Narrative Form and Mediaeval Continuity In The Percy Folio Manuscript: A Study Of Selected Poems

Abstract

This study examines the continuity of mediaeval literary tradition in selected rhymed narrative verse. These verses were composed for entertainment at various times prior to 1648. At or shortly before this date, they were collected into The Percy Folio: BL. Add. MS. 27,879. Selected texts with an Historical or Romance topic are examined from two points of view: modification of source material and modification of traditional narrative stylistic structure. First, an early historical poem is analysed to establish a possible paradigm of the conventions governing the mediaeval manipulation of fact or source material into a pleasing narrative. Other texts are compared with the result of this analysis and it is found that twenty paradigmatic items appear to summarize early convention as their presence in other poems is consistent — no text agreeing with less than twelve. The second step is the presentation of the results of an analysis of some fifty mediaeval Romances. This was undertaken in order to delineate clearly selected motifemic formulae inherent in the composition of these popular narratives. It is shown that these motifemes, found in the Romances, are also present in the historical texts of The Percy Folio. The findings, derived from both strands of investigation, are that mediaeval continuity exists in the texts studied. The factors which actually comprise this ‘mediaeval continuity’ are isolated: it is then seen that rather than discard tradition as society grew further and further from the early circumstances that gave rise to it, later poets have chosen to contrive modifications designed to fit new requirements as they arise. Such modifications, however, are always within the established conventional framework. In short, no text examined failed to echo tradition, and mediaeval continuity is an important feature of the popular rhymed narrative in 1648 and The Percy Folio.