ABSTRACT
Living at court, and steeped in social life, the nobleman likes a poem celebrating the latest wedding, the most flagrant scandal, or the latest coup-d’etat in politics, and, if he be military, a glorification of the deeds of the field. A considerable portion of the epic writings of the Middle Ages has come to be recognized as courtly. Disregarding the matter of patronage in each individual case, beside the more ambitious works there is much medieval poetry which deals definitely with noble characters, or which was clearly prompted by the possibility of finding readers at court. In England there are numerous poems of a semi-political nature which show court influence or at least interest. Writing in the eyes of the court, such poets bent their pens to elegies as a notable evidence of patronage, though an elegy is not necessarily an indication of that relationship.
