Emaré

Emaré is a Middle English Breton lai, a form of Mediaeval romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and it exists in only one manuscript, Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives.Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in the North East Midlands. The iambic pentameter is rather rough.

It tells a version of the popular "Constance-saga".

Plot summary

The text begins with a standard invocation to Christ, but one of uncommon length; it may be the longest one in English romance.

We are then told of Sir Artyus, an Emperor. His wife gives birth to a beautiful baby girl but dies shortly afterwards. The daughter, Emaré, is sent to live with a lady named Abro who raises her and teaches her manners and sewing.

Some years later, the King of Sicily comes to see the Emperor, bringing with him a beautiful cloth set with precious stones, woven by the daughter of the heathen Emir as a wedding gift to her betrothed. It depicts four scenes of lovers in the corners. The King had won it from the Sultan of Emir in war, and presents it to the Emperor as a gift.

Emar

Emar (modern Tell Meskene, Aleppo Governorate, Syria) was an ancient Amorite city on the great bend in the mid-Euphrates in northeastern Syria, now on the shoreline of the man-made Lake Assad near the town of Maskanah. It has been the source of many cuneiform tablets, making it rank with Ugarit, Mari and Ebla among the most important archeological sites of Syria. In these texts, dating from the 14th century BC to the fall of Emar in 1187 BC, and in excavations in several campaigns since the 1970s, Emar emerges as an important Bronze Age trade center, occupying a liminal position between the power centers of Upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia-Syria. Unlike other cities, the tablets preserved at Emar, most of them in Akkadian and of the thirteenth century BC, are not royal or official, but record private transactions, judicial records, dealings in real estate, marriages, last wills, formal adoptions. In the house of a priest, a library contained literary and lexical texts in the Mesopotamian tradition, and ritual texts for local cults.