Such Joy at the Heart: Lord Berners’ Huon de Bordeaux

Abstract

"It is the supreme and splendid triumph of looking shallow and being deep," writes G.K. Chesterton, of "all French literature and philosophy." He may or may not be right about the French, but precisely that, looking shallow and being deep, is the triumph of the two great masters of English prose at the end of the Middle Ages, Thomas Malory and John Bourchier, Lord Berners. Both shared, appropriately enough, a passion for French literature, and that was not all, for they both wrote in that spirit that Richard Hooker articulated, memorably, years later, "that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream." A world was passing away before them. They longed to capture and recreate imaginatively what they cherished in it, and where they succeeded in that intention, there their work runs deepest. So, at least, I will argue about Huon de Bordeaux in this paper, Huon being the first of Berners' two great literary achievements. In making my argument I will look at Berners' language, at aspects of his narrative, and at the surprising things he affirms with his jaunty and hard-edged materials.