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Bloom's Literary Themes
f

Alienation
Death and Dying
Human Sexuality
Rebirth and Renewal
The American Dream
The Grotesque
The Hero’s Journey
The Labyrinth
 Bloom’s Literary Themes

T h e h ero ’ s j o u r n e y

Edited and with an introduction by

Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University

Volume Editor
Blake Hobby
Bloom’s Literary Themes: The Hero’s Journey

Copyright 2009 by Infobase Publishing

Introduction ©2009 by Harold Bloom

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any infor-
mation storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For
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Bloom’s Literary Criticism

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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p. cm. — (Bloom’s literary themes)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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 , Contents .

Series Introduction by Harold Bloom: ix

Themes and Metaphors

Volume Introduction by Harold Bloom xiii

The Aeneid (Virgil) 1

“Aeneas” by T.R. Glover, in Virgil (1904)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) 11

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Kathleen Blake,
in Play, Games, and Sport: The Literary Works of Lewis
Carroll (1974)

Beowulf 25
“Beowulf ” by W. P. Ker, in Epic and Romance: Essays on
Medieval Literature (1908)

David Copperfield (Charles Dickens) 39

“David Copperfield and the Emergence of the Homeless
Hero” by Beth F. Herst, in The Dickens Hero: Selfhood
and Alienation in the Dickens World (1990)

Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) 51

“Don Quixote” by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, in
Some Authors: A Collection of Literary Essays, 1896-
1916 (1923)

The Epic of Gilgamesh 63

“The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hero’s Journey” by
Merritt Moseley
vi Contents

Go Tell It on the Mountain ( James Baldwin) 75

“James Baldwin” by Robert Bone, in The Negro Novel in
America (1965)

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) 85

“Jane Eyre and the Hero’s Journey” by Merritt
Moseley

Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare) 95

“The Political Odyssey: Shakespeare’s Exploration of
Ethics in Julius Caesar” by Matthew Sims

The Lord of the Rings ( J.R.R. Tolkien) 107

“Hobbits and Heroism” by Richard L. Purtill, in J.R.R.
Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (1984)

A Man for All Seasons (Robert Bolt) 123

“The Hero as Rebel: Robert Bolt’s A Man for All
Seasons” by Scott Walters

Middlemarch (George Eliot) 131

“Middlemarch and the Hero’s Journey” by Merritt
Moseley

Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) 141

“Moby Dick” by William Ellery Sedgwick, in Herman
Melville: The Tragedy of Mind (1944)

The Odyssey (Homer) 157

“The Man of Many Turns” by Albert Cook, in The
Classic Line: A Study in Epic Poetry (1966)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ( James Joyce) 167

“On A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by
Dorothy Van Ghent, in The English Novel: Form and
Function (1953)
 Contents vii

Pride and Prejudice ( Jane Austen) 183

“Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen’s ‘Patrician Hero’ ” by
Kenneth L. Moler, in Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900 (1967)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 195

“Sir Gawain’s Unfulfilled/Unfulfilling Quest” by
Michael G. Cornelius

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) 207

“‘Stand up; your father’s passing:’ Atticus Finch as
Hero Archetype” by Marlisa Santos

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts 215

(Maxine Hong Kingston)
“The Woman Warrior and the Hero’s Journey” by
Lauren P. De La Vars

“The Worn Path” (Eudora Welty) 225

“‘The Worn Path’ and the Hero’s Journey” by Jean
Hamm

Acknowledgments 233

Index 235
, Series Introduction by Harold Bloom: .
Themes and Metaphors

1. Topos and Trope

What we now call a theme or topic or subject initially was named a
topos, ancient Greek for “place.” Literary topoi are commonplaces, but
also arguments or assertions. A topos can be regarded as literal when
opposed to a trope or turning which is figurative and which can be a
metaphor or some related departure from the literal: ironies, synec-
doches (part for whole), metonymies (representations by contiguity)
or hyperboles (overstatements). Themes and metaphors engender one
another in all significant literary compositions.
As a theoretician of the relation between the matter and the rhet-
oric of high literature, I tend to define metaphor as a figure of desire
rather than a figure of knowledge. We welcome literary metaphor
because it enables fictions to persuade us of beautiful untrue things, as
Oscar Wilde phrased it. Literary topoi can be regarded as places where
we store information, in order to amplify the themes that interest us.
This series of volumes, Bloom’s Literary Themes, offers students and
general readers helpful essays on such perpetually crucial topics as the
Hero’s Journey, the Labyrinth, the Sublime, Death and Dying, the
Taboo, the Trickster, and many more. These subjects are chosen for
their prevalence yet also for their centrality. They express the whole
concern of human existence now in the twenty-first century of the
Common Era. Some of the topics would have seemed odd at another
time, another land: the American Dream, Enslavement and Emanci-
pation, Civil Disobedience.
I suspect though that our current preoccupations would have
existed always and everywhere, under other names. Tropes change
across the centuries: the irony of one age is rarely the irony of another.
But the themes of great literature, though immensely varied, undergo

ix
 Series Introduction by Harold Bloom: Themes and Metaphors

transmemberment and show up barely disguised in different contexts.

The power of imaginative literature relies upon three constants:
aesthetic splendor, cognitive power, wisdom. These are not bound by
societal constraints or resentments, and ultimately are universals, and
so not culture-bound. Shakespeare, except for the world’s scriptures,
is the one universal author, whether he is read and played in Bulgaria
or Indonesia or wherever. His supremacy at creating human beings
breaks through even the barrier of language and puts everyone on
his stage. This means that the matter of his work has migrated every-
where, reinforcing the common places we all inhabit in his themes.

2. Contest as both Theme and Trope

Great writing or the Sublime rarely emanates directly from themes
since all authors are mediated by forerunners and by contemporary
rivals. Nietzsche enhanced our awareness of the agonistic foundations
of ancient Greek literature and culture, from Hesiod’s contest with
Homer on to the Hellenistic critic Longinus in his treatise On the
Sublime. Even Shakespeare had to begin by overcoming Christopher
Marlowe, only a few months his senior. William Faulkner stemmed
from the Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad and our best living
author of prose fiction, Philip Roth, is inconceivable without his
descent from the major Jewish literary phenomenon of the twentieth
century, Franz Kafka of Prague, who wrote the most lucid German
since Goethe.
The contest with past achievement is the hidden theme of all
major canonical literature in Western tradition. Literary influence is
both an overwhelming metaphor for literature itself, and a common
topic for all criticism, whether or not the critic knows her immersion
in the incessant flood.
Every theme in this series touches upon a contest with anteriority,
whether with the presence of death, the hero’s quest, the overcoming
of taboos, or all of the other concerns, volume by volume. From
Monteverdi through Bach to Stravinsky, or from the Italian Renais-
sance through the agon of Matisse and Picasso, the history of all the
arts demonstrates the same patterns as literature’s thematic struggle
with itself. Our country’s great original art, jazz, is illuminated by what
the great creators called “cutting contests,” from Louis Armstrong and
 Series Introduction by Harold Bloom: Themes and Metaphors xi

Duke Ellington on to the emergence of Charlie Parker’s Bop or revi-

sionist jazz.
A literary theme, however authentic, would come to nothing
without rhetorical eloquence or mastery of metaphor. But to experi-
ence the study of the common places of invention is an apt training in
the apprehension of aesthetic value in poetry and in prose.
, Volume Introduction by Harold Bloom .

The High Romantic internalization of quest-romance sent the poet-

as-hero upon an inward journey still central to Western literature.
Ancestral paradigm of such a trek to the interior is the Shakespearean
tragic hero Hamlet and his even darker successor Macbeth. Hamlet,
the hero of Western consciousness, voyages to the bourn of death’s
undiscovered country while Macbeth drives himself into the heart of
his own darkness.
Most conspicuous of Romantic poet heroes, George Gordon,
Lord Byron, made his final journey to Greece in order to lead an army
of brigands in rebellion against the Turks. His best friend Shelley,
an incessant revolutionary, was a more metaphysical quester, starting
with Alastor: The Spirit of Solitude and ending with a Sublime death-
fragment, The Triumph of Life.
Shelley’s lifelong disciple, the superb dramatic monologist Robert
Browning, wrote the starkest of hero-journeys in Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower Came where the quester, after a life spent training for the
sight, fails to recognize the Dark Tower and ends in defiance, daunt-
lessly repeating Shelley’s “trumpet of a prophecy.”
The American revision of the poet-hero’s journey has Walt
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as its Scripture. Song of Myself begins as
a joyous quest for the authentic “knit of identity” and starts a Great
Decade of poetry that culminates in the majestic elegy When Liliacs
Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. The American poet-hero’s journey
ends in a transcendence of death, a new mode of apotheosis in
which Whitman marries the visionary fourfold of Night, Death, the
Mother, and the Sea.
American Romanticism’s triumph and sorrow inform our
greatest poet since Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the seer of White

xiii
xiv Volume Introduction by Harold Bloom

Buildings, The Bridge, and “The Broken Tower”—Hart Crane, the

Orphic splendor of our own imaginative tradition. The Bridge, which
disputes with Song of Myself and Moby-Dick the honor of being the
American epic, portrays a poet-hero’s journey from dawn to dusk on
a New York City day. Journeying both to his own and his nation’s
past, Crane follows the hero’s trajectory from childhood through
poetic incarnation and on to a descent into Avernos in “The Tunnel,”
an unmatchable demonic vision of the New York subway. In the
epic’s final chant, “Atlantis,” the poet celebrates the vision of a lost
mythic America. Surpassingly, The Bridge “lends a myth to God,” who
certainly seems to need it.
 The Aeneid
(Virgil)
,.
“Aeneas”
by T. R. Glover,
in Virgil (1904)

Introduction
As repositories of myth, Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid
express how two vast civilizations—one Hellenic, the other
Roman—understand themselves, seek to preserve the past,
and envision a future based upon a structured social order
seeking justice. The self-sacrificing heroes of each of these
epics, Achilles and Aeneas, complete perilous journeys, vying
for control amid warring foes and intervening gods. They battle
for the founding of the social order and undertake mythic jour-
neys that demand perseverance amid strife. During their epic
struggles, key values emerge. These highly imaginative tales,
set in a distant past, were intended to offer instructive stories
for those seeking to survive and gain wisdom. Ultimately, both
mythic worlds preserve the past, speak to the present, and
define values for the future. By comparing Greek and Roman
epic, both of which contain larger-than-life figures that meet
moral obligations through strife, early twentieth-century critic

Glover, T.R. “Aeneas.” Virgil. Seventh Edition. New York and London: Barnes
& Noble, Methuen & Co., 1969 (First printed in 1904). 208–32.


 Virgil

T.R. Glover argues that what distinguishes the two is

Virgil’s idea of destiny, one in which Aeneas supplicates
himself to the gods, embodying what Glover sees as Chris-
tian piety.

Aeneas is not at all a hero of the type of Achilles, and if we come

to the Aeneid with preconceived opinions of what the hero of an
epic should be, we run the risk of disappointment and also of losing
Virgil’s judgment upon human life. Virgil obviously did not intend to
make a copy of Homer’s Achilles or of any of Homer’s heroes. That
was a feat to be left to Quintus of Smyrna. If, as it is, there is an air
of anachronism about Virgil’s Aeneas, there would have been a far
profounder anachronism about him if in the age of Augustus he had
been a real Homeric hero. The world, as we have seen, had moved far
and fast since Homer’s day. Plato’s repudiation of Homer meant that
a new outlook and new principles were needed in view of new condi-
tions of life and the new thoughts which they waked. In its turn the
impulse, with which we connect the literature of Athens, and such
names as Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle, was itself spent, though not
before it had made an imperishable contribution to the growth of
mankind. The world was awaiting another fresh impulse, and, till this
should come, it was occupied in analyzing, coordinating, and devel-
oping its existing stock of ideas, not without some consciousness that
they were already inadequate.
It was at this moment that Virgil wrote, and as he was a poet
rather than a mere scholar or antiquarian, he sought to bring his
Aeneas into connexion with his own age, while, if possible, still
keeping him a Homeric hero. It was hardly to be done. If Aeneas as
the ideal hero was to be the “heir of all ages,” it would be difficult to
keep the simplicity of Homer’s outlook and philosophy. Aeneas could
not stand in Achilles’ relation to men. He must have new virtues which
had been discovered since Homer’s day, if he was to be a hero near
the hearts of Virgil’s contemporaries—the new private virtues which
Menander and Cleanthes and many more were finding out, and the
new political virtues which Alexander and the Ptolemies, Julius and
Augustus, were revealing to the world. Aeneas, again, could not stand
 The Aeneid 

in Achilles’ relation to heaven. The gods no longer came among men

in bodily form, they were far away; and yet perhaps they were not so
very far away after all—

deum namque ire per omnes. 1

This is another reason why Aeneas does not appeal to us as Achilles

does. The fusion of the Homeric and the modern types is not complete.
Virgil’s Aeneas is two heroes in one, perhaps more, for beside the
Homeric hero and the modern hero one feels sometimes that we have
another creature, which is not a hero at all, but an idea2, an allegory of
a virtue, and a political virtue at that, partially incarnated.
To understand the character and the poem of which it is the
center, it will be helpful to analyze the various elements in Aeneas.
In this process we shall necessarily lose our consciousness of what we
have felt to be the great defect of the hero, his want of unity, and we
shall probably gain a clearer notion of what the poet intended.
First of all, there is Aeneas conceived as a Homeric hero. Aeneas
has of course the heroic manner, in measure, but not quite the manner
of Homeric heroes, a more magnificent, a more courtly manner. He
has the wealth of the Homeric hero, and his habit of giving splendid
presents and receiving them. At times, Virgil would have us think, he
feels the same wild delight in battle which we find in Homer’s heroes.
“Lie there now, terrible one! No mother’s love shall lay thee in the sod,
or place thy limbs beneath thine heavy ancestral tomb. To birds of prey
shalt thou be left, or borne down in the eddying water, where hungry
fish shall suck thy wounds.”3 This is what Virgil remembers to have
read in the Iliad; he blends what Odysseus says to Socus with Achilles’
words to Lycaon.4 But the words are still Homer’s; they do not belong
to Aeneas. Again, the reservation of eight captured youths to be sacri-
ficed to the Manes of Pallas5 can be defended by the Homeric parallel of
Achilles slaying Trojans over the pyre of Patroclus6 and by more awful
contemporary parallels, but still it is not convincing. Augustus may
have ordered or performed a human sacrifice7, but when Virgil trans-
fers this to Aeneas, the reader feels the justice of Aristotle’s paradox:
“there is no reason why some events that have actually happened should
not conform to the law of the probable and possible.”8 This may have
been an actual event, but it is not “probable” here.
 Virgil

But perhaps the most incongruous Homeric touch in Virgil’s story

of Aeneas is the beautifying of the hero by his mother to enable him
unconsciously to win Dido. That Aeneas is “like a god in face and
shoulders” we can well believe, but the addition of the “purple light of
youth”9 to a man of years, “long tost on land and sea,” worn to grandeur
by war and travel, is surely a triumph of imitation over imagination.
This perhaps will be best realized if we consider for a moment the
passage, or passages, in the Odyssey which Virgil had in mind. Twice
Athene changes the aspect of Odysseus. First, at his meeting with
Nausicaa, the goddess, after his bath, “made him greater and more
mighty to behold, and from his head caused deep curling locks to
flow, like the hyacinth flower . . . Then to the shore of the sea went
Odysseus apart, and sat down, glowing in beauty and grace, and the
princess marvelled at him.”10 And very naturally, for she was a young
girl, and the goddess knew it, and made her appeal to the imagination
in a true and natural way.
Again, when Odysseus makes himself known to his wife, the poet
uses the very words, and the simile that follows them, once again.
Penelope “sat down over against Odysseus in the light of the fire.
Now he was standing by the tall pillar, looking down and waiting
to know if perchance his noble wife would speak to him when her
eyes beheld him. But she sat long in silence, and amazement came
upon her soul, and now she would look upon him steadfastly with
her eyes, and now again she knew him not.” Odysseus withdraws,
and bathes, and comes back, and “Athene shed great beauty from
his head downwards, and [made him] greater and more mighty to
behold, and from his head caused deep curling locks to flow, like
the hyacinth flower.”11 Once more it is an appeal to the imagination.
Penelope has still a final test to make before she will be sure, but in
her mind she sees her husband as he was twenty years before, young,
strong and tall, as she had always pictured him during the long years
of his absence. Homer is justified.
But is Virgil justified? People tell us that youth and beauty are
not without their appeal to women in middle life or toward it, but
the reader can hardly think of Dido as Venus would seem to have
done. She was not Nausicaa. Nor can the poet claim Homer’s plea
in the second case, for Aeneas and Dido had never met before.12 In
fact, it is a piece of imitation, dull and unconvincing, as nearly all
 The Aeneid 

the purely Homeric touches are in the character and the story of
Aeneas.13
Virgil’s Aeneas implies a new relation to heaven. While the whole
question of Olympus and the gods will have to be reserved for sepa-
rate treatment at more length, it will be convenient to anticipate a
few points of importance. Greek thinkers had moved, and brought
mankind with them, beyond the Olympus of Homer. Men no longer
might expect to

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

There was a gain, however, in their loss, for it was a deepening

consciousness of the real character of the Divine nature that carried
men away from Olympus to look for divinity in a higher region. The
divine was more remote, but it was more divine. It had less contact
with humanity, but it was freer from the weaknesses and the vices
of humanity. It was perhaps less interested in the individual, but it
might exercise a wider and a firmer power over the universe.
The Homeric gods, in accordance with epic usage, had to watch
over Aeneas, but they were gods in whom no one really believed.
Hence Virgil handles them with a caution that excludes warmth.
Though Aeneas is favoured with one theophany after another, and is
for the while re-assured by them, he is not on such easy terms with
the gods as was Achilles. He sees them less frequently, and his rela-
tions are more formal. In fact, the complete rejection of the Homeric
pantheon by educated people in favour of eastern religion or Greek
philosophy was too strong for the poet.14
Yet Virgil is far from refusing the idea of some divine government
of the world. Some of the philosophers had rejected the Homeric
theology, just because it did not sufficiently relate the world with the
gods. They traced the world’s origin back to divine intelligence, they
recognized the diviner element in man’s nature, his power of remem-
bering and re-discovering the divine “ideas,” and they leant to a belief
in the moral government of the universe. With the gradual direction
of philosophy to individual life, men came to believe in a personal
concern of heaven with the individual man. If Fate is hard and
unrelenting, it has recognized the individual, and on the whole the
 Virgil

individual may accept it without resentment. Hence Cleanthes bade

Fate lead him in the destined way and he would be fearless, though,
as he reminded himself meanwhile, there was no question about his
following.15 Man is thus entirely dependent upon the divine, and of
this Aeneas is always conscious. It was, however, a consciousness never
before presented in poetry, and Virgil, in loyalty to the traditions of
the epic, endeavoured to present it by the means of the old, incredible
Homeric gods. This was indeed to pour new wine into old bottles,
with the inevitable result.
This idea of Destiny, perhaps of Providence, is the dominant one
in Virgil, and it is one of the things in which he is furthest from
Homer.
Destiny, as M. Boissier remarks, has its place in Homer. His heroes
often know well that they are doomed to fall, but as a rule they forget
it and act as if they had not the knowledge. The action is only now
and again darkened by the shadow of Fate, but in general we have the
free development of the individual’s story, as he carelessly abandons
himself to the fever of life, and forgets the menaces of the future in
the interests of the present.16 The same idea is well developed by M.
Girard in his chapter on “Man in Homer and Hesiod.” In particular
he instances Hector leaving child and wife for a death he foresaw, but
the prevailing tone of the poem he finds, with Arnold, in the words
of Sarpedon to Glaucus—

But now a thousand fates of death stand over us, which mortal
man may not flee from nor avoid; then let us on, and give a
glory, or obtain it ourselves.17

The Greek and the Trojan heroes in the Iliad recognize Destiny
well enough, but they make up their own minds, and are ready to
accept the consequences. They survey the world for themselves, look
facts well in the face, and then shape their own courses. If the gods
intervene, these calculations may be upset, it is true, but this is acci-
dent after all.
Aeneas, on the contrary, is entirely in the hands of heaven, and
for guidance keeps his eyes fixed on superior powers. He resigns
himself to Providence as a willing, if not entirely intelligent, agent.
Wherever his great quest is concerned, he is a man of prayer,
 The Aeneid 

anxiously waiting for a sign from heaven, which never fails him. It
is the attitude of the Roman general taking the auspices.

Haud equidem sine mente, reor, sine numine divom adsumus

et portus delati intramus amicos18 (A. v. 56).

So says Aeneas, when wind and storm drive him out of his course, and
land him at his father’s grave in Sicily. Delati is the whole story of his
voyage in one word—an involuntary quest, perpetually over-ruled by a
somewhat unintelligible divine will, but with a happy result. The hero,
like a medieval saint, has surrendered his own will, though not with
the same restfulness of mind.19
Aeneas then is the chosen vessel of Destiny from first to last—fato
profugus;20 he is guided by fate throughout all his wanderings—

Nate dea, quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur; quidquid

erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est (A. v. 709),

says one of his captains.21 He so entirely subordinates himself to Fate,

and, in spite of Virgil’s showing him to us “this way and that dividing
the swift mind,” he so frequently flies to prayer rather than to reflec-
tion and resolution, that the reader feels that life is after all made clear
to him even if it is not easy, and that his pilgrimage is tedious rather
than dark or perplexing.
It was a Roman conviction that Rome was under the special care
of heaven—a belief which great Roman generals extended to cover
their own personal fortunes. “It was not by numbers,” says Cicero,
“that we overcame the Spaniards, nor by our strength the Gauls, the
Carthaginians by our cunning, or the Greeks by our arts, nor lastly
was it by that sense, which is the peculiar and natural gift of this race
and land, that we overcame the Italians themselves and the Latins;
but by piety (pietas) and by regard for the divine (religio), and by this
sole wisdom—our recognition that all things are ruled and directed
by the will of the immortal gods—by these things we have overcome
all races and peoples.”22
As this utterance is from a speech, we may take it to represent the
belief rather of Cicero’s audience than of himself, and this assump-
tion is confirmed by similar language addressed to the Romans by
 Virgil

Horace.23 Probably Virgil shared this popular feeling more than either
Cicero or Horace could, and consistently with his habit of showing
the future in the past, the spiritual sequence of events from principles,
he endows Aeneas with this thoroughly Roman attitude towards the
gods. Aeneas, the founder of the race, like all his most eminent descen-
dants, holds the belief that his country—for he calls Italy his patria—is
beloved and chosen of heaven; like them, he subordinates himself to
heaven’s purpose for his country, and, on every occasion, seeks to learn
at once, and in the directest possible way, what is the will of the gods;
and, once more like them, he finds that heaven never fails Rome.
One or two questions naturally rise at this point. We may ask
whether this Roman view, that Rome is the supreme thing for which
Providence should care, is a true one; but there is another inquiry which
bears more closely upon Aeneas. Has he any real conviction that the
gods care for him? They care for Rome—that is evident enough—and
for Aeneas as the destined founder of Rome. But do they care for the
man as apart from the agent?24 Does he feel that they care for him?
On the whole, the answer is fairly clear. No one could well be
more loyal than Aeneas to the bidding of heaven, but his loyalty gives
him little joy. He is a man who has known affliction, who has seen
the gods in person destroying what he had loved above all things—his
native city;25 who has been driven, and expects to be driven, over land
and sea by these same gods to a goal foreign to his hopes and affec-
tions. He realizes that in the end some advantage will accrue to his
people, or their descendants, from all that he undergoes, and he is
willing to work for them. Sorrow, it will be seen, has not cramped him,
but rather has broadened and deepened his nature. He lives for others;
and because he is told that the planting of Rome will be a blessing to
his people, he makes Rome “his love and his country”—

hic amor, haec patria est. (A. iv. 346)

If his comrades grow weary, and despair, he has words of hope and
cheerfulness for them. But for himself? For himself, he only expects
the repetition of the past. There is little comfort, little hope for
himself. Even his goddess-mother seems to think as much of the ulti-
mate Augustus as of her son. Does any one, god or man, think about
Aeneas and his happiness? His thoughts are ever of wars behind him
 The Aeneid 

and wars before him; and he hates war. He has nothing to which to
look forward, and only too much to which to look back.

Et nimium meminisse necesse est 26 (A. vi. 514)

Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem27 (A. ii. 3).

And with these thoughts he is perhaps the most solitary figure in

literature.
Virgil is true here to human experience, for with his story of
pain, and with a doubt at his heart, Aeneas could hardly be other
than he is. He can never forget the story he tells to Dido.28 The poet
has seized the meaning of the fall of Troy, and interpreted it in this
quiet, wounded, self-obliterating man. If Virgil’s hand shakes here
and there, his picture, as he saw it in his mind, is true. Underneath the
trappings of the Homeric hero is the warrior-sage, who has sounded
human sorrow, and who, though he cannot solve the riddle, will not
believe that all is vanity and a striving after wind.

Notes
1. G. iv. 221, “for God pervades all.”
2. Goethe’s word. He told Eckermann (Oct. 29, 1823) “You must do
some degree of violence to yourself to get out of the idea.”
3. A. x. 557 (Mackail).
4. Il. xi. 452, and xxi. 122.
5. xi. 81 vinxerat et post terga manus, quos mitteret umbris | inferias,
caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas; cf x. 517–20.
6. Il. xxiii. 22–3. In Il. 175–6 Dr Leaf finds a “moral
condemnation of the act” by the poet possible, though not
inevitable, in the Greek . . .
7. Suet. Aug. 15.
8. Poetics, ix. 9.
9. A. i. 588.
10. Odyssey, vi. 229f.
11. Odyssey, xxiii. 156.
12. It may be objected that Teucer had told Dido of Aeneas long
before (A. i. 619, a point made by Heinze, Vergils epische Technik,
p. 119), and that there was a picture of Aeneas in Dido’s temple
10 Virgil

(A. i. 488). It will hardly be maintained that it can have been a

photographic likeness.
13. Sainte-Beuve has some excellent criticism on this episode of
the beautification. Étude sur Virgile, 274–6.
14. Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Étude sur Virgile, p. 276: “Avec lui (Virgil)
on est déjà dans la mythologie; avec Homère on était dans la
religion.”
15. Cleanthes ap. Epictetus, Manual, 52, end of book.
16. La Religion romaine, i. p. 244.
17. Girard, Le Sentiment religieux en Grèce, pp. 70–5; Arnold,
On Translating Homer, p. 18; Iliad xii. 310–28. Translated by
Purves.
18. “Not in truth, I deem, without the thought or the will of the
gods are we here, driven as we are into a friendly haven.” Years
add beauty to such a couplet.
19. A Christian saying of the second century. It is in the homily
known as Second Clement, 6, 7.
20. A. i. 2. “an exile of destiny.”
21. “Goddess-born whither Fate draws us, onward or backward, let
us follow; come what may, every chance must be overcome by
bearing it.”
22. Cicero, de Harusp. Resp. 9. 19. Cf. Warde Fowler, Religious
Experience of the Roman people, pp. 249 ff., with notes.
23. Dis te minorem quod geris imperas, and other utterances of the
kind.
24. Cicero’s Stoic said they did. Cf. de natura deorum ii. 65, 164.
25. A. ii. 608 f., 622.
26. “But too good cause is there to remember.”
27. “Too cruel to be told, O queen, is the sorrow you bid me
revive.”
28. Aeneas’ words to Dido, Aen. iv. 340, give the keynote of his
character.
mi si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
auspiciis et sponte mea componere curas,
urbem Troianam primum dulcisque meorum
reliquias colerem, Priami tecta alta manerent
et recidiva manu posuissem Pergama victis.
sed nunc Italiam, etc.
 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(Lewis Carroll)
,.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
by Kathleen Blake,
in Play, Games, and Sport:
The Literary Works of Lewis Carroll (1974)

Introduction
In her 1974 book, Play, Games, and Sport: The Literary
Works of Lewis Carroll, Kathleen Blake analyzes the games
Alice plays in Wonderland and the way these games mark
crucial stages in her journey. At first, Alice does what the
creatures tell her to do, following confusing and arbitrary rules
as she goes from game to game. Blake contends, however,
that, as Alice becomes aware of the freedom she has, she
sees these games as irrational. By becoming a “spoilsport”
and rejecting the rules thrust upon her, Alice learns to control
her own fate, assert her own will, and escape the game
world she has created. Alice gains self-understanding and
self-mastery during her heroic journey, despite many frustra-
tions. For Blake, Alice’s maturation parallels ours. For life
is indeed a strange journey with games governed by many
seemingly arbitrary rules we often do not understand. Thus

Blake, Kathleen. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Play, Games, and Sport: The
Literary Works of Lewis Carroll. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1974. 108–31.

11
12 Lewis Carroll

Alice’s journey both mirrors and inscribes the way we come

to understand the world.

At the outset of Alice in Wonderland, Alice, somewhat bored with

the book being read to her, considers amusing herself with a sort of
play—making a daisy chain; she would do this for the fun of it, in
spite of the trouble of getting up to pick the flowers. However, this
type of play is not really what Alice prefers; typically, she likes social
games, games with rules, of a more strictly structured character than
is involved in daisy-chaining. Even when thrown back upon her
solitary self, Alice is fond of pretending to be two people, so that,
besides giving herself good advice, scolding herself to tears, she has
also been known to play a game of croquet against herself (W, pp.
25, 32–33).
Given a choice, Alice would prefer to have other people around.
As she falls down the rabbit hole, talking aloud to herself the while,
she feel the absence of listeners, the opportunity of “showing off
her knowledge.” This suggests the importance of relative mastery
in Alice’s view of social relations, which are games insofar as they
are undertaken out of the pure pleasure of competitive self-asser-
tiveness. Language for Alice is to some extent a way of impressing
others; she likes to say “latitude” and “longitude,” without any
notion of their meaning, but only because they are so satisfy-
ingly “grand” to say. On the other hand, she reflects that a lack of
knowledge of a word, for instance, having to ask an inhabitant of
the other side of the globe what the name of his country is, would
put her at a psychological disadvantage. She determines not to be
caught out (W, pp. 27–28).
Alice has a game attitude, with which goes a great concern for
the terms and rules of play. She is on the lookout to learn these so
as to fit in and even master the peculiar universe she has entered. In
the first chapter Alice’s abiding interest in rules is introduced. For
example, she remarks that she hopes to find a book of rules for shut-
ting up like a telescope, and she recalls disapprovingly stories she has
heard of children who had been burned and eaten up by wild beasts,
“all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 13

had taught them.” She is strict in her views about obeying rules. Once
she even boxed her own ears for cheating at the croquet game she was
playing with herself (W, pp. 30–33).
Alice entertains a self-satisfied, even smug opinion of herself
as a rule-abiding little girl. In most cases the narrator’s attitude is
close to her own.1 The possibility of great narrative distance or of
narrative irony at the expense of the character is diminished by the
fact that, as is sometimes suggested, Alice is listening and reacting to
the narrator while living the adventures which he is at that moment
relating. In one notable instance, just after the narrator remarks her
fondness for pretending to be two people, Alice responds as if she
had heard this: “‘But it’s no use now . . . to pretend to be two people!
Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable
person!’” (W, p. 33).
[. . .]
A lack of stable rule-structure plagues Wonderland (and Looking-
Glass land), but this does not ensure that the player will be immune
from others’ incursions. It gives him less, not more security against
being imposed upon, and this is as true in the caucus-race as later in
the croquet game. [. . .] In a sense, the White Knight’s song celebrates
a generalized concept of play, but it is one contrasted to work, not to
games. Although in certain works Carroll seems to lament the turning
of games into sport, as I hope to show, it is risky to theorize that he
must also lament the turning of free play into games. The Alice narra-
tives do not appear to offer good enough or many enough instances
of primitive play to make this a valid point of reference in discussing
the novels.
The world Alice enters does not operate according to mental
structures of an age younger than herself—an innocent and flam-
boyant realm of presocialized freedom and unrule-bound self-expres-
sion. If this were the case the creatures would not be so insistent on
her submission to their games. Rather this world represents an older
level of mental organization, characterized by an addiction to games
with rules, with which Alice is expected to play along.
[. . .]
Let us go forward now with Alice’s Adventures. In the rough
interplay of Wonderland, Alice is content, initially, to put up with
a hard time. She is acquiescent and accepts a very humble position:
14 Lewis Carroll

she is mistaken for the housemaid by the White Rabbit and goes
on an errand for him. This is as strange as if at home, besides having
to submit to the normal authorities, she were to be ordered about
by animals, the very cat. Alice imagines being ordered by Dinah to
watch a mouse-hole. She supposes though that at home she could
count on some protection against such servitude, from the same
“them” who are the usual authorities (W, p. 56). Alice even wishes
she were back home, where besides being sure of one’s size one isn’t
“ordered about by mice and rabbits.” “‘I almost wish I hadn’t gone
down that rabbit hole,’” she adds, “‘and yet—and yet’” (W, p. 58).
After all, Alice is willing to stick it out. She still wants to see the
lovely garden, and can’t resist the very curiousness of this new world.
So she chooses to go on in her subordinate role. She trembles at the
White Rabbit’s voice, though in actual fact she is a thousand times
his size and has no need to be afraid (W, p. 59). And later, once out
of the Rabbit’s house and much reduced in size, she fears being
eaten by the puppy. Her encounter with him resembles “having a
game of play with a cart horse” (W, p. 65). In all the games she enters
into in Wonderland, Alice labors under a disadvantage of about this
proportion.
On several occasions she feels the disadvantage quite strongly,
as for example in the Caterpillar encounter. She hates being contra-
dicted and feels she’s losing her temper, and yet she swallows it
down and maintains her politeness (W, p. 72). Consider also this
instance of Alice’s really heroic considerateness of others in the face
of the signal lack of anyone’s consideration for herself: though one
of her great desires has been to achieve and stabilize her natural
size, she actually shrinks herself to a diminutive nine inches before
approaching the Duchess’s house, because “‘it’ll never do to come
upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!’”
(W, p. 78).
“Pig and Pepper” is a chapter largely about will, or willfulness.
Alice notes to herself how dreadfully all the Wonderland creatures
argue. The song sung by the Duchess to the baby is in all probability
a parody of a poem which teaches

Speak gently! It is better far

To rule by love than fear.
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 15

The original is all about curbing one’s outspoken urgency

into gentleness. The Duchess’s song, on the other hand, recom-
mends an unleashed battle of wills, which assumes that one’s little
boy’s willfulness is not to be coaxed and tamed but quite simply
overpowered:

Speak roughly to your little boy,

And beat him when he sneezes
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases. [W, p. 85 and n. 3]2

The Duchess’s remedy for insurgency is capital punishment (W,

p. 84).
Alice, as we have seen, is not very assertive of her own will
but rather seeks direction from others. The chapter opens with
her “wondering what to do next” (W, p. 79). The creatures she
encounters refuse to be of much help. The advice received from
the Caterpillar, for example, had been excessively cryptic (W, p.
73). And now the Frog-Footman remains obdurately unhelpful
when Alice begs to know, “‘But what am I to do!’” At last she does
take the initiative, and dismissing the Frog-Footman as “perfectly
idiotic,” she opens the door herself and walks into the Duchess’s
house. Still she has not yet learned much about willfulness as she
remains “timid” with the Duchess, afraid of displaying a lack of
“good manners” in presuming to begin the conversation herself
(W, pp. 81–83).
With the Cheshire Cat she is equally timid. She inquires like a
dutiful child, “‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go
from here?’” But the Cheshire Cat is as perverse as the Footman in
refusing to give Alice the direction she wants. He throws the ques-
tion back to her: “‘That depends a good deal on where you want
to get to!’” Alice doesn’t know where she wants to go; she says she
doesn’t much care. But she adds, “‘so long as I get somewhere.’” She
wants a goal, and she wants someone else to set it for her. This need
is not satisfied by the Cat’s response: that she can go any way she
likes, that it doesn’t matter which way she goes, as no matter whom
she goes among will be mad (W, pp. 88–89). Alice is very reluctant
to go among mad people and even more so to be told she must be
16 Lewis Carroll

mad too, for being in Wonderland. As a polite, well-lessoned little

girl, she stakes a lot on her sanity.
At this juncture she is saved from directionlessness, though, for
the Cheshire Cat mentions the Queen’s croquet game, which Alice
would like very much to attend (if asked). The Cat intimates an invita-
tion by remarking, “‘You’ll see me there’” (W, p. 89). Now at midpoint
in the book, Alice receives the clearest goal she has had yet. She does
not make or even actively choose her own game universe, but she is
eager to join in any that offers, once fairly invited.
The Mad Tea-Party shows again Alice’s interest in where activi-
ties lead, where they get to. She finds these mad creatures with their
endless circulating around the tea table very incompatible. Alice asks
the embarrassing question, which the Mad Hatter does not choose
to answer, what happens when you arrive back at your original
place? This concern to know where it will all end is typical of the
game-playing mentality, which conceives activity as linear, as going
from point X to point Y. But given the infinite extensibility of most
processes, or their circular nature, which yields a similar inconclu-
siveness (as seen in the caucus-race as well as in the Mad Tea Party),
a stop rule is absolutely necessary. The stop rule is what Alice wants
to know.
Alice likes riddles; she is eager and determined to apply herself,
but not to such as the Mad Hatter asks, because she feels that riddles
without answers are a waste of her time (W, pp. 95, 97). Though the
game, the riddle, is quite literally a waste of time in terms of practical
use, it is felt as a waste in psychological terms if it does not allow of
a solution, a gratifying sense of closure and triumph. Play activity
begins arbitrarily; it is simple enough to begin drawing everything
that starts with an M, as the three sisters undertake to do in the
Dormouse’s story. “‘Why with an M?’ said Alice. ‘Why not?’ said the
March Hare” (W, p. 103). One might, with ingenuity, find a way to
draw mousetraps, moon, memory, muchness, etc. (It’s all in how one
defines terms, sets up rules.) But perhaps Alice has another doubt
concerning this enterprise—how could one ever leave off drawing
things that begin with an M?
In any event, Alice alternates between an attempt to play along
civilly with the Tea-Partyers, and dismay at their outrageousness.
At one point she promises “humbly” not to interrupt the Dormouse
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 17

again. And yet this is in apology for speaking “very angrily” to him.
She overlooks the Hatter’s calling her “stupid,” but this after accusing
him of rudeness and after snapping at him sharply (W, pp. 101,
102, 94). Finally she cannot bear their provocations and walks off in
disgust, although, interestingly, she somewhat regrets this bold action,
as she keeps looking back “half hoping that they would call after
her.” Only when they show no signs of wanting her back does she
denounce them (to herself ) once and for all: “‘At any rate I’ll never go
there again;’ said Alice. . . . ‘It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in
all my life!’” (W, pp. 103–104).
Alice thus demonstrates some capacity to reject past destinations
of her own accord, though she cannot as yet propose future ones on
the strength of her own will. However, given a purpose, she is persis-
tent in working to achieve it. She does finally get into the garden
where the croquet match is being held.
At the start of “The Queen’s Croquet-Ground” Alice exhibits
increased self-confidence and unwillingness to defer to others.
Though she is polite to the Queen, she remarks to herself, “‘They’re
only a pack of cards, after all. I needn’t be afraid of them!’” She
disclaims responsibility for the situation in which she has merely
happened to become involved, the dilemma of the three spade-
card gardeners. And when the Queen attempts to enforce her
responsibility by punishing her, Alice silences the Queen with a
“‘Nonsense.’” Apparently she is allowed to get away with this imper-
tinence because she is “only a child,” no serious threat to the card
world (W, pp. 108–109).
Alice is on no one’s side now, but only standing up for herself.
She is anything but deferential, laughing to hear that the Duchess has
boxed the Queen’s ears, and without pity at learning of the Duchess’s
scheduled execution for that act (W, p. 111).
The croquet game itself typifies the games of Wonderland. It
frustrates Alice because of the maddening absence of fixity in rules
or terms: “‘I don’t think they play at all fairly,’ Alice began, in rather
a complaining tone, ‘and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear
oneself speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular: at
least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how
confusing it is all the things being alive: for instance, there’s the arch
I’ve got to go through next walking about at the other end of the
18 Lewis Carroll

ground—and I should have croqueted the Queen’s hedgehog just now,

only it ran away when it saw mine coming!’” (W, p. 113). The rules are
not only confusing or altogether lacking, but self-contradictory. For
example, as far as Alice can see, there is no waiting for turns, and still
the Queen decrees execution for missing a turn (W, pp. 112, 115). The
coherence essential to a game is impossible.
Since the pieces, or terms, in the game are alive and ever-trans-
forming or escaping, they cannot contribute the necessary definition
and reliability. The flamingos keep twisting temperamentally about,
the hedgehogs run off to fight with each other, and the soldiers
walk away from their positions as arches to remove participants
condemned by the Queen. Because of the complete devastation of
the playing field and the players, the game can never be concluded
(W, p. 124).
The soldier/arches provide a good example of the definition of
terms by attributes and the interrelation of terms and rules in a game.
When they are arches they are defined according to a rule of relation-
ship to the rest of the game: fixed positions through which the balls
must be struck in a certain sequence in order to win. But when they
are soldiers they are defined according to the rule: those who do the
Queen’s bidding and who arrest those she accuses.
For similar fluctuations in terms according to their attributes,
and consequent fluctuations in the rules governing them, we may
remember Alice as little girl/serpent, the fish/footman, the baby/pig.
It doesn’t matter to the Pigeon what Alice is per se, but only what
her attributes are. Both a serpent and a little girl “eat eggs”; therefore
in the Pigeon’s mind they are equivalent terms, both governed by
an obnoxious rule of behavior (W, pp. 76–77). Judging by his face,
Alice would have taken the creature she meets outside the Duchess’s
door to be a fish (presumably he should act according to fish rules),
but since he is in livery, she defines him as a footman, and expects
him to act accordingly (W, pp. 79–80). As a baby, the creature in
Alice’s arms should not exhibit the attributes of “grunting,” but as
a pig it displays this attribute quite properly and according to rule
(W, p. 87).
Wonderland is a game world which ostensibly values definition
and clarity, although it signally fails to achieve these. The Duchess
congratulates Alice for her clear way of putting things (in particular,
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 19

her ability to distinguish between mustard and a bird, something

that is beyond the Duchess’s power). The Duchess’s own precept is
“Be what you would seem to be,” but she, like other Wonderland
characters, has a fatal penchant for confusion, with the result of total
incoherence: “‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what
it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was
not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them
to be otherwise’” (W, pp. 121–122).
Terms and rules must remain constant if one is to know what
universe one is dealing with. The croquet game does not meet this
criterion. Two of the basic requirements for play as formulated in
game theory are lacking: (1) Alice is not cognizant of all the terms
and rules, and (2) therefore she cannot play rationally (maximize
utility or undertake to play a winning strategy). “Alice soon came to
the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed” (W, p. 112).
And though it is impossible to play correctly, the penalty is great for a
false move, as the whole spirit of this game is one of capital risk. Alice
is getting uneasy. Though she had previously displayed some bravado
in saying “Nonsense” to the Queen and recalling that she needn’t
fear mere cards, she is being ordered about more than ever in her life
before, and she fears a dispute with the Queen, for then, “‘What would
become of me?’” (W, pp. 125, 112).
Wonderland is a competitive, have and have-not world, as in the
Duchess’s moral: “The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.”
What makes the world go round?—minding one’s own business,
which, as far as the Duchess is concerned, amounts to the same thing
as love (W, pp. 122, 120–121). For her, love means self-love.
Because she is dealing with such a world, Alice feels it politic to
flatter the Queen; what she says has a certain sinister accuracy, namely,
the Queen is so likely to win, it’s hardly worth finishing the game (W,
p. 114). The Queen may not be able to win at croquet, strictly speaking,
through lack of opponents to finish up (unless perhaps they may be
considered to forfeit upon disappearing from the game). But she may
be playing at something simpler: another version of Fury and the
Mouse. (Carroll describes the Red Queen of Looking-Glass in “‘Alice’
on the Stage” as “a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion—a
blind and aimless Fury,” and the Queen of Hearts is not far different.)
It is no wonder that Alice chooses to escape this game. The threat of
20 Lewis Carroll

losing one’s head is literally and according to the common idiom the
threat of losing all control.3
In spite of herself, Alice is still eager enough to believe that the
systems she encounters will be decipherable, rational. Her reasoning
goes something as follows: it is true, the creatures assume authority
over me in the most galling manner and order me about as if I were at
lessons, but if I can figure out by observation (certainly no one bothers
to clue me in) the terms and rules by which the system operates, then
when I’m in power (I’m only a little girl now, but bound to grow up
someday), I’ll be able to employ them according to my will, in effect,
enjoy the pleasures of mastery.
It is typical of Alice to be very “much pleased at having found
out a new kind of rule.” “‘Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people
hot-tempered . . . and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile
that makes them bitter—and—and barley sugar and such things that
make children sweet-tempered’” (W, pp. 119–120). Alice plans how
she will manage things when she’s a Duchess.
So Alice’s faith in rational games persists. Her quickness in
figuring out a sequence according to implied rules and her concern
for what happens at the end are demonstrated by her questioning
of the Mock Turtle, who did ten hours of lessons the first day, nine
the second, and so on (which is why they are called lessons). Alice
finds this a curious plan and is intrigued enough to figure that “‘the
eleventh day must have been a holiday?’” “‘And how did you manage
on the twelfth?’” But the Mock Turtle, like the Mad Hatter, turns
the conversation, frustrating Alice of a definite stop rule and clear
outcome (W, p. 130).
Of special interest about the Lobster Quadrille is that it is specifi-
cally identified as a game (W, pp. 130–131). This emphasizes again
the basic circularity, the real pointlessness of play, which like a dance
is primitively more of a here-we-go-round-and-round activity than
a getting-somewhere activity, though as we have seen, competitive
games parade a certain point-X to point-Y linearity, where in practical
terms point Y is not anymore somewhere than point X except that
one player gets there first. And the only practicality in games is that of
the pleasure they produce, the pleasure of final victory in a game nine
times out of ten replacing the pleasure of step-by-step in a dance. Alice
does not have much sympathy for the latter; it makes her nervous.
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 21

The Gryphon and Mock Turtle dance “round and round Alice”
while they sing their very symmetrical refrain:

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,

Will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,
Won’t you join the dance?

But she has a strongly developed time and direction sense and really
dislikes the infinity threatened by such circularity. She feels “very glad
that it was over at last” (W, pp. 133–135).
Alice had still been allowing herself to be reprimanded for
“nonsense” in Chapter X, but in Chapter XI she begins to show a
good deal less docility under abuse.
She is pleased with herself for being able to identify all the figures
at the trial, for example, the judge because he has a wig (again, a term
defined by its attribute with an implied rule of proper function). She
is pleased because she knows the word “jurors.” The jurors themselves,
on the other hand, are so bad at clear definition of terms that they are
afraid of forgetting their own names. This makes Alice indignant, and
she calls them “stupid things.” She cannot bear the jurors’ incapacity;
a squeaking pencil is the last straw. So she takes away the offending
object. Alice is becoming self-assured and bold (W, pp. 144–145).
The White Rabbit is a sort of master of ceremonies and tries to
insist on the rules to be observed in court, for instance, by giving the
King whispered instructions. He is quite ineffectual, but Alice is still
curious to see what will come of the proceedings. Apparently, “‘though
they haven’t much evidence yet,’” she thinks they might manage it in
the long run (W, pp. 146, 151–152).
Alice is growing. Increase in size correlates with increase in bold-
ness. Always before a food or drink had caused her to grow; this time
she is in some sense doing it on her own. Whereas in the past, for
example in the White Rabbit’s house, large size had not mitigated an
irrational timidity, now it represents and reinforces a larger courage.
True, she is at first still meek: “‘I can’t help it [if ] I’m growing.’”
But then more boldly she answers the Dormouse—“‘Don’t talk
nonsense’”—about having no right to grow. Alice is simply assuming
more rights. With her increased power she is no longer trapped in any
22 Lewis Carroll

situation where she might not choose to remain. It would no longer

be a matter of escape for her to leave, but of simply walking out.
Nevertheless, she decides to stay (W, pp. 147–148).
The last chapter shows Alice in her final transformation from
assiduous and obedient aspirant, intent on working her way up
from the bottom toward command of the system; now she is rebel
and overthrower of that system. Though surprised, she is willing to
respond to the call to give evidence, and she is dismayed, apologetic,
at accidentally upsetting the jurybox; she is even solicitous for the
jurymen’s lives. She obeys the King’s order to put them back in their
places, and yet observes that it wouldn’t much matter whether they
went in feet or head first. Likewise, she remarks, “‘It doesn’t matter a
bit’” which way the jury writes down a piece of evidence, as both are
equally meaningless (W, pp. 153–156).
Alice’s increasing rebelliousness climaxes in actual revolt when
“Rule Forty-two” is invoked against her: “All persons more than a mile
high to leave the court.” She refuses to go for three reasons: (1) she is
not a mile high, not in the category of those to whom the rule might
apply and hence not bound by it; (2) it is not a regular rule, but just
invented, hence not binding; (3) “‘I shan’t go, at any rate.’” The third
is perhaps the most significant reason, as it implies: even if your game
were coherent and consistent, which it isn’t, I shouldn’t have to play it
unless I chose, which I don’t (W, p. 156).
This time Alice does not simply remove herself from the game,
which would leave the game itself intact. Instead she actively disrupts
it. She declares the evidence meaningless (because of the ambiguity
and confusion of terms caused by vague pronoun reference in the
poem attributed to the Knave of Hearts), and she refuses to hold her
tongue (W, pp. 158–159). Alice is now so large that she is completely
unafraid, and a palpable threat to the court. She challenges it with
a loud “‘Stuff and Nonsense,’” and declares for the second time, but
now out loud rather than harmlessly to herself, “‘Who cares for
you. . . . You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’” (W, p. 161). The game
must destroy or evict her, for it cannot maintain itself in the disruptive
presence of a spoilsport.4 This is what Alice has learned to be, through
her lessons in frustration and her increasing awareness of the founda-
tion of play systems upon pure will. Alice is beginning to recognize
the rudiments of a Fury-and-the-Mouse model—in the unilateral
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 23

proclamations of the Dodo, in the outrageous answerless riddles

of the Mad Hatter, in the shifting terms and rules of a capital-risk
croquet that renders the Queen of Hearts sure to win, and now in a
court that invents laws as it goes, and against Alice. If terms, rules, and
whole games are founded upon fiat—why not hers as well as theirs?
Volition remains to Alice; she is not finally a Mouse.
But the end of Wonderland is difficult to interpret. Does Alice
succeed in destroying the game? Or does it succeed in evicting her, by
ejecting her from her dream? She challenges the cards, but it is they
who fly at her (W, p. 161). I tend toward the former interpretation. As
Piaget points out, play and dream are related, as they are both the ego’s
strategies of incorporating reality. But more control is maintained in
play, for one remains aware of its voluntary status and the fact that one
can end it when one chooses. In a dream the nightmare might very
well continue indefinitely, for one cannot will to wake up.5 However,
one can will not to play, even in a dream, and thus end the nightmare,
if it consists of a game world, by ending the game. This is what Alice
does; hers is the initiative. I agree in a certain sense with Empson’s
statement that “the triumphant close of Wonderland is that she [Alice]
has outgrown her fancies and can afford to wake and despise them,”
except that I would add that it is the choosing not to play others’ mad
games that wakes her.6
The end is a triumph insofar as Alice extricates herself from the
game world altogether. To a true spoilsport, none of the rules of the
game apply, even the rule, a common insurance of the inviolability
of parlor games, which says that willful displacement of the pieces
forfeits the game.7 One must be very strong-minded to abolish the
nagging compulsion of such a rule. But Alice has developed into a
very strong-minded little girl.

Notes
1. Cf. Harry Levin, “Wonderland Revisited,” Kenyon Review,
XXVII (Autumn 1965), 595: “No novelist has identified more
intimately with the point of view of his heroine.”
2. See also John Mackay Shaw, The Parodies of Lewis Carroll and
Their Originals, catalog of an exhibition with notes (Florida
State University, 1960).
24 Lewis Carroll

3. Carroll, “‘Alice’ on the Stage,” from The Theatre (April 1887),

rprt. in Collingwood, ed., Diversions and Digressions, p. 171; see
Henkle, “Comedies of Liberation,” p. 72, and Greenacre, Swift
and Carroll, pp. 243–244.
4. See Huizinga, Homo Ludens, p. 11: “The spoil-sport shatters
the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals
the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had
temporarily shut himself with others.” This is why he is much
less tolerated by other players even than the cheat.
5. Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation, Chap. 7, especially pp. 179f.
6. Empson, p. 270.
7. See Hoyle’s Games, rev. by R. F. Foster (New York, 1926),
p. 178. The forfeiture rule is sometimes understood, sometimes
made explicit, as in this edition.
 Beowulf
,.
“Beowulf ”
by W. P. Ker,
in Epic and Romance:
Essays on Medieval Literature (1908)

Introduction
In Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature
(1897), Scottish critic W.P. Ker traces the romance tale to
the “Teutonic Epic” journey described in the Beowulf poem.
Arguing for Beowulf’s aesthetic unity while pointing out
what he sees as its shortcomings, Ker cites the Odyssey
and the Iliad as epic journeys that symbolize the human
experience. Similarly, Ker finds that Beowulf is indeed an
epic hero and the Beowulf poem a testimony to the values—
both pre- and post-Christian—found in later literary versions
of the hero’s journey. Thus, Beowulf’s journey reflects the
moral concerns of a war-waging age and looks forward to
the way the romance literature that follows this age builds
upon them.

Ker, W. P. “Beowulf ” Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature. London:

Macmillan, 1908. 158–75.

25
26 Beowulf

The poem of Beowulf has been sorely tried; critics have long been
at work on the body of it, to discover how it is made. It gives many
openings for theories of agglutination and adulteration. Many
things in it are plainly incongruous. The pedigree of Grendel is not
authentic; the Christian sentiments and morals are not in keeping
with the heroic or the mythical substance of the poem; the conduct
of the narrative is not always clear or easy to follow. These difficul-
ties and contradictions have to be explained; the composition of
the poem has to be analysed; what is old has to be separated from
what is new and adventitious; and the various senses and degrees
of “old” and “new” have to be determined, in the criticism of the
poem. With all this, however, the poem continues to possess at
least an apparent and external unity. It is an extant book, whatever
the history of its composition may have been; the book of the
adventures of Beowulf, written out fair by two scribes in the tenth
century; an epic poem, with a prologue at the beginning, and a
judgment pronounced on the life of the hero at the end; a single
book, considered as such by its transcribers, and making a claim to
be so considered.
Before any process of disintegration is begun, this claim should
be taken into account; the poem deserves to be appreciated as it
stands. Whatever may be the secrets of its authorship, it exists as
a single continuous narrative poem; and whatever its faults may
be, it holds a position by itself, and a place of some honour, as the
one extant poem of considerable length in the group to which it
belongs. It has a meaning and value apart from the questions of its
origin and its mode of production. Its present value as a poem is not
affected by proofs or arguments regarding the way in which it may
have been patched or edited. The patchwork theory has no power
to make new faults in the poem; it can only point out what faults
exist, and draw inferences from them. It does not take away from
any dignity the book may possess in its present form, that it has been
subjected to the same kind of examination as the Iliad. The poem
may be reviewed as it stands, in order to find out what sort of thing
passed for heroic poetry with the English at the time the present
copy of the poem was written. However the result was obtained,
Beowulf is, at any rate, the specimen by which the Teutonic epic
poetry must be judged. It is the largest monument extant. There is
 Beowulf 27

nothing beyond it, in that kind, in respect of size and completeness.

If the old Teutonic epic is judged to have failed, it must be because
Beowulf is a failure.
Taking the most cursory view of the story of Beowulf, it is easy to
recognise that the unity of the plot is not like the unity of the Iliad
or the Odyssey. One is inclined at first to reckon Beowulf along with
those epics of which Aristotle speaks, the Heracleids and Theseids, the
authors of which “imagined that because Heracles was one person the
story of his life could not fail to have unity.”1
It is impossible to reduce the poem of Beowulf to the scale of
Aristotle’s Odyssey without revealing the faults of structure in the
English poem:—

A man in want of work goes abroad to the house of a certain

king troubled by Harpies, and having accomplished the
purification of the house returns home with honour. Long
afterwards, having become king in his own country, he kills a
dragon, but is at the same time choked by the venom of it. His
people lament for him and build his tomb.

Aristotle made a summary of the Homeric poem, because he

wished to show how simple its construction really was, apart from
the episodes. It is impossible, by any process of reduction and simpli-
fication, to get rid of the duality in Beowulf. It has many episodes,
quite consistent with a general unity of action, but there is some-
thing more than episodes, there is a sequel. It is as if to the Odyssey
there had been added some later books telling in full of the old age
of Odysseus, far from the sea, and his death at the hands of his son
Telegonus. The adventure with the dragon is separate from the earlier
adventures. It is only connected with them because the same person
is involved in both.
It is plain from Aristotle’s words that the Iliad and the Odyssey
were in this, as in all respects, above and beyond the other Greek
epics known to Aristotle. Homer had not to wait for Beowulf to
serve as a foil to his excellence. That was provided in the other epic
poems of Greece, in the cycle of Troy, in the epic stories of Theseus
and Heracles. It seems probable that the poem of Beowulf may be at
least as well knit as the Little Iliad, the Greek cyclic poem of which
28 Beowulf

Aristotle names the principal incidents, contrasting its variety with

the simplicity of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Indeed it is clear that the plan of Beowulf might easily have been
much worse, that is, more lax and diffuse, than it is. This meagre
amount of praise will be allowed by the most grudging critics, if they
will only think of the masses of French epic, and imagine the extent to
which a French company of poets might have prolonged the narrative
of the hero’s life—the Enfances, the Chevalerie—before reaching the
Death of Beowulf.
At line 2200 in Beowulf comes the long interval of time, the
fifty years between the adventure at Heorot and the fight between
Beowulf and the dragon. Two thousand lines are given to the first
story, a thousand to the Death of Beowulf. Two thousand lines are
occupied with the narrative of Beowulf ’s expedition, his voyage to
Denmark, his fight with Grendel and Grendel’s mother, his return
to the land of the Gauts and his report of the whole matter to King
Hygelac. In this part of the poem, taken by itself, there is no defect
of unity. The action is one, with different parts all easily and natu-
rally included between the first voyage and the return. It is ampli-
fied and complicated with details, but none of these introduce any
new main interests. Beowulf is not like the Heracleids and Theseids. It
transgresses the limits of the Homeric unity, by adding a sequel; but
for all that it is not a mere string of adventures, like the bad epic in
Horace’s Art of Poetry, or the innocent plays described by Sir Philip
Sidney and Cervantes. A third of the whole poem is detached, a
separate adventure. The first two-thirds taken by themselves form
a complete poem, with a single action; while, in the orthodox epic
manner, various allusions and explanations are introduced regarding
the past history of the personages involved, and the history of other
people famous in tradition. The adventure at Heorot, taken by itself,
would pass the scrutiny of Aristotle or Horace, as far as concerns the
lines of its composition.
There is variety in it, but the variety is kept in order and not
allowed to interfere or compete with the main story. The past history
is disclosed, and the subordinate novels are interpolated, as in the
Odyssey, in the course of an evening’s conversation in hall, or in
some other interval in the action. In the introduction of accessory
matter, standing in different degrees of relevance to the main plot,
 Beowulf 29

the practice of Beowulf is not essentially different from that of clas-

sical epic.
In the Iliad we are allowed to catch something of the story of the
old time before Agamemnon,—the war of Thebes, Lycurgus, Jason,
Heracles,—and even of things less widely notable, less of a concern to
the world than the voyage of Argo, such as, for instance, the business
of Nestor in his youth. In Beowulf, in a similar way, the inexhaustible
world outside the story is partly represented by means of allusions
and digressions. The tragedy of Finnesburh is sung by the harper, and
his song is reported at some length, not merely referred to in passing.
The stories of Thrytho, of Heremod, of Sigemund the Waelsing and
Fitela his son (Sigmund and Sinfiotli), are introduced like the stories
of Lycurgus or of Jason in Homer. They are illustrations of the action,
taken from other cycles. The fortunes of the Danish and Gautish
kings, the fall of Hygelac, the feuds with Sweden, these matters come
into closer relation with the story. They are not so much illustrations
taken in from without, as points of attachment between the history of
Beowulf and the untold history all round it, the history of the persons
concerned, along with Beowulf himself, in the vicissitudes of the
Danish and Gautish kingdoms.
In the fragments of Waldere, also, there are allusions to other
stories. In Waldere there has been lost a poem much longer and
fuller than the Lay of Hildebrand, or any of the poems of the “Elder
Edda”—a poem more like Beowulf than any of those now extant.
The references to Weland, to Widia Weland’s son, to Hama and
Theodoric, are of the same sort as the references in Beowulf to the
story of Froda and Ingeld, or the references in the Iliad to the adven-
tures of Tydeus.
In the episodic passages of Beowulf there are, curiously, the same
degrees of relevance as in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Some of them are necessary to the proper fulness of the story,
though not essential parts of the plot. Such are the references to
Beowulf ’s swimming-match; and such, in the Odyssey, is the tale told
to Alcinous.
The allusions to the wars of Hygelac have the same value as the
references in the Iliad and the Odyssey to such portions of the tale
of Troy, and of the return of the Greek lords, as are not immediately
connected with the anger of Achilles, or the return of Odysseus. The
30 Beowulf

tale of Finnesburh in Beowulf is purely an interlude, as much as the

ballad of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey.
Many of the references to other legends in the Iliad are illustra-
tive and comparative, like the passages about Heremod or Thrytho in
Beowulf. “Ares suffered when Otus and Ephialtes kept him in a brazen
vat, Hera suffered and Hades suffered, and were shot with the arrows
of the son of Amphitryon” (Il. v. 385). The long parenthetical story of
Heracles in a speech of Agamemnon (Il. xx. 98) has the same irrel-
evance of association, and has incurred the same critical suspicions,
as the contrast of Hygd and Thrytho, a fairly long passage out of a
wholly different story, introduced in Beowulf on the very slightest of
suggestions.
Thus in Beowulf and in the Homeric poems there are episodes that
are strictly relevant and consistent, filling up the epic plan, opening out
the perspective of the story; also episodes that without being strictly
relevant are rightly proportioned and subordinated, like the interlude
of Finnesburh, decoration added to the structure, but not overloading
it, nor interfering with the design; and, thirdly, episodes that seem to
be irrelevant, and may possibly be interpolations. All these kinds have
the effect of increasing the mass as well as the variety of the work, and
they give to Beowulf the character of a poem which, in dealing with
one action out of an heroic cycle, is able, by the way, to hint at and
partially represent a great number of other stories.
It is not in the episodes alone that Beowulf has an advantage over
the shorter and more summary poems. The frequent episodes are only
part of the general liberality of the narrative.
The narrative is far more cramped than in Homer; but when
compared with the short method of the Northern poems, not to speak
of the ballads, it comes out as itself Homeric by contrast. It succeeds
in representing pretty fully and continuously, not by mere allusions
and implications, certain portions of heroic life and action. The prin-
cipal actions in Beowulf are curiously trivial, taken by themselves. All
around them are the rumours of great heroic and tragic events, and
the scene and the personages are heroic and magnificent. But the
plot in itself has no very great poetical value; as compared with the
tragic themes of the Niblung legend, with the tale of Finnesburh,
or even with the historical seriousness of the Maldon poem, it lacks
weight. The largest of the extant poems of this school has the least
 Beowulf 31

important subject-matter; while things essentially and in the abstract

more important, like the tragedy of Froda and Ingeld, are thrust away
into the corners of the poem.
In the killing of a monster like Grendel, or in the killing of a
dragon, there is nothing particularly interesting; no complication to
make a fit subject for epic. Beowulf is defective from the first in respect
of plot.
The story of Grendel and his mother is one that has been told
in myriads of ways; there is nothing commoner, except dragons. The
killing of dragons and other monsters is the regular occupation of the
heroes of old wives’ tales; and it is difficult to give individuality or epic
dignity to commonplaces of this sort. This, however, is accomplished
in the poem of Beowulf. Nothing can make the story of Grendel
dramatic like the story of Waldere or of Finnesburh. But the poet has,
at any rate, in connexion with this simple theme, given a rendering,
consistent, adequate, and well-proportioned, of certain aspects of life
and certain representative characters in an heroic age.
The characters in Beowulf are not much more than types; not
much more clearly individual than the persons of a comedy of
Terence. In the shorter Northern poems there are the characters of
Brynhild and Gudrun; there is nothing in Beowulf to compare with
them, although in Beowulf the personages are consistent with them-
selves, and intelligible.
Hrothgar is the generous king whose qualities were in Northern
history transferred to his nephew Hrothulf (Hrolf Kraki), the type of
peaceful strength, a man of war living quietly in the intervals of war.
Beowulf is like him in magnanimity, but his character is less
uniform. He is not one of the more cruel adventurers, like Starkad
in the myth, or some of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is
an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his
disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in
the fairy stories. “They said that he was slack.” Though he does not
swagger like a Berserk, nor “gab” like the Paladins of Charlemagne,
he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic
sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the
details of its rhetoric, to the common affection of Anglo-Saxon poetry
for the elegiac mood; but the softer passages are not out of keeping
with the wilder moments of Beowulf, and they add greatly to the
32 Beowulf

interest of his character. He is more variable, more dramatic, than the

king and queen of the Danes, or any of the secondary personages.
Wealhtheo, the queen, represents the poetical idea of a noble lady.
There is nothing complex or strongly dramatic in her character.
Hunferth, the envious man, brought in as a foil to Beowulf, is not
caricatured or exaggerated. His sourness is that of a critic and a politi-
cian, disinclined to accept newcomers on their own valuation. He is
not a figure of envy in a moral allegory.
In the latter part of the poem it is impossible to find in the char-
acter of Wiglaf more than the general and abstract qualities of the
“loyal servitor.”
Yet all those abstract and typical characters are introduced in such
a way as to complete and fill up the picture. The general impression
is one of variety and complexity, though the elements of it are simple
enough.
With a plot like that of Beowulf it might seem that there was
danger of a lapse from the more serious kind of heroic composition
into a more trivial kind. Certainly there is nothing in the plain story
to give much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to fascinate or
tempt a poet with a story made to his hand.
The plot of Beowulf is not more serious than that of a thou-
sand easy-going romances of chivalry, and of fairy tales beyond all
number.
The strength of what may be called an epic tradition is shown
in the superiority of Beowulf to the temptations of cheap romantic
commonplace. Beowulf, the hero, is, after all, something different
from the giant-killer of popular stories, the dragonslayer of the
romantic schools. It is the virtue and the triumph of the poet of
Beowulf that when all is done the characters of the poem remain
distinct in the memory, that the thoughts and sentiments of the poem
are remembered as significant, in a way that is not the way of the
common romance. Although the incidents that take up the principal
part of the scene of Beowulf are among the commonest in popular
stories, it is impossible to mistake the poem for one of the ordinary
tales of terror and wonder. The essential part of the poem is the drama
of characters; though the plot happens to be such that the characters
are never made to undergo a tragic ordeal like that of so many of the
other Teutonic stories. It is not incorrect to say of the poem of Beowulf
 Beowulf 33

that the main story is really less important to the imagination than
the accessories by which the characters are defined and distinguished.
It is the defect of the poem this should be so. There is a constitutional
weakness in it.
Although the two stories of Beowulf are both commonplace,
there is a difference between the story of Grendel and the story of
the dragon.
The story of the dragon is more of a commonplace than the other.
Almost every one of any distinction, and many quite ordinary people
in certain periods of history have killed dragons; from Hercules and
Bellerophon to Gawain, who, on different occasions, narrowly escaped
the fate of Beowulf; from Harald Hardrada (who killed two at least)
to More of More Hall who killed the dragon of Wantley.
The latter part of Beowulf is a tissue of commonplaces of every
kind: the dragon and its treasure; the devastation of the land; the
hero against the dragon; the defection of his companions; the loyalty
of one of them; the fight with the dragon; the dragon killed, and the
hero dying from the flame and the venom of it; these are common-
places of the story, and in addition to these there are commonplaces
of sentiment, the old theme of this transitory life that “fareth as
a fantasy,” the lament for the glory passed away; and the equally
common theme of loyalty and treason in contrast. Everything is
commonplace, while everything is also magnificent in its way, and
set forth in the right epic style, with elegiac passages here and
there. Everything is commonplace except the allusions to matters of
historical tradition, such as the death of Ongentheow, the death of
Hygelac. With these exceptions, there is nothing in the latter part of
Beowulf that might not have been taken at almost any time from the
common stock of fables and appropriate sentiments, familiar to every
maker or hearer of poetry from the days of the English conquest of
Britain, and long before that. It is not to be denied that the common-
places here are handled with some discretion; though commonplace,
they are not mean or dull.2
The story of Grendel and his mother is also common, but not
as common as the dragon. The function of this story is considerably
different from the other, and the class to which it belongs is differently
distributed in literature. Both are stories of the killing of monsters,
both belong naturally to legends of heroes like Theseus or Hercules.
34 Beowulf

But for literature there is this difference between them, that dragons
belong more appropriately to the more fantastic kinds of narrative,
while stories of the deliverance of a house from a pestilent goblin are
much more capable of sober treatment and verisimilitude. Dragons are
more easily distinguished and set aside as fabulous monsters than is
the family of Grendel. Thus the story of Grendel is much better fitted
than the dragon story for a composition like Beowulf, which includes
a considerable amount of the detail of common experience and ordi-
nary life. Dragons are easily scared from the neighbourhood of sober
experience; they have to be looked for in the mountains and caverns of
romance or fable. Whereas Grendel remains a possibility in the middle
of common life, long after the last dragon has been disposed of.
The people who tell fairy stories like the Well of the World’s End,
the Knight of the Red Shield, the Castle East o’ the Sun and West o’ the
Moon, have no belief, have neither belief nor disbelief, in the adven-
tures of them. But the same people have other stories of which they
take a different view, stories of wonderful things more near to their
own experience. Many a man to whom the Well of the World’s End is
an idea, a fancy, has in his mind a story like that of Grendel which
he believes, which makes him afraid. The bogle that comes to a house
at night and throttles the goodman is a creature more hardy than
the dragon, and more persevering. Stories like that of Beowulf and
Grendel are to be found along with other popular stories in collec-
tions; but they are to be distinguished from them. There are popular
heroes of tradition to this day who are called to do for lonely houses
the service done by Beowulf for the house of Hrothgar.
Peer Gynt (not Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, who is sophisticated, but the
original Peter) is a lonely deer-stalker on the fells, who is asked by his
neighbour to come and keep his house for him, which is infested with
trolls. Peer Gynt clears them out,3 and goes back to his deer-stalking.
The story is plainly one that touches the facts of life more nearly than
stories of Shortshanks or the Blue Belt. The trolls are a possibility.
The story of Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig is another of the
same sort.4 It is not, like the Battle of the Birds or Conal Gulban, a
thing of pure fantasy. It is a story that may pass for true when the
others have lost everything but their pure imaginative value as stories.
Here, again, in the West Highlands, the champion is called upon like
Beowulf and Peer Gynt to save his neighbours from a warlock. And it
 Beowulf 35

is matter of history that Bishop Gudmund Arason of Holar in Iceland

had to suppress a creature with a seal’s head, Selkolla, that played the
game of Grendel.5
There are people, no doubt, for whom Peer Gynt and the trolls,
Uistean Mor and the warlock, even Selkolla that Bishop Gudmund
killed, are as impossible as the dragon in the end of the poem of
Beowulf. But it is certain that stories like those of Grendel are
commonly believed in many places where dragons are extinct. The
story of Beowulf and Grendel is not wildly fantastic or improb-
able; it agrees with the conditions of real life, as they have been
commonly understood at all times except those of peculiar enlight-
enment and rationalism. It is not to be compared with the Phaeacian
stories of the adventures of Odysseus. Those stories in the Odyssey
are plainly and intentionally in a different order of imagination
from the story of the killing of the suitors. They are pure romance,
and if any hearer of the Odyssey in ancient times was led to go in
search of the island of Calypso, he might come back with the same
confession as the seeker for the wonders of Broceliande,—fol i alai.
But there are other wonderful things in the Iliad and the Odyssey
which are equally improbable to the modern rationalist and sceptic;
yet by no means of the same kind of wonder as Calypso or the
Sirens. Probably few of the earliest hearers of the Odyssey thought
of the Sirens or of Calypso as anywhere near them, while many of
them must have had their grandmothers’ testimony for things like
the portents before the death of the suitors. Grendel in the poem
of Beowulf is in the same order of existence as these portents. If
they are superstitions, they are among the most persistent; and
they are superstitions, rather than creatures of romance. The fight
with Grendel is not of the same kind of adventure as Sigurd at the
hedge of flame, or Svipdag at the enchanted castle. And the episode
of Grendel’s mother is further from matter of fact than the story
of Grendel himself. The description of the desolate water is justly
recognised as one of the masterpieces of the old English poetry; it
deserves all that has been said of it as a passage of romance in the
middle of epic. Beowulf ’s descent under the water, his fight with the
warlock’s mother, the darkness of that “sea dingle,” the light of the
mysterious sword, all this, if less admirably worked out than the first
description of the dolorous mere, is quite as far from Heorot and
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ni grever. Lors descendit le page, et fit tant que son maître fut relevé
et remonté: ce beau service lui fit-il. Et sachez que le sire Jean de
Senseilles ne revint mie arrière par le chemin qu'il avoit fait; et aussi,
au voir dire, il n'eût pu.

Comment ceux de la bataille au prince de Galles envoyèrent

au roi d'Angleterre pour avoir secours; et comment le roi
leur répondit.
Cette bataille, faite ce samedi, entre la Broye et Crécy, fut moult
félonneuse et très horrible; et y advinrent plusieurs grands faits
d'armes qui ne vinrent mie tous à connoissance; car quand la
bataille commença il étoit jà moult tard. Ce greva plus les François
que autre chose, car plusieurs gens d'armes, chevaliers et écuyers,
sur la nuit, perdoient leurs maîtres et leurs seigneurs: si vaucroient
parmi les champs et s'embattoient souvent, à petite ordonnance,
entre les Anglois, où tantôt ils étoient envahis et occis, ni nul étoit
pris à rançon ni à merci, car entre eux ils l'avoient ainsi au matin
ordonné, pour le grand nombre de peuple dont ils étoient informés
qui les suivoit. Le comte Louis de Blois, neveu du roi Philippe et du
comte d'Alençon, s'en vint avec ses gens, dessous sa bannière,
combattre aux Anglois, et là se porta-t-il moult vaillamment, et aussi
fit le duc de Lorraine. Et dirent les plusieurs que si la bataille eût
aussi bien été commencée au matin qu'elle fut sur le vespre, il y eût
eu entre les François plusieurs grands recouvrances et grands
appertises d'armes, qui point n'y furent. Si y eut aucuns chevaliers et
écuyers françois et de leur côté, tant Allemands comme Savoisiens,
qui par force d'armes rompirent la bataille des archers du prince, et
vinrent jusques aux gens d'armes combattre aux épées, main à
main, moult vaillamment, et là eut fait plusieurs grands appertises
d'armes; et y furent, du côté des Anglois, très bons chevaliers,
messire Regnault de Cobehen et messire Jean Chandos; et aussi
furent plusieurs autres, lesquels je ne puis mie tous nommer, car là
de lès le prince étoit toute la fleur de chevalerie d'Angleterre.
Et adonc le comte de Norhantonne et le comte d'Arondel, qui
gouvernoient la seconde bataille et se tenoient sur aile, vinrent
rafraîchir la bataille dudit prince; et bien en étoit besoin, car
autrement elle eût eu à faire; et pour le péril où ceux qui
gouvernoient et servoient le prince se véoient, ils envoyèrent un
chevalier de leur conroi devers le roi d'Angleterre, qui se tenoit plus
à mont sur la motte d'un moulin à vent, pour avoir aide.
Si dit le chevalier, quand il fut venu jusques au roi: «Monseigneur, le
comte de Warvich, le comte de Kenfort et messire Regnault de
Cobehen, qui sont de lès le prince votre fils, ont grandement à faire,
et les combattent les François moult aigrement; pourquoi ils vous
prient que vous et votre bataille les veniez conforter et aider à ôter
de ce péril; car si cet effort monteplie et s'efforce ainsi, ils se
doutent que votre fils n'ait beaucoup à faire.» Lors répondit le roi, et
demanda au chevalier, qui s'appeloit messire Thomas de Norvich:
«Messire Thomas, mon fils est-il mort, ou aterré, ou si blessé qu'il ne
se puisse aider?» Cil répondit: «Nennin, monseigneur, si Dieu plaît;
mais il est en dur parti d'armes; si auroit bien mestier de votre
aide.»—«Messire Thomas, dit le roi, or retournez devers lui et devers
ceux qui ci vous ont envoyé, et leur dites, de par moi, qu'ils ne
m'envoient mes huy requerre, pour aventure qui leur avienne, tant
que mon fils soit en vie; et leur dites que je leur mande qu'ils
laissent à l'enfant gagner ses éperons, car je veux, si Dieu l'a
ordonné, que la journée soit sienne, et que l'honneur lui en demeure
et à ceux en quelle charge je l'ai baillé.» Sur ces paroles retourna le
chevalier à ses maîtres, et leur recorda tout ce que vous avez ouï;
laquelle réponse les encouragea grandement, et se reprirent en eux-
mêmes de ce qu'ils l'avoient là envoyé: si furent meilleurs chevaliers
que devant; et y firent plusieurs grands appertises d'armes, ainsi
qu'il apparut, car la place leur demeura à leur honneur.

Comment le comte de Harecourt, le comte d'Alençon, le

comte de Flandre, le comte de Blois, le duc de Lorraine
 et plusieurs autres grands seigneurs furent déconfits et
morts.
On doit bien croire et supposer que là où il y avoit tant de vaillans
hommes et si grand multitude de peuple, et où tant et tel foison de
la partie des François en demeurèrent sur la place, qu'il y eut fait ce
soir plusieurs grands appertises d'armes, qui ne vinrent mie toutes à
connoissance. Il est bien vrai que messire Godefroy de Harecourt,
qui étoit de lès le prince et en sa bataille, eut volontiers mis peine et
entendu à ce que le comte de Harecourt son frère eût été sauvé; car
il avoit ouï recorder à aucuns Anglois que on avoit vu sa bannière, et
qu'il étoit avec ses gens venu combattre aux Anglois. Mais le dit
messire Godefroy n'y put venir à temps; et fut là mort sur la place le
dit comte, et aussi fut le comte d'Aumale, son neveu. D'autre part, le
comte d'Alençon et le comte de Flandre se combattoient moult
vaillamment aux Anglois, chacun dessous sa bannière et entre ses
gens; mais ils ne purent durer ni résister à la puissance des Anglois,
et furent là occis sur la place, et grand foison de bons chevaliers et
écuyers de lès eux, dont ils étoient servis et accompagnés. Le comte
Louis de Blois et le duc de Lorraine son serourge, avec leurs gens et
leurs bannières, se combattoient d'autre part moult vaillamment, et
étoient enclos d'une route d'Anglois et de Gallois, qui nullui ne
prenoient à merci. Là firent eux de leurs corps plusieurs grands
appertises d'armes, car ils étoient moult vaillans chevaliers et bien
combattans; mais toutes fois leur prouesse ne leur valut rien, car ils
demeurèrent sur la place, et tous ceux qui de lès eux étoient. Aussi
fut le comte d'Aucerre, qui étoit moult vaillant chevalier, et le comte
de Saint-Pol, et tant d'autres, que merveilles seroit à recorder.

Comment le roi de France se partit, lui cinquième de barons

tant seulement, de la bataille de Crécy, en lamentant et
complaignant de ses gens.
Sur le vespre tout tard, ainsi que à jour faillant, se partit le roi
Philippe tout déconforté, il y avoit bien raison, lui cinquième de
barons tant-seulement. C'étoient messire Jean de Hainaut, le
premier et le plus prochain de lui, le sire de Montmorency, le sire de
Beaujeu, le sire d'Aubigny et le sire de Montsault. Si chevaucha le dit
roi tout lamentant et complaignant ses gens, jusques au châtel de la
Broye. Quand il vint à la porte, il la trouva fermée et le pont levé, car
il étoit toute nuit, et faisoit moult brun et moult épais. Adonc fit le roi
appeller le châtelain, car il vouloit entrer dedans. Si fut appelé, et
vint avant sur les guérites, et demanda tout haut: «Qui est là qui
heurte à cette heure?» Le roi Philippe, qui entendit la voix, répondit
et dit: «Ouvrez, ouvrez, châtelain, c'est l'infortuné roi de France.» Le
châtelain saillit tantôt avant, qui reconnut la parole du roi de France,
et qui bien savoit que jà les leurs étoient déconfits, par aucuns
fuyans qui étoient passés dessous le châtel. Si abaissa le pont et
ouvrit la porte. Lors entra le roi dedans, et toute sa route. Si furent
là jusques à mi nuit; et n'eut mie le roi conseil qu'il y demeurât ni
s'enserrât là-dedans. Si but un coup, et aussi firent ceux qui avec lui
étoient, et puis s'en partirent, et issirent du châtel, et montèrent à
cheval, et prirent guides pour eux mener, qui connaissoient le pays:
si entrèrent à chemin environ mie nuit, et chevauchèrent tant que,
au point du jour, ils entrèrent en la bonne ville d'Amiens. Là s'arrêta
le roi, et se logea en une abbaye, et dit qu'il n'iroit plus avant tant
qu'il sçût la vérité de ses gens, lesquels y étoient demeurés et
lesquels étoient échappés. Or, retournerons à la déconfiture de Crécy
et à l'ordonnance des Anglois, et comment, ce samedi que la bataille
fut, et le dimanche au matin, ils persévérèrent.

Ci dit comment messire Jean de Hainaut fit partir le roi de

France de la bataille, ainsi comme par force.
Vous devez savoir que la déconfiture et la perte pour les François fut
moult grand et moult horrible, et que trop y demeurèrent sur les
champs de nobles et vaillans hommes, ducs, comtes, barons et
chevaliers, par lesquels le royaume de France fut depuis moult
affaibli d'honneur, de puissance et de conseil. Et sachez que si les
Anglois eussent chassé, ainsi qu'ils firent à Poitiers, encore en fût
trop plus demeuré, et le roi de France même: mais nennin; car le
samedi oncques ne se partirent de leurs conrois pour chasser après
hommes, et se tenoient sur leurs pas, gardans leur place, et se
défendoient à ceux qui les assailloient. Et tout ce sauva le roi de
France d'être pris, car le dit roi demeura tant sur la place, assez près
de ses ennemis, si comme dessus est dit, qu'il fut moult tard; et
n'avoit à son département pas plus de soixante hommes, uns et
autres. Et adonc le prit messire Jean de Hainaut par le frein, qui
l'avoit à garder et à conseiller, et qui jà l'avoit remonté une fois, car
du trait on avoit occis le coursier du roi, et lui dit: «Sire, venez-vous-
en, il est temps; ne vous perdez mie si simplement: si vous avez
perdu cette fois, vous recouvrerez une autre.» Et l'emmena le dit
messire Jean de Hainaut comme par force. Si vous dis que ce jour
les archers d'Angleterre portèrent grand confort à leur partie; car par
leur trait les plusieurs disent que la besogne se parfit, combien qu'il
y eût bien aucuns vaillans chevaliers de leur côté qui vaillamment se
combattirent de la main, et qui moult y firent de belles appertises
d'armes et de grands recouvrances. Mais on doit bien sentir et
connoître que les archers y firent un grand fait; car par leur trait, de
commencement, furent les Gennevois déconfits, qui étoient bien
quinze mille, ce qui leur fut un grand avantage; car trop grand foison
de gens d'armes richement armés et parés et bien montés, ainsi que
on se montoit adonc, furent déconfits et perdus par les Gennevois,
qui trébuchoient parmi eux, et s'entoulloient tellement qu'ils ne se
pouvoient lever ni ravoir. Et là, entre les Anglois, avoit pillards et
ribaux, Gallois et Cornouaillois, qui poursuivoient gens d'armes et
archers, qui portoient grands coutilles, et venoient entre leurs gens
d'armes et leurs archers qui leur faisoient voie, et trouvoient ces
gens en ce danger, comtes, barons, chevaliers et écuyers; si les
occioient sans merci, comme grand sire qu'il fût. Par cet état en y
eut ce soir plusieurs perdus et murdris, dont ce fut pitié et
dommage, et dont le roi d'Angleterre fut depuis courroucé que on ne
les avoit pris à rançon, car il y eut grand quantité de seigneurs
morts.
 Comment le dimanche au matin, après la déconfiture de
Crécy, les Anglois déconfirent ceux de Rouen et de
Beauvais.
Quand la nuit, ce samedi, fut toute venue, et que on n'oyoit mais ni
crier, ni jupper, ni renommer aucune enseigne ni aucun seigneur, si
tinrent les Anglois à avoir la place pour eux, et leurs ennemis
déconfits. Adonc allumèrent-ils en leur ost grand foison de fallots et
de tortis, pour ce qu'il faisoit moult brun; et lors s'avala le roi
Édouard, qui encore tout ce jour n'avoit mis son bassinet, et s'en
vint, à toute sa bataille, moult ordonnément devers le prince son fils;
si l'accolla et baisa, et lui dit: «Beau fils, Dieu vous doint bonne
persévérance! vous êtes mon fils, car loyalement vous vous êtes hui
acquitté; si êtes digne de tenir terre.» Le prince, à cette parole,
s'inclina tout bas et se humilia en honorant le roi son père; ce fut
raison.
Vous devez savoir que grand liesse de cœur et grand joie fut là entre
les Anglois, quand ils virent et sentirent que la place leur étoit
demeurée et que la journée avoit été pour eux: si tinrent cette
aventure pour belle et à grand gloire, et en louèrent et regracièrent
les seigneurs et les sages hommes moult grandement, et par
plusieurs fois cette nuit Notre Seigneur, qui telle grâce leur avoit
envoyée.
Ainsi passèrent celle nuit sans nul bobant: car le roi d'Angleterre ne
vouloit mie que aucun s'en fesist. Quand vint au dimanche au matin,
il fit grand bruine, et tel que à peine pouvoit-on voir loin un arpent
de terre: donc se partirent de l'ost, par l'ordonnance du roi et de ses
maréchaux, environ cinq cents hommes d'armes et deux mille
archers, pour chevaucher, à savoir si ils trouveroient nullui ni aucun
François qui se fussent recueillis. Ce dimanche au matin, s'étoient
partis d'Abbeville et de Saint-Riquier en Ponthieu les communautés
de Rouen et de Beauvais, qui rien ne savoient de la déconfiture qui
avoit été faite le samedi: si trouvèrent à male étreine pour eux; en
leur encontre, ces Anglois qui chevauchoient, et se boutèrent entre
eux, et cuidèrent de premier que ce fût de leurs gens. Sitôt que les
Anglois les ravisèrent, ils leur coururent sus de grand manière; et là
de rechef eut grand bataille et dure; et furent tantôt ces François
déconfits et mis en chasse; et ne tinrent nul conroi. Si en y eut
morts sur les champs, que par haies, que par buissons, ainsi qu'ils
fuyoient, plus de sept mille; et si eût fait clair, il n'en eût jà pied
échappé. Assez tôt après, en une autre route, furent rencontrés de
ces Anglois l'archevêque de Rouen et le grand prieur de France, qui
rien ne savoient aussi de la déconfiture, et avoient entendu que le
roi ne se combattroit jusques à ce dimanche; et cuidèrent des
Anglois que ce fussent leurs gens: si s'adressèrent devers eux, et
tantôt les Anglois les envahirent et assaillirent de grand volonté. Et
là eut de rechef grand bataille et dure, car ces deux seigneurs
étoient pourvus de bonnes gens d'armes; mais ils ne purent durer
longuement aux Anglois, ainçois furent tantôt déconfits et presque
tous morts. Peu se sauvèrent; et y furent morts les deux chefs qui
les menoient, ni oncques il n'y eut pris homme à rançon.
Ainsi chevauchèrent cette matinée ces Anglois, querans aventures: si
trouvèrent et rencontrèrent plusieurs François qui s'étoient fourvoyés
le samedi, et qui avoient cette nuit géu sur les champs, et qui ne
savoient nulles nouvelles de leur roi ni de leurs conduiseurs: si
entrèrent en pauvre étreine pour eux, quand ils se trouvèrent entre
les Anglois; car ils n'en avoient nulle mercy, et mettoient tout à
l'épée. Et me fut dit que de communautés et de gens de pied des
cités et des bonnes villes de France, il y en eut morts ce dimanche
au matin plus quatre fois que le samedi que la grosse bataille fut.

Comment le roi d'Angleterre fit chercher les morts pour en

savoir le nombre, et fit enterrer les corps des grands
seigneurs.
Le dimanche, ainsi que le roi d'Angleterre issoit de la messe,
revinrent les chevaucheurs et les archers qui envoyés avoient été
pour découvrir le pays, et savoir si aucune assemblée et recueillette
se faisoit des François: si recordèrent au roi tout ce qu'ils avoient vu
et trouvé, et lui dirent bien qu'il n'en étoit nul apparent. Adonc eut
conseil le roi qu'il enverroit chercher les morts, pour savoir quels
seigneurs étoient là demeurés. Si furent ordonnés deux moult
vaillans chevaliers pour aller là, et en leur compagnie trois hérauts
pour reconnoître leurs armes, et deux clercs pour écrire et
enregistrer les noms de ceux qu'ils trouveroient. Les deux chevaliers
furent messire Regnault de Cobehen et messire Richard de Stanfort.
Si se partirent du roi et de son logis, et se mirent en peine de voir et
visiter tous les occis. Si en trouvèrent si grand foison, qu'ils en furent
tous émerveillés; et cherchèrent au plus justement qu'ils purent ce
jour tous les champs, et y mirent jusques à vespres bien basses. Au
soir, ainsi que le roi d'Angleterre devoit aller souper, retournèrent les
dessus nommés deux chevaliers devers le roi, et firent juste rapport
de tout ce qu'ils avoient vu et trouvé. Si dirent que onze chefs de
princes étoient demeurés sur la place, quatre-vingts bannerets,
douze cents chevaliers d'un écu, et environ trente mille hommes
d'autres gens. Si louèrent le dit roi d'Angleterre, le prince son fils et
tous les seigneurs, grandement Dieu, et de bon courage, de la belle
journée qu'il leur avoit envoyée, que une poignée de gens qu'ils
étoient au regard des François avoient ainsi déconfit leurs ennemis.
Et par espécial, le roi d'Angleterre et son fils complaignirent
longuement la mort du vaillant roi de Behaigne, et le
recommandèrent grandement, et ceux qui de lès lui étoient
demeurés.
Si arrêtèrent encore là celle nuit, et le lundi au matin ils ordonnèrent
de partir; et fit le dit roi d'Angleterre, en cause de pitié et de grâce,
tous les corps des grands seigneurs, qui là étoient demeurés,
prendre et ôter de dessus la terre et porter en un moutier près de là,
qui s'appelle Montenay (Maintenay), et ensevelir en sainte terre; et
fit à savoir à ceux du pays qu'il donnoit trêve trois jours pour
chercher le champ de Crécy et ensevelir les morts; et puis
chevaucha outre vers Montreuil sur la mer; et ses maréchaux
coururent devers Hesdin, et ardirent Waubain et Serain; mais au dit
châtel ne purent-ils rien forfaire, car étoit trop fort et si étoit bien
gardé. Si se logèrent ce lundi sur la rivière de Hesdin du côté devers
Blangis, et lendemain ils passèrent outre et chevauchèrent devers
Boulogne. Si ardirent en leur chemin la ville de Saint-Josse et le
Neuf-Châtel, et puis Estaples et Rue, et tout le pays de Boulonnois;
et passèrent entre les bois de Boulogne et la forêt de Hardelo, et
vinrent jusques à la grosse ville de Wissant. Là se logea le dit roi et
le prince et tout l'ost, et s'y rafraîchirent un jour; et le jeudi [168] s'en
partirent, et s'en vinrent devant la forte ville de Calais. Or parlerons
un petit du roi de France, et conterons comment il persévéra.

Comment le roi de France fut courroucé des seigneurs de

son sang qui morts étoient en la bataille; et comment il
voulut faire pendre messire Godemar du Fay.
Quand le roi Philippe fut parti de la Broye, ainsi que ci-dessus est dit,
à moult peu de gens, il chevaucha celle nuit tant que le dimanche au
point du jour il vint en la bonne ville d'Amiens, et là se logea en
l'abbaye du Gard [169]. Quand le roi fut là arrêté, les barons et les
seigneurs de France et de son conseil, qui demandoient pour lui, y
arrêtèrent aussi, ainsi qu'ils venoient. Encore ne savoit le dit roi la
grand perte des nobles et des prochains de son sang qu'il avoit
perdus. Ce dimanche au soir, on lui en dit la vérité. Si regretta
grandement messire Charles son frère, le comte d'Alençon, son
neveu le comte de Blois, son serourge le bon roi de Behaigne, le
comte de Flandre, le duc de Lorraine, et tous les barons et les
seigneurs, l'un après l'autre. Et vous dist que messire Jean de
Hainaut était adonc de lès lui, et celui en qui il avoit la plus grand
fiance, et lequel fit un moult beau service à messire Godemar du
Fay; car le roi étoit fort courroucé sur lui, si que il le vouloit faire
pendre, et l'eût fait sans faute si n'eût été le dit messire Jean de
Hainaut, qui lui brisa son ire et excusa le dit messire Godemar. Et
étoit la cause que le roi disoit que il s'étoit mauvaisement acquitté
de garder le passage de Blanche-Tache, et que par sa mauvaise
garde les Anglois étoient passés outre en Ponthieu, par quoi il avoit
reçu celle perte et ce grand dommage. Au propos du roi s'inclinoient
bien aucuns de son conseil, qui eussent bien voulu que le dit messire
Godemar l'eût comparé, et l'appeloient traître: mais le gentil
chevalier l'excusa, et de raison partout; car comment put-il avoir
défendu ni résisté à la puissance des Anglois, quand toute la fleur de
France n'y put rien faire? Si passa le roi son mautalent adonc, au
plus beau qu'il put, et fit faire les obsèques, l'un après l'autre, de ses
prochains, et puis se partit d'Amiens et donna congé à toutes
manières de gens d'armes, et retourna devers Paris. Et jà avoit le roi
d'Angleterre assiégé la forte ville de Calais.
Chroniques de Froissart.
 SIÉGE DE CALAIS.
1346-47.

Après la bataille de Crécy, Édouard alla assiéger Calais, qu'il «désiroit moult
conquérir» parce que cette ville donnait à l'Angleterre un point de débarquement
sur le sol français et un port très-utile à son commerce. La ville fut assiégée du 3
septembre 1346 au 4 août 1347. Elle fut vigoureusement défendue par les
habitants et leur capitaine Jean de Vienne, brave chevalier de Bourgogne. Au bout
de onze mois de siége, vers la fin de juillet 1347, Philippe VI arriva enfin au
secours de Calais; mais les Anglais avaient tellement fortifié et rendu
inexpugnables les abords de la ville, qu'il fallut que l'armée française se décidât à
battre en retraite sans combat. Abandonnés par le roi de France, les habitants de
Calais se résignèrent à capituler.

Comment ceux de Calais se voulurent rendre au roi

d'Angleterre, sauves leurs vies; et comment ledit roi
voulut avoir six des plus nobles bourgeois de la ville pour
en faire sa volonté.
Après le département du roi de France et de son ost du mont de
Sangattes, ceux de Calais virent bien que le secours en quoi ils
avoient fiance leur étoit failli; et si étoient à si grand détresse de
famine que le plus grand et le plus fort se pouvoit à peine soutenir:
si eurent conseil; et leur sembla qu'il valoit mieux à eux mettre en la
volonté du roi d'Angleterre, si plus grand merci ne pouvoient trouver,
que eux laisser mourir l'un après l'autre par détresse de famine; car
les plusieurs en pourroient perdre corps et âme par rage de faim. Si
prièrent tant à monseigneur Jean de Vienne qu'il en voulût traiter,
qu'il s'y accorda; et monta aux créneaux des murs de la ville, et fit
signe à ceux de dehors qu'il vouloit parler à eux. Quand le roi
d'Angleterre entendit ces nouvelles, il envoya là tantôt messire
Gautier de Mauny et le seigneur de Basset. Quand ils furent là
venus, messire Jean de Vienne leur dit: «Chers seigneurs, vous êtes
moult vaillants chevaliers et usés d'armes, et savez que le roi de
France, que nous tenons à seigneur, nous a céans envoyés, et
commandé que nous gardissions cette ville et ce châtel, tellement
que blâme n'en eussions, ni il point de dommage: nous en avons fait
notre pouvoir. Or, est notre secours failli, et vous nous avez si
étreints que n'avons de quoi vivre: si nous conviendra tous mourir,
ou enrager par famine, si le gentil roi qui est votre sire n'a pitié de
nous. Chers seigneurs, si lui veuillez prier en pitié qu'il veuille avoir
merci de nous, et nous en veuille laisser aller tout ainsi que nous
sommes, et veuille prendre la ville et le châtel et tout l'avoir qui est
dedans; si en trouvera assez.»
Adonc répondit messire Gautier de Mauny, et dit: «Messire Jean,
messire Jean, nous savons partie de l'intention du roi notre sire, car
il la nous a dite: sachez que ce n'est mie son entente que vous en
puissiez aller ainsi que vous avez ci dit; ains est son intention que
vous vous mettiez tous en sa pure volonté pour rançonner ceux qu'il
lui plaira, ou pour faire mourir; car ceux de Calais lui ont tant fait de
contraires et de dépits, le sien fait dépendre, et grand foison de ses
gens fait mourir, dont si il lui en poise ce n'est mie merveille.»
Adonc répondit messire Jean de Vienne, et dit: «Ce seroit trop dure
chose pour nous si nous consentions ce que vous dites. Nous
sommes céans un petit de chevaliers et d'écuyers qui loyalement à
notre pouvoir avons servi notre seigneur le roi de France, si comme
vous feriez le vôtre en semblable cas, et en avons enduré mainte
peine et mainte mésaise; mais ainçois en souffrirons-nous telle
mésaise que oncques gens n'endurèrent ni souffrirent la pareille, que
nous consentissions que le plus petit garçon ou varlet de la ville eût
autre mal que le plus grand de nous. Mais nous vous prions que, par
votre humilité, vous veuillez aller devers le roi d'Angleterre, et lui
priiez qu'il ait pitié de nous. Si nous ferez courtoisie; car nous
espérons en lui tant de gentillesse qu'il aura merci de nous.»—«Par
ma foi, répondit messire Gautier de Mauny, je le ferai volontiers,
messire Jean; et voudrois, si Dieu me veuille aider, qu'il m'en voulût
croire; car vous en vaudriez tous mieux.»
Lors se départirent le sire de Mauny et le sire de Basset, et laissèrent
messire Jean de Vienne s'appuyant aux créneaux, car tantôt
devoient retourner; et s'en vinrent devers le roi d'Angleterre, qui les
attendoit à l'entrée de son hôtel, et avoit grand désir de ouïr
nouvelles de ceux de Calais. De lès lui étoient le comte Derby, le
comte de Norhantonne, le comte d'Arondel, et plusieurs autres
barons d'Angleterre. Messire Gautier de Mauny et le sire de Basset
s'inclinèrent devant le roi, puis se trairent devers lui. Le sire de
Mauny, qui sagement étoit emparlé et enlangagé, commença à
parler, car le roi souverainement le voult ouïr, et dit: «Monseigneur,
nous venons de Calais, et avons trouvé le capitaine messire Jean de
Vienne, qui longuement a parlé à nous; et me semble que il et ses
compagnons et la communauté de Calais sont en grand volonté de
vous rendre la ville et le châtel de Calais et tout ce qui est dedans,
mais que leurs corps singulièrement ils en puissent mettre hors.»
Adonc répondit le roi: «Messire Gautier, vous savez la greigneure
partie de notre entente en ce cas: quelle chose en avez-vous
répondu?»—«En nom de Dieu, monseigneur, dit messire Gautier, que
vous n'en feriez rien, si ils ne se rendoient simplement à votre
volonté, pour vivre ou pour mourir, si il vous plaît. Et quand je leur
eus ce montré, messire Jean de Vienne me répondit et confessa bien
qu'ils étoient moult contraints et astreints de famine; mais ainçois
que ils entrassent en ce parti, ils se vendroient si cher que oncques
gens firent.» Adonc répondit le roi: «Messire Gautier, je n'ai mie
espoir ni volonté que j'en fasse autre chose.»
Lors se retraït avant le sire de Mauny, et parla moult sagement au
roi, et dit, pour aider ceux de Calais: «Monseigneur, vous pourriez
bien avoir tort, car vous nous donnez mauvais exemple. Si vous nous
vouliez envoyer en aucune de vos forteresses, nous n'irions mie si
volontiers, si vous faites ces gens mettre à mort, ainsi que vous
dites; car ainsi feroit-on de nous en semblables cas.» Cet exemple
amollia grandement le courage du roi d'Angleterre; car le plus des
barons l'aidèrent à soutenir. Donc dit le roi: «Seigneurs, je ne vueil
mie être tout seul contre vous tous. Gautier, vous en irez à ceux de
Calais, et direz au capitaine que la plus grand grâce qu'ils pourront
trouver ni avoir en moi, c'est que ils partent de la ville de Calais six
des plus notables bourgeois, en purs leurs chefs et tous déchaux, les
hars au col, les clefs de la ville et du châtel en leurs mains; et de
ceux je ferai ma volonté, et le demeurant je prendrai à
merci.»—«Monseigneur, répondit messire Gautier, je le ferai
volontiers.»

Comment les six bourgeois se partirent de Calais, tous nuds

en leurs chemises, la hart au col, et les clefs de la ville en
leurs mains; et comment la roine d'Angleterre leur sauva
les vies.
A ces paroles se partit du roi messire Gautier de Mauny, et retourna
jusques à Calais, là où messire Jean de Vienne l'attendoit. Si lui
recorda toutes les paroles devant dites, ainsi que vous les avez
ouïes, et dit bien que c'étoit tout ce qu'il avoit pu empétrer. Messire
Jean dit: «Messire Gautier, je vous en crois bien; or vous prié-je que
vous veuillez ci tant demeurer que j'aie démontré à la communauté
de la ville toute cette affaire; car ils m'ont ci envoyé, et à eux tient
d'en répondre, ce m'est avis.» Répondit le sire de Mauny: «Je le
ferai volontiers.» Lors se partit des créneaux messire Jean de
Vienne, et vint au marché, et fit sonner la cloche pour assembler
toutes manières de gens en la halle. Au son de la cloche vinrent
hommes et femmes, car moult désiroient à ouïr nouvelles, ainsi que
gens si astreints de famine que plus n'en pouvoient porter. Quand ils
furent tous venus et assemblés en la halle, hommes et femmes,
Jean de Vienne leur démontra moult doucement les paroles toutes
telles que ci-devant sont récitées, et leur dit bien que autrement ne
pouvoit être, et eussent sur ce avis et brève réponse. Quand ils
ouïrent ce rapport, ils commencèrent tous à crier et à pleurer
tellement et si amèrement, qu'il n'est si dur cœur au monde, s'il les
eût vus ou ouïs eux demener, qui n'en eût eu pitié. Et n'eurent pour
l'heure pouvoir de répondre ni de parler; et mêmement messire Jean
de Vienne en avoit telle pitié qu'il larmoyoit moult tendrement.
Un espace après se leva en pied le plus riche bourgeois de la ville,
que on appeloit sire Eustache de Saint-Pierre, et dit devant tous
ainsi: «Seigneurs, grand pitié et grand meschef seroit de laisser
mourir un tel peuple que ici a, par famine ou autrement, quand on y
peut trouver aucun moyen; et si seroit grand aumône et grand grâce
envers Notre-Seigneur, qui de tel meschef le pourroit garder. Je, en
droit moi, ai si grand espérance d'avoir grâce et pardon envers
Notre-Seigneur, si je muirs pour ce peuple sauver, que je veuil être le
premier; et me mettrai volontiers en pur ma chemise, à nud chef, et
la hart au col, en la merci du roi d'Angleterre.» Quand sire Eustache
de Saint-Pierre eut dit cette parole, chacun l'alla aouser de pitié, et
plusieurs hommes et femmes se jetoient à ses pieds pleurant
tendrement; et étoit grand pitié de là être, et eux ouïr écouter et
regarder.
Secondement, un autre très-honnête bourgeois et de grand affaire,
et qui avoit deux belles damoiselles à filles, se leva, et dit tout ainsi
qu'il feroit compagnie à son compère sire Eustache de Saint-Pierre;
et appeloit-on celui sire Jean d'Aire.
Après se leva le tiers, qui s'appeloit sire Jacques de Wissant, qui
étoit riche homme de meubles et d'héritage; et dit qu'il feroit à ses
deux cousins compagnie. Aussi fit sire Pierre de Wissant son frère; et
puis le cinquième; et puis le sixième. Et se dévêtirent là ces six
bourgeois tous nus en leurs braies et leurs chemises, en la ville de
Calais, et mirent hars en leur col, ainsi que l'ordonnance le portoit,
et prirent les clefs de la ville et du châtel; chacun en tenoit une
poignée.
Quand ils furent ainsi appareillés, messire Jean de Vienne, monté sur
une petite haquenée, car à grand malaise pouvoit-il aller à pied, se
mit au devant, et prit le chemin de la porte. Qui lors vit hommes et
femmes et les enfans d'iceux pleurer et tordre leurs mains et crier à
haute voix très-amèrement, il n'est si dur cœur au monde qui n'en
eût pitié. Ainsi vinrent eux jusques à la porte, envoyés en plaintes,
en cris et en pleurs. Messire Jean de Vienne fit ouvrir la porte tout
arrière, et se fit enclorre dehors avec les six bourgeois, entre la
porte et les barrières; et vint à messire Gautier qui l'attendoit là, et
dit: «Messire Gautier, je vous délivre, comme capitaine de Calais, par
le consentement du povre peuple de cette ville, ces six bourgeois; et
vous jure que ce sont et étoient aujourd'hui les plus honorables et
notables de corps, de chevance et d'ancesterie de la ville de Calais;
et portent avec eux toutes les clefs de la dite ville et du châtel. Si
vous prie, gentil sire, que vous veuillez prier pour eux au roi
d'Angleterre que ces bonnes gens ne soient mie morts.»—«Je ne
sais, répondit le sire de Mauny, que messire le roi en voudra faire,
mais je vous ai en convent que j'en ferai mon pouvoir.»
Adonc fut la barrière ouverte: si s'en allèrent les six bourgeois en cet
état que je vous dis, avec messire Gautier de Mauny, qui les amena
tout bellement devers le palais du roi; et messire Jean de Vienne
rentra en la ville de Calais.
Le roi étoit à cette heure en sa chambre, à grand compagnie de
comtes, de barons et de chevaliers. Si entendit que ceux de Calais
venoient en l'arroi qu'il avoit devisé et ordonné; et se mit hors, et
s'en vint en la place devant son hôtel, et tous ces seigneurs après
lui, et encore grand foison qui y survinrent pour voir ceux de Calais,
ni comment ils fineroient; et mêmement la roine d'Angleterre, qui
moult étoit enceinte, suivit le roi son seigneur. Si vint messire
Gautier de Mauny et les bourgeois de lès lui qui le suivoient, et
descendit en la place, et puis s'envint devers le roi, et lui dit: «Sire,
vecy la représentation de la ville de Calais à votre ordonnance.» Le
roi se tint tout coi, et les regarda moult fellement, car moult héoit les
habitants de Calais, pour les grands dommages et contraires que au
temps passé, sur mer, lui avoient faits. Ces six bourgeoisses mirent
tantôt à genoux pardevant le roi, et dirent ainsi, en joignant leurs
mains: «Gentil sire et gentil roi, véez-nous ci six, qui avons été
d'ancienneté bourgeois de Calais et grands marchands: si vous
apportons les clefs de la ville et du châtel de Calais, et les vous
rendons à votre plaisir, et nous mettons en tel point que vous nous
véez, en votre pure volonté, pour sauver le demeurant du peuple de
Calais, qui a souffert moult de griévetés. Si veuillez avoir de nous
pitié et merci par votre très-haute noblesse.» Certes il n'y eut adonc
en la place seigneur, chevalier, ni vaillant homme, qui se pût abstenir
de pleurer de droite pitié, ni qui pût de grand pièce parler. Et
vraiment ce n'étoit pas merveille; car c'est grand pitié de voir
hommes déchoir et être en tel état et danger. Le roi les regarda très-
ireusement, car il avoit le cœur si dur et si épris de grand courroux
qu'il ne put parler. Et quand il parla, il commanda que on leur coupât
tantôt les têtes. Tous les barons et les chevaliers qui là étoient, en
pleurant prioient si acertes que faire pouvoient, au roi qu'il en voulût
avoir pitié et merci; mais il n'y vouloit entendre. Adonc parla messire
Gautier de Mauny, et dit: «Ha! gentil sire, veuillez refréner votre
courage: vous avez le nom et la renommée de souveraine gentillesse
et noblesse; or ne veuillez donc faire chose par quoi elle soit
amenrie, ni que on puisse parler sur vous en nulle vilenie. Si vous
n'avez pitié de ces gens, toutes autres gens diront que ce sera grand
cruauté, si vous êtes si dur que vous fassiez mourir ces honnêtes
bourgeois, qui de leur propre volonté se sont mis en votre merci
pour les autres sauver.» A ce point grigna le roi les dents, et dit:
«Messire Gautier, souffrez vous: il n'en sera autrement, mais on
fasse venir le coupe-tête. Ceux de Calais ont fait mourir tant de mes
hommes, que il convient ceux-ci mourir aussi.»
Adonc fit la noble roine d'Angleterre grand humilité, qui étoit
durement enceinte et pleuroit si tendrement de pitié que elle ne se
pouvoit soutenir. Si se jeta à genoux pardevant le roi son seigneur, et
dit ainsi: «Ha! gentil sire, depuis que je repassai la mer en grand
péril, si comme vous savez, je ne vous ai rien requis ni demandé: or
vous prié-je humblement et requiers en propre don que pour le fils
sainte Marie, et pour l'amour de moi, vous veuillez avoir de ces six
hommes merci.»
Le roi attendit un petit à parler, et regarda la bonne dame sa femme,
qui pleuroit à genoux moult tendrement; si lui amollia le cœur, car
envis l'eût courroucée au point où elle étoit; si dit: «Ha! dame,
j'aimasse trop mieux que vous fussiez autre part que ci. Vous me
priez si acertes que je ne le vous ose escondire; et combien que je le
fasse envis, tenez, je vous les donne; si en faites votre plaisir.» La
bonne dame dit: «Monseigneur, très-grands mercis!» Lors se leva la
roine, et fit lever les six bourgeois et leur ôter les chevestres
d'entour leur cou, et les emmena avec li en sa chambre, et les fit
revêtir et donner à dîner tout aise, et puis donna à chacun six
nobles, et les fit conduire hors de l'ost à sauveté; et s'en allèrent
habiter et demeurer en plusieurs villes de Picardie [170].
Chroniques de Froissart.
 LE COMBAT DES TRENTE.
27 mars 1350.

Le combat des Trente est un des épisodes les plus populaires de l'interminable
guerre de Bretagne et l'un des exemples les plus célèbres de ces défis ou «joûtes
de fer de glaive» qui sont si complétement dans les usages de la chevalerie et qui
tiennent une si grande place dans les guerres féodales. Le combat eut lieu dans la
lande de Josselin. Les deux chefs étaient Robert de Beaumanoir, gouverneur du
château de Josselin et maréchal de Charles de Blois, et Richard Bramborough,
chevalier anglais et commandant le château de Ploërmel.
Nous donnons trois relations de cette «bataille»: la traduction d'un poëme français
du XIVe siècle, la traduction d'un admirable chant breton que nous avons
emprunté au recueil de M. de la Villegille, et le récit de cette «joûte» par
Froissard.

I.—Traduction d'un poëme français du XIVe siècle.

Ici commence la bataille de trente Anglais et de trente Bretons, qui
fut faite en Bretagne l'an de grâce 1350, le samedi devant Lætare,
Jerusalem.
Seigneurs, faites attention, chevaliers et barons, bannerets,
bacheliers, et vous tous nobles hommes, évêques, abbés, religieux,
hérauts, ménestrels, et tous bons compagnons, gentilshommes et
bourgeois de toutes nations, écoutez ce roman que nous voulons
raconter. L'histoire en est vraie, et les dits en sont bons; comment
trente Anglais, hardis comme lions, combattirent un jour contre
trente Bretons; et pour cela j'en veux dire le vrai et les raisons; ainsi
s'en réjouiront souvent gentilshommes et savants, d'ici jusqu'à cent
ans, pour vrai, dans leurs maisons.
Bons discours, quand ils sont bons et de bonne sentence, tous les
gens de bien, d'honneur et de grande science, pour les écouter y
mettent leur attention, mais les traîtres et les jaloux n'y veulent rien
entendre. Or je veux commencer à raconter la noble bataille que l'on
a appelée le combat des Trente, et je prie Dieu, qui a laissé vendre
sa chair, d'avoir miséricorde des âmes des combattants, car le plus
grand nombre est en cendre.
Dagorne [171] fut tué devant Auray par les barons de Bretagne et leur
compagnie, que Dieu lui fasse miséricorde. De son vivant, il avait
ordonné que les Anglais ne combattraient plus et ne feraient plus
prisonniers le menu peuple des villes ni ceux qui font venir le blé.
Quand Dagorne fut mort, sa promesse fut bientôt oubliée, car
Bembrough son successeur a juré par saint Thomas qu'il sera bien
vengé. Puis il pilla le pays et prit Ploërmel, qu'il mit à deuil. Il
soumettait toute la Bretagne à ses volontés; enfin arriva la journée
que Dieu avait ordonnée, où Beaumanoir, de grand renom, et
messire Jean le preux, le vaillant et le sage, allèrent vers les Anglais
pour demander sûreté contre ces ravages. Ils virent maltraiter de
pauvres habitants, dont ils eurent grand'pitié; les uns avec des fers
aux pieds et aux mains, les autres attachés par les pouces, tous liés
deux à deux, trois par trois, comme bœufs et vaches que l'on mène
au marché. Beaumanoir les vit, et son cœur soupira, et s'adressant à
Bembrough avec fierté: «Chevalier d'Angleterre, dit-il, vous vous
rendez bien coupables de tourmenter les pauvres habitants, ceux qui
sèment le blé et qui nous procurent en abondance le vin et les
bestiaux. S'il n'y avait pas de laboureurs, je vous dis ma pensée, ce
serait aux nobles à défricher et à cultiver la terre en leur place, à
battre le blé et à endurer la pauvreté; et ce serait grande peine pour
ceux qui n'y sont pas accoutumés. Qu'ils aient la paix dorénavant,
car ils ont trop souffert de ce que l'on a sitôt oublié les dernières
volontés de Dagorne.»
Bembrough lui répond avec la même fierté: «Beaumanoir, taisez-
vous; qu'il ne soit plus question de cela. Montfort sera duc du noble
duché de Bretagne, depuis Pontorson jusqu'à Nantes et à Saint-

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