

50 The manuscriptis in the hand of Richard Frampton, who is the scribe of the Duchy of Lancaster Registerof 1402: see A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, "The Production of Copies of the CanterburyTales and the ConfessioAmantis in the Early FifteenthCentury," Medieval Scribes, Manuscriptsand Libraries:Essays Presentedto N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson

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MS 4.12, which presents in the same hand Piers Plowman and the Wars of Alexander,and appears to have belonged to the Benedictine Priory of Durham c. 1500;51 or Vernon and the two Thornton manuscripts,with a less easily satisfiedassurance that their contents are merely"miscellaneous"; or, for that matter,Cotton Nero A.x, witha less blindingconfidence that we are dealing withthe worksof a single author. There is also room for more work on the audience for alliterativepoetry, both ideal (the audience the poets wanted) and actual (the audience they got), bearing in mind that the difference in stylisticregister between formalalliterative poems, mainlyromances, and the more informal,Piers Plowman,probably indicates a distinctionbetween a specialized and a general audience.52 But I hope that this essay has done enough to establish the unity of Middle English alliterativepoetry in mattersbeyond meter and style,and to support GeoffreyShepherd's fine intuitionthat this unitylies not so much in place or time as in "theme and treatmentof theme." It is a unityof temper. There remains the question of form: this essay does nothing,of course, to illuminate the perplexing issue of origins. If my suggestion about the paramount influence of Piers Plowman has any merit, we are left with a question of metricalprovenance: fromwhat materialsdid Langland, and the perhaps earlier poet of Williamof Palerne, "invent" their meter? (The question becomes less pressing in the case of later poets simply because of the increased availabilityof models.) There is unlikelyto be any single explanation of the origin of Middle English unrhymedalliterative poetry; there may be almost as many explanations as there are extant aalax poems. But attention has been directed recentlyto what, given the paucity of modern ter-

(London, 1978), p. 192 and n. 63. See also Doyle's survey of manuscriptscontaining Middle English alliterativepoetry, "The Manuscripts,"in MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background,pp. 88-100. 51 E. St. John Brook, "The PiersPlowman Manuscripts in TrinityCollege, Dublin," The Library, 5th series,6 (1951), 141-53; George Kane, ed., PiersPlowman: The A Version,pp. 4-5. 52 The distinctionin terminologyis that suggested by N. F. Blake, "Middle English Prose and Its Audience," Anglia 90 (1972), 437-55. The number of extant manuscripts,of course, bears the theory out: among alliterative poems, only the Piers Plowman A-text appears to have achieved a nationwide circulation.See M. L. Samuels, "Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology,"English Studies 44 (1963), 81-94. Most of the formalpoems are extantin only one manuscript; the Siege of Jerusalemis best represented, with eight, in two of which, Bodleian Library Laud Miscellany 656 and Huntington Library HM 128 (olim Ashburnham 130), it is attached to PiersPlowman. For a recentwork on Lancashire and Cheshire audiences, perhaps at a national level, see my article,"Scottish Field: AlliterativeVerse and Stanley Encomium in the Percy Folio," Leeds Studiesin English 10 (1978), 42-57; Michael J. Bennett, "Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight and the LiteraryAchievement of the North-WestMidlands: The Historical Back- ground,"Journal of MedievalHistory 5 (1979), 63-88; and Edward Wilson, "Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight and the Stanley Familyof Stanley,Storeton and Hooton," Reviewof English Studies, n.s. 30 (1979), 308-16.

This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 94 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry minology,we must call prose sources.53That these sources consistmainly of catecheticarnd penitential material is whollyin keeping withthe argumentof thisessay.

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

5 See especially the emphasis on Gaytryge'sSermon by Salter (n. 7) and me (n. 25). There is an importantreappraisal of the question of antecedents by Angus McIntosh, "Early Middle English AlliterativeVerse," in Middle EnglishAlliterative Poetry and Its LiteraryBackground, pp. 20-33.

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