This work consists of two essays on the poetry of contemporary English history of the middle ages. The first is entitled "Morality and English Historical Poetry." The second is entitled "Romance and English Historical Poetry."
The first essay begins with a general discussion of the history of Christian historiography. After this review, the writer concludes that the medieval writer who assigned himself the task of writing history found available to him two alternative and highly reputable views on the historical process and the meaning of history. Both were traditionally Christian in their recognition that in history man finds God revealing Himself, that human history is providential, and that all acts have moral meaning. One approach, that iden tified with St. Augustine, is marked by a certain caution concerning the meaning of specific historical events, by a recognition that the precise import of any human action or Divine intervention is too often beyond the reach of the restricted faculties of men. The other view, a view associated with Augustine's contemporary, the Spaniard Orosius, tends to consider history more dramatically, to interpret more definite ly; the Orosian historian is likely to be an historicist and will often read history in millenarian terms.
The writer then considers the historical poetry— especially those poems found in the collections of Thomas Wright and R. H. Robbins— in an attempt to demonstrate that it frequently is historicist in a simple way— the poets find in particular historical events God rewarding the good and chastizing the wicked— and in a subtle way— the poet employ genres, motifs, and themes which in the late middle ages are associated with apocalyptical expression. For example, the figure of the Ideal King, a millenarian commonplace, is detected in descriptions of historical personages, especially Henry VI, Edward IV, and Henry VII.
In the final section of this essay, the writer attempts to show that the historical poets could be moral in ways which are more orthodox. The writer accepts the idea that by the high middle ages the patristic concept of allegorical interpretation, originally applied to Scripture, had been expanded to include literature of any type. It is maintained that the writer of historical verse could conceal within his work higher meanings, doctrinal in content, and that he was able to accomplish this in several ways— by his choice of literary form, by the presentation of symbolic settings, and by iconographic details. "Summer Sunday" (1327), "The Death of Edward III" (1377), "The Battle of Northampton" (l/f60), and "God Amend Wicked Counsel" (Iif6t*) are among the poems used to demonstrate the methods of the poets.
The second essay is a study of the romantic elements in historical poetry. After a rehearsal of of the medieval "confusion" of romance and reality, the writer considers the romanticization of history in a few famous historical works. I^Histoire de Guillaume le Mar£chal, Froissart's Chronicles, and the Life of the Black Prince are among those histories and biographies discussed. The writer then turns to topical poetry— especially that occasioned by the English-French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries— to show that the conduct of historical personages was expected to stand comparison with the conduct of romantic figures, especially those found in metrical romances.
In the final section, the writer contends that the hyperbolic portraits of contemporary kings;and princes found in historical poetry, while partially the product of passions inflamed by civil war and partially in the tradition of millenarian expecta tions, is connected with the hope of the romances that some Perfect Knight, usually Galahad or Arthur himself, will come to save the land.