"It is fortunate that Hugh is both a highly capable narrator, and an attractively astute witness to the values and assumptions of the society in which he lived. His narratives are distinguished by an energetic and inventive enthusiasm for extended action-sequences featuring the exploits of knights in battle; a consistent, clearly realised and colourful setting in a distinctly imagined fictional world;"
"a knowing, amused, and somewhat "quizzical" attitude towards "elegant society"; and a penchant for amusingly dry and incisive irony. This irony is in most cases directed at his characters, but sometimes at particular contemporaries, or at himself."
"Ipomedon stands, therefore, as an important work with significant implications for how we understand the cultural climate of the twelfth-century Anglo-Welsh border; medieval conceptions of humour, genre, chivalry, and misogyny; and the reception and translation of insular French texts."
Ipomedon is a twelfth-century Anglo-French romance set on the Anglo-Welsh border that follows a prince who goes incognito to meet a queen and is then sent on adventures. The narrative includes tournaments, repeated tests of prowess and character, and vivid action-sequences featuring knights in battle. The narrator, Hugh, presents a colourful fictional world with a knowing, amused, and quizzical attitude toward elegant society and a penchant for dry, incisive irony. The work illuminates medieval conceptions of humour, genre, chivalry, misogyny, and the reception of insular French literature.
Read at Medievalists.net
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