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The Middle English Amis and Amiloun: Chivalric Romance or Secular Hagiography?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ojars Kratins
Ojars Kratins*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Romance is one of the most abused generic terms of medieval literature. For a good many scholars it serves as a commodious bottom drawer which will hold almost anything that could not be stored elsewhere. Having been enlarged to mean nothing less than “imaginative fiction,” the term romance communicates very little, especially when it is applied to such a conglomerate body of works as “The Middle English Romances.” Apparently indifferent to the possibilities of greater clarity and meaning through a more circumspect application of the word, scholars have wasted little time on morphological problems in the Middle English romances, and yet they would not discountenance discussions of whether The Scarlet Letter is a novel or a romance. There, indeed, labelling the work with one or the other term becomes a matter of making a statement about the area of meaning of the work and about the techniques with which this meaning is conveyed. In medieval studies, the latitude in application of the term romance and its consequent diminishing usefulness for descriptive purposes might have been felt more keenly if it were not for the assumption that the tracing of the sources of a given work has contributed the most significant part to its understanding. However, the variety of forms that the same story material can demonstrably assume, e.g., the Arthurian tradition, should make us more sensitive to the opinion of some scholars that generic patterns have a more important influence than story material upon the shape of a literary product. Moreover, the concept of genre acts as a kind of perspective which one assumes towards the work one is examining, and depending upon its appropriateness, it can make the structure more or less meaningful. The few writers who have ventured to deal with the whole body of the so-called romances and to make judgments on their respective merits have ignored the possibility that, without finer and more specific terminological distinctions, they may be mistaken about some of the ugly ducklings. Such has been the lot of the Middle English version of the story of Amis and Amiloun, because the perspectives of romance and saint's legend are not identical.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , October 1966 , pp. 347 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 Paul Zumthor, review of Stefan Hofer, Chrétien de Troyes: Leben und Werk eines altfranzösischen Epikers, ZRP, lxxi (1955), 324–325; Hugo Kuhn, “Stil als Epochen-, Gattungsund Wertproblem in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters,” Stil- und Formprobleme in der Literatur, ed. Paul Böckmann (Heidelberg, 1959), p. 128.

2 London, 1930, pp. 138–139.

3 London, 1951, pp. 15, 30.

4 Dieter Mehl, “Die kürzeren mittelenglischen ‘Romanzen’ und die Gattungsfrage,” DVJSLG, xxxviii (1964), 530.

5 See Frederic C. Tubach, “Exempla in Decline,” Traditio, xvii (1962), esp. pp. 408–409.

6 The success of the Breton lays in England may have caused the name to be applied to quite different poems for the purposes of advertisement. See Mehl, “Mittelenglische ‘Romanzen’,” p. 522.

7 Taylor, pp. 141 ff.

8 Middle English Literature, p. 30.

9 See the excellent analysis of characterization in courtly romance in Ilse Nolting-Hauff's Die Stellung der Liebeskasuistik im höfischen Roman, Heidelberger Forschungen, vi (Heidelberg, 1959).

10 See André Jolies, Einfache Formen, 2nd ed. by A. Schossig (Halle / Salle, 1956), pp. 28–29.

11 EETS, O. S. 203 (London). All quotations of the poem will be from this edition.

12 Ibid., pp. xxv, xxvii.

13 Ibid., p. ix.

… deþ hadde fet him fro
His foder & his moder al-so
þurch þe grace of godes sond. (ll. 220–222)

See also ll. 2495–96.

15 Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. MS. 50 (K) and B. M. MS. Royal 12 C. xxi (L), ed. Eugen Kölbing, Amis and Amiloun, Altenglische Bibliothek, ii (Heilbronn, 1884). There is a fragmentary MS. (C), included in Kölbing's edition, which seems closer to the English poem in spirit. Quotations of the Anglo-Norman poems will be from this edition.

16 Dorothy Everett's statement that “miracles as wonderful as this are of constant occurrence in the romances” is to be disregarded because the author does not differentiate between romances and pious legends nor between the different supernatural agencies responsible for marvelous events. “A Characterization of the English Medieval Romances,” Essays and Studies, xv (Oxford, 1929), 107.

17 Leach, p. xcvii.

18 Kölbing, p. 153.

19 See A. H. Krappe, “The Legend of Amicus and Amelius,” MLR, xviii (1923), 155.

20 F. Carl Riedel, Crime and Punishment in the Old French Romances (New York, 1938), p. 34.

21 Kölbing, p. ciii.

22 Ibid, p. civ.

23 Amis and Amiloun, pp. lxiii–iv.

24 Malvina Milder Reynolds attempts to explain the difficulties presented by the death of the steward in the light of the theme of love common to romance. The treachery of the steward is to be regarded as treachery against love. “Our sympathy is not with the one who is in the right according to the spirit of the law [the steward], but in [sic] the one who defeats the ends of justice by conforming only to the letter. We reject, in favor of Love, the principles on which the judgment is based, as we reject, in favor of Love, the principles of common justice in the ordeal in Tristan.” (“The Tradition of Amis and Amiloun,” diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1939, p. 122.) The parallel to Tristan is, however, inaccurate, since none of the characters is motivated by anything like the love there. Far from being the example of a courtly lover, Amis must be forced to love Belisaunt by blackmail; and after having offered battle as the last resort to save his life, he fears the damnation of his soul through perjury. In the swearing of the oath, Amiloun would be the parallel to Iseult, but he is motivated by his trewþe to Amis, and this virtue, having the explicit approval of God, cannot be equated with the love between a knight and a lady in a romance, much less with the specifically adulterous love in Tristan.

25 There is one possible preparation for the speech in l. 1456 which tells of Amiloun's return “to his leuedi þat was vnkende,” but the two other MSS read “ryche and kynde” (S) and “ryche of kynde” (D). In the chanson de geste her reaction is motivated by a close relationship to the steward; of the Anglo-Norman versions, KL does not have a corresponding scene, and the fragmentary C stops prior to this scene. However, the reading “vnkende” may be the vestige of a fuller characterization similar to the one in C at her marriage to Amiloun (Kölbing, p. 124):

Ne fu creature plus bele,
Si ele ust este bone e lele;
Mes mut fut male e rampouse,
En checune poynt con[t]rariouse,
Desnaturele a sun seignur,
Cum il apparust a chef de tour.

26 See Num. xii; Matth. viii.2–4; Mark i.40–44; Luke v. 12–14. A typical example of this view is a reference in a lay sermon to King Uzziah (II Chron. xxvi): “But afturward when he was riche he wilde not worshippe God as he dud beforn, and toke on hym þinges to don þat longed vn-to þe prestes of þe tempull. And for is presumpcion God cast on hym a lepree.” Middle English Sermons, ed. Woodburn O. Ross, EETS, O. S. 209 (London, 1940), p. 211, ll. 8–12.

27 Rotha Mary Clay, The Mediaeval Hospitals of England (London, 1909), p. 36.

28 Ibid., pp. 52–55, and Appendix A. For a general description of the condition of the leper see also Ida B. Jones, “Popular Medical Knowledge in XIVth Century England,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, v (1937), 426–428.

29 Clay, pp. 57–58. The custom is referred to in Middle English Sermons, pp. 211, 12–14: “an for is lepre is own men cast hym owte of is kyngedome, þe wiche he had thorough heretage.”

30 See Wilhelm Wackernagel, ed., Der arme Heinrich Herrn Hartmanns von Aue und zwei jüngere Prosalegenden verwandten Inhaltes, rev. ed. Ernst Stadler (Basel, 1911), pp. 194–203.

31 For outstanding examples of such disregard see Wackernagel, pp. 207–209, Clay, p. 50.

32 See Wackernagel, p. 209.

33 Clay, p. 66. “St. Lazarus became the guardian of lepers partly through the influence of the Order whose aim was to relieve the sick, and especially the leprous, members of their brotherhood. They were introduced into England in Stephen's reign …” Clay, p. 251.

34 See Gerald Bordman, Motif-Index of the English Metrical Romances, Folklore Fellows Communications, 190 (Helsinki, 1963). Because it is not a romance, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is not counted in the index.

35 Titus and Vespasian, ed. J. A. Herbert, Roxburghe Club (London, 1905).

36 Jolies, p. 22.

37 The same phrase with an identical meaning is used also in l. 1872. Cf. Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale (ii, 826), Works, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957).

38 Edd. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford, 1955), ll. 1512–19:

And of alle cheualry to chose, þe chef þyng alosed
Is þe lel layk of luf, þe lettrure of armes;
For to telle of þis teuelyng of þis trwe knyзteз,
Hit is þe tytelet token, and tyxt of her werkkeз,
How ledes for her lele luf hor lyueз han auntered,
Endured for her drury dulful stoundeз,
And after wenged with her walour and voyded her care,
And broзt blysse into boure with bountees hor awen.

For discussions of the two themes in romance see Nolting-Hauff, Die Stellung der Liebeskasuistik; Reto R. Bezzola, Le sens de l'avanture et de l'amour (Chrétien de Troyes) (Paris, n.d.); Max Wehrli, “Strukturprobleme des mittelalterlichen Romans,” WW, x (1960), 334–345.