Chapter 5

ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS

Romance an element in Epic and Tragedy apart from all "romantic schools" 321

The literary movements of the twelfth century 322

A new beginning 323

The Romantic School unromantic in its methods 324

Professional Romance 325

Characteristics of the school--courteous sentiment 328

Decorative passages--descriptions--pedantry 329

Instances from _Roman de Troie_ 330 and from _Ider_, etc. 331

Romantic adventures--the "matter of Rome" and the "matter of Britain" 334

Blending of classical and Celtic influences--_e.g._ in Benoit's _Medea_ 334

Methods of narrative--simple, as in the _Lay of Guingamor_; overloaded, as in _Walewein_ 337

_Guingamor_ 338

_Walewein_, a popular tale disguised as a chivalrous romance 340

The different versions of _Libeaux Desconus_--one of them is sophisticated 343

_Tristram_--the Anglo-Norman poems comparatively simple and ingenuous 344

French Romance and Provençal Lyric 345

Ovid in the Middle Ages--the _Art of Love_ 346

The Heroines 347

Benoit's _Medea_ again 348

Chrestien of Troyes, his place at the beginning of modern literature 349

'Enlightenment' in the Romantic School 350

The sophists of Romance--the rhetoric of sentiment and passion 351

The progress of Romance from medieval to modern literature 352

Chrestien of Troyes, his inconsistencies--nature and convention 352

Departure from conventional romance; Chrestien's _Enid_ 355

Chrestien's _Cliges_--"sensibility" 357

_Flamenca_, a Provençal story of the thirteenth century--the author a follower of Chrestien 359

His acquaintance with romantic literature 360 and rejection of the "machinery" of adventures 360

_Flamenca_, an appropriation of Ovid--disappearance of romantic mythology 361

The _Lady of Vergi_, a short tragic story without false rhetoric 362

Use of medieval themes by the great poets of the fourteenth century 363

Boccaccio and Chaucer--the _Teseide_ and the _Knight's Tale_ 364

Variety of Chaucer's methods 364

Want of art in the _Man of Law's Tale_ 365

The abstract point of honour (_Clerk's Tale_, _Franklin's Tale_) 366

Pathos in the _Legend of Good Women_ 366

Romantic method perfect in the _Knight's Tale_ 366

_Anelida_, the abstract form of romance 367

In _Troilus and Criseyde_ the form of medieval romance is filled out with strong dramatic imagination 367

Romance obtains the freedom of Epic, without the old local and national limitations of Epic 368

Conclusion 370

APPENDIX

Note A--Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry 373

Note B--Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason 375

Note C--Eyjolf Karsson 381

Note D--Two Catalogues of Romances 384

INDEX 391