Studies in medieval Scottish historical romance : an examination of John Barbour's Bruce, Hary's Wallace, the octosyllabic Buik of King Alexander, and the decasyllabic Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour

• Main Author: Saldanha, Kathryn Eleana
• Published: University of Cambridge 2000
• Subjects: 821.03309941109024
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.401391

This thesis offers a study of four Middle Scots poems, John Barbour's Bruce, Hary's Wallace, the octosyllabic Buik of King Alexander and the decasyllabic Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, which were composed in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While this thesis falls into two clear sections, the first of which examines John Barbour's Bruce and Hary's Wallace, and the second of which examines the octosyllabic Buik of King Alexander and the decasyllabic Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, these are linked by the common concern of all four texts with the question of kingship. Each of the texts are studied within the political and cultural context of their composition in order to examine how their portrayal of kingship may have been influenced by contemporary concerns. In the case of John Barbour's Bruce and Hary's Wallace the ways in which these texts both represent and contribute to the development of a sense of Scottish national identity and an emergent Scottish 'nationalism' is considered. In the case of the two Middle Scots Alexander-books consideration is given to the question of the disputed authorship of these texts. In addition, in the case of the decasyllabic Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, which has only recently been edited, it is argued that a number of episodes are borrowed from the work known in its Latin version as the Liber Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum and in its French version as the Dits Moraulx. A number of interesting similarities are also observed between the decasyllabic Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour and the, as yet unedited L 'Histoire d'Alexandre of Jehan Wauquelin. Finally, consideration is given to the tension between the attempt in the Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour to present Alexander as both a 'romance hero' and a 'philosopher king'.