Reconstructing the Audiences of the Middle English Versions of Ipomedon

Scholars of medieval literature understand that the audience of a text proactively articulates an actualized interpretation of the text and shapes the literary taste to which writers of its period would cater. However, the audience of romance, of all medieval genres, has proven the most elusive in view of the discrepant opinions it has elicited.¹ A brief survey of the changing views expressed by Derek Pearsall, a critic who has shown a constant interest in this issue, suffices to exemplify the complexity involved in defining the audience of Middle English romances.² In 1965 Pearsall did not hesitate to affirm that "the social context of Middle English romance … is overwhelmingly popular and non-courtly."³ Yet in 1976 he endorsed a more inclusive view, writing that "the traditional popular romances catered for a general audience, not an exclusively 'popular' one; they provided entertainment for the households of all but the aristocratic elite."⁴ The excluded noble circles were in turn subsumed into that general audience in a later article in which Pearsall acknowledges the romances' capability to attract a plural and heterogeneous public:

One must insist on the range of possible audiences that need to be adduced for medieval English romance. It is not only a matter of allocating certain romances to certain appropriate kinds of audience: the audience of a disour could be a noble household as well as a more humble gathering, and likewise written texts of romances could find their way into the hands of anyone who could read.⁵

The fact of the matter is not only that this genre appealed to a wide segment of the population, but also that its various modes of transmission rendered romances, unlike the literature of the courtly poets, accessible to the lower echelons of society marked by their booklessness.

In his seminal monograph, Dieter Mehl rightly recommends discussing the audience of each romance individually;⁶ and this is precisely the approach I adopt in this essay, where I concentrate on the English versions of the romance Ipomedon. This romance was written originally in Anglo-Norman by Hue de Rotelande (ca. 1180), and in view of the textual witnesses, it seems to have remained popular in Britain until the sixteenth century. Three separate English renditions of the Anglo-Norman poem are now extant in three fifteenth-century manuscripts: the tail-rhyme Ipomadon A in Chetham's Library MS 8009 (Mun.A.6.31), the couplet version Ipomydon B in Harley MS 2252, and the prose Ipomedon C in Longleat House MS 257.⁷

Critical Survey

Before proceeding with the analysis of the audiences of the Middle English Ipomedon, I would like to review the positions advanced by scholars on the social condition of this romance's public. About Ipomadon A, Pearsall has said that "it opens up the tradition for a much more sophisticated audience"; Victoria Bjorklund comments that it was "perhaps written for a provincial audience of limited literary sophistication"; Brenda Thaon maintains that it "is obviously intended for a courtly audience"; Carol Meale considers that it is a "sophisticated reworking of Hue's poem, destined … for an audience of [courtly] literary discrimination"; Brenda Hosington first admits that "nothing is actually known of the anonymous translator's audience," yet she later describes it as "non-aristocratic" and "less sophisticated than the French author's"; Erik Kooper believes it was "written for … the aristocracy." ⁸ In the case of Ipomydon B, there is greater agreement in applying the adjective "popular": Pearsall assumes it was "for a popular audience"; Meale argues that it was "a 'popular' adaptation of Hue's work, with 'popular' here denoting the accessibility of the romance … to the widest possible audience"; Thaon states that it is "a tale retold for a popular audience," and Kooper that it "was not primarily meant for a court audience."⁹ Finally, concerning Ipomedon C, Thaon opines that it "was directed at a less sophisticated audience than that for whom the tail-rhyme version was written," whereas Meale places it in a "courtly" ambience, and Stefano Mula associates...