Resources


General | Handouts | King Horn | Havelok the Dane | Octavian | Sir Isumbras | Athelston

The following resources are intended to help you find extra information or clarification; however, this is not an exhaustive bibliography. Please be aware of the following criteria in doing background reading:

  1. The shorter the reading, the more superficial and less nuanced an understanding you'll get, even if the reading comes from a reputable source.
  2. Publications found only on the internet tend to be short and therefore fall into the above category. In addition, they may not conform to the standards of good scholarship.
  3. Sources with more recent publication dates are preferable to older sources. This does not mean that the older sources are invalid, but the more recent ones will list them in their bibliographies and provide an idea of the extent to which older scholarship is still accepted.

General History of the Middle Ages

You may find some of the following general works useful for background information:

Jackson, W.H. Knighthood in Medieval Literature. Woodbridge, Suffolk : D.S. Brewer, 1981. PN682.K54 K54 198.

Krueger, Roberta L., ed. The Cambridge companion to medieval romance. Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2000. PN671 .C36 2000.

Saul, Nigel. The Batsford Companion to Medieval England. London : Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd., 1983. DA175 .S38 1983.

---. The Age of Chivalry. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1992. N6763 .A36 1992

Handouts

These are some printable readings which you might find useful:

King Horn

Note: The following list consists only scholarship which (a) occurs in the bibliography of your textbooks and (b) is available at the Oviatt Library without the use of interlibrary loan. You may want to search the library databases for publications more recent than those in your textbook.

Allen, Rosamund "The Date and Provenance of King Horn: Some Interim Reassessments." In Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane. Ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig. Suffolk, England: St. Edmundsburg Press, 1988. Pp. 99-126. [Based on both internal and external evidence, argues a later date for all MSS than previously thought.]

---. "Some Textual Cruces in King Horn." Medium Aevum 53 (1984), 73-77. [Isolates six examples where cruces occur by comparing three MS versions.]
Dannebaum, Susan. "'Fairer Bi One Ribbe/Thane Eni Man That Libbe' (King Horn C315-16)." Notes and Queries 226 (1981), 116-17. [Posits a masculine ideal for physical beauty operating within the poem that derives from Adam and Christ.]

Hurt, James R. "The Texts of King Horn." Journal of the Folklore Institute 7 (1970), 47-59.

Hynes-Berry, Mary. "Cohesion in King Horn and Sir Orfeo." Speculum 50 (1975), 652-70. [Argues that all episodes fit into a "cohesively progressive pattern" in which every incident contributes to narrative development.]

McLaughlin, John. "The Return Song in Medieval Romance and Ballad: King Horn and King Orfeo." Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975), 304-07. [Links twentieth-century Serbo-Croatian heroic poetry, medieval French romances, and nineteenth-century Scottish ballads, by recognizing a "return song" pattern common to all.]

Speed, Diane. "The Saracens of King Horn." Speculum 65 (1990), 564-95. [The Saracens named in the poem are not "figures from real life," but rather a "literary phenomenon."]

Havelok the Dane

Note: The following list consists only scholarship which (a) occurs in the bibliography of your textbooks and (b) is available at the Oviatt Library without the use of interlibrary loan. You may want to search the library databases for publications more recent than those in your textbook.

Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. [Comprehensive general study of generic features, historical contexts, and evolutionary principles.]

Boitani, Piero. English Medieval Narrative in the 13th and 14th Centuries. Trans. Joan Krakover Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. [Surveys several medieval English literary genres, including religious writing, comic writing, dream visions, and romances, with separate chapters on Gower and Chaucer; compares English with French culture and romance with epic; discusses how Chaucer uses romance.]

Bradbury, Nancy Mason. "The Traditional Origins of Havelok the Dane." Studies in Philology 90 (1993), 115-42. [Employs folklore methods for tracing oral origins of the Havelok story as presented in the English poem.]

Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. [Sees the exile and return pattern of Havelok as a frame for ideological expression of the nobility's interest in land and personal title.]

Halverson, J. "Havelok the Dane and Society." Chaucer Review 6 (1971), 142-51. [Supports the view of a non-noble audience for the poem.]

Hanning, Robert W. "Havelok the Dane: Structure, Symbols, Meaning." Studies in Philology 64 (1967), 586-605. [Argues that despite its lack of aesthetic beauty, the poem is deserving of commendation for its unified structure, for its consistent use of central symbolic acts or devices, and for the way in which structure and symbols cooperate to establish and clarify the work's central meanings (p. 587).]

Kleinman, Scott. "Animal Imagery and Oral Discourse in Haveloks First Fight.", Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 35 (2004): 311-327. [Examines the poet's use of Anglo-Scandinavian folk material and popular animal imagery to examine relationships between truth and meaning. Argue that the poet's inconsistent imagery and multiple narrative perspectives evoke the textual variations produced by oral transmission and that the poet consciously adopts this feature of oral discourse in order to draw attention to its fallibility as a conveyor of historical veracity, directing the reader's attention to its deeper truths about the multiple ways in which humans experience bondage. Available on Moodle only.]

Kleinman, Scott. "The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography of East Anglia." Studies in Philology 100:3 (2003), 245-277. [Argues that the names found in the Havelok legend provide evidence of its origins in the historiographical tradition of East Anglia, a learned and literate enterprise that attempted to establish an identity for the region. Certain elements of the tale were invented by Gaimar in his Estoire des Engleis based on elements in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian historical literature (some of which can be traced in Scandinavian sources). Later adapters of the tale sometimes turning back to Gaimar and sometimes to sources similar to those he had used, in order to enhance its credentials as local history or to show how the Danish presence in East Anglia participated in the development of English social and legal institutions. The popularization of the Havelok story provides a model of the way the ideas of learned historiographers reached and influenced a much broader audience.]

Levine, Robert. "Who Composed Havelok for Whom?" Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), 95-104. [Rejects the characterization of the poem's audience as lower class.]

Liuzza, Roy Michael. "Representation and Readership in the ME Havelok." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994), 504-19. [Sees the catalogue of fish as part of a larger system of economic exchange.]

McIntosh, Angus. "The Language of the Extant Versions of Havelok the Dane." Medium Aevum 45 (1976), 36-49. [Disputes, by linguistic analysis, the scholarly presumption of Lincolnshire origin; instead, argues Norfolk influence.]

Mills, Maldwyn. "Havelok's Return." Medium Aevum 45 (1976), 20-35. [Explores the return scene to shed light on the genesis and unity of the poem.]

---. "Havelok and the Brutal Fisherman." Medium Aevum 36 (1967), 219-30. [Argues that Grim is not as good as he seems.]

Pearsall, Derek. "John Capgrave's Life of St. Katharine and Popular Romance Style." Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1975), 121-37. [John Capgrave, a fifteenth-century Augustinian friar, knew and mimicked romance formulae found in Havelok in his Life of St. Katharine. The close thematic associations of hagiography and romance are textually manifest as well.] 

Purdon, Liam O."'Na Yaf He Nouth a Stra' in Havelok." Philological Quarterly 69 (1990), 377-83. [Argues that the feudal act of renunciation is suggested by the placement, repetition, and language of this particular expression.]

Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. [A study of the Middle English romance with a chapter on the child exile story, comparing the characters of the king and traitors and the relation of heroes to heroines in Havelok and King Horn. Sees royalist sympathies and a concern for the rule of law in thirteenth-century England.]

Reiss, Edmund. "Havelok the Dane and Norse Mythology." Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966), 115-24. [Reveals Scandinavian mythological traces in several characters of the poem.]

Scott, Anne. "Language as Convention, Language as Sociolect in Havelok the Dane." Studies in Philology 89 (1992), 137-60. [Views formulaic style of Havelok as an expression of Havelok's acquisition of "language" or "sociolect" appropriate for a king.]

Smithers, G. V. "The Style of Havelok." Medium Aevum 57 (1988), 190-218. [Meticulously detailed study of repetition, periphrasis, apostrophe, simile, hyperbole, and other devices, with comparisons to Anglo-Norman rhetorical practice on which these devices may have depended.]

Staines, David. "Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes." Speculum 51 (1976), 602-23. [Argues that Havelok is a mirror for princes with implicit admonitions to treat the lower classes well and observe the rule of law. Sees a number of interesting parallels between Havelok and Edward I.]

Sir Isumbras

Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.

Octavian

Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. [Comprehensive general study of generic features, historical contexts, and evolutionary principles.]

Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.

Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.

Athelston

Bennett, J.A.W. "Havelok; Gamelyn; Athelston; Sir Amadace; Libeaus Desconus." In Middle English Literature. Ed. Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 154-69.

Gerould, Gordon Hall. "Social and Historical Reminiscences in the Middle English Athelston." Englische Studien 36 (1906), 193-208. [Argues that the historical reminiscence is to the famous dispute between Henry II and Thomas Becket, which ended in Becket's death and his subsequent beatification. Becket's cult was widespread by the fourteenth century.]

Hibbard, Laura A. [Loomis]. "Athelston, A Westminster Legend." PMLA 36 (1921), 223-44. [Argues that the source for the romance is the legendary Queen Emma and the Ploughshare, a story disseminated by monastic writers.]

Kiernan, Kevin S. "Athelston and the Rhyme of the English Romances." Modern Language Quarterly 36 (1975), 338-53. [Focuses on the artistry of the tail-rhyme stanza and argues that irregularities in the stanzaic structure in Athelston are purposeful, deliberate attempts to marry form and content in the work. Concludes that the work is among the most closely knit of Middle English romances.]

Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. 146-52. [Places Athelston within the category of "homiletic romances," and in an analysis which focuses on both the specific details of the romance and on short comparisons with a great many other works in Middle English, concludes that it is "one of the most impressive of the homiletic romances" (p. 152).]

Pigg, Daniel. "The Implications of Realist Poetics in the Middle English Athelston." English Language Notes 32 (1994), 1-8. [Considers the importance of realist - as opposed to nominalist - sign theory in relation to feudal monarchy. The Earl of Dover's false accusations threaten both the realist understanding of sign and referent and the feudal institutions that such a system of signs upholds.]

Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman. "The Female Body Politic and the Miscarriage of Justice in Athelston." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995), 79-98. [Argues that the poem attacks the tyranny of Richard II, but not monarchy itself; the poem may thus date as late as 1399. Furthermore, Athelston uses a female/maternal metaphor for the body politic itself, which becomes silenced within the romance.]

 

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