If 1 72 - 15,290 SCHLOBIN, Roger Clark, 1944- THE TURKE £ GOWIN, THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE, AND THE GRENE KNIGHT: THREE EDITIONS WITH INTRODUCTIONS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1971 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan ©Copyright by Roger Clark Schlobin 1972 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE TURKE & GOWIN, THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE, AMD THE GRENE KNIGHT: THREE EDITIONS WITH INTRODUCTIONS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Roger Clark Schlobin, B.A., M.A. * + + * * The Ohio State University 1971 Approved by Department of English PLEASE NOTE: Some pages have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................... iii VITA .................................................... v GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF THE MANUSCRIPT .......... 1 EDITORIAL PROCEDURES ....................................... 14 Chapter I. THE TURKE & G O W I N ................................. 16 Introduction Metre and Versification Conventional Forms Dialect Text Textual Commentary Explanatory Notes II. THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAINE........................ 65 Introduction Metre and Versification Conventional Forms Dialect Text Textual Commentary Explanatory Notes III. THE GRENE KNIGHT................................... 108 Introduction Metre and Versification Conventional Forms Dialect Text Textual Commentary Explanatory Notes BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................1?0 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is indebted primarily to my advisor, Francis Lee Utley, and my two readers, John B. Gabel and Christian Zacher. Professor Utley has consistently contributed valuable time, knowledge, and effort to my graduate career and to my preparation for my profess­ ional obligations. More than this, he has been a valuable friend who has generously shared his experience and his enthusiasm, and who has been patient and understanding in situations that would have exhausted the resourcea of a lesser man. Professor Gabel, now Acting Chairman of the Department of English at Ohio State University, has taken time from his very pressing duties and obligations to assist me in the prep­ aration of the texts and the editorial apparatus. His experience and expertise have been invaluable in helping me operate effectively in an area I had had little previous experience with. If the texts contained within are of value for their accuracy and cogency, Professor Gabel must receive much of the credit. Assistant Professor Christian Zacher has not only given freely of his considerable knowledge of Arthurian literature, but has been a continual source of inspiration and encouragement. Like Professor Utley, his willingness to respect ray ' ideas and value my opinions has been one of the major sources of the strength and fortitude necessary to sustain my work and, more signif­ icantly, to enable me to maintain my interest and enthusiasm. ill I would like to dedicate this work to rqy wife, Melody, without whose love, understanding, and patience I could never have completed it, and to Professor Eugene B. Cantelupe, without whore help and inspiration all this never would have begun. iv VITA June 22, 1 9 ^ . B o m - Brooklyn, New York 1966 ............ B.A. C.W. Post College, Greenvale, New York 1 9 6 8 ............ M.A., The University of Wisconsin, Kadison, Wisconsin 1968-1970 .... Assistant to the Director, The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1970-1971 .... Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Field of Specialisation Kiddle English Language and Literature Professor Francis Lee Utley v GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF THE MANUSCRIPT My original purpose in selecting The Turke & Gowin. The Grene Knight, and The Marriage of Sir Gawaine for this study was to expose these works to the changes in critical techniques and attitudes that have taken place since the poems were last studied in any significant detail by George Lyman Kittredge.^ These poems, particularly The Grene Knight, have been almost completely the objects of source studies and their literary merit has been neglected. While the source approach is an extremely valuable part of scholarship, used exclusively it can obscure those elements that make any work of literature unique and distinctive. An additional step must be taken. After the tradition of a poem has been studied, it must be returned to the totality of the poem and studied as part of an aesthetic whole. This is one of the attempts that I have made here. In addition, I have attempted to provide, for the first time, examinations of the metre and versification, convention forms, and dialect for each poem. Initially, it was difficult to judge how sucessful a re­ examination of the manuscript of the three poems would prove to be. I knew that none of them had been transcribed from the manuscript since Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript in 186? (see the Introduction to each poem), and I hoped that the advances in the study of ^*A Study of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Boston, 1916). 1 2 handwriting would enable me to provide a more accurate transcription of the manuscript than previously available. The gains here have been modest, but noteworthy. Child's text of The Grene Knight has over thirty-five errors,^ Madden's forty,3 and Hales and Fumivall's twelve.**■ I have discovered twenty-six errors in Madden's text of The Turke & Gowin^ andx eleven errors in Hales and Fumivall's.^ Thera are also a number of errors in the editions of The Marriage of Sir Gawaine; ten in Percy's,? and nine in Hales and Fumivall's.® Also, there is one error that all the editors consistently make. This is the transcription of 1 as 's,' when there are strong indications that it should be read as 'es.' There are thirty-one examples of this reading in the text of The Grene Knight, eighteen in The Marriage of Sir Gawaine. and thirty-two in The Turke & Gowin. One of the results of this set of corrections is that the poems turn out to be far more metrically regular than had been earlier suspected (see Metre and Versification for each poem). Finally, this edition is offered in the spirit that it will ^English and Scottish Ballads (London, 1857), I, 35-57. 3syr Gawaine (London, 1839), pp. 224-242. ^Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript (London, 186?), II, 56-77. ^Syr Gawaine. pp. 243-255. ^Bishop Percy1s Folio Manuscript. I, 88-102. ?The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London, 1794), III 350ff. ^Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript. I, 103ff. 3 ultimately lead to renewed interest in each of the poems it contains. The Percy Folio Manuscript, British Museum Additional Manuscript 27879, contains five hundred and twenty leaves. Each leaf is approximately fifteen and a half inches long and five and a half inches wide. A number of the leaves, in particular those of The Turke and Gowin and The Marriage of Sir Gawaine. are torn or cut and anywhere from two to twenty lines are missing. Many of the leaves have been damaged by holes, tears, and cuts. In addition, there are various marginal notes in Percy's hand, and soma of the leaves contain his notations in the text itself and heavy lines drawn along the left hand margin and between the stanzas which often obscure the text. In the first of two notes he wrote on the first leaf of the manuscript, Percy recognised his carelessness: 'When I first got possession of the MS. I was very young, and being in no degree an antiquary* I had not learnt to reverence it; which must be my excuse for the scribble which I then spread over some parts of its margin, [and,] in one of two instances, for even [tak]ing out the leaves to save the trouble of trouble of transcribing.^ I have long since been more careful." Fumivall cites "two authorities in the Records Office" who ^Frederick Fumivall, in his introduction to Bishop Percy1 s Folio Manuscript (London: N. Trubner and Company, 186?), I, x, states that "King Estmere" had been removed, and Grace Trenery, in "Ballad Collections of the Eighteenth Century," MLR. (1915), 289n., indicate^ uhat it was sent to the publisher and lost. placed the manuscript in the reign of James I (1603-1625) Indeed, the manuscript is written in a late secretarial hand, and, despite Furnivall's attempt to date it in 1650,^ the hand does compare very favorably with specimens written fifty to seventy years earlier. Almost nothing is known about the early history of the manuscript. The lack of shorthand and excessive abbreviation indicate that the scribe was able to write slowly without the pressure of the normal speed of a reading or performance. Also, the variety of material suggests that the major portion of the manu­ script is a compilation from a number of sources, not an original composition. Otherwise, it is Impossible to tell whether part or all of the manuscript was written from memory, taken by dictation (either from a written copy or memory by a second party), or copied from an earlier manuscript or manuscripts. Percy, in the second of two notes on the first leaf of the manuscript, says that the scribe was one William Blount, but Fumivall effectively counters that Blount, a barrister of the Middle Temple, was too educated to become involved in the chore of copying.*2 In the same note, and writing well after the actual event,Percy describes his disoovery of the manuscriptj lOFumivall, I, xii. ^ I b i d ., xii-xiii. 12Ibid.. xiii-xiv. *-?Percy was discussing the manuscript as early as 1757 with 5 hens tone. C f . Hans Hecht, Thomas Percy und William She ns tone (Strassburgt Trttbner, 1909), p.5* Nov. 7th, 1769 This very curious old manuscript, in its present mutilated state, but unbound and sadly tom, & c ., I rescued from destruction, and begged at the hands of my worthy friend Humphrey Pitt, Esq., then living at Shiffnal, in Shropshire, afterward at Priorslee, near that town; who died very lately at Bath (viz.