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Julie Burton Julie Burton Fairytale Characteristics in Medieval Romances Doctoral thesis completed but not submitted, owing to the death of the author This thesis represents the state of completion the author attained before her death in March 2010. It was her final wish that it be made available to the widest possible scholarly circulation. All queries regarding this should be directed to her husband: Mr Simon Burton, 51 Double Row, Charlestown, Fife, KY11 3EJ Tel: 01383 872847 Email: [email protected] The bibliography was posthumously prepared from the footnotes by Dr Lynne Blanchfield (queries to [email protected]). Page 1 of 249 INTRODUCTION From the viewpoint of the twenty-first century, Middle English romance can be a problematic genre. Its fantastic events, stock characters, repetitive structures and contrived endings seem to belong with the fairytale of the nursery rather than with the 1 serious literature of the adult world. Stylistically, so many romances do little to counter this impression with formulaic words and phrases expressing simplistic emotions and commonplace sentiments. Yet Middle English romance was an enduring genre, popular over five hundred years or more. Although Chaucer was famously disparaging about the verse romances in his burlesque „Sir Thopas‟, many survive in the collections of, or indeed were commissioned by, worldly men, important and successful in their time. Clearly this raises a question: why are the romances, once so popular, unpalatable to the reading public of today? Any response to this question would of course be complex, not least because the romance genre notoriously embraces a range of greatly differing works. In this thesis I intend to explore one aspect of the romances which must be considered in any comprehensive answer: namely their „language‟, by which I mean their method of communication in its broadest sense, now generally regarded as lacking in sophistication and unrelated to real life. Because of the variety of works in the genre, I focus the study on a sub-group of the romances. It is the contention of this thesis that the link between fairytale and romance which I previously mentioned as disparaging to romance is in fact a strength of romance. In many ways the “language” of fairytale is the “language” of romance. In fact, the 1 When I use the term „romance‟ in this introduction it is to Middle English romance in particular that I refer. Page 2 of 249 closeness of fairytale and romance is such that an understanding of fairytale can contribute significantly to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the methods and effectiveness of romance. Fairytale can justly lay claim to be one of the most enduring of artistic genres. The tales have achieved popularity with succeeding generations who find real satisfaction in stories where impossible adventures undergone by improbable and stereotyped characters culminate so often in the familiar happy ending. Indeed, the sheer implausibility of the tales is so central that the generic term „fairytale‟ has come to be a euphemism for the unbelievable and the fantastic. Considered nowadays to be primarily suitable for children, fairytales have been transmitted amongst adults for centuries, communicated orally if not in writing. And where they enter literature and the other arts, the fairytale element is recognisably consistent with the fairytale of the nursery, even in cynical modern renderings. 2 While it is true that fairytale shares many of its characteristics with other folk genres, 3 and that the romances may be influenced by other sorts of folktale, like saint‟s legend, nevertheless of all the traditional genres which we know collectively as folktale, 4 fairytale stands apart in its relationship with the vernacular romances. However, appreciation of the strength of the link between fairytale and the romances has 2 Stith Thompson lists the genres of folktale as: fairytale, novella, local legend, saint‟s legend, hero tale, explanatory tale, myth, animal tale, fable, humorous anecdote (including numskull tales). As he points out, the boundaries between sorts of tales are not rigid in practice, and not all the terms are universally accepted. See The Folktale (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1946; repr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp.7-10. See also Linda Dégh, „Folk Narrative‟, in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. by Richard M. Dorson (London: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp.53-83 (pp.58-80). 3 Sir Isumbras is one example: see for instance Laurel Braswell, „Sir Isumbras and the Legend of St. Eustace‟, Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 128-51. 4 „Folktale‟ is an ambiguous term. Thompson says, „although the term “folktale” is often used in English to refer to the “household tale” or “fairy tale” (the German Märchen), […] it is also legitimately employed in a much broader sense to include all forms of prose narrative, written or oral, which have come to be handed down through the years. In this usage the important fact is the traditional nature of the material‟, p. 4. In this study I shall follow Thompson in differentiating between folktale and fairytale. Page 3 of 249 developed slowly. Renewed interest in the Middle English romances in the nineteenth century and the resulting surge in editorial activity saw the collection of analogues from a variety of written and oral sources so that the romances could be seen in the context of 5 like tales and motifs. Piecemeal enquiry into romance‟s folk relations gradually gelled into more systematic collection and collation of sources and analogues, with prolific 6 results. Investigation into sources and analogues tended, however, to be limited to establishing the historical and geographical connections of like stories in folktale and romance. The treatment afforded the folktale or motif in any particular romance, how it served the romancer‟s purpose, how its form and nature influenced that of the romance itself, tended to go unregarded. Motifs themselves were often simplistically understood. Insofar as it was considered, the influence of folktale was generally felt largely to account for the genre as second or third rate literature. Gerald Bordman, for example, considers Guy of Warwick to have been composed piecemeal by adding arbitrarily chosen folk motifs to a basic frame with an eye mainly to theatrical effect and little or no regard for convincing internal logic. In this („the temptation is to term it literary prefabrication‟) he considers Guy to be typical of the majority of romances, and that this method of composition accounts for several of what he perceives to be the outstanding features of romance like one-dimensional characters which are „stock folk-lore types, 5 See for example Walter Scott, Sir Tristrem, 3rd edn (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1811), which draws together much material on, for instance, dragons, shared by the romance with other medieval sources (pp. 309-11). It is seen as evidence of „traditions‟ rather „folklore‟, a word not coined until 1846, by William Thoms. See too Sir Frederick Madden‟s „Note on the word “werwolf”‟, in The Romance of ‘William of Palerne’, ed. by Walter Skeat EETS ES 1 (London: Trübner, 1867), pp. xxv-xxix, where he collects and comments on several instances of the word; also Skeat‟s discussion of various instances of belief in lycanthropy in the same edition, pp. xix-xx. 6 Many of these results are brought together and enlarged in Laura A. Hibbard‟s Mediaeval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924). Page 4 of 249 7 incorporated into the stories as such without any further interest‟. To take another example, a glance at Lillian Herlands Hornstein‟s commentary on Sir Eglamour of Artois in J. Burke Severs‟s catalogue of the romances shows that the romance has been condemned as „fantastic‟ (Kane), and „repetitious and lacking in invention‟ (Hibbard), while Hornstein herself, who supports the „validity to these animadversions‟, marks out the second part as „a “patchwork” of […] well-worn incidents‟, remarks which imply 8 that implausibility and repetition are not commendable literary characteristics. A browse through the catalogue shows that such views prevail. Gradually, however, such attitudes have been changing, prompted largely by increased understanding of the various sorts of folk narrative, their structure, style, and so on. The field of exploration most relevant to this study in this respect, though it is not the only 9 one, is Folklore Studies. The first significant explication of the characteristics of folktale in general was Axel Olrik‟s essay of 1909, „Epic Laws of Folk Narrative‟, in which he defines the „laws‟ of folktale (for example the „law‟ of repetition and the „law‟ of three) which he perceives as governing the creation of folk narratives of many sorts, 10 including the fairytale and ranging from legend to myth. Olrik‟s successor, insofar as he too formulates his observations from the study of the narratives themselves, is Max Lüthi, whose study of the essential characteristics of fairytale in particular, Das europäische Volksmärchen, was published in 1947. Lüthi draws attention to certain 7 Gerald Bordman, „Folklore and the Medieval Romance‟, in Folklore in Action: Essays for Discussion in Honour of MacEdward Leach, ed. by Horace Beck, Publications of American Folklore Society, Bibliographical and Special Series, 14 (Philadelphia, 1962), pp.37-43 (quotations from p.41). 8 „Eustace-Constance-Florence-Griselda Legends‟ in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, I, The Romances, ed. by J. Burke Severs (New Haven, Connecticut: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967), pp.120-32 (pp.124-25). 9 Another area of study which is changing perceptions of romance is that of orality/literacy. For a general introduction see Walter J.
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