Introduction

Summary

Although it is relatively little known today, the story of Bevis of Hampton was among the most popular narratives of the medieval and early modern periods, its only serious rival in this respect being that of Guy of Warwick. There are many parallels between the textual and reception histories of the English versions of Bevis and of Guy, but also considerable differences. Both are translations of Anglo-Norman texts that are generally regarded as ‘ancestral romances’, associated with particular aristocratic families and specific localities; texts of both appear in two of the major medieval manuscript compilations of Middle English romances extant from the medieval period; both were translated into Irish in the fifteenth century; both were printed in the sixteenth century by Wynkyn de Worde and William Copland, the giants among Renaissance printers of medieval romance; the ‘vogue’ of both continued well into the seventeenth century, both being repeatedly singled out in Humanist and Puritan denunciations of popular secular literature; both Bevis and Guy have, to some extent, an extra-literary life as folk heroes; scenes from both romances are (or were) represented in a variety of visual media.

On the other hand, while Guy gave rise to a generically more diverse group of texts than did Bevis, the latter is unique in having continued to be printed in its fifteenth-century metrical form from the beginning of the Tudor period until the early years of the eighteenth century. The respective lengths of the two romances are probably significant here: only about one-third the length of Guy, Bevis would lend itself more readily to cheap production for a mass market. By contrast, Guy tended to be adapted and excerpted, as well as accruing self-contained episodes (such as that of the Dun Cow) that formed no part of the Middle English romance. Curiously, given that the Guy of the romance that bears his name is not of noble birth, he was appropriated as an ancestor for the purposes of ‘baronial propaganda’ by the families associated with the earldom of Warwick in a way that the aristocratic Bevis seems not to have been by the earls of Arundel. This is perhaps because Guy was, from early on, taken seriously by chroniclers (including Knighton, Hardyng and Holinshed) as a part of English history, whereas the story of Bevis remained largely confined to the realms of fiction and folklore.