The Bruce

The Bruce

The literary relationships of The Bruce may be briefly indicated. It stands at the beginning of Scottish literature; of its predecessors and contemporaries we have but the names, or possible versions whose place of origin is in dispute. In form and technique, including the octosyllabic couplet, it plainly depends on the French metrical romance, the most fruitful branch of a literature which, for quite two centuries, had been the mother of literatures in Western Europe. The opening line of The Bruce characterizes at once the poem itself, and what was best and most abundant in the literature of the Middle Ages. Barbour, too, it is never overlooked, announces his work as a romance, but as such, we gather from what precedes, only in a technical sense; and no medival writer would consider this popular method of treatment incompatible with strict accuracy and reality of subject: that is a modern refinement. Barbour certainly did not, nor did those who followed and used him; his selection of the model is simply the expression of his desire to do his work in gud manere. He anticipated Macaulays ambition in that his history was to differ from the most attractive literary matter only in being true. There were already in French many examples of contemporary history presented in this way as a succession of incidents on the lines of personal memoirs, though history had in the end succeeded in widening its outlook, and consequently found more fitting expression in prose. But that was of Barbours own age, and indeed Froissart had made his first essay, as an historian, in verse, which later he recast and continued in the form we know. All the necessities of Barbours case, however, led him the other waythe despised condition of the prose vernacular as a literary medium, from which, indeed, it never fully emerged; the character of his audience, which would be either learned or aristocratic; and the nature[Pg xvi] and associations of his subject, for which only the literature of romance could furnish a parallel or supply the appropriate setting. The literary qualities of The Bruce are, therefore, those of its model; it is a clear, vivid, easy-flowing narrative, and if it is also, as romances tended to be, loose in construction and discursive, it is never tedious, for it deals with real persons and events of real interest, depicted with an admiring fidelity. The year of John Barbours birth we do not know, an item which is lacking also for Chaucer: 1320 is a good round guess. Nor have we any knowledge of his family. If, however, the St. Ninian in the Legends of the Saints be of Barbour, a claim for which there is much to be said,[28] it may give us a clue. The adventure of Jak. Trumpoure, there told, connects with the fact that Jaq. (James) Trampour had land in Afberdeen bordering on that of an Andrew Barbour.[29] It may be conjectured that the latter was John Barbours father, or other near relative, since the vivid personal details of the affair in the St. Ninian must have come from Trumpour himself, and the fact that he was a neighbour of the Barbours would explain how. The name Barbour (Barbitonsoris) is obviously plebeian. Some ancestor followed the business of barber, as some one of Chaucers possibly did that of hose-making. The established spelling, Barbour, shows a French termination which takes also the form Barbier, whence Mr. Henderson concludes that John Barbour was of Norman origin.[30] But the spelling is merely an accident of transcription; the oldest form is Barber(e) (1357, 1365),[31] which the scribe of the Edinburgh MS. also uses, and which Wyntoun rhymes with here and matere; in a few cases it is Barbar. As we might expect, the name was common enough in the English-speaking districts of Scotland. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 44292
Author: Barbour, John
Release Date: Nov 27, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Mackenzie, W. M. (William Mackay), 1871-1952