Selim 19.indb


María Dumas, SELIM 19 (2012): 81–110ISSN: 1132–631X

THE USE OF THE PILGRIM DISGUISE IN THE 
ROMAN DE HORN, BOEVE DE HAUMTONE AND 

THEIR MIDDLE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 1

Abstract: The fi gure of the pilgrim has been considered one of the leitmotifs of vernacular 
insular literature. In the Roman de Horn, Boeve de Haumtone, and their Middle English 
translations, King Horn and the Auchinleck Bevis, the heroes repeatedly exchange clothes 
with pilgrims, since the “esclavine” and the “bourdon” grant them complete immunity to 
encroach on their enemies’ territory and test the loyalty of their lovers. However, the pilgrim 
disguise may prove useful in yet another way, providing the poets with a convenient fi gure 
in which to mirror their own role as storytellers. The purpose of this paper is to examine to 
what extent the authors of these romances make use of the fi gure of the pilgrim in order to 
foreground their authorial role and draw attention to their own poetic activity. Keywords: 
Anglo-Norman romance, Middle English romance, translation, pilgrim, disguise.

Resumen: La fi gura del peregrino ha sido considerada uno de los motivos más recurrentes en 
la literatura vernácula insular. En el Roman de Horn, Boeve de Haumtone y sus traducciones 
al inglés medio, King Horn y la versión de Bevis del manuscrito Auchinleck, los héroes 
cambian con fr ecuencia sus ropas con peregrinos, ya que la esclavina y el bordón les confi eren 
total inmunidad para penetrar el territorio enemigo y probar la lealtad de sus amantes. Sin 
embargo, el disfr az de peregrino también puede resultar útil en otro sentido, en la medida en 
que proporciona a los poetas una fi gura conveniente en la cual refl ejar su rol como narradores. 
El propósito de este artículo es examinar hasta qué punto los autores de estas obras hacen 
uso de la fi gura del peregrino a fi n de poner en primer plano su función autoral y llamar 
la atención acerca de su propia actividad poética. Palabras clave: romance anglonormando, 
romance en inglés medio, traducción, peregrino, disfr az.

Disguise is a ubiquitous topic in insular romances, both Anglo-Norman and Middle English. The authors 
of these romances, which are oft en based on the exile-

and-return tale-type,2 fr equently use disguise in nearly identical 

1 I am grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for fi nancial 
support in the preparation of this article, and to Prof. Dr. Wolfr am Keller for his 
careful reading of a previous version of this paper.
2 See Crane 1986. While recognizing that tales of exile and return are not uniquely 
insular, Susan Crane acknowledges its fr equent occurrence in Anglo-Norman and 
Middle English romance and suggests that this narrative pattern proved highly 
functional for the articulation of specifi cally insular baronial concerns, namely, 



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narrative contexts. Disguise appears almost invariably as a central 
feature to stage the return of a dispossessed king fr om exile. In 
the struggle of the displaced heroes to regain their dynastic rights, 
the concealment of identity becomes an invaluable strategy to test 
the fi delity of a lover or the loyalty of a servant.3 Scholars have 
acknowledged the fr equent and similar use of disguise throughout 
the insular corpus, mainly focusing on theoretical issues stemming 
fr om these scenes, such as the nature and the integrity of a knight’s 
or, more importantly, a king’s identity (Burrow 1994, Dickson 
2000, Snell 2000). If under the clothes of a fool, a minstrel, a 
leper, or a pilgrim the king is no longer recognizable, how is his 
identity defi ned? To what extent is his identity merely dependent 

landholding and the defense of dynastic rights by law rather than by war. Judith 
Weiss has contested this view, pointing out that “such concerns do not appear 
solely in insular romance: they are evident in French chansons de geste, such 
as Raoul de Cambrai, Aiol, and Mainet, and romances such as Ille et Galeron, 
which use the ‘exile and return’ theme” (Weiss 2004: 40). Rosalind Field has 
also analyzed the exile-and-return tales found in Anglo-Norman romances of the 
late twelft h and early thirteenth century, underscoring their intrinsically insular 
features (e.g., the return by water) and calling the attention to the particular 
cultural and historical context which could have motivated the recurring choice 
of this tale-type by romance writers. According to Field, the popularity of the 
exile-and-return narrative in insular literature may be explained by its “chiming 
with contemporary concerns and the perception of the same motif in the English 
political scene fr om Henry II to Henry IV and beyond” (Field 2005: 53).
3 Disguised heroes and heroines are traceable throughout the diff erent genres of 
medieval literature. However, in combination with exile-and-return narratives, 
such as in insular romances, this topic achieves a remarkable specifi city: oft en 
associated with episodes of recognition and reunion, it yields highly dramatic 
scenes, hardly discernible in other texts which make use of this narrative device. 
Studies focused on roughly contemporary Continental chansons de geste—with 
which these romances share numerous features—have suggested that the topic of 
disguise would oft en introduce a comic register. Unlike insular romances, chansons 
such as Charroi de Nîmes and Prise d’Orange present disguise as a playful game 
devised by the conquering hero to deceive his enemy and make fun of him. See 
Gallé 2005 and Suard 1994.



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on his physical appearance or his social insignia? These studies 
have yielded interesting results regarding the tight connections 
between the interior self and the exterior appearance in feudal 
society. Morgan Dickson (2000) has emphasized that the effi  cacy 
of the hero’s disguise normally depends on the lowering of his 
social status as he assumes the role either of a fool, a minstrel, a 
leper or a pilgrim. However, besides noting the shared effi  cacy of 
these lower-class masks, it is equally interesting to examine their 
peculiarities, since the hero’s choice to impersonate one or another 
of these socially inferior types might have important implications 
for the understanding of both the disguise episodes and the works 
as a whole. This is at least the case in the texts I examine. The 
Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone and the Roman de Horn, as 
well as their Middle English rewritings, Sir Bevis of Hampton and 
King Horn, include several disguise episodes. Given their similar 
and thus easily comparable outline, I shall focus on those scenes in 
which the hero, coming back fr om exile, assumes the appearance 
of a pilgrim in order to gain access to his lover and test her loyalty. 
According to Neil Cartlidge (2005), the fi gure of the peregrinus 
ignotus represents one of the leitmotifs of vernacular insular 
romance. Helen Cooper (2004) has likewise identifi ed pilgrimage 
as one of the most enduring motifs of English romance.4 This 
pervading presence of pilgrims in romance may be perhaps better 
apprehended following Judith Weiss’s distinction between serious, 
penitential pilgrims, such as Guiac in Waldef, Gui de Warewic, or 
Sir Isumbras, on the one hand, and, on the other, less pious knights, 
such as Tristan, Horn and Boeve/Bevis, who temporarily use the 
guise of the penitent pilgrim “to accomplish their own secular ends” 
(Weiss 2010: 50). Indeed, in the romances I consider the adoption 
of the “esclavine” and the “bourdon” entails no piety and serves, 

4 In the Motif Index of Folk Literature, Stith Thompson (1995) classifi es the 
pilgrim disguise under two headings: K1817.2, “Disguise as palmer (pilgrim)” 
where he mentions King Horn, and K1837.2, “Woman disguised as pilgrim engages 
lover in conversation and learns of his faithlessness”.



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thus, no didactic purposes. Instead, it is highly functional in secular 
terms, not only on the diegetic level, granting the heroes complete 
immunity to encroach on their enemies’ territory, but also on the 
extra-diegetic level, providing the poets with a convenient fi gure 
in which to mirror their own role as storytellers. In her study on 
the role of pilgrims in Continental chansons de geste, Valérie Galent-
Fasseur (1997) shows that pilgrims do not appear only as penitents, 
walking tirelessly to Holy Land in search of redemption, but also 
as carriers of information, that is, as storytellers. Galent-Fasseur 
focuses mainly on pilgrims’ varying relationship with truth as the 
genre evolves, but it would similarly be interesting to explore how 
poets made use of these alternative storytellers in order to represent 
their own poetics.

The texts I examine do not utilize the character of the pilgrim 
in the same way. The author of the Roman de Horn shows a clear 
interest in associating his role to that of the pilgrim, with the 
purpose of drawing attention to and refl ecting on his own poetic 
activity. By contrast, in Boeve de Haumtone this association is only 
faintly suggested. I shall analyze if the Middle English adapters 
exploited this meta-narrative procedure available in their ultimate 
sources, and if so, how and to what extent. I hope it will become 
evident that far fr om simply reproducing their models in a servile 
way, in the process of translation, the Middle English redactors 
of Sir Bevis of Hampton5 and of King Horn reshaped the disguise 
episodes, making diff erent use of their meta-narrative potential 
according to their own interest in foregrounding their authorial 
role and asserting their conceptions of poetry. In this sense, 

5 The textual tradition of the Middle English Bevis is extremely complex. It 
survives in six manuscripts and several printed editions (see Fellows 2008). All 
these versions have been studied in order to assess whether their redactors made 
any use of the meta-narrative potential of this episode. As a result, I have found 
that only the Auchinleck poet consistently did. In the Boeve/Bevis section, this will 
be shown in the main body of the article, while references to the relevant passages 
in the alternative manuscripts and printed editions will be provided in notes.



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the pilgrim-disguise episodes will prove to be of much value to 
examine the diff erent models of authorship embedded in each text. 
Interestingly, these models do not seem to be linguistically arranged. 
In fact, as will become evident, similarities may be traced in the 
authorial stance adopted by the poets of King Horn and the Anglo-
Norman Boeve, while the Auchinleck Bevis redactor shares much 
more with Thomas than with the author of his source. Rosalind 
Field has stated that “there are […] few valid generalizations to be 
made about relations between Anglo-Norman and Middle English 
versions of the same material” (1999: 166). Authorship, I will argue, 
cannot be counted among them.

Studies on translation theory and practice carried out 
mainly during the last two decades have been pivotal for the 
examination of the links between Anglo-Norman and Middle 
English romances, and ultimately, for the scholarly reassessment 
of the latter.6 Although the close interdependence of Anglo-
Norman and Middle English romances has long been established 
by scholars, studies published in the early and mid twentieth 
century tend to simplify  this relationship, considering Middle 

6 Since the 1980s and during the 1990s, several scholars have claimed the 
importance of translation as technique of composition in the specifi c contexts 
of medieval literature (Kelly 1978; Zumthor 1980; Buridant 1983; Copeland 1991; 
Beer 1989, 1997). However, in the insular context, research on translation appears 
as particularly relevant, since it is aff ected by the complex interactions between 
the two main vernaculars of post-Conquest England, i.e., French and English. 
For a thorough survey of the shift ing relationship between French and English 
fr om the eleventh to the fi ft eenth century, see Crane 1999, and for a more recent 
and encompassing reassessment of the role of the “French of England” and of its 
connections with English and Anglo-Latin in fi elds not as well-established as 
literature (e.g. devotional or medical writing), see Wogan-Browne 2009. During 
the past two decades, important studies on insular translation practice have 
been published (see, for instance, the surveys by Field 2008b and Warren 2007). 
However, especially noteworthy is the work of Ivana Djordjević, who made a 
highly valuable contribution providing scholars with a useful theoretical fr amework 
within which vernacular translation and, specifi cally, romance translation fr om 
Anglo-Norman to Middle English may be studied (Djordjević 2000, 2002, 2008).



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English translations as coarser popularizations of their courtly 
and refi ned French predecessors (Ker 1912; Pearsall 1965; Diekstra 
1975).7 This hypothesis, which assumes that translation inevitably 
implies a change in the intended audience, has been more recently 
contested by a number of scholars. In their re-investigations of the 
romances (Crane 1986, 1999; Field 1999, 2008a, 2009; Calin 1994) 
and their contextualization within manuscripts, inventories, and 
records (Meale 1994), they have argued that there is no reason to 
assume that the audience of Middle English works was diff erent 
in terms of class status or any less sophisticated in its tastes than 
that of Anglo-Norman romances. The alleged popularization 
resulting fr om the process of translation has equally shaped the 
scholarly appraisal of the authorship of Middle English romances 
(McDonald 2004; Reichl 2009). Translation would have inexorably 
substituted a clerical and learned French author for a crude hack 
writer. This “stigmatization” of Middle English poets, as Mc 
Donald puts it (2004: 9), is most blatantly exposed in Loomis’s 
description of the Auchinleck romances’ authors: “If these, for 
the most part, unoriginal and ungift ed translator-versifi ers were 
not what we should call literature hacks, what were they?” (1942: 
608). In what follows, overlooking the biased and rhetorical nature 
of this question and further extending it to the Anglo-Norman 
romancers, I intend to describe the diff erent ways through which 
the authors of the Roman de Horn, Boeve de Haumtone and their 
Middle English analogues appear in their narratives, such as 
it becomes apparent fr om their varying interest in guiding the 
readers’ attention to their poetics in the pilgrim-disguise episodes.

7 In her “polemical introduction”, Mc Donald 2004 has suffi  ciently shown to 
what extent the scholarly labeling of Middle English romance as “popular” usually 
entails, as it is above implied, a negative appraisal of its aesthetic value and an 
assumption that these debased literary products would appeal to a lower-class 
audience.



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1 From the ROMAN DE HORN to KING HORN
In the Anglo-Norman Roman de Horn, the narrative context 
for the hero’s adoption of the pilgrim disguise may be briefl y 
summarized in the following terms: due to Wikele’s slanders, 
Horn is forced to leave Brittany, where he had grown up aft er 
the Saracens invaded his own kingdom, Suddene, and killed his 
father. Exiled fr om Brittany, Horn goes to Ireland where, under 
the pseudonym Gudmond, he helps the king to defeat the Saracens 
and avenges his father’s death. Aft er some years, he hears fr om a 
pilgrim that his lover, Rigmel, daughter of the king of Brittany, is 
forced to marry King Modin. Backed by a powerful army, Horn 
goes back to Brittany to stop the wedding. But before engaging in 
battle, he changes his clothes with a pilgrim, he verbally confr onts 
his rival and then goes into court—still in disguise—in order to 
test Rigmel’s loyalty.

In view of my present concerns, this encounter with the pilgrim 
deserves special attention. It is noteworthy that before exchanging 
their garments, Horn asks the pilgrim about the situation in the 
country. The pilgrim gives a full account of the recent events 
regarding Rigmel’s wedding, providing Horn with strategic 
information for the fulfi llment of his plans (3954–3964). This 
account of events, however, is not only useful and necessary on the 
diegetic level; it turns out to be as informative for Horn as it is for 
the audience, who is equally unaware of the situation in Brittany, 
since until this point, the narrative focus has remained exclusively 
directed to the description of Horn’s activities. The pilgrim, thus, 
slips into the narrator’s role, supplementing the events left  out of 
his reach. Interestingly, this is not the fi rst time that, by means 
of the fi gure of the pilgrim, the narrative voice is split in order 
to render simultaneous events. Aft er Horn’s exile, the narrator 
follows his hero to Ireland, leaving Rigmel’s aff airs in darkness. 
In this case, it is also a pilgrim, Joceran, who widens the narrative 
scope, disclosing simultaneously to Horn and the audience what 
the narrator has been omitting: the desperate situation of Herland, 



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Horn’s tutor, in Brittany, Wikele’s treacherous actions, and Rigmel’s 
imminent wedding. Mestre Thomas evidently takes full advantage 
of the storytelling skills associated with pilgrims, relying heavily on 
these characters to complement his limited narrative perspective.

Besides these contributions to the narration of the story, 
pilgrims are of much use for the poet in yet another way. When 
Horn assumes his disguise, together with the “esclavine,” the 
“burdun” and the “paulme,” he also takes hold of the pilgrim’s 
narrative ability, which has just been demonstrated. Above all, he 
becomes a storyteller. His fi rst chance to display his skills ensues 
right away. King Modin, intrigued by the contrast between the 
alleged pilgrim’s beauty and his poverty, sets Horn a series of 
questions, which prompt his fi rst story. In response to his rival’s 
demands, the hero gives a rather oblique account of his life at the 
end of which he explicitly defi nes himself as a teller of tales: “Tiele 
vïe demein cum vus sui cunteör. / S’en volz plus oïr, querez autre 
ditor” (4053–4054), (“I lead such a life as I tell you. If you want to 
hear more, ask another storyteller,” 117).8 In the following laisses, 
until Horn fi nally drops his mask, the story will not be about a 
knight, not even about a pilgrim, but about a storyteller. Through 
the pilgrim’s persona, the narrator takes the stage and displays his 
own narrative ability.

Twice in this episode, the disguised hero, mimicking Mestre 
Thomas, sets himself to the task of telling his own story. Both 
times, however, he does it in an obscure way. Horn, whose 
language is usually plain and straightforward, is suddenly 
possessed by a conspicuous inclination to use fi gurative speech. 
Just as he disguises his appearance with the pilgrim’s cloak, he 
disguises his intentions with words, too. Morgan Dickson has 
noted that Horn’s riddles are “a form of verbal disguise” (2000: 
47). He tells King Modin that he is a fi sherman who has put his 

8 All references to the text of the Roman de Horn are by line number to Pope 1955 
and 1964, and English translations are quoted fr om Weiss 2009. Emphasis mine.



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net into the water seven years ago and is now coming back to see 
if it caught a fi sh. A few lines below, he says to Rigmel that seven 
years ago he tamed and put into mew a goshawk and that now 
he wants to know “s’il est si entier, cum il fud a ces dis / quant 
joe turnai de ci” (4263–4264) (“if it is unblemished, as it was in 
the days when I left ,” 121). Horn is telling the truth about his 
intentions by lying. This veiled use of language does not seem 
to be just a useful subterfuge employed by the disguised hero to 
make fun of his rival or test his lover’s virginity. Horn’s truthful 
lies go far beyond their immediate narrative purpose. In fact, they 
may be construed as meta-narrative comments on the author’s 
own poetical program: in the Roman de Horn, fi ction, just as 
Horn’s riddles, is primarily a way of conveying truth, and it is up 
to the reader to be able to grasp it. This becomes evident fr om the 
diff erent responses of King Modin and Rigmel to Horn’s fi ctions. 
On the one hand, King Modin sticks with the literal meaning 
of the hero’s discourse and, hence, considers it a “grant folur” 
(4055), “great nonsense” (117) and the speaker, a “gabeör” (4056), 
“joker” (117). Rigmel, on the other hand, is insightful enough to 
remove the veil imposed by Horn’s words and, thus, recognize 
their true meaning and the pilgrim’s real identity: “Amis Horn, 
c’estes vus! bien conois vostre vis […] Li ostur dont parlez, ja 
mar sééz pensis: / Par tut est bien gardé si cum joe vus pramis” 
(4271, 4274–4275), “Horn, my fr iend, it’s you! Of course I know 
your face […] Have no doubts about the goshawk you speak of; I 
promise it is well guarded in every way,” (12). The impersonation 
of his hero as a pilgrim, thus, allows the Horn-author to voice 
his claim to the validity of fi ction as a disguised form of truth 
and, more importantly, to lay on the reader the responsibility for 
removing this disguise in the appropriate way. 9 This situation in 

9 The importance of the audience’s disposition for the correct interpretation 
of the story is also highlighted in the abovementioned episode in which Horn, 
under the pseudonym of Gudmond, is informed by the palmer-narrator about the 
situation in Brittany. Although Joceran is telling the truth, Horn, whose primary 



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which the author attracts the attention to his own literary project 
is described by Michel Zink as typical of romance composition. 
Indeed, in romance, by contrast to chanson de geste, “la subjectivité 
de l’auteur s’impose […] à travers la défi nition d’un projet ou d’un 
démarche dans l’ordre de la création littéraire” (Zink 1981: 8).

As M. K. Pope, Horn’s editor, acknowledges in his introduction 
to the poem, Mestre Thomas is noticeably a clerk. This is apparent, 
Pope argues, in the title he accords himself in the prologue, in 
his conspicuous Biblical knowledge, in his acquaintance with 
Ovid, in his strongly Latin-infl uenced vocabulary, in his fr equent 
remarks on women’s fi ckleness, and, I would add, in his idea of 

intention is to preserve his disguise in Ireland, levels serious accusations against 
the pilgrim, questioning his credibility: “Bien diz cum[e] paumer, mençonges 
vas trovant; / Lei est de pelerin, nul ne mentira taunt; / Ja ne dirront taunt veir 
ke je·s seie creant” (3730–3732) “You talk like a palmer, inventing lies. No one 
lies so much as pilgrims, who are used to it. They can never speak truly enough 
for me to believe them” (111–112). In medieval literary imagination pilgrims were 
traditionally represented as God’s spokesmen and instruments of divine Providence. 
However, by the twelft h century, the association of these fi gures with the disguise 
topos yields, according to Valerie Galent-Fasseur, “une angoisse liée à la notion de 
vérité”, since “le signe qui révèle la vérité peut aussi être utilisé comme véhicule 
du mensonge” (Galent-Fasseur 1997: 204, 210). Therefore, alongside Providence-
ordained pilgrims, such as Saboath in Boeve de Haumtone (see Galent-Fasseur 1998) 
or the mysterious palmer who rebukes Guiac’s ambition in Waldef (see Cartlidge 
2005), pilgrims accused of being liars eventually became commonplace in chanson 
de geste (Galent-Faseur 1997) and insular romance (Weiss 2010). However, it is 
noteworthy that this accusation of mendacity is also traditionally directed to poets 
ever since they were fi rst exiled by Plato fr om his Republic. Green 2003 identifi es 
three reasons why poets are oft en charged with being liars both in Antiquity and 
the Middle Ages: fi rst, the refusal of rigorist critics to recognize any kind of truth 
under the mendacious veil of fi ction, regardless of intention, eff ect or context. 
Second, rivalry among authors, and fi nally “the absence of a specifi c term and 
a theoretical home for the new genre of the romance and the fi ctionality that 
characterized it” (12–13). It is against this accusation that Thomas appears to be 
reacting as he forwards in meta-narrative terms his idea of poetry, which, as I 
argue below, he may have borrowed fr om scholarly commentaries and rhetorical 
treatises.



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poetry.10 Indeed, in the pilgrim episode Thomas may be echoing 
a view of poetry prevalent in late classic and medieval grammatical 
commentaries on the auctores. Equally interested in coming to terms 
with their pagan heritage, Late-antique Christian commentators, 
such as Servius, Lactantius or Fulgentius, show a recurring concern 
for explaining poetic language and assessing its validity.11 For this 
purpose, they draw largely on rhetorical theories of fi guration. 
Martin Irvine and David Thomson highlight that “the conception 
of metaphor and fi gure found in the artes grammaticae provided 
a foundation for literary theory for over a thousand years” (2005: 
35). According to Nicolette Zeeman, these texts and commentaries 
present a relational defi nition of poetry, which distinguishes itself 
fr om other discourses, such as philosophy, theology, ethics or 
natural sciences, in terms of its “special potential for obliquity, 
inexplicitness, evasiveness and obscurity” (1996: 155). In the early 
fourth century, Lactantius states that “offi  cium poetae [est] in eo, 
ut ea, quae gesta sunt vere, in alias species obliquis fi gurationibus 
cum decore aliquot conversa traducant” (“it is the business of poets 
elegantly and with oblique fi gures to turn and transfer things which 
have really occurred into other representations,” Zeeman 1996: 156; 
emphasis added). His description of the poet’s role would become 
commonplace among later clerics in their eff orts to defend poetry as 
a veiled form of truth. In the twelft h century, Bernard of Chartres 

10 Rosalind Field also underscores the clerical status of Thomas among other 
Anglo-Norman romancers, drawing the attention to a distinctive feature of insular 
clergie: whereas in Continental romances, as noted by Peter Haidu, the cleric oft en 
maintains an ironic distance towards his narrative, in the insular context there 
seems to be no disagreement between clerical and baronial concerns. In fact, she 
argues that both literary and historical evidence (i. e., the issuing of Magna Carta) 
show that the two groups were jointly engaged in “defi ning and supporting good 
rule” (Field 2011: 187).
11 For a full account of the study of classical authors in Late Antiquity and the 
Early Middle Ages, and of the implications of these readings for medieval literary 
theory, see Wetherbee 2005.



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and, especially, William of Conches would further explore the 
potential scope of this philosophical view of poetry, introducing 
the concept of integumentum or involucrum in their readings of 
Plato, Macrobius and Boethius.12 This fi gural conception of poetry 
is certainly discernible in the pilgrim’s slanting way of telling 
his vere gesta. But it can also be traced in Thomas’s own way of 
conveying meaning throughout his work. His idea of love, for 
instance, is not stated directly by means of authorial interventions. 
On the contrary, it is suggested through the careful structuring of 
the narrative in a pattern of doubling and repetition. The analogical 
relationship weaved between Rigmel and Lenburc allows the 
author to articulate in a disguised way his view of love, namely, 
that sexual desire is only acceptable when constraint by marriage 
and as a means of recovering the hero’s inheritance rights.13 It could 
be, thus, argued that in appropriating this academic view of poetry, 
originally conceived for reading the classical auctores, Thomas may 
be seeking to authorize and enhance the value of his own vernacular 
project, a strategy equally noticeable in the roughly contemporary 
works of Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, who defi nitively 
share Thomas’s literary awareness.14

12 Integumentum is defi ned in the Martianus Capella commentary, possibly 
authored by Bernard Silvester, as “a mode of discourse which covers a true meaning 
under a fi ctitious narrative” (Westra 1986: 24). For discussions on the twelft h 
century theory of integumentum, see the bibliography in Copeland 1991: 247, n. 57.
13 For the use of analogy to express authorial intention as a characteristic trait 
of romance composition, see Kelly 1992, particularly pages 217–222 and 306–308. 
The romance author would carry out a rhetorical or critical reading of his matière 
governed by a preconceived idea (the sans or antancion), which is subsequently 
entangled in the plot to construct a meaningful structure; in Chrétien’s terms, a 
“moult bele conj ointure” (Erec et Enide, v. 14). For the use of doubling patterns in 
the Roman de Horn, see Dickson 2002.
14 For this argument, I am indebted to the insightful fr amework provided by 
Copeland 1991 for understanding the interrelations between academic and 
vernacular cultures throughout the Middle Ages. In the context of this essay, it is 



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If we consider the Middle English reworking of Horn’s story 
in King Horn, it is evident that the adapter did not make as much 
of the meta-narrative potential of the pilgrim-disguise episode. 
To begin with, the role of pilgrims as storytellers is considerably 
reduced. It is not a pilgrim but a “knave” (949) who informs Horn 
about the recent events in Brittany, with which the readers, by the 
way, are already acquainted because they have just been described 
by a much more encompassing narrator. When Horn comes back 
fr om Ireland, he does meet a pilgrim who informs both him and 
the audience about Rymenhild’s situation in an eloquent way, which 
enhances the suspense of the episode. In assuming the identity of 
the pilgrim, however, the Middle English Horn does not make 
much use of his storytelling skills. The encounter with King Modi 
is deleted, and with it, the hero’s fi rst veiled account of his life 
and his self-identifi cation as a storyteller. The episode is therefore 
substantially shortened, and there is a signifi cant reorganization of 
the narrative components found in the Anglo-Norman version. 
The story about the fi sherman that Horn had told to King Modin 
is relocated so as to be included in his dialogue with Rymenhild, 
replacing the goshawk allegory. And, more importantly, unlike the 
Anglo-Norman text, this is not the fi rst time the fi shing image 
appears in the romance: before Horn is betrayed by Fikenhild, 
Rymenhild dreams that she casts a net to the sea and a big fi sh 
breaks it. The meaning of this dream is interpreted by Horn, who 
understands it as a prediction of the suff erings they will have to 
endure. A few lines on, Horn is exiled and his hermeneutical 
competence is demonstrated: “Lemman, derling, / Nu havestu þi 
swevening. / Þe fi ss þat þi net rente, fr am þe me he sente” (Allen 
1984: 737–740). Thus, when disguised as a pilgrim Horn brings 
up this story, his main purpose is to refr esh Rymenhild’s memory 

particularly relevant her study of Chaucer’s and Gower’s appropriation of academic 
exegetical practices with the purpose of authorizing vernacular writing (Chapter 
7). For Chrétien de Troyes’s and Marie de France’s literary awareness, see Zink 
1981 and Stanesco 1991.



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94SELIM 19 (2012)

recalling her dream, which is known to the two of them only, in 
order to prompt recognition. As a clue to Horn’s real identity, then, 
the fi shing story has a clear function within the narrative. It works 
in a similar way as the ring he drops in the horn. This narrative 
function is hardly recognizable in the Anglo-Norman version: the 
story is not told to Rigmel but to King Modin and, anyway, there is 
no dream to recall. Although almost completely gratuitous on the 
level of the narrative, the fi shing story, as I argued before, achieves 
full signifi cance in its meta-narrative dimension, drawing attention 
to Horn’s veiled use of language as a mirror of fi ction-making. 
The Middle English adaptor, not recognizing or not interested in 
exploiting its meta-narrative potential, deletes the encounter with 
King Modi and relocates the story, providing it a clear function 
within the narrative. In King Horn the fi shing riddle serves, thus, 
a diff erent but equally functional purpose: the repetition of this 
among other themes, such as the sea voyages, provides the work 
with a high degree of cohesion (Hynes-Berry 1975). Rosalind 
Wadsworth argues that “the conciseness of the Middle English 
renders this repetition eff ective and indeed necessary, and it 
accentuates signifi cant verbal repetition” (1972: 222). This is 
specially noticeable in the use of the ring motif: whereas in the 
Anglo-Norman romance it is mentioned only once (3166), in the 
Middle English the inspirational power of the ring is fr equently 
recalled in almost identical terms throughout the work (613–314; 
873–874; 1483–1484). These kinds of verbal repetitions may only 
succeed in establishing thematic unity in the Middle English text: 
even if Thomas would have likewise insisted on the ring’s magical 
qualities, in his detailed and expanded romance, Field suggests, 
these repetitions would not have proved as eff ective as in the highly 
condensed narrative of King Horn.

It should be noted that the wedding scene is not the only 
instance in which the Middle English narrator disregards the 
possibility, available in the Anglo-Norman version, to step into 
the narrative and stage his practice in a self-refl ective way. In the 



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Roman de Horn, during his stay in Ireland, the hero also conceals 
his identity: this time he keeps his status as a knight, but he 
disguises his name, assuming the pseudonym Gudmond. Under 
this disguise, in a musical meeting in Lady Lenburc’s chambers, 
he sings a lai about the love story between himself and Rigmel, 
delighting his audience, of course, just as Mestre Thomas hopes to 
do. This episode is, not surprisingly, deleted by the author of King 
Horn, who, furthermore, does not seem to grasp the use of the 
pseudonym, since both he and characters such as King Thurston 
constantly forget it, calling the hero sometimes Horn and others by 
the name he falsely assumes, Cutberd. In this way, unlike the author 
of the Roman de Horn, who is evidently inclined to comment on his 
own activity by way of these meta-textual procedures, the Middle 
English rewriter, dismissing these opportunities to foreground his 
authorial role, disappears behind his story. As Spearing puts it, “the 
story is told, but there is no indication of anyone telling it” (2005: 
40). This withdrawal of the poet fr om his narrative is noticeable 
—other than in his indiff erence for the meta-textual procedures— 
in two other aspects identifi ed by Spearing, that is, in the lack of 
narratorial explanations for changes in the focus of attention, on 
the one hand, and, on the other, in the almost exclusive use of the 
past tense, which “is felt to be the vehicle of objective discourse, 
fr om which all traces of speaker subjectivity have been eradicated” 
(Spearing 2005: 41, citing Fleischman). The poet’s withdrawal has 
long been recognized by Grimm and Hegel as characteristic of the 
epic narrative, which “donne l’impression de se chanter de lui-
même, d’une façon autonome, et sans être guidé par un auteur” 
(cited by Jauss 1963: 74). Jauss expands on this idea examining the 
Old French chanson de geste and contrasts the impersonal distance 
of the epic jongleur with the oft en overwhelming intermediary 
presence of the romance poet (1963: 75). Although focused on 
continental narrative, his insights turn out to be quite illuminating 
for describing the diff erences between the authorial stances adopted 
by the authors of the Romance of Horn and of King Horn, but also, 



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as will be seen in what follows, by the poets of the Auchinleck Bevis 
and Boeve de Haumtone.

2 Translating BOEVE DE HAUMTONE
The context for the pilgrim-disguise episode in the Boeve/Bevis-
story is very similar to that of Horn. As a boy, the hero is sold 
to Saracen merchants aft er the Emperor of Germany kills his 
father, the earl of Hampton, to marry his mother, who planned 
his murder. He grows up at the Saracen court of King Hermine 
and aft er some years, he has a love aff air with his daughter, 
Josiane. He is betrayed by two knights, however, and confi ned 
to a prison in Damascus for seven years. When he manages to 
escape, he searches for Josiane, who, although married to King 
Yvori of Monbrant, has preserved her virginity by means of a 
magic belt. Disguised as a pilgrim, Boeve/Bevis tests Josiane’s 
love and, following the suggestion of her squire, deceives his rival 
in order to run away fr om the city.

Although in both versions of the Boeve/Bevis story the outline 
of the episode is almost identical, signifi cant diff erences can be seen 
at this point. In the Anglo-Norman Boeve, the choice of the pilgrim 
disguise is not explicitly motivated and, as it is the case in many 
other episodes of the narrative, the appearance of the fake pilgrim 
must be taken for granted. Aft er Boeve sees Josiane complaining 
about him, the reader is simply informed that he felt pity and 
“en paleis entre en guise de palmer” (1394; “He entered the palace 
dressed like a palmer,” 52).15 Further on, she asks the question that 
triggers his fi rst fi ctitious narrative. Motivation, thus, is merely 
suggested by the paratactic arrangement of two narrative elements 
(Boeve’s disguise and Josian’s question) which appear to work as 
cause and eff ect. In translating his source, the Middle English 
Auchinleck poet completely dismisses this paratactic style borrowed 

15 All references to the text of Boeve de Haumtone are by line number to Stimming 
1899 and English translations are quoted fr om Weiss 2008.



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fr om the chanson de geste tradition by the Anglo-Norman author. 
His insinuations are replaced by overt explanations of the hero’s 
motivations: becoming a pilgrim allows him, fi rst, to go unnoticed 
and obtain information about the situation at court. This could 
have certainly been achieved with any kind of disguise that would 
conceal his social status. Only under the pilgrim’s cloak, though, 
can he attract Josian’s attention, which is exclusively directed to 
pilgrims’ storytelling skills. In fact, one of the palmers gathered at 
the castle’s gate explains that Josian expects nothing fr om them but 
stories about Bevis and that she would reward them for these: “To 
a riche man ȝe wolde him bringe, / Þat kouþe telle of him [Bevis] 
tiding!” (102).16 Not long aft erwards this requirement is voiced by 
Josian herself in the following terms: 

Herde ever eni of ȝow telle
in eni lede or eni spelle,
or in feld oþer in toun,
of a kniȝt, Beves of Hamtoun? (104)

These two statements suffi  ciently explain Bevis’s reasons for using 
the pilgrim disguise. But they have another purpose as well: at the 
same time they underscore the pilgrims’ narrative role, clarify ing 
thus the hero’s motivations, they enhance the association between 
their fi gure and that of the narrator. Just as these pilgrims, the 
narrative persona of the Auchinleck Bevis expects to receive rewards 
for telling stories about Bevis (particularly in the form of beverage: 
“Ac er þan we be-ginne fi ȝe  / Ful vs þe koppe anon riȝe!,” 194) 
and, just like Josian, he also refers to the narrative he is voicing as 

16 All references to the Auchinleck (A) text of Bevis are by page number to Köbling 
1885–1894. References to other manuscrips and printed versions of Bevis are by line 
number to Fellows 1980. I use Fellows’ abbreviations for manuscripts and printed 
texts. This reward promise voiced by the palmer in A is attributed to Josian in N, 
S, C (2794–2795), M (1902–1903), and the printed versions (1881–1882).



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a “spelle.”17 Josian appears to be summoning the narrator himself, 
who, in the same way as Mestre Thomas, steps into the narrative 
by means of his hero’s pilgrim disguise.

Unlike Horn, however, the disguised Bevis will not tell 
truthful—though veiled—stories of his life; he will tell only lies. 
This is especially evident when, already recognized by Josian, 
he uses his pilgrim disguise once again to trick King Yvori. On 
account of this ruse (devised by Josian’s squire, Bonefas), the 
audience is invited to witness the process by which a fi ctitious 
story is constructed. Therefore, the means used by the narrator 
to guarantee his credibility are bluntly exposed and can be easily 
identifi ed. In the fi rst place, Bevis draws his authority fr om his 
pilgrim cloak. A pilgrim, as Valérie Galent-Fasseur points out, 
“instaurait avec Dieu un rapport privilégié qui lui conférait une 
puissance sur la parole porté par le texte, et sur les auditeurs” (1997: 
54). Given this tight association between storytelling and truth 
embedded in the character of pilgrims, it is not hard to envision 
the benefi ts for Bevis to impersonate a pilgrim. In his eff ort to 
make his story believable, the “sclavyne” would grant his narrative 
the same unquestionable and God-sanctioned credibility as that 
attached to the pilgrims’ discourse. Interestingly, this authorizing 
gesture, which is here enacted in a meta-narrative fashion, is later 
uttered by the narrator in much more straightforward terms. 

17 The word spelle is not used by Josian in S, N or the printed versions. It can 
be found, other than in A, in C and M, but only in the fi rst two manuscripts 
does the narrator use the term “spelle” to refer either to his work (“Of þat feste 
ne lich namor telle,  / for to hiȝe wiþ our spelle,” 78) or to the activity he is 
performing (“Nomore of þis Erle wyll y telle / But of hys sone wyll y spelle,” C: 
316/317). Nevertheless, in C the pilgrim’s tale is not otherwise associated to the 
narrator’s work; see below. As stated by Paul Strohm, the term spelle off ers valuable 
information about the generic nature of the works thus defi ned. In his analysis of 
the terminology used by Middle English writers for describing narrative genres, 
he called the attention to the strong “identifi cation of spelle with what we think of 
today as metrical romance” (1971: 353), such as it becomes especially evident fr om 
Chaucer’s use of this word to describe his parodic Sir Thopas.



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When the poet, in an episode interpolated in the Middle English 
translation, has to assert the truthfulness of a dragon’s dreadful 
and questionable properties, he equally resorts to the authority 
of pilgrims:

And who þat nel nouȝt leve me,
Wite at pilgrimes þat þer haþ be,
For þai can telle ȝow, iwis,
Of þat dragoun how it is. (125; M, 2301–2302)18

This is not the only instance in the work in which the poet appeals 
to an external source of authorization and disclaims responsibility 
for the truth of the events narrated. In the same way as Bevis 
borrows the pilgrim’s authority to make his lies believable, the poet 
usurps the authority of the “French bok” to provide credibility to 
his fi ction.

In second place, in the process of construction of the counterfeit 
story, it becomes evident that Bevis grounds his credibility on his 
rhetorical skills, which he displays fully to compose a convincing 
narrative. The storyline is provided to him by Bonefas:

Sai, þat þow havest wide i-went,
And þow come be Dabilent,
Þat is hennes four jurné:
Sai, men wile þer the king sle,
Boute him come help of sum oþer. (109)

The hero amplifi es it substantially, however, to spin an elaborate 
“tale”, as King Yvori calls it:

Sire, ich come fr o Jurisalem
Fro Nazareþ & fr o Bedlem,

18 This commentary appears only in A and Ma (the intervening portion of M). 
Interestingly, Fellows indicates that “given that Ma is generally much closer to 
the later texts of Bevis, it seems likely that where it agrees with A against other 
manuscripts, the features in question are original” (Fellows 2008: 94). Therefore, 
the identifi cation between the disguised hero and the narrator, both appealing 
to the authority of pilgrims to authorize their discourse, could have already been 
suggested in the original Middle English translation of Boeve.



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Emauns castel & Synaie;
Ynde, Erop, and Asie,
Egippte, Grese, and Babiloine,
Tars, Sesile and Sesaoine,
In Fris, in Sodeine and in Tire,
In Aufr ik and in mani empire,
Ac al is pes þar ichave went,
Save in þe lond of Dabilent.
In pes mai no man come þare,
Þar is werre, sorwe & care.
Þre kinges and dukes fi ve
His chevalrie adoun ginneþ drive,
And meche oþer peple ischent,
Cites itake and tounes i-brent;
Him to a castel þai han idrive,
Þat stant be þe se upon a clive,
And al þe ost liþ him aboute,
Be this to daie a is in doute. (110)

The exhaustive enumeration of cities or territories and the detailed 
account of the alleged siege by the armies of three kings and fi ve 
dukes are not usual in this narrative which is generally more succinct 
in its descriptions.19 Drawing on his eloquence and showing off  his 
rhetorical mastery, Bevis makes his story plausible. In addition to 
the pilgrim’s cloak, then, it is this verbal profusion, this “rhétorique 
de l’excès” (Gallé 2005: 260) that warrants the credibility of the 
fi ctitious story. It is noteworthy that the economy of the narration 
is also subverted by a lengthy and eloquent description in another 
episode, which, due to its questionable nature, requires further 
endorsement: the battle with the dragon. Here, the poet off ers 

19 Although in the Anglo-Norman version the alleged pilgrim also enumerates 
the places he visited and describes the siege of Dabilent (1519–1527), in the A 
redaction of the Middle English poem (as well as in S and N) this passage is 
considerably amplifi ed: the number of place names is doubled and more precise 
details about the siege are included to confer further credibility to the pilgrim’s 
account. In C, M, and the printed versions, instead, Bevis’s tales as a traveller are 
omitted and Bonefas’s speech is, in varying degrees, amplifi ed.



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101 SELIM 19 (2012)

a very detailed account of the characteristics of this dubitable 
creature, including, for example, the length of the dragon’s tusks:

His eren were rowe & ek long,
His fr ount be-fore hard & strong;
Eiȝte toskes at is mouþ stod out,
Þe leste was seventene ench about,
Þe her, þe cholle under þe chin,
He was boþe leiþ and grim;
A was i-maned ase a stede;
Þe heved a bar wiþ meche pride,
Be-twene þe scholder and þe taile
Foure and twenti fot,saunfaile.
His taile was of gret stringeþe,
Sextene fot a was a lingþe;
His bodi ase a wintonne.
Whan hit schon þe briȝte sonne,
His wingges schon so þe glas.
His sides wer hard ase eni bras.
His brest was hard ase eni ston;
A foulere þing nas never non. (125)20

The description of the dragon provides an eloquent example of 
this use of hyperbolic language as an authorizing strategy, which 
the narrator had previously underscored in his fi ctitious account of 
the siege of Dabilent.

Consequently, exploiting the meta-narrative possibilities of the 
pilgrim-disguise episode available in his source, the Auchinleck 
Bevis-poet suggests diff erent and quite contradictory forms of 
narrative authorization: on the one hand, he draws his credibility 
fr om external sources, either a pilgrim or the “Frensch bok”, whose 
stories he claims to reproduce or translate. On the other hand, 
however, he emphatically asserts the value of his own eloquence as 
a comparable source of credibility, moving away fr om the humilitas-

20 This long and “excessive” description appears only in A. In NSEC (3497–
3501), M (2372–2376), and the printed versions (2340–2344) a much more 
concise depiction is provided when Bevis encounters the dragon, and this is 
correspondingly omitted in A.



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topos which translators generally use to describe the relationship 
between source and translation, even when they consciously subvert 
their sources.21

3 Conclusions
In the past decade, scholars have argued that Boeve de Haumtone 
and the Roman de Horn share numerous features with Continental 
chansons de geste and could, in fact, be considered peculiar insular 
developments of this genre (Ailes 2006, 2008, 2011; Furrow 2010). 
A common practice has been to read these texts in the light of the 
critical models which describe and explain the Continental genre 
in order to ascertain their suitability when applied to the insular 
corpus. If one follows this approach regarding the ways in which 
poets represent themselves and their poetics within their own 
works, one reaches interesting conclusions. In his seminal work on 
medieval poetics, Paul Zumthor (2000 [1972]: 399) states:

quelle que soit la rigueur avec laquelle il applique les règles 
propres de son texte, jamais le chanteur de geste (bien diff érent 
en cela du trouvère) n’imposa à ses auditeurs sa propre 
conscience artistique; il subordonne, à l’accomplissement 
d’une tâche qui est de raconter une fois encore une fable 
héritée, le dessein particulier de sa parole.

While this fi ttingly describes the poet of Boeve de Haumtone, who 
appears to be exclusively focused to the task of telling a story, the 
author of the Roman de Horn can hardly be described in terms 
of Zumthor’s chanteurs. The meta-narrative procedures presented 
above show a poet with a clear artistic conscience, eager to showcase 
and assert his poetics and, therefore, at least concerning this aspect, 
closer to romance authors such as Chrétien de Troyes or Hue de 

21 For a survey on medieval translation as an essentially hermeneutical practice, 
see Copeland 1991.



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Rotelande.22 Interestingly, when these narratives are rewritten in 
Middle English, the case is the opposite: Mestre Thomas’s overt 
displays of authorial consciousness cannot be traced in King Horn 
but are defi nitely visible in the Auchinleck Bevis. Jennifer Fellows 
has in fact suggested that “the Auchinleck Bevis clearly represents 
a systematic reworking of the romance—what in short may 
reasonably be termed ‘authorial revision’ ” (1998: 21).

The texts we have looked at show two diff erent authorship 
models. The poets of both Boeve de Haumtone and King Horn 
appear to adopt the traditionally epic authorial stance: they are 
simply vehicles of a tradition they inherit. As Michel Stanesco 
puts it, “ce n’est pas l’individu qui a ici la parole, mais la tradition 
embrassant toutes les dimensions de l’être, y compris le dit 
poétique” (1991: 8). In this context, Zumthor certainly had it right 
when he proclaimed the author’s disappearance, in whose place 
“reste le sujet de l’énonciation, une instance locutrice intégrée au 
texte et indissociable de son fonctionnement: ‘ça’ parle” (Zumthor 
2000 [1972]: 89). But the authors of the Roman de Horn and the 
Auchinleck Bevis refuse to disappear. Advertising their authorial 
status, the Auchinleck scribe and Mestre Thomas insistently drive 
the reader’s attention to their role in the individual reworking 
of a traditional story. The development of literary conscience 
is, therefore, not linear and, as becomes evident fr om the works 
analyzed above, the vernacular employed would not  represent 
a signifi cantly determining factor in the evolution of authorial 
consciousness in medieval England.

These conclusions may be supported by recent critical work 
on other Anglo-Norman and Middle English romances. A. C. 
Spearing, for instance, off ers an insightful reading on the literary 
awareness of the Havelok poet (2005) and Rosalind Field, in her 
study on the translation of Gui de Warewic into Middle English 

22 For the role of twelft h-century romance and, in particular, Chrétien de Troyes’s 
work in the development of authorial consciousness, see Zink 1981.



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(2008a), has demonstrated that the Anglo-Norman author may 
be described in terms similar to those usually employed to refer 
to Middle English popular writers. These essays have contributed 
greatly to qualify  previous generalizations on the authorial modes 
commonly associated either to Anglo-Norman or to Middle English 
romances. However, much remains to be done. According to 
Field’s recent assessment of Anglo-Norman critical practice (2011), 
scholars have long been focused on the intended audiences of these 
romances, neglecting the authorship question. This essay has thus 
been intended to partially make up for this uneven distribution of 
scholarly attention, extending the study of this problem also to the 
Middle English period.

María Dumas
University of Buenos Aires - CONICET (IMHICIHU)

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•

Received 17 Sep 2013; accepted 25 Oct 2013