Medieval romance
The Arthurian romances
The best example of an English medieval romance is Morte D'Arthur, by Thomas Malory who put together French and English versions of the various stories of the knights of the Round Table
and gave them narrative unity:
and ends with his death.
the romance begins with the birth of king Arthur
the subject matter of romance
The stories that make up the corpus of medieval romance materials, called "matters", are divided into 3 groups:
the matter of Rome; including the stories of Troy and the stories of Alaxander the Great.
the matter of Britain; with the stories of the Arthurian legend
the matter of France; with the stories of Charlemagne, Roland exc...
the romance may be considered as the ancestor of the modern novel, drew on a number of sources, both
contemporary
classical
Characteristics of romance
Medieval romance is a portrayal of feudal knighthood in both its exterior and ethical aspectcs.
Ethically, the true knight is bound in absolute duty to
his lady
his king
his God
The romance and its origins
the great age of the medieval romance was the 12th and early 13th centuries.
It was the expression of the highly cultivated aristocratic society of France.
has as subject the deeds of knights:
supernatural events.
romantic love
fighting
the best form of literary prose in the Middle Ages is the romance.
Mystery Plays and Morality
The guilds' take over
The next step cam when the rudimentary but popular form of drama was taken over by town corporations.
When drama moved from the church to the streets, the new representations were called "plays".
Origins of medieval drama
Medieval drama doesn't descend directly from classical drama.
The origins lie instead in church cerimonies like
Easter
Christmas
Medieval drama
The sudden appearence of drama has 3 important reasons
the formation of religious and trade guilds.
the grown of towns
the rise of the middle class;
Drama was written in English, not in Latin.
The 2 main forms of drama in England were
the Morality Plays
based on a moral and allegorical reading of man's life
the Mystery Plays
based on episodes from the Bible
The most popular form of art in the Middle Ages was drama
in the sense that it was a public show attended by most social classes.
Middle English lyrics and ballads
Medieval ballads
They are based on:
real historical events
romantic figures
Most ballads speak about of
including supernatural elements
tragic events (death)
Ballads are:
elaboreted by oral trasmission over the ages
anonymous
song
narrative poems
short
Features of ballads
The musical origin of the ballad is testified by its name
which comes from the Old French balade
Tecnically speaking, the ballad can be defined as a form of popular verse
and employing
simple metrical pattern:
4 beats in each line
rhyming abcb or abab
stanzas of 4 lines (quatrains)
very direct language
usually narrative
the predominance of verse
In the Middle Ages, verse was still much more of a everyday medium for expression than it is now. So, for example:
scientific discourse could contain verse.
Sermons could be written in verse
Metrical characteristics
Even though the French models supplanted the older English tradition of alliterative verse,
alliteration is still a core device in English poetry
Sottoargomento
The great novelty introduced by French literary models were:
stanzaic forms.
These were written in patterns of metrical feet.
rhyme
Middle English metrics doesn't break completely with the Old English tradition, but rather develops it.
Medieval lyrics
Thus, we have:
-the religious lyrics
-the love complaint,
-the love lyric
-the spring song,
Poems were often set to music and meant to be sung
They are re-workings of existing themes, conventions or poetical forms common throughout the Middle Ages
But in the best of them there is a freshness of response to the conventions that can give the impression of an individual voice.
A large body of medieval lyrics still survives. Most of them are anonymous.
