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Insular tradition in the story of Amis and Amiloun

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Notes

  1. Derek Pearsall, “The Development of Middle English Romance,”Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 110. Generic terminology is not the subject of my study, so the conventional designation “ romance” is retained for these works in order to facilitate direct discussion of features of style and narrative procedure.

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  2. Striking examples of this approach are: Ojars Kratins, “Middle EnglishAmis and Amiloun: Chivalric Romance or Secular Hagiography?,”PMLA, 81 (1966), 347–54; Dieter Mehl,The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1968), pp. 105–11; Kathryn Hume, “Amis and Amiloun and the Aesthetics of Middle English Romance,”Studies in Philology, 70 (1973), 19–41. Maria Dominica Legge provides introductory remarks onAmis e Amilun in her surveyAnglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), pp. 115–21.

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  3. Quotation:Amis and Amiloun, ed. MacEdward Leach, EETS, O.S. 203 (London, 1937), xcvii. ME quotations are from this edition, hereafter cited as MEAmis. The three MSS ofAmis e Amilun, K (Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 50), L (British Museum Royal 12. C. xii), and the much later C (Cod. Durlac 38, Carlsruhe), are described by Eugen Kö lbing, ed.,Amis e Amilun, inAmis and Amiloun (Heilbronn, 1884), pp. lxxiii–lxxvi. Anglo-Norman quotations are from this edition, hereafter cited as ANAmis. Kölbing reproduces the Durlac fragments, which will not be discussed here, beneath the appropriate lines of K and L in his edition. On manuscript filiation, see Kölbing, “Zu Amis and Amilloun,”Englische Studien, 2 (1879), 295–310; edition, pp. cxxi–cxxxi; Leach, edition, pp. xx, xciv–xcvii.

  4. Two apparently inadvertent betrayals of the outcome of events (lines 544, 933–4) are not examples of foreshadowing so much as demonstrations of the poet's disregard for suspense or surprise in the face of the power of the story as a whole.

  5. Hume, p. 21; Mehl, pp. 107–8; Leach, p. xcvii.

  6. MEAmis, lines 293–7 and 364–6. Kölbing demonstrates the typical repetitiveness of the tail-rhyme form with nearly thirty pages of examples of concatenation, formulae, interior repetition, and similar transitions, epithets, and speeches from MEAmis: edition pp. xxxvii–lxiv. Kölbing's parallels between MEAmis and other ME romances, pp. lxiv–lxvi, indicate that most repetitions are traditional. A suggestive study of ME repetitiveness is Susan Wittig'sStylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances (Austin, 1978).

  7. These stylistic expansions are discussed by Hume, pp. 24–6; and by Dale Kramer, “Structural Artistry inAmis and Amiloun,”Annuale Mediaevale, 9 (1968), 112–18.

  8. Mehl, pp. 106–7; Kramer, pp. 106–12; Hume, pp. 35–7; Pearsall, p. 111.

  9. Quotations are from Leach, p. 125, note; Mehl, p. 108. Cf. leprosy as a punishment for the “sin of ‘ forswearing,’” Kramer, p. 110; as a punishment for the “false oath before the judicial duel,” A. H. Krappe, “The Legend of Amicus and Amelius,”The Modern Language Review, 18 (1923), 155; and as a punishment for sinfulness, Hume, pp. 28–9.

  10. Leach, p. lxxxvi; for examples of tricked ordeals, pp. lxxxv–lxxxvi; William C. Calin,The Epic Quest (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 72, 84–7; Philippe Ménard,Le Rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge (1150–1250), Publications romanes et françaises, No. 105 (Geneva, 1969), pp. 362–3.

  11. Kratins notes the significance of the angel's wording: the voice “does not threaten Amiloun with punishment (‘þou schalt haue an euentour strong’ is a morally neutral statement); rather, he puts Amiloun'strewþe to the test by placing before him a choice” (p. 351).

  12. The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS, O.S. 54 (London, 1873), Passus X, lines 184–5.

  13. “La Lèpre, thème littéraire au moyen âge,”Le Moyen Age, 52 (1946), 195–242. Remy citesJaufre, Protheselaus, Gesta Romanorum, and theQueste del Saint-Graal as offering examples of the blood cure tradition (pp. 226–7); King Richard and Louis XI were advised to take this cure (pp. 222–3); see also Leach, p. lxii; and Saul Nathaniel Brody,The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, 1974).

  14. Hume, pp. 29, 37.

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  1. Dept. of English, Rutgers University, 08903, New Brunswick, N.J., USA

    Susan Dannenbaum

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Dannenbaum, S. Insular tradition in the story of Amis and Amiloun. Neophilologus 67, 611–622 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352420

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