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[Pg xi]

Epic and Romance, by W. P. Ker

Essays on Medieval Literature. 1896

PREFACE | POSTSCRIPT

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I

The Heroic Age

	PAGE
Epic and Romance: the two great orders of medieval narrative	3
Epic, of the "heroic age," preceding Romance of the "age of chivalry"	4
The heroic age represented in three kinds of literature—Teutonic Epic, French Epic, and the Icelandic Sagas	6
Conditions of Life in an "heroic age"	7
Homer and the Northern poets	9
Homeric passages in Beowulf and in the Song of Maldon	10 11
Progress of poetry in the heroic age	13
Growth of Epic, distinct in character, but generally incomplete, among the Teutonic nations	14

II

Epic and Romance

The complex nature of Epic	16
No kind or aspect of life that may not be included	16
This freedom due to the dramatic quality of true (e.g. Homeric) Epic [Pg xii] as explained by Aristotle	17 17
Epic does not require a magnificent ideal subject such as those of the artificial epic (Aeneid, Gerusalemme Liberata, Paradise Lost)	18 18
The Iliad unlike these poems in its treatment of "ideal" motives (patriotism, etc.)	19
True Epic begins with a dramatic plot and characters	20
The Epic of the Northern heroic age is sound in its dramatic conception and does not depend on impersonal ideals (with exceptions, in the Chansons de geste)	20 21
The German heroes in history and epic (Ermanaric, Attila, Theodoric)	21
Relations of Epic to historical fact	22
The epic poet is free in the conduct of his story but his story and personages must belong to his own people	23 26
Nature of Epic brought out by contrast with secondary narrative poems, where the subject is not national	27
This secondary kind of poem may be excellent, but is always different in character from native Epic	28
Disputes of academic critics about the "Epic Poem"	30
Tasso's defence of Romance. Pedantic attempts to restrict the compass of Epic	30
Bossu on Phaeacia	31
Epic, as the most comprehensive kind of poetry, includes Romance as one of its elements but needs a strong dramatic imagination to keep Romance under control	32 33

III

Romantic Mythology

Mythology not required in the greatest scenes in Homer	35
Myths and popular fancies may be a hindrance to the epic poet, but he is compelled to make some use of them	36
He criticises and selects, and allows the characters of the gods [Pg xiii]to be modified in relation to the human characters	37
Early humanism and reflexion on myth—two processes: (1) rejection of the grosser myths; (2) refinement of myth through poetry	40
Two ways of refining myth in poetry—(1) by turning it into mere fancy, and the more ludicrous things into comedy; (2) by finding an imaginative or an ethical meaning in it	40
Instances in Icelandic literature—Lokasenna	41
Snorri Sturluson, his ironical method in the Edda	42
The old gods rescued from clerical persecution	43
Imaginative treatment of the graver myths—the death of Balder; the Doom of the Gods	43
Difficulties in the attainment of poetical self-command	44
Medieval confusion and distraction	45
Premature "culture"	46
Depreciation of native work in comparison with ancient literature and with theology	47
An Icelandic gentleman's library	47
The whalebone casket	48
Epic not wholly stifled by "useful knowledge"	49

IV

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

Early failure of Epic among the Continental Germans	50
Old English Epic invaded by Romance (Lives of Saints, etc.)	50
Old Northern (Icelandic) poetry full of romantic mythology	51
French Epic and Romance contrasted	51
Feudalism in the old French Epic (Chansons de Geste) not unlike the prefeudal "heroic age"	52
But the Chansons de Geste are in many ways "romantic"	53
Comparison of the English Song of Byrhtnoth (Maldon, a.d. 991) with the Chanson de Roland	54
Severity and restraint of Byrhtnoth	55
Mystery and pathos of Roland	56
Iceland and the German heroic age	57
The Icelandic paradox—old-fashioned politics together with [Pg xiv]clear understanding	58
Icelandic prose literature—its subject, the anarchy of the heroic age; its methods, clear and positive	59
The Icelandic histories, in prose, complete the development of the early Teutonic Epic poetry	60

CHAPTER II

THE TEUTONIC EPIC

I

The Tragic Conception

Early German poetry	65
One of the first things certain about it is that it knew the meaning of tragic situations	66
The Death of Ermanaric in Jordanes	66
The story of Alboin in Paulus Diaconus	66
Tragic plots in the extant poems	69
The Death of Ermanaric in the "Poetic Edda" (Hamðismál)	70
Some of the Northern poems show the tragic conception modified by romantic motives, yet without loss of the tragic purport—Helgi and Sigrun	72
Similar harmony of motives in the Waking of Angantyr	73
Whatever may be wanting, the heroic poetry had no want of tragic plots—the "fables" are sound	74
Value of the abstract plot (Aristotle)	74

II

Scale of the Poems

List of extant poems and fragments in one or other of the older Teutonic languages (German, English, and Northern) in unrhymed alliterative verse	76
Small amount of the extant poetry	78
Supplemented in various ways	79
[Pg xv]1. The Western Group (German and English)	79
Amount of story contained in the several poems, and scale of treatment	79
Hildebrand, a short story	80
Finnesburh, (1) the Lambeth fragment (Hickes); and (2) the abstract of the story in Beowulf	81
Finnesburh, a story of (1) wrong and (2) vengeance, like the story of the death of Attila, or of the betrayal of Roland	82
Uncertainty as to the compass of the Finnesburh poem (Lambeth) in its original complete form	84
Waldere, two fragments: the story of Walter of Aquitaine preserved in the Latin Waltharius	84
Plot of Waltharius	84
Place of the Waldere fragments in the story, and probable compass of the whole poem	86
Scale of Maldon and of Beowulf	88 89
General resemblance in the themes of these poems—unity of action	89
Development of style, and not neglect of unity nor multiplication of contents, accounts for the difference of length between earlier and later poems	91
Progress of Epic in England—unlike the history of Icelandic poetry	92
2. The Northern Group	93
The contents of the so-called "Elder Edda" (i.e. Codex Regius 2365, 4to Havn.) to what extent Epic	93 93
Notes on the contents of the poems, to show their scale; the Lay of Weland	94
Different plan in the Lays of Thor, Þrymskviða and Hymiskviða	95
The Helgi Poems—complications of the text	95
Three separate stories—Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun	95
Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava	98
Helgi and Kara (lost)	99
The story of the Volsungs—the long Lay of Brynhild contains the whole story in abstract giving the chief place to the character of Brynhild	100 100 101
The Hell-ride of Brynhild	102
[Pg xvi]The fragmentary Lay of Brynhild (Brot af Sigurðarkviðu)	103
Poems on the death of Attila—the Lay of Attila (Atlakviða), and the Greenland Poem of Attila (Atlamál)	105
Proportions of the story	105
A third version of the story in the Lament of Oddrun (Oddrúnargrátr)	107
The Death of Ermanaric (Hamðismál)	109
The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun)—the Old Lay of Gudrun, or Gudrun's story to Theodoric	109
The Lay of Gudrun (Guðrúnarkviða)—Gudrun's sorrow for Sigurd	111
The refrain	111
Gudrun's Chain of Woe (Tregrof Guðrúnar)	111
The Ordeal of Gudrun, an episodic lay	111
Poems in dialogue, without narrative— (1) Dialogues in the common epic measure—Balder's Doom, Dialogues of Sigurd, Angantyr—explanations in prose, between the dialogues (2) Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure: (a) vituperative debates—Lokasenna, Harbarzlióð (in irregular verse), Atli and Rimgerd (b) Dialogues implying action—The Wooing of Frey (Skírnismál)	112 112 114
Svipdag and Menglad (Grógaldr, Fiölsvinnsmál)	114
The Volsung dialogues	115
The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale	116
The old English poems (Beowulf, Waldere), in scale, midway between the Northern poems and Homer	117
Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion	117
Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic—(1) episodic, i.e. representing a single action (Hildebrand, etc.); (2) summary, i.e. giving the whole of a long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (Weland, etc.)	118
The second class is unfit for agglutination	119
Also the first, when it is looked into	121
The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently [Pg xvii]fused into larger masses of narrative	122

III

Epic and Ballad Poetry

Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads	123
Their style is different	124
As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects	125
The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal (Svipdag and Menglad) and of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild)	126 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress	129

IV

The Style of the Poems

Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse	133
English and Norse	134
Different besetting temptations in England and the North	136
English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry)	137
Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms	137
Lyrical element in Norse narrative	138
Volospá, the greatest of all the Northern poems	139
False heroics; Krákumál (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok)	140
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances	141

V

The Progress of Epic

Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter	144
The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared—Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr	147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory [Pg xviii]of Kriemhild's revenge	149
The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems	150
But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story	152
Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school	153 155
The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants	156

VI

Beowulf

Beowulf claims to be a single complete work	158
Want of unity: a story and a sequel	159
More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed	160
Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf and Waldere	162 163
Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf—tragic significance in some of the allusions	165
The characters in Beowulf abstract types	165
The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight with the dragon	168
Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy	169
Grendel's mother more romantic	172
Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic adventures	173

CHAPTER III

THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

I

Iceland and the Heroic Age

The close of Teutonic Epic—in Germany the old forms were [Pg xix]lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages	179
England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages	180
Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere	181
Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition—a new heroic literature in prose	182

II

Matter and Form

The Sagas are not pure fiction	184
Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details	185
Miscellaneous incidents	186
Literary value of the historical basis—the characters well known and recognisable	187
The coherent Sagas—the tragic motive	189
Plan of Njála of Laxdæla of Egils Saga	190 191 192
Vápnfirðinga Saga, a story of two generations	193
Víga-Glúms Saga, a biography without tragedy	193
Reykdæla Saga	194
Grettis Saga and Gísla Saga clearly worked out	195
Passages of romance in these histories	196
Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoða, a tragic idyll, well proportioned	198
Great differences of scale among the Sagas—analogies with the heroic poems	198

III

The Heroic Ideal

Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas	200
Heroic characters	201
Heroic rhetoric	203
Danger of exaggeration—Kjartan in Laxdæla	204
[Pg xx]The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal	206

IV

Tragic Imagination

Tragic contradictions in the Sagas—Gisli, Njal	207
Fantasy	208
Laxdæla, a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to the terms of common life	209
Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgeland	209
The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic literature	210
The Northern rationalism	212
Self-restraint and irony	213
The elegiac mood infrequent	215
The story of Howard of Icefirth—ironical pathos	216
The conventional Viking	218
The harmonies of Njála and of Laxdæla	219 222
The two speeches of Gudrun	223

V

Comedy

The Sagas not bound by solemn conventions	225
Comic humours	226
Bjorn and his wife in Njála	228
Bandamanna Saga: "The Confederates," a comedy	229
Satirical criticism of the "heroic age"	231
Tragic incidents in Bandamanna Saga	233
Neither the comedy nor tragedy of the Sagas is monotonous or abstract	234

VI

The Art of Narrative

Organic unity of the best Sagas	235
Method of representing occurrences as they appear at the time	236
[Pg xxi]Instance from Þorgils Saga	238
Another method—the death of Kjartan as it appeared to a churl	240
Psychology (not analytical)	244
Impartiality—justice to the hero's adversaries (Færeyinga Saga)	245

VII

Epic and History

Form of Saga used for contemporary history in the thirteenth century	246
The historians, Ari (1067-1148) and Snorri (1178-1241)	248
The Life of King Sverre, by Abbot Karl Jónsson	249
Sturla (c. 1214-1284), his history of Iceland in his own time (Islendinga or Sturlunga Saga)	249
The matter ready to his hand	250
Biographies incorporated in Sturlunga: Thorgils and Haflidi	252
Sturlu Saga	253
The midnight raid (a.d. 1171)	254
Lives of Bishop Gudmund, Hrafn, and Aron	256
Sturla's own work (Islendinga Saga)	257
The burning of Flugumyri	259
Traces of the heroic manner	264
The character of this history brought out by contrast with Sturla's other work, the Life of King Hacon of Norway	267
Norwegian and Icelandic politics in the thirteenth century	267
Norway more fortunate than Iceland—the history less interesting	267
Sturla and Joinville contemporaries	269
Their methods of narrative compared	270

VIII

The Northern Prose Romances

Romantic interpolations in the Sagas—the ornamental version of Fóstbræðra Saga	275
The secondary romantic Sagas—Frithiof	277
French romance imported (Strengleikar, Tristram's Saga, [Pg xxii]etc.)	278
Romantic Sagas made out of heroic poems (Volsunga Saga, etc.) and out of authentic Sagas by repetition of common forms and motives	279 280
Romantic conventions in the original Sagas	280
Laxdæla and Gunnlaug's Saga—Thorstein the White	281
Thorstein Staffsmitten	282
Sagas turned into rhyming romances (Rímur) and into ballads in the Faroes	283 284

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

(Chansons de Geste)

Lateness of the extant versions	287
Competition of Epic and Romance in the twelfth century	288
Widespread influence of the Chansons de geste—a contrast to the Sagas	289
Narrative style	290
No obscurities of diction	291
The "heroic age" imperfectly represented but not ignored	292 293
Roland—heroic idealism—France and Christendom	293
William of Orange—Aliscans	296
Rainouart—exaggeration of heroism	296
Another class of stories in the Chansons de geste, more like the Sagas	297
Raoul de Cambrai	298
Barbarism of style	299
Garin le Loherain—style clarified	300
Problems of character—Fromont	301
The story of the death of Begon unlike contemporary work of the Romantic School	302 304
The lament for Begon	307
Raoul and Garin contrasted with Roland	308
Comedy in French Epic—"humours" in Garin in the Coronemenz Looïs, etc.	310 311
Romantic additions to heroic cycles—la Prise d'Orange	313
Huon de Bordeaux—the original story grave and tragic converted to Romance	314 314

CHAPTER V

ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS

Romance an element in Epic and Tragedy apart from all "romantic schools"	321
The literary movements of the twelfth century	322
A new beginning	323
The Romantic School unromantic in its methods	324
Professional Romance	325
Characteristics of the school—courteous sentiment	328
Decorative passages—descriptions—pedantry	329
Instances from Roman de Troie and from Ider, etc.	330 331
Romantic adventures—the "matter of Rome" and the "matter of Britain"	334
Blending of classical and Celtic influences—e.g. in Benoit's Medea	334
Methods of narrative—simple, as in the Lay of Guingamor; overloaded, as in Walewein	337
Guingamor	338
Walewein, a popular tale disguised as a chivalrous romance	340
The different versions of Libeaux Desconus—one of them is sophisticated	343
Tristram—the Anglo-Norman poems comparatively simple and ingenuous	344
French Romance and Provençal Lyric	345
Ovid in the Middle Ages—the Art of Love	346
The Heroines	347
Benoit's Medea again	348
Chrestien of Troyes, his place at the beginning of modern literature	349
[Pg xxiv]'Enlightenment' in the Romantic School	350
The sophists of Romance—the rhetoric of sentiment and passion	351
The progress of Romance from medieval to modern literature	352
Chrestien of Troyes, his inconsistencies—nature and convention	352
Departure from conventional romance; Chrestien's Enid	355
Chrestien's Cliges—"sensibility"	357
Flamenca, a Provençal story of the thirteenth century—the author a follower of Chrestien	359
His acquaintance with romantic literature and rejection of the "machinery" of adventures	360 360
Flamenca, an appropriation of Ovid—disappearance of romantic mythology	361
The Lady of Vergi, a short tragic story without false rhetoric	362
Use of medieval themes by the great poets of the fourteenth century	363
Boccaccio and Chaucer—the Teseide and the Knight's Tale	364
Variety of Chaucer's methods	364
Want of art in the Man of Law's Tale	365
The abstract point of honour (Clerk's Tale, Franklin's Tale)	366
Pathos in the Legend of Good Women	366
Romantic method perfect in the Knight's Tale	366
Anelida, the abstract form of romance	367
In Troilus and Criseyde the form of medieval romance is filled out with strong dramatic imagination	367
Romance obtains the freedom of Epic, without the old local and national limitations of Epic	368
Conclusion	370

APPENDIX

Note A—Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry	373
Note B—Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason	375
Note C—Eyjolf Karsson	381
Note D—Two Catalogues of Romances	384

[Pg v]

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[Pg vi] 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.

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[Pg vii]

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, Copen[Pg viii]hagen, 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[Pg ix] 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.