Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances; To Which Is Prefixed an Historical Introduction on the Rise and Progress of Romantic Composition in France and England (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION III. Inquiry into the State of Wales during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirtcenth Centuries. ? Intimate Conneetion betwcen the Welsh and Normans. ? Influenee of this on Romanee. ? State of the Welsh Tribes within the Seottish Border. ? Probability that some original, and many translated Romanees, were the work of Seottish Poets. ? Conelusion. Gcoffrey's British Chroniele is justly regarded as one of the comer- stones of romantic fietion, yet its prineipal. if not sole effeet, was to stamp the names of Arthur, Merlin, Kay, and Gawain with the charaeter of historical veraeity; and thus to authorize a colleetion of all the fables already current respeeting these faneiful heroes and their companions. For not one word is to be found in that compilation, coneerning Sir Launeelot and his brothers; Sir Tristram; Sir Ywain; Joseph of Arimathea and the Sangreal; the round table, with its perilous seat; and the various quests and adventures which fill so many folio volumes. These were subsequent additions, but additions apparently derived from the same souree. The names, the manners of the heroes, and the seenes of their adventures, were still British; and, the taste for these strange traditions continuing to gain ground during at least two centuries, the whole literature of Europe was ultimately mundated by the nursery-tales of Wales and Armorica, as it had formerly bcen by the mythology of Grcece and Egypt. As this apparent revolution in literary taste took place at a time when the Cymric language and pcople were driven, both in this island and in Franee, to the western extremities of the two countries, it must perhaps be prineipally attributed to a cause already mentioned; viz. the early connexion of the Normans with the pcople of Bretagne, among whom they first form...