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Originally Posted by Bęthberry
Hmm. I'm not so sure that our medieval ancestors would necessarily have gone always for High Epic of Gods & Heroes. Think of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Some of the most boring stories--and told at the expense of their pilgrim tellers--are the high ones.
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I don't think a medieval audience would have looked askance at Sam. There's much there with his pans and his conies that would have fit right in with medieval life--not the Arthurian kind maybe, but Arthur's Round Table is not necessarily the most representative of the art of the time.
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Arthur's Round Table (from Malory version onwards, or something?) could easily be seen as more of a story of a "pre-pre-romantic" upperclass. But the stories had been about for centuries, not as rigid tales of Christian might and the things high and noble, but as living tradition of stories about people and their fortunes.
So in this I side with Bęthberry. If you look at medieval culture at large, you shouldn't forget the distinction between the high & low (well that shouldn't be forgotten in any phase of the history). The canon of "great works" just rarely reflects the ideals of the common folks. Think about the success of Rabelais as an exception (I haven't ever studied litterature, so I'm not sure about it's initial reception by the high-class, but could imagine it got somewhat well into them because of all those philosophical jokes etc): folksy-humour with the lowest common denominator attached with picking on trendy theories of the upper-class.
SEEM TO BE CROSS-POSTING...
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= Davem
I'm not sure the Canterbury Tales would ever have been considered 'high' or 'serious' literature in the way Malory, Chretian or The High History of the Holy Grail was.
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That's just the point. They would not have been considered "high", but would have been loved... unlike the one's you cite there. They are the official canon, made by the theologians and other university-people (who knows history? what's the percentage of them in the Middle-ages, 2%?)...
