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SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

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294<br />

Saga-Book of the <strong>Viking</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />

the Latin planctus, since the German poetry has clear<br />

affinities with the Latin.P<br />

This feature of Trohetsvisan is, of course, not apparent in<br />

Chaucer's poem, and we may take our lead from<br />

Hildemans remarks about the Latin poems in considering<br />

the genre of Lak of Stedfastnesse. I have thought it<br />

clearer to produce a text with illustrations, now printed in<br />

Appendix B, but I will select and elaborate on some<br />

recurring features which identify the genre of the poem.<br />

The general attitude is emphasised in the description of<br />

a world "rotten to the core", as Hildeman said of other<br />

poems.s" and this is presented partly in the brief personifications<br />

of abstractions. The short statements of lines<br />

15-1 7 :<br />

Trouthe is putte doun resoun is holden fable<br />

Vertu hath now no dominacioun<br />

Pite exiled no man is merciable<br />

are clearly echoes of the Latin noun plus verb statements<br />

in the Continental poems, which are also found in other<br />

Middle English verses. The stylistic feature may derive<br />

ultimately from Scriptural passages spoken by other<br />

prophets of woe such as Isaiah 59, 14: "And judgment is<br />

turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off for<br />

truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter",<br />

probably reinforceds! by the Latin satirists such as<br />

Juvenal: "Probitas laudatur et alget', (I, 74). It is, of<br />

course, difficult to trace a direct line of descent for any<br />

isolated phrase unless there is other evidence of the poet's<br />

immediate reading. Such phrases as these are found in<br />

quantity in the de contemptu mundi literature, as for<br />

example in the poem attributed to Bernard of Morlaix:<br />

"Peace weeps, love groans, wrath stands and roars, right<br />

., Hildeman, op. cit., 135 on Sanningen, Falskheten, Troonn .<br />

.. The Swedish idiom is a little different: "intill roten ruttna", Hildeman,<br />

op, cit., r31.<br />

.. The notes in Hilka and Schumann, op, cit., amply illustrate the echoes of<br />

Latin satirists in Carmina Burana. See also Raby, op, cit.. II 325: "The poets<br />

of the Arundel and Benediktbeuern collections, as well as Walter of Chatillon,<br />

knew the classical poets thoroughly ...."

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