The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory

The Flourishing of Romance and
the Rise of
by George
Saintsbury

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flourishing of Romance and the
Rise of
Allegory, by George Saintsbury This eBook is for the use of anyone
anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of
European Literature, vol. II)
Author: George Saintsbury
Release Date: May 24, 2007 [EBook #21600]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Transcriber's Notes: To improve readability, dashes between entries in
the Table of Contents and in chapter subheadings have been converted
to periods. The Anglo-Saxon yogh symbol is here represented by [y].]

Periods of European Literature
EDITED BY
PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY
II.
THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE.
EDITED BY PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY.
"The criticism which alone can much help us for the future is a
criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
to a common result."
--MATTHEW ARNOLD.
In 12 Crown 8vo Volumes. Price 5s. net each.
The DARK AGES Professor W.P. KER. The FLOURISHING OF
ROMANCE AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY THE EDITOR. The
FOURTEENTH CENTURY F.J. SNELL. The TRANSITION PERIOD
The EARLIER RENAISSANCE The LATER RENAISSANCE
DAVID HANNAY. The FIRST HALF OF 17TH CENTURY The
AUGUSTAN AGES OLIVER ELTON. The MID-EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY The ROMANTIC REVOLT EDMUND GOSSE. The

ROMANTIC TRIUMPH WALTER H. POLLOCK. The LATER
NINETEENTH CENTURY THE EDITOR.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

THE
FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE
AND THE
RISE OF ALLEGORY
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND
LONDON MDCCCXCVII

PREFACE.
As this volume, although not the first in chronological order, is likely to
be the first to appear in the Series of which it forms part, and of which
the author has the honour to be editor, it may be well to say a few
words here as to the scheme of this Series generally. When that scheme
was first sketched, it was necessarily objected that it would be difficult,
if not impossible, to obtain contributors who could boast intimate and
equal knowledge of all the branches of European literature at any given
time. To meet this by a simple denial was, of course, not to be thought
of. Even universal linguists, though not unknown, are not very common;
and universal linguists have not usually been good critics of any, much
less of all, literature. But it could be answered that if the main principle

of the scheme was sound--that is to say, if it was really desirable not to
supplant but to supplement the histories of separate literatures, such as
now exist in great numbers, by something like a new "Hallam," which
should take account of all the simultaneous and contemporary
developments and their interaction--some sacrifice in point of specialist
knowledge of individual literatures not only must be made, but might
be made with little damage. And it could be further urged that this
sacrifice might be reduced to a minimum by selecting in each case
writers thoroughly acquainted with the literature which happened to be
of greatest prominence in the special period, provided always that their
general literary knowledge and critical habits were such as to render
them capable of giving a fit account of the rest.
In the carrying out of such a scheme occasional deficiencies of
specialist dealing, or even of specialist knowledge, must be held to be
compensated by range of handling and width of view. And though it is
in all such cases hopeless to appease what has been called "the rage of
the specialist" himself--though a Mezzofanti doubled with a
Sainte-Beuve could never, in any general history of European literature,
hope to satisfy the special devotees of Roumansch or of Platt-Deutsch,
not to mention those of the greater languages--yet there may, I hope, be
a sufficient public who, recognising the advantage of the end, will
make a fair allowance for necessary shortcomings in the means.
As, however, it is quite certain that there will be some critics, if not
some readers, who will not make this allowance, it seemed only just
that the Editor should bear the brunt in this new Passage Perilous. I
shall state very frankly the qualifications which I think I may advance
in regard to this volume. I believe I have read most of the French and
English literature proper of