THE LITERARY USE OF RELIGIOUS FORMULAE IN CERTAIN MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCES

Abstract

lett vs thynk on hym that vs hathe boughtAnd we shall please god ther-fore.(Stanzaic Morte Arthur, 3718-19)Formulae invoking the saving power of Christ's Passion and the creating vigour of God the Father are numerous in the Middle English romances. Drawn from a variety of sources - the liturgy, the religious lyric, the private prayer - they rarely occasion more than a perfunctory comment, unless it be the charge of stylistic redundance.' The metrical ease transparently afforded by such patterns has diverted critical attention from the question of their potential relevance to literary context. Yet the startling power of their apposite usage in charged narrative moments (nowhere more than in Guinevere's renunciation of the temporal world, quoted above) prompts further investigation.Whatever their status in the romances, other Middle English contexts credit formulae of this kind with considerable semandc weight. Beginning with a review of these contexts, this study will reassess the function of religious formulae in romance, focusing particularly on the deployment of Passiontide-tags in the stanzaic Morte Arthur and on formulae invoking the Creator in William of Paleme.2In order to furnish examples of the formulae in question, and to show how these are typical of a wide range of story-types and verse-forms, the present study draws on a corpus of twenty metrical romances.3 Largely comprising tail-rhyme verse, the corpus includes five poems in octosyllabic couplets, and two in alliterative long lines. Differing story-types are represented on the one hand by a group of overdy homiletic romances, including Sir Amadace and Guy of Warwick, and on the other by a less explicitly pious assortment including Beues of Hamtoun and The Erl of Tolous.4 The most frequendy recurring formulae to be found in this corpus (conforming to the paradigm 'pronoun / proper noun + relative or co-ordinate clause') may be grouped under the following theological headings.5Creator mundi: Him that schope mankynde' (AA13 the Trinity - 'Jhesu, that syttyth yn trynyte' (Oct 95 8);14 and an eschatological context: 'hym that all schall weide' (BF 5 5 8).15These formulae exhibit three characteristics which suggest that they offered a range of literary and dramatic possibilities to the composers of Middle English romance.First, they can be used to present differing aspects of God. The Creator mundi may be as readily invoked as the Salvator mundv, the Nativity as readily as the Passion. Historical and eschatological attributes may be rehearsed with equal facility.Secondly, such formulae are, in fact, functional at various narrative levels. Within the narrative they appear in the prayers and oaths15 of characters, outside it they surface in narratorial prayers for audience, narrator or even fictional character; their use in introductory and exordial prayers unites all three within a Christian frame of reference.Finally, these patterns are distinct from the secular formulae of romance in that they exhibit precise semantic and syntactic correspondence to the language of doctrinal instruction and popular piety, as manifested in lyrics, verse prayers, and charms. In these contexts a principle of apposite invocation is at work, governing the selection of formulae in which moral and doctrinal weight is invested. …