The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory | Page 4

the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling.
The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of
Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of
the modern languages. Historical retrospect. Anglo-Saxon prosody.
Romance prosody. English prosody. The later alliteration. The new
verse. Rhyme and syllabic equivalence. Accent and quantity. The gain
of form. The "accent" theory. Initial fallacies, and final perversities
thereof 187
CHAPTER VI.
MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY.
Position of Germany. Merit of its poetry. Folk-epics: The
Nibelungenlied. The Volsunga saga. The German version. Metres.
Rhyme and language. Kudrun. Shorter national epics. Literary poetry.
Its four chief masters. Excellence, both natural and acquired, of
German verse. Originality of its adaptation. The Pioneers: Heinrich von
Veldeke. Gottfried of Strasburg. Hartmann von Aue. Erec der
Wanderære and Iwein. Lyrics. The "booklets." Der Arme Heinrich.

Wolfram von Eschenbach. Titurel. Willehalm. Parzival. Walther von
der Vogelweide. Personality of the poets. The Minnesingers generally
225
CHAPTER VII.
THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' AND THE MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF
FRANCE.
The predominance of France. The rise of Allegory. Lyric. The
Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence.
Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language.
And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of
irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin.
The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. The Rise of
Allegory. The satire of Renart. The Fox himself. His circle. The burial
of Renart. The Romance of the Rose. William of Lorris and Jean de
Meung. The first part. Its capital value. The rose-garden. "Danger."
"Reason." "Shame" and "Scandal." The later poem. "False-Seeming."
Contrast of the parts. Value of both, and charm of the first. Marie de
France and Ruteboeuf. Drama. Adam de la Halle. Robin et Marion. The
Jeu de la Feuillie. Comparison of them. Early French prose. Laws and
sermons. Villehardouin. William of Tyre. Joinville. Fiction. Aucassin et
Nicolette 265
CHAPTER VIII.
ICELANDIC AND PROVENÇAL.
Resemblances. Contrasts. Icelandic literature of this time mainly prose.
Difficulties with it. The Saga. Its insularity of manner. Of scenery and
character. Fact and fiction in the sagas. Classes and authorship of them.
The five greater sagas. Njala. Laxdæla. Eyrbyggja. Egla. Grettla. Its
critics. Merits of it. The parting of Asdis and her sons. Great passages
of the sagas. Style. Provençal mainly lyric. Origin of this lyric. Forms.
Many men, one mind. Example of rhyme-schemes. Provençal poetry
not great. But extraordinarily pedagogic. Though not directly on

English. Some troubadours. Criticism of Provençal 333
CHAPTER IX.
THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS.
Limitations of this chapter. Late Greek romance. Its difficulties as a
subject. Anna Comnena, &c. Hysminias and Hysmine. Its style. Its
story. Its handling. Its "decadence." Lateness of Italian. The "Saracen"
theory. The "folk-song" theory. Ciullo d'Alcamo. Heavy debt to France.
Yet form and spirit both original. Love-lyric in different European
countries. Position of Spanish. Catalan-Provençal. Galician-Portuguese.
Castilian. Ballads? The Poema del Cid. A Spanish chanson de geste. In
scheme and spirit. Difficulties of its prosody. Ballad-metre theory.
Irregularity of line. Other poems. Apollonius and Mary of Egypt.
Berceo. Alfonso el Sabio 375
CHAPTER X.
CONCLUSION 412
INDEX 427

THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE
AND THE
RISE OF ALLEGORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.
REASONS FOR NOT NOTICING THE BULK OF MEDIÆVAL
LATIN LITERATURE. EXCEPTED DIVISIONS. COMIC LATIN
LITERATURE. EXAMPLES OF ITS VERBAL INFLUENCE. THE

VALUE OF BURLESQUE. HYMNS. THE "DIES IRÆ." THE
RHYTHM OF BERNARD. LITERARY PERFECTION OF THE
HYMNS. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. ITS INFLUENCE ON
PHRASE AND METHOD. THE GREAT SCHOLASTICS.
[Sidenote: Reasons for not noticing the bulk of mediæval Latin
literature.]
This series is intended to survey and illustrate the development of the
vernacular literatures of mediæval and Europe; and for that purpose it is
unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of the Latin
writing which, in a steadily decreasing but--until the end of the last
century--an always considerable proportion, served as the vehicle of
literary expression. But with a part of it we are as necessarily concerned
as we are necessarily compelled to decline the whole. For not only was
Latin for centuries the universal means of communication between
educated men of different languages, the medium through which such
men received their education, the court-language, so to speak, of
religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of knowledge which did
not directly stoop to the comprehension of the unlearned; but it was
indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as well as consciously, a
schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary
accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would;
and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It
modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an
extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of