John Bourchier, Lord Berners, stands at the boundary between the medieval and early modern, his compositions hovering at their nebulous threshold. While it is recognized that Arthur of Little Britain (1560?) and Huon of Bourdeaux (c.1515) are written in the tradition of the medieval chivalric romance and that Castle of Love (1548?) reflects new, humanist trends in the genre, it is less frequently observed that these two strands of romance were both avidly read, reprinted, and adapted throughout the Tudor period. The continued appeal of romance may be explained by its ability to respond to the shifting preoccupations of diverse reading publics. For instance, as the sixteenth century progressed, Castle was read as both protofeminist and misogynist, as a speculum principis, and as a rhetorical and amatory manual (Boro 2007). Huon was adapted into dramatic form and inspired William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe (Boro 2004: 239). Arthur was denounced as corrupting by some, while others nostalgically recalled it as favoured childhood reading (Nashe 1958: i, 11; A. Davis 2003:30). Readers looked to romance for entertainment, education, and advice. Despised and feared by moralists, it provided children, merchants, gentlemen, women, and nobles with models of exemplary and daring behaviour, rhetorical and chivalric prowess, and political theory. Straining against the tide of continued and widespread moral condemnation, chivalric and humanist romance fiction remained popular with male and female readers across the social spectrum (see Hutson 1994). In order to illuminate the dominance of the romance throughout the period, this chapter will provide an overview of sixteenth-century romance production, dissemination, and readership, followed by a closer look at Lord Berners, whose literary output reflects the evolution, enduring popularity, and continued relevance of the genre through the Tudor period and beyond.
World History
