A Re-assessment of Poema Morale and its influence on Penitence for a Wasted Life

Abstract

The aim of this study is to re-assess the possible influence of Poema Morale on the slightly later lyric Penitence for Wasted Life. The intention is to consider both the content and metre of the two works. Previous scholarship has noted that Penitence for Wasted Life is thematically close to the early Middle English poem; as I shall show, this debt extends to metre as well. A wise old man’s reflection on the transience of worldly things, Poema Morale displays a fondness for proverbial sayings and vivid descriptions of heaven and hell – all elements that must surely have appealed to the Early Middle English readership. This appeal is attested to not only by the nine manuscripts in which the poem is preserved, but also by several textual borrowings from Poema Morale in a number of thirteenth-century lyrics, which were noted by previous scholarship. In this study, I shall suggest that, amongst these lyrics, Penitence for Wasted Life seems inspired by a specific section of Poema Morale, and that several previously unnoticed metrical correspondences between the two works actually indicate that the author of Penitence for Wasted Life possessed a first-hand knowledge of the twelfth-century poem.