Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Late Medieval England
- Author / Editor
- Bradbury, Nancy Mason.
Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Late Medieval England
- Published
- Urbana and Chicago: University of illinois Press, 1998.
- Physical Description
- x, 247 pp.
- Description
- Explores how Middle English metrical romances reflect "proximity to orally transmitted legends." Treats the "Tale of Gamelyn" and related outlaw ballads as "fragmentary remains of a predominantly oral tradition,"Havelock the Dane" as an early experiment in literary retelling of oral material, "The Seege of Troye" as a failed effort to assimilate oral story to literary form, and "King Alisaunder" as a successful application of oral-based method to literary material.
- Chapter 5 ("Chaucerian Mistrelsy: 'Troilus and Criseyde'," pp. 175-201) assesses ways TC was "profoundly influenced by English minstrel-style romance," considering relations between oral story and "old books" as a significant theme of the work. Also assesses how Th reflects Chaucer's and his audience's knowledge of the conventions of metrical romance.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Tale of Sir Thopas.
- Chaucerian Apocrypha.