Irish tales: New research released recently finds that, while the Knights of the Round Table have won global fame, most medieval English heroic or chivalric stories have been lost. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of medieval stories in Icelandic and Irish survive to the present, in an unusual pattern suggesting island ‘ecosystems’ helped preserve culture.
The findings come from an international research team, including Oxford experts, which has applied statistical models used in ecology to estimate the loss and survival of precious artefacts and narratives from different parts of Europe.
Dr Katarzyna Anna Kapitan of Linacre College, Oxford, says, “We estimate that more than 90% of medieval manuscripts preserving chivalric and heroic narratives have been lost.”
The team gauged the loss of narratives from medieval Europe, such as romances about King Arthur, or heroic legends about Sigurd the dragon slayer or the legendary ruler Ragnar lóðbrok, known to wider audiences from the TV series Vikings.
Irish Tradition
The Irish tradition of medieval narrative fiction is best preserved, while works in English suffered the most severe losses. The team calculated that around 81% of medieval Irish romances and adventure tales survive today, compared to only 38% of similar works in English. Similarly, results suggest that around 19% of medieval Irish manuscript books survive, compared to only 7% of English examples.
Dr Daniel Sawyer at Merton College, Oxford, says, “We found notably low estimated survival rates for medieval fiction in English. We might blame the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, which did scatter many libraries. But heroic stories in English rarely appear in the library catalogues of monasteries and friaries in the first place. Another possible explanation might be found in the limited prestige of the English language during this period. Today, English is learned as a second language all over the world but, during the Middle Ages, it had little international significance. After the Norman Conquest, in particular, French was important in England as an international language of power and culture, and the English crown owned parts of what is now France. This shows the importance of Norman French to English culture.”
Irish and Icelandic Tales Survived
Meanwhile, Dr Kapitan explains it is a very different picture for Iceland, where, she says, ‘We know today around three out of four medieval Icelandic romances and adventure tales (or 77%), but only one out of six medieval manuscripts preserving these works (17%).’
Besides events such as library fires and the recycling of books, the research identifies the original ‘evenness’ of cultural production as an overlooked factor in the survival of ancient artefacts.
Dr Kapitan says, “The similarities between Iceland and Ireland may be caused by lasting traditions of copying literary texts by hand long after the invention of print.”
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