Parergon

These essays examine the transmission of medieval romances through investigation of their material (codicological) and verse forms. Introducing them, editors Ad Putter and Judith A. Jefferson review the history of romance studies (including the various prejudices attached to the genre), then mark up what the [End Page 244] dual approach has amply exposed, that there is much more to learn about an area considered well-studied.

Rhiannon Purdie’s ‘King Orphius and Sir Orfeo, Scotland and England, Memory and Manuscript’, examines transmission by memorization, based on study of extant manuscript copies of the Orpheus romance—three of the ME Orfeo (on which see also Minkova, and De Groot, in this volume); one of the OSc Orphius (NRS MS RH13/35); and David Laing’s transcription of a 1586 fragment, ‘Orpheus king of Portingaill’ (La.IV.27(54)). She argues, from a variety of evidence types and a deep understanding of the critical literature, that Orphius ‘not only evolved from Orfeo, but continued to evolve and change gradually as it passed through memorial transmission’ (p. 21).

Derek Pearsall, in ‘The Metre of the Tale of Gamelyn’, uses his vast knowledge to test whether significant differentiations can be made between metrical forms that have in the past been described loosely as ‘the old septenary/alexandrine couplet’ (p. 33). The journey is fascinating; the conclusions carefully tentative.

‘Rhyme Royal and Romance’ is Elizabeth Robertson’s valuable contribution on the way in which romance is, and is not, transmitted. She argues that rhyme royal, introduced into English by Chaucer, is rarely chosen for romance because, as her close analysis then demonstrates, this form, by expanding, then binding the thought, ‘mitigates against some of the aims and purposes of romance’ (p. 50).

Ad Putter addresses the non-literate (memorial, melodic) forms of romance transmission in ‘The Singing of Middle English Romance: Stanza Forms and Contrafacta’. He focuses on verse forms in Sir Tristrem (pp. 72–84), Horn (pp. 84–86), and Bevis of Hampton (pp. 86–90), building on the work of earlier scholars interested in musical performance. Putter eruditely makes the case for sung/orally performed romances, his attentive exploration of the terms, forms, memory slips, and possible music enjoyably compelling.

A study of material transmissions, Carol Meale’s ‘Deluxe Copies of Middle English Romance: Scribes and Book Artists’, asks, of four of the five illustrated Middle English manuscripts containing romances, where they were made, for whom, and why so few survive. On Auchinleck (pp. 92–98, 114), Meale’s essay has interesting links to Putter’s.

Thorlac Turville Petre asks, ‘Is Cheuelere Assigne an Alliterative Poem?’ He compares Cheuelere Assigne with other alliterative romances, expertly considering syntax, metrics, possible emendations and rewriting, presence and absence of characteristic alliterative vocabulary, the defining accentual rhythm of balanced half-lines, and audience.

Attention to the finer details of transmission characterizes Donka Minkova’s ‘Language Tests for the Identification of Middle English Genre’. She reports early findings of attempts ‘to quantify the behaviour of adjectives in Middle English verse that relate frequency in the ambient language to metrical placement and possibly text type’ (p. 144). [End Page 245]

In ‘The Problem of John Metham’s Prosody’, Nicholas Myklebust studies how the transmission of Chaucer’s metrical line has been interpreted, engaging with Amoryus and Cleopes, and other Lancastrian poets (Bockenham, Ashby). He shows the importance of Metham’s metre, because of ‘the pressure it places not only on literary traditions of romance and metre but also on critical traditions of contextualization and reconstruction’ (p. 169).

With Jordi Sánchez-Marti’s ‘The Printed Transmission of Medieval Romance from William Caxton to Wynkyn de Worde, 1473–1535’, interest moves to the marketing approaches of these printers, his findings especially useful on the different kinds of romance readers each printer sought.

Contextual matters...