Tournament of Tottenham, The

Abstract

The fifteenth‐century Tournament of Tottenham is a burlesque in which rough peasants enact a mock tournament. This Middle English poem is thought to have circulated in a middle‐class milieu, and the parody may mock both crude peasants and court conventions represented in the romance genre. The tone is warmly affectionate. Manuscript evidence suggests the poem was performed from memory on occasion, and a payment record documents a dramatic performance, illustrating the flexibility of medieval texts in an entertainment context. The complicated nine‐line stanza is ornamented with alliteration, linking the text with the northern romance tradition.