Matthew Arnold - Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold

~Chanson de Roland~. The greatest of the Chansons des Gestes , long narrative poems dealing with warfare and adventure popular in France during the Middle Ages. It was composed in the eleventh century. Taillefer was the surname of a bard and warrior of the eleventh century. The tradition concerning him is related by Wace, Roman de Rou , third part, v., 8035-62, ed. Andreson, Heilbronn, 1879. The Bodleian Roland ends with the words: "ci folt la geste, que Turoldus declinet." Turold has not been identified.

"Then began he to call many things to remembrance,—all the lands which his valor conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him."— Chanson de Roland , III, 939-42.[Arnold.]

"Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery ye might have sorrow?"— Iliad , XVII, 443-445.[Arnold.]

"Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy."— Iliad , XXIV, 543.[Arnold.]

"I wailed not, so of stone grew I within;— they wailed."– Inferno , XXXIII, 39, 40.[Arnold.]

"Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me." — Inferno , II, 91-93.[Arnold.]

"In His will is our peace."— Paradiso , III, 85.[Arnold.]

Henry IV , part 2, III, i, 18-20.

Hamlet , V, ii, 361-62.

Paradise Lost , I, 599-602.

Ibid. , I, 108-9.

Ibid. , IV, 271.

Poetics , § 9.

~Provençal~, the language of southern France, from the southern French oc instead of the northern oïl for "yes."

Dante acknowledges his debt to ~Latini~ (c. 1230-c. 1294), but the latter was probably not his tutor. He is the author of the Tesoretto , a heptasyllabic Italian poem, and the prose Livres dou Trésor , a sort of encyclopedia of medieval lore, written in French because that language "is more delightful and more widely known."

~Christian of Troyes~. A French poet of the second half of the twelfth century, author of numerous narrative poems dealing with legends of the Round Table. The present quotation is from the Cligés , ll. 30-39.

Chaucer's two favorite stanzas, the seven-line and eight-line stanzas in heroic verse, were imitated from Old French poetry. See B. ten Brink's The Language and Meter of Chaucer , 1901, pp. 353-57.

~Wolfram von Eschenbach~. A medieval German poet, born in the end of the twelfth century. His best-known poem is the epic Parzival .