The World Upside-down

Abstract

Although epic and romance dominated vernacular literature in the twelfth century, other genres did begin to develop and by the early thirteenth century were sufficiently well established to pose a real challenge to the pre-eminence of the serious aristocratic literature of castle and court. The fighting values of the chansons de geste with their emphasis on loyalty to God and one’s overlord; the preoccupations of the courtly lover and his lady; the self-serving adventures of knights errant in the fantastic world of the romances — all these tales had only a limited appeal for the new bourgeois society that was evolving at the turn of the century and becoming sufficiently wealthy and socially aware to be interested in patronising the poets and artists who had previously looked only to the barons and the aristocratic world for their inspiration and their commissions.

‘and if you’re not good directly,’ she added, ‘I’ll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that? … the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way.’

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)