Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature Rosalind Field Rhiannon Purdie , Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature. Studies in Medieval Romance. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2008. Pp. ix + 272, 6 plates. ISBN: 978-1-8438-4162-3. $95.00. The Middle English tail-rhyme romances have long been regarded as a problem, an awkward regional response to the genre, patronized for their metrical clumsiness and derivative narratives. Rhiannon Purdie's previous work as editor of the Ipomadon equips her to provide the authoritative study that should once and for all re-orientate them as a focus of intelligent and important questions. In order to examine the origins and literary associations of tail-rhyme, Purdie takes the enquiry back across two centuries and into the tri-lingual culture of medieval England, arguing that while tail-rhyme may originate in Latin hymns and Victorine sequences, its use for narrative is a feature of insular literature, both Anglo-Norman and Middle English. There are earlier traditions of tail-rhyme for pious literature— hymns, sermons, hagiography—in Anglo-Norman and Middle English and the indication is that romance writers adopted tail-rhyme stanzas for their association with piety and moral seriousness. There is also a significant association with figures of English history and sanctity in texts that have direct influence on Middle English romances of English heroes, as in the case of the Vie de Thomas Becket and Bevis of Hampton. A thorough analysis demonstrates the variety of meter and stanza form to be found in the tail-rhyme corpus, one which is throughout the period recognized as distinctive, irrespective of genre (as the grouping of poems in the Vernon MS indicates). This is further illustrated by an account of what Purdie dubs 'graphic tail-rhyme,' an 'unusual, inconvenient and instantly recognisable' manuscript lay-out used by English scribes to display Anglo-Norman and Middle English tail-rhyme poetry. The use of graphic tail-rhyme in numerous manuscripts of Sir Thopas shows Chaucer deliberately using this manuscript convention to deepen his parody of the experience of reading romances—even the bob lines work as a visual joke. The pre-history of Middle English tail-rhyme has been largely invisible to readers of the romances but establishes a firm basis for a review of the Auchinleck manuscript in which tail-rhyme romances make their first appearance, accompanied by several non-romance texts in the form. It is shown that 'anglicisation' goes beyond translation in Auchinleck, as tail-rhyme is used for the romances of English heroes in a way that confirms it is understood as an English form, whatever its linguistic inheritance. That this contrasts with the metrical forms used for Arthurian texts in the manuscript may illuminate the scarcity of tail-rhyme Arthurian romance until the insular development of later Gawain romances. Her discussion of the close relationships amongst the tail-rhyme romances of Auchinleck confirms an untidy history of borrowings, compilation and movement of texts and writers around and beyond the metropolitan literary circuit. Through a detailed assessment of the prosodic, philological, and manuscript evidence, Purdie finally lays to rest the stubborn 'school of East Anglia,' proposed by A. McI. Trounce (Medium Ævum 1.2-3.1). Her final chapter on the geography [End Page 130] of tail-rhyme moves the discussion away from any single center of origin or activity. Tail-rhyme is a feature of fluid and overlapping regional literary centers, across much of England. A later development gives more elaborate tail-rhyme romances no longer derived from French or Anglo-Norman but original productions of a northern literary culture. This book is underpinned by a much-needed, updated survey of the date, language and provenance of each of the thirty-six tail-rhyme romances in an Appendix that is in its own right a rich resource for future researchers. Tail-rhyme romance has been under-appreciated and misunderstood—the responsibility for this shared between Sir Thopas and Trounce. Purdie's study provides the first comprehensive account of the form and its romance texts and wider cultural contexts. It is meticulous in its detail and convincing in its arguments, but above...