and the moving of Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain. Geoffrey’s legendary
history of the Island of Britain was put into English by Layamon. His 14,000-line
Brut makes no distinction between the British and the English, thus allowing the
English to regard Arthur, their British enemy, as English.
Layamon was a priest from Worcestershire, an area where old verse traditions
lasted. His talent was for narrative, and his battles have a physicality found later in
Barbour’s Bruce (1375) and in the Alliterative Morte (c.1400). These qualities came
from Old English verse, but Layamon’s metre is rough, employing the old formulas
with less economy, mixing an irregular alliteration with internal rhyme. Arthur’s last
words are:And Ich wulle varen to Avalun, to vairest alre maidene,
to Argante there quene, alven swithe sceone,
and heo scal mine wunden makien alle isunde,
al hal me makien mid haleweiye drenchen.
And seothe Ich cumen wulle to mine kineriche
and wunien mid Brutten mid muchelere wunne.
And I shall fare to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens, to their queen Argante, the very
beautiful elf-lady; and she shall heal all my wounds, make me whole with holy infusions.
And afterwards I shall come to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with much
rejoicing.Whereas Beowulf ’s body is burnt, and Roland’s soul is escorted to heaven by
angels, Arthur’s body is wafted by elf-ladies to Avalon to be healed – and to return.
This promise is repeated in Malory’s Morte Darthur (c.1470).
The change during the 11th–13th centuries from Gestes (songs ofres gestae, Lat.
‘things done’, ‘ doings’) to romances of chivalry is part of the rise offeudalism. A
knight’s dut y to serve God and the King had a religious orientation and a legal force;
it was not just an honour-code in literature.Chivalrywas historical as well as liter-
ary;its cultural prestige was spread through Romance.
Romances were tales of adventurous and honourable deeds – deeds of war, at
first; but knights also fought to defend ladies, or fought for ladies, introducing a new
ethos.Although romance took popular forms, it began as a courtly genre, a leisure
pursuit – like feasting, hunting, reading, playing chess, or the pursuit of love itself.
The warrior gave way to the knight, and when the knight got off his horse he wooed
the lady. In literature the pursuit of love grew ever more refined.Courtly literature
The distance between chevalier and vilain,or knight and churl, widened and became
hereditary; a literature for the court developed. The French rulers, ruling by
conquest, enjoyed romances of antiquity, about Thebes, Aeneas, Troy and Alexander.
In 1165 Benoît de Sainte-Maure produced a 30,000-line Roman de Troie at the court
ofEleanor of Aquitaine. Such popular stories of antiquity were ‘the matter of Rome’- that is, of classical antiquity. The romances of Alexander were full of marvels, and
the romans of Aeneas took the part of Queen Dido, whom Aeneas abandoned in
order to go and found Rome. But Arthurian romance, ‘the matter of Britain’, was
more popular with ladies. Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest swears, of his ‘Tale of the Cock and
Hen’: ‘This storie is also trewe, I undertake, / As is the book of Launcelot de Lake,
/ That wommen holde in ful greet reverence.’
42 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500
feudalism The codification
of the roles, land-rights,
privileges and duties of the
Germanic warrior-class, the
French-speaking Normans
who ruled Britain and, with
the Franks, much of Europe
during the period of the
Crusades.
Crusades The series of
expeditions from western
Europe to the eastern
Mediterranean, originally for
the defence of Christendom:
to recover Jerusalem, taken
by Arab Muslims from
Byzantine Christians in 1071.
First Crusade, 1095–1104
(Jerusalem taken in 1099);
Second Crusade, 1147–9;
Third Crusade, 1189–92
(Jerusalem lost in 1187,
recovered in 1229, lost in
1291). The Crusades ended
in defeat by the Turks at
Nicopolis (1396).
knight The Old English cniht
was simply a boy or youthful
warrior, as in Maldon, line 9.
‘Knight’ began to acquire its
modern sense only after the
success of the mounted
warrior.
chivalry(from Fr. chevalerie,
from med. Lat. caballus,
‘horse’) A system of
honourable conduct expected
of a knight or ‘gentle’ (that is,
noble) man, involving military
service to Christ and king,
protection of the weak, and
avoidance of villainy (from
Fr. vilain, base; ME villein,
a churl).