Epic and Romance

Epic and Romance, by W. P. Ker

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Title: Epic and Romance Essays on Medieval Literature
Author: W. P. Ker

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This text employs some Anglo-Saxon characters, such as the eth (Ð or
ð, equivalent of "th") and the thorn (Þ or þ, also equivalent of "th").
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"3ong" (yong).

EPIC AND ROMANCE
Essays on Medieval Literature
by
W. P. KER
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford Professor of English Literature in
University College London

MacMillan and Co., Limited St. Martin's Street, London 1931
Copyright First Edition (8vo) 1896 Second Edition (Eversley Series)
1908 Reprinted (Crown 8vo) 1922, 1926, 1931
Printed in Great Britain By R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh

PREFACE
These essays are intended as a general description of some of the
principal forms of narrative literature in the Middle Ages, and as a
review of some of the more interesting works in each period. It is
hardly necessary to say that the conclusion is one "in which nothing is
concluded," and that whole tracts of literature have been barely touched
on--the English metrical romances, the Middle High German poems,
the ballads, Northern and Southern--which would require to be

considered in any systematic treatment of this part of history.
Many serious difficulties have been evaded (in Finnesburh, more
particularly), and many things have been taken for granted, too easily.
My apology must be that there seemed to be certain results available
for criticism, apart from the more strict and scientific procedure which
is required to solve the more difficult problems of Beowulf, or of the
old Northern or the old French poetry. It is hoped that something may
be gained by a less minute and exacting consideration of the whole
field, and by an attempt to bring the more distant and dissociated parts
of the subject into relation with one another, in one view.
Some of these notes have been already used, in a course of three
lectures at the Royal Institution, in March 1892, on "the Progress of
Romance in the Middle Ages," and in lectures given at University
College and elsewhere. The plot of the Dutch romance of Walewein
was discussed in a paper submitted to the Folk-Lore Society two years
ago, and published in the journal of the Society (Folk-Lore, vol. v. p.
121).
I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr. Paget Toynbee for his help in
reading the proofs.
I cannot put out on this venture without acknowledgment of my
obligation to two scholars, who have had nothing to do with my
employment of all that I have borrowed from them, the Oxford editors
of the Old Northern Poetry, Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson and Mr. York
Powell. I have still to learn what Mr. York Powell thinks of these
discourses. What Gudbrand Vigfusson would have thought I cannot
guess, but I am glad to remember the wise goodwill which he was
always ready to give, with so much else from the resources of his
learning and his judgment, to those who applied to him for advice.
W. P. KER.
LONDON, 4th November 1896.

POSTSCRIPT
This book is now reprinted without addition or change, except in a few
small details. If it had to be written over again, many things, no doubt,
would be expressed in a different way. For example, after some time
happily spent in reading the Danish and other ballads, I am inclined to
make rather less of the interval between the ballads and the earlier
heroic poems, and I have learned (especially from Dr. Axel Olrik) that
the Danish ballads do not belong originally to simple rustic people, but
to the Danish gentry in the Middle Ages. Also the comparison of
Sturla's Icelandic and Norwegian histories, though it still seems to me
right in the main, is driven a little too far; it hardly does enough justice
to the beauty of the Life of Hacon (Hákonar Saga), especially in the
part dealing with the rivalry of the King and his