Generides
Encyclopedia
Generides or Generydes is an English verse romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

, originating in the English Midlands and dated to the end of the 14th century. It survives in two different lengthy forms. The hero Generides is born as an illegitimate son of the King of India, and after adventures marries a princess of Persia and becomes ruler of both India and Persia.

The original, which may have been in Middle English or French, appears to have been a compilation of the fourteenth century. Despite the wide use of Eastern names and locations, these do not appear to have any particular significance, and though many analogues can (and have) been drawn between it and various India and Persian tales, the characters and episodes are familiar ones in medieval romances. As in the romance Guigemar
Guigemar
"Guigemar" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France during the 12th century. The poem belongs to the collection known as The Lais of Marie de France...

, one of the hero's parents is already married to a cruel spouse, and some of the scene suggest deliberate imitiation of that romance; as in the romance Erec
Erec
Sir Erec, the son of King Lac, is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend. He features in numerous Arthurian tales , but he is most famous as the protagonist in Chrétien de Troyes' first romance, Erec and Enide...

, the father is woken the next morning by the lady's tears. While as in Guigemar, the hero is identified by a trait of his garment, in Generides, the lady's tears can only be washed out by the lady herself, which suggests that poet used a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 of the type of Black Bull of Norroway
Black Bull of Norroway
The Black Bull of Norroway is a fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales.The language, including references to bannocks, would indicate a Scottish story teller, in this instance, Kenny Norman Macleod....

; magical shirts are a commonplace, but only in this romance and that tale does the detail of the heroine's ability to wash clean the shirt appear. The lovers stay in the woods with his sword between them, which inspires their pursuer not to kill them; this is evidently imitating the scene in Tristan
Tristan
Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...

.

Editions

  • Frederick James Furnivall
    Frederick James Furnivall
    Frederick James Furnivall , one of the co-creators of the Oxford English Dictionary , was an English philologist...

     (1865), A royal historie of the excellent knight Generides for the Roxburghe Club
    Roxburghe Club
    The Roxburghe Club was formed on 17 June 1812 by leading bibliophiles, at the time the library of the Duke of Roxburghe was auctioned. It took 45 days to sell the entire collection. The first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Chrisopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, was sold to the...

  • William Aldis Wright
    William Aldis Wright
    William Aldis Wright , was an English writer and editor.William Aldis Wright was son of George Wright, a Baptist minister in Beccles. He was educated at Beccles Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1858...

     (1878), Generydes: a romance in seven-line stanzas for the Early English Text Society
    Early English Text Society
    The Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...


External links

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