“Rhyme and Lies in Medieval Poetry” – Lecture

“Rhyme and Lies in Medieval Poetry” explores the role of rhyme in the verse narratives, or “romances,” of the early fourteenth century.  These anonymous texts are characterized by their use of repeated formulae at the end of the line, so-called “stock phrases” or rhyming tags like “I swear,” or “without lying.”  The rhyme tags are metatextual, in that they refer to the text itself; they tend to occur at sexually scandalous, gruesome, or hyperbolic moments, and assert the presence of a speaker who may or may not be telling the truth, but who draws attention to the question of authorial veracity.  I suggest that the rhyme tags are conscious artistic devices, spoken in the voice of the poet themself, a narrator who is not part of the plot but who comments on it.  They constitute an authorial signature in much the same way as a graffiti “tag,” and they are a means by which we may measure an emergent self-conscious sense of authorship in medieval England.