William Caxton’s translations of Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine are among the first romances to be printed in England. Published in 1485 and 1489, respectively, they continued to be popular for more than a century and have considerable literary significance. They are the earliest English versions of French narratives already well known in medieval Europe. Circulating in verse and prose versions in numerous languages, romances of the faithful lovers were among the most popular narratives of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The stories’ sustained and widespread appeal had much to do with their lively, sympathetic characters and to their distinctive treatments of familiar plots. The romances both edify and entertain, exemplifying ideals of chivalry and steadfast devotion while incorporating adventure, suspense, deception, and humor. Audiences would also have appreciated their realistic depictions of tournaments and battles.

Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine are important witnesses to the development of English prose style and the genre of romance, being in many ways precursors to the novel. They are unique among the romances that Caxton published, for they are the only independent romances of adventure; all the others are canonical works drawn from the epic cycles of England, France, and Greece and Rome. Despite similarities, the two narratives are a study in contrasts, since they give different but complementary accounts of chivalry and love, and nearly opposite treatments of characters who are Muslim.

The sections that follow review what the romances have in common: their publication by Caxton, ties to the court of Burgundy, English audiences, shared narrative motifs, and fifteenth-century prose style. Commentary on Caxton’s translation practice and an explanation of my editorial practice are included. A chronological list of Caxton’s romances, manuals of chivalry, and conduct books appears in Table 1.

The remainder of the volume consists of the edited text of each romance preceded by its own introduction addressing matters specific to that narrative, including origin, versions, manuscript history, and distinctive features. Each text is followed by Explanatory Notes and Textual Notes; a Bibliography and a Glossary complete the edition.

William Caxton: Merchant, Diplomat, and Printer

William Caxton was not the author of Paris and Vienne or Blanchardyn and Eglantine; however, as the person who chose to translate them and print them, he can be said to have authored them into English. His career and publications engaged him directly in the literary, economic, and political life of his times. Caxton was born in Kent around 1420, to parents who sent him to school and arranged his apprenticeship to the merchant Robert Large, a member of the Mercers’ Company, also Alderman, and later mayor of London. By 1444 Caxton himself was a Mercer engaged in exporting wool and importing fine textiles between London and northern Europe. Trading at Bruges, he rose to become Governor of the English Nation of the Merchant Adventurers there, and in this capacity held what one biographer calls “the most prominent, powerful and lucrative office available to a private Englishman abroad.” Bruges was a nexus of trade and cultural diffusion from the continent to England, as well as one of the most important cities in the territories of the dukes of Burgundy. Here staples and luxury goods of all kinds from around the world were bought and sold. Caxton’s office in the Merchant Adventurers required him to negotiate both international contracts and local agreements with London, the ports of Flanders, the French staple port at Calais, and the cities of the Hanseatic League. His position of authority, expertise, and knowledge of commerce brought him into contact with important people and cultural trends. Edward IV commissioned him to negotiate shipping treaties and tariffs among the ruling houses of England and Burgundy. In addition to shipping and selling finished cloth and other goods between London and the Continent, Caxton was active in the book trade, supplying volumes in manuscript and print to nobles, gentry, citizens, and courtiers. His clients included aristocratic bibliophiles, literary patrons, and creators of libraries whose desire for books and display of status supported professional translators, scribes, and workshops with ties to the book trade.

At the end of his appointment as Governor in 1468, Caxton ceased his active career with the Merchant Adventurers but remained in Bruges serving as secretary, librarian, and translator in the establishment of Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV and wife of Charles the Bold. With access to her library, and time at his disposal, Caxton began to translate a French Troy romance into English and completed the project at Cologne, where he became acquainted with the printing press. In 1473 he printed the romance at Bruges with Colard Mansion, who operated the first press in that city. Having traded in books printed in Germany and at Lyon, Caxton recognized the advantages of the new technology and had experience supplying the growing demand for books. With these in mind, he returned to London in 1476, after thirty years in northern Europe, to set up England’s first printing press in Westminster outside the City of London. Through the instability of the Wars of the Roses he prospered there, translating, editing, publishing, printing, loaning, and selling books until his death in 1491 — a ready conduit to English readers for the fashionable French literature he had encountered on the Continent, as well as a source for material already circulating in English.

Caxton as Publisher

During the fifteen years that he operated his press, Caxton catered to the market’s demands, printing a variety of materials for a diverse audience. His publications included Latin grammars, standard educational texts, chronicles, indulgences, and such ephemera as handbills. Many of his publications, the books of hours and collections of homilies and prayers, were intended for religious instruction and devotional use. In addition to fostering the spread of literacy generally, Caxton made substantial contributions to English literature. He helped to form its canon, fostered the development of a courtly literary prose style distinct from the older alliterative tradition, and authored prologues and epilogues that are among the earliest examples of literary criticism in English. He edited Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur before printing it. His many translations from French (also Latin and Dutch) added substantially to those works available to English readers and audiences. Although he created no original work of literature, he was a literary figure in his own right and an author according to literary practice of the period. Major English writers of the fifteenth century, including Malory, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, and John Skelton, all reproduced pre-existing works by excerpting, paraphrasing, or translating. The years 1400–1530 saw a higher proportion of translated prose, compared to total literary production, “than in any other period of English literary history.” Caxton published works by respected authors of earlier generations, commenting on their literary significance and acknowledging his admiration of Chaucer’s style. He printed the Canterbury Tales (twice) as well as Troilus and Criseyde, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady, and his The Horse, the Sheep and the Goose. Caxton’s edition of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur was the only known version of the romance until the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript in the 1930s. As notable as the works he did print are those that he did not. Excepting the Morte and works by Chaucer, Caxton printed no English romances, and nothing in alliterative verse or prose (and he suppressed Malory’s alliteration in his edition). The style of Piers Plowman and Richard Rolle doubtless seemed old-fashioned and insular (“rude” and “uplondish”) and their lexicon unfamiliar to one with Caxton’s continental tastes. Nevertheless, the earlier verse romances and alliterative works by Langland and Rolle circulated widely in Caxton’s England and continued to be popular in the sixteenth century when they were reprinted by his successors.

Caxton and Burgundian Literature

In addition to literature already circulating in English, Caxton printed works new to the language and established a program of chivalric publications that included treatises on conduct and knighthood, chronicles, histories, and romances. With the latter he sought both “to shap[e] and to satisf[y] the taste for romances of chivalry that dominated” the later fifteenth century. Though they were new to readers of English, his romances were in keeping with literary tastes already established in Britain; there, readers of French owned copies of those works, and authors and translators were producing similar prose romances in English. Caxton’s publications introduced Burgundian literature with its attendant ideologies and social forms into English culture, contributing to what has been called a Burgundian Renaissance in England. Many of his sources can be identified as works belonging to the collections of Dukes Charles the Bold and Philip the Good, among them writings of Christine de Pizan, Raymond Lull, and Geoffrey de la Tour-Landry. The French text closest to Caxton’s translation of the latter is known to have been in the ducal library at Bruges. Among Caxton’s other publications with sources or analogues in that collection are The Game and Playe of the Chesse, The Consolation of Philosophy, Aesop’s Fables, The Declamation of Noblesse, The Golden Legend, and The Book of Good Manners. He translated eight prose romances associated with the court and its sphere of influence, including The Recuyell and the Historye of Troye and Jason, both authored by Raoul le Fèvre, chaplain and secretary to Philip the Good. The author of Paris et Vienne, Pierre de la Cépède, was affiliated with the establishment of Duke Philip in Marseille. Louis de Gruuthuse, Flemish nobleman and bibliophile, owned the manuscript of the Livre d’Eracles that Caxton probably used as a source for Godfrey of Boulogne. Fierabras [Charles the Great] was commissioned by Charles Bolomyer, Canon of Lausanne; Four Sons of Aymon and Enydos have Burgundian connections as well.

Surviving manuscripts of Paris et Vienne (in Brussels) and Blancandin et l’Orgueilleuse d’Amours (in Vienna) were created in the atelier of the Maître de Wavrin at Lille, a studio of artisans supported by the patronage of Jean de Wavrin, bibliophile and counselor to Philip the Good. Jean de Créquy, another patron of letters and counselor to the duke, commissioned the illustrated Vienna manuscript of Blancandin from that atelier. Members of the Croy family, who held titles and offices at the courts of Philip and Charles the Bold, owned the Brussels manuscript of Paris et Vienne. Members of the family also commissioned two copies of the romance Octovyen from the Wavrin workshop which they dedicated to Créquy. The text of the plainer Paris manuscript of Blancandin, which is “undoubtedly” closely related to Caxton’s source, is virtually identical to that of the Vienna manuscript and is written in a similar hand. It, too, was likely produced by the same atelier, perhaps for sale. Such workshops in Flanders were the source of many deluxe manuscripts owned by English nobles; Edward IV’s fine decorated volumes imported from Bruges became the basis for the British Royal Library.

Caxton’s attempt to introduce French prose romance into England was initially successful, and several of his translations continued in print until the end of the sixteenth century. The Recuyell of the Historye of Troye was particularly popular, to judge from the number of editions and copies that survive, and Wynkyn de Worde reprinted that romance as well as Four Sons of Aymon, Morte D’Arthur, and Paris and Vienne. In his own romance publications, de Worde continued to follow Caxton’s program of printing “what was currently available, and in demand, on the Continent,” that is, new translations of French prose romances. Robert Copland and Richard Pynson, who followed de Worde, kept these four romances in print for more than a hundred years.

Caxton’s Audience: Patrons and Readers

Information about Caxton’s audiences comes from his prologues and dedications, and from traces left by readers in surviving manuscripts and documents. His dedicatees are both noble and bourgeois, and his writings recommend the romances to the reading of aristocrats as well as to a larger less elite audience. The dedications function as advertisements by calling attention to Caxton’s access to the aristocracy and flattering both the patron and aspiring readers of the gentry, merchant, and professional classes. The nature of Caxton’s relationship to his patrons and dedicatees varied, and he may not have assumed that they actually read the books dedicated to them. In his prologue to Jason, he asks Edward IV, who had commissioned the translation, to allow him to dedicate it to the Prince of Wales, “to the entente he may begynne to lerne rede English,” rather than to the king himself, “for as moch as I doubte not his good grace hath it in Frensh, which he wel understandeth.” However, Caxton did dedicate Godfrey of Boulogne to Edward, whose copy of the book survives. He translated and printed The Recuyell of Troye at the request of Margaret of Burgundy; the only surviving copy belonged to her sister-in-law, the queen Elizabeth. Blanchardyn was translated for Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Caxton had earlier sold her a manuscript of the romance in French that may well have been his source. Caxton was present when Henry VII presented a copy of Christine de Pizan’s Faites d’Armes et de Chevalerie [Deeds of Arms and Chivalry] to the Earl of Oxford, who in turn conveyed it to the printer for translation. Margaret Beaufort owned a copy of the treatise that he had printed, given to her by her son. These patrons’ support for the dissemination of material in print was regarded as a virtuous act of charitable largesse, making books of moral and educational value available to English readers. Such patronage was also a display of status modeled on Italian Renaissance courts where nobles asserted prestige by building libraries and owning luxury copies of important works. Not all of Caxton’s dedications acknowledge actual patronage; some, like the presentation of The Ordre of Chyvalry to Richard III, seem more designed to ingratiate.

While English aristocrats read French, their courtiers and members of their households were more at home with English. In his prologue to the 1483 reprint of The Game and Playe of the Chesse, Caxton explains that he translated it for the benefit of those who do not understand French and Latin, and “al them that . . . shal see, here, or rede” the book. In the prologue to The Nightingale Lady Anne Beaufort is envisioned reading the poem to her “people” for their moral instruction and entertainment. If the engraving of Margaret of Burgundy in The Recuyell of Troye is any indication, the audience would have consisted of ladies in waiting, their maids and pages, and members of the retinue, household, and family. The scene resembles that of other dedicatory miniatures from France and northern Europe where the lady, surrounded by her attendants, receives the book from the kneeling author while others busy themselves on the periphery.

In addition to aristocrats, Caxton dedicated books to several of London’s leading citizens. Hugh Bryce, a Mercer, funded the translation and production of the Mirror of the World. Caxton dedicated The Book of Good Manners to William Pratt and Charles the Great to William Daubeney — wealthy tradesmen and city officials. Caxton addressed his publications to “Cristen prynces, lordes, barons, knyghtes, gentilmen, marchauntes, and all the comyn peple,” as well as to clerks, ladies, and gentlewomen. The surviving copies of Caxton’s romances belonged to such people: clergy, landed gentry, lawyers, officials, and court servants who would have shared them in their domestic and social circles. Raufe Batson, a member of the Mercers Company at Bruges in 1505, and Roger Thorney (d. 1515), a wealthy London Mercer, owned copies of Godfrey of Boulogne. Robert Johnson, a sub-deacon in Ely and rector in Essex, purchased copies of Godfrey of Boulogne, Enydos, and Fayttes of Arms and Chivalry in 1510. John Thynne, who owned The Recuyell of Troye and Enydos, was steward to the Seymour family and was knighted in 1546. The Troy story seems to have been especially popular, which is to be expected given Britain’s myth of Trojan origins. A copy belonged to Thomas Shuckburg, whose family held lands in Warwickshire; he could have obtained the book through an uncle who was listed as a member of the London Drapers Company in 1493. Other copies of The Recuyell of Troye were owned by William Saunder, a lawyer in Surrey who held important positions there under Henry VIII; by the Tresham family of Northamptonshire, a member of which was knighted in 1530; and by Margery Wellysborn, of Buckinghamshire, whose husband was MP in 1477. Thomas Skeffington, master of military ordinance for the Tudors, owned Jason and The Mirror of the World. One John Dew of Chesterton, a fellow of Gonville College, inscribed the surviving copy of Blanchardyn and Eglantine in 1500. A connection between Caxton and the prominent Paston family can be traced through their scribe, William Ebesham, whose shop was close by Caxton’s in Westminster. Ebesham made their “Grete Booke” as well as manuscript copies of Caxton’s documents. The Pastons owned a copy of Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse.

Caxton’s early readers were quite separated by rank, wealth, and locale from his aristocratic patrons and the French nobles who were instrumental in the creation and dissemination of the romances he offered for sale. Their owners belonged to classes that did not fit neatly into the medieval hierarchy of those who work, pray, and fight, and whose growing numbers proved a challenge to the static ideals of feudal society that their reading matter validated. The technology of their books’ production was also at odds with these ideals, as mass production and consumption of printed materials had transformative implications for both cultural and economic capital. Caxton could manufacture books in “grete chepe and in grete nombre,” a virtue of printing that enabled him to reach a large group of socially diverse customers at once. Though his technology was forward-looking, Caxton’s conservative tastes appealed to those of his socially ambitious customers. His prologues and the availability of printed books on chivalric themes suggested that one could rise in social status through appropriate choice of reading matter. That the volumes were valued possessions and symbols of family status is clear from references in wills and other documents. It seems fitting that John Dew, who presumably owned other books he could have written in, chose the one containing Blanchardyn to record his family’s pedigree and coat of arms.

Chivalry and Courtesy

Caxton’s romances are part of his larger program of chivalric publication and commentary on the practice of chivalry in his own times. Significantly, he chose to focus on the cycle of the Nine Worthies. This group of legendary, biblical, and historical figures had served as a model of chivalric virtue since the early thirteenth century and was a favorite subject of literature and art at the courts of France and England. In these settings, the Worthies played an important role in the performance of chivalry, epitomized by the pageants, celebrations, ceremonies, and tournaments that took place at the founding of the Order of the Golden Fleece by Philip the Good in 1430. Caxton had visited the shrine-chamber at Hesenden that the duke had constructed for the Order and dedicated at its founding. In his prologue to Jason, Caxton described its paintings depicting the hero’s conquests and the mechanized marvel that produced wind and rain. He could well have attended the celebration of the marriage of Margaret of York and Charles the Bold in 1468, which took place in Bruges amid extravagant pageantry and feats of arms at the Pas de l’Arbre d’Or [Challenge of the Golden Tree]. Here Anthony Woodville, later Caxton’s patron, famously jousted with Anton de la Roche, the Bastard of Burgundy. At least four other tournaments were held by members of the Burgundian court while Caxton was in Bruges and Ghent, giving him many opportunities to observe such displays. In London, court and urban cultures blended with the increased frequency of large-scale tournaments. Citizens attended these, and their businesses supported them. Aldermen, officers, and guilds participated in the processions associated with civic and royal ceremonies where chivalric protocol played an important role. In a departure from the practice of earlier sovereigns, Edward IV showed favor to leading London citizens by bestowing knighthoods on aldermen and mayors.

The dedication to Blanchardyn and Eglantine recommends romances for their chivalric values:

[I]t is as requesyte other whyle to rede in auncyent hystoryes of noble fayttes and valyaunt actes of armes and warre which have been achyeved in olde tyme of many noble prynces, lordes, and knyghtes, as wel for to see and know their walyauntnes for to stande in the specyal grace and love of their ladyes (Dedication.1).

Caxton strikes a note of nostalgia and alarm at his contemporaries’ practice of chivalry in his epilogue to Raymond Lull’s Ordre of Chyvalry:

[This] booke is not requysyte to euery comyn man to haue, but to noble gentylmen that by their vertu entende to come and entre in to the noble ordre of chyualry the whiche in these late dayes hath been vsed accordyng to this booke here to fore wreton but forgeten and thexcersytees of chyualry not vsed honoured ne excercysed as hit hath ben in auncyent tyme.

After citing Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table he laments, “O ye knyghtes of Englond where is the custome and vsage of noble chyualry that was vsed in the dayes?” In closing, Caxton appeals to Richard III to make the book required reading for young lords, knights, and gentlemen who aspire to knighthood. Caxton had printed a number of other treatises on chivalry and manners including The Game and Playe of the Chesse and Fayttes of Arms and Chivalry. Connections can be made between the manuals and the romances published in the same year: the battle plans and siege warfare described in Blanchardyn and Eglantine resemble the instructions for mounting defenses and sieges in Christine’s Fayttes of Arms and Chivalry (1489), while the tournaments and pilgrimage of Paris and Vienne are in keeping with the ideals of Lull’s Ordre of Chyvalry (1485). Caxton’s prologues and epilogues are conduct books of a sort, instructing readers in how to approach aristocratic texts.

The romances themselves are courtesy literature, for their characters epitomize proper deportment and chivalric excellence, or the lack thereof. Blanchardyn and Eglantine can be read as a mirror for princes and princesses, Paris and Vienne as a mirror for adolescents. Blanchardyn is a paragon of courteous behavior: his audiences with Eglantine are models of elegant manners as he approaches the royal personage and “makes the reverence,” speaking politely and displaying humility, discretion, and reticence. Such behavior is described in Caxton’s Babee’s Boke and The Boke of Curtasye, which include instructions for how properly to greet one’s lord or superior, approach them, and engage in conversation. Though Vienne’s determination and loyalty to Paris is admirable, her disobedience and refusal of the completely appropriate marriage her father arranges for her are negative illustrations of the ideals of obedience, submission, and respect for parents, especially regarding marriage, that are set forth in The Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry. That treatise, addressed to the knight’s daughters, concludes with a debate as to the propriety of “love paramours,” or courtly love. He asserts that a knight’s love of a lady can inspire him to good conduct and skill at arms while raising the reputation of the lady; his wife argues that men perform feats of chivalry mainly to enhance their own reputations and are more often motivated by lust than by love. Blanchardyn and Eglantine and Paris and Vienne both mention the lovers’ educations and include many dialogues in which the heroes and heroines are advised by their confidantes as to the proper course of conduct, often in terms that resonate with those of didactic writings. Even the format of Caxton’s books encouraged instructional reading, and, characteristically for Burgundian works, included prologues and epilogues emphasizing the works’ educational and chivalric value. Additionally, tables of chapters and chapter headings called attention to characters’ good and bad behaviors and make the text easier for readers to navigate.

Features of Chivalric Romance in Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine

Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine share features typical of fifteenth-century chivalric narratives from France. Their authors and redactors composed in prose, a form employed in historical and scientific writings that began to replace verse as the preferred medium for French romances at the time. Descriptions are heightened, as are depictions of emotions, while battles and combats are narrated in formulas that create melodrama and arouse the audience’s empathy. Characters are developed through passages of dialogue, monologue, reflection, and self-analysis. Both narratives depict the headstrong lovers humorously on occasion, and have active female characters.

The narratives are composed of elements belonging to the common vocabulary of romance. As MacEdward Leach observes of Paris and Vienne, “it is the stock motifs that carry the story.” Readers of medieval romance will recognize such familiar memes as the blocking father, the bold Muslim princess, the treacherous steward, three-day tournaments to prove a lady’s champion, lovers separated by storms, and recognition by ring. Both romances feature a secondary couple, confidantes of the lovers, who also marry. Both exiled heroes pass as Muslim by appearance and language, ingratiate themselves with Muslim rulers by acts of chivalry, and rescue imprisoned fathers.

Caxton’s romances treat generic motifs with literary sophistication and a degree of verisimilitude. Like his sources, Caxton refers to his romances as “hystoryes,” making a claim to veracity and fidelity to actual events that the genre of romance does not. The word history accords with the fifteenth-century taste for realistic narratives and for true (and therefore instructive) stories. Pierre de la Cépède remarked that he found the material in some romances hard to believe, and so selected the story of Paris and Vienne to translate because it was reasonable and credible enough [assez croyable]. The two romances belong to a genre in which chivalric romance can be seen to presage the historical novel. The absence of supernatural elements, the localized settings, and the attention to detail give a realistic cast to the narratives. Unlike many other knights who ride through the forests of romance, Blanchardyn gets hungry and eats the wild fruit and crab apples growing there. Paris’s voyage of adventure is not impelled by storms at sea; rather, he arranges passage to and from the Holy Land and pays for his transportation with funds drawn from Missire Bertran’s bank. Both romances are set in specific geographic locales. Blanchardyn and Eglantine takes place in the Baltic, near Marienbourg where the romance’s patron, Jean de Créquy, had rendered military service to the duke of Burgundy. Paris and Vienne is set in the city of Vienne and along the Rhone River to the Mediterranean, a region that would have been familiar to its author who lived in Marseille. Characteristically for Burgundian romances, fictional adventures can be traced on historical maps and resonate with actual events.

Despite the romances’ commonalities, their differences show them belonging to different sub-genres, and deriving from different literary and regional traditions of chivalric narrative. Blanchardyn and Eglantine, the older, is anonymous and originated in northern France, probably Picardy, in the early thirteenth century. What began as a verse romance set in Athens and India made the transition to prose in the mid-fifteenth century in a version set along the North Sea. The story of Paris and Vienne originated in Provence during the late fourteenth century and was composed in French prose by Pierre de la Cépède in 1432. Blanchardyn and Eglantine is lengthy and offers an elaborated rendition of Burgundian prose style, while Paris and Vienne is a shorter treatment of de la Cépède’s embellished romance, with less rhetorical ornamentation and a more linear narrative. Blanchardyn and Eglantine is a military adventure of armies, navies, sieges, and gruesome combats in which the knight proves himself by defending his lady and her kingdom from invading armies and treasonous officials. Paris and Vienne includes no such episodes, for the lady’s person and kingdom are not under attack; instead, Paris demonstrates chivalric prowess in a series of tournaments to become her champion. Paris and Vienne is a family romance: the obstacle to the lovers’ marriage is parental objection, not the assault of an unwanted suitor, and the matter is complicated by class, for the dauphin of Vienne rejects Paris’s suit because of his inferior rank. Blanchardyn and Eglantine engages issues of class briefly from a negative perspective in the episode of the treacherous steward and introduces family romance only in the sub-plot of the secondary couple. Blanchardyn and Eglantine is interested in governance and fin amor, Paris and Vienne in adolescent behavior and marriage.

While both heroes disguise themselves as cultural and religious others, the romances offer differing representations of Muslims and use different terms to refer to characters and peoples who are Muslims. Blanchardyn and Eglantine is indebted to the chansons de geste for its portrayals and employs the words Saracen and pagan exclusively and almost interchangeably to characterize the enemy king, Alymodes, and his people. The romance portrays these characters in terms of the negative racial stereotypes associated with the label Saracen, including dark skin, monstrous bodies, and wrongful aggression against Christians who slay them or force them to convert. While Sadoyne and the Prussians who come to Blanchardyn’s aid are not so vilified, their religious rituals, like those of Alymodes, are said to include the worship of idols and a deity named Mahoun, practices forbidden by Islam but commonly ascribed to Muslims in Christian writings. Paris and Vienne uses a term that appears more frequently in the later Middle Ages and refers to Paris and the inhabitants of the Middle East solely as Moors. Like Saracens, these Moors differ from Europeans in language, dress, and religion, but they are not racialized or depicted as disfigured, idol-worshiping, enemies.

Blanchardyn and Eglantine is the more conventional romance; the characters of Paris and Vienne are the more realistic. Perhaps for this reason, and because of its straightforward narrative and accessible style, it was the more popular and long-lived of the two romances. It was reprinted numerous times while Blanchardyn and Eglantine saw no later editions, though both romances were revised and continued in circulation. Their differences extend to their physical formats: Blanchardyn is a decorated volume in single columns with dedication, table of chapters, and numbered chapter headings; Paris is plainer, in double columns, with less prominent headings and no ancillary matter or table.

Caxton’s Translation Practice and Prose Style

Caxton followed the practice of close translation common in fifteenth-century England. As he explains in the prologue to The Mirror of the World, “I have to my power folowed my copye. And as nygh as to me is possible I have made it so playn, that every man resonable may understonde it.” Thus, he brought into English the prose style of his French sources. In the prologue to Enydos he praises this style as “wel ordred” and using “fayr and honest termes.” It was also characterized as “compendious.” Fifteenth-century writers of French prose narratives cultivated an ornate style notable for ampificatio and rhetorical exuberance intended to elevate the subject, and which relied on embellishments like hyperbole and Latinate diction — the gilding of the aureate style. This way of writing was also influenced by curial prose with its learned vocabulary, synonymic doublets, epistolary formulas, and phrases of referential precision (“the which,” “that same”). Caxton’s prose is notable for recapitulation and redundancy, particularly doublets of synonyms in English and French. His syntax follows that of his sources: long chains of clauses and phrases strung together by sequences of subordinate and, more often, coordinate constructions. In neither French nor English is syntax necessarily supported by punctuation and dialogues shift freely from direct to indirect discourse.

Caxton’s skill as a translator and prose stylist grew over the course of his publishing career, and both Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine are products of his later years. Editors have praised his accomplishments: Leach commends the former for its “clear straightforward style,” while Kellner finds the latter “not inferior to Peacock, the greatest prosaist of his time.” Caxton aimed for accuracy and intelligibility; though his lexicon imports terms from his source, his vocabulary is midway between the extremes of vernacular, common terms, and ornate, aureate language. As he explains in the prologue to Enydos, “Some gentylmen . . . late blamed me, sayeng that in my translacyons I had over curyous termes which coude not be understande of comyn peple and desired me to use olde and homely termes in my translacyons . . . And som honest and grete clerkes have ben wyth me and desired me to wryte the moste curyous termes that I coude fynde . . . Therfor in a meane between both I have reduced and translated this sayd booke.” In the dedication of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, he asks Margaret to pardon his “rude and comyn Englyshe . . . , for I confesse me not lerned ne knowynge the arte of rethoryk ne of suche gaye termes as now be sayd in these dayes and used” (Dedication.2). Elsewhere he apologizes for his lack of subtle new eloquence while explaining that he avoids the language of “rude uplondish men.” Though these are typical instances of the humility topoi in authorial prologues, Caxton’s comments recognize the varied and fluid state of the English language, the possibilities of elite and vernacular styles, and the differences between the self-consciously refined literary language of aristocrats and the English widely in use.

Editorial Practice

The texts that follow are based on the single surviving copies of the romances in the Rylands Library and the British Library. Following METS editorial guidelines, I silently regularize i/j and u/v spellings and use modern capitalization, punctuation, and word division. Thus, dialogue appears in quotation marks, and hym self is spelled hymself. I silently expand the pronoun thee to differentiate it from the article the, as well as the adverb off to distinguish it from the preposition of. Standard printers’ abbreviations are also silently expanded, as are elided articles where nouns begin in vowels (the ynstance not thynstance). Transposed and inverted letters are corrected (for, Caxton reads fro; Breunes, Caxton reads Breuues). Caxton’s punctuation is not regular and consists of marks no longer in use, and his syntax does not conform to modern practice, so I have slightly modernized the punctuation to facilitate reading. I have also edited his paragraphing to follow the narrative more closely. In Caxton’s texts, a whole chapter may consist of only one paragraph, or sentences may be punctuated as paragraphs for emphasis. These features are cited in the Textual Notes accompanying each romance.

The following passage from Paris and Vienne is found on folio 1v of BL C10.b10:

. . . And the fayre Vyenne grewe and encreaced ever in soverayn beawte and gentylness so that the renomme of hyr excellent beawte flourysshed not onley thrugh al frau~ce but also thrugh al the royaume of englond & other contrees | It happed after she was xv yere of age that she was desyred to maryage of many knyghtes & grete lordes | & at that tyme was in the daulphyns courte emonge many hys knyghtes | a noble mã of auncyent lygnage & of faye londes | the whiche was wel byloued of the daulphyn & of alle the lordes of the lande and was called Syr James | thys noble man had a moche fayr sone that had to name Parys | & hys fader made hym to be taught in al good custommes | and whan he was xviii yere of age he was adressed to the dyscyplyne of armes | & demened hym self so nobly & worthely in al maner dedes of chyualrye that wythin a shorte tyme after he was doubed knyght by the hande of the sayd daulphyn | ¶ Noo fayte of knyghthode ne none adventure of chyualrye happed after but that he founde hym self at it in soo moche that the renommee of hym ranne thurgh al the world & men sayde he was one of the best knyghtes þ~ myght be founde in ony contree | & helde hym self ryght clene in armes and lyued chastly & joyefully | & had euer aboute hym fowles hawkes and houndes for his dysporte to all maner of huntyng suffysaunt ynough for a duc or for an erle | and thurgh hys prowesse and hardynes he was acqueynted & knowen of many other grete lordes | and emonge all other he was gretely and louyngly acqueynted with a yonge knyght of the cyte of Vyenne that hyght Edward | and were bothe of one age and moche loued eche other | and as two brethern of armes wente euer to gyder there as they knew ony joustyng or appertyse of armes to be had for to gete honour| ¶ And wete it wel that besyde theyr worthynes in armes they were good musycyens playeng upon alle maner instrumentes of musyke |and coude synge very well | but Parys passed in al ponytes his felowe Edward . . .

Points at which my edited text differs appear in bold type.

. . . And the fayre Vyenne grewe and encreaced ever in soverayn beawté and gentylnesse so that the renomee of hyr excellent beawté flourysshed not onely thurgh al Fraunce but also thurgh al the royame [fol. 1v] of Englond and other contrees.

2 It happed after she was fyftene yere of age that she was desyred to maryage of many knyghtes and grete lordes. And at that tyme was in the daulphyns courte emonge many hys knyghtes a noble man of auncyent lygnage and of fayr londes, the whiche was wel byloved of the daulphyn and of alle the lords of the lande, and was called Syr James. Thys noble man had a moche fayr sone that had to name Parys, and his fader made hym to be taught in al good custommes. And whan he was eightene yere of age he was adressed to the dyscyplyne of armes, and demened hymself so nobly and worthely in al maner dedes of chyvalrye that wythin a shorte tyme after he was doubed knyght by the hande of the sayd lord daulphyn.

3 Noo fayte of knyghthode ne none adventure of chyvalrye happed after but that he founde hymself at it, in soo moche that the renommee of hym ranne thurgh al the world, and men sayd he was one of the best knyghtes that myght be founde in ony contree. And helde hymself ryght clene in armes and lyved chastly and joyefully. And had ever aboute hym fowles, hawkes, and houndes for hys dysporte to alle maner of huntyng suffysaunt ynough for a duc or for an erle. And thurgh hys prowesse and hardynes he was acqueynted and knowen of many other grete lordes. And emonge alle other, he was gretely and lovyngly acqueynted with a yonge knyght of the cyté of Vyenne that hyght Edward, and were bothe of one age and moche loved eche other. And as two brethern of armes wente ever togyder there as they knew ony jousytng or appertyse of armes to be had for to gete honour.

4 And wete it wel that, besyde theyr worthynes in armes, they were good musycyens, playeng upon alle maner instrumentes of musyke and coude synge veray wel, but Parys passed in al ponytes his felowe Edward . . .

Table 1: Caxton’s Translations of Romances and Chivalric Treatises

Date refers to the year of the first printing.

Dedicatees are those mentioned in prologues.

Sources are individuals mentioned in prologues and elsewhere who provided the French texts that Caxton translated.