Simple Forms: Essays on Medieval English Popular LiteratureSimple Forms is a study of popular or folk literature in the medieval period. Focusing both on the vast body of oral literature that lies behind the written texts which have survived from the medieval period and on the popular literature provided by literate authors for audiences of hearers or readers with varying degrees of literacy, Douglas Gray leads new readers to a productively complicated understanding of the relationship between medieval popular culture and the culture of the learned. He argues that medieval society was stratified, in what seems to us a rigid way, but that culturally it was more flexible. Literary topics, themes, and forms moved; there was much borrowing, and a constant interaction. Popular tales, motifs, and ideas passed into learned or courtly works; learned forms and attitudes made their way in into popular culture. All in all this seems to have been a fruitful symbiosis. The book's twelve chapters are principally organised genre, covering epics, ballads, popular romances, folktales, the German sage, legends, animal tales and fables, proverbs, riddles, satires, songs, and drama. |
Contents
Folk Literature? Popular Literature? | 1 |
Notes on Popular Culture | 19 |
The Ocean of Story Narrative FormsMyth Epic and Heroic Lay | 50 |
Ballads | 71 |
Popular Romances | 89 |
Folk Tale Folk Tale into Art | 107 |
Sage Tale Legend | 127 |
Merry Tale Animal Tale and Fable | 144 |
Proverb | 162 |
Riddle | 178 |
Satire | 193 |
Songs and Drama | 215 |
| 245 | |
| 263 | |
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Common terms and phrases
ancient animal appear audience ballads Boklund-Lagopoulou carol century charms Chaucer Child chronicle collection comic dance death discussed drama E. K. Chambers earlier early echoes England entertainment eucatastrophe examples fable fairy folk tale French Gervase of Tilbury Gest Gray Grimms Havelok Henryson hero heroic interesting kind king knight lady later Latin learned legend literary lived LMEL Lüthi lyric magic manuscript Margery Kempe Marie de France Mary medieval merry Middle Ages Middle English modern monks moral motifs mysterious narrative NCBD Old English oral tradition outlaw pattern peasants Percy Folio perhaps play poem popular literature popular romances popular satire probably proverbs quoted R. M. Wilson readers recorded references religious remarks riddles Robbins SL Robin Hood saints satire says Scottish seems similar simple singing Sir Orfeo Skelton sometimes song story style suggest surviving tale texts Troilus and Criseyde verse wife wolf writers