Actual performance by a particular voice and body for a physically present audience can provide information that validates and redirects theoretical understanding of textual variation. Paul Zumthor's concept of mouvance, a graphic representation of intertextuality in which virtual models function as the vertical axis and actual variations the horizontal axis, has provided a vehicle for addressing the variation so characteristic of Middle English verse romances. The term mouvance may also be used to describe the degree and quality of variation of a performance event from the text on which it is based. The mouvance recorded in a memorized performance of The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell presented at the Annual Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1996 displays similarities to textual variants in romance manuscripts. The modern performance may thereby provide clues to the generative process behind some manuscript variants.

A prepared, memorized performance distills characteristic elements in texts that cannot easily be envisioned without embodiment. The process of reconstructing performance of medieval texts must rely on considerable speculation, and historical features cannot readily be isolated from modern features. None theless, when grounded in available textual and historical evidence, performance can stimulate fresh thinking.

The question of whether the Middle English verse romances were performed at all has been the subject of some controversy. Much of the early skepticism derived from reaction against assertions based entirely on internal oral references. Despite subsequent evidence that romances were intended to be heard, that musical performances of English romances were likely, and that some romances were “modified in performance-from-memory,” models of minstrel performance were met with suspicion by many critics. In the 1990s and early 2000s other approaches and some new information have made the performance concept more credible. External historical records and new textual evidence strongly indicate at least some instances of performance of late-medieval romance. A reworking of the oral-formulaic theory, has given impetus to consider oral aspects of written texts. Along similar lines, many critics have argued for more confluence among categories previously established by scholars. Interdisciplinary approaches such as these urgently call for complementary experimentation with actual performance to understand and characterize performance of what have been termed “popular romances.”

In an attempt to explore possible dimensions of medieval romance performance, I memorized the entire text of The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell.