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Transcriber's Notes:
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This e-text also contains passages in ancient Greek. In the original text, some of the Greekcharacters have diacritical marks that may not display properly in some browsers,depending on the available fonts. In order to make this e-text asaccessible as possible, the diacritical marks have been omitted. Short phrases in Greek have a mouse-hover transliteration,e.g., καλος. Longerpassages have the transliteration immediately following.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1931
COPYRIGHT
First Edition (8vo) 1896
Second Edition (Eversley Series) 1908
Reprinted (Crown 8vo) 1922, 1926, 1931
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH
These essays are intended as a general description of some of theprincipal forms of narrative literature in the Middle Ages, and as areview of some of the more interesting works in each period. It ishardly necessary to say that the conclusion is one "in which nothingis concluded," and that whole tracts of literature have been barelytouched on—the English metrical romances, the Middle High Germanpoems, the ballads, Northern and Southern—which would require to beconsidered in any systematic treatment of this part of history.
Many serious difficulties have been evaded (in Finnesburh, moreparticularly), and many things have been taken for granted, tooeasily. My apology must be that there seemed to be certain resultsavailable for criticism, apart from the more strict and scientificprocedure which is required to solve the more difficult problems ofBeowulf, or of the old Northern or the old French poetry. It ishoped that something may be gained by a less minute and exactingconsideration of the whole field, and by an attempt to bring the moredistant and dissociated[Pg vi] parts of the subject into relation with oneanother, in one view.
Some of these notes have been already used, in a course of threelectures at the Royal Institution, in March 1892, on "the Progress ofRomance in the Middle Ages," and in lectures given at UniversityCollege and elsewhere. The plot of the Dutch romance of Walewein wasdiscussed in a paper submitted to the Folk-Lore Society two years ago,and published in the journal of the Society (Folk-Lore, vol. v. p.121).
I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr.