(c) The Metrical Romances. A romance was originally a composition in the Romance tongue, but the meaning was narrowed into that of a tale of the kind described in the next paragraph. Romances were brought into England by the French minstrels, who as early as the eleventh century had amassed a large quantity of material. By the beginning of the fourteenth century the romance appears in English, and from that point the rate of production is great. Romantic tales are the main feature of the literature of the time.
TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
| YEAR | POETRY | PROSE | |||
| Lyrical | Narrative | Didactic | Narrative | Didactic | |
| Beowulf | |||||
| 700 | Cædmon | ||||
| 800 | |||||
| 900 | Alfred | ||||
| A.S. | |||||
| Cynewulf | CHRONICLE | ||||
| 1000 | Ælfric | ||||
| Wulfstan | |||||
| 1100 | |||||
| Ormulum | |||||
| 1200 | |||||
| Brut | AncrenRiwle | ||||
| 1300 | Manning | ||||
| Alysoun, | THE | Hampole | |||
| etc. | ROMANCES | ||||
| 1400 | Cursor Mundi | ||||
The chief features of the romance were: a long story, cumulative in construction, chiefly of a journey or a quest; a strong martial element, with an infusion of the supernatural and wonderful; characters, usually of high social rank, and of fixed type and rudimentary workmanship, such as the knightly hero, the distressed damsel, and the wicked enchanter; and a style that was simple to quaintness, but in the better specimens was spirited and suggestive of mystery and wonder. In meter it ranged from the simple couplet of The Squire of Low Degree to the twenty-lined stanza of Sir Tristrem. In its later stages, as Chaucer satirized it in Sir Thopas, the romance became extravagant and ridiculous, but at its best it was a rich treasure-house of marvelous tales.
2. Prose. The small amount of prose is strictly practical in purpose, and its development as a species of literature is to come later.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STYLE IN POETRY
With poetry in such an immature condition, it can be easily understood that style is of secondary importance. The prevailing, almost the universal, style is one of artless simplicity. Very often, owing chiefly to lack of practice on the part of the poet, the style becomes obscure; and when more ambitious schemes of meter are attempted (as in Pearl) the same cause leads to the same result. Humor is rarely found in Middle English, but quaint touches are not entirely lacking, as facts revealed in the life of Hampole show. Pathos of a solemn and elevated kind appears in the Moral Ode, and the romance called The Pistyl of Susan and the Pearl, already mentioned, have passages of simple pathos.
EXERCISES
1. The following extracts show the development of English poetry from Old English to Chaucerian times. Trace the changes in meter (scansion, rhyme, and stanza-formation), alliteration, and style. Are there any traces of refinements such as melody and vowel-music?
| (1) Swá íú wætres thrym | When of old the water’s mass |
| Ealne middan-geard, | All mid-earth, |
| Mére-flód, theáhte | When the sea-flood covered |
| Eorthan ymb-hwyrft, | The earth’s circumference, |
| Thá [`s]e æthela wong | Then that noble plain |
| Æg-hwæs án-súnd | In everything entire |
| With yth-fare | Against the billowy course |
| Gehealden stód, | Stood preserved, |
| Hreóhra wæga | Of the rough waves |
| Eádig unwemmed, | Happy, inviolate, |
| Thurh áest Godes; | Through favour of God. |
| Bídeth swá geblówen | It shall abide thus in bloom, |
| Oth bæles cyme | Until the coming of the funeral fire |
| Dryhtnes dómes. | Of the Lord’s judgment. |
| The Phœnix, 900 |