Short Fiction in the Early Middle Ages

Introduction

The early Middle Ages (for the purposes of this discussion from 476 to c.1050) represent a time of transition and readjustment from the declining Roman, classical era to a culture that more and more clearly defined itself as a new age in the West (medieval scholars considered themselves modern men). This period saw the gradual development of the romance languages from Vulgar Latin and, especially as social conditions stabilized in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, the development of an increasingly varied body of literary work.

It is only fair and necessary to assume literary continuity in this transitional time. The great Latin writers, Ovid for example, were recopied as well as imitated, and Latin versions of the fables of Aesop continued to be produced and read. There was a considerable body of oral fiction, but this study will be confined to such exemplars of short fiction that have survived in written form. It will be necessary, especially for the early centuries of the period, to abstract exemplars from works that are not fictional as such. Many of the writings of the late classical and early Christian periods were grammatical or historical, and early Christian writings were primarily dogmatic treatises. Furthermore, the Church fathers tended to distrust pagan literature even when their own writings betrayed their classical educations in every sentence, as an examination of the works of Saint Jerome or Saint Augustine easily shows. Later, although the Church was responsible for the suppression of much pagan literature, notably the Germanic heroic works, remnants of which survive in Old Icelandic (Old Norse) versions, the accommodation of the literary impulse to the Christian ethos would produce a significant body of hagiographical literature and, in the later Middle Ages, the various romance cycles in which the didactic element does not overwhelm real literary merit.

The Etymologiae (partial translation in An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages, 1912) of Saint Isidore of Seville provides a contemporary definition of story (fabula): Story does not speak of things done (res factae) but of things created in speech (res fictae de loquendo). The emphasis in this study will be on the latter point, “things created,” because even in historical or quasi-historical works, authors such as Saint Gregory the Great or Gregory of Tours would break the flow of their narratives to develop or expand upon a striking episode, making of it more a vignette than a mere recital of details. What one finds, in other words, are coherence of focus and intensity of presentation that make of such an episode a totality of intrinsic narrative interest. One looks for fictive form and not necessarily fictive content. The writer imposes his or her creative skill upon the incidents, factual or not, so that they become almost independent of the historical, narrative matrix in which they are found.

These early works of “short fiction” should also possess the sharp, intense focus of the lyric or the lai as opposed to the broader scope and grander scale of the epic or extended romance. Most of the works considered in this study will range from 250 to 500 words, but length is less of a concern than focus, scale, or ambiance: Beowulf (transcribed c. 1000) is not lengthy, but it fits the definition of epic very obviously when compared with the unity of conflict to be found in the late ninth century Waltharius or the Irish tale Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, also written in the ninth century. These two works are better termed heroic lays or tales than epics. Other generic categories of short fiction include the vignette or anecdote, both of which tend not to be found independently of some larger narrative framework; the saint’s life or miracle tale whether in verse or prose; and later, the romantic tale, even when it still possesses a strong heroic or mythic content.

The period under discussion extends from 476 c.e., the date of the deposition of the last Roman emperor in the West, to around 1050, a time when it was manifest that political and economical stability, along with an influx of new knowledge and the rise of the great cathedral schools, had led to the beginnings of the high Middle Ages. The historical events relevant for this study go back to around 375, the death of Ermanaric, the Ostrogothic emperor whose deeds, filtered through the lost chronicle of Cassiodorus and its condensation written by Jordanes, figure in the Old Icelandic Hamismál (c. tenth century; Poem of Hamir, 1923). A similar process occurred with the stories of Attila and Theodoric the Ostrogoth as history was transmuted into heroic legends that spread from their places of origin near Rome or the Rhine as far west as Iceland.

As important to this study as historical personages are events marking the development of European national units, such as the Treaty of Verdun (843) that created France and Germany, and of the major European languages, such as the Strasbourg Oaths (842), which testify to the necessity of using both Old French and the Germanic dialects so that all witnesses of the proceedings might understand the oaths of peace between Charles the Bald and Louis the German. A history of literary development in the early Middle Ages is also a history of the development of the major European languages as tools of creative expression, as well as of day-to-day communication. Indeed, for some time, many of the works to be discussed in this study were analyzed chiefly as linguistic monuments rather than as literary exemplars. Twentieth century studies, however, have repeatedly established their literary merits.

A chronological look at the works illustrates the increasing variety of forms in the literature of the early Middle Ages, as well as the linguistic variety that characterizes the latter part of the period. The apparent consistency of literary forms of the pre-Carolingian period is somewhat misleading since the vignettes and anecdotes found in the various works differ widely in content and presentation. Consider, for example, the Munderic episode in Gregory of Tours’s Historia Francorum (c. 594; The History of the Franks, 1927) and one of the dialogues from the first book of Dialogi (c. 593; Dialogues, c. 887) of Gregory the Great.

Munderic

The story of Munderic is actually an episode in the reign of Thierry I, son of Clovis. Munderic, a relative of Thierry I, revolts against his king, claiming that his blood makes him equally entitled to the throne. He gains followers and is besieged by Thierry I. His defense is strong enough that Thierry I resorts to guile, luring Munderic from his stronghold with false pledges of good faith and having him executed once he is vulnerable.

This episode has multiple functions in Gregory’s narrative: It is one of the historical events he is bound to include in his work, but it is also one of a series of episodes portraying the ruthlessness and administrative ingenuity of Thierry I. Although Gregory deplores Thierry I’s tactics, this attitude is mixed with some admiration for Thierry I’s strength of character. Furthermore, the Munderic episode offers an opportunity for Gregory to exercise his skill as a storyteller. The events are not complicated, but the episode stands out because of Gregory’s use of two motifs—good faith and bad faith—that are intensified by repetition. Munderic is a traitor, but he has a loyal following; Thierry I, the rightful ruler, does not hesitate to use deceit, and his envoy, Aregyselus, is able to persuade the strangely guileless Munderic that Thierry I will honor the oath sworn on the altar in his name. Aregyselus promptly betrays Munderic to Thierry I’s forces, and Munderic, finally aware of treachery, kills the messenger and dies, honorably defending himself. With no real description of his personality, one still can perceive a rather simple, straightforward man who is destroyed as much by his ambition as by the machinations of his opponent. The techniques of fiction, especially the coherence provided by the emphasis of two major motifs, elevate the episode from a mere sequence of events to the status of story.

Gregory the Great

The anecdotes of Gregory the Great are more easily identified as fiction because the narrator himself describes them as tales he has heard from others and will now relate to his interlocutor, Peter. One such story, found in Book 1 of the Dialogues is a conventional exemplum describing the powers of a holy man and the chastising of a thief. The latter has stolen vegetables from the monastery garden, so the prior commands a snake to guard the path. The thief, startled by the snake, tries to escape but finds himself entangled in the fence, hanging head downward. The prior dismisses the snake with a blessing and rebukes the thief, giving him the vegetables he had tried to steal.

Many scholars have commented on the naïveté Gregory shows toward these stories. He relates tale after tale, seeming to give critical acceptance to even the most preposterous. This may be, but Gregory saw as a function of the anecdote or exemplum the edification through pleasure of the least sophisticated of his audience. What appears to be naïveté, a quality one can ascribe to a politician and religious leader such as Gregory only with difficulty, is actually an absence of ironic overtones. The snake obeys a command made in the name of Christ; this is simply one of the conventions of the miracle tale. The miracle is the focus and raison d’être of the story and is the one element that cannot be called into question if the tale is to succeed.

Bede the Venerable

The anecdotes and miracle stories told by Saint Bede the Venerable in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (731; Ecclesiastical History of the English People, c. 887) are of a more sober variety than those of Gregory the Great. They are generally biographical, such as the story of Caedmon, and the focus of the miracles is on personal help—healing or the conferring of some special gift, such as Caedmon’s gift of song. A good example of Bede’s narrative skill is his description of Caedmon’s painful reluctance even to remain in the hall when others were drinking and singing lest he be required to sing; this realistic touch heightens the effect of the miraculous bestowal of musical talent. Likewise, Bede’s usual narrative restraint enhances the effect of such stories, as one comes upon them as gems in a plainer matrix.

Bede and Gregory have in common their use of hagiography as the controlling convention for the stories they incorporate into their works. With Paul the Deacon, readers return to the more secular, heroic cast of story that was observed in the work of Gregory of Tours. One much-praised episode, the story of Alboin, was reworked in various versions as late as the Elizabethan period. Alboin’s career is developed at length in the first two books of Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum (after 787; History of the Lombards, 1907), but it is the story of his winning his weapons and a man’s place in his society that deserves critical consideration. Alboin must receive his weapons from the king of a foreign nation, and the king he chooses, Turisind, is the father of a man Alboin has just killed. Turisind, mindful of the oath of peace extended to all guests, restrains his men, gives Alboin his weapons, and allows him to depart unharmed. It is the tension between Alboin’s audacity and Turisind’s honorable restraint that gives the episode its power. Paul allows the story to stand on its own merits, which are considerable, but in other instances such as the story of Lamisso, he feels free to comment if the details of the story strain the readers’ credulity too much. His doubts and disclaimers appear as storyteller’s asides which do not hamper the progress of the narrative; the asides do not prevent him from giving all the details of the story, however improbable.

To suggest that the most prominent literary monuments of the sixth through the eighth centuries were, for the most part, Latin secular histories that incorporated short tales rather misrepresents the fictive activity of that period. Much has been lost, for example, of stories in Old High German. It is also safe to assume oral versions for the stories that have been dated as eighth century or later. When stories are connected, however tenuously, with historical events, one can assume that some version of those events entered the storyteller’s realm soon afterward. One of the best sets of examples involves the heroic tales concerning the Huns, the Burgundians, and the Goths; there is enough of the historical to tempt scholars to link each character with a historical personage yet enough events that are patently contrary to established fact that one is forced to see the storyteller’s hand and judgment at work.

Ermanaric

The first example of the evolution of story from history concerns the death of the Ostrogothic ruler, Ermanaric, around 375, an event attested by a contemporary historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, and in the later histories of Jordanes and thus presumably in the lost history of Cassiodorus. Ermanaric had executed Sunnilda, the wife of a treacherous member of his following, having her torn apart or trampled by wild horses. Her brothers attempted to avenge her death but succeeded only in wounding Ermanaric so that he was permanently incapacitated. Later, this story becomes linked with the legends of the Nibelungs and the Volsungs and forms the background for the Old Icelandic Hamismál. Gudrun, a well-known figure in the Nibelung and Volsung legends, urges her sons, Hamir and Sorli, to avenge the death of Svanhildr, their sister. As in the earlier account, the death of the sister is not part of the action of the story proper but forms a powerful motivation for her brothers. The Hamismál departs from its sources in the introduction of Erpr, an illegitimate half brother, killed by Hamir and Sorli when he offers, with taunting speeches, to accompany them. The brothers succeed in mutilating Jomunrekkr (Ermanaric) but are destroyed by his men, realizing too late that, if they had allowed Erpr to assist them, they would have killed Jomunrekkr and survived the encounter. The focus of the lay has shifted from simple revenge to a tragedy of hubris and folly as the brothers’ wrongful violence against Erpr destroys them. The Hamismál, an excellent example of the stark narrative of the lays in the collection known as the Poetic Edda, is brief and tightly constructed, with no word or incident that is irrelevant to the plot. The author also has a gift for understatement, especially in Sorli’s rebuke to Hamir: “You’d have had a brave heart [Erpr’s], Hamir/ if you’d had a wise one:/ a man lacks much/ when he lacks a brain.”

Ermanaric figures in several heroic tales, such as the V”lsunga saga (c. 1270; The Saga of the Volsungs, 1930), the Old English Widsith (seventh century?), and the Old Icelandic Þirekssaga (seventh century?). He is usually depicted in negative situations, although some versions of the Ermanaric stories show some sympathy for his plight. The Þireks saga links him, in a totally nonhistorical fashion, with another figure of history and legend, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who was known in legend as Dietrich von Bern (Dietrich of Verona) and as Þirek. Theodoric’s literary development is much more involved than that of Ermanaric; his fame as a conqueror and a ruler made him the focus of many legends. One of the earliest tales in which he figures, although not as a character, is one of the best, the fragmentary Hildebrandslied (c. 800; The Hildebrandslied, 1914) the only extant example of Old High German heroic tale.

Hildebrand, returning to Italy with Dietrich from exile, is confronted by the army of his enemy, Odoaker (Odovacar). The conflict is to be decided by a duel, and Hildebrand’s opponent is his own son, Hadubrand, who had been a very young child when his father was exiled. Hildebrand identifies himself, but Hadubrand, convinced that Hildebrand had died long before, refuses to believe him. Hadubrand insists on fighting, even when his father begs him to reconsider. The poem breaks off, but the outcome is certain to be tragic: Either the father will kill the son, as in the case of Rustum and Sohrab, or the son will kill the father, as Oedipus does Laius. In fewer than seventy lines, however, the poet has presented an episode that is powerful and deeply moving—almost a drama since much of the poem is in dialogue. The two characters reveal their personalities in their speeches. Hadubrand is all adolescent pride and truculence; Hildebrand is desperate as he realizes the futility of his pleading, seeing that his paternal affection must yield before the demands of his honor as a warrior.

Although events in The Hildebrandslied can be located in the historical context of Theodoric’s conflict with Odovacar, the poet has chosen the father-son conflict as the focus of his work and has even altered historical fact for the sake of his story. Theodoric defeated Odovacar; the latter did not drive him out of his kingdom. This nonhistorical detail is a kind of “name-dropping,” a storyteller’s device to attract and hold the attention of his hearers as he proceeds to tell a story of his own making. Furthermore, the motif of exile works well for the conflict in TheHildebrandslied and, in fact, becomes a part of the Theodoric legend. Theodoric and Hildebrand’s exile also allow the poet to allude to another character, Attila the Hun, with whom they presumably resided for a time.

The impact of Attila on Western civilization is undeniable, and the legends of the races he encountered also attest his impact on their fiction. The “Scourge of God” was also the benevolent patron of Walther in the ninth century Waltharius and received positive treatment as Etzel in the thirteenth century Nibelungenlied (c. 1200; The Nibelungenlied, 1848). The negative portraits of Attila are to be found in the Old Icelandic tales of the Nibelungs and the Volsungs, such as the Atlakvia (ninth century?; Lay of Atli, 1923). Later medieval stories would link him with the other legendary figures from the time of the migrations, making him the contemporary not only of Theodoric, born twenty years after his death, but also of Ermanaric, who lived and died long before Attila’s time. These complexities are of less importance than the tales themselves, two of which, the Waltharius and the Atlakvia, will be discussed here.

Waltharius

The Waltharius contains the stuff of epics. Attila has taken hostages from three of the kingdoms he has encountered: Walther, a prince of Aquitaine; Hildegund, a Burgundian princess; and Hagen, a Frankish nobleman. The Waltharius, however, is not the story of war but of the ingenuity and martial prowess of Walther himself as he extricates himself from various dilemmas. Moreover, Walther is not an Odysseus; his struggles are with men, not with gods. He wishes only to free himself and Hildegund, his beloved, from the benevolent captivity of Attila, who considers him one of his best warriors. The lovers escape when Attila and his men are all intoxicated after a feast given by Walther. They reach the kingdom of the Franks only to be attacked by Gunther, the Frankish king who covets the treasure Walther has brought from his Hunnish captivity. Among Gunther’s men is Hagen, who had escaped earlier from Attila. Hagen is forced by his allegiance to Gunther to join him in a two-against-one combat with Walther, who before this was his friend, but he rationalizes his acquiescence to Gunther’s demand by means of the vengeance he must seek for a nephew killed by Walther during the battle. All three fighters survive the conflict, although Walther loses his right hand, Gunther loses a leg, and Hagen loses one eye; at the end, Walther mocks Hagen for joining Gunther against him.

The poet uses all the techniques of the epic—scholars have suggested the influence of Vergil’s Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553)—while maintaining his focus on personal conflicts, especially that between Walther and Hagen. In this respect, the poet of the Waltharius resembles the poet of The Hildebrandslied. The great events and personages of the migrations and the fall of the Roman Empire are simply contest and background for the central conflicts of the tales. Both The Hildebrandslied and the Waltharius are heroic lays that achieve their narrative power by concentrated focus on potentially tragic confrontations.

Atlakvia

In the Atlakvia, Attila is given the negative role which is more familiar to most readers. Gunther and Hagen appear as the brothers of Gudrun, the wife of Atli (Attila). Atli has persuaded the brothers to come to his court, and, once they are there, he tortures them to force from them the location of the great treasure of the Nibelungs. Hogni (Hagen) is killed, and Gunther eventually dies in a pit of snakes. Gudrun takes vengeance in Aeschylean fashion; she kills her sons by Atli and serves him their flesh. She then sets fire to the hall, and all perish. The Atlakvia is as terse and stark as the other example of the Eddic lay, the Hamismál. The poet attends to the basic matter of the conflicts—Atli’s avarice, the heroic resistance of the brothers, and the total vengeance of Gudrun.

The tales of the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Huns are primarily interesting because of their literary style, which combines narrative simplicity with compelling, dramatic situations that in and of themselves serve the purposes of characterization. The other aspect of their importance involves the way in which important figures and events of history find their way into fictional narrative, a process much more complex than this study can indicate, but one which demonstrates the interaction between fact, tradition, and the creative impulse.

History and fable (or story) come together also in one of the major Old English heroic works, the Battle of Maldon (early tenth century). The poem has been much admired for the clarity with which it illustrates both the glory and the tragedy of the heroic ethos in confrontation with the reality of war. Byrthnoth, the leader of an English troop, permits an invading party of Norwegians to cross, at low tide, a causeway that at any other time would be impassable. His heroic and hubristic generosity dooms him and his men in the subsequent battle. They die to a man, one of the last survivors rendering in epigrammatic fashion the code by and for which they lived and died: “Heart must be braver, courage the bolder/ Mood the stouter as our strength grows less!”

Battle of Maldon

The opening lines of the Battle of Maldon have been lost, but the point at which the story begins is nevertheless lyrical in force: A young knight frees his falcon, and this, the poet says, is a sign that he will not fail his leader; the poem maintains this elegiac note throughout. Scholars have established nearly all the details concerning the historicity of the battle, but it is the work of the poet—his skill in depicting Byrthnoth’s ofermo, hubris, and the dogged courage of his men—that makes the Battle of Maldon unequaled in tragic impact within its scope except by The Hildebrandslied.

An early passage in this study mentioned the accommodations that Christian literary sensibilities made to some of the modes of secular literature. The various hagiographical stories of the early Middle Ages are a good index to this accommodation. One might argue that the tales of saints and martyrs are not, strictly speaking, fiction, yet their narrative form quickly becomes standardized—miraculous birth, early piety, many miracles, much self-denial, fortitude under oppression, and painful martyrdom or blissful death—and, of greater significance, these tales participate in one of the major fictional modes, that of romance. No matter how gruesome the details of a martyrdom might be, the tale has, in the Christian context, the requisite “happy ending” of romance. The saint’s life or miracle is yet another aspect of the wish fulfillment that underlies the mode of romance.

One must make distinctions among the various forms of medieval hagiography. The Old English Andreas (eighth century?) or the Elene (750-785), or the Irish Navigato sancti Brendani abbatis (ninth century; The Voyage of St. Brendan, 1928), are quite different from such Old French works as Cantilène de Sainte Eulalia (c. 880; Cantilena of St. Eulalia, 1912) sequence or La Vie de Sainte Alexis (1040; Life of St. Alexis, 1912). The Old English tales have a strong heroic element and have a wider scope of action than the Old French tales. The Voyage of St. Brendan takes the form of a quest and has been linked with the Old Irish voyage tales (Imramma), such as the Voyage of Brân (seventh century) or the Voyage of Maeldune (seventh-ninth centuries). It is as much a tale of the wonders witnessed by St. Brendan and his companions as it is the story of a holy ascetic.

The Voyage of St. Brendan

The Voyage of St. Brendan relates the quest of the abbot St. Brendan and several of his monks for a fabled “Promised Land of the Saints,” an earthly Paradise. The journey is a series of encounters with strange creatures and enchanted places, but it is also a spiritual journey. Some scholars have argued that the various islands or sailing conditions, such as the Coagulated Sea (the Sargasso?) can be identified and that The Voyage of St. Brendan suggests actual journeys, perhaps even to the Americas. This hint of possible veracity accounts in part for the popularity of the work all through the medieval period, but its popularity also resulted from the writer’s descriptions of the beautiful and the strange, from the way in which monastic spirituality is unified with the quest for marvels (centuries before the Old French La Queste del Saint Graal (1225-1230; The Quest of the Holy Grail, 1926), and from the person of St. Brendan himself. His calm faith sustains his monks through all of their fantastic adventures, and even the presence of a sea monster, the leviathan Jasconius, does not disrupt the tranquil tone of the work.

The Andreas and the Elene

In contrast to The Voyage of St. Brendan, the spirituality and piety of the Andreas and the Elene seem more vigorous and active. Andreas (the apostle Andrew) must rescue his fellow apostle Matthias from a race of cannibals. The poem graphically describes the torments suffered by Andreas once he rescues both Matthias and the youth of the cannibal race chosen to die in Matthias’s stead. Among the best passages of the poem are those that describe Andreas’s sea journeys with a mysterious boatman who catechizes him on matters of faith and who is, as Andreas slowly realizes, Christ himself. Andreas’s role as deliverer and missionary crystallizes in the image of the water from the rock, a flood Andreas invokes to destroy his enemies. He relents so much as to pray for the resurrection of the youths of the cannibals, and, having converted them to Christianity, he departs. For all of his passivity, Andreas is a fighter, a thane of Christ, and a Moses figure. He is timid when first confronted with his task, but the dominant impression left by this heroic miracle tale is the forceful personality of its protagonist.

The same evaluation applies to Cynewulf’s Elene, the story of the recovery of the True Cross by Saint Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine. Confronted by the obstinacy of the elders of Jerusalem, she incarcerates a wise man who is known to hold the key to the mystery of the rebel teacher executed in that city. The wise man, named, oddly enough, Judas, yields before Elene’s harshness and reveals not only the identity of the rebel but also the place of His crucifixion. Only one of the crosses found there can resurrect a dead youth, and Elene claims it as the long-sought relic. Judas converts to the Christian faith and receives the name Cyriacus, and Elene returns to her son in a triumph of healing miracles.

The Elene and the Andreas have been described here as heroic miracle tales because they emphasize the power of their protagonists (and their protagonists’ Patron). Andreas, although broken by torture, can nevertheless invoke an enemy-destroying miracle, and Elene uses the power of her imperial rank, usually a negative element, in the service of the faith. Indeed, the Elene, from its first episode, the triumph granted Constantine by the sign of the Cross, deals with the power of the new Faith. This emphasis on militant Christianity is in marked contrast to the hagiographic narratives of the Cantilena of St. Eulalia and the Life of St. Alexis.

Cantilena of St. Eulalia

The Cantilena of St. Eulalia is the first literary monument of the French language. In addition to its linguistic significance it also attests the adaptation of the liturgical sequence (an extended embellishment of a line of text) to the uses of lyric poetry. The poem is very brief and tells the story of Eulalia’s martyrdom in the simplest manner. Eulalia, a young Christian noblewoman, refuses to give up her faith; brought before Maximian, she persists in her resistance and is given over to be burned. When the flames do not harm her, Maximian orders her beheaded. Her soul flies to heaven in the form of a dove.

For all its brevity, the Cantilena of St. Eulalia presents a complete dramatic action that builds in intensity from Eulaliae’s resistance through the torturing and martyrdom and is resolved in her soul’s flight. As stated above, this tale differs from the Old English tales here described in its emphasis not on Eulalia’s active power but on her endurance and her helplessness to resist, physically at least, her tormentors. Also, the focus of the tale is on the personal rather than the social effects of the miracles.

Life of St. Alexis

The Life of St. Alexis, another early French monument, deals again with the struggles of an individual. Alexis, a wealthy young man, decides on his wedding night to reject all—wife, riches, and family—to devote himself to prayer and self-denial. After a lengthy self-exile, he returns to his home and lives, unrecognized by his family, as a poor holy man under the staircase of his former home. His family only learns of his true identity by means of a letter that they find after his death. The poem ends proclaiming Alexis’s joy in Heaven where he is reunited with his maiden bride. The Life of St. Alexis follows the conventions of the flight-from-the-world, which is one of the many varieties of saints’ lives. Its compact narrative and careful handling of rhythm and assonance show the French language in the process of becoming one of the major literary languages of the West.

Exile of the Sons of Uisliu

The saints’ lives have been described as participating formally in the mode of romance in a period in which, for the most part, heroic tales dominated. The great age of medieval romance would begin in the early decades of the twelfth century, but as early as the ninth century and possibly even earlier, there were Celtic precursors to many of the major romances. The Irish Exile of the Sons of Uisliu has been linked with the development of the Tristan legend, and the Wooing of Etain (ninth century), also Irish, with the legend of Lancelot and Guinevere, at least insofar as the abductions of Guinevere are concerned.

The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, sometimes called the story of Deirdre, describes the fate of those sons of Uisliu who accompany Noisiu, their brother, into exile after he elopes with Deirdre, who has been promised to Conchobar, king of Ulster. The outcome is tragic for both lovers: Noisiu is treacherously slain, and Deirdre, who signs two poignant laments for her lover, later commits suicide rather than be given to one she despises. One can see the details that later became part of the Tristan story—the illicit love affair, the lovers’ flight, and their tragic demise—but the work has its own inherent interest. One sympathizes with Deirdre, fated from before her birth to cause dissension among men, when she chooses Noisiu in defiance of the arrangement that makes her the property of the aging Conchobar. Likewise, Noisiu draws the reader’s sympathy as he is taunted by Deirdre into accepting her, an act that seals his fate.

Wooing of Etain

The Wooing of Etain is the story of how King Eochaid Airem wins Etain, a princess of the fairy folk, loses her to her former mate, and regains her by besieging the fairy mounds and eventually succeeding in the trials set before him there. This tale reappears in many guises, not only in the Lancelot: Ou, Le Chevalier à la charrette (c. 1168; Lancelot: Or, The Knight of the Cart, 1913) of Chrétien de Troyes but also in “Pwyll, Prince of Dyved,” one of the tales included in The Mabinogion (1838-1849), which includes tales from The White Book of Rhydderch, (1300-1325) and The Red Book of Hergest (1375-1425), a group of Welsh tales dating from the very end of the period under discussion here. Like the Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, the Wooing of Etain is important as a good piece of fiction in its own right, from the lavish description of Etain with which it begins to the moment of surprise when Etain is magically abducted despite the hapless Eochaid’s attempts to guard her.

Summary

In bringing together an extended discussion of the forms of short fiction in the Middle Ages, a danger exists of oversimplification or of an overly pat schematic view of diverse developments. The period of the early Middle Ages was an unsettled time. Necessary social and economic adjustments to the collapse of Roman domination in the West threatened the preservation of the classical tradition of education. The number of surviving works of fiction seems small beside the compendiums of rhetorical, historical, or doctrinal works, but at no time did the art of fiction lapse, certainly not as far as oral transmission and development were concerned, as the complicated history of the Goths, Burgundians, and their heroes clearly shows. Often, however, “story” was put to work in sermons or in histories without losing the essential crafted nature that sets a work of fiction apart from mere sequential reportage. Many of the independent stories never ceased to engage their audiences, and storytellers adapted them by retelling or forging ever more complex combinations of the tales, some with the range and scope, for example, of the Theodoric stories. Although many of the gems of early medieval fiction remain buried in little-read histories or in collections primarily of interest to scholars, others, some of which have been discussed here, are now receiving the scholarly and critical attention they have deserved as literary works.

Bibliography

Gantz, Jeffrey, trans. Early Irish Myths and Sagas. New York: Penguin, 1981. Each chapter of this survey is devoted to a different Irish myth or saga. Features a discussion of the Exile of the Sons of Uisliu. Also includes an introduction and notes by Gantz, bibliographical references, and an index.

Griffiths, Bill. The Battle of Maldon: Text and Translation. Hockwold-cum-Wilton, Norfolk, England: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1996. This translation from the Old English includes bibliographical references.

Hasty, Will, and James Hardin, eds. German Writers and Works of the Early Middle Ages, 800-1170. Vol. 148 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. This comprehensive reference source contains information on Old High and Middle High German literature. Includes biographies of the major writers of the period, bibliographical references, and an index.

Jackson, William T. H., ed. Prudentius to Medieval Drama. Vol. 1 in European Writers: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by George Stade. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983. An exhaustive study of the major forms of medieval fiction, with chapters written by prominent scholars. Includes discussion of medieval fiction forms, such as the epic, the ballad, the allegory, the satire, and the saga.

Ludlow, John Malcolm. Popular Epics of the Middle Ages of the Norse-German and Carlovingian Cycles. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1865. A thoughtful analysis of the major epics of the medieval period. Each chapter is devoted to a study of a different epic. Includes two overview chapters, entitled “Some Words on the Growth of Legend” and “The Great Cycles of Middle Age Romance.”

Murdoch, Brian, trans. Walthari: A Verse Translation of the Medieval Latin “Waltharius.” Glasgow: Scottish Papers in Germanic Studies, 1989. This translation of Waltharius includes bibliographical references.

Odenkirchen, Carl J. trans. “The Life of St. Alexius” in the Old French Version of the Hildesheim Manuscript: The Original Text Reviewed, with Comparative Greek and Latin Versions, All Accompanied by English Translations, and an Introductory Study, a Bibliography, and Appendices. Brookline, Mass.: Classical Folia Editions, 1978. Includes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s retelling of the tale in original German and English translation.

Schreiber, Lady Charlotte, trans. The Mabinogion. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1997. Translations of a number of Arthurian romances and medieval Welsh tales, including “Pwyll, Prince of Dyved.” Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Twaddell, William Freeman. The Hildebrandlied. Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 1976. This English translation includes a commentary by Twaddell.

Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen, ed. The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Contains two chapters devoted to the Middle Ages, in which critical issues are debated and discussed. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Webb, J. F., ed. The Age of Bede. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1998. Includes discussions of Bede’s Life of Cuthbert and Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Eddius Stephanus’s Life of Wilfrid, and the anonymous history of Abbot Ceolfrith with The Voyage of St. Brendan. Includes bibliographical references and an index.