[ 7 seems to reflect familiarity with those pronouncements on amatory ethics by great ladies which Andreas Capellanus reported about 1185 and which Miss Amy Kelly has assigned to the early 1170s.16 Ulrich's poem represents, then, except for minor details, an Anglo-Norman romance of the age of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Richard Coeur de Lion. It belongs to the same epoch and the same milieu as Thomas of Britain's Tristram, Marie de France's lais, and Hugh of Rutland's Ipomedon, and despite its artistic inferiority it is hardly inferior in interest. It reveals in scattered passages the classical training of the Anglo- Norman author. It mirrors realistically certain phases of courtly life and morals, certain prevalent tastes, in that period of amazing vitality and evolving standards. An examination of the narrative materials sheds an unexpected and brilliant light on the complex problems of the Matter of Britain. That the Anglo-Norman author was a cleric is proved by his knowledge of Latin writings. He quotes or translates from Ovid's Fasti, Publilius Syrus' apophthegms, and Vergil's Ecloques.17 He was probably responsible for calling Yblis' flowery domain vallis sybile.18 The name Clidra, assigned to the lady transformed into a serpent, is pretty clearly a corruption of Celidra, and the source must have been a description of the snake chelydros such as that in Isidore of Seville.19 Esealt, the giant youth of precocious growth, bears the name, slightly corrupted, of the classical giant Efealt (Ephialtes), who is described in that source book of medie- val knowledge, the commentary of Servius on the Aeneid.2° Pos- sibly these scraps of learned lore were inserted by Ulrich, but the somewhat garbled state of the names suggests rather a remoter source, the Anglo-Norman romance. They remind us of Marie de France's allusions to Priscian and Ovid, Thomas of Britain's use of soliloquy, and the pseudo-classicism of Hugh of Rutland's romances, and show that their author breathed the same air. Characteristic of Anglo-Norman Britain, too, is the fascination of mirabilia, natural wonders. Lanzelet contains three—the 16 Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. J. J. Parry (New York, 17 See notes 160, 161, 162 to the Text. 1941). Speculum, XII (1937), 3-19. 18 See note 128 to the Text. MS W reads “vallis yblê.' 20 See note 224 to the Text. 19 See note 230 to the Text.