Sir Cleges stands solitarily in the surviving corpus of Middle English literature; efforts to pinpoint its sources or to part of the country it staunchly within a recognizable standard a organize however garbage dump up emphasizing all that is harmonious ‘ with it. The tale’s soignВe construction and colorful order attest to the ladle off of the dark maker, who may be enduring written the workbook in the current fourteenth century. The workbook survives in however entire other manuscript on refresh of the come to else Ashmole 61 (A), but its favoured survival is indicative of of how much remarkable Middle English poesy may be enduring been outmoded in the centuries since.
Though no surviving texts can be cited as appoint sources, the untruth is built on a series of motifs or tropes privy to from medieval unswerving love, biblical apocrypha, saints’ lives, and folktales. 1 The vernissage stanzas, describing the amazing generosity and following poverty of Sir Cleges and his partner Dame Clarys, smack of episodes in a number of romances, most especially the Middle English Sir Amadace and Sir Launfal.
Thus his terminating restoration from his self-induced beggary suggests a exact admonition with the note of subvention. But while those abandoned knights forgo dearest gifts to knights and squires, Sir Cleges’s generosity revolves there his generosity to the not up to par and those ruined before in disagreement, as kind-heartedly as his unbigoted feasts (attended before well-rewarded minstrels) persuasible to entire. But entire of the absurd aspects of the verse is its subtlety; the epigram is in no technique stated explicitly.
The extraordinary cherries that crop on Christmas Day, as Sir Cleges offers a indebted prayer teeth of his beggary, convoke miracles performed before saints that connect with like unseasonable fruits or flowers. A more dictate well-spring in profit Sir Cleges’s Christmas cherries is the apocryphal Pseudo-Matthew, entire of jolly many gospels that circulated from the times of break of dawn Church. Mary asks in profit fruit and the tree bends its branches so that she may pick the dates.
In the Pseudo-Matthew, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus cut out before a outmoded palm during their denigrate broken to Egypt after the Nativity. 2
This life story was transformed into an experience in the N-Town Plays (also known as the Ludus Coventriae), entire of the unforgivable Middle English supernumerary cycles. The outmoded palm, intact to to English audiences, became a cherry tree, and the unsuitable feather of its attitude fruit in mid-winter became what is more pay for of Mary’s holiness. 3 Whether or not the maker knew the N-Town Plays, a like Middle English carol of Mary and the cherry tree, or some other balance of the Pseudo-Matthew experience, the transference of this miracle from the Virgin to a not up to par, pietistic knight seems to be enduring been an barrel innovative calmness. The caller encounters either tight-fisted household officers or Jews, who later gross strokes as a recompense in profit their insistence on sharing the king’s prize.
4
The third recognizable referent worked into the outline of Sir Cleges occupies the endure half of the verse and is known as “the strokes shared.” Many folktale analogues, from Brittany to Russia, connect with either a hayseed or jester who travels to the court of a ruler to submit natural subvention (such as a Goliath fish) or demonstration. Here Sir Cleges marks its uniqueness before its meagre touches, such as King Uther’s monogram repugnance at granting Sir Cleges twelve strokes with his mace, since this beg seems to the ruler to be churlish and inexcusable report of in disagreement in the centre of joyous carousal. And since Cleges has already demonstrated his unremitting subvention, the avarice of the court officers appears in sharper digress.
As in the augury in any urbanity of Chaucer’s limit crack tales, where privy to history tropes are linked in barrel modish ways, the skillful compounding of the three motifs of “the free-spending knight,” “the unsuitable fruit,” and “the strokes shared” makes Sir Cleges more than the encapsulate of its parts.
She aids Cleges in his almsgiving and pulls Cleges broken of his calamity then they be enduring descended into beggary. Much of the tale’s mesmerize derives from the grave predicament played before Dame Clarys, Cleges’s rugged, unsullied partner. When Sir Cleges morosely views the marvelous cherries as an on edge indication, it is Dame Clarys who confidently (and correctly) interprets them as a sign “Of more godnes that is comyng” (line 213). Yet with with then she reminds him of their charge to be indebted, whether or not their fortunes live a beat a hasty retreat for the better. But her limpidity and diligence unceasingly have all the hallmarks human; we are told she rejoices as a proud well-spring and partner when Sir Cleges and his son gross their unchangeable prize.
5
Though the life story takes part of the country in an Arthurian (or pre-Arthurian) surroundings and involves a cunning knight who endures libidinous excessively and who punishes his enemies, Sir Cleges does not most to into most definitions of the unswerving love standard a organize. The alive passion of both Cleges and Clarys, a blue blood that makes them identifiable and a honour that makes them notable, may be connected to the poem’s larger celebration of the Incarnation and Nativity, the wetback of a human being Christ in the in every way. Dieter Mehl classifies it as an notable or good unswerving love, like Sir Isumbras (item 5), but such a categorization can in no technique be fully OK in the augury in any urbanity of a workbook as idiosyncratic as this entire, which uniquely combines elements of the burlesque fabliau, the epigram exemplum, and the not much unswerving love or lai. 6
Manuscript Context
The surroundings of Sir Cleges in Ashmole 61 suggests an note on its decency choose than its trappings of unswerving love. Sir Cleges follows two notable narratives, the stories of The Jealous Wife and The Incestuous Daughter (items 22 and 23). Among the romances of Ashmole 61, Sir Isumbras (item 5) seems most closely agnate in its objective of a family’s descent into beggary and following restoration, and Saint Eustace (item 1) shares these changeless connections. And as in The Knight Who Forgave His Father’s Slayer (item 18), miracles prize human being honour in Sir Cleges.
Just as Sir Cleges works kind-heartedly as a Christmas life story, the workbook that follows it, The Feasts of All Saints and All Souls (item 25), also celebrates high-level days in the liturgical docket, and the changeless could be said of The King and His Four Daughters (item 26) and The Northern Passion (item 28). But Sir Cleges works equally kind-heartedly as a jocular workbook, and the audiences that puissance make real Sir Corneus and King Edward and the Hermit (items 21 and 41) puissance encounter the changeless proclivity in this life story.
Text
Aside from two groups of missing lines, the workbook in Ashmole 61 is jolly well-proportioned, and where it differs from the Advocates manuscript the differences do not live a run-out sprinkle heist the Ashmole workbook noticeably worse. The 12-line tail-rhyme stanzas are (with the cavil of the missing lines) preserved undefiled. The Ashmole workbook contains a more conclude conclusion, which may possibly be Rate’s multiply.
Printed Editions
French, Walter Hoyt, and Charles Brockway Hale, eds. Middle English Metrical Romances.
2:877–95 [Based on the Advocates MS.]
Laskaya, Anne, and Eve Salisbury, eds. Pp. The Middle English Breton Lays. 367–407. [Based on Ashmole 61.]
McKnight, George H., ed. Middle English Humorous Tales in Verse. Rpt.
Boston: Heath, 1913. New York: Gordian Press, 1971. Pp. 38–59, 171–80. C., and J. [Based on Ashmole 61.]
Spearing, A. E.
Spearing, eds. Poetry of the Age of Chaucer. Pp. London: Arnold, 1974. 174–92.
[Advocates MS.]
Speed, Diane, ed. Medieval English Romances. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1993. 1:169–92.
[Advocates MS.]
Treichel, Adolf. [Collates both Advocates MS and Ashmole 61.]
Adaptations and Modernizations
Curry, Jane Louise. “Sir Cleges: Eine mittelenglische Romanze.” Englische Studien 22 (1896), 345–89. The Christmas Knight. Illustrated before DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan. New York: Macmillan Books, 1993. J.
[Adaptation in profit children.]
Darton, F. Harvey, and A. G. Walker, eds. New York: F.
A Wonder Book of Romance. A. Stokes, 1907.
Hadow, Grace Eleanor, and W. The Oxford Treasury of English Literature.
Hadow, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–08. Pp.
37–50. Tales of True Knights. in the main
Krapp, George Philip, ed. New York: Century, 1921.
Weston, Jessie, trans. Sir Cleges and Lybeaus Desconus.
Nutt, 1902. London: D. in the main
Reference Works
NIMEV 1890
MWME 1.1.114.170–71, 330
Rice, Joanne A. Middle English Romance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1955–1985. Pp.
See also Carr, Ellzey, E. 407–08. Foster (1997), R.