The “Sermons” of English Romance

The influence of sermon content on mediaeval secular literature has long been acknowledged. Widening the trail blazed by Gerald Owst in 1933, Siegfried Wenzel has recently identified sermon material in the fabliaux, the drama, the epic, and, very extensively, in the mediaeval lyric.1 Evidence for the usage of sermon formats, however, is considerably harder to develop, although efforts to do so—both brilliant and bizarre—have certainly been attempted.2 Many of the difficulties arise because the homily style in preaching design that had been dominant until the twelth century and remained a viable option especially in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries was too unique and personalized to the individual sermon giver to be reduced to a scheme. In addition, the more organized pattern of preaching, which today is called “scholastic,” “university-style,” or more correctly “thematic,” vied for prominence with the homily throughout most of the mediaeval period. Only in the fourteenth century, and probably only in England where manuals on thematic design and sermons thus organized flourished, can the effect of a prescribed preaching structure on non-religious writing be easily discerned. Such a discovery occurs when certain unusually-shaped passages in English metrical romance are measured against thematic formats.