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Notes
The first important study which attempted to demonstrate the existence of secular scriptoria before the mid-fourteenth century in England is that of Laura Hibbard Loomis, "The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330-1340," PMLA, 57 (1942), 595-627, though J. S. P. Tatlock had urged the probability of such commercial undertakings in "The 'Canterbury Tales' in 1400," PMLA, 50 (1935), 108-109. Mrs. Loomis' hypothesis is very likely correct in its main outlines, but some of the evidence on which her conclusions are based, particularly the repetitions of lines and phrases in the romances of the Auchinleck manuscript, is probably better explained in terms of the conventional diction of Middle English metrical romances in general (see the studies of Albert C. Baugh and William E. Holland cited in notes 3-5 below) than by borrowing within the workshop. This is especially true of the arguments advanced in her essay "The Auchinleck Roland and Vernagu and the Short Chronicle," MLN, 60 (1945), 94-97, and H. M. Smyser's "Charlemagne and Roland and the Auchinleck MS.," Speculum, 21 (1946), 275-288. Less ambiguous is the evidence of scribal cooperation within the scriptorium produced by A. J. Bliss, "Notes on the Auchinleck Manuscript," Speculum, 26 (1951), 652-658. For fifteenth-century commercial scriptoria for vernacular texts, see Tatlock, op. cit., pp. 100-139; James W. Thompson, The Medieval Library (1939), p. 371 f.; H. S. Bennett, "The Production and Dissemination of Vernacular Manuscripts in the Fifteenth Century," The Library, 5th ser., 1 (1946/47), 167-178; and the brief account of the fifteenth-century scribe-entrepreneur John Shirley in Eleanor P. Hammond, English Verse Between Chaucer and Surrey (1927; rept. 1965), p. 191-194.
H. S. Bennett, "Production and Dissemination of Vernacular MSS.," p. 175. See also the invaluable account of fifteenth-century scribes and scribal practice in Curt F. Bühler, The Fifteenth-Century Book (1960), chap. 1. For the scribes employed by the Pastons, see Norman Davis, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (1971), pp. lxxv-lxxix, and for the career of one such scribe, see A. I. Doyle, "The Work of a Late Fifteenth-Century English Scribe, William Ebesham," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 39 (1957), 298-325.
"Improvisation in the Middle English Romance," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959), 434.
"The Middle English Romance: Some Questions of Creation, Presentation, and Preservation," Speculum, 42 (1967), 29-30.
William E. Holland has pointed explicitly to the editorial consequences of the evidence of his own and Baugh's researches in "Formulaic Diction and the Descent of a Middle English Romance," Speculum, 48 (1973), 89-109.
The Wars of Alexander: an Alliterative Romance translated chiefly from the Historia Alexandri Magni de Preliis, ed. Walter W. Skeat, EETS, ES 47 (1886). All citations are to this edition. The other important studies of the text are those of John Bell Henneman, Untersuchungen über das mittelenglischen Gedicht "Wars of Alexander" (Berlin, 1889), and Heinrich Steffens, Versbau und Sprache des mittelenglischen stabreimenden Gedichtes "The Wars of Alexander", Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, 9 (Bonn, 1901).
F. P. Magoun, Jr., in "The Oralformulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry," Speculum, 28 (1953), 446-467, was the first to apply to the study of medieval English poetry the methods and insights derived from the investigations of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord into the techniques of oral composition in modern Serbo-Croatian poetry. For an excellent survey of the scholarship to 1966, see Michael Curschmann, "Oral Poetry in Mediaeval English, French, and German Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research," Speculum, 42 (1967), 36-52. Most of the considerable scholarship in English literature has been concerned with Old English poetry, and Donald Fry's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh: A Bibliography (1969), accounts for most of these. The important studies of formula in Middle English alliterative verse are those of Ronald A. Waldron, "Oral-Formulaic Technique and Middle English Alliterative Poetry," Speculum, 32 (1957), 792-804; John Finlayson, "Formulaic Technique in Morte Arthure," Anglia, 81 (1963), 372-393; M. Fifield, "Thirteenth Century Lyrics and the Alliterative Tradition," JEGP, 62 (1963), 111-118; K. H. Göller, "Stab und Formel im Alliterierenden Morte Arthure," Neophilologus, 49 (1965), 57-66; two articles by R. F. Lawrence, "The Formulaic Theory and its Application to English Alliterative Poetry," in Essays on Style and Language, ed. Roger Fowler (1966), pp. 166-183, and "Formula and Rhythm in The Wars of Alexander," ES, 51 (1970), 97-112; a perceptive essay on alliterative style in Larry D. Benson's Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1965), pp. 110-166; and Eiichi Suzuki, "Poetic Synonyms for 'Man' in Middle English Alliterative Poems," Essays and Studies in English Language and Literature (Tohoku Gakuin University) 49-50 (1966), 209-227, and "Middle English Molde," Studies in English Literature (1969), 75-87.
"Oral-Formulaic Techniques," p. 798. John Finlayson, op. cit., p. 375, takes issue with the notion that formulas are determined by syntactical-grammatical features rather than lexical.
ll. 699, 709, 885, 1077, 1242, 1249, 1430, 1439, 1531, 1575, 1592, 1613, 1668, 1915, 2050, 2060, 2109, 2119, 2152, 2170, 2190, 2397, 2556, 2632, 2900, 2926, 2993, 3031, 3045, 3131, and 3361. In l. 1231, alliteration in A conforms with the normal pattern, but D's aa bb is an acceptable variant. Both are metrically regular.
ll. 24, 35, 144, 214, 278, 488, 597, 608, 643, 3328, 3341, 3428, 3683, 3854, 3922, 3924, 3927, 3986, 4022, 4086, 4109, 4127, 4133, 4147, 4828, 4875, 4895, 4920, 5080, and 5425. There is one instance in which D is alone and correct (l. 741).
"Formula and Rhythm in The Wars of Alexander," ES, 51 (1970), 97-112. Lawrence also cites ll. 1880, 1881, 1944, 1992, 2029, 2069, 2330, 2345, 2348, 2359.
Marie Boroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study, Yale Studies in English, 152 (1962), pp. 142, 188-189.
Albert C. Baugh, "The Middle English Romance: Some Questions of Creation, Presentation, and Preservation," Speculum, 42 (1967), 24-25.
Baugh, "The Middle English Romance," 30-31, cites parallel instances from the stanzaic romances.
The poet closes passus XVII, XXI, XXIII, XXVI, with short variations on the statement "And now fynes here a fitt & folows anothire." At only one other point, ll. 416-417, does the poet interrupt the passus for such a query, though the effect is to increase the illusion of oral composition.
Baugh, "The Middle English Romance," 24-28. See also the same author's "Improvisation in the Middle English Romance," Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., 103 (1959), 418-454, and Albert B. Lord, "Homer and Huso I: The Singer's Rests in Greek and South Slavic Heroic Song," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 67 (1936), 105-113.
"Improvisation in the Middle English Romance," passim, and "The Middle English Romance," passim. Jean Rychner's study of the fabliaux, Contributions à l'étude des fabliaux, Variantes, remainiements, dégradations, I; Université de Lausanne, Recueil de travaux publiés par la Faculté des Lettres, XXVIII (Geneva, 1960) also offers parallel instances. See also Charles H. Livingston, Le Jongleur Guatier de Leu, Étude sur les fabliaux, Harvard Studies in Romance Languages, 24 (1951), pp. 101-114.
Les Épopées françaises, 2nd ed. (1892), II, 115. Cited by Baugh, "The Middle English Romance," p. 18, n. 12. An extended and useful account is in H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print (1945), pp. 115-137.
The best account of scribal practice is still that of H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print, pp. 5-21. See also Eugene Vinaver, "Principles of Textual Emendation."
Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24 (1960), pp. 99-123.
Although some scholars maintain that transitional texts, poems composed by literate poets using the formula systems of oral poetry, are impossible, recent scholarship, especially that in connection with the Old French chanson de geste, has been concerned with the use of formulas, probably oral in origin, by literate poets. In that debate, the chief figures have been Jean Rychner, La Chanson de Geste: essai sur l'art épique des jongleurs (Geneva and Lille, 1955); René Louis, "Le Refrain dans les plus anciennes chansons de geste et le sigle AOI dans le Roland d'Oxford," in Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature romanes à la memoire d'Istvan Frank (Saarbrücken, 1957), 330-360; "Qu'est-ce que l'épopée vivante?", La Table Ronde, no. 132 (1958), 9-17; Rita Lejeune, "Technique formulaire et chansons de geste," Le Moyen Age, 60 (1954), 311-334; Adrien Bonjour, "Poésie Héroïque du moyen âge et critique littéraire," Romania, 78 (1957), 243-255; Maurice Delbouille, "Les chansons de geste et le livre," in La technique littéraire des chansons de geste. Actes du Colloque de Liége (septembre, 1975), Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, fasc. 150, ed. Maurice Delbouille (Paris, 1959), pp. 295-407; Madeleine Tyssens, "Le style oral et les ateliers de copistes," in Mélanges de linguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à M. Maurice Delbouille, Philologie médiévale (Gembloux, 1964), II, 659-675; Duncan McMillan, "A propos de traditions orales," CCM, 3 (1960), 67-71; and the same author's "A propos d'un travail de M. Delbouille sur 'Les chansons de geste et le livre'," CCM, 4 (1961), 47-54. There is an excellent summary account of this controversy in the introductory chapter of C. W. Aspland's A Syntactical Study of Epic Formulas and Formulaic Expressions Containing the -ant Forms in Twelfth Century French Verse (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1970), pp. 3-34. See also Adam Parry, "Have We Homer's Iliad?" Yale Classical Studies, 20 (1966), 175-216; Birger Gerhardson, Memory and Manuscript, Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis, 22 (Uppsala, 1961), chap. 11; and Larry D. Benson, "The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry," PMLA, 81 (1966), 334-341. For more traditional accounts of the complex matter of the dissemination of medieval vernacular literature, see H. S. Bennett, "The Production and Dissemination of Vernacular Manuscripts in the Fifteenth Century," The Library, 5th series, I (1946-47), 167-178; H. K. Root, "Publication before Printing," PMLA, 28 (1913), 419-431; and H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print, pp. 115-137.
The poem is composed in strophes or stanzas of twenty-four lines, though there is evidence that eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, and twenty-eight line strophes were written. Max Kaluza, "Strophische Gliederung in der mittelenglischen rein alliterierenden Dichtung," Englische Studien, 16 (1892), 169-180, was the first to realize that the poem was composed in strophes, but he was unaware of the poet's attempt to relate the strophes to the divisions of his Latin source. I discuss this problem in detail in my forthcoming edition of the poem.
The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (1969), p. 11. There is no indication that either manuscript of The Wars of Alexander is a minstrel copy nor that either is the product of a bookshop like that described by Mrs. Loomis. The loss of 123 lines between fols. 12 and 13 of the A manuscript proves straightforward mechanical copying on the part of that scribe. Loss of so many lines is evidence that the A scribe did not know the text well, while the connection of the D manuscript with Piers Plowman and Durham Priory makes attribution to a minstrel improbable.
"The Middle English Romance," p. 4. I have taken my citation from Baugh's text. See also Edmond Faral, Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Age (Paris, 1910), pp. 75-76, and Chaytor, From Script to Print, p. 116. The Latin text of the Epistolae rerum senilium may be found in Francisci Petrarchae, Operum (Basel, 1554; rpt. Ridgewood, N. J., 1965) II, 877.
"To a minstrel verbal accuracy is not important so long as he keeps the meter. He is not reciting Shakespeare. He is telling a story. Even if his memory is a good one, he may have occasional lapses, be forced to improvise, may drop out a couplet or a stanza, may substitute a familiar rime-tag or formula without even being aware of it, may alter a particular passage through equally unconscious contamination with a similar incident in some other romance which he is accustomed to recite, may insert at times a couplet or a whole passage if it is part of his general stock of conventional descriptions and incidents, commonplace lines and phrases. Of course, he is corrupting the text, but that is a modern notion. The important thing for him is to keep going" (Baugh, "The Middle English Romance," p. 29).
Obviously all editors have taken into consideration similarities in phrasing and the limited number of acceptable rhythmic patterns in alliterative poetry, though many of Henneman's careful and intelligent emendations reveal his lack of awareness of systematic formulas in the poem. Critics of the Old French chansons de geste have shown more awareness of the usefulness of formulaic evidence for textual studies. See Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, "À propos de la technique formulaire dans les plus anciennes chansons de geste," in Mélanges de linguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à Maurice Delbouille, Philologie médiévale (Gembloux, 1964), pp. 705-727, esp. p. 727. See also Karl Heinz Göller, "Stab und Formel in Alliterienden Morte Arthure," Neophil., 49 (1965), 57-67. The discovery that Middle English alliterative poetry was highly repetitive in diction is not a new one, though most of the early research was directed toward establishing common authorship. Several studies are still of considerable value. See Moritz Trautmann, Über Verfasser und Entstehungzeit einiger alliterierender Gedichte des Altenglischen (Halle, 1876); Johannes Fuhrmann, Die alliterienden Sprachformeln in Morris' Early English Alliterative Poems und im Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (Hamburg, 1886); Curt Reicke, Untersuchungen über den Stil der mittelenglischen alliterierenden Gedichte "Morte Arthure," "The Destruction of Troy," "The Wars of Alexander," "The Siege of Jerusalem," "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight" (Königsberg, 1906); and J. S. P. Tatlock, "Epic Formulas, Especially in Laȝamon," PMLA, 38 (1923), 494-529.
Morte Arthure, York Medieval Texts (1967), p. 25. I do not wish to urge that all of the alliterative poems of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are like the Wars in being composed formulaically. The works of the Gawain-poet clearly are not, but poems like Morte Arthure, The Destruction of Troy, and the Siege of Jerusalem would probably repay study. The computer is clearly the most rational approach to a problem of this kind. A program already exists for Old English which could be of use. See Donald C. Green, "Formulas and Syntax in Old English Poetry: A Computer Study," Computers and the Humanities, 6 (1971), 85-93. Professor Green, whose study I read after completion of this essay, reaches similar conclusions about the primacy of syntactic-metrical collocations in the definition of formulas.
See Lord, The Singer of Tales, pp. 35-36; Robert L. Kellogg, "The South Germanic Oral Tradition" in Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., eds. J. B. Bessinger, Jr. and R. P. Creed (1965), pp. 66-74; and F. G. Cassidy, "How Free was the Anglo-Saxon Scop?" in Franciplegius, pp. 75-85.
It is not possible in this place to prove in detail that the poet was indeed working within such a tradition or to outline the particular sub-grammar which governed his composition. A number of formula systems are cited in this article, and the sceptic may quickly gather a sample of his own by random checks in Skeat's glossary, especially of adverbs, adjectives, and nouns.
Lawrence, ES, 51 (1970), 97-112. Lawrence thinks it possible that the Wars-poet was influenced by the rhetorical manuals, but concludes that "it seems now beyond much doubt that in Wars Alex. a great proportion of the apparently random divergences from one realisation of a formula or grammetrical frame to another were parts of an elaborate and purposive design which, without stifling variety, safeguarded a vital element in the traditional rhythm of the verse" (p. 112).
Similar variation in a different formula in ll. 677 and 700 is the most slender kind of evidence that the A scribe (or performer) tended to vary original wai(i)tis with lokis. Both manuscripts agree in reading waytis (watyn) at l. 700.
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