Inside, Outside: Man in Society

Abstract

The outbreak of the Hundred Years War between France and England in 1340 marked a turning-point in the cultural as well as the political history of France. The great flowering of vernacular literature and Gothic art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was in full bloom by the beginning of the fourteenth century, with some genres, especially the narrative ones of epic and romance, already overblown. For the next two centuries, the exploits of Arthur or Charlemagne and their followers, or the antics of Renart and his fellows, amplified or abridged, continued or selected, are endlessly retold but only rarely revitalised. In the late fifteenth century, with few exceptions, the only versions of these ever-popular tales available to the contemporary reading public are preserved in prose and pickled in print: pleasing to the palate, perhaps, but as remote from the original poems as tinned pineapple from fresh.

Searching for me I wander through a hall of mirrors.

(Leonard Nimoy)