Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose — A Closer Reading

e eleventh century; and about the end of the twelfth some large-scale experiments show that writers were no longer content with the old medium. In _Layamon_, the last great poem in this metre before the fourteenth century, internal rime and assonance are common. Orm adopted the unrimed _septenarius_ from Latin, but counted his syllables so faithfully as to produce an intolerable monotony. Then French influence turned the scale swiftly and decisively in favour of rime, so that in the extant poetry of the thirteenth century alliteration is a secondary principle or a casual ornament, but never takes the place of rime.

The sudden and complete eclipse of a measure so firmly rooted in tradition is surprising enough; but the wealth and elaborateness of the new forms that replaced it are still more matter for wonder. It is natural to think of the poets before Chaucer as children learning their art slowly and painfully, and often stumbling on the way. Yet in this one point of metrical technique they seem to reach mastery at a bound.

That the development of verse forms took place outside of English is part of the explanation. Rimed verse had its origin in Church Latin. In the monastic schools the theory of classical and post-classical metres was a principal study; and the practical art of chant was indispensable for the proper conduct of the services. Under these favourable conditions technical development was rapid, so that in such an early example of the rimed stanza as the following, taken from a poem that Godescalc wrote in exile about the year 845,—

_Magis mihi, miserule, Flere libet, puerule, Plus plorare quam cantare Carmen tale iubes quale, Amor care. O, cur iubes canere?[2]—_

the arrangement of longer and shorter lines, the management of rime or assonance, and the studied grouping of consonant sounds, give rather the impression of too much than too little artifice.

[Foot-note 2: _Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini_, vol. iii (ed. L. Traube), p. 731.]

From Church Latin rime passed into French, and with the twelfth century entered on a new course of development at the hands of the _trouvères_ and the minstrels. The _trouvères_, or 'makers', studied versification and music as a profession, and competed in the weaving of ingenious patterns. Since their living depended on pleasing their audience, those minstrels who were not themselves composers spared no pains to sing or recite well the compositions of others; and good execution encouraged poets to try more difficult forms.

The varied results obtained in two such excellent schools of experience were offered to the English poets of the thirteenth century in exchange for the monotony of the long line; and their choice was unhesitating. In an age of lyrical poetry they learned to sing where before they could only declaim: and because the great age of craftsmanship had begun, the most intricate patterns pleased them best. Chaucer was perhaps not yet born when the over-elaboration of riming metres in English drew a protest from Robert Mannyng:[3] and when, after a period of hesitancy, rimed verse regained its prestige in Chaucer's prime, nameless writers again chose or invented complex stanza forms and sustained them throughout long poems. If _The Pearl_ stood alone it might be accounted a literary _tour de force_: the York and Towneley plays compel the conclusion that a high standard of metrical workmanship was appreciated by the common people.

If it were made in _ryme couwee_, Or in strangere, or _enterlacé_, Þat rede Inglis it ere inowe Þat couthe not haf coppled a kowe, Þat outhere in _couwee_ or in _baston_ Som suld haf ben fordon.

(_Chronicle_, Prologue, ll. 85 ff.)]

Thus far, by way of generalization and without the _caveats_ proper to a literary history, I have indicated some aspects of the preceding period that are important for an understanding of the fourteenth century. But it would be misleading to pass on without a word of reservation. There is reason to suppose that the extant texts from the thirteenth century give a truer reflection of the tastes of the upper classes, who were in closest contact with the French, than of the tastes of the people. But however this may be, they do not authorize us to speak for every part of the country. All the significant texts come from the East or the South—especially the western districts of the South, where an exceptional activity is perhaps to be connected with the old preference of the court for Winchester. In the North and the North-West a silence of five centuries is hardly broken.