‘Chivalric’ and ‘humanist’ are broad categories that serve as a convenient shorthand for an extremely varied group of texts. As Corinne Saunders observes, ‘Romance is a genre of extraordinary fluidity: it spans mimetic and non-mimetic, actuality and fantasy, history and legend, past and present, and is striking in its open-endedness, if frustrating in its capacity to defy classification or resolution’ (2004:2). A romance may contain elements of hagiography, chronicle, historical biography, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, the magical and the miraculous, and amorous and chivalric adventures in varying degrees. It can end in tragedy or reconciliation; it may narrate one discrete episode in a knight’s life or follow him and his family for generations; the hero may be secular or saintly, a military hero or a lover; or these elements may be blended in surprising, innovative ways (see also Wakelin, Chapter 3 in this volume).
Helen Cooper enumerates upwards of seventy medieval romances that were known in early modern England or Scotland (2004: 409-29). The range of influence and circulation of these romances is diverse. Two of the most popular narratives were Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton. Guy circulated in at least ten manuscripts, four prints, up to four dramatizations, and six adaptations in forms ranging from broadside through ballad to chapbook (H. Cooper 2004:93,419). Bevis was also transmitted in manuscript, print, and as a chapbook. In addition to its nine manuscript exemplars and fifteen editions, Bevis was a formative source text for Spenser and John Bunyan. The breadth of its readership is further suggested by the countless allusions to it by writers of drama, verse, and prose (H. Cooper 2004: 419, 413). At the opposite end of the spectrum to Guy and Bevis are romances such as Amis and Amiloun (dramatized as Alexander and Lodowick in 1594) and Gamelyn (one source for Lodge’s Rosalynde), which seem only to have been known in manuscript.
The wide appeal of romance is manifested by the way it cornered the print market, circulating in even greater numbers than any other form of fiction, including printed drama at its zenith in the final decades of the sixteenth century (Stanivukovic 2007: 61); yet, publication records tell only part of the story. As the dissemination of Amis and Amiloun and Gamelyn suggests, there was a vibrant scribal tradition alongside the abundance of print. In this period when books were expensive and therefore not dispensable, reading material encompassed older manuscripts alongside new, printed compositions: medieval romances persisted in both formats. Over 200 medieval manuscripts containing romances still survive, and more would have circulated in the Tudor era (Guddat-Figge 1976; Hays 1985: 87-109; Seymour 1995-7). Many contain annotations in Tudor hands, indicating their continued readership. Furthermore, medieval romances continued to be transcribed: approximately twenty-six Tudor manuscripts of medieval romances are still extant. The advent of print did not forestall or slacken the production of romance manuscripts. In fact, some romances may have been copied from, or inspired by, printed editions (A. Edwards 2002: 145-6). Manuscripts could contain single romances or romance anthologies; but, in manuscript form, romances usually rubbed shoulders with all kinds of texts—secular, religious, didactic, entertaining, popular, elite, Latin, English, scientific, historical, or personal.
Whereas the continued readership of medieval romance is attested by manuscript and print circulation, textual allusions, and library inventories, the period also bore witness to new romance forms. These innovations rejuvenated the ever-thriving genre. They sustained its popularity, ensuring the romance’s pertinence to new groups of readers. The chivalric romance was the most prevalent form of the genre in the medieval and early Tudor periods, but as the decades progressed it was accompanied by emerging forms, such as the humanist romance, romance collections, and dramatizations.
The chivalric romance narrates the adventures of valiant knights as they fight torturous battles, defeat mighty opponents, rescue damsels in distress, encounter supernatural elements, and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds in order to acquire or regain their inheritance, land, honourable reputation, and/or beloved lady. Despite the similar markers of success in the chivalric and humanist romance—lands, inheritance, love—the particular types of heroism depicted and the heroes’ modus operandi vary: humanist romances value qualities of mental readiness rather than knightly prowess; the prudent captain replaces the errant knight as the heroic model (Hutson 1994). These new heroes are gifted with the art of eloquence. When physical prowess is required, the hero’s capability is commended because it reflects his mental strength. It indicates his intellectual ability to draw on knowledge gained through reading about, or acting in, similar situations and to transform such experience into persuasive arguments and practical achievements. As the markers of success moved from battlefield to text, heroes are admired for the ‘virtuoso deployments of their skill in probable argument’, as they rhetorically win over unwilling ladies and other resistant forces (Hutson 1994: 99). Skill in courtship is indicative of the heroes’ learning, intelligence, and value to the common weal, since their ability to persuade a woman is evidence of their capacity to find a probable argument in any situation and to convince anyone to follow their desired course of action: ‘heroic masculinity, in these narratives, finds its image in the extent to which all contingency, all circumstance, has its own potential as an emotionally persuasive agent for or against a particular case’ (Hutson 1994: 99). These romances place greater emphasis on the actions and emotions of female readers and female protagonists than do the chivalric romances. While this increases their appeal to women readers, as I will discuss below, the primary function of female characters is to act as a foil for the hero’s discursive feats as he attempts to persuade her to follow his whims. Within this framework, humanist romances are valued for their exemplary depictions of heroic behaviour and for the rhetorical displays they offer their readers. Of particular usefulness were texts that allotted significant discursive space to persuasion of all kinds—for debates between men, political and persuasive orations, letters and pleading harangues addressed to women—that is, in texts which sought to convince and which demonstrated how probable arguments could be found and success attained in even the most seemingly desperate situations (Hutson 1994).
Consonant with the political and rhetorical pedagogical focuses of humanist romances, in these texts, through the example of the hero, readers learned how verbally and physically to manipulate any situation to their advantage. Feats of dialectical chivalry were there for readers to emulate, so that they could mirror the fictional protagonists and craft themselves as rhetorical heroes. Traces of readers in humanist romances point to audiences attuned to their didactic potential as rhetorical pedagogy. For instance, the English translations of Arnalte y Lucenda (1543), Fiammetta (1587), and The Aethopian History (1569?) contain printed and handwritten glosses highlighting speeches, descriptions, orations, letters, and complaints. Moreover, several Tudor rhetorical manuals borrowed letters from romances, thereby emphasizing their didacticism. The third to tenth editions of William Fulwood’s letter-writing manual The Enemy of Idleness (1578-1621) contain model epistles derived from Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s (Pope Pius Il’s) De duobus amantibus (‘The Two Lovers’, 1444) and Amadis of Gaul (1590?), and Thomas Paynell’s handbook The Treasury ofAmadis of France (1572?) is composed entirely of extracts from Amadis of Gaul and has the express purpose of epistolary instruction. This link between epistolary fiction and manuals of instruction as well as the rhetorical preoccupations visible in the marginal notations to romances suggest that these fictional works were used didactically—that their letters and other rhetorical units were to be studied and imitated by aspiring writers as they sought proficiency in highly marketable rhetoric skills.
The sentimental romance is an early manifestation of the humanist romance. Flourishing in Spain from c.1450 to c.1550, sentimental romances were translated and disseminated across Europe, gaining favour with audiences from Poland to England. These texts are generally distinguished by their focus on emotion rather than action and their interest in rhetoric, epistolarity, debate, good kingship, and women’s social position. They are structured according to discrete discursive units all uttered in the first person. Diverse modes of rhetorical expression are combined, such as discursive monologues, letters, laments, challenges, and replies as the heroes argue with ladies, oppositional kinsfolk, rulers, judges, and rivals, and as these other characters argue among themselves. The heroes write letters and poems and issue long laments. Combat is rare, and when it does occur, it is dealt with summarily. The heroes face a different type of challenge from the knights of chivalric romance. While they are all trying to win the love of their ladies, in the sentimental romance the amorous conquest is rhetorical, and its success or failure is dependent on the heroes’ verbal dexterity. As in humanist romance, the heroes are transformed from errant knights to talking knights, prefiguring the Renaissance humanists and courtiers who would avidly read these texts.
The esteem of the sentimental romance with English audiences is attested by the popularity of Berners’s Castle and other English translations of works in this genre. For example, Juan de Flores’s Grisel y Mirabella boasts three distinct English translations plus two dramatic adaptations (Swetnam, the Woman Hater (1620) and John Fletcher’s Women Pleased (1647)), yielding a total of eight editions from c.1525-32 to 1647. Translated into English on four separate occasions, Diego de San Pedro’s Arnalte y Lucenda exists in six editions, dating from 1543-1660. And, an important generic inspiration for these texts, Piccolomini’s De duobus amantibus was translated on four occasions and versified, adding up to seven editions between 1515? and 1639. The adaptations, re-editions, and retranslations of sentimental-cum-humanist romances clearly indicate the popularity of these texts through the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century.
In addition to the sentimental romance, readers warmly embraced other forms of the humanist romance: the sheer amount of imprints demonstrates the extent to which the genre flourished as romance collections and Greek, pastoral, rhetorical, and novella-derived romances entered the literary scene. By the later decades of the sixteenth century, romance anthologies, modelled on Continental examples, appeared. The first volume of William Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure was published three times (1566,1569,1575) and the second volume underwent two editions (1567,1580?). Possibly inspired by its success, similar collections by Geoffrey Fenton (1567), George Pettie (1576), and Barnaby Rich materialized (1581). But the Anglicized Italian novella was only one manifestation of the popular and diverse humanist romance; a new type of romance with an intensely rhetorical style and voguish subject matter was introduced by John Lyly in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578). Simultaneously, Greek romance thrived. Coupled with the pastoral romance, it was formative to Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, which was published twelve times by 1638. Greek romance, however, comes to be particularly associated with Robert Greene. Greene pairs the genre with the Italian novella as well as with romances by Lyly and Sidney, to produce about twenty romances, including the famed narratives of Pandosto (1588) and Menophon (1589), which underwent twelve and five editions respectively. Blending biblical, classical, medieval chivalric, Italian, French, and pastoral romances, Spenser’s epic, allegorical The Faerie Queene (1590,1596), extant in seven editions and reissues, represents the pinnacle of the genre. This variety of romance forms speaks to the genre’s intense dynamism and fluidity. Moreover, romance’s diversity and adaptability contributed to its longevity, enabled it to appeal to such a large segment of the population, and ensured that it remained one of the dominant Tudor genres.
Between 1540 and 1661 over twenty medieval romances were adapted for the stage, and if Tudor romances are included, the number doubles. These plays were central to the theatrical repertoire. They exposed audiences to familiar and muchloved romance narratives, enabling dramatists to manipulate audience expectations in powerful ways. The sheer volume of dramatizations highlights, yet again, the preeminence of the romance genre through the Tudor period. The drama of Berners’s
Huon was a phenomenal success, taking in more on its opening night than any other play of the 1594 theatre season, beating even Titus Andronicus at the box office (Henslowe 2002: 20-2). Amis and Amiloun and Godfrey of Boulogne were equally beloved: Alexander and Lodowick, the adaptation of Amis, was performed an impressive fourteen times in 1597, and Godfrey of Boulogne II was staged twelve times in 1594-5 (Henslowe 2002: 51 ff., 22 ff.). Arthurian material inspired a host of plays (Hays 1985: 87-109). Shakespeare’s As You Like It adapts Lodge’s Rosalynde; his Winter’s Tale looks to Greene’s Pandosto; Othello draws on Fenton’s Certain Tragical Discourses of Bandello; and the plots of All’s Well that Ends Well and Romeo and Juliet are found in Painter’s collection. In addition to these direct adaptations, Brian Gibbons demonstrates the sustained influence of the romance on heroic plays ranging from The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600) through Tamburlaine (1590) to Mucedorus (1598) (Gibbons 2003: 212). Moreover, the second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a proliferation of dramatic romances in the style of their chivalric counterparts, including Patient Grisel (1600), Cambises (c.1560), and Clyomon and Clamides (1599), thus further demonstrating the pervasive influence of the romance genre. In fact, about a third of all early modern plays produced or published after 1570 were based on romance materials, and the genre continued to provide playwrights with inspiration well into the seventeenth century.
The high profile of romance is further demonstrated as much by its vociferous detractors as by its appreciative readers. Moralists condemned both dramatic and non-dramatic romances. Observing that in dramatic romances ‘sometime you shall see nothing but the adventures of an amorous Knight, passing from country to country for the love of his lady’, who encounters monsters and relies on charms or talismans to ensure a happy ending, Steven Gosson asks, ‘what schooling is this?’ (1582: C6r). Like Francis Meres, Thomas Nashe, and others, Gosson relegates the offensive texts to the domain of the uneducated, whose ignorance facilitates their moral corruption (D1r). Virtually every sixteenth-century moralist echoes Gos-son’s worries. Some writers target children’s reading of romance, while others stress their unsuitability for women. Still more treat romance reading as a comprehensive social and religious predicament, since the fictions, deemed papist and monastic, can corrupt all those who peruse them, especially those who are less educated or from the lower social classes (R. Adams 1959: 33-48; K. Charlton 1987: 449-71). These condemnations applied to chivalric, humanist, and dramatic romance alike. Chivalric romance generally was thought to valorize ‘open man slaughter and bold bawdry’ since it deems ‘violente murder or murder for no cause, manhoode; and fornication and all unlawful luste, friendly love’ (Ascham 1570: I3r; Underdowne 1587: 3r, my punctuation). Rooted in the Italian novelle, humanist forms were particularly suspect because of the associations of Italy with Catholicism and corruption. This link enabled the activation of religious and moral polemic against romance (R. Adams 1959; K. Charlton 1987). For instance, according to Ascham ‘ten Morte Arthures do not in the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England’ (1570: I3v). Ascham does not name any specific texts, but his targets likely include Fenton’s and Painter’s beloved humanist romance anthologies. His polemic fell on deaf ears as the Italianate romance continued to flourish.
In the face of this widespread moral condemnation, it is too easy to assume an uneducated readership for romances, comprised of women and the barely literate. Yet, men and women from a range of social classes read romances for education and enjoyment. In fact, a dominant trend was to advertise and read romances as didactic manuals, capable of supplying their readers with powerful lessons. Both chivalric and humanist romances focus on young men engaged in processes of maturation. Through the successful completion of their quests the heroes become productive, valued members of their society with families and secure lands. Building on the formative work of Louis Wright, who posited romances as conduct books for ambitious young men, Goran Stanivukovic writes that ‘romances imagine young men’s lives as a series of cultural and personal rites of passage’ (2007: 67). They ‘construct narratives both of the formation of young men’s lives maturing to husbands and masters of the household, and recommended models for the rhetorical strategies and actions that lead to the formation of patriarchy’ (63). Classifying romances as ‘an aspect of informal education in Early Modern England’, Kenneth Charlton gestures towards a range of prologues and dedicatory letters in all kinds of romances which stress the texts’ merit in fashioning virtuous and successful men (1987: 449). Cooper identifies one of the most common topoi of the romance as the young man leaving his home or community to achieve a personal quest. This structure has important social, political, and instructive dimensions: through their adventures, romance heroes learn to rule themselves; they therefore prove themselves worthy of returning to positions of leadership and power within their communities (H. Cooper 2004:55-7). Moreover, ‘Despite the uniqueness of the hero within each romance, the kind of learning process that both Gawain and Redcrosse undergo is designed to be exemplary so far as the reader is concerned, to offer a model of how to act and how not to act’ (H. Cooper 2004: 52). By providing readers with positive models of masculinity, the romances assist male youth in their development (Hutson 1994: 88). Furthermore, attacks on romances take issue precisely with their imitative quality, thereby simultaneously recognizing and condemning the pedagogical capabilities of romance.
World History
