by Andrea Jones
Published in the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages Online, an English-language supplement to the Lexicon des Mittelalters (LexMA)
The Lyric in Old and Middle English Literature
The lyric is notoriously hard to define as a genre, in part... more
The Lyric in Old and Middle English Literature
The lyric is notoriously hard to define as a genre, in part because it may partake of a wide variety of verse forms, topics, and cultural milieus. The difficulty is compounded both by some critics’ description of a lyrical mode (as differentiated from the genre) in literature, and by shifting perceptions and contexts over time. In general, however, a lyric is a short poem, usually composed in the voice of a single persona, that tends to offer a reflection on that persona’s state of mind or processes of thought and emotion. It may contain some narrative elements—that is, it may tell a story—but these are almost always very impressionistic and often are only implied.
The word “lyric” itself is of Greek origin and indicates the genre’s ancient and persistent ties to music, since it is etymologically based on “lyra,” the word for the lyre which often accompanied the singers of these poems. While not all medieval lyrics were written to be sung, evidence suggests that they frequently were sung to the accompaniment of stringed instruments. Current usage, in which the words to any song may be termed “lyrics,” are a result of these connections to musical performance, although not all songs’ verbal components are lyrics in the literary sense.
By far the largest number of medieval lyrics are anonymous, which may seem odd, given the sometimes breathtakingly intimate tone of these poems, but before the Romantic re-casting of the genre during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, lyrics were usually quite conventional. That is, they tended to use traditional tropes and formulas to express ideas which the poet expected the audience, by and large, to share, even if those ideas were filtered through an individual perspective. This is not to say that medieval lyrics lack either spirit or even innovation, but rather that the pleasure of reading or hearing these poems lies more in recognizing conventional patterns and their modifications than in experiencing originality for its own sake.
There are, of course, famous and attributed authors of medieval English lyrics, ranging from Caedmon to Chaucer and beyond. As Peter Dronke points out in The Medieval Lyric, the compositors of lyric poems often were also performers—bards, scops, wandering minstrels, goliards, or troubadours and trouvéres—who traveled more widely than many of their contemporaries and medieval lyric “is to a striking degree international” (9).
The diversity and richness of the lyric may make frustrating work for an encyclopedist, but they also are some of the genre’s most interesting aspects. Subjects may include amorous and religious devotion, meditations on or inspired by nature, laments, satire or praise, commentary on politics and current events, and dancing or drinking songs. In terms of their social affiliations, lyrics may draw from folklore, popular culture, or courtly culture—or they may draw from several cultural fields at once.
The Old English lyric
Discussion of the Old English contribution to lyric poetry has been somewhat subdued in scholarly circles, with some critics going so far as to declare that the lyric did not attain particularly high development in Anglo-Saxon culture. This seems an odd conclusion, given that many of the most admired and anthologized Old English poems are those traditionally called “elegies,” elegies being generally recognized as a lyrical subgenre. Other scholars, however, have argued that an understanding of the lyric is essential to an understanding of much Anglo-Saxon literature. Lois Bragg’s The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry is a good introduction to the subject.
The famous “first poem” in English, the 7th-century Caedmon’s Hymn, is a lyric poem of praise to God and his Creation. In keeping with the lyric’s traditional connection to stringed instruments, Bede’s account of the hymn’s composition describes Caedmon’s initial retreat from the harps passed among his companions at feasts, offering this as a sign of poetic inability prior to divine intervention.
Another lyric praise-poem of the 9th or 10th centuries, Widsith, famously provides an idealized characterization of a scop’s life. While the poet clearly exaggerates both geographical and temporal distances, the piece’s references the many noble households at which he performed and received gifts probably are based in the reality of the poetic search for patronage. In fact, the name “wid-sith” literally means “wide-travel.” This poem also refers to a fellow performer or apprentice named Scilling and their singing to a harp—perhaps similar to the fragmentary one discovered in the Sutton Hoo ship burial—in great halls.
Other famous secular Old English lyrics include the masterful Exeter Book poems known as The Ruin, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Deor. In addition, some critics have pointed to sections of the epic Beowulf—particularly those sometimes called “The Last Survivor” (lines 2231-2270) and “The Father’s Lament” (lines 2444-2462)—as potentially discrete lyrics.
Anglo-Saxon religious lyrics include the Vercelli Manuscript’s visionary Dream of the Rood, a devotional masterpiece spoken primarily by the cross on which Christ died as it both laments and celebrates that death, and the late 10th-century Advent Lyrics the of Exeter Book. Based on the liturgical antiphons known as the “Advent Os” chanted during Vespers between December 17 and 23, these devotional poems once were thought to be the first section of a tripartite poem by Cynewulf. Far from being straightforward translations of the Latin, these poems are works of art in their own right, building from the original texts into more elaborate uses of metaphor and allegory. The second lyric, for example, based on the Latin “O clavis David” text and beginning “Eala þu reccend,” famously expands on the idea of Christ as a key and, therefore, a guardian.
A survey of the Old English lyrics and the scholarship surrounding them reveals their variety and dynamism. Indeed, these are some of the most exciting and culturally intriguing poems in the Anglo-Saxon literary corpus, demonstrating influences from Celtic and Mediterranean traditions as well as Germanic ones.
The Middle English lyric
Though critics have long recognized the importance and excellence of the Middle English lyrics, these poems are not widely read. Even those students who learn to read Chaucer in the original and wish to read more widely will find some difficulty in tackling the English lyrics of the 12th through 15th centuries, thanks to the splendid diversity of dialects and colloquial expressions which still stymie many of their most devoted scholars. Nonetheless, these poems are worth the effort. As Maxwell S. Luria and Richard Hoffman note in the introduction to their anthology, Middle English Lyrics, these works “form one of the great bodies of lyric verse in world literature” (ix).
Middle English lyrics seem particularly capable of achieving astonishingly intense effects and complex relationships within the space of only a few, deceptively simple lines. One of the most famous Early Middle English lyrics, dating to around 1250, is only five lines long:
*Foweles in the *frith, (birds/forest)
The fisses in the *flod, (stream)
And I *mon wax *wod. (mad)
Much *sorw I walke with (sorrow)
For beste of bon and blod.
Perhaps even more acclaimed is the 13th century “Sumer is icumen in,” an earthy reverdie (celebration of spring) which appears in MS Harley 978 with musical notation for six-part polyphony and an alternative set of sacred lyrics in Latin. As these two examples indicate, Early Middle English lyrics tend particularly to draw on nature (sometimes personified as Kynde) for inspiration.
An even more common theme, however, is devotion the Virgin Mary or to Christ. One early 13th-century poem about Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross is particularly outstanding in its intense brevity:
*Nou goth sonne under * wod: (now/wood)
Me *reweth, Marye, thy fare *rode. (pity/face)
Nou goth sonne under tree:
Me reweth, Marye, thy sone and thee.
The riddling word-play here is deeply meditative and seems to stem from the poet’s contemplation of a forest at sunset. Considering the “wod” and “tree” at hand leads to thoughts of the “wod” of the Cross (sometimes described as a “tree”), then to the tear-stained “rode” of Mary as she stands at the foot of that Cross (or “rood”). The collapsing of sacred and profane time evident in the repeated “nou” and the empathy the poet evokes in us may show the influence of Continental affective piety.
Many of the love lyrics of the period, however, even on entry into the 14th century, seem to show less influence from the Continental courtly love tradition than we might expect. The famous “Alysoun,” for example, is not an idealized, blond, grey-eyed lady, and her lover seems to have some hope that his affections will be returned. Indeed, the clever “All night by the rose, rose” makes it clear that its speaker’s affections already have been. Many of these pieces seem to draw primarily from more “folksy” approaches to romantic love or from the tradition of the ribald goliards, rather than from the work of troubadours and trouvéres.
There also are some famous dancing songs from the period, including “Maiden in the mor lay” (which may well describe a pagan water-sprite) and “Ich am of Irlonde”, meditations on mortality like “Erthe tok of erthe,” and a provocative body of satire and political commentary which is beginning to receive overdue notice from researchers.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as English became an increasingly official and courtly language, acknowledged masters of the Middle English lyric included Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, the captive Frenchman Charles d’Orléans, and Scottish poet William Dunbar. Lyric forms during this period included the ballade, the roundel, the “complaint,” and the epistle.
Several manuscript miscellanies—among them the multilingual Harley 2253 and Digby 86, as well as Harley 913 (the Anglo-Irish “Kildare Manuscript”)—contain collections of Middle English lyrics interspersed with other types of literature. Many more, however, are “flyleaf poems” found in margins, on the reverse sides of more mundane records, recovered from pastedowns in other manuscripts, or elsewhere. A number of specialists, Susanna Fein among them, are working to discover what the settings, sequencing, and preservation of these poems within their manuscript contexts may tell us.
Bibliography
Boklund-Lagopoulou, Karin. ‘I have a yong suster’: Popular song and the Middle English lyric. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002. ISBN 1851826270. Monograph, English.
Bradley, S. A. J., ed. and trans. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. New ed. North Clarendon, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 1994. ISBN 0460875078. Anthology and Translation, English.
Bragg, Lois. The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry. Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991. ISBN 0838643036. Monograph, English.
Brook, G. L., ed. The Harley Lyrics: The Middle English Lyrics of Ms. Harley 2253. 4th edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964. ASIN B000GL7BPA. Anthology, English.
Dronke, Peter. The Medieval Lyric. 3rd ed. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996. ISBN 0859914984. Monograph, Engllish.
Duncan, Thomas G., ed. A Companion to the Middle English Lyric. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005. ISBN 1843840650. Collection of Articles, English.
Krapp, George Philip and Eliot Van Kirk Dobbie, eds. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. 6 vols.; see esp. vol. 3. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. ISBN 0231087675. Anthology, English.
Maxwell S. Luria and Richard Hoffman, eds. Middle English Lyrics. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1974. ISBN: 0393093387. Anthology and Collection of Articles, English.
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