Chartier in Europe 1843841762, 9781843841760

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Gallica Volume 11

CHARTIER IN EUROPE Chartier in Europe is the first sustained enquiry into the distinctive influence of the fifteenth-century French poet and diplomat, Alain Chartier, on the reading and writing cultures of England, Italy, Scotland, and Spain, as well as France. Opening with essays that assess Chartier’s own construction of an authoritative voice, the volume then analyses the transmission and reception context of his Latin and French prose and poetry, and examines the ways in which the translation of his work into other vernaculars shaped his burgeoning reputation. Established and younger scholars from the fields of English, French, History, Scottish and Hispanic studies build a cross-disciplinary approach that illuminates Chartier’s importance not only in the realm of French literature but in the evolution of a wider European literature. In addition, Chartier in Europe presents a full bibliography of published work on Chartier and includes a foreword by James Laidlaw, the first modern editor of Chartier’s complete French poetical works. EMMA CAYLEY is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Exeter. ASHBY KINCH is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of Montana.

Gallica ISSN 1749–091X

General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University, 303 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA The Managing Editor, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this volume

CHARTIER IN EUROPE

Edited by

Emma Cayley Ashby Kinch

D. S. BREWER

© Contributors 2008 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2008 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 978–1–84384–176–0

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

CONTENTS Foreword: JAMES LAIDLAW List of Contributors Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: EMMA CAYLEY AND ASHBY KINCH

vii viii ix x 1

Part I: Authorising Chartier 1

Boethius as Model for Rewriting Sources in Alain Chartier’s Livre de l’Esperance DOUGLAS KELLY

15

2

‘Vox Dei, vox poetae’: The Bible in the Quadrilogue invectif FLORENCE BOUCHET

31

3

‘Car rompre vault pis que ployer’: Proverbial Pleasure in La Belle Dame sans mercy DANA SYMONS

45

4

Alain Chartier’s Livre des Quatre Dames and the Mechanics of Allegory BARBARA K. ALTMANN

61

Part II: Transmitting Chartier 5

‘Ainchois maintien des dames la querelle’: Poetry, Politics and Mastery in the Manuscript Tradition of Alain Chartier EMMA CAYLEY

75

6

Cyclification and the Circulation of the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy JOAN E. MCRAE

91

7

The Early Reception of Chartier’s Works in England and Scotland JULIA BOFFEY

105

Part III: Translating Chartier 8

From Invectivo to Inventivo: Reading Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif in Fifteenth-Century Castile CLARA PASCUAL-ARGENTE

119

9

William Worcester Reads Alain Chartier: Le Quadrilogue invectif and 135 its English Readers CATHERINE NALL

10 The dit amoureux, Alain Chartier, and the Belle Dame sans mercy Cycle in Scotland: John Rolland’s The Court of Venus WILLIAM CALIN

149

11 ‘La Crudele in amore’: Carlo del Nero Reads La Belle Dame sans mercy ASHBY KINCH

165

Bibliography

183

Index

205

FOREWORD ‘Stat magni nominis umbra’ (only the shadow of the great name remains). That quotation from Lucan, which I chose to introduce my edition of Chartier’s poetical works, described my view of Chartier studies as I saw them in 1974. While much had been accomplished by earlier critics as diverse as Pierre Champion, Edward Hoffman and Arthur Piaget, and by editors such as Eugénie Droz, Pascale Bourgain and François Rouy, I considered that Chartier was still too shadowy a figure, and that much more remained to be done if we were fully to understand a complex figure – poet, rhetorician, royal secretary, diplomat, polemicist, publicist – whose life was dominated by unending civil and national war, by years when the very future of his beloved France was in doubt. Just over thirty years on, there is the clearest evidence of renewed and sustained interest in Chartier. A noteworthy feature of the many books and articles which his life and works have recently inspired is the wide range of topics addressed: Chartier’s style and rhetoric; his sources, literary and historical; the impact of contemporary events on his thought and outlook; the translations of his works in prose and verse, particularly into English; the surviving manuscripts and early printed editions, whether of Chartier’s own works or of those inspired by him. Chartier in Europe follows in that tradition, rightly so: its eleven chapters, all by distinguished scholars, are diverse in their subject-matter and yet complementary in the light that they cast on an author who has deservedly been called “le pere de l’eloquence françoyse” (Pierre Fabri, 1521). Emma Cayley and Ashby Kinch are to be congratulated warmly on taking this welcome initiative. It is for me a great honour and a pleasure to have been asked to introduce the collection of essays which they have edited. I am sure that I will not be alone in hoping that this volume will be followed by others which will similarly bring Chartier out of the shadows and further into the light. James Laidlaw

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Barbara K. Altmann, University of Oregon, US Julia Boffey, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Florence Bouchet, Université de Toulouse Le Mirail, France William Calin, University of Florida, US Emma Cayley, University of Exeter, UK Douglas Kelly, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US Ashby Kinch, University of Montana, US James Laidlaw, University of Edinburgh, UK Joan E. McRae, Hampden-Sydney College, US Catherine Nall, University of Cambridge, UK Clara Pascual-Argente, Georgetown University, US Dana Symons, Buffalo State College, US

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First we would like to thank all our wonderful contributors for their enthusiasm and belief in this project, which has evolved through discussions and exchanges of work by scholars working in a range of fields, all of whom connected through an interest in Chartier’s impact on literary culture in Europe in the late medieval period. We feel sure that Alain Chartier would have approved of the rigour and diversity of approach with which his works have been approached here. We are extremely grateful to James Laidlaw for his characteristically astute and supportive Foreword to this volume, and acknowledge a great debt of gratitude both to him, and to Chartier scholars past and present, many of whom do not appear explicitly in this volume, but the traces of whose influence can be felt through its pages. We have tried to include as many of these scholars as possible in the Bibliography, and refer our readers to some excellent recent work on Chartier published and forthcoming elsewhere. The editors would also like to thank their expert readers, Sarah Kay, Cynthia J. Brown and Jane H. M. Taylor, whose insightful criticisms, comments and suggestions have improved this volume’s coherence and substance immeasurably. Our sincere thanks also go to Ellie Ferguson at Boydell & Brewer who has guided us through the editorial process with considerable expertise, patience and kindness. The editors warmly thank the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association), who provided us with a generous publication subvention. The Office of the Provost at The University of Montana provided professional development funds, which allowed us to hire Tom Seiler, our editorial assistant at the University of Montana, who has ironed out countless wrinkles on the surface of Chartier in Europe: many thanks go to him for his tireless efforts. We dedicate this volume to the “umbra” of Alain Chartier’s influence: may it grow ever more substantial. Last but certainly not least, to Amy and Michael, who continue to put up with us and Chartier; and to Shelby, Griffin, and Oliver, a new generation of Chartier enthusiasts.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The following bibliographical details and titles are used in notes and text for the first time in full, and thereafter in these standard abbreviated forms. All titles of poems used regularly in the book are italicised and untranslated (for our translations, see below). Translations into English are given in the text for all other titles and quotations. Where a modern secondary source is cited, only the English translation is given. Accusations

Baudet Herenc, Les Accusations contre la Belle Dame sans mercy (Accusations against the BDSM) Amant rendu L’Amant rendu cordelier a l’observance d’amours cordelier (The Lover who became a Friar by Following Love) Arsenal Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal BDSM Alain Chartier, La Belle Dame sans mercy (The Beautiful Lady without Pity) BL British Library BM Bibliothèque Municipale BN Biblioteca Nazionale BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits (division occidentale) Breviaire Alain Chartier, Le Breviaire des nobles (A Breviary for the Nobility) CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Complainte Alain Chartier, La Complainte pour la mort de sa dame (Lament for the Death of his Lady) Court John Rolland, The Court of Venus Cruelle Femme Achille Caulier, La Cruelle Femme en amours (The Woman who was Cruel in Love) CUL Cambridge University Library CUP Cambridge University Press Curial Middle French translation of Alain Chartier’s De vita curiali (On Life at Court), Le Curial Dame lealle La Dame lealle en amours (The Lady who was Loyal in Love) DDFA Alain Chartier, Le Debat des Deux Fortunés d’amours (The Debate of the Two who Fared Differently in Love)

ABBREVIATIONS

DHVV Dialogus

DRM EETS Erreurs de la BDSM Erreurs de l’amant Esperance Excusacion fr. Godefroy GRLMA IRHT Jardin de plaisance JEGP KB KBR lat. Lettre des dames LP LPl LQD MRTS MS(S) Navarre NB Ospital OUP Quadrilogue Querelle de la BDSM

xi

Alain Chartier, Le Debat du Herault, du Vassault, et du Villain (The Debate of the Herald, the Vassal and the Villein) Alain Chartier, Dialogus familiaris amici et sodalis super deploracione Gallice calamitatis (The Familiar Dialogue between the Friend and the Fellow on the Condemnation of French Misfortunes) Alain Chartier, Le Debat Reveille matin (The Debate of Daybreak) Early English Text Society Les Erreurs du jugement de la Belle Dame sans mercy (The Errors in the Judgement of the BDSM) Les Erreurs du jugement du povre triste amant banny (The Errors in the Judgement of the Poor Miserable Banished Lover) Alain Chartier, Le Livre de l’Esperance (The Book of Hope) Alain Chartier, L’Excusacion aux dames (The Apology to the Ladies) fonds français Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes Le Jardin de plaisance et fleur de rethorique (The Garden of Pleasure and Flower of Rhetoric) Journal of English and Germanic Philology Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, Netherlands; Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, Denmark Bibliothèque royale de Belgique fonds latin La coppie des lettres envoyees par les dames a Alain (The Ladies’ Letter Sent to Alain) Alain Chartier, Le Lay de paix (The Lay of Peace) Alain Chartier, Le Lay de plaisance (The Lay of Pleasure) Alain Chartier, Le Livre des Quatre Dames (The Book of the Four Ladies) Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Manuscript(s) Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy de Navarre National Bibliothek (Austria) Achille Caulier, L’Ospital d’amours (The Hospital of Love) Oxford University Press Alain Chartier, Quadrilogue invectif (The Argument between Four Parties) Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy (The Quarrel of the BDSM)

xii

Querelle de la Rose Requeste aux dames Responce Rose Santillana SATF UP Vat. Reg.

ABBREVIATIONS

Querelle du/Débat sur le Roman de la Rose (The Quarrel over / Debate about the Romance of the Rose) La Requeste baillee aux dames contre Alain (The Request Sent to the Ladies against Alain) La Responce des dames (The Response of the Ladies) Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) Íñigo López de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana Société des Anciens Textes Français University Press Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Regina

INTRODUCTION EMMA CAYLEY AND ASHBY KINCH

Car son engin fu si haultain Et son bon renon si certain, Que s’il estoit encore en vie, Je ne vys huy courage humain Qui l’osast blasmer par envye.1 Alain Chartier, known to the sixteenth century as the ‘pere de l’eloquence françoyse’2 (and ranked alongside Dante in both English and French works for his contribution to vernacular eloquence),3 was one of the most provocative, significant and prolific authors of late medieval France, composing both poetry and prose in Latin and French.4 Chartier’s works were celebrated, imitated, translated and transmitted widely throughout Europe during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and set up as models both in manuals of versification such as ‘L’Infortuné’s’ Instructif de seconde rhétorique (1480), in the immensely popular manuscript anthology the Jardin de Plaisance, printed by Anthoine Vérard in 1501,5 Pierre Fabri’s Le Grant et Vrai Art de pleine rhétorique (1521), or Thomas Sebillet’s Art poëtique françois (1548),6 and in poetical works of the later period.7 However, as Laidlaw confirms in the Foreword to our volume, the relatively small number of modern studies ‘His intellect was so elevated, / And his good reputation so well established, / That if he was still alive today / I can’t think of anybody / who would dare to blame him out of jealousy.’ Achille Caulier, Cruelle Femme, vv. 492–6. See Alain Chartier et al. (2003: 245–325, our translation). 2 Pierre Fabri (vol. 1, 72). 3 See Hoffman; and Meyenberg (38–43). 4 The two major editions of Chartier’s Latin and French œuvre respectively are by Laidlaw: Alain Chartier (1974a); and Bourgain-Hemeryck: Alain Chartier (1977). 5 Le Jardin de Plaisance et fleur de rethorique. 6 See Sebillet. 7 The instances are too numerous to mention here, but include René d’Anjou’s Livre du cuer d’amours espris; Martin le Franc’s Champion des Dames; Jean Regnier’s Fortunes et Adversitez; Pierre Michault’s Le Procès d’Honneur Féminin; and Octovien de Saint Gelais’ Sejour d’honneur. See Walravens for further traces of Chartier in archival material and literary texts. 1

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on Chartier (compared with later medieval authors such as Christine de Pizan or François Villon), and the frequent emphasis on his prose as the ‘instrument of his greatest works’ (W. B. Kay),8 has tended to obscure his exemplary contemporary reputation until recent years. While scholars such as Champion, Poirion, Walravens and Hoffman have discussed Chartier’s influence as part of their more general study of his writing,9 this volume aims to focus attention squarely on the question of the legacy and impact of Chartier’s œuvre, including his far-reaching influence on court poetry and debate, norms of eloquence and political thought. Chartier’s selected works appeared in no fewer than twenty-five printed editions from 1489 (Pierre le Caron) to 1617 (Samuel Thiboust), and they were collected in around two hundred fifteenth-century manuscript copies.10 The European appeal of our ‘clerc excellent, orateur magnifique’11 is demonstrated by the number of translations of his works that were circulating in the late fifteenth century. There are fifteenth-century Middle French and English translations of Chartier’s Latin works, the De vita curiali and the Dialogus familiaris (including an English translation by William Caxton of 1484). The French prose works were also translated into Castilian (Quadrilogue invectif) and Middle English (Quadrilogue, Livre de l’Esperance). Chartier’s poetical French works were equally popular in other countries. In addition to Catalan and Scottish translations respectively of the Livre des Quatre Dames and the Breviaire des nobles, Chartier’s Belle Dame sans mercy, his most famous work, was translated out of French literary circles into other vernacular traditions through three primary vectors. It went west to England, where Richard Roos, a King’s Knight in Henry VI’s service, translated the poem into Middle English, most probably in the period between 1445 and 1450; south to Spain and Catalonia, where Francesc Oliver translated the poem into Catalan; and, finally, south and east, to Italy, where Carlo del Nero, an Italian living in Montpellier, translated the poem into ‘toscano’, as the manuscript records. In all three cultural environments, there are indications that Chartier’s reputation had broad scope, and that the BDSM was only part of the reception of his writing: apart from stanzas lifted from the BDSM and integrated into original poems and manuscripts in both Middle English and Catalan, there are also numerous references to, and translations of, prose and other poetry, in addition to extant manuscripts of his Latin writing.12 It is clear from the transmission and reception of Chartier’s works, then, that W. B. Kay (69–73; citation 73). Champion (1923: 1–165); Hoffman; Poirion (1965); Walravens. 10 See Cayley and McRae in this volume for further details of the manuscript transmission; also Alain Chartier (1974a); and Alain Chartier (1977). 11 This is Octovien de Saint-Gelais’ assessment of Chartier in his Sejour d’honneur; Octovien de Saint-Gelais, v. 6331. 12 See Hoffman for an account of the Latin manuscripts circulating outside France. See Riquer, in Francesc Oliver (xix–xxvii), for a discussion of the Catalan references. 8 9

INTRODUCTION

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he was regarded as an authority not just in his prose works, but also for the French poetry, which – far from being simply ‘joyeuses escriptures’13 – delivered a unique blend of entertainment and socio-political engagement, as is beginning to be recognised by scholars.14 So Chartier was widely celebrated for his mastery of both prose and poetry: of première and seconde rhétorique. The interdependence of prose and verse, and of style (forme) and content (fond) across Chartier’s work, was recognised in particular by Fabri in 1521 who remarks upon Chartier’s ‘beau langage elegant et substancieux’.15 Chartier was, in other words, a figure of broad literary authority in Europe, and it is important to note that this authority was connected with his status both as a writer and as a public official. Roos integrates Chartier’s name explicitly into his own translator’s prologue to BDSM, where he describes the poem as ‘a book called Belle Dame sans Mercy / which master Aleyn made of remembraunce, / Cheef secretarie with the king of Fraunce’ (vv. 10–12). Santillana, a Castilian writer, describes him as ‘Maestre Alen Charrotier, muy claro poeta moderno, é secretario deste rey don Luis de Françia, en grand elegançia compuso é cantó en metro.’16 Chartier’s work as a diplomat gives political and historical grounding for the notion of Chartier ‘in Europe’: he travelled to the eastern edge of Europe, as well as to one of its northern borders in Scotland.17 It is hard to imagine that the man whose writing cast such a long shadow over European literature of the fifteenth century did not similarly exert a certain degree of magnetic influence on the courts he attended as a diplomat. The apocryphal story of Margaret of Scotland kissing the sleeping poet rings true not for its verisimilitude, but for the way the anecdote actualises what must have been a more broadly felt desire to get close to the man who produced such a rich, varied, thoughtful, and, at times, difficult corpus of writing.18 When John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, carried a copy of Chartier’s BDSM with him on the Scottish campaigns – a revealingly literal version of ‘translation’ as a ‘carrying across’ – he evidently found Chartier’s writing important

13 Hoffman takes this term out of context from Chartier’s recusatio in the Esperance as a way of dividing up Chartier’s ‘serious’ and ‘non-serious’ works. 14 See recent work by Angelo, Cayley, Delogu, Hult, Kinch, Mühlethaler, Sansone, Solterer, et al. 15 Pierre Fabri (vol. 1, 11). 16 Hoffman (221). 17 See Hoffman; Walravens, and Laidlaw: Alain Chartier (1974a) for details of the diplomatic missions, and Alain Chartier (1977) for editions of the speeches delivered. 18 The Rhétoriqueur Jean Bouchet first mentions this anecdote in his Annales d’Aquitaine of 1524. Margaret is alleged to have replied, when asked why she kissed Chartier (Bouchet records that Chartier was reputed to be unattractive), ‘I did not kiss the man, but the precious mouth which issued so many excellent words, and virtuous lines’; Jean Bouchet (252). For a cogent account of the success and chronological development of this anecdote, see Walravens (54–8).

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enough to have with him as he conducted his military and political affairs.19 It is intriguing to speculate as to why he would want the text with him on this sea voyage, but clear that this small fact indirectly attests to the widespread diffusion of Chartier’s famous poem into English culture of the late fifteenth century. He was not alone: William Worcester, at a crucial moment of English cultural and political history, copied extracts from Chartier into his evolving Boke of Noblesse, which meditates on England’s political fortunes and views Chartier’s prose as an authoritative intertext for understanding the present moment of conflict.20 Castilian readers of Chartier’s work similarly viewed it as authoritative enough to warrant glosses, that distinctive emblem of canonical authority in medieval textual culture.21 Chartier in Europe aims to synthesise diverse strands of recent scholarship on this major European intellectual whose impact on late medieval and early modern culture is surely beyond doubt. Many of our contributors have produced editions, translations and criticism that have recently helped to redefine Chartier studies.22 This volume brings together established and newer Chartier scholars from a variety of disciplines including French, English, History and Hispanic Studies. These scholars are all united by their desire to see Chartier restored to his rightful position as a canonical author; and more particularly to have a long overdue account of Chartier which integrates poetry and prose, political and courtly discourses. Each of the three sections of the book presents essays on both Chartier’s prose works and poetry, ensuring that both aspects of Chartier’s œuvre are thoroughly integrated into our discussion of this pivotal literary figure. The selection of essays collected here weave around the interdependent strands of authority, transmission and translation across Chartier’s corpus in a variety of contexts in ways which make this project stimulating, coherent and thoroughly transdisciplinary. The essays are complementary, but by no means do they conform to a single perspective on this controversial author; indeed, the volume, like the author that is its focus, will inspire lively debate by the differing approaches our contributors take to some of the same texts. The volume illustrates the richness and diversity of today’s scholarship on Chartier, and demonstrates how lively such methodological debate within medieval studies continues to be. The first section, entitled ‘Authorising Chartier’, foregrounds readings of Chartier as an authority, and Chartier’s readings of authorities: how he 19

Boffey (1994: 120). See Nall’s essay in this volume. 21 See Pascual-Argente’s essay in this volume. 22 Joan E. McRae (Alain Chartier et al., 2003; 2004); Barbara K. Altmann (Alain Chartier, 2006: 307–93); Dana Symons (Chaucerian Dream Visions, 2004); Florence Bouchet (Alain Chartier, 2002); Clara Pascual-Argente (Alain Chartier, 2004); See bibliography for Cayley’s other publications on Chartier; also Kinch (2006a), (2006b), (2008); and Calin (2006). 20

INTRODUCTION

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authorises and is authorised (‘authorising’ then both as transitive verb and adjective). This discussion of Chartier’s influences is crucial to any consideration of his own influence over contemporaries and successors, positioning him as a key player, and master, in late medieval debates about politics, philosophy, culture and literature, via an intertextual network of previous auctores. Chartier’s circle of initiated and experienced medieval readers would have been expected to recognise and appreciate his repeated allusions to the auctores in much the same way that Jörn Gruber conceives of the ‘hermetische Lyrik’ of troubadour poetry.23 A number of recent studies have focused on the phenomenon of intertextuality as a modus scribendi and means of transmitting senefiance in the Middle Ages. Networks of authors collaborate with one another in playful competition, and form what Cayley has termed ‘collaborative debating communities’.24 Rouy, Bourgain and Meyenberg have demonstrated how Chartier’s Esperance, Quadrilogue invectif, and the Latin works are informed by a number of important classical, biblical and medieval authorial intertexts.25 Less work has been done on the verse in terms of authorising influences, partly because of the commonly perceived imbalance of gravitas between prose and verse works, though intertexts are frequently located among vernacular avatars such as the Roman de la Rose on the one hand, or the debate poetry of such self-appointed authorities as Machaut and Christine de Pizan on the other.26 In this section, four essays explore authorising influences on both Chartier’s prose and verse. Douglas Kelly (‘Boethius as Model for Rewriting Sources in Alain Chartier’s Livre de l’Esperance’) and Florence Bouchet (‘ “Vox Dei, vox poetae”: The Bible in the Quadrilogue invectif’) demonstrate how Chartier establishes his authority relative to predecessors and contemporaries in the prose texts Le Livre de l’Esperance and Le Quadrilogue invectif respectively. While Kelly examines Chartier’s use of Boethius as model for rewriting in the Esperance, Bouchet reveals the biblical authority which subtends the Quadrilogue, exploring Chartier’s dual role as prophet and preacher within the text. Kelly suggests how Chartier’s unfinished Esperance uses Boethius’s work as a model, not to copy, but to rethink and rewrite the late Roman author’s work. He focuses on three features of Chartier’s rewriting of his model: replacement, recontextualising, and the multiplication See Gruber. See Cayley (2002) and (2006a). Recent work on late medieval participatory poetics has focused attention on François Villon and Charles d’Orléans, the Querelle de la BDSM and the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, but little work in this vein has been undertaken on Chartier’s verse. See Armstrong (2000), and (Forthcoming 2008); Jane H. M. Taylor (2001) and (2007a). 25 See Alain Chartier (1977); Rouy; Meyenberg. 26 See Altmann (Christine de Pizan, 1998), Angelo, Cayley (2006a), Hult (2003), McRae (Alain Chartier et al., 2003), among others, on the question of influences on the verse. 23 24

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of personifications as a reflection of diversification of thought. Kelly makes the crucial distinction between ‘model’ and ‘source’ here, where a model refers to a work whose pattern or frame is reproduced or imitated, and source as material to pad out that model. Chartier uses Boethius as his model, while drawing on biblical, patristic and some secular sources. Ultimately, Chartier adapts his Boethian model to reflect what Kelly describes as an interpretation ‘based not only on reason and philosophy, but, more importantly for him, on faith and the Bible’. Bouchet’s essay provides the perfect foil to Kelly’s with its focus on biblical avatars in the Quadrilogue. Drawing on biblical as well as classical sources for the Quadrilogue, Chartier adapts the debate form for a prose dialogue between Lady France and her three children. In her four part analysis, Bouchet shows how Chartier adopts the authority of the prophet through his invocation of biblical authority in the form of the word of God. The persona of the Acteur-prophet is not the sole embodiment of the ‘vox Verbi’, though. Chartier operates a ‘diffraction’ of authority through his characters, Lady France, Peuple (People), Chevalier (Knight) and Clergé (Clergy), all of whom assume the mantle of biblical authority by anchoring their speeches in frequent scriptural reference. Bouchet ultimately shows how this biblical authority or ‘vox Verbi’ in the Quadrilogue is made to serve political ends. For her, Chartier converts ‘biblical wisdom … into political savance’ and puts it to the service of his beloved country. Dana Symons (‘ “Car rompre vault pis que ployer”: Proverbial Pleasure in La Belle Dame sans mercy’) and Barbara K. Altmann (‘Alain Chartier’s Livre des Quatre Dames and the Mechanics of Allegory’) complete this section with a consideration of Chartier’s authorising strategies for his verse, balancing Kelly and Bouchet’s earlier discussion of the French prose. Symons highlights the case of proverbial language in the Belle Dame sans mercy in her discussion, which encompasses aspects of translation as well as transmission, linking forward into the final two sections of the book. Symons emphasises the pleasure that readers of Chartier’s original poem and Richard Roos’s translation took in the use of proverbial language. She suggests that it was precisely the conjunction of the known and the unfamiliar (Jauss’s ‘known rules and still unknown surprises’) offered by the situating of proverbs within the literary framework of the debate that made these debates so attractive to potential readers. Chartier’s BDSM is heavily sententious, Symons argues, and derives its originality and impact from its manipulation of this form of authority. Belle Dame and Amant trade and recast proverbial sayings to suit their arguments; the open-endedness of the debate reflects the open and polyvalent nature of the proverb itself. Barbara K. Altmann similarly focuses on how Chartier manipulates courtly, gendered and historico-political conflictual discourses within the Livre des Quatre Dames, but here through his use of the allegorical rather than proverbial mode. Altmann reconfirms Chartier’s position as an ‘écrivain engagé’, with her discussion of his negotiation of political and amatory discourses within the debate form. Altmann contends that the

INTRODUCTION

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Quatre Dames of Chartier’s longest debate can be read as allegorical figures and, further, that the whole work operates on an allegorical level. She points to how the ‘conventions of love debate use the mechanisms of allegory’ in order to fit the debate vehicle for Chartier’s political commentary. All four essays establish Chartier’s credentials as an authority, both in his reworking of auctores, and in his authorising of new models for future generations. Historical, biblical, political and literary authority is foregrounded here in both Chartier’s prose and poetry. So Chartier is established as an auctor in a long line of auctores. In the second section, entitled ‘Transmitting Chartier’, investigation of the diverse manuscript tradition of Chartier’s works in French, Latin, and English and Scottish translations complements the discussion of cultural practices in the first section of the book, moving on from authorising discourses in his work to sketch material patterns of authoritative influence in the transmission and reception of his works. Pascale Bourgain has shown how Chartier’s Latin works were frequently transmitted in the manuscript context with those of earlier classical, patristic, or medieval authors, positioning Chartier as a final link or auctor in the tradition.27 The French manuscript tradition tends to associate Chartier’s work with that of later poets and authors, in some sense suggesting that here Chartier provides a source of authority for them, a suggestion confirmed by the material evidence which frequently sees him positioned near the beginning of the codex as ‘chief ’ authority within the material space of the codex. The manuscript collection or early printed book also provides a context for playful collaboration between poets, authors and readers, as various critics have recently shown.28 This study of material context frequently throws up interesting and illuminating pairings or collections of texts. Paratextual elements and codicological research enhance and must necessarily anchor such discussions of material context. Intentionally arranged or not, these collections consistently reward close attention, and can afford unique insights into medieval scribal, compositional and reading practices. The three essays in this section explore aspects of the material context of the transmission and reception of Chartier’s œuvre. Emma Cayley (‘ “Ainchois maintien des dames la querelle”: Poetry, Politics and Mastery in the Manuscript Tradition of Alain Chartier’) conceptualises the manuscript as a space of play and mastery (with Chartier identified as a site of authority/mastery within the codex). She compares two ostensibly distinct patterns of transmission of the Latin and French works (‘official’ and ‘non-official’), via representative manuscripts from the two traditions, and shows instead their overlap and interdependence, discussing how political and poetic discourses Alain Chartier (1977: 156–61). Jane H. M. Taylor (2001), (2007a), and (2007b); Armstrong (2000), and (Forthcoming 2008); Huot (1993); see also Cayley (2002), (2004), (2006a). 27 28

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EMMA CAYLEY AND ASHBY KINCH

interweave throughout. The manuscript is a ‘space of play’, where poets and authors vie to acquire prestige or ‘capital’. Chartier emerges from Cayley’s discussion as a defender of vernacular poetry and of a new poetic discourse. It is this defence that she argues forms the ‘political’ or socially engaged subtext of the French verse, linking back to the more overt social comment Chartier makes in the French and Latin prose. So the apparently antithetical concepts of mastery and play, ‘official’ and ‘non-official’ discourses are reconciled. Joan E. McRae (‘Cyclification and the Circulation of the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy’) also discusses patterns of transmission emerging from a close study of the manuscripts of the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy, in which, she observes, poems frequently appear out of chronological order. McRae suggests ways in which this lack of order can be understood, focusing on the notion of the pre-circulation of ‘livrets’ (booklets), copied and sold individually from booksellers, which would then have been collected and bound together later, and not necessarily in the intended narrative sequence. Further study is needed, she suggests, to establish the circumstances under which other such medieval ‘best-sellers’ were compiled. Her conclusions give unique insights into the circulation of the Querelle poems, the popularity that Chartier’s poem enjoyed, and the circles of poets it inspired, building on the interdependent concepts of mastery and play which Cayley foregrounds in her essay. The final essay in this section by Julia Boffey (‘The Early Reception of Chartier’s Works in England and Scotland’) examines the English and Scottish transmission of Chartier’s works, complementing the two previous essays, which deal largely with French transmission. She provides a rigorous re-examination and overview of the transmission and reception of Chartier’s prose and verse works in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, engaging with current critical thinking on reception. Many of Chartier’s works, she explains, were known for a long time in England and Scotland, either through manuscripts brought to England from France, or via English and Scottish translations that were made of his texts. ‘Mayster Aleyn’s’ Anglo-Scottish reputation centred around the two domains that Cayley brings together in her study in this section: the poetic interest sparked by the BDSM, and the politically informed works which spoke across national boundaries to the political situation in fifteenth-century England. Boffey marshals codicological evidence to support her picture of the extremely high regard in which Chartier was held in late medieval England and Scotland, and the extent to which his texts were regarded as repositories of wisdom and sources of moral guidance as well as entertaining pieces. All three essays in this section turn on the significance of Chartier’s material heritage, traces of which remain in libraries and archives throughout Europe and beyond. The third and final section, entitled ‘Translating Chartier’, brings together

INTRODUCTION

9

four essays whose common thread is a focus on the local contexts that provide both the impetus and the context for translation, reflecting a broader trend in the field of vernacular translation. Newer scholarship on medieval translation has provided a forum to reflect on the socio-political meaning of translation as an act that potentially constructs a new form of literary culture, rooted in the constraints and values of that second culture.29 Through this vein of scholarship, we are much more attuned to the pervasive interpenetration of literary influence that a previous scholarly emphasis on national traditions worked to obscure. Part of this shift of attention has been to focus on the ways in which the act of translation conveys coded values, including a whole sub-set of codes relating to behavioural norms, political values and cultural ideals. In the late medieval period, inter-vernacular translation was an increasingly crucial means through which literary reputation and authority were both constructed and disseminated, but translators faced immediate difficulties with a whole range of issues, from metrical and stylistic negotiations between different literary languages, to interpretive problems, or cultural differences that sometimes appear in an awkward misfit of meaning. Rita Copeland has usefully distinguished between the two poles of vernacular translation practices, replication and displacement,30 which represent the two attitudes that vernacular translators took toward their authoritative Latin models. That is, increasingly, vernacular translators chose to displace, rather than replicate, their originals as a means of constructing their own textual authority. Many of the same issues are at stake when a writer in a vernacular tradition translates a text from a ‘prestige’ vernacular like French. Like the first section, the four essays in this section divide neatly into pairs distinguished by their emphasis on prose and poetry. Clara Pascual-Argente (‘From Invectivo to Inventivo: Reading Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif in Fifteenth-Century Castile’) and Catherine Nall (‘William Worcester Reads Alain Chartier: Le Quadrilogue invectif and its English Readers’) both use detailed codicological analyses and close reading to address the question of the motivation of their respective authors in translating Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif. Pascual-Argente contextualises her argument within the ‘debate on arms and letters’, which in fifteenth-century Castile served as a proxy for articulating the social tension between a traditional self-conception of clerics as the purveyors and sustainers of wisdom, and an emerging self-conception of the knightly class as literate in its own right. This question obviously resonates with Chartier’s treatise, but Pascual-Argente’s essay demonstrates unique moments of textual appropriation, including a subtle For comments on this question in an English context, see, inter alia, Burnley (42); and Field (139–140); Watson (349–50). See also the Middle English texts gathered in Wogan-Browne et al., eds (1999). 30 Rita Copeland first developed this opposition in Copeland (1989: 15–36), and developed the argument in Copeland (1991). 29

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EMMA CAYLEY AND ASHBY KINCH

renaming of the text, that suggest a ‘local motivation’ for the translation. Similarly, Nall locates the late fifteenth-century English translation of the Quadrilogue within the context of the tumult of the 1470s and 1480s. She analyses the codicological evidence suggesting a kind of ‘prestige envy’ for French literature by English readers, but also demonstrates, through close reading of the English manuscript annotations, that these readers were using Chartier’s text to think through their own political fortunes. While the next two essays both address Chartier’s ‘courtly’ poetry, they take a different methodological approach to the question of translation. William Calin (‘The dit amoureux, Alain Chartier, and the Belle Dame sans mercy Cycle in Scotland: John Rolland’s The Court of Venus’) makes the case for the widespread assimilation of French poetry by Scottish writers, focusing his attention on John Rolland’s The Court of Venus, in which he finds echoes of Chartier’s BDSM, as well as evidence of familiarity with the wider Querelle de la BDSM. Given the political and social affiliations between Chartier and Scotland, Calin’s essay offers an account of French literary influence on Scottish writing that suggests a deep river of reading and writing. Translation, in his analysis, is the relocation of an entire tradition, evident often through echoes of motif, image and narrative disposition, rather than in strict verbal similarity. Ashby Kinch (‘ “La Crudele in amore’’: Carlo del Nero Reads La Belle Dame sans mercy’) pursues a detailed reading of the often subtle changes in form, structure and diction in Carlo del Nero’s latefifteenth-century translation of Chartier’s BDSM. Rooting his analysis in the notion that Del Nero’s text reflects his desire to translate Chartier’s poem not just verbally, but conceptually and culturally, Kinch argues that Del Nero was aware enough of the context of debate around BDSM, so often transmitted with Querelle poems in manuscript, to take a position by crucially altering Chartier’s final line so that the Belle Dame is renamed ‘La Crudele’. As these four essays suggest, to study historical acts of translation is thus to engage directly with the exchange of cultural values in a given moment, and to recognise the places where two literary contexts come into contact and exchange, but never complete and faithful correspondence with one another. The authors of these essays observe in their chosen texts a range of techniques medieval translators deployed to facilitate the movement of the ideas and values of Chartier’s literary texts into a new literary context. Among these techniques are formal adaptation, intertextual allusion, selection of passages for excerption, commentary glosses, and selective omission. All of these features of vernacular translation demonstrate to some degree the tensions medieval translators of Chartier’s work experienced in balancing their respect for his auctoritas with the needs of the local audience, including, first and foremost, the translators themselves. We conclude, or indeed make a beginning (in typically open-ended Chartier fashion), with an image from Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cité des dames:

INTRODUCTION

11

James Laidlaw, also a Christine expert, dug the foundations for this study and others like it when, in 1974, he opened up further potential critical study of Chartier with his CUP edition of the poetical works. Building on Laidlaw’s strong foundations, we present a ‘defence’ of Chartier which goes far beyond the rehabilitation of a single author, but has implications for the rehabilitation of the fifteenth century in its contribution to new critical debate in the areas of translation, reception, gender, canonicity and authority. The far-reaching conclusions to be drawn from this study are vital to an understanding of cultural exchange and translation in the Middle Ages in Europe, and have widespread repercussions for a discussion of late medieval authorship and authority. Reception theory has been a crucial aspect of the resurgence of scholarly interest in the fifteenth century, because it allows scholars to link the study of seminal authors and poetic works to the historical and cultural contexts that provide so much interpretive interest, not simply for modern readers, but also for historical readers. Chartier’s international reputation provides an excellent platform for examining the range of uses to which literature was put in the late medieval period. This book, with its focus on a single author of demonstrably widespread influence, thus contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the fifteenth century.

PART I:

AUTHORISING CHARTIER

1

Boethius as Model for Rewriting Sources in Alain Chartier’s Livre de l’Esperance DOUGLAS KELLY Qui publicis curis mentem animumque dederat jam se ipsum exuens universalem virum induit, non homo unus, sed omnis in omnibus effectus.1 Recently attention has begun to focus on how an antecedent work serves as a model rather than as a source stricto sensu for a new work. A source fits the usual meaning of the word in scholarship: that of a work a subsequent author draws on for matière. A model is different. A model in the sense I am using the term refers to a work with commonplace features that the new author uses as a pattern or frame for the work he or she writes.2 Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is the model for Chartier’s Livre de l’Esperance. Both these writings illustrate the prosimetrum, or a work in both verse and prose. In each, personifications lead a despairing author figure, named Acteur in the Esperance, towards consolation and, more importantly, truth and selfknowledge. However, unlike Boethius, Chartier’s sources are not only philosophical. In fact, Philosophy is rejected in the Esperance because it leads to despair and suicide. Chartier’s major sources are the Bible and Church authorities; they provide faith, hope, and charity.3 In the Esperance, then, Chartier uses Boethius as model, while drawing on biblical and patristic sources as well as some secular authors. In what follows, when appropriate, 1

‘He who devoted mind and soul to public issues divests himself at the same time of his individuality so as to assume the guise of a generic human, becoming not an individual but Everyman.’ Dialogus; Alain Chartier (1977: 288). All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2 Haye, especially Ch. 1. See also Kelly (2004: esp. 3–9); and Kelly (1987). Use of such models alongside standard arts of writing was common among late medieval authors; see Meyenberg (98–9); Cayley (2006a: 70–3). 3 Rouy identifies these sources in his edition of Chartier’s Esperance: Alain Chartier (1989a).

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I suggest comparisons with his other writings and with the works of other medieval authors. According to Thomas Haye, a model identifies and shows the medieval author’s awareness of generic features. Such features are found in specific works that identify the model as archetypus or ‘blueprint’ of the work in the artist’s mind.4 Such works were perceived as arts of poetry because they contain features of the art that the student and later writer could imitate or emulate.5 In terms of medieval poetics, we may speak of the model as the archetypal blueprint that the new author uses to elaborate and amplify new sources – in Chartier’s case, the Bible; Christian works that Boethius implicitly left out of his Consolation in favor of Philosophy; and standard secular authorities. Awareness of the model as a blueprint that the new author reconstrues using new sources obliges us to consider how the author proceeds in individual cases in which he or she rewrites a given model, as, for example, Chartier does in his Esperance. A model may offer a plan the new author uses to frame his or her new work. Sources provide material the new author lifts; his or her rewriting may range from copying to original rewriting.6 Let me illustrate this distinction between source and model before treating it in Chartier’s Esperance. Laurent de Premierfait claims that Dante drew on the Roman de la Rose and Virgil’s Aeneid to write the Divine Comedy, a work Chartier may have known, or known about, but does not refer to explicitly (Esperance, Prose 8.187).7 Laurent’s words help us understand how a model differs from a source and how they come together in a new work. Laurent describes Dante’s use of the Rose model as follows: ‘Dante … qui … advisa que ou Livre de la Rose est descript le paradis des bons et l’enfer des mauvais … voult … contrefaire au vif le beau Livre de la Rose en ensuivant tel ordre comme fist le divin poete Virgile ou VIe livre que l’en nomme Eneyde’ (Dante noticed that the Roman de la Rose describes the Paradise of the good and the Hell of the wicked; he decided to copy the beautiful Book of the Rose following the sequence used by that divine poet Virgil in

4

On archetypus as model or ‘blueprint’, see Kelly (1999: esp. 30–1 and 81–2), and, more generally, Kelly (1991: 37–8, 64–8). 5 See Kelly (1991: 57–64), and Cizek (1994). 6 Minnis (1984: 94). 7 Chartier’s reference in the Esperance to Dante is probably to the Monarchia, or perhaps the Divine Comedy; see Alain Chartier (1989a: 184n); Meyenberg (30–1, especially n70). On faith, see Esperance, Prose 10.43–8 (based on Hebrews 11.1) parallel to Dante (1933), Paradiso 24.64–5; on hope, Prose 10.54–56 (based on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae 3.26) parallel to Paradiso 25.67–9. There is no analogous explanation of charity in the Esperance, although the word occurs there eight times (Poem 4.11–12; Poem 5.27; Prose 6.132; Prose 8.200 and 252; Prose 9.456; Prose 13.390; Prose 15.155).

BOETHIUS AS MODEL FOR REWRITING SOURCES

17

the sixth book of the Aeneid).8 This brief statement claims that Dante took as source the image of Heaven and Hell in the Rose and, amalgamating it with Virgil’s account of Aeneas’s descent into Hades as a blueprint (ordre), wrote a more complete vision, adding the ascension to Purgatory and Heaven to the descent into Hell, itself a rewrite of the Aeneid’s descent into Hades and the Elysian Fields. Dante then described his entire journey through all these regions of the universe, as the late Middle Ages viewed it, drawing on various secondary sources to illustrate and people his narrative. Of course, source and model can be the same antecedent work. Jean de Meun’s source was Guillaume de Lorris; that is, he copied Guillaume’s poem as far as its gradus amoris went. Then, using it as a model, Jean continued Guillaume by completing Amant’s gradus amoris with his own amplifications that construe differently his primary source.9 Dante’s continuation is analogous. He amplified beyond the Aeneid’s descent into Hades and the Elysian Fields in order to describe the Christian universe of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, as well as their inhabitants. Virgil’s Aeneid is an instructive example and, therefore, source in the Esperance. Defiance (Mistrust) uses the poem to dissuade Acteur from going into exile abroad in order to escape France’s and his own misfortunes; Aeneas’s wanderings ‘te vauldra experiment’ (Prose 3.70: will serve you as experience). But, of course, this is only part of Virgil’s story. Defiance does not mention his establishment in Latium and the founding of Rome.10 That is, she has made a selective resumé of the Aeneid that supports her counsel of despair, preparing for Desesperance’s (Despair’s) promotion of suicide. Esperance (Hope) offers a different reading of Virgil’s poem. She recommends that Entendement (Understanding) read Virgil (Prose 14.76) because his work, like that of other ancient and medieval authors, offers examples of ‘humaine industrie’ (Prose 14.73–4: human industriousness), especially when people unite to overcome adversity and restore their nation. Alluding to the fate of the Trojans, Esperance completes implicitly Defiance’s truncated example by recalling the foundation of Rome by the ‘Troyens desconfiz, exilés de leur terre et dechacés par tempeste de mer’ (Prose 14.99–100: Trojans defeated, exiled from their land, and driven astray by sea storm), words that echo Acteur’s own description of his lot: ‘nous fuitifz, exiliés et dispers’ (Poem 1.35: we in flight, alienated, and gone astray). Yet ‘la durté de leur travail lez encouraga a querir seur repos, et l’ennuy de leur bas estat lez esvertua a esperer haulte gloire’ (Prose 14.103–4: the harshness of their travail encouraged them to seek secure repose, and the wretchedness of their

8

Quoted from Badel (486). Virgil was also taken to be a model for Martianus Capella and Boethius; see Kelly (1999: 89–91). 9 See Kelly (1995: 32–44). 10 Defiance’s truncated version is not invalidated because it is incomplete; as a poetic fiction, its exemplary force relies on the validity of the idea it exemplifies.

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low estate aroused them to hope for exalted glory). This hope is rekindled as succeeding generations overcome misfortune and restore the nation. For Esperance, Rome is a model for national renewal, not for private despair, contrary to what Defiance claims.11 Defiance refers to the Aeneid as a ‘poesterie’ (Prose 3.67). Poetries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were lists of biblical, historical, and literary figures with brief summaries of their exploits.12 From them, aspiring writers selected examples that they fashioned to fit their intentions and the model they wished to exemplify. Thus, in the Esperance, Virgil’s Aeneid becomes a poetrie for Defiance – that is, a source of examples of the woes of the wandering exile. Esperance draws on the same epic for an illustration of her model of the restoration of the body politic. A poetrie can be more than a brief summary useful for those learning the art of the Second Rhetoric. Much as Chartier’s poetry, as poetrie, became a canonical model for aspiring writers, so Virgil’s writings became models of the art of poetry for medieval Latin and vernacular writers.13 Other authors also served as model, notably Ovid – in Latin and in the late medieval French Ovide moralisé; Boethius was another such model.14 Such rewriting is modeled on God’s act of creation.15 According to the Esperance, God ‘veult que on lui recongnoisse ses graces donnees, et estre requis et advoué pour patron en toutes oeuvres fayre’ (Prose 15.25–7: wants to be recognized for His gifts, and to be sought and avowed as model in all undertakings). God is thus a model for all other models. Chartier illustrates this with the Trinity as model for the human faculties of cognition, will, and memory (Prose 6.9–11). Similarly, God’s justice guides the virtuous king whose actions are a model (‘patron’) for his subjects (Prose 7.198–9). In their case knowledge, experience, and counsel rely on models and examples (Prose 14.11–14; cf. Prose 11.48–58). Adapting pagan conduct to Christian belief (Prose 11.151–8), Hannibal’s life, a model for chevalerie, failed for lack of knowledge of the true God (Prose 14.164–9). In the context of human invention, the Pater noster taught by Jesus is a patron for all prayers (Prose 15.322–49). The theological virtues – faith, hope, and charity in the

11

In his ‘Premier Discours de la mission d’Allemagne’, Chartier extends Virgil’s Rome to include the Holy Roman Empire; Alain Chartier (1977: 175). Similarly, translatio imperii becomes a manifestation of divine justice in Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif, 2.33–5.6; also Esperance, Prose 7.86–127. 12 Jung (58–64); Kelly (1991: 160–3). 13 See Poirion (1965: 255–7; 258; 262–4; 269–70); Kelly (1991: 152, esp. n331, 160); Cerquiglini-Toulet (1993: 156–8); Cayley (2006a: 87–8). 14 Eberhard the German’s Laborintus 681, in Faral (361). The other arts of poetry and prose mine Boethius’s Consolation for illustrations of their instruction. See also Bernardus Silvestris (2). 15 Kelly (1991: 37–8).

BOETHIUS AS MODEL FOR REWRITING SOURCES

19

Esperance – offer the consolation Hannibal lacked in adversity, but that Acteur finds in turning away from despair.16 How does Chartier use Boethius’s Consolation as model for his last treatise, the unfinished Esperance?17 He mentions the Consolation once, noting that Boethius ended his days in Theoderich’s prison after writing a book on consolation (Prose 2.149–52). Like the Consolation, Chartier’s Esperance is a consolatory treatise. However, it derives consolation not from Philosophy, as in his model, but from Foy, Esperance, and – implicitly – Charity.18 Pagan examples are the sole source of Defiance, Indignation, and Desesperance, the three malevolent ‘monsters’, or false muses, who urge the Acteur to despair and suicide.19 The personifications of the virtues set out Christian models and examples for thought and action, most of which correct the monsters’ lessons. Charity’s consolation is missing because the Esperance is unfinished. She would have been the third personification introduced along with Foy and Esperance at the beginning of the treatise. These personifications represent the same three theological virtues on which Peter, James, and John test Dante before admitting him to Paradise. In other words, Chartier did with his model what readers of the Consolation had been doing for centuries: he Christianized it,20 contrasting ‘a Christian perspective’ expressed by Foy and Esperance ‘with a non-Christian one’21 espoused by the three monsters Defiance, Indignation, and Desesperance. Before going further, I shall briefly discuss the use of abstractions and commonplace themes and motifs in Chartier’s writings. Commonplaces may serve as models in diverse contexts. For example, to die for love out of despair can be adapted as despair after the death of a loved one that causes the bereaved to long for death, as in Chartier’s Complainte, at the end of which he exclaims: ‘Autre bien n’ay, n’autre bien n’assaveure / Fors seule-

16 Chartier’s Breviaire des nobles sets out a similar model for analyzing nobility; see Alain Chartier (1974a: 36). On patron as archetypus, see Kelly (1988: 25–39). 17 On Chartier’s adaptation, see Blanchard (1987: 7–11: 41–7); Huot (2007). I thank Professor Huot for allowing me to read her article pre-publication. On an earlier formulation of Boethius as model, see Hoffman (185). One manuscript, BnF, nouv. acq. fr. 6535, includes Jean de Meun’s translation of the Consolation with the Esperance; see Hoffman (185 n3), and Rouy (xxxi). 18 Rouy (87–99). 19 Prose 4.33–61. Desesperance sees suicide as an escape (Prose 4.83–5), a kind of exil by alienation from self. The Dialogus also foregrounds pagan examples (Zinser 1977: 327–30). 20 Courcelle. Courcelle attributes this adaptation to the influence of Alcuin (Part 1, ch. 2); he does not mention Chartier. For a general discussion of Chartier’s use of Boethius in treating fortune, see Ferrier (124–35). 21 Zinser (1977: 65); cf. 347: ‘In the prose Esperance, personal prerogative is subordinated to Christian faith’ with the result that pagan examples are useful only in practical life, not in realms where religion claims authority; see also Zinser (1980: 177–89, esp. 181–3).

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ment l’actente que je meure’ (No other good do I possess, nor does any other good please me, except the sole expectation of dying).22 We see here that bien, a common theme in love poetry, is introduced, then rejected because the loved one has died, and with her the bien she granted. In the Belle Dame sans mercy, vv. 421–2, Amant claims that ‘Donner le bien ou il deffault, / C’est courtoisie raisonnable’ (It is a reasonable act of grace to give [goodness] where there is need).23 The Belle Dame replies curtly ‘Ne say que vous appellez “bien” ’ (v. 425 [346]: I don’t know what you call ‘goodness’).24 Had she read Chartier’s poems she might have found language that justifies her suspicions: Maiz du doulx bien et cetera – Vous me poués assés entendre – Y doibs je renoncer ou tendre, Ou se ma bouche se tayra?25 But must I renounce striving for the sweet good et cetera – you can understand me well enough – or should I keep silent?

The Belle Dame wishes to preserve her franchise (liberty) rather than grant any such bien (vv. 429–32 [346]).26 Is her decision justified? That is the issue.27 It is made all the more critical by the possible death of Amant after the lady’s categorical rejection of love (vv. 781–4 [359]).28 The issue is unresolved, but allows quite naturally for different readings of the same commonplaces.29 The ‘irresolution’ in the plot line of the BDSM is a fruitful source of invention in the debate the poem provoked. It illustrates the potential for rewriting inherent in late medieval debate literature. Cayley’s lucid analysis of this feature of late medieval literature shows how typical such inconclusiveness is in Chartier’s time.30 The Esperance, albeit unfinished and therefore open-

22

Complainte, vv. 181–2, in Alain Chartier (1974a: 327). Alain Chartier (1974a: 346); see also Alain Chartier et al. (2003: 16); Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 71). 24 Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 71). 25 Rondeau 23.9–12, in Alain Chartier (1974a: 386). Chartier’s poem justifies the Belle Dame’s suspicions, but does not reveal whether Amant actually understands bien in the same way she implies. See Shapley (56 and n17, 105–6, 107, 111). 26 On franchise, see Solterer (2002); Cayley (2006a: 116–20); Blanchard and Mühlethaler (79). 27 Calin (2006: 31–46). 28 Philip Bennett kindly called my attention to this uncertainty during the Vancouver congress of the ICLS (1998); see also Cayley (2003: 56–7 and 63 n27). 29 Calin (2006) remarks that ‘plaintiff and defendant even argue over whether or not the Lover is in fact deceased’ (37). On open-ended writing and continuation see Armstrong (1997: 12–14); Cayley (2003); Alain Chartier et al. (2004). 30 Cayley (2006a: 88–9); and ch. 4.1. 23

BOETHIUS AS MODEL FOR REWRITING SOURCES

21

ended, conforms therefore to the ‘game of invention’31 fostered in its social and literary milieu. By linking individual happiness to the commonweal, Chartier seeks to bridge the gap between the two extremes by appealing to the vir universalis of the Dialogus in all French men.32 In Chartier’s political writings such as the Quadrilogue invectif and the Debat du Herault, du Vassault et du Villain, the national commonweal becomes the desirable bien.33 The Esperance seeks ‘biens meritoires’ (Prose 11.36–7: meritorious goods), not the ‘biens que tu cuides avoir desservis’ (Prose 2.158–9: goods that you presume to have earned) that Indignation says went to other less deserving persons. The register oscillates elsewhere.34 Death in war for the nation is honorable according to Sodalis in the Dialogus, whereas Amicus finds such virtue quite difficult and unusual (288); although honorable as service to the nation in the Livre des Quatre Dames, death is a calamity for lovers.35 Hope is a bien when founded on faith, but ‘counterfeit’ when it lacks that foundation (Esperance, Prose 12.12). The Esperance excludes the love context but does discuss national calamity as cause for despair and death – death by suicide, not as the result of external violence, age, or disease. Unlike the ladies in the LQD for whom Agincourt was a national and personal tragedy that makes the first Dame wish she were dead,36 in the Esperance, Acteur contemplates suicide as a response to any calamity, whether personal or national (Prose 4.81–5). As we have seen, his opinion is inspired by Desesperance and supported by pagan examples. The choice, amalgamation, and interpretation of commonplace themes or motifs like bien, death, and despair, as well as credible historical and literary examples that support a line of argument, are characteristic of Chartier’s writing.37 To appreciate this kind of composition, we must return to the distinction between model and source. As we have seen, both may be found in antecedent works; but it is important to keep in mind the difference between them if one wishes to understand how authors such as Chartier rewrite both their models and their sources. 31

Cayley (2006a: 158). On the Dialogus’s antithesis of individual and groups, see Zinser (1980: esp. 292–4; 318–19). 33 Quadrilogue, 32:9–14; the DHVV 225–40 treats bien as prowess (Alain Chartier 1974a: 429), whereas the word refers to honor in the Breviaire des nobles (vv. 92–3, Alain Chartier 1974a: 398). On the ‘souverain bien’ towards which all powers strive, see Esperance, Prose 6.132–40. 34 See Hult (2003). 35 LQD, vv. 550–2, 964–72 (Alain Chartier 1974a: 214; 227). See Breviaire des nobles, vv. 148–87; and Dialogus 252: ‘in communi dampno tibi privatam mesticiam comparas’ (in common disaster you experience private grief). 36 LQD, vv. 581–4 (Alain Chartier 1974a: 215). She rejects suicide, as in the Esperance, because it is a sin (650–6 [217]). 37 Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a). On commonplaces from the Rose in BDSM, see Jane H. M. Taylor (2003: 325–33). 32

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Three of Chartier’s adaptations of his Boethian model are important.38 First, Chartier replaces and multiplies personifications; for example, Foy, Esperance (and Charity), replace Philosophy. Second, by gradual revision of the infratextual audience, Boethius, a prisoner in the Consolation, becomes Chartier’s Acteur, a suicide-prone persona who metamorphoses into an Everyman figure standing for all the French men and women whom Foy and Esperance admonish in their time of troubles. Third and last, by recontextualization, religion replaces philosophy and even reason as ultimate authority in order to reconcile God’s foreknowledge with human free will, a major issue in Book Five of the Consolation. Since the purpose of Esperance, like the Consolation, is to console, Chartier keeps the blueprint for consolation he found in Boethius’s treatise. As in this work, so in the Esperance, a bewildered and despairing acteurfigure is shown listening to false muses. The words of Defiance, Indignation, and Desesperance tend to individualize Acteur’s life while enhancing his despair and, finally, encouraging suicide as an escape from his tribulations and, therefore, as a kind of comfort and consolation. This scheme entails fundamental adaptations of Boethius’s blueprint. Unlike Boethius (Esperance, Prose 2.149–52), Acteur is no longer in a literal prison; therefore, if he is on death row, it is because he places himself there by contemplating suicide. What he shares with Boethius is the lethargy visualized as lying on the cot to which Melencolie leads him. By his lethargic and ‘vergonneuse descongnoissance’ (Prose 5.64: ‘shameful ignorance’) he resembles Boethius who ‘lethargum patitur, communem illusarum mentium morbum’ (he suffers lethargy, the common disease of befuddled minds).39 As noted above, the Esperance’s prologue describes Chartier as having been in ‘exil’ for ten years (Poem 1.1; cf. 35: ‘fuitifz, exiliés et dispers’: in flight, alienated, and gone astray). However, he does not mean that he is an exile in the sense evoked by Defiance: ‘habiter en estrange nation’ (Prose 3.63–4: living in a foreign land). Rather he uses the word in another sense common in Old and Middle French – that of alienation – alienation from the world he lives in, isolation from his contemporaries and the court, and wretched victim of fortune.40 This sense of exil is compatible with another, more closely Boethian image of ‘prison’ as a metaphor for Acteur’s alienation.41 Such alienation is alienation from self, pictured in the Esperance’s version of Boethius’s confrontation with false muses. Chartier’s false muses accompany Melencolie as she leads Acteur to the couch before which they chant, as it were (but only in prose),

38

See Meyenberg (178–85). Boethius 1. Prose 2.10–11. See Esperance, Poem 1.54–60; Prose 1.1–7, 26–32. 40 Shapley (119–20); similarly Prose 13.491–2; Prose 3.20. Chartier’s en exil is therefore analogous to the modern German im Elend. 41 Prose 5.54–5; Prose 6.93–6 (the body as prison); Prose 10.158–60. 39

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their sad litanies.42 Like the false muses that failed to console Boethius, these monsters fail to console Acteur; rather, they urge him to suicide. They do so using traditional pagan arguments and examples about life and death.43 That is, they speak for Philosophy, not for the faith that Acteur has forgotten.44 The replacement of Boethius’s false muses by Defiance, Indignation, and Desesperance, is mirrored by the benevolent trinity that replaces Boethius’s Philosophy. Like Philosophy, they oppose the gloomy muses.45 This trinity is composed of the three theological virtues, the ‘dames’ Foy, Esperance, and Charity. Also mentioned is ‘une debonnaire et bien encontenancee damoiselle’ (Prose 5.49–50: a noble, dignified damsel). She is neither identified nor referred to again, but may well have emerged meaningfully at the end of the treatise had Chartier completed it.46 The two who are named, Foy and Esperance, actually speak to Acteur; Charity is silent because the treatise is unfinished.47 This benevolent trinity not only replaces Boethius’s Philosophy, it also lifts the source of consolation out of his philosophical context. Rational thought helps Boethius to identify virtue as the true basis for the good. Virtue alone gives felicity, which distinguishes it from false goods that may, for a time, bring happiness, but that are dependant on fortune and therefore do not truly belong to the human being. (Philosophy treats five false goods: wealth, honor as high public office, power, fame, and bodily pleasure.) 48 Chartier offers what we might now cogently term ‘faith-based’ consolation. Christine de Pizan takes a similar tack in the Advision Cristine, a treatise for which Boethius’s Consolation also serves as model.49 In the

42

Jung (47–9). Melancholy is a commonplace theme that Chartier adapts in most of his works to, alternately, amorous, political, and, here, subjective registers. On melancholy, see Heger, esp. 200–4; Cerquiglini-Toulet; Blanchard and Mühlethaler (40–1); Meyenberg (25); Marchello-Nizia (1985: 258–9). 43 Alienation from self in Boethius results from the failure to know oneself, the cause of his illness and possible death (Courcelle 27; see Consolatio, 1. Prose 6.17–19). Chartier rewrites this as a wish to die. 44 See Zinser (1980: 184–6). 45 Chartier uses such contrasts (Zinser 1977: 55–75; 203–18) as virtual contraires choses that define his and his world’s experience; see Regalado (62–81); Bolduc. 46 Could she have been Joan of Arc? Cynthia J. Brown (1999) does not mention this ‘damoiselle’ in treating Joan of Arc and the Esperance, nor does Meyenberg (178 n42). Rouy dates the treatise ‘aux environs des années 1429–30’ (Alain Chartier 1989a, ii); Chartier died 20 March 1430 (Alain Chartier 1977: 55) and therefore before Joan’s capture at Compiègne. On the ‘literary image’ of Joan of Arc based on earlier biblical and antique models of the egregia bellatrix that Chartier contributed to along with Christine de Pizan, see Fraioli. 47 On Charity’s possible role in uniting the French, see Zinser (1977: 52–3; cf. 196). 48 Boethius treats these false goods in Book 3 of the Consolation. In Esperance Foy refers to them in relation to divine justice (Prose 8.20–5); Esperance alludes to them in treating ‘defective hope’ (Prose 13.483–8). 49 Christine de Pizan (2001: xxviii–xxxi). I discuss Christine’s change of opinion in Kelly (2007).

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Advision, a Christine-figure moves in the opposite direction to that Chartier takes in the Esperance, but arrives at the same goal. That is, she moves from France’s travails at the beginning of her treatise through intellectual uncertainty regarding opinions good and bad, to her personal life. In this third stage, Philosophy offers correction and consolation; but Christine’s Philosophy metamorphoses (perhaps an adaptation of Boethius’s Philosophy who assumes various heights) into Theology,50 a renaming that reflects a commonplace medieval hierarchy in knowledge and disciplines (Advision vv. 140–2).51 Christine works her way to the faith-based consolation that, in the Esperance (Poem 6), enlightens the mind when reason and opinion fail.52 Chartier too distinguishes clearly between Providence and the subsidiary, but dependent realm of Nature,53 a distinction that paves the way to his treatment of the apparent conflict between providence and free will that will be discussed below. Despair’s urge to suicide quickens Nature, not Philosophy or the theological virtues. Nature54 in turn awakens ‘Entendement raysonnable’ (Prose 5.69: Rational Understanding), who is languishing in the lethargic state discussed above.55 Entendement then gives the three virtues access to Acteur. This brings us to our second topic: the replacement of Acteur by the French nation.56 That is, Acteur metamorphoses from a ‘Moi’ (I) heeding the malevolent muses, to an Acteur recording the admonitions that Foy and Esperance address to the entire French nation. Consolation gives way to admonition as Entendement begins to grasp what the French (including Acteur) need. ‘L’intellectuel, au lieu de se penser lui-même, pense l’universalité’ (The intellectual, rather than thinking of himself alone, thinks of all people).57 Chartier’s adaptation of his Boethian model is still in progress. The Boethius figure in the Consolation first appears in the Esperance as an Acteur sick unto death. The sickness spreads through the body politic to plague the

50

Consolation 1. Prose 1.1–2. Courcelle (55–6), places the source of this hierarchy in Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus. 52 Zinser (1980: 180–1). Christine, like Chartier, seems to be aware of the limitations of Boethius’s Philosophy, who can understand only what reason can; see Courcelle (24–5); Blanchard (1987). Jean Gerson’s Consolatio Theologiae may also have influenced Chartier (Meyenberg, 33–4). 53 See also Quadrilogue 1–2. 54 On Nature as agent of divine providence in time, see Zinser (1977: 150–8). In the Esperance, Nature is also subservient to Entendement, whom she awakens, but does not otherwise influence. 55 According to Foy, such lethargy is divine punishment (Prose 9.361–74). 56 On Acteur’s intervention starting with Prose 10, see Zinser (1977: 178–9); Meyenberg (150 n33; 175). On an analogous adaptation in the Quadrilogue, see Meyenberg (173 n25). 57 Blanchard (1986: 44). 51

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whole French nation.58 Entendement can provide amelioration once he understands what is required. Chartier adopts the virtue Boethius sees as the only true good. But he also multiplies and personifies it as the three theological virtues. They provide that understanding, speaking for Providence by mining biblical and patristic sources for matière.59 With the appearance of these virtues, therefore, Acteur acquires a new role and a new identity. While under the influence of Melencolie and the malevolent personifications Defiance, Indignation, and Deseperance, Acteur is a first-person pronoun speaker thinking only of himself. ‘Au diziesme an de mon dolent exil’ (Poem 1: in the tenth year of my grievous alienation). Similarly, under the rubric Acteur, he begins Prose 1: ‘En ceste dolente et triste pensee, qui tousjours se presente a mon cueur et m’acompaigne …’ (In this grievous, sad thought that ever appears before my heart and accompanies me). When Melencolie and her suite appear, it is ‘vers moy’ (Prose 1.14: to me) that they come and it is his ‘ymaginative’ (Prose 2.8), or ‘faculty of imagination’, that they address. Yet Acteur, a ‘Moi’, lies on his couch and Entendement falls into a state of lethargy. ‘Ma povre fantasie tormentee de diverses considerations …, debatant a par moy tous ces partis, … cha ne la je ne trouvoye fors espoventement et contrarieté’ (Prose 4.2–5: my wretched fantasy tormented by various concerns, I found only horror and adversity everywhere while contending by myself with all these opponents). Desesperance, turning like Melencolie ‘vers moy’ (Prose 4.10), urges suicide, that is, the snuffing out of a single, albeit miserable life, Acteur’s own. He is obviously thinking only of himself at this stage in the Esperance. The verse passages that punctuate the false muses’ prose comment critically on Acteur’s decline into isolation, depression, and despair, counterpointing in this way the malevolent influence of his imaginative faculty, or ‘fantasy’ (Prose 2.9) that the malevolent ‘monsters’ misinform. These depressing prose passages in Chartier’s prosimetrum require a positive, rational imagination that can find truth in Acteur’s mind as he hovers between hope and despair in an internal debate analogous to that found in the Quadrilogue (6.3–7, 7.1–2). While the false muses’ arguments sap Acteur’s virtues by inciting him to act against Nature and himself, the verse passages explain his moral decline: ‘Ton penser te desvertue’ (Poem 2.7: your thoughts deprive you of virtue). The person who gives into such confusion (Poem 3.16–20) ‘trop se desnature’ (Poem 5.19: grossly degrades himself [cf. 1–10]) by turning against God and rejecting His charity (Poem 5.25–30). The loss of rational judgment can be remedied only by turning to God (Poem 4), not to despair and suicide.

58

Esperance, Prose 3.63: ‘police epydimiee’ (plagued government); Prose 7.200–10 refers to illness in the body politic; Prose 8.96–7: ‘corruption espydimieuse’ (epidemic corruption); Dialogus 312: ‘pax rei publice sanitas’ (peace is the health of the commonwealth). 59 See Zinser (1977: 332–3); see also Quadrilogue, 12.20–2, 32.19–23, 49.18–21.

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These verse passages anticipate Nature’s reawakening. By reviving Entendement, she moves Acteur from his false imaginations to rational thought. Now Acteur becomes an observer of what transpires as Entendement heeds the words of the benevolent personifications of the theological virtues and engages them by his questions. Rational human understanding supersedes individual, private fantasy where Imaginative runs amok (Prose 5). Acteur becomes a more obvious sort of Everyman, or at least a representation of every Frenchman, in conformity with the argument in the Dialogus quoted above in the epigraph. Now a vir universalis, he is indeed an Everyman, or homo omnis in omnibus effectus.60 From this perspective Chartier can even address representatives of other religions through Esperance’s long diatribes in Prose 13. This change becomes apparent as Acteur’s role recedes before the larger demands of the common good. Although Acteur’s misfortunes reflect Chartier’s own in service to the French crown as well as other, personal tribulations he endured in his life, they also mirror those of every Frenchman in his audience.61 His self-destructive impulse characterizes the French in general. Foy’s and Esperance’s lessons reflect this larger audience Acteur now becomes a part of, Foy having passed from correcting Entendement individually (Prose 6) to the national calamity (Prose 7). The two virtues call for national selfawareness and unity. In the Esperance a national calamity requires not consolation, but amelioration.62 Ideas Chartier develops in the Dialogus receive further treatment in the Esperance and, perhaps, anticipate the role he planned for Charity had he completed the treatise, a role emphasizing service to the commonweal that benefits everyone. If common misfortunes produce individual grief (Dialogus 252), improving the commonweal benefits every individual and every part of the nation while restoring virtue: ‘Recto gradu per virtutem ad rem publicam iter ostenditur’ (Dialogus 284: the journey on the straight way through virtue to the commonwealth is displayed). Offering one’s life in this cause is not suicide, but a virtuous and honorable action.63 Such a death conforms to the divine will that remains constant and consistent. God abandons only sinful or otherwise perverse humans who themselves abandon virtue (Dialogus 296). Here again we see a model in Boethius. One recalls that Philosophy’s

60 The Dialogus is bound together with the Esperance in nine of its surviving manuscripts; see Cayley (2006a: 93) and the tables 208–14. On this transformation of the individual in the Dialogus, see Cayley (2006a: 105–9). 61 Poirion (1965: 261). 62 This requires reconfirming the bond between king and people, a goal Chartier also sets in the Quadrilogue; the Esperance, Prose 8–10, lectures the clergy, the rulers, and the people on their role in national amelioration. 63 Dialogus 288; cf. 306 and Quadrilogue 53–4.

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scope in the Consolation is illustrated by her variable size. Likening such shape-shifting to Jacob’s ladder, Chartier rewrites and revises the image so that Philosophy’s diverse heights in Boethius become twelve articles of faith that, like rungs in a ladder, extend from the Trinity down through Christ’s mission on earth to the lives of men and women here below (Prose 5.168–85). Foy is the lofty realm of theology (Prose 5.188) to which Entendement and his rational disciplines must now submit (Prose 5.128–40).64 The French are encouraged to do so as well by submitting to the demands of their faith and turning from suicidal, self-destructive despair to revivifying hope – that is, from self-destruction in strife to the same unified effort that France promotes in her peroration in the Quadrilogue. Acteur also illustrates a further reassignment of roles. As shown above, Entendement becomes the first-person pronoun figure, whereas Acteur is reduced to audience recording the personification’s exchanges with first Foy, and then Esperance. Acteur is now analogous to the antigraphe who, in Christine de Pizan’s Advision, records what transpires among personifications (Advision 6.140 and 16.12).65 Indeed, ‘the intense dramatic action involving the personifications in the beginning of L’Esperance gives way to their dialogue which … becomes increasingly like monologue’.66 Chartier virtually relegates Acteur to the role of rubricator once Entendement begins to speak. Entendement, not Acteur, becomes the first-person, Boethian interlocutor. But under Foy, the problems dealt with using reason in the Consolation find different, faith-based solutions to which reason contributes nothing significant. In conclusion, I would like to illustrate briefly this new source of solutions by looking at the third topic proposed above: the aporia that Philosophy treats in Book 5 of Boethius’s Consolation, that is, the reconciliation of divine foreknowledge with human free will. It is a big problem in Boethius; it is hardly a problem at all for Chartier. Boethius distinguishes between human experience in time and space and God’s knowledge outside time and space, as it were in a single moment of perception – in a ‘mirror’ in Jean de Meun’s Rose, in which all time past, present, and future is visible in an ineffable moment.67 Because time and space do not exist in God’s realm, there are none of the contingencies that humans experience and respond to in the time and space of their geocentric universe: ‘tout le temps ensemble luy est present plus que a toy l’eure de maintenant’ (Prose 15.283–5: all time together is more present to him than

64

See also Prose 6. 84–91; and Zinser (1977: 144–6); Blanchard (1987: 36–8). Contrast falsigraphus in Dialogus 314. 66 Zinser (1977: 119); see also Rouy (9; 118–30); Blanchard (1987: 30). 67 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (1965–70), vv. 17421–68. Chartier describes time as a circle that revolves about its immovable center, God (Prose 15.285–95). 65

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the present moment is to you). Chartier rehearses this explanation (Prose 15.240–68), but it is not the linchpin of his argument.68 The issue of free will comes up in Esperance’s section of Chartier’s treatise. While responding to a number of Entendement’s queries, or ‘aucuns menus interrogatoires’ (Prose 15.12: some small questions) regarding the efficacy of hope, Esperance takes up prayer as a source of hope.69 Entendement wonders whether prayer can provide consolation. If so, how can prayer be efficacious when it is not answered, or when opposing parties pray for incompatible or opposite results? A third query brings up the issue of free will versus divine foreknowledge. If our prayers please God, does this not mean that His will is determined by our wishes, not His own? Esperance counters that God’s will is constant and unchanging. This leads to a restatement of the issue. ‘Se sa voulenté est invariable’, asks Entendement, ‘et eternellement il ait voulu et sceu toutes choses sans changer vouloir, pour neant seroient oreisons et prieres’ (Prose 15.219–21: if His will is unchangeable and he has through all eternity determined and known all things without changing his will, prayers would serve no purpose). Esperance responds that the question indeed raises the issue of harmonizing God’s foreknowledge, or, more explicitly, His ‘predestination’, with human free will, or ‘le franc arbitre de l’omme’ (Prose 15.225–6). To understand how Chartier resolves this problem, we must return to Foy’s proofs for faith that Esperance builds on in order to answer Entendement’s queries. Besides recalling Boethius’s philosophical, albeit ‘imaginative’ because metaphorical solution to the problem of God’s foreknowledge, Foy also relies on more traditional theological and biblical examples: Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the ark, and the Red Sea crossing. Abraham believed he could follow God’s will and sacrifice Isaac, his only begotten son, and still, in old age, be the founding father of Israel; Noah and the crossing of the Red Sea also exemplify faith in the face of philosophical or scientific objections (Prose 6.33–45). Elsewhere, Esperance, again evoking Abraham’s certain faith, proves its efficacy: ‘aprez tant d’ans passés sa lignie se multiplia sur terre comme l’arene de la mer’ (Prose 11.11–12: after so many years had passed his lineage multiplied over the earth like the sands of the sea). Hope, founded on faith, becomes certain, and the history of Abraham’s descendants confirms faith, albeit after the fact. The Bible is evidence for the solution to Entendement’s problem. ‘Croy, et n’en doubte point’ (Prose 15.268: believe and doubt it not).70 This is the model Abraham, Noah, and Moses illustrate. As with Abraham, Noah before the Flood, and Moses before the Red Sea, faith can move philo68

Zinser (1980: 186–7). On Esperance’s treatment of prayer, see Blanchard (1987: 37–41). See also Meyenberg (142–3), and, on alternating hope and despair in Chartier’s writings (23–4). 70 See Prose 6.157–8. 69

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sophical mountains and natural seas. From this perspective, Entendement can believe that, indeed, God has absolute and infallible foreknowledge and yet, indeed, we humans have free will and are, accordingly, responsible for our thoughts, decisions, and actions. This is not rational. Faith lies above reason, preempting the latter’s authority in Chartier’s worldview; as Foy explains, ‘argumens et silogismes sont forclos de mes metez’ (Prose 9.348–9: proofs and syllogisms are excluded from my confines).71 Returning to the efficacy of prayer in her peroration, Esperance concludes: ‘Tu peulz sçavoir que se oreisons et merites ne proufitassent et Dieu eust si destiné les choses que le franc arbitre d’omme fut contraint par necessité, je eusse pour neant esté crée’ (Prose 15.305–8: you can be sure that if prayers and merits were without value and God had foreordained matters so that human free will was constrained by necessity, I would have been created for no purpose). But God has a purpose for all His creations, including hope and the prayers that express it. Faith makes hope effective. Entendement is convinced and so moves on to other questions. How should one pray? What is the place of offerings and sacrifices? Entendement’s questions show him to have been initially ‘scrupuleux’ (Prose 8.28), that is, doubting – in this instance, doubting divine justice and providence.72 Yet, obviously, for Chartier and his intended medieval audience, faith is a powerful response to such doubts. Foy and Esperance dispel Entendement’s doubts and he is able to recover faith in fear of the Lord (Prose 10.2–7, 202–3). Chartier does not suggest that agnosticism or skepticism might be more appropriate responses to his earlier uncertainty. He is in harmony with medieval and early modern mentalities. Rather than express doubts, Entendement now finds hope through prayer and faith. Christine de Pizan, building on Boethius, also claims that the explanation for her life’s tribulations and consolations comes ultimately from theology and faith.73 Chartier, like Hélinand de Froidmont74 or Christine before him, derives comfort for faith from martyrs and the Bible75 – as Foy puts it, ‘De la sainte Bible me veul je aider cy endroit’ (Prose 78.54: I want to help myself

71

See Prose 10.48–50. See Esperance, Prose 8.3–4; Prose 10.3–5, 202–3; Prose 15.294–5. 73 See Advision, 55.41–2, 139.67–9; see also 140–41. In Christine’s gloss to the Advision, theology is identified as Foy’s chambermaid (Advision, 6.108–9). 74 Hélinand de Froidmont claimed in Les Vers de la mort that it would be a terrible deception if hope and faith were not available in the world God created; see Hélinand de Froidmont, esp. stanzas 36–9, 44–8. The idea derives from 1 Cor. 15.12–19 (cf. p. 56n). 75 Examples are the principal device for argument in the Esperance (Meyenberg, 139; 146–9). See Prose 6.33–34. Only biblical examples are reliable here; they are the foundation for faith (Zinser 1977: 21–3; 88–98; 158–68; 203–21). Foy uses examples to support faith; they are an important mode for debate in Chartier’s Latin writings; see Zinser (1977, Ch. 4). 72

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here using Sacred Scripture). As late as the seventeenth century Pascal still relies on the evidence of miracles to confirm faith.76 But let us end by returning to the twenty-first century and empirical evidence, not ‘faith-based’ scholarship, for Chartier’s use of Boethius as model. In three areas, the French author moves from Boethius’s philosophical consolation towards religious consolation that is also a call for unified action by the French nation. He does so by recasting personifications, shifting his first person figure from a ‘Moi’ to every Frenchman, and recontextualizing philosophical issues as religious issues in order to resolve them. To put Chartier’s rhetoric in perspective, I conclude by returning to Bonaventure’s ‘four ways of making a book’ alluded to above: scriptor, compilator, commentator, and auctor.77 The scribe (scriptor) ‘writes the materials of others, adding or changing nothing’.78 The compiler (compilator) ‘writes the materials of others, adding, but nothing of his own’. The commentator (commentator) ‘writes both the materials of other men, and of his own, but the materials of others as the principal materials, and his own annexed for the purpose of clarifying them.’ Finally, the author (auctor) ‘writes both his own materials and those of others, but his own as the principal materials, and the materials of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own’. In the Esperance, Chartier is an ‘author’ because he uses Boethius’s Consolation as model, but adapts it to confirm his own interpretation of Boethius’s dilemma, an interpretation based not only on reason and philosophy, but, more importantly for him, on faith and the Bible.79 Boethius is his model, but faith is his foundation and hope is his bequest to the French nation. Finally, examples biblical, religious, and secular are the sources that support the truths his personified virtues pronounce in the context of hope and faith. We can only wonder what Charity and that ‘debonnaire et encontenancee damoiselle’ might have added to his argument had Chartier lived long enough to complete the Esperance. There can, however, be little doubt that his model and sources would not have changed.

76 77 78 79

Pascal (vol. 2, §§ 169 and, in general, 678–707). Quoting Minnis (94). Chartier uses copie in this sense (Esperance, Prose 7.200–5). Rouy (99).

2

‘Vox Dei, vox poetae’:1 The Bible in the Quadrilogue invectif FLORENCE BOUCHET Following in the footsteps of Jean de Meun, Alain Chartier had understood that it was possible to bring forth ‘la diffinitive sentence’ (the definitive answer) from ‘contraires choses’ (contrary things).2 So he chose the elaborate framework of a tempestuous debate, of a ‘quadrilogue’ between Lady France and her three sons, to mobilise his compatriots in 1422, that darkest of years. Respected clerk and secretary of the dauphin Charles, maistre Alain enjoyed a certain reputation; but Charles was still only the ‘roi de Bourges’ (king of Bourges), reduced to exile with his followers, while the English king Henry V had obtained political control over the country, thanks to the treaty of Troyes (21 May 1420). The urgency of the need to speak out, for Chartier, was equalled only by the difficulty of doing so. All necessary means had to be employed in order to confer on the Quadrilogue invectif the persuasive weight of auctoritas. Chartier’s clerical authority in the Quadrilogue is two-fold, based at once on classical erudition and on biblical wisdom.3 My investigation here builds on work undertaken by Jean-Claude Mühlethaler.4 I focus on how our Norman clerk, forging a dual persona of prophet and preacher, deploys biblical discourse in order to lend authority to his ‘petit traictié’ (short treatise), both directly and through the agency of his characters.5

My grateful thanks to Emma Cayley for her translation of this article; all English translations of quotations are also by Cayley unless otherwise stated. 1 ‘Voice of God, voice of the poet.’ 2 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (1992), vv. 19508 and 21577. 3 I do not deal here with classical sources, but see Bourgain-Hemeryck’s edition; Alain Chartier (1977); Meyenberg; Rouy; or Cayley (2006a), esp. Ch. 3. 4 Mühlethaler (1983). 5 Chartier’s Quadrilogue is cited throughout from E. Droz’s edition; Alain Chartier (1950). For this quotation, see p. 5.

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The Authority of the Prophet Immediately after the opening paragraph of the Quadrilogue addressed to his readers, Chartier embarks upon a meditation underpinned by the sovereign authority of God: all human power depends on ‘la divine et infinie puissance’ (the divine and infinite power) of the Creator (1). The fate of the nation, referred to in the first person plural, is at stake. Alain swiftly emerges from this ‘nous’, through his ability to determine the real cause of the catastrophe: ‘nous imputons a Fortune … la juste venjance que Dieu prent de noz faultes’ (4: we ascribe to Fortune … the just vengeance that God exacts for our faults). Even if ‘les jugemens de Dieu … sont une abisme parfonde ou nul entendement humain ne sceit prendre fons’ (4: God’s judgements … are a deep chasm where human understanding must fall short), the clerk escapes at least in part from human impotence, and it is this exceptional status that is the cornerstone of his authority. Like a prophet, the clear-sighted Chartier is able to distinguish himself from his contemporaries, those who ‘en racontant les faiz qu’ilz cognoiscent a l’œil, … demeurent en descognoissance de la cause’ (4: in relating the deeds that they perceive by sight alone, … remain ignorant of the cause). Indeed, long before Chartier, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had denounced the sinful blindness of the people.6 It is precisely because of this blindness that Christ used parables to make himself understood.7 Chartier’s use of the parabolic mode in the shape of an allegorical dream vision (a frequent literary phenomenon after the Roman de la Rose) implicitly finds its guarantee and its justification in the Bible.8 Indeed, from a spiritual perspective, one should be careful: dreams can be deceptive9 and false prophets abound.10 Jeremiah goes on: ‘The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully’.11 So it is not the dream that vouches for the prophet, but the word of God. Then alone can he be considered, in accordance with the Glossa ordinaria, as ‘vox Verbi’, the voice of the Word.12

6

See Jr 5:21 (qui habentes oculos, non videtis – which have eyes, and see not), Ez 12:2 (qui oculos habent ad videndum, et non vident – which have eyes to see, and see not), which is echoed by Mk 8:18. See also Is 6:9–10 (cited in Jn 12:39–40; Ac 28:25–7). This notion became proverbial in the Middle Ages: ‘Teux a beaux yeulx qui ne voit goutte’ (Morawski, 2326: He has good eyes who sees nothing). Biblical quotations in English are taken from the King James Bible, and in Latin from the Vulgate (in italics, and given according to the Vulgate division where this differs from that in the standard modern version). 7 Mt 13:13–16; Lk 8:10. 8 See Marchello-Nizia (1981) and (1985). 9 Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 34:1–8. 10 Jr 23:25–27. 11 Jr 23:28. 12 See Mühlethaler (1990: 266); etymologically, the prophet is the one who ‘speaks in the name of ’.

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In the dreamscape of the Quadrilogue, biblical citation and the word of God serve to authorise the Acteur. Chartier refers his contemporaries in an obligatory humility topos to chapter 3 of Isaiah, ‘qui est parole de Dieu, ou la langue ne la plume de homme mortel ne peut actaindre’ (5: which is the word of God, to which men’s tongue or pen can never aspire). So no writer can equal the ‘vox Dei’ short of quoting it! It seems natural that the Bible, constantly perused, ‘ruminée’ (mulled over) and memorised through the practice of lectio divina, should reappear spontaneously under the pen of clerks, and Chartier is no different in this respect.13 The Bible structures both ways of thinking and forms of writing. Our clerk naturally adopts a prophetic stance, then, with the proviso that his inspiration does not come directly from God but from the perusal of holy books. He puts his doleful hope in the Lord, just like Isaiah.14 His copious tears, which leave him ‘les yeulx obscurciz’ (5: with clouded eyes), reveal his extreme emotion, and act as proof of authentic ‘sentement’ (feeling);15 they are also the sign of the prophet who sympathises with the plight of his land.16 The humility, weakness or even the melancholy of the poet in the first few pages of the Quadrilogue, far from undermining him, confer upon him the exemplary singularity of the prophet.17 Here we clearly see Pauline logic, which reverses the norms of wisdom and makes the weak strong.18 The ‘envoi’, which describes the final mission of the poet, charged by Lady France to record the debate he has participated in, reinforces this notion: Tu, qui as ouye ceste presente disputacion faicte par maniere de quadrilogue invectif, escry ces parolles afin qu’elles demeurent a memoire et a fruit. Et puis que Dieu ne t’a donné force de corps ne usaige d’armes, sers a la chose publique de ce que tu pués, car autant exaulça la gloire des Rommains et renforça leurs couraiges a vertu la plume et la langue des orateurs comme les glaives des combatans. (65)

13

This prefigures the notion of innutrition, evoked by the Pleiad poets in the midsixteenth century to defend literary imitation. 14 Is 26:9: ‘With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness’; see also Ps 119:147–148 (118:147–148). 15 The sentement demonstrated by late medieval poets proves the sincere involvement of the speaker and acts as a motor for inspiration. See Bouchet in Alain Chartier (2002: 11–14); also Lechat. 16 Is 22:4; Jr 8:23 (9, 1) esp. the Lamentations, which the Vulgate attributes to Jeremiah. See also Ps 119:136 (118:136) and II Co 2:4: ‘For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears’. 17 This can be taken to extremes: ‘And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years’ (Is 20:3), though Chartier does not take it this far. 18 I Co 3:18–20; II Co 12:9–10 (cited by Esperance, Pr V, 100–5).

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You who have heard this current dispute conducted in the manner of a ‘quadrilogue invectif’, write down these words so that they remain and prosper in our memory. For since God has granted you neither physical strength nor the right to bear arms, serve the state in whatever ways you can; indeed the glory of the Romans was enhanced and their resolve to exercise virtue was strengthened as much by the pen and the tongue of their orators, as by the blades of their warriors.

This exhortation clearly recalls that of Jesus to John at the opening of the Book of Revelation (1:10–11). Behind the classical reference to Roman orators lies an indirect reference to St Paul, through the parallel established with the soldiers’ blades: the blade of the Spirit (gladium spiritus), is the ‘verbum Dei’ (God’s word).19 The final mention of the title, Quadrilogue invectif, encourages us to view Chartier’s text as the repository of a quasisacred ‘word’. The initial meditation of the poet is fed by further scriptural references. The simile comparing God to a potter (2) is borrowed from Isaiah.20 It is a recurrent motif in the Bible,21 probably derived from the scene in Genesis in which God shapes man from earth (Gn 2:7), which reminds us that man must become ‘humilis’ (humble) before divine omnipotence, because he comes from ‘humus’ (earth). What is true for individuals holds also for nations, as is shown in the ubi sunt evocation of great seats of power that have vanished (3). The catalogue begins with illustrious cities whose destruction through pride or impiety was foretold by the prophets: ‘Ninive, la grant cité qui duroit trois journees de chemin’ (Nineveh, the great city of three days’ journey),22 or ‘Babillone, qui fut edifiee de matiere artificieuse pour plus durer aux hommes, et maintenant est habitee de serpens’ (Babylon, which was built from man-made materials in order to be more lasting for men, and now is inhabited by snakes).23 The vividness of the biblical discourse in the Quadrilogue gives it the appeal of a sermon addressed to every group of society.24 The calls for awareness, for conversion, for correction – constant throughout the text – are characteristic of this moralising mode. From the very beginning of the prologue, Chartier invites us to examine our consciences, he wants ‘a chascun ramen-

19

Ep 6:17. Is 45:9 and 64:7 (64:8). 21 Jr 18:6–10; Ecc (Sirach) 33:13 (33:13–14); Rm 9:20–21. 22 See Jon 3:3; So 2:13–15. 23 See Is 14:22–23; Dn 4:27–29. The rest of the series (Troy, Ilion, Thebes, Lacedaemonia, Athens, Carthage, Rome) illustrate Chartier’s other reservoir of historical exempla, drawn from classical antiquity. 24 From this perspective, the Quadrilogue is analogous to Jean Gerson’s Vivat Rex (Jean Gerson 1968: 1137–85). However, the Quadrilogue can be distinguished from the sermon in that it does not cite patristic authorities. 20

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tevoir ce qui lui en touche’ (5: to bring home to each man that which concerns him). He ends with the hope of ‘profiter par bonne exhortacion’ (66: profiting through well-meaning persuasion). The prophet doubles as a preacher. Politics and religion are reunited in the name of the mutual defence of moral values. The virtuous discourse functions as an authoritative one, underpinned by the universal truth of its principles. Biblical Authority and Polemic Biblical authority is not exclusively concentrated in the persona of Chartier as author-witness of the debate. The polyphonic framework of the disputatio (which is not resolved at the end) operates what might be termed a diffraction of authority.25 Chartier lends his voice to a series of speakers who, to differing degrees, incarnate all or part of his thought. Even if, in the fictional world, Chartier is only the spokesperson for his characters, in reality he lends them both his voice and his learning, in more or less apparent ways. Hence the biblical discourse that appears in the mouth of Lady France and her sons, feeding the polemic that sets them against one another. Lady France is clearly a political personification, endowed with a sacred aura symbolised by her ‘mantel ou paille’ (7: mantle or cloak): she is the incarnation of the mystic body of the State.26 Although she is terribly mistreated, she maintains, as a mother, authority over her wayward children, and even reaches a kind of sublime state. This ‘France aux outrages’ (dishonoured France) is the political equivalent of a dishonoured Christ. Christ sacrifices himself for the salvation of man, Lady France takes care of the ‘commun salut’ (64: public salvation): patriotism is her political version of faith. Like Chartier, she employs conversion rhetoric worthy of a preacher: ‘Tournez vos yeulx et convertissez vostre jugement sur vous mesmes’ (13: Turn your gaze and divert your judgement inwards). She marshals all the registers of pathos and her tone is often vehement. When she urges the French ‘Estoupez vos oreilles a toutes bonnes amonicions’ (16: Close your ears to all good counsel), it is with an ironic twist, or more precisely with an inversion of a well-known moral from Ecclesiasticus: ‘If thou love to hear, thou shalt receive understanding: and if thou bow thine ear, thou shalt be wise’.27 At the close of the debate, the ‘vox Franciæ’ (voice of France) entrusting her

25 This leaves a certain responsibility with the reader, who must provide his own conclusion to the debate; see Bouchet. On the non-ending of the debate in Chartier’s verse and other prose works see also Cayley (2003), and (2006a), esp. 125–9. 26 On the liturgical dimension of the pallium, see Bouchet in Alain Chartier (2002: 57 n21). On the personification of France, see Beaune (314–18). 27 Ecc (Sirach) 6:33 (6:34). The motif of acquiring wisdom via the ears appears, positively and negatively, throughout Ecclesiasticus. The enjoinder ‘inclinate aurem’ (Lend me your ears) is recurrent in Psalms.

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mission to Chartier comes to represent the voice of the author’s conscience, which moves him to write in the name of a higher principle. The figure of Clergé (Clergy) represents a doubling of Chartier the narratorwitness, if only because of their mutual clerical status. So it is no accident that Clergé also cites Isaiah from the outset (46); his speech is constructed in the form of a sermon whose tripartite structure is carefully announced. The modesty topos – ‘j’en parle selon ma petitesce’ (59: I speak of it to the best of my limited ability) – recalls the humility of Chartier in the opening paragraph, while his conclusion anticipates the final two sentences of the work (65–6): Ces choses et noz autres defaulx ne sont pas a raconter pour entrer en contempcion les ungs aux autres, ains seroient du tout a traire a qui n’en vouldroit plus user pour correction que pour reprouche. Si ne les recite pas pour donner charge, mais pour y prendre adviz, et a tant suffise a chascun ce peu que j’en scay dire, car, quoy qu’il soit de petit effect, il procede de grant abondance de bon vouloir. (61–2) These matters and our other faults are not to be discussed in order to enter into arguments with one another, but rather in order to remove them from all those who renounce them, both for their betterment and for their correction. I do not list them in order to accuse anyone, but rather to take advice; for the moment let everyone be satisfied by the little that I have to say on the matter, since, although it may be of minor impact, it is extremely well-intentioned.

Clergé’s speech is, unsurprisingly, peppered with biblical expressions: ‘flaël de divine justice’ (44: scourge of divine justice),28 ‘joug de servitute’ (46: yoke of servitude) and so on.29 Men who persist in error are compared with the ‘chien [qui retourne] a son vomissement’ (50: dog [who returns] to his vomit), a simile borrowed from the Book of Proverbs (26:11), where it is applied to the ‘imprudens’ (fool) who repeats his ‘stultitiam’ (folly). Even though Lady France and Clergé are authority figures naturally endowed with a certain sacred status, and, through their speeches, directly echo Chartier’s own preoccupations, it is worth noting that the speeches of the other two characters are also steeped in biblical reference. The figure of Peuple (People), who complains bitterly of his oppression by the other estates and asserts his dignity, employs the accusation found in Isaiah 3:15: ‘What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor?’30 28 See Judith 8:27 (flagella Domini – the scourge of the Lord); Ps 32:10 (31:10: multa flagella peccatoris – many are the scourges of the sinner); Is 10:5 (virga furoris mei – the rod of my anger). 29 See Ga 5:1 (jugo servitutis – the yoke of servitude); I Tm 6:1 (sub jugo servi – servants under the yoke). 30 ‘Le peuple si est membre notable d’un royaume’ (23: The people form an important

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The image of the ‘soc … tourné en glaive mortel’ (21: the ploughshare … turned into a deadly blade) reverses the formulation found in Isaiah 2:4 ‘they will beat their swords into ploughshares’: a satirical inversion which reflects the distress of Peuple, forced to live in a topsy-turvy world where any hope of peace has been squashed. From a broader perspective, the emotional charge of Peuple’s complaint seems inspired by the pathos of the psalmist, who also laments his misery plaintively. The illiterate Peuple is certainly in no position to cite the ‘divina pagina’, and still less to do so ironically. Indeed, he contents himself with a fairly vague allusion to ‘les ancien escrips’ (ancient writings) to introduce God’s punishment of sinners: pour la misere des povres et gemissemens des souffreteux la divine justice donne sentence de tresaigre punicion. (24) to the misery of the poor and the moaning of the suffering, divine justice hands down very harsh punishment.

We find reminiscences here of one of the most popular books of the Bible, Psalms. Psalms 3–10 (among many others) celebrate the greatness of a vengeful and just God who punishes evil and succours the oppressed, by whose prayers he is moved. The a priori unrealistic eloquence of Peuple demonstrates the moral solidarity of Chartier, who provides Peuple with the means to defend himself, thereby lending him a measure of his own clerkly authority. The role of the clerk ‘engagé’ is not solely limited to advice for princes, then: he comes to speak for the people who, in medieval society, are deprived of words. But on the make-believe stage of his fictional text, Chartier does more than just speak for Peuple: he gives Peuple the floor. The Chevalier (Knight) is, in the end, the character who speaks the most aggressively and arrogantly, but his speech is deficient in biblical authority. Just like the other speakers, he defers to God (28, 33) and turns the divine punishment card against Peuple: ‘Pensez tu evader la main de Dieu dont tu requiers venjance sur nous autres?’ (27: Do you expect to escape the hand of God whose vengeance you direct on us others?). He deploys religious vocabulary: ‘Confesse maintenant ce que tu ne peus denyer et bat ta coulpe de tes mauvais pechiez’ (27–8: Confess now to that which you cannot deny and expiate for your wicked sins); or ‘requier a Dieu qu’il te pardonne’ (28: ask God’s forgiveness), but it remains fairly superficial; on an intertextual level, the Bible seems to feed the Chevalier’s speech far less. A biblical term linked to the ‘invectif’ nature of the exchange, ‘murmure’ (rebellious talk), ties both Peuple and Chevalier to Chartier’s liminal

member of a kingdom). The complementarity of the members of a single body takes up St. Paul’s famous metaphor of the Church as a body (I Co 12:12–27).

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comments. From the very start of the debate, our clerk denounces ‘la superfluité des biens mondains, qui est nourrice de sedicions et de murmure’ (2: the superfluous nature of worldly goods, which breed sedition and rebellious talk). In the Bible, the substantive ‘murmur’ and the verb ‘murmurare’ refer to the rebellious rumblings among the people of Israel against their leaders Moses and Aaron.31 The verbal disobedience of a subordinate to an appointed superior here is presented as a seriously pernicious linguistic misdeed, and one that spells trouble. The Chevalier does not hesitate to use the same argument to his advantage: ‘Or se plaint le peuple de nous, or crient et murmurent les communes gens contre la seigneurie’ (32: So the people complain about us, so the common herd shout their rebellious talk against the ruling class). He adds that recriminations about fiscal matters reveal the egoism of a people who would rather not contribute to the national defence effort. Peuple retorts that it is precisely the ostentatious riches of the powerful and the nobility which have ‘suscité contre eulx le murmure du peuple’ (37: whipped up against them the rebellious talk of the people). He even goes as far as presenting this seditious muttering as a warning of rebellion to come: noz parolles, que tu appelles murmure, signifioient des lors le meschief qui pour ces causes estoit a advenir. Or est ainsi que d’oultraige et de desordonnance vient murmure, de murmure rumeur et de rumeur division et de division desolation et esclandre. (38) our words, that you call rebellious talk, express from that time on the trouble that might come from such causes. So it is that from dishonour and disobedience comes rebellious talk, from rebellious talk rumour, from rumour dissent, and from dissent devastation and scandal.

Once again, Chartier lends Peuple his rhetorical mastery to emphasise, by means of anadiplosis, the catastrophic chain of events. One could say that the order inherent in the speech is an attempt to remedy the disorder of reality, by providing it with an explanatory framework. History, a Model for the Present Day The Bible, read literally as a historical narrative (the first of the four levels of exegesis used by medieval theologians), obeys the Ciceronian principle of historia magistra vitæ:32 offering in addition an explanatory framework, a mirror for understanding the present. Chartier therefore turns to the past:

31

Ex 15:24; 16:2; Nb 11:1; 14:2; 17:6 (16:41); I Co 10:10. See Casagrande and Vecchio (181–6). 32 De Oratore II (36).

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Et se memoire vous puet aucune chose ramentevoir et les anciens livres de nos peres apprendre à cognoistre nos faiz par les leurs, toutes anciennes escriptures sont pleines de mutacions, subversions et changemens des royaumes et des principautez … (2–3) So if memory can enable you to recall anything, and the ancient books of our fathers teach us to understand our deeds through theirs, all ancient writings are full of transformations, subversions and changes of kingdoms and of principalities ….

He has in particular ‘curieusement encerchié par les discours des Sainctes Escriptures’ (5: made an exhaustive search of the pages of the Holy Scriptures). In fact, the similarity of the current situation depicted by the poet and the situation as denounced by the prophets is striking: the country has been devastated by foreigners;33 the present discontent is a divine sanction for sins committed.34 The lament of Lady France faced with her negligent sons recalls the Lord’s statement at the beginning of Isaiah: ‘I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me’ (1:2). Lady France’s sons, the three estates, can certainly be compared to the ‘corrupt children’ of Israel (Is 1:4) here.35 In this biblical context, the hope, however tenuous, of divine forgiveness remains implicit in Chartier’s prologue. Without tackling the problem, Chartier asks whether the present misfortune ‘est en verge de pere pour nostre chastiement ou en rigueur de juge pour nostre exterminacion’ (5: is as a father’s rod to beat us with or a judge’s rigour to destroy us). His hesitation stems from the ambivalence of God, whom the Bible certainly describes as a father, but also regularly depicts as a judge.36 For this reason, in the psalms and in the books of the prophets, if God punishes rigorously, he remains just, loyal and merciful towards his people. The notion of a punishment that turns out to be salutary is also found in Judith (8:27) and in the first letter to the Corinthians (11:32). So the Bible informs the protagonists’ speeches implicitly, by means of thematic and formulaic analogy. It also provides a vast reservoir of exempla, on which medieval preachers regularly drew. These exempla, while anchoring discourse, fulfilled the strategic function of authoritative arguments. Little

33

Clergé’s remark about the devastation caused by foreign occupation (50) can be read in Is 1:7. 34 Is 5:25 and 24:1–6; Jr 5:25. As he sees ‘noz vices croistre avecques le temps’ (our vices grow over time), Chartier concludes that ‘la main de Dieu est sur nous et que sa fureur a mis en œvre ce flaiel de persecution’ (4: the hand of God is upon us and his anger has begun this accursed persecution). 35 See also Proverbs 17:25 and 19:26: the French are like children who disappoint both father (God) and mother (country). 36 I Sm 24:16 (I Reg 24:16); Ps 7:12; 50:6 (49:6); 75:8 (74:8); Jr 29:23.

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surprise, then, that Chartier should have endowed his characters with this demonstrative, even polemical, tool. The children of Lady France therefore marshal diverse biblical examples in order to valorise, in the light of the past, their interpretation of the present.37 Peuple finds it useful, for example, when denouncing the bad counsellors of the king, to call on the case of Rehoboam, son of Solomon and king of Israel, who was disowned by his people for his bad policies:38 Assez le peut on noter et prendre exemple du roy Roboan, qui, pour les oppressions de son peuple qu’il ne voult amendrir ne cesser en delaissant le conseil des saiges anciens et ensuivant la sote oppinion des jounes et non saichans, perdy de sa seigneurie dix lignies et demie. (23) To understand this, one only has to take the example of king Rehoboam, who, because he did not want either to lessen or stop the oppression of his people, in abandoning the counsel of old sages to follow the foolish advice of young idiots, he lost control of ten and a half tribes.

At the first opportunity, the Chevalier retorts with a counter-example, which denounces the people’s insubordination, and again plays on the ‘murmur’ motif: Ayez en memoire les punicions qui, pour les murmures et impaciences du peuple d’Israël encontre leurs chiefz, vindrent sur eulx es temps de Moyse et d’Aaron, dont les aucuns furent vifs transgloutiz en terre, les autres devourez de serpens et embrasez du feu qui du ciel descendy. (27) Keep in your mind the punishments which, because of the rebellious talk and the impatience of the people of Israel with their leaders, were visited upon them in the time of Moses and Aaron, and which resulted in some being swallowed alive in the ground, while others were devoured by snakes and incinerated in the fire which descended from the heavens.

The details of such celestial punishments, taken from the book of Numbers, are intended to impress and terrorise one’s interlocutor, reducing him or her to silence.39 So the exempla used by Peuple and Chevalier effectively cancel each other out. Clergé, anxious to raise the tone of the debate, rejects this partisan recrimination in favour of a valorous heroism, which France so desperately needs in order to get back on her feet. The Bible provides him with the example of Mattathias:40 37

Ancient History remains the main source of exempla for the Quadrilogue; see Bouchet in Alain Chartier (2002: 29–32). 38 See I Kgs 12:1–19 (III Reg 12:1–19) and II Ch 10 (II Par 10). 39 Nb 16:30–35 and 21:6. 40 I Mac 2.

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Ceste maniere tint le vertueux homme et d’entier courage Mathatias et ses enfans les Machabees en la persecution que fist le roy Anthiocus sur le peuple d’Israël … ilz racheterent de leur sang et par leur mort la servitute et desolacion de leur peuple et remistrent le royaume de Juda en sa franchise et haulte dignité. (48–9) This is the attitude that was adopted by the valorous and courageous Mattathias and his children the Maccabees faced with the persecution that the king Antiochus inflicted on the people of Israel … by their blood and by their deaths they redeemed the servitude and ruin of their people and gave back to the kingdom of Judah its freedom and great dignity.

Then the example of Samson:41 Sanson le fort, pour les Philistiens ennemis du peuple d’Israël acravanter et confondre, abbati sur soy et sur eulx par sa grant force la maison ou ilz tenoient leurs grans conviz. (53) Samson the strong, in order to crush and destroy the Philistines, enemies of the people of Israel, caused to fall down both on him and on them, by virtue of his great strength, the house in which they were holding their great celebrations.

For the sake of the coherence of his arguments, Clergé takes certain liberties with the biblical text: he heroises Mattathias’s behaviour and brushes Samson’s personal vendetta under the carpet, in order to emphasise in each case their spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of their country. Up to a point, then, biblical authority is flexible: the meaning produced depends on the framing of the exemplum. Far from invalidating the example, though, this sort of manipulation showcases Clergé’s skill in interpreting the sacra Scriptura with a view to moving his contemporaries to appropriate action.42 Ultimately it is wisdom that is at stake, ‘la sapience de Salomon’ (61: the wisdom of Solomon), whose prestigious name joins those of the Maccabees or Samson in his speech.43 The Power of Style Citation of the auctores was an intellectual reflex in the Middle Ages. Texts composed in the vernacular made even greater use of such citation: if the author did not compose in the learned and hallowed Latin tongue, he 41

Jg 16:23–30. In a study of biblical imagery, Garnier notes that ‘to the faithfulness of detail in appearances, the medieval mind preferred the deeper truth of which action is the sign’ (404). 43 The name also evokes peace: in Hebrew, Solomon means ‘the peaceful’; see I Ch 22:9 (I Par 22:9). 42

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had to find another way to anchor the authority of his writing. Alain Chartier chose French in order to reach the whole nation, whose various social groups he addresses at the very beginning of the Quadrilogue.44 However, he chooses not to write in a stylus humilis (low style): the gravity of the situation required a loftier tone to impress the addressee and galvanise him into action. The urgency of Chartier’s arguments required, if not a stylus gravis (high style), then at least a stylus mediocris (medium style), adapted for the diversity of the country’s estats (who are both addressees and protagonists of the Quadrilogue): the persuasive power of Chartier’s traictié depended upon it. So we could say that biblical intertextuality participates, at the level of the writing itself, in the authorisation strategy of the Quadrilogue. G. Dahan has quite rightly noted the extent to which ‘l’imprégnation biblique’ (biblical saturation) characterises the style of mystics such as St Bernard or St Bonaventure and of writing in medieval Latin in general.45 This also holds true to a great extent for medieval writing in French, and Chartier is perhaps the greatest exponent of the phenomenon. Michel Zink suggests that ‘the most noteworthy and fertile aspect of preaching in the vernacular at the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries lies in the interest that Parisian humanists took in French prose oratory’.46 Midway between the sermon and the satirical allegory, the Quadrilogue succeeds in uniting literary elegance and vernacular expression. Chartier’s prose achieves a unique balance, due certainly in part to the cadenced and euphonic rhythm of classical authors such as Cicero or Livy, but also as a result of its biblical inspiration.47 The Bible itself, often referred to as a bibliotheca in the Middle Ages, is not unitary, but an amalgam of books from different genres and periods. This is the reason, as we saw earlier, that such a diversity of inspiration is found in the speeches of the Quadrilogue’s protagonists, here and there tinged with lyricism, or epic grandeur, and punctuated with proverbial sayings and concrete examples. The humble secretary of the dauphin, conscious of his moral responsibility and his political mission at a time when the writer’s conscience was beginning to assert itself, exhibits his literary credentials from the very beginning of the debate. He describes himself in the prologue as a ‘lointaing immitateur des orateurs’ (1: distant imitator of the orators). The term ‘orateur’ itself, though, does not only refer to the authors of Antiquity; it also defines a new kind of fifteenth-century French author, as Christine de Pizan puts it in her Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune (1400–03):

44 Chartier, of course, composed a significant part of his own œuvre in Latin; see Bourgain-Hemeryck’s edition: Alain Chartier (1977). 45 Dahan (21–4). 46 Zink (515). Zink mentions three of Chartier’s contemporaries: Jean Gerson, Jean Courtecuisse and Robert Ciboule. 47 See Meyenberg; Bouchet in Alain Chartier (2002: 32–5).

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Et orateur est clamé l’omme, Quant bon en nature on le nomme, Bien ordené en vie et meurs Et en ars et en tous labeurs, Et qui, introduit et perit En bien dire, et ses diz nourit Par eloquence gracieuse, Soubtile et artificieuse.48 That man is called an orator / Who they say is gifted with natural talent, / Who is well organised in his life and habits / As well as in the [liberal] arts and in all his works; / And who, initiated and skilled / In elegant speech, nourishes his words / With gracious eloquence / Which is subtle and refined.

The authority of such an ‘orateur’ is at once ethical and aesthetic: it combines ‘bien vivre’ (good living) and ‘bien dire’ (eloquence). Indeed, posterity unanimously saluted Chartier as virtuoso stylist and man. In the Quadrilogue, the desire for ‘bien commun’ (the common good) is underscored by the author’s own moral and rhetorical implication in the text. From this perspective, next to the great Latin authors, the Bible constitutes an undeniable source of elevation. Moreover, the term oratio refers us not only to eloquent speech, but also to prayer, oration. The writing of maistre Alain clearly preserves the lexical and syntactical imprint of Latin; this latinate atmosphere contributes to the Quadrilogue’s eloquence, and confers upon it a certain literary dignitas. Meanwhile, the biblical riches of his discourse endow Chartier with a priestly aura (in spite of his frequent modesty topoi). Crucially, this kind of scriptural ‘saturation’ invests Chartier’s text with the authority of eternal truths. In the final analysis, it enables the text to transcend national and historical boundaries so that, even though the Quadrilogue was composed in a very particular context, it maintains, independently of that context, a universal value which we can still recognise today. ‘Omnis sapientia a Domino Deo est’ (All wisdom is from the Lord God):49 it is quite natural that Alain Chartier, a clerk brought up on the Holy Scriptures, should borrow from the word of God to give his own writing the necessary ethical weight. The numerous biblical reminiscences in the Quadrilogue, of which I have but scratched the surface, play both a rhetorical and a stylistic role within the text. However, this traditional recourse to the supreme auctoritas here serves a new purpose, that of the ‘écrivain engagé’:50 biblical wisdom must be converted into political savance, and put to the service of a 48 49 50

Christine de Pizan (1959: t. II, vv. 8033–40). Ecc (Sirach) 1:1. See Mühlethaler (2006).

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country in danger.51 Hence the vision favoured by our poet is none other than the personification of France herself. While humbly remaining in his allotted place, that of a servant of God and of the State, Alain Chartier, with a sort of restless zeal, demonstrates the great dignity of a writer who parries with his pen as he would a sword. After all, spiritual salvation and public salvation are one and the same thing. The Nation is a mystic body, watched over by divine transcendence, who deserves absolute devotion in her own right.

51

See Clergé’s first argument (45–50).

3

‘Car rompre vault pis que ployer’:* Proverbial Pleasure in La Belle Dame sans mercy DANA SYMONS Like many of Alain Chartier’s works, La Belle Dame sans mercy tells its story of thwarted love through dialogue or debate, medieval genres that thrived on the use of proverbial expressions, legal language, and a sententious style.1 The poem revolves around a dispute between a lover and his beloved (Amant and Belle Dame) overheard by an ‘eyewitness’ narrator who records the debate. Although one critical thread has centered on the poem’s supposed conventionality and unoriginality of expression, and others have investigated the use of courtly language and intertextual play, scholars have not investigated the pleasures of the poem’s use of proverbs and sentences. Giuseppe E. Sansone comes closest when he assesses the appeal of Chartier’s poem as the result of ‘its nature as an exemplary and at the same time problematic work’,2 suggesting that the problematic elements give the poem its particular pull – for readers then and now. But the overwhelming use of proverbial language in Chartier’s poem signals an interest in conventional language and tropes, sources of enjoyment for medieval and early modern audiences that prove harder to accept for later readers weaned on the importance of originality and innovation. Hans Robert Jauss argues that modern readers, who think highly of newness rather than tradition, must reconstruct ‘the horizon of expectations’ for the original audiences of medieval works,

* For translation see p. 49. 1 Medieval debate poems reproduce this practice from disputatio in the universities and legal pleading (The Owl and the Nightingale 1960: 34; Medieval Debate Poetry 1987: xii–xiii). Cayley (2006a) points out that ‘judicial trial models, and earlier poetic forms such as the demandes, joc-partits, or tensos combined with the scholastic model of the disputatio, shape the late medieval debate poem’ (20). For more on the development of late medieval debate poetry in relation to Chartier’s poetry, see Cayley (2006a: Ch. 1, 12–51); for a more general overview, see Bossy in Medieval Debate Poetry (1987: xii–xvi), who argues that increased literacy and ‘imitations of traditional oral games’ in written form helped shape the literary debate genre (xii). Cayley discusses differences between debate and dialogue (2006a: 6–7); but this distinction is not essential to my argument. 2 Sansone (514). My translation.

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a reconstruction requiring ‘a reversal of [modern] aesthetic expectations’.3 Reading conventional medieval works requires ‘the reader [to] negate the character of the individual text as a work in order to enjoy the charm of an already ongoing game with known rules and still unknown surprises’.4 Reproducing proverbial language in a literary context creates just such a mixture of ‘rules’ with ‘surprises’. Examining the manipulation of proverbial language in the debate reveals that the pleasures of proverbs stem from the tension they offer as recognizable, common sayings that carry with them unexpected surprises through their reprise in the debate structure (in the form of reprisals). The intricacy of the verbal games in BDSM centers on the use of sententious language manipulated in a proverbial tour de force, offering readers the delight of the known mingled with the unknown, the familiar turned strange – Jauss’s ‘known rules and still unknown surprises’ taken to another level. Perhaps the ultimate expression of the kind of conventionality unappreciated by later audiences, proverbs were extremely popular in the medieval period. Emmanuelle Rassart-Eeckhout comments on the ‘exceptional craze for fixed linguistic forms’ in the Middle Ages,5 implying that it is the fixed quality that audiences enjoyed. Dave L. Bland suggests rather that medieval admiration of proverbs stemmed from a ‘sensitivity to the proverb’s dynamic and polyvalent nature … the proverb could easily be adapted to different purposes and settings’.6 Exchanges between the Belle Dame and Amant show that Chartier’s use of proverbs in the poem unfixes them, generating tension between convention and innovation and the personal and proverbial, and creating riffs on proverbial meanings through the challenges and counterchallenges of the characters’ verbal pyrotechnics. The two work from one another’s claims in a verbal performance that includes the manipulation of common sayings into literary formulations through word games and verbal trills. As the speakers embed proverbs in attack and riposte, the poetic form offers opportunities for embellishing and fine-tuning this well-known language, forming it to its literary environment. By the end of the poem, it is clear that the lover and lady exist only through their verbal interactions with one another, a performative ‘dictation’ of their identities. Chartier’s ceaseless manipulation of proverbial language further carries a commentary on the proverb itself, paradoxically fixed yet polyvalent, a form at once so full and so empty of meaning that it can easily serve cross purposes. As valued ‘ornaments of style’ recommended by ‘twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Latin treatises on rhetoric … and reemphasized by rhetoricians of 3 4 5 6

Jauss (1979: 182, 185). Jauss (1979: 189). Rassart-Eeckhout (211, my translation). Bland (6).

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the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’,7 French proverbs were collected in ‘dictionary form for the convenience of poets and the edification of all’, with as many as thirty French collections in play before 1400.8 Chartier’s poem participates wholeheartedly in this energetic use of proverbial expressions: David Heft identifies twenty proverbs in BDSM,9 and says that, in addition, forty percent of its lines are sententious.10 This proportion of proverbial language is extremely high. For example, in Chaucer’s 41,987 lines, Bartlett Jere Whiting finds 186 proverbs, 630 phrases, and 421 sententious expressions, ‘a larger proportion than is found in any other group of Middle English poems of an equal number of lines’11 but, significantly, much lower than the percentage in BDSM. Although many of Chartier’s poems are similarly proverbial, the almost complete lack of such language in the Lay de paix, which has just one proverb and no sentences, shows that Chartier does not invariably favor apophthegmatic phrases in his poetry.12 Notwithstanding the advice of medieval rhetoricians, proverbial expressions are not just decorative or part of the aesthetic background of BDSM; rather, they create a specific impact on readers through their play with meaning and their effect on characterization. David Hult suggests that ‘the Belle Dame’s characters are individuals (in spite of the author’s failure to provide names for them) and any incursion of allegorical characters remains episodic and incidental’.13 Melissa L. Brown sees the lady as a realistic portrayal of a person who displays both individuality and depth of character in contrast to the lover, whom she describes as ‘a static, unambiguous type’.14 These positions highlight the play between the personal and the proverbial at work in the characters’ language, but the poem’s sententious style deflects attention from the characterization of lover and lady, who become nameless mouthpieces for a love debate focusing on the rhythmic pattern of strike and counterstrike.

7 Williams (223). For more specifics on the rhetoricians, see also Jane H. M. Taylor (1989: 217). 8 Williams (224). 9 Heft (41). Unfortunately, Heft does not provide a list of the proverbs. See the Appendix for proverbs I have been able to identify. 10 Heft (38). Heft distinguishes between proverbs and sentences, although the differences are not self-evident. In his summary of the early literature, Heft explains that one definition sees proverbs as popular in origin and sentences as literary, whereas another points to brevity as the key factor in identifying a proverb (3–4). See also Archer Taylor, especially 4–5. Pfeffer offers a more recent and extensive survey of the literature in her Introduction (1–11). For other recent discussions, see Rassart-Eeckhout; and SchultzeBusacker (1984) and (1985). Whiting (1968) suggests that the distinction is not ultimately possible to make in any useful way (x–xvii), and I do not attempt to distinguish between them. 11 Whiting (1934: 10). 12 Heft (37, 41). 13 Hult (1999: 221). 14 Melissa L. Brown (126). Brown also summarizes modern reactions to the lady.

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If the characters are not allegorical, neither do they display individuality or realistic personalities: such characterizations seem out of place in a poem where at least 40 percent of the language is proverbial or sententious, because the flood of proverbs works against uniqueness of voice. Although the two begin their conversation by referring to themselves and each other directly, as the debate progresses, their personal language gives way more and more frequently to proverbial discourse, until they are swiftly trading nothing but aphorisms for whole stanzas, returning from time to time to the specificity and self-referentiality embodied in the personal pronouns. For the first few huitains, Amant and the Belle Dame speak of their own feelings in the first person and respond to one another in the second person. ‘Je seuffre mal ardant et chault, / Dont je muir pour vous bien vouloir’ (vv. 193–4: I suffer from a pain that burns and enflames me / and is killing me, for want of you)15 are the first words of Amant’s initial three-stanza complaint to the Belle Dame, who responds: Beau sire, ce fol pensement, Ne vous laissera il jamaiz? Ne penserés vous aultrement De donner a vostre cueur paix? (vv. 221–4) My dear sir, will these foolish thoughts never leave you? Will you not find another way to bring peace to your heart?

These personalized statements are soon interlaced with maxims that usually take up at least half the lines in a given huitain. Although each speaker returns to first and second person pronouns on a fairly regular basis, almost all the debate stanzas participate in the steady flow of proverbs and sententious language that characterizes most of the interchanges between lady and lover. In some cases, every line the two throw at each other has a proverbial sound to it, and statements where no identified proverb is invoked often have an aphoristic quality, as if the débatants are determined to take one another down through the rhetoric of common sayings. For example, in huitains 45–6, Amant and Belle Dame both resort to one generalization after the next in countering one another’s points. Neither character uses personal pronouns or refers directly to the other; instead each responds solely through proverbial sayings. Embedded in both huitains are phrases that play off the core idea in the proverb Bon (Honneste) cœur (Cœur loyal / Cœur humain) ne peut mentir (a good / honest / loyal / human heart cannot lie).16 Amant first introduces a 15 All quotations come from Alain Chartier et al. (2003); translations of the poetry are from Alain Chartier et al. (2004) unless otherwise indicated. Other translations are mine. 16 See Appendix, no. 13.

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version of this proverb, ‘Loyal cueur et voir disant bouche / Sont le chatel d’omme parfait’ (vv. 357–8: A loyal heart and truthful tongue / are the qualities of a good man), after which the lady responds with her own modifications, ‘Villain cuer et bouche courtoise / Ne sont mie bien d’une sorte’ (vv. 361–2: A base heart and a courteous tongue / are not a compatible pair). The lover uses the proverb about the loyal heart to respond to the Belle Dame’s proverbial accusation in the previous stanza that although the lover and others swear oaths to their beloveds, the ladies for their part ‘[n]e cuident que leurs sermens durent / Fors tant comme les moz se dïent, / Et que Dieu et les sains s’en rïent’ (vv. 347–9: do not believe your oaths to last any longer / than the brief second it takes to pronounce the words. / God and the saints mock your sport). These lines play off the saying Dieu et les saints se rient des serments des amoureux (God and his saints laugh at the oaths of lovers),17 which the Belle Dame modifies to suit the context of her accusation. When Amant counters with his version of Cœur loyal ne peut mentir – ‘Loyal cueur et voir disant bouche / Sont le chatel d’omme parfait’ – he extends the play by turning the last part of the traditional saying from a negative behavior, ‘mentir’ (lie) to a positive feature, a ‘voir disant bouche’ (truth-telling mouth [my trans.]). The Belle Dame’s response mimics Amant’s rhetoric even as she similarly recasts his phrases: ‘Villain cuer et bouche courtoise / Ne sont mie bien d’une sorte’ (A base heart and a courteous tongue / are not a compatible pair). Here, the Belle Dame changes ‘[l]oyal cueur’ to ‘[v]illain cueur’ and ‘[s]ont’ to ‘[n]e sont mie’, transformations that negate the lover’s terms and move the statement further from its proverbial base at the same time as they create further riffs on it. The reiteration with variation as a practice of refutation heightens the sense that the Belle Dame and Amant exist as verbal performances and suggests that the performative thrust and riposte of their dialogue was a significant source of enjoyment for audiences.18 Another dimension to the performative quality of the debate centers on creating literary word games out of well-known aphorisms, offering a spectacle of verbal performance – spoken through the rhetoric of common sayings – threaded through the characters’ agonistic connection to one another. When the Belle Dame advises Amant ‘[b]on fait refraindre a supployer19 / Ung cueur folement deceü’ (vv. 461–2: It is wise to beware of encouraging / a heart so woefully deceived), she follows this sententious comment with a well-known proverb: ‘[c]ar rompre vault pis que ployer’ (for to break is worse than to bend [my trans.]), adding to the end of the maxim, ‘[e]t esbranlé mieulx que

17

See Appendix, no. 12. Johnson points out that ‘[l]ong stretches of Belle Dame … can be characterized as marivaudage avant la lettre, a word or expression or image in one character’s speech being used in some witty way in another character’s reply’ (132). 19 Some other manuscripts have ‘fait vaincre et assouployer’ (see the line in Alain Chartier 1974a; and Alain Chartier et al. 2004). 18

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cheü’ (vv. 463–4: and tottered better than fallen [my trans.]). Although there is just one indisputable proverb here, ‘rompre vault pis que ployer’,20 the two lines that precede and the one that follows sound like proverbial sayings themselves, with the use of infinitives specifically echoing the format of the proverb they surround. The proverbs that punctuate the poem are often rooted like this in similarly worded formulations, lending the ‘replicas’ the air of maxims in their own right and heaping up proverbial phrases to make whole stanzas reverberate with recurring rhetorical flourishes. Interweaving these proverbs with other types of verbal games extends the linguistic and literary complexity. Here, drawing the proverb out through the addition of the line ‘esbranlé mieulx que cheü’ is one obvious way of embellishing it. Squeezing the proverb in between ‘[b]on fait refraindre a supployer’ and ‘esbranlé mieulx que cheü’ adds to its intricacy in another way by setting up a verbal play between ‘bon’, ‘pis’, and ‘mieulx’ (good, worse, and better), connecting each part of the four-line sequence through the link between the adjective good and its comparative form better and comparative opposite worse.21 The enjoyment of apophthegmatic language turns on this verbal virtuosity and the suppleness of the proverb that indeed bows but does not break under the pressure of the poetic language it bears. The pleasures of the proverbial phrases in the two characters’ speeches are supplemented by other word games and verbal trills such as rhymes and repetition. Three huitains (33–5) near the beginning of the debate share a preoccupation with rime riche and the repetition of related words throughout.22 The first stanza of this set belongs to Amant, who performs variations of the word ‘cheü’, the past participle of ‘chëoir’ (to fall): Qui que m’ait le mal pourchassé, Cuider ne m’a point deceü; Maiz Amours m’a si bien chassé Que je suis en vos lacz cheü. Et puis qu’ainsy m’est escheü D’estre en mercy entre vos mains, S’il m’est au chëoir mescheü, Qui plus tost meurt en languist mains. (vv. 257–64, my italics)

20

See Appendix, no. 17. The analysis of these lines is based in part on the discussion of the English poem in my Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints (2004: 208). 22 Johnson notes this tendency in the poem: ‘The rhymes are often rich; there is frequent play with rhymes coming from the same root word’ (124). Such rhymes ‘are present throughout Belle Dame, where they are often wittily continued through two corresponding strophes and, indeed, account for part of the text’s charm’ (126). Swift analyses such tendencies in Chartier’s Complainte (64). 21

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Whoever has caused me this ill, presumption has not at all deceived me; but Love has chased me so well that I have fallen in your snares. And since it has thus fallen to me to be at your mercy between your hands, if my fall has caused me misfortune, well, whoever dies sooner suffers less [my trans.].

As with the rime riche of ‘pourchassé’ (caused) and ‘chassé’ (chased) in the first two lines of the stanza, ‘cheü’ (fallen) alternates with the related words ‘escheü’ (fallen to) and ‘mescheü’ (misfortune caused – in a word: ‘misfallen’). In the alterations of ‘cheü’, each word plays on the core meaning of ‘fallen’, a repetition that emphasizes the lover’s lack of control due to the Belle Dame’s ‘snares’ as well as his contradiction of her argument in the previous stanza that he is responsible for his own feelings. But the suitor’s manipulation of the wording goes beyond mere replication of the rhymes or the employment of rime riche. The near-repetition of ‘m’est escheü’ (it has fallen to me) at the end of line 261 as ‘m’est … mescheü’ (it has caused me misfortune) at the end of line 263 highlights the word play by recycling whole clauses with the variations on ‘cheü’ that pepper the stanza. In the final example of this phrase, the elements are separated by ‘cheoir’ (a fall), the noun form here but identical with the infinitive of the verb, reiterating the connection with the action of the previous lines. As with the repetitious variants of ‘cheü’, when Amant tells the Belle Dame, ‘je suis en vos lacz cheü’ (I have fallen in your snares) and, ‘[il] m’est escheü / D’estre en mercy entre vos mains’ (it has thus fallen to me / To be at your mercy between your hands), his emphasis is on his helplessness as he falls under the lady’s control. He highlights this vulnerability by the change from ‘je suis … cheü’ (I have fallen) to ‘[il] m’est escheü’ (it has fallen to me) a shift from subject to object for the lover highlighted by the similarity of the phrases that follow each construction.23 The first prepositional phrase, ‘en vos lacz’ (in your snares) creates a sinister meaning for the second one, ‘entre vos mains’ (between your hands) suggesting connotations of falling into the clutches of someone who might mean harm. The lover’s persistent repetition draws the poetic, personal language he uses in this stanza closer to the proverbial language threading the poem, language distinguished by its reiterability. His personal appeal is then summed up in a proverb in the final line of the stanza, ‘[q]ui plus tost meurt en languist mains’ (whoever dies sooner suffers less).24 The rime riche of ‘mains’ (hands 23

At least one manuscript has a variant for the line ‘D’estre en mercy entre vos mains’ (to be at your mercy between your hands [my trans.]) that adds to the word play: ‘D’estre cheü entre vos mains’ (to have fallen into your hands); see v. 262 in Alain Chartier et al. (2004), which uses BnF, fr. 20026. The substitution of ‘cheü’ for ‘en mercy’ for v. 262 places more emphasis on the word by repeating it and creates another play on ‘m’est escheü’ and ‘m’est … mescheü’ with ‘[d]’estre cheü’. 24 See Appendix, no. 5.

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/ less) in lines 262 and 264 connects the generic proverb back to the word play earlier in the huitain and points up the game-like quality of the stanza with its series of alternations, modifications, and substitutions. The Belle Dame immediately follows up her suitor’s adage with a whole huitain of impersonal proverbial language. Her response continues the verbal play by using similar verbal games and redressing the proverb in the lover’s final line with a variation on the common figure of dying for love: ‘Si gracïeuse maladie / Ne met gueres de gens a mort’ (Such a gracious malady / causes the death of [hardly any] one).25 Like Amant’s speech in the preceding huitain, the lady’s riposte plays up rime riche and repetition, but more important than the echoes of the lover’s rhyming games are the two proverbs the lady intertwines in them. The first, ‘[t]el se plaint et guermente fort / Qui n’a pas les plus aspres deulz’ (vv. 269–70: They who complain and cry out loud / do not suffer the most serious pain) is a version of Qui plus se plaint n’est pas le plus malade (Whoever complains the most is not the sickest).26 The second is a variation on Make not one sorrow twain:27 ‘Et s’Amours grefve tant, au fort, / Mieulx en vault ung dolent que deulx’ (vv. 271–2: but if Love doles out such affliction, [what’s more] / better for one to suffer than two). The four lines housing these two proverbs come at the end of the stanza and are linked through their shared rhymes (‘fort’ / ‘fort’ [loudly / what’s more] and ‘deulz’ / ‘deulx’ [pain / two]); the second proverb, with its numbers ‘ung’ (one) and ‘deulx’ (two) and its rhyming of ‘Mieulx’ (better) and ‘deulx’, then becomes the focal point of the lover’s response in the following huitain. As the Belle Dame did with the lover’s adage in the preceding stanza, Amant picks up on the lady’s final saying in his reply and offers two variations on it – resonating both with the proverb the Belle Dame employs and a related one: Helas!, ma dame, il vault trop mieulx, Pour courteoisie et bonté faire, D’ung dolent faire deulx joyeux Que le dolent du tout deffaire. Je n’ay desir në aultre affaire Fors que mon service vous plaise Pour eschangier, sans rien meffaire, Deulx plaisirs en lieu d’ung mesaise. (vv. 273–80, my italics) Alas, my lady, it is better, for courtesy and kindness’s sake, to make from one suffering, two joyful, rather than destroy the sufferer in such a

25 26 27

Cayley (2006a: 115), discusses the figure briefly; see also Kinch (2008). See Appendix, no. 6. See Appendix, no. 7.

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way. I have no desire nor any intention other than to please you with my service – to exchange, without doing any disservice, two pleasures for one torment.

As before, the lover uses rime riche, but such pyrotechnics are but windowdressing for the proverbial display. The lover inverts the word order of the lady’s ‘[m]ieulx en vault’ (better [it is]) to ‘il vault trop mieulx’ (it is [much] better) at the end of his first line, anticipating his revision of the proverb’s meaning two lines later. The proverb itself has been transformed from a statement on a negative emotion (suffering), ‘[m]ieulx en vault ung dolent que deulx’ (better for one to suffer than two), to a declaration on a positive one (being joyful), ‘il vault trop mieulx … D’ung dolent faire deulx joyeux’ (it is better … to make from one suffering, two joyful). Instead of trying to preserve a second person from sorrow, as the Belle Dame advocates, her suitor argues for creating two joyous people from a single sorrowful one, suggesting a dynamic transformation from singular unhappiness to doubled delight. His manipulation of her proverb links his statement to a related axiom, Pour un dommage en faire deux (For one injury make two).28 As with the Belle Dame’s proverb, the lover’s recasting of the common saying offers a positive spin by suggesting that one unhappy person becomes two happy ones instead of one injury being doubled. The final twist on the proverb lies in the implication that for the two to be joyous they have to unite: lady and lover as one (as the one changes to two, the two paradoxically become one). Amant uses the second half of the huitain to turn away from the impersonal aspects of proverbial language by going back to the personal pronoun, je, thereby making the proverbial personal. This shift culminates in his reiteration of the two-for-one motif again in his last line of the huitain, this time referring to an exchange of ‘[d]eulx plaisirs en lieu d’ung mesaise’ (two pleasures for one torment) – further from the proverbs but still resonating with them because of its connection to the earlier statements of both lady and lover. The give and take from the personal to the proverbial culminates in the intertwining of the two in the lover’s discourse (if not the intertwining of the lovers themselves), highlighting Amant’s desire for the personal and necessitating the Belle Dame’s rejection of it. Gretchen V. Angelo similarly argues that ‘[t]he Lover’s quest is (obviously) personal – arguing his own fate, over half his speeches (22 out of 38) link “je” and “vous” as subject and object or through other grammatical structures’, whereas the lady ‘repeatedly denies or avoids such a link. Of the thirteen stanzas in which she uses the two pronouns together, ten are negative. Instead, she uses the third person more than either “je” or “vous” ’.29 The pattern of the debate engages the predictability of a response combined with 28 29

See Appendix, no. 7. Angelo (142).

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the unpredictability of how the characters will modify the proverbial, creating a mixture of personal and proverbial, old and new, convention and innovation, the conventional made new. Richard Roos’s Middle English translation of Chartier’s poem emphasizes that one of the satisfactions derived from the use of commonplaces was the possibility of new meanings resonating through their placement in this literary form, as suggested by his occasional substitutions for or ‘improvements’ on the French proverbs.30 The severely disordered version of Roos’s translation reproduced in two of the manuscripts without any correction also speaks to the generic and proverbial gratifications the poem presented, for the mistranscription shows that audiences were more engaged with the ebb and flow of argument and rejoinder than in following the logical course of the debate to its conclusion.31 Moving from the general to the specific and back, the Belle Dame and Amant use their riffs on one another’s sententious and proverbial language to highlight the poem’s rhythm as they offer rejoinder and retort, and it is the rhythm itself that offers enjoyment. Sansone sees this alternation as a part of a ‘jeu dialectique’ (dialectical game) where ‘the opposed argumentation of the two speakers therefore balances between the two dimensions of the individual and the general’.32 David Hult is interested in the ‘ambivalence’ of similar oppositions: ‘the real and the allegorical, the particular and the universal, the individual and the exemplary’, referring to that ambivalence as ‘itself constitut[ing] the work’s major innovation’.33 But more than simply alternations between opposing poles, these shifts intermingle with one another, a verbal palimpsest and lover-like melding, which the lady rejects when she says ‘[d]e tant redire m’ennoyés / Car je vous en ay assés dit’ (vv. 767–8: You annoy me with your repetitions, / for I have already said enough to you) in her final two lines of the debate, forcing its conclusion. The exploitation of apophthegmatic phrases works in tandem with other word games in the poem to underscore the pleasures of a written language that deliberately draws on and simultaneously overshadows the oral origins of debate. Michel-André Bossy argues that ‘writing supplements spoken words and often replaces oral exchange’, at the same time as ‘written debates simulate the agonistic mentality of traditional oral society’.34 This suggests that the lady’s and lover’s ‘personas’ depend on orality even though they are entirely, firmly written and literary. The characters are constructed through 30

See, for example, Roos’s take on the stanzas that play on Make not one sorrow twain (vv. 285–308) in the Middle English poem. 31 The manuscripts with out-of-order lineation are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16 and London, British Library, MS Harley 372. The line order is 1–428, 669–716, 525–72, 477–524, 621–68, 573–620, 429–76, 717–856 (Roos rpt. 1959, liv). 32 Sansone (525, my translation). 33 Hult (1999: 221). Jane H. M. Taylor (2003) reads Chartier’s poem through the allegorical abstractions of the Rose. 34 Medieval Debate Poetry (1987: xii).

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a poetic performance of spoken language, through the words Amant and the Belle Dame verbalize to one another; the two exist agonistically, not separately, as identities constituted by articulated responses rather than through actions or thoughts. Without someone to counter, these characters do not live, as the lover’s supposed death in response to the lady’s refusal to say more at the close of the debate implies.35 When the Belle Dame forcibly ends the dialogue with her final two lines, she does so by rejecting repetition (‘redire’) and claiming to have ‘assés dit’ (said enough): she wants both of them to stop talking. Bringing the lady and lover together, making the two one – transforming the one sorrowful into two joyful by uniting them, as the lover’s proverbs argue for (and as his rhetoric enacts on hers) – would bring the debate to an end by offering closure. Instead, the Belle Dame cuts the debate short, keeping the poem’s conclusion unresolved and open. Her action prompts Amant to leave and invite death to come quickly, as if he is lost without her ripostes – and indeed he disappears from the poem once his voice is no longer heard. The Belle Dame’s insistence on walking away points to her inability to end the lover’s manipulative rhetoric in any other way, suggesting that his use of proverbial language holds endless permutations; if she stays, her standoffishness risks being forcibly translated into acceptance, a kind of verbal ‘rape’. The lady’s sudden end to the debate, the narrator’s claim not to know where Amant has gone afterwards,36 and the narrator’s report of hearsay that the lover later died37 all oppose closure.38 This persistent opening invites readers to engage in the debate themselves and draws out the fiction of an oral encounter, but it also brings to light the openness of the proverb itself – its adaptable, polyvalent, and dynamic nature. The pleasures of proverbial phrases in debate poetry, then, stem from their open-endedness and their resulting manipulation in the literary conversation, that is, from the display of wit involved in modifying or elaborating them to suit the purpose of the debate. But what comment does Chartier offer on this proverbial pleasure through

35

A number of critics have discussed the lover’s death. See in particular Rieger; Cayley (2003: 56–7), (2006a: 113). Cayley (2006a) notes that although some critics take it literally, ‘[his] death is only reported later to the narrator, and so remains speculative’ (113). 36 ‘Depuis je ne sceus qu’il devint / Ne quel part il se transporta’ (vv. 777–8: I do not know what became of him afterward / nor to where he fled). 37 ‘[O]n me rapporta … Qu’il en estoit mort de courrous’ (vv. 780–4: someone told me … that finally he had died of his distress). 38 I agree with Cayley’s position that ‘Chartier’s satirical approach to this episode renders the poem ambiguously inconclusive; the actual fates of both lover and the Belle Dame remain uncertain’ (2003: 57). For a discussion of closure and irresolution in a number of Chartier’s debate poems, including BDSM, see Cayley (2003). For more on the ‘poetics of irresolution’ in debate poetry, see Reed.

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his own display of rhetorical wit? Several critics have commented on the poem’s concern about the corruption of courtly discourse. Angelo suggests that ‘[t]he Belle Dame’s challenge to courtly discourse is of course an indictment by Chartier of the corrupt atmosphere of the court, where chivalric values have weakened or disappeared and words cannot be trusted’.39 Helen J. Swift’s argument similarly implies corruption of a once ethical code: Chartier’s use of ‘lyric rhetoric almost ad absurdum’ allows him ‘to stretch its expressive capacities to the limit’ and show ‘the divorce that has finally occurred between the ethic of courtliness and the diction that used to embody this now outmoded code’, reducing courtly discourse to ‘a mere aesthetic play of language’.40 But it would seem that courtly discourse is not so much corrupted from a once pure state as already empty precisely because of its ‘purity’. The proverb’s resilience means it can bow but not break but also suggests that the proverb has no meaning, or that it means both everything and nothing. The lover’s joyous – indeed shameless – reveling in pure language calls to mind the distinction between ‘verba and res – words and things’, which Emma Cayley identifies as ‘[a] central opposition in Chartier’s Dialogus.’41 Cayley observes that ‘Chartier appears to advocate the rejection of a Scholastic logic [verba] concerned only with the mastery of language, in favour of the adoption of an engaged humanist rhetoric [res]’, pointing to ‘Chartier’s conscious emptying of courtly convention and proverbial wisdom’.42 Noting another instance of proverbs, Cayley asserts that in ballade XXVIII ‘Chartier demonstrates the circularity of these empty phrases through his arrangement of them in the ballade form whose refrain is repeated at the end of each eight-line stanza. The circularity inherent in this fixed form verse reflects and compounds the meaningless courtly discourse it encloses.’43 I argue that what Chartier shows in BDSM is rather that the fixed nature of the language of proverbs perversely unfixes them, or perhaps reveals in them a meaning so fixed that it ceases to have fixed meaning – it is this paradox that enables the lover’s persistent circularity and requires the lady to end their conversation in order to preserve the poem – and herself – from the lover’s empty closure. In leaving BDSM without closure Chartier seems to suggest that the proverb’s apparent openness and resilience leads its users to a closed circuit: its fixed yet unfixed nature offers no more than play without meaning.

39

Angelo (142). Swift (64). Swift is discussing Chartier’s Complainte. Hult (2003) argues that ‘if there is a perception of decadence, it is perhaps not the system of courtly love or of courtesy that is to blame, but rather the uneasiness of an aristocratic society that hovers close to its ruin’ (259). 41 Cayley (2006a: 90). 42 Ibid. 43 Cayley (2006a: 131). 40

Appendix: Proverbs in La Belle Dame sans mercy I have identified twenty-one proverbs, listed here with translations in order of line number.44 Most are referenced in James Woodrow Hassell, Middle French Proverbs (1982) and Bartlett Jere Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases (1968) (others as noted). Where there is significant variation, I have also quoted the proverb. Several proverbs I found listed only in Whiting, a more comprehensive reference than any of the dictionaries of medieval French proverbs. (Additional generalizations in proverbial language are far too numerous to mention and form part of the 40 per cent of lines Heft identifies as sententious.) 1. Line 86: ‘desir passoit la raison’ (his desire surpassed his reason [my trans.]). Related proverb: ‘Love puts reason away’ (Whiting L533). 2. Line 154: ‘joye triste cueur traveille’ (rejoicing torments a sad heart) (Hassell J22) 3. Line 192: ‘quant je vous vy onques’ (when I first laid eyes on you). Related proverb: ‘Love at first sight’ (Whiting L496). 4. Line 238: ‘Les yeux sont faiz pour regarder’ (eyes were made for looking) (Heft: 377; 434 n38). 5. Line 264: ‘Qui plus tost meurt en languist mains’ (Whoever dies more quickly suffers less [my trans.]) (Hassell M147). 6. Lines 269–70: ‘Tel se plaint et guermente fort / Qui n’a pas les plus aspres deulz’ (They who complain and cry out loud / do not suffer the most serious pain). Related proverbs: ‘Qui plus se plaint n’est pas le plus malade’ (Whoever complains the most is not the sickest) (Hassell M62); ‘Tel se plaint qui n’a nul mal’ (He complains so who has no illness) (Hassell M56). 7. Line 272: ‘Mieulx en vault ung dolent que deulx’ (One unhappy person is better than two [my trans.]). Related proverbs: ‘Make not one sorrow

44 Except where indicated, translations of lines from the poem are from Alain Chartier et al. (2004). All translations of proverbs are mine.

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twain’ (Whiting S513 [cf. D4, H140]); ‘Pour un dommage en faire deux’ (For one injury make two) (Hassell D115). 8. Line 283: ‘n’ay de vos maulx plaisance’ (I get no joy from your sadness). Related proverb: ‘The hurt of one makes the other happy’ (Whiting H653). 9. Line 304: ‘A beau parler closes oreilles’ (To pleasant speaking closed ears [my trans.]) (Hassell P42). Related proverb: ‘Beware of fair speech’ (Whiting S601). 10. Line 325: ‘Qui n’a froit n’a cure de chault’ (He who is not cold has no need for warmth). Related proverb: ‘Who has no cold has no dainty (pleasure) of heat’ (Whiting C366 [cf. W231]). 11. Line 330: ‘Ce vous est doulx qui m’est amer’ (What to you is sweet, to me may be bitter). Related proverb: ‘That (which) pleases one smarts (hurts) another sorely’ (Whiting O42 [cf. G329]). 12. Lines 349–50: ‘Dieu et les sains s’en rïent, / Car en tieulx sermens n’a rien ferme’ (God and the saints laugh at them [lovers’ oaths], / for there’s nothing steady about such oaths [my trans.]). Related proverbs: ‘Dieu et les saints se rient des serments des amoureux’ (Hassell D74); ‘God and his saints laugh at lovers’ oaths’ (Whiting G201). 13. Lines 357–8 and 361–2: ‘Loyal cueur et voir disant bouche / Son le chatel d’omme parfait’ (A loyal heart and truthful tongue / are the qualities of a good man); ‘Villain cueur et bouche courtoise / Ne sont mie bien d’une sorte’ (A base heart and a courteous tongue / are not a compatible pair). Related proverbs: ‘Bon (Honneste) cœur (Cœur loyal / Cœur humain) ne peut mentir’ (A good / honest / loyal / human heart cannot lie) (Hassell C233); ‘A good heart cannot lie’ (Whiting H274 [cf. H288, T111]). 14. Line 369: ‘Qui pense mal, bien ne luy viengne’ (To him who thinks ill, no good will come). Related proverbs: ‘No good may befall him who thinks ill’ (Whiting G355 [cf. S197]); ‘Qui mal y pense, mal luy vient’ (Whoever thinks ill, ill comes to him) (Hassell M53). 15. Line 370: ‘Dieu doint a chacun sa deserte’ (God gives to each what he deserves). Related proverbs: ‘Dieu rendra tout à juste pris’ (God will deliver all to just reward) (Hassell D82); ‘A chascun Dieu fera droiture’ (To each God will do justice) (A. J. V. Le Roux de Lincy, 1.18). 16. Line 408: ‘Qu’amours soit par amours merie’ (that love receives just compensation from love). Related proverb: ‘Love for love is skilful guerdoning (reasonable reward)’ (Whiting L506 [cf. L273, L543]).

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17. Line 463: ‘Car rompre vault pis que ployer’ (For to break is worse than to bend [my trans.]). Related proverb: ‘Mieux vaut plier que rompre’ (Hassell P199); ‘Better bow than break’ (Whiting B484). 18. Line 498: ‘mieulx dire qu’esploitier’ (easier said than done). Related proverb: ‘Easier to say (said) than to do (done)’ (Whiting S73). 19. Lines 517–20: ‘quant vo durté me fera / Mourir loyal et douloureux, / Encore mains grief me sera / Que de vivre faulx amoureux’ (when your hardness causes me / To die loyal and in misery, / It will be still less painful to me / Than to live as a false lover [my trans.]). Related proverb: ‘Better to die with honor than live in shame’ (Whiting D239). 20. Line 525: ‘Qui se quiert le mal, si l’endure’ (He who seeks evil can always find it). Related proverbs: ‘Qui mal quiert (porchasse), mal lui vient’ (Who seeks evil, evil will come to him) (Hassell M52); ‘Who seeks sorrow his be the receipt (is worthy) of it’ (Whiting S523 [cf. E178; H136]). 21. Line 689: ‘cueur plus dur que le noir marbre’ (heart harder than black marble [my trans.]). Related proverb: ‘Dur comme marbre’ (Hard as marble) (Hassell M82); ‘As hard as marble (stone)’ (Whiting M370).

4

Alain Chartier’s Livre des Quatre Dames and the Mechanics of Allegory BARBARA K. ALTMANN Alain Chartier composed his Livre des Quatre Dames, the longest of his four love debates, sometime between 1415 and 1418.1 Having spent a decade as notary and secretary to the dauphin Charles (destined to become King Charles VII with some help from Joan of Arc), Chartier had a first-hand vantage point to observe the turbulent political life of the French court in the early decades of the fifteenth century: from the civil war between the Bourguignon and Armagnac factions to the disastrous defeat of the French at the Battle of Agincourt at the hands of the English in 1415. That rout and the subsequent Treaty of Troyes (1422), which named the English king Henry V as successor to Charles VI of France at the expense of his son Charles, marked the nadir of the Hundred Years’ War for the French. Agincourt is thus among the most dramatic events in French history from the time when the LQD was written. One might wonder whether if there can be any rational connection between such a calamity of the real world and the apparently inconsequential stuff of love debate, which was among the highly codified courtly genres Chartier had inherited from Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart and Christine de Pizan.2 We should remember, however, that Machaut had introduced an element of realism into the narrative frame surrounding the conundrums of love his characters debate. In his Jugement dou roy de Navarre, he uses the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 as the device that moves his narrator out into the world and on to his encounter with the other characters.3 Christine de Pizan adopted the same practice and used increasingly concrete and realistic detail to anchor her love debates in contemporary society.4 With that facet of the genre in mind, it is

1 See Laidlaw’s discussion of dating, Alain Chartier (1974a: 35–6). Cayley (2006a: 94 n41, 123). 2 On the connection of historical reality and the world of the love debate see Delogu; Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a); Cayley (2006a), Ch. 3. 3 For an edition and translation see Guillaume de Machaut (2006: 69–175). 4 See my edition of Christine’s love debates: Christine de Pizan (1998).

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perhaps less unexpected that Chartier makes use of the battle of Agincourt as a poignant, pertinent, and compelling framework for the four unhappy tales he develops in the LQD. The ladies of the title refer explicitly in their long speeches to the defeat of the French royal house by the English, and all of their woes stem from that loss. As one of them exclaims: Haa, Destinee Tresdure, et maudicte journee Douloureuse, mal fortunee Qui toute ma joie as tournee En desconfort! (LQD, vv. 540–4) (Ah, cruel Destiny / And unhappy, ill-fated / Accursed day, it is you / Who have turned all my joy / Into suffering!)5

And later, in the summaries the ladies give as the debate nears its conclusion, the narrator states, ‘Leurs faiz disoient / Et la bataille maudisoient / Toutes’ (vv. 3156–58: They explained their cases / And cursed the battle / Each and every one). In many ways, the LQD follows the standard model of the love debate. The ostensible purpose of the debate is common enough: the eponymous ladies wish to determine which of them has the right to say she suffers the most. The narrator/clerk encounters them when he seeks solace in nature for the pain and uncertainty inflicted on him by unrequited love. Once the ladies have been persuaded to explain their stories to him, they ask him to judge their case. He demurs, but suggests – in another strategy characteristic of the genre – that he, in turn, ask his own lady to make the judgment, a proposal to which they all agree. As usual, the claim of each unhappy lady lies in the particulars of her situation, for the task in such a debate poem is to judge the degree of grief suffered by each claimant relative to the others. In this aspect of the work, Chartier makes more significant use than any of his predecessors of the link between his text and the world outside the poem. Indeed, the essence of each case is determined by the fate of the lady’s lover at Agincourt. The first lady’s knight was killed in the battle. The second lady’s knight was taken prisoner and is being held by the English across the Channel. The third lady’s knight is missing in action. And the fourth lady’s knight was one of the deserters who fled the battlefield to his, and her, great dishonor. In this work, then, the historical event alluded to is inseparably intertwined with the conventions of a love debate poem. How are we to understand that juxtaposition? Renate Blumenfeld5

All quotations from the original text are taken from Laidlaw’s edition in Alain Chartier (1974a). English translations are from my edition in Alain Chartier (2006: 307– 93).

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Kosinski argues that ‘the questions Alain Chartier raises in his LQD give a new meaning to the debate tradition, since there is nothing less at stake than the fate of France, expressed through the four case histories’.6 She sees in the LQD Chartier’s ‘first serious work’, one in which he ‘turned to the traditional genre of the love debate as a kind of launching pad for his political engagement’.7 With all the knights absent from the text and the narrator’s role limited largely to that of empathetic reporter and scribe, the key to the increased political import of the scenario must lie with the ladies, whose direct speech takes up most of the poem. This article proposes a close reading of the text to determine how Chartier adapts stock figures to make political discourse out of conventional courtly debate, so authorising his lyric. My main contention is that the ladies can best be understood as allegorical, and, indeed, that the whole work is built on allegorical modes of signification, even though Chartier deploys them here without many of the usual markers. With Blumenfeld-Kosinski’s assessment of the LQD as a starting point, this article will examine how the conventions of love debate use the mechanisms of allegory to give political commentary a much greater prominence in this work than the genre can usually accommodate. Given the manifest references in this text to Agincourt and its effect on France in the early 1400s, it is tempting to look for historical figures we might identify as the knights and ladies under discussion. The case that provides fodder for this sort of identification is the second, in which the knight, as his lady tells us at length, is a nobleman buffeted by Fortune. We know that after the battle he is in captivity ‘en terre estrange et maronniere’ (v. 1286: in a foreign, maritime land), and the lady mentions in passing the tantalizing detail that he is a poet, having composed ‘mainte balade / Au lict’ (vv. 1411– 12: many a ballade / In bed) while ill. The case has been made, of course, that this must be Charles d’Orléans, poet and member of the royal family. Charles had lost in quick succession his father, Louis d’Orléans, his mother, Valentina Visconti, and his wife, Isabelle de France, and was, indeed, captured at Agincourt and held for years thereafter in England.8 The temptation to try to identify the knights with historical figures is, however, perhaps ultimately unproductive.9 While some details fit, others are less convincing. While the second knight’s characteristics correlate well with Charles d’Orléans, in the other cases, there is so little information that we cannot justify reading the work as a ‘débat à clef ’, to coin a term. In fact, the four ladies are remarkable precisely because of their lack of singularity. Their primary characteristics are the manifestation of grief and

6

Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a: 77). Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a: 78, 84). See Cayley (in this volume) on the artificial division between Chartier’s ‘serious’ and ‘non-serious’ works. 8 For details of this hypothesis, see Alain Chartier (1974a: 35–6). 9 See Armstrong (2000: 211–13); Cayley (2006a: 94). 7

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the absence of their beloveds. They are given no names – the text refers to them generically as the first lady, the second lady, and so on. What defines them is only and entirely the fate of their lovers. In the course of 3531 lines, we learn little more about them. While uniformly courtly in their demeanor and refined in their comportment, they are not dressed in the finery appropriate to women of high social standing. When the narrator encounters them, he notes that they are modestly dressed: ‘leurs habiz ne furent guiere / De trop grant monstre’ (vv. 367–8: their clothes were hardly / Extravagant). Curiously, there are two mentions of their bare feet (vv. 374, 812). The second lady says she is journeying as a piteous pilgrim (vv. 1258–9), in the hope that God might bring back her lover. Their appearance, then, is simply that of women in mourning, and nothing sets any one apart from her sisters. Although only one of the ladies can already be sure her knight has died, all four are bereaved at the loss of their lovers. Together, they recall the figure of the widow, a character well-known in the literature of late medieval France. Just before encountering the ladies, the narrator had observed shepherds and shepherdesses kissing and frolicking in a pastoral setting, living a life ‘en joie … ravie / Et de suffisance assouvie’ (vv. 214–15: overflowing with joy / And full of contentment). The ladies present the opposite image. They display no sociability, play no games of love or otherwise. In their part of the landscape, there is a total absence of the birds and flowers that surround the shepherds and the narrator earlier. Delight and reciprocal love are replaced with despair and isolation. But with unhappiness and chastity comes a certain power. Once outside the economy of desire, grief brings wisdom, and desolation brings authority. We recognize this figure from a broad sample of epic, romance, and lyric poetry. Among Chartier’s contemporaries, the most obvious example comes from Christine de Pizan, a widow in fact, as well as in her authorial persona. Widowhood allowed Christine to assume a writer’s voice, even in love poetry, with no hint of impropriety. Many critics have noted this phenomenon as a hallmark of Christine’s corpus. In a book on the power invested in widowhood as of the thirteenth century, Yasmina Foehr-Janssens addresses Christine’s work as a later variation on a theme. As she puts it, Christine ‘legitimates her work on the basis of her status as widow’.10 From her earliest poetry on, Christine paints a vivid picture of ‘the distress of a being without support, subjected to political and economic violence’.11 From her position as a woman unfairly disenfranchised, a widow can comment on injustice and wrongdoing in the world. Chartier’s four ladies share this discursive space with Christine. They are blameless victims of misfortune and can speak with authority about the abuses and failings that have exacted such a toll on them and others. Despite the particulars of each knight’s fate, then, the effect of the ladies’ 10 11

Foehr-Janssens (264). Id. (265).

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speech is unified and consistent. We have four variations on a theme, four voices speaking as one. As we saw earlier on, ‘la bataille maudisoient / Toutes’ (vv. 3156–58: ‘They … cursed the battle / Each and every one’). But we might wonder why there should be four nameless ladies, a number the title brings to our attention from our first encounter with the text. Can we find meaning in the number that helps explain their function? It is unlikely to be an arbitrary choice. Chartier, like his contemporaries, played with the elegance and signifying potential of round numbers. Within his corpus, we note the symmetries of his Quadrilogue invectif, the pairs of debaters in other love debate poems, such as the DDFA (also known as the Debat du Gras et du Maigre), and the Debat Reveille matin. The Belle Dame sans mercy, also a debate, demonstrates a particularly heightened concern for harmonious proportion: it comprises 100 eight-line strophes of octosyllabic lines.12 In the case of the four ladies in the LQD, whose words already carry the weight conferred by widowhood, the grouping lends them the additional authority invested in other powerful sets of four. Global, all-encompassing fours deeply anchored in the medieval imagination include the cardinal points of the compass, the elements, the humors, the Gospels, and the Quadrivium. Four is one of the significant numbers that represent a comprehensive, totalizing experience or view of life. By offering his reader this four-in-one, collective presence that embodies grief, Chartier moves his tale into a realm beyond the particulars of his fiction and individual characters and into the space of the abstract and general. We have before us, then, a group of women who together present a totalizing effect, who speak with gravitas, and comment openly on the state of the country. It would not be too great a leap to read the ladies as part of an allegory, or in the allegorizing mode of signification so central to medieval textuality. The LQD is inscribed in a long tradition of allegory, starting with the Roman de la Rose, which was both the source material and pre-text to all late medieval love debate poetry.13 Starting with Machaut, the frame tale surrounding a love debate resembles that of the traditional dream visitation we see so often in allegory as genre.14 The frame tale generally opens with the narrator revealing his own personal circumstances, often in a rumination or a lyrical passage concerning his own loves and losses, and then employs a narrative device to bring the narrator into contact with the debaters. Machaut’s Jugement dou roy de Navarre, mentioned above, is one such example.

12

See Alain Chartier (1974a) for editions of all these debates; also Hult and McRae’s BDSM in Alain Chartier et al. (2003:15–83); and Cayley’s forthcoming edition and translation of the DRM. 13 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (1992); for a concise account of the development of debate poetry see An Anthology of Medieval Love Debate Poetry (2006), Introduction (1–20). 14 See Marchello-Nizia (1981) on the ‘songe politique’ (political dream vision).

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The LQD is similar, but it actually operates a reversal on Machaut’s Navarre. Machaut’s narrator begins by referring to the affliction visited on France by the Black Death in 1348 and then turns to a love debate, which provides a distraction. In Chartier’s LQD, by contrast, the narrator begins with a conventional love complaint in the first person and only when he meets the ladies, who will be the debaters, does the framework leave the ‘safe’ topoi of the conventional and courtly and engage with the disastrous effects of the recent battle. In both versions of the model, however, the narrator’s progress through space is parallel to the transition the observer in a dream vision makes from wakefulness to sleep or vice versa. The setting in which Chartier’s narrator interacts with the ladies is quite different from the standard utopian landscape of birdsong, flowers, and verdant foliage into which he first ventures to forget his melancholy. It is noteworthy that this springtime opening to the LQD is couched in a format more appropriate to lyric poetry rather than the narrative verse forms required for a ‘dit’ or debate. The prologue runs to 164 lines, consisting of twelve strophes (seven of twelve lines, five of sixteen lines). The ladies do not appear until the last three lines of the twelfth strophe. The narrator, in an isolated spot, has been struck by an excess of desire when he sees the shepherd and shepherdess kissing. He is suffering keen distress when he notices ‘de loing yssir d’une tour / Quatre dames en noble atour’ (vv. 163–4: far away, coming out of a tower, / Four ladies in noble attire). The distant sight of these ladies brings him relief: ‘Cela fist mon mal appaisier’ (v. 164: The sight of them eased my pain). And thus begins the body of the debate itself, now composed in interlocking blocks of four lines, a fluid rhythm for narration. The change in verse format marks the shift from lyric to narrative, from love lament to love debate, from the narrator’s tale to that of the main characters. It also, I would argue, makes the transition from a landscape favorable to thoughts or the development of love, to the less material and more symbolic terrain suitable to the staging of allegory. In this new setting, while continuing at first to ponder his lovesickness, the narrator descends into a valley: ‘en un val ou j’avallay / Apperceü / Les dames qu’eu premier veü’ (vv. 347–9: in a valley that I was descending / I caught sight of / the ladies whom I had seen earlier). He chooses a path that will intersect with theirs (vv. 369–70). Once in that valley, which becomes a veritable vale of tears, he and they converse for the next 3000 lines and more until finally, after having traveled a long way together, they part at a crossroads (vv. 3444–47). The long path they travel together (‘Grant chemin fismes’, v. 3444) can only be the path of strong emotion, for there are no physical landmarks to punctuate their progress. When they part, he heads back towards Paris, the concrete world in which he can still hope for happiness with his lady. The ladies, one supposes, for lack of other information, glide single file back into the indeterminate space of woe.

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The setting is thus appropriate to allegory. Can we say the same of the ladies? Certainly the usual supporting cast of allegorical characters is on hand, integrated into the text without the elaborate structures surrounding the rose in Guillaume de Lorris’s garden or Jean de Meun’s tower. In the ladies’ accounts of the delights and sorrows associated with love, we meet Fortune and Death, Hope and Desire, False Speaking and Shame – the usual suspects, one might say. However, there is no description of the attributes of these personifications. They are introduced with the economy of an allegorical sign system thoroughly familiar to the intended audience and constitute a kind of shorthand to the major forces and characters at work in courtly love. The lack of linguistic and descriptive markers for these figures makes it difficult, in fact, for the editor and/or translator to determine which are personifications of abstract notions, and therefore take a capitalized proper noun, and which are simply abstract notions adequately expressed by a common noun. The workings of allegory seem to dictate that the personified version makes the abstract notion an active agent of a transitive verb. In the first long speech of the second lady, for example, she says: Ces maulx hastiz M’a Fortune a durer bastiz, Et Desir tient tout a pastiz Mon vouloir qui est amatiz, Dont il se venge … Desir me chace, Espoir me tire; L’un ne puis vaincre ou l’autre fuire. (vv. 1833–37; 1843–44) (These pressing ills / Were created by Fortune for me to endure, / And Desire takes in tribute / My entire will, which is crushed, / On which he takes revenge … / Desire hunts me down, Hope takes aim at me; / I cannot vanquish the one or flee the other.)

Fortune creates ills, Desire takes tribute and revenge, Desire hunts the lady, and Hope takes aim at her – all are forces to which the lady is vulnerable, of which she is the victim. Even with no portrait or attributes attached, the one-word name for each abstract noun opens a whole world of signification to an audience of connoisseurs, tying the ladies’ experiences into a known register and many intertexts. The figure of the ladies seems to operate in the opposite way. We see their attributes and behavior – sober clothing, bare feet, tear-stained faces, reserved comportment – but never see a name attached. Given that the only element distinguishing one from the other is the fate of her knight and the corresponding form of her grief, we might label each by the quality or cause of her suffering. Happily, allegory is a flexible apparatus that can accommodate this sort of case just as well as the representation of abstract nouns. Maureen Quilligan, in her book The Language of Allegory, provides vocabu-

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lary that we can adapt to these two different types of conceptual character. While the former type of allegorical character – such as Desire and Hope – is what Quilligan calls an ‘incarnation’, the ladies correspond to what she terms ‘exemplifications’.15 This kind of allegorical personification uses an adjective rather than a noun for a name. Exemplifications tend to be less static and more realistic than incarnations, according to Quilligan’s categories. Each exemplification translates the attributes of individual characters and renders them dramatically, representing an individual pared down to his or her essential trait. I take the difference between the two types to mean that incarnations are flesh and blood embodiments of the notion they represent while exemplifications demonstrate, illustrate, act out the quality they represent. Given this possibility of allegorization, then, we might finally have markers to propose for the four ladies. The first could be ‘Bereaved’, the second ‘Vexed’, the third ‘Uncertain’, and the fourth ‘Ashamed’. In each case, the lady has been acted upon by the corresponding incarnation – Bereaved is the victim of Bereavement, Vexed is prey to Vexation, and so on. Each is thus defined by her predominant emotion, which, in turn, is defined by the fate of her knight. Taken together as a cluster of emotions resulting from loss, they might collectively be named something like Dame Désemparée, for example – the lady dispossessed in all senses of that word. What is to be gained by reading the ladies and the LQD allegorically? First, it makes sense of the lack of specificity of the ladies as characters and of the traits they share. We can take the supposed debate question – which of them has the right to call herself the most unhappy – as the literal level of meaning and as a pretext for further analysis. We can then read the ladies for their broader significance and read them as a collective character representative of a group and a particular set of concerns. They operate in a manner familiar from the kind of allegorical characters Jean de Meun used in his part of the Roman de la Rose, that is, as talking heads who lavish great quantities of verse on the topic for which they stand.16 Andrea Tarnowski defines this function of Jean de Meun’s allegorical characters with clarity: ‘Their value … is the opportunity they provide for moral and philosophical questioning. They are pretexts for conducting a thorough examination of a topic, rather than for declaring that topic understood, closed, and enclosed within the person who represents it’.17 Tarnowski points out that late medieval poets such as Christine de Pizan and Philippe de Mézières use personification in a way that resembles Jean de Meun’s creations, and employ it ‘to approach, to “get at”, the essence that their figures are meant to personify: the result is repeated inquiry, declaration, definition and demonstration’. Reading the ladies alle15

Quilligan (127–8). Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (1992). 17 Andrea Tarnowski, ‘The Rose and its Legacy’. The text of the paper, delivered at the 2001 MLA, was provided courtesy of the author. Original emphasis. 16

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gorically means reading the import of the poem beyond the confines of their debate and connects it with the political and military events that Chartier wove in as the dramatic springboard for these scenarios. To return to the question of the work’s larger theme, it is worth returning to the resemblances between the LQD and the Quadrilogue invectif, one of Chartier’s best-known works.18 The Quadrilogue, which dates from 1422, in the aftermath of the Treaty of Troyes, shows the three estates – Peuple (People), Chevalier (The Knight, representative of the Aristocracy), and Clergé (Clergy) – all children of a France in mourning, lamenting the plight of the country and calling for collective action in support of the crown.19 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, in the article mentioned earlier, sees the figure of mother France as ‘an avatar of the “quatre dames” ’.20 In my reading, however, the bereft ladies function more like Peuple, Chevalier, and Clergé – they can be read as one of the collective children of France. Chartier did not hesitate to introduce the political into genres that seem, on the surface, less than obvious for such discourse.21 In the LQD, Chartier manages an integration of the two broad strains in his corpus, namely the politically-engaged allegorical work and the allegorically-inflected love debate. The lengthy LQD and its disconsolate tone thus represent a convergence of usually disparate genres. The ladies are in a privileged position as critics of the war and of the situation in which the country finds itself. They certainly do praise loyalty to the crown as a particularly praiseworthy attribute of honorable men, and decry in violent terms the dishonor that comes from desertion and cowardice. By virtue of their identity as women, however, they can also bear a particular kind of witness to the losses the country has sustained and make a broader appeal for peace, for stability, and for an end to the devastation. Their perspective allows what is definitely a gendered reaction to the war, one possible only for those who cannot fight themselves but suffer the consequences. There is an undeniable element of female solidarity in the text. One detail that supports such an assertion is that the narrator’s lady is chosen as the judge who is supposed to decide the outcome of the debate. A lady will understand the case better than a man as the narrator suggests once he has proposed his lady as judge, Chascun tendroit Que de ce qui appartendroit Aux dames, dame en son endroit Trop mieulx jugement en rendroit Certes que un homme, Et mieulx entendroit quoy et comme. (vv. 3376–81) 18

See Alain Chartier (1950), and (2002). On the Quadrilogue see also Bouchet, Pascual-Argente and Nall in this volume. 20 Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a: 79). 21 Another of Chartier’s debates, the Debat du Herault, du Vassault, et du Villain, expounds explicitly on the pitiable state of France. 19

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(Everyone would agree / That in matters pertaining to ladies, / A lady, for her part, / Would render a much better judgment / Than a man, surely, / And would better understand the what and how.)

On a broader level, consistent with the authority of the ladies as spokeswomen for the country, they call on their counterparts in England, those who are the wives and beloveds of the victors at Agincourt, to transcend the nationalistic aspect of the war and intercede on behalf of the Frenchmen held captive. The second lady, whose knight is held captive in England, makes an appeal to them for help: … requerre Voulsisse aux dames d’Angleterre Que pour loz de pitié acquerre, Pour moy de lui vueillent enquerre Et demander Et son estat recommander, Car aucune puet commander A tel le puet bien amender… . Qu’a elles ne sçay recourir, Qui mieulx me puisse secourir. (vv. 1797–1804; 1822–23) (I would like to ask the ladies of England / That, in order to earn praise for mercy, / They might inquire and ask about him / On my behalf, / And commend his estate, / For one of them can appeal to those / Who can improve his lot… . / I know of no recourse /That could help me more than they.)

She then acknowledges the potential effect of group action, refers to the good nature of women, and recalls that English ladies, too, are vulnerable to the ravages and vicissitudes of war: Si pevent mont Toutes les dames en un mont, Et leur doulceur les y cemont, Car ce qu’avenir veü m’ont En combatant, Se la guerre ne cesse a tant. Leur puet venir en rabatant (vv. 1809–15) (They can do much, / All the ladies together, / And their sweetness calls them to it. / What they have seen happen to me / As a result of the fighting / Could happen to them if the war does not end shortly.)

This general appeal reinforces the idea that the ladies of the knights who fought in the war can command moral authority, can call for charity and generosity, mercy and honor. In their call for action and solidarity, they are setting a much better example than most of the men or their rulers have

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done. Chartier could not have known, of course, at this stage that his ladies’ discourse foreshadowed the actions of Joan of Arc, the maid who exercised such moral authority and leadership over the strife-ridden country that she reversed the fortunes of the war.22 Reading the ladies as representative of the losses imposed on France by Agincourt gives considerably more heft to their otherwise tear-stained but insubstantial characters. It also reinvigorates other metaphors and tropes common in love debate poetry. These include the melancholy of the narrator, which takes on a valence beyond the usual unhappiness of unrequited love as he listens to, sympathizes with, and reports on the plight of the ladies. The textual reminder of a recent real war, in which advances in military technology helped decimate the French, gives a new edge to the military metaphors and images often used to describe the game of love, including arrows, prisons, and combat. And, as argued above, the two contrasting landscapes through which the narrator moves are much more strongly charged with emotion, the first positive and the second negative, than the usual generic scenes. All of these commonplaces are reactivated here with a second, immediate, powerful frame of reference and thus regain some of their original, literal significance. As Blumenfeld-Kosinski puts it, ‘Alain … “refills”, as it were, the traditional lyric form of the love debate with a topic of national import’.23 Tying the standard, occasionally clichéd vocabulary of debate to the infamous defeat at Agincourt infuses life into the genre. A major structural component of late medieval debate poems reinforces the convergence in the LQD of normally incongruent themes and generic conventions. The work ends in a state of stasis that results from a lack of resolution.24 While the ladies request a judgment, there is, in fact, no ruling offered. This lack of closure is not because the question and argument are insignificant. Rather, it would be unseemly to diminish the grief of any of the four ladies by deciding among them. Perhaps there can be no resolution because the question of degrees of unhappiness in love is misplaced under real-life circumstances, an apparently trivial matter alongside larger political and cultural concerns. Having asked what impact the inclusion of Agincourt and allegory has on the love debate, we can also ask what the conventions of love debate make possible as a response to the historical event. First, it makes available a genre in which women’s voices have a ready-made and accepted place. Second, it

22

Just as Joan inspired Christine de Pizan to write her Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (Christine de Pizan 1977a), Chartier is later inspired to write the Epistola de puella (c.1429) about Joan’s exploits. See Bourgain-Hemeryck’s edition in Alain Chartier (1977: 326–9); and an English translation in Craig Taylor (2006: 108–12). 23 Blumenfeld-Kosinski (2002a: 80). 24 On lack of resolution in debate poetry see Reed; Armstrong (1997); Cayley (2003) and (2006a: Ch. 3).

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opens a safe, sanctioned form of discourse for lamentation and protest. Third, it allows for the expression of grief and loss unalloyed by an overt political or masculinist agenda of the kind that might take precedence in a different genre. The kind of biting grief the ladies express and their bitter resentment concerning the results of war are perhaps possible only in a feminized and generalized discourse distanced just enough from the actual names and families involved to make criticism possible. The debate form itself is a distancing mechanism in this instance, allowing political commentary from a largely silent sector of the nobility by staging it in what is usually a playful literary space in which the stakes are low. The collective allegorical presence of the four ladies is a second distancing mechanism: Bonne d’Armagnac or another noblewomen who suffered losses could not have lamented in such a public way,25 for example, but the second lady, allied in chorus with her similarly afflicted sisters, can give free rein to grief and devastation. Last, to come back to the lack of an answer to the question posed in the debate, the unresolved outcome is a perfect poetic expression of the limbo, the lack of direction, and the instability of France after Agincourt, through the Treaty of Troyes, and up to the advent of Joan of Arc. The lack of closure in the work echoes in conventional poetic terms the impotence of France struggling with civil war, a transient and powerless court, a dauphin rather than a king, and a lack of military power. France was immersed in its grief like the ladies drowning in their tears.26

25 See Laidlaw’s discussion of the second lady’s identity, Alain Chartier (1974a: 35–6), and my arguments above. 26 For a literal ‘immersion’ in grief (within the allegorical setting of the Court of Love), we are reminded of the Belle Dame’s fate in Achille Caulier’s sequel poem, Cruelle Femme, where she is sentenced to drown in a pool of tears. See Alain Chartier et al. (2003: vv. 905–12, p. 320).

PART II:

TRANSMITTING CHARTIER

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‘Ainchois maintien des dames la querelle’: Poetry, Politics and Mastery in the Manuscript Tradition of Alain Chartier EMMA CAYLEY Ainchois maintien des dames la querelle, Pour leur bonté qui croyt et renouvelle; Et se je y fail de rien, je m’en rappelle Et cry mercy et engaige l’amende.1

This essay proposes a consideration of Alain Chartier’s œuvre in the material context of its fifteenth-century reception, through an exploration of the diverse manuscript tradition. The manuscript is conceptualised here as a space of play and Chartier posited as a site of authority and mastery, as well as key player within the codex.2 I offer a parallel study here of two manuscripts, typical of the two main branches of the transmission of Chartier’s Latin and French works respectively: Tours, Bibliothèque municipale (BM), MS 978, 3 and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), fr. 1642.4 These two mss give us vital insights into the transmission patterns of Chartier’s literary production; and into two ostensibly distinct domains of activity: political and diplomatic (the Latin and French prose works); poetic and playful (the French verse). The context of the Tours MS apparently directs us to the official, humanistic and Latinate world of the Paris chancery; while 1 All translations of quotations into English are my own unless otherwise stated: ‘However, I uphold the women’s cause / Because of their worth which grows and renews itself; / And if I should err in any way, I shall withdraw / And beg for mercy and pledge to give satisfaction’, Complainte, vv. 93–6; see Alain Chartier et al. (2003: 8). 2 For a fuller discussion of manuscripts as spaces of play see Cayley (2002), (2004), (2006a). See also work in this area by Jane Taylor, including Jane H. M. Taylor (2001), (2007a), and (2007b). 3 See Bourgain’s description in Alain Chartier (1977: 133–4). Tours 978 is responsible for Heuckencamp’s attribution of the De vita curiali to Ambrogio dei Migli, since it contains a number of his letters: ibid. (67–76). 4 This is Laidlaw’s Pd (Alain Chartier 1974a, 104–6), and has also been discussed by Bourgain (Alain Chartier 1977, 120–3); and McRae (1997: 52–4).

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BnF, fr. 1642, appears to refer us to the non-official vernacular world of the ‘cour amoureuse’ and courtly debate poetry. There is, however, more overlap between the two domains of Chartier’s production than one might expect, particularly in the subtle interweaving of political and poetic discourses, as I reveal through an examination of the pieces collected in both these manuscripts, in text and paratext. The Tours MS collects Chartier’s anti-curial Latin letter, the De vita curiali,5 with other Latin epistles circulated between humanist scholars of the Paris chancery in the early fifteenth century, and also with Books XIV and XV of Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium (1350–74) which present a defence of poetry.6 Collected within BnF, fr. 1642, alongside Chartier’s French works, we find debate poems which problematise gender, deal with the rejection of corrupt courtly mores and discourse, and call for the renewal of poetic language.7 The anthologisation of these poems with Chartier’s texts hints, amongst other things, at a possible ‘profeminine’ prise de position by Chartier in the Querelle des femmes,8 a recurrent motif in Chartier’s œuvre picked up by the liminal quotation here from his Complainte.9 The case for Chartier’s sympathy with the Belle Dame, and her political significance in terms of women’s franchise, or political and social autonomy, has been argued recently.10 I go even further to suggest that a profeminine discourse informs Chartier’s entire production, a hypothesis given weight by the reception of his texts in manuscript collections where the question of women is the guiding theme. The material reception of Chartier’s vernacular texts therefore establishes him as a major player and authoritative model in wider social and political debates of his time, linking back to the political and diplomatic content of the Tours MS. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, this problematisation of gender, and engagement in contemporary debates through his verse, demonstrates the interdependence of the domains of poetry and politics in Chartier’s literary production. So Chartier’s mastery of the vernacular poetic game, and his mastery of the humanist and Latinate world of diplomacy and politics, ultimately point to the same end. Moreover, in a reversal of W. B. Kay’s indictment of Chartier’s verse,11 I would like to suggest that, if it is

5

I refer throughout to Bourgain’s editions of the Latin original and the Middle French translation, Alain Chartier (1977: 345–75). 6 Boccaccio (1951). 7 See the appendix at the end of this article for a list of contents of both MSS. 8 I use the term ‘profeminine’ here as suggested by Alcuin Blamires. 9 Chartier refers to his support of women in a number of texts including his BDSM, Excusacion, DDFA and LQD; see Cayley (2006a: 121–6). 10 See Solterer (2002); Cayley (2006a: 111–20); Sansone; Kinch (2008); Angelo. 11 W. B. Kay. See Kay’s claim that, ‘the fact that he was unable to make the framework of conventional courtly love poetry fully serve his personal vision is borne out by his later choice of prose as the instrument of his greatest works’ (73).

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one or the other then poetry, and not prose, was the instrument of Chartier’s greatest works. The pattern of manuscript transmission points to an equivalent if not greater popularity of the verse, and though there are clearly reasons why poetic, and indeed vernacular, texts may have enjoyed a wider circulation than prose or Latin texts, the material evidence nonetheless points us in the direction of Chartier as a master of both media, poetry and prose.12 Chartier’s Latin and French works were transmitted in around two hundred manuscripts, recorded by James Laidlaw in his 1974 edition of the French poetical works.13 I have since uncovered another manuscript containing works by Chartier: Sion (Switzerland), Médiathèque Valais-Sion, bibl. Supersaxo S 97 bis, and have discussed the profeminine and anti-courtly context of this manuscript elsewhere.14 It is highly likely, given such a diffuse tradition, that there are other Chartier MSS still to be officially recorded, including those which, like Turin, BNU, L. IV. 3 (not previously listed as containing works by Chartier), have unfortunately perished.15 The overlap I identify here between the two broad modes of Chartier’s authorial expression (poetry and prose) and the two main branches of manuscript transmission (Latin and French) breaks down the artificial barrier constructed by some critics between what are perceived to be ‘serious’ and 12 See Cayley (2006a: 202–14), for comparative tables of the manuscript transmission of the French verse, French prose, and Latin texts (my tables of the prose MSS do not consider the eleven manuscripts containing only the Quadrilogue; these are listed in Laidlaw: Alain Chartier 1974a, 44–5, Aa–Al). I count 40 MSS containing the Esperance, and 51 of the Quadrilogue (making it more popular than the BDSM with 44 MSS copies, though not as popular as the Breviaire des nobles at 53 MSS copies [54 with Sion, Supersaxo 97 bis]). At least 64 MSS contain more than one of the verse texts; compared with 25 MSS with both the Esperance and Quadrilogue. As Laidlaw points out, length is also a consideration with the prose texts, and may be another factor in their relatively smaller, and separate, circulation. 13 Laidlaw records 113 MSS of the French poetical works and a total of 194 containing French or Latin works (this figure includes MSS of the French translation of the Latin letter De vita curiali, known as the Curial, probably not by Chartier, however Laidlaw omits one version cited by Bourgain: Alain Chartier 1977, 141). Four of Laidlaw’s 194 are now lost or untraceable: Kn, Qj, Qn, Qp; see Alain Chartier (1974a: 43–144), also Alain Chartier et al. (2003: lxvii–lxxi). Bourgain records 42 MSS containing Latin works (this figure does not include the MSS of the French version of the Curial); see Alain Chartier (1977); Cayley (2006a: 98–9, and my manuscript tables 202–14). There is a further MS which contained French verse by Chartier: Turin, BNU, L. IV. 3 (Pasinus’ L. V. 30), not listed by Laidlaw, which was lost in the fire of 1904 (see Piaget 1905). This MS also contained BDSM imitation poems. Hult and McRae list this MS (Alain Chartier et al. 2003: lxvi), as [Qs], but as Laidlaw does not list it, they assume it did not contain poems by Chartier. In fact it also contained the BDSM. See Pasinus, vol. II (489), column 2. I am very grateful to Roger Middleton for helping me to ‘locate’ this MS of Chartier’s works. 14 The Sion MS contains Chartier’s Breviaire and LP, as well as his Ballade XXVIII, ‘Il n’est danger que de villain’. See Cayley (2004) and (2006b: 283–95). 15 For a discussion of the diversity of the manuscript tradition of Chartier, see McRae’s article in this volume. See n13 for discussion of Turin, BNU, L. IV. 3.

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‘non-serious’ works in Chartier and indeed in this period as a whole.16 The relationship between diplomatic and playful debate in the period is then more fully revealed. This new approach, combining study of Chartier’s Latin and French output, confirms the position of authority Chartier enjoyed among contemporaries, and offers an account of Chartier’s œuvre which integrates poetry and politics, play and mastery – themes that are intertwined in the two representative manuscripts discussed below. The first of these manuscripts, Tours, BM, 978, presents us with a material community whose dialogic ethos is based on the art of humanist rhetoric, represented in both theory and practice. The Tours MS was copied at Amboise on 2 February 1435/6, and is signed on the final folio, 64v, by Jean Majoris, confessor of the future Louis XI.17 This vellum manuscript comes originally from the Basilica of Saint-Martin de Tours, where Jean died. The final two books (XIV and XV) of Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium, which propose a defence of poetry, are here collected with Chartier’s Latin letter De vita curiali (not attributed to him in the MS). There are in addition two letters sent by a visiting Milanese scholar, Ambrogio dei Migli, to Gontier Col (like Chartier, a notary and secretary at the Paris chancery). Finally there is a response on Col’s behalf from Nicolas de Clamanges to Migli. Jean de Montreuil’s and Nicolas de Clamanges’ collections of epistles are among the fullest collections surviving from this turbulent period.18 It is particularly interesting, and indeed significant, that these letters of Migli and Clamanges should have been collected with Boccaccio’s defence of poetry, and also with Chartier’s essentially ‘literary’ letter, composed on the topos of ‘taedium curiae’ (weariness with the court). We can assume that, Chartier apart, the authors whose epistles are collected in the Tours manuscript knew one another and indeed worked, or had worked, together in the coulisses of the Paris chancery, and probably also in the entourage of Louis, duc d’Orléans. Items 4 and 5 in the manuscript form part of an ongoing series of rhetorical quarrels on a variety of topics (predominantly literary) that erupted between Jean de Montreuil, Provost of Lille, and secretary and notary to Charles VI, who has been labelled the first French humanist,19 and Ambrogio dei Migli.20

16

For this customary division of Chartier’s works see Hoffman (1942: 39–43), and Shapley’s rejection of it: Shapley, esp. Ch. 2 (32–120); also Cayley (2006a: 9 n30, 88–9, 111 n99). 17 The same scribe copied BnF lat. 6091, which contains works by Sallust, and bears the date and provenance: Amboise, 30 Nov. 1434, on fol. 102v; see Alain Chartier (1977: 133–4). Our MS has a date written at the end of the De vita curiali on fol. 59v, ‘Actum Ambasie, die secunda februarii, anno domini millesimo quadringentesimo tricesimo quinto’. 18 See Jean de Montreuil; Nicolas de Clamanges (1967) and (1969). 19 A remark made by Thomas; see also Combes (13–15). 20 See Ornato; Ouy (13–42).

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This epistolary exchange may immediately predate or be contemporaneous with the Querelle de la Rose, and involves a similar cast of actors.21 Item 5 is a polemic written against Jean de Montreuil by Migli, and addressed to Gontier Col, also a royal secretary and notary. This letter of Migli’s was transmitted by Col to Jean de Montreuil, who reacted with a particularly venomous epistolary retort (his epistle 106), comparing Migli to a treacherous serpent.22 Nicolas de Clamanges stepped into the breach, possibly at Col’s request, sending conciliatory letters to both Migli on Col’s behalf (this is item 4) and to Jean de Montreuil. Nicolas de Clamanges was originally affiliated to the University of Paris and the royal chancery, but he moved to a post in Avignon in 1397, following the election of Pope Benedict XIII. The Avignon–Paris chancery axis was to play a major role in diplomatic and literary jousting throughout this period, with considerable Italian influence at the Papal court in Avignon colouring the endeavours of the Parisian scholars.23 Clamanges and Montreuil in turn both exerted a strong influence on Chartier, whose De vita curiali draws on many of the classical topoi and rhetorical devices they employ in their own literary letters. Chartier’s De vita curiali was written a good twenty years after (c. 1427) the other pieces in the Tours manuscript. The trend of the French collections, in contrast with the Latin tradition, seems to be to combine Chartier’s work with later pieces. The Latin tradition tends to associate Chartier with earlier auctores, who fall into four main groups: earlier French scholars such as Montreuil, Clamanges, and Gerson; Italian humanists including Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Coluccio Salutati; Patristic and earlier medieval authors including St Augustine, Alain de Lille, and St Basil; and finally classical authors such as Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero, Ovid, or Seneca.24 We can conclude from the two main branches of transmission that where his Latin works are concerned, Chartier was regarded as coming from a long line of auctores, and took his rightful place among them, as the final link in the chain; their work legitimising and authorising his own. Where the vernacular is concerned, and more particularly his poetic production, Chartier’s works were more frequently collected with those of later practitioners, suggesting that he was regarded in some sense as their source of authority,

21 On the Querelle see Christine de Pizan et al. (1977); Badel; Brown-Grant; Cayley (2006a: 52–86); since my book was published in 2006, work on the Querelle de la Rose has produced two new versions of the documents: Virginie Greene’s modern French translation: Christine de Pizan et al. (2006); and Christine McWebb’s anthology and English translation: Christine de Pizan et al. (2007); see the Margot project at http://margot. uwaterloo.ca/rose/rosehome_e.html. 22 See Cayley (2006a: 63–9). 23 See Ornato. 24 For a full account of all the authors and works collected with Chartier in the Latin MSS, see Bourgain in Alain Chartier (1977: 156–61).

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as coming before, rather than ‘coming after’.25 So Chartier would seem to be situated within the vernacular codex context as the ultimate authoritative vernacular source or site of authority, the ‘doctus poeta’ (learned poet), corresponding with Boccaccio’s notion of the ‘backwards’ direction of genealogy. In his De genealogia, Boccaccio conceives of genealogy as always pointing back towards its starting point, towards the revelation of a hidden truth or origin.26 The inclusion of Chartier’s Latin letter in the Tours manuscript, therefore, sets up a number of dialogic and collaborative links within the codex as well as referring us to scholarly collaboration beyond the bounds of the text and of the immediate manuscript context. Chartier is established here as a humanist magister in a long line of illustrious humanist forebears, both French and Italian, composing mainly in Latin, but also in the vernacular. This intellectual and artistic genealogy authorises Chartier’s work in the same way that the genealogy of great poets traced in Boccaccio’s De genealogia authorises and reinvigorates poetry itself. Montreuil and Clamanges were famous for the excellence of their epistolary style in Latin;27 Boccaccio was celebrated for his eloquence both in Latin and in the vernacular, in spite of the ambivalent status of the vernacular in Italy at this time.28 Strong links are set up between the epistles collected here and the writings of two of the three Florentine ‘corone’ (crowns): Petrarch and Boccaccio. Italian humanistic influence can be traced through Montreuil’s and Clamanges’s stylistic debt to the epistles of Petrarch and his correspondents (Boccaccio among them), and through the influence of the Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati on the French scholars.29 In his recent account of Dantean reception, Simon Gilson discusses how Boccaccio’s attitude to the use of the vernacular differed from that of his contemporary Petrarch, who saw a clear category difference between works composed in Latin and those in the vernacular, with Latin considered the more prestigious language. Boccaccio, Gilson argues, struggled throughout his career to reconcile his production in Latin and in the vernacular, convinced of the potential and usefulness of the latter, while acknowledging ‘the perceived supremacy of Latin literary culture’ in fourteenth-century Florence.30 Indeed, Petrarch and

25

I borrow the term from Rebecca Dixon’s collection of essays: Dixon. See Hyde. 27 Jean de Montreuil seemed reluctant to use the vernacular, see his epistle 119, Ex quo nugis, inspired by Petrarch’s rejection of his own ‘nuge’ or trifling works in the vernacular. On the matter of eloquence and style, see Pons (1992: 9–24); Cecchetti, and Ornato. 28 The history of the relationship between the vernacular and Latin in humanist writing is far from straightforward. For a cogent account of Boccaccio’s linguistic strategies, and those of his humanist predecessors and contemporaries, see Gilson. 29 On Coluccio Salutati and the ars dictaminis, see Pons (1992); also Witt (1976) and (1983). 30 Gilson (32–41), quotation p. 41. 26

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Boccaccio engage in heated epistolary correspondence about the merits of Dante as a vernacular poet, discussing his Comedy in particular, in much the same way that Jean de Montreuil engages in debate with chancery colleagues on the merits of Jean de Meun and his Rose.31 The question of poetry (classical and vernacular) and its place in the literary hierarchy is one that guides the Tours manuscript, not only in the more obvious sense of the presence of Boccaccio’s apologia, but also through the epistolary links forged between the humanist scholars whose works are collected here. The engagement of Montreuil, Clamanges, and, to a lesser extent, Ambrogio dei Migli, in the Querelle de la Rose, and their literary discussions more generally, were informed by the writings of Dante,32 Petrarch,33 Boccaccio34 or Salutati,35 on the nature and status of poetry, the poet and the use of the vernacular. The defence of poetry as an essential part of rhetoric offered in the final two books (XIV and XV) of Boccaccio’s mammoth compendium of ancient mythology, the De genealogia deorum gentilium, provides a theoretical framework for the letters collected in the Tours manuscript and again directs us to the humanist content and emphasis of the manuscript,36 as well as providing a bridge to the second, predominantly vernacular and poetic strand of the manuscript tradition of Chartier’s works through its discussion of the origins, nature, and purpose of poetry.37

31 Boccaccio’s letter on this topic has not survived, but Petrarch’s response does: Familiares XXI, see Petrarch; as well as Boccaccio’s Trattatello, the first biography of Dante: Boccaccio (1964-). 32 I refer here to Dante’s Comedy, widely regarded at the time as a source of vernacular poetic authority, and the De vulgari eloquentia in which he outlines a defence of the vernacular (the latter would have been known to Boccaccio, but not to the later humanist scholars except through Boccaccio’s own work). See Dante Alighieri (1996; 2003) and (1968). 33 Petrarch discusses Dante’s mastery of vernacular poetry in his correspondence with Boccaccio: Familiares XXI (post 1359), and readily awards him ‘the palm of vernacular eloquence’, while emphasising the superiority of Latin; see Petrarch (1985: 204). 34 Boccaccio’s admiration of Dante as a vernacular poet is particularly evident in his biography, the Trattatello (three redactions: 1351–55, 1360, pre 1372); but also in his Filocolo (c.1336–39); Amorosa visione (c.1342–43); De genealogia (c. 1350–75); De casibus illustrium virorum (c.1363); Carmen 3, ‘Ytalie iam certus honos’; and the correspondence with Petrarch, among other works. See Boccaccio (1964–), and (1951). 35 As Florentine chancellor from 1375–1406, Coluccio Salutati was instrumental in the development of humanism in Florence, and the cult of Petrarch. Like Boccaccio and Petrarch before him, Salutati glorifies Dante the poet in his work, and develops his own defence of poetry in the second redaction of the allegorical De laboribus Herculis (mid1390s). See Gilson (64), n. 28 on Salutati and poetry. 36 On the changing relationship of poetry and rhetoric in the Middle Ages, see Minnis and Scott (373–438, esp. 420–38). 37 See esp. Book XIV, ch. 7, ‘Quid sit poesis, unde dicta, et quod eius offitium’ (What is poetry, where does the name come from, and what is its purpose); Boccaccio (1964–).

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Petrarch’s ‘presence in absence’ in our manuscript (his influence on the epistles of Clamanges and Montreuil) is again noted in Book XIV, Chapter 10 of the De genealogia, rubricated ‘Stultum credere poetas nil sensisse sub cortice fabularum’ (It is foolish to believe that poets convey no meaning beneath the surface of their fictions). Petrarch is evoked here as a ‘poetatheologus’ (poet-theologian) alongside Dante in Boccaccio’s discussion of the parallel arts of poetry and theology, which both use allegorical veils to convey truths. Finally, item 3 in the Tours manuscript, Chartier’s polemical Latin letter, De vita curiali (c.1427), plays on the classical anticurial topos of taedium curiae, through a portrayal of the vices rife at court.38 The De vita curiali is addressed by a courtier to a friend who aspires to a ‘vita curialis’ or life at court. The author himself is disillusioned by the self-interest and corruption he observes in court society and language. The courtiers, he suggests, advance in their careers through deception rather than talent, content to win titles and promotion, but not prepared to fulfil the roles that go with them: Insuper agnomina et titulos magistratuum dignitatumque avide petimus et superbe tenemus … Sed titulos res ipsa deest sepius, cum alter justi judicis nomen, alter strenui ducis officium sine opere vendicat … Et ecce nos curiales effrontes officiorum non jura, sed nomina sequimur. (34–7) Moreover, we greedily seek the names and titles of magistrates and officials, and proudly bear them … But the titles more often than not come without the jobs themselves; one man assumes the title of a fair judge, another the place of a valiant duke, without doing any work … So you see that we courtiers seek not the rights of offices but their titles.

These ‘curiales’ live in a perilous state, hovering between self-denial and selfadvancement, willing slaves to the rich and powerful. The awkward pairing of libertas (freedom), which the Middle French Curial translates as ‘franchise’, and servitudo (enslavement), is the duality upon which Chartier’s epistle, like the lives of the courtiers, depends.39 By making an explicit link between moral and linguistic corruption and enslavement here, via a meta-rhetorical network of references to linguistic openness and closure, Chartier hints at the limitations of courtly language, and heralds the dawn of a new ‘engaged’

38 Chartier was no doubt influenced by the humanist scholars Clamanges and Montreuil in his use of the anti-curial topos: see Meyenberg (32–6) and Pons (1986: 67–81). For the French literary tradition of anti-curial satire, see Pauline Smith, and Blanchard and Mühlethaler, Ch. 3; see also Cayley (2006a: 70–2). 39 This concept of franchise is again debated in Chartier’s BDSM; see Solterer (2002).

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poetic discourse.40 This meta-rhetorical network runs throughout Chartier’s œuvre, informing both Latin and French texts, prose and verse.41 The De vita curiali forms a further bridge to the second strand of reception of Chartier’s works, in its Middle French translation, often wrongly attributed to Chartier.42 The Dialogus is the only Latin work of Chartier’s to have been copied in Latin with his French works in the manuscript tradition, and was the most widely circulated of his Latin texts (in its ‘original’ Latin).43 We find the Latin Dialogus collected in nine manuscripts with the French prose (out of a total of twenty-four MSS), two of which collect it with both his prose and verse texts. The De vita curiali circulated far more widely than the Dialogus with the French verse and prose, but in its Middle French translation, the Curial, written before 1447. The vernacular Curial appeared in twenty-three MSS and ten printed editions in the second half of the fifteenth century (including the first complete edition of Chartier’s works by Pierre le Caron in 1489), compared with only eleven MSS of the Latin original.44 So although it is unlikely to have been translated by Chartier, the French Curial was received alongside Chartier’s French œuvre. Twelve versions of the French Curial are copied into manuscripts that also contain Chartier’s French verse. The popularity of Chartier’s Latin letter is also demonstrated by the number of fifteenth-century translations that were made of it: the Middle French Curial; a Latin translation of the French Curial by Robert Gaguin in 1473; and a Middle English version by William Caxton in 1484.45 The second manuscript which I would like to consider here is a manuscript in which the Middle French Curial makes an appearance (linking back to the previous MS) alongside the only French translation of Chartier’s Latin debate, the Dialogus.46 Paris, BnF, fr. 1642 is typical of the later transmission of Chartier’s French verse; it is a large paper anthology (480 fols.), prob-

40 For a discussion of openness and closure in Chartier’s œuvre, see Cayley (2003); Cayley (2006a: 100–1; 115–35). 41 On the meta-rhetorical discourse in Chartier’s Latin works and prose, see Meyenberg. 42 On the question of attribution, see Alain Chartier (1977: 150–2). 43 The original Latin text of the Dialogus appears in Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 C 7 (Hamilton 144), and in Paris, BnF, fr. 1128; Alain Chartier (1977: 120–3; 247–325); Bourgain assumes that the French version which makes its sole appearance in BnF, fr. 1642, was written later, and was not by Chartier. 44 Bourgain records twenty-one copies, but does not include two included by Laidlaw in his edition: Copenhagen, KB, Ny Kgl. Saml. 1768.2 (formerly Ashburnham Place, Barrois 355), and London, Clumber Sale (Sotheby’s, 6 .XII. 1937, 941) (untraceable); see Alain Chartier (1977: 140–52), and Alain Chartier (1974: 126–32). Laidlaw does not record the copy of the Curial in Reims, BM, 918, listed by Bourgain in Alain Chartier (1977: 141). 45 See Alain Chartier (1977: 67–76; 133–52). 46 For discussion and an edition of the Middle French Dialogus, see Alain Chartier (1977: 120–3; 247–325).

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ably dating from the 1490s.47 The manuscript (of indifferent textual quality) is copied in what appears to be a single small regular hand; there is a title page, contemporary table of contents, catchwords, and limited decoration. From a glance down the table of contents, we can see that Chartier’s status as magisterial auctor is reinforced by his material positioning within the codex. Fourteen out of thirty-eight texts collected here are attributable to Chartier, including four apocryphal texts: the letters (items 13 and 14); the French Curial (item 1) and Dialogus (item 2).48 The ordering of the manuscript is striking. Chartier’s texts largely form the first part of the manuscript; the rest is made up of texts which often revisit and imitate Chartier’s themes and topoi, referring us back to Boccaccio’s authorising genealogy and the situating of authority at the source or root of that genealogy. The Paris manuscript forms part of the community of forty Querelle manuscripts that collect the sequels and/or imitations of Chartier’s BDSM, which McRae examines in her article in this volume.49 It collects texts from what I have termed the first, second and third cycles of sequels and imitations of the BDSM: Chartier’s BDSM, Excusacion and the two letters (part of the first cycle); Baudet Herenc’s Accusations contre la BDSM, the anonymous Dame lealle en amours, Achille Caulier’s Cruelle Femme en amours (part of the second cycle); and the Amant rendu cordelier a l’observance d’amours (part of the third cycle); as well as two fourth-cycle texts:50 Achille Caulier’s L’Ospital d’amours and Oton de Granson’s La Belle Dame qui eut mercy.51 The Belle Dame sans mercy is the most widely copied of Chartier’s French verse debates, collected in forty-four extant MSS. It provoked considerable contemporary reaction, eliciting a series of sequels, imitations and translations that span over half a century, collectively referred to as the Cycle or Querelle de la BDSM.52 The prose letters found at items 13 and 14 of our MS, and item 15, the Excusacion, mark the beginning of this querelle. The Querelle de la BDSM itself feeds on a tradition of literary quarrels, and in particular the Querelle de la Rose. Dialogic links are thus forged between Chartier, the contemporary poets who debated the Belle Dame, and the humanist scholars who debated the Rose.53

47

See Laidlaw for dating and watermarks: Alain Chartier (1977: 104–5). Laidlaw suggests that this MS is closely related to the first printed collected edition of Chartier’s works as well as to Paris, BnF, fr. 833, and Paris, BnF, fr. 24440; Alain Chartier (1977: 106). 49 See Hult and McRae’s intro.: Alain Chartier et al. (2003), lxv–lxxiii; Cayley (2002); (2006a: 162–3 n106). 50 For discussion of my classification into four cycles see McRae. 51 Cayley (2006a: 153–4). 52 In general Cycle refers to the texts, and Querelle to the circumstances/context in which they were written; but the terms are largely interchangeable. I tend to prefer Querelle as I identify various minor cycles within the major Cycle. See Piaget’s editions of the poems in Romania: Piaget (1901; 1902; 1904; 1905). See also Alain Chartier (2003). 53 For the Rose as intertext for the BDSM, see esp. Jane H. M. Taylor (1998). 48

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So the presence of the Querelle texts here, and the collection of Chartier’s work with that of the participants of the Querelle de la Rose in the Latin tradition, further reconciles the two patterns of reception of Chartier’s work. Many of the other texts collected here are not specifically related to the Querelle, but occur elsewhere in Chartier’s manuscript tradition (items 21; 24; 26; 30–7).54 These non-Querelle texts are intimately linked to Chartier’s production in that they rehearse the notion of poetic competition, debate and collaboration (in terms of their form and content, or in the antagonistic pairing of poets and poems: 21 links to 5; 23 to 21; 32 to 33),55 as well as tapping into familiar late medieval poetic themes, encountered initially here in Chartier’s own texts. The question of the defence of women and the autonomy of the female voice, for example, guiding the Querelle texts, is later taken up by Vaillant’s provocative and occasionally salacious debate, the Ambusche Vaillant (also known as the Debat des deux seurs) at item 31,56 or La Louenge des dames (29). The theme of lost time and mortality, or ‘contemptus mundi’, the inevitable flipside and sober companion of courtly play and game, is contemplated here in Alexis’s Debat de l’omme mondain,57 Taillevent’s Passe temps (32),58 or Gréban’s Epitaphes (34). Like many of the large lyric anthologies that transmit Chartier’s verse, the Paris MS also contains his French prose (the Quadrilogue is the most commonly collected, followed by Esperance and then the Middle French Curial). In the Paris MS, unusually, we find all four prose or prosimetrum vernacular texts usually attributed to Chartier: the Dialogus and De vita curiali in their Middle French translations, the Quadrilogue and the Esperance. The Dialogus, Chartier’s only Latin debate, collected in the Paris MS, picks up on many of the theological, sociopolitical and ethical themes (patriotism, mortality, moral and linguistic corruption, self-interest versus common good) that are latent in Chartier’s verse works, and the other texts collected here. The love-lyric of Chartier’s BDSM, DDFA, or Debat Reveille matin, is no less a vehicle for the theological, political or ethical reflection of our ‘restaurateur de l’écriture engagée’ (restorer of engaged writing),59 than the French and Latin prose.60 In the prologue to Chartier’s prosimetrum text, the Esperance,61 the conflict

54

Cayley (2004); (2006b). See a fuller account of competition in Chartier’s MSS tradition in Cayley (2002). 56 See my forthcoming edition in Arizona’s MRTS; also Deschaux’s edition of Pierre Chastellain and Vaillant (1982: 113–57). 57 See my edition, as above; also Guillaume Alexis (1896: III, 127–62). 58 See Deschaux’s edition in Michault Taillevent (1975: 111–30). 59 I use Mühlethaler and Blanchard’s term here: Mühlethaler and Blanchard (34). 60 On the political substrate of the French verse, see Shapley; Sansone; Delogu; Angelo; Cayley (2006a); Kinch (2006a); and Altmann’s essay in this collection. 61 On the prosimetrum, see Kelly’s essay in this collection, and Huot’s article on the Esperance (2007). 55

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of poetry and prose that we recognise from texts collected in the Tours MS is again staged. Here the introspective figure of the ageing poet seems to dismiss the frivolous verse he penned in his youth: Je souloye ma jonnesse acquiter A joyeuses escriptures dicter Or me convient aultre ouvrage tissir: De cueur dolent ne pourroit joye issir. (Poem 1, 47–50)62 I used to spend my youth / Composing joyful writings / But now I must spin a different kind of tale: / Since from a sorrowful heart no joy can come.

Chartier’s apparent rejection here of the ‘joyeuses escriptures’, or courtly love-lyric of his youth, a description later picked up by Hoffman and applied to characterise Chartier’s ‘frivolous’ verse production, is clearly a tongue-incheek literary topos.63 This is an instance of recusatio, a figure inherited from the golden age Latin poets Ovid and Horace, as well as from Chartier’s medieval forebears, and frequently employed by the persona of the melancholic and ageing poet who looks back with a certain nostalgic disdain at the ‘foolish’ writings of his youth. Indeed, Chartier employs the figure elsewhere in his poetical works.64 The rhetorical figure of recusatio is intimately connected to the medieval narrator’s initial claims to be composing ‘chose nouvelle’, or arranging material in a new form, a topos inherited from humanist predecessors such as Boccaccio, inspired by Aristotle’s Poetica or Cicero’s De inventione.65 Like the topos of literary defence which authors such as Chartier or Machaut employed self-consciously, to attract attention and solicit debate over their texts, and/or to pre-empt the comments of potential detractors, these narratorial ‘vision statements’ may be taken with a large pinch of salt. As modern readers alert to such literary devices, we must remain wary of an over-enthusiastic identification of the historical Chartier and the figure of Chartier poet and/or prosateur which he presents on the stage of his texts.66 Chartier does not suddenly decide to condemn his earlier poetic production here; rather Acteur adopts a literary pose which directs his readers to the content and form of the current work, and establishes his literary credentials

62

I refer to Rouy’s edition of the Esperance: Alain Chartier (1989a). See Hoffman (39–43). 64 In the BDSM, v. 18, Chartier’s narrator talks of abandoning ‘joyeuses choses’. See Kinch’s discussion of the tension between joy and suffering in Chartier’s œuvre in this volume; and of the figure of recusatio in Kinch (2008); see also Huot (2007). 65 See for example Guillaume de Machaut (1999), vv. 11–12; see also the De inventione: Cicero; and the Poetics: Aristotle. 66 See Armstrong (2000) on the interplay of the horizontal (intratextual/intertextual) and vertical (biographical) functions of the poetic ‘je’ (211–13); also Cayley (2006a: 94–5). 63

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and authority by the use of this classical topos. In Chartier, we must look for his move to a new poetic discourse from within the rhetorical structure of the poetic form itself (in the vocabulary of closure which informs his entire œuvre for example), love-lyric included, as I have suggested elsewhere.67 Above I have sketched some of the ways in which two representative manuscripts can be seen to unite the ostensibly discrete realms of Chartier’s literary production, Latin and French, prose and verse. I have hoped to go some way towards dispelling the reductive mythology surrounding Chartier’s ‘serious’ and ‘non-serious’ production. In particular the manuscript tradition of Chartier tends to associate his works not only with a defence of women and moral values, but with anti-courtly and patriotic invective coupled with a call for the renewal of poetic language. This examination of cultural and literary groupings within the manuscripts which preserve both Chartier’s texts and those of his contemporaries and predecessors has emphasised how Chartier is situated as magister within both sets of traditions. Within the Latin tradition he is authorised to bear the title by association with his illustrious forebears; within the French tradition he represents a source of authority for later poets. Like the Tours and the Paris manuscripts, many of the MSS which transmit Chartier’s œuvre hint at collaboration and debate beyond and through the confines of the material page. The fifteenth-century manuscript collection is frequently a site of convergence for more than one exchange or debate between scholars; networks of playful yet hierarchical relations are created by the juxtaposition of such exchanges. It is precisely this incitement to collaboration through poetic endeavour (signalled in some cases by the non-ending of the debate poem),68 this encouragement of a participatory poetic culture in the French MSS tradition, that we can begin to read as Chartier’s own apologia for poetry and for the vernacular.69 It is a call answered by the later poets whose works jostle for position and capital within the vernacular codex.70 Through intertextual links between the texts contained within these manuscripts, and correspondences between the Latin and French traditions, then, we start to read Chartier’s ethical and moral engagement with politics and society. Moreover, we begin to understand the privileged position given to literary culture, poetry and indeed the vernacular within both sets of codices. Chartier emerges from his manuscript tradition as a master not only of the poetry of politics, but of the politics of poetry.

67

Cayley (2003), and (2006a: Ch. 3). On the non-ending of debate poetry see Reed, Armstrong (1997); Cayley (2003) and (2006a). 69 See Jane H. M. Taylor (2001: 7). 70 On forms of capital, see Bourdieu. 68

Appendix Table of Contents of Tours, BM, 978, and Paris, BnF, fr. 1642 Tours, BM, 978 Contents: 1. Fols. 1–50v, [Boccaccio] De genealogia deorum gentilium (two final books: XIV, XV). 2. Fol. 51, [Ambrogio dei Migli to Gontier Col], ‘Novum me esse noveris.’ 3. Fol. 56, [Chartier] De vita curiali (no title or attribution in ms), ‘Suades sepius et hortaris vir diserte et carissime frater’. [Fol. 59v, ‘Actum Ambasie, die secunda februarii, anno domini millesimo quadrigentesimo tricesimo quinto.’] 4. Fol. 60, [Nicolas de Clamanges, on behalf of Col, to Ambrogio dei Migli] ‘Justum erat, Ambrosi, si saperes’.71 5. Fol. 61v, [Ambrogio dei Migli to Gontier Col, to which the previous letter is a response] ‘Si alius esses quam Gontherus’.72

Paris, BnF, fr. 1642 Contents: 1. Fol 3, Le Curial 2. Fol. 7, S’ensuit la translacion d’ung dyalogue en latin que fist en son vivant feu maistre Alain Chartier et fut translaté Par … [blank] 3. Fol. 30, Le Quadrilogue 4. Fol. 54, Le Livre de l’Esperance 5. Fol. 117, Le Breviaire des nobles 6. Fol. 124, Le Lay de paix 7. Fol. 128, Le Livre des Quatre Dames 8. Fol. 178, Le Debat des Deux Fortunés d’amours 9. Fol. 196, Le Debat Reveille matin 10. Fol. 202, La Complainte maistre Alain Chartier 11. Fol. 205, L’Ospital d’amours [Achille Caulier]

71 72

This is Clamanges’ letter VII in the Lydius edition of his works. This letter follows the last directly, with no break (Bourgain places it on fol. 62v).

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12. Fol. 224, La Belle Dame sans mercy 13. Fol. 235v, Coppie de la requeste baillee aux dames contre maistre Alain 14. Fol. 236, Coppie des lettres envoyees de par les dames à maistre Alain 15. Fol. 237v, L’Excusacion aux dames 16. Fol. 240, La Dame lealle en amours 17. Fol. 253, Accusations contre la BDSM [Baudet Herenc] 18. Fol. 262, La Cruelle Femme en amours [Achille Caulier] 19. Fol. 285, La Belle Dame qui eut mercy [Oton de Granson] 20. Fol. 290, La Louenge des dames 21. Fol. 297, Le Psaultier des villains [Michault Taillevent] 22. Fol. 303, L’Arbre tort 23. Fol. 309, L’ABC des doubles [Guillaume Alexis] 24. Fol. 326, L’Omage fait par maistre Pierre de Nesson 25. Fol. 329, paraphrase of ‘ecce ancilla dominum’ 26. Fol. 330, Ethimologisation de Paris [Jean Munier] 27. Fol. 331, Le Specule des pecheurs [Jehan Castel] 28. Fol. 345, Requeste de Castel adressant à M. de Gaucourt 29. Fol. 347, L’Amant rendu cordelier a l’observance d’amours 30. Fol. 375, Le Debat de l’omme mondain et du religieulx [Guillaume Alexis] 31. Fol. 384, L’Ambusche Vaillant [Debat des deux seurs – Vaillant] 32. Fol. 397, Le Passetemps [Michault Taillevent] 33. Fol. 406, Le Contre passetemps [Le temps perdu – Pierre Chastellain] 34. Fol. 414, Les Epitaphes du roy Charles VII [Simon Gréban] 35. Fol. 424, Exclamacion en la mort pour Marye d’Anjou, Royne de France 36. Fol. 443, Le Debat de Hector et d’Achilles [George Chastelain] 37. Fol. 456, Le Temple de Mars [Molinet] 38. Fol. 460, La Complainte du feu roy Loys

6

Cyclification and the Circulation of the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy JOAN E. MCRAE The poems written by Alain Chartier in the early fifteenth century experienced a popularity clearly attested to by the sheer quantity of extant copies. There are 115 manuscripts which have been identified as containing copies of his poetical works.1 Descriptions given by James Laidlaw in his edition of Chartier’s poems2 indicate that the manuscripts containing this author’s work range from luxury codices belonging to kings and queens, such as Paris, BnF, fr. 2235, or Paris, BnF, fr. 2230, to the ‘working’ manuscripts of lawyers or clerics exemplified by Paris, Arsenal, 3523, or Chantilly, Musée Condé, 686; some serve as an author corpus (BnF, fr. 833), some are beautifully orchestrated collections of narrative love poems (BnF, fr. 1131) and some are single-work manuscripts (BnF, fr. 2235). There are parchment manuscripts, illuminated and plain, as well as many paper manuscripts. The very abundance and variety of manuscript style and status serves to suggest that Chartier was widely read by audiences both high and low. By far the most popular of his poems, with contemporary readers as well as readers today, is the 800 line lovers’ debate entitled in its final verse La Belle Dame sans mercy. Indeed, the BDSM has been cited as the most well-known French literary work in the Middle Ages since the Roman de la Rose,3 a popularity attested by the fourty-four manuscripts in which the poem is extant. The BDSM introduces a lady who coldly and without apology refuses her lover, ultimately provoking his grief-stricken death. The uncourtly conclusion to the poem inspired a clever and contentious literary debate, what

1

Laidlaw cites 113; Cayley, (2004) and (2006b), has identified yet another manuscript containing several Chartier texts: Sion, Médiathèque Valais-Sion, bibl. Supersaxo S 97 bis. See also Cayley’s discussion of the destroyed Turin MS (Turin, BNU, L. IV. 3) in this volume. 2 See Alain Chartier (1974a: Ch. 3). 3 Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles, vol. XI (1876): 192, quoted in Hoffman (70).

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we now refer to as the Querelle or Cycle de la Belle Dame sans mercy.4 The Querelle de la BDSM testifies to the volatile reaction of some eighteen poetic voices of the middle of the fifteenth century. Begun with letters allegedly written to Chartier by ladies and noblemen of Charles VII’s court shortly after the poem’s appearance in 1424,5 the Querelle centered on the courtly dilemma of whether or not the Belle Dame was justified in refusing her lover. These erotico-juridical poems either continued or evaluated Chartier’s poem, stirring up a scandal that would make the Belle Dame an infamous femme fatale. Propagated by Chartier himself with his Excusacion,6 an allegorical dream in which Chartier addresses the God of Love in lieu of the ladies and noblemen who have criticized him, the ensuing Querelle is largely responsible for the wide fame of the BSDM. Various poems of the Querelle are extant in some forty manuscripts, almost always with Chartier’s originating BDSM, thus creating a self-conscious ‘cycle’.7 Included among the ‘imitations’ of the BDSM identified by Piaget late in the nineteenth century,8 indeed, central to the Querelle, is a series of four poems that recount in sequence an extended and complex murder trial in which the Belle Dame is brought before the allegorical Court of Love and accused of killing her lover. In the first of these sequel poems, the Accusations contre la Belle Dame sans mercy,9 attributed to Baudet Herenc and extant in eighteen manuscripts, the Belle Dame is indicted for murder; the evidence is taken from her very words, cited from

4

The poems of the Querelle were edited first by Piaget in Romania and can be found in his series of articles on the imitations of the BDSM (1901–1905). Most recently the most popular of the poems appear in two editions, the first by David Hult and Joan E. McRae: Alain Chartier et al. (2003) which includes a translation into modern French; the second by Joan E. McRae: Alain Chartier et al. (2004) with accompanying English translations. References in the text will be made to this last edition. 5 La Requeste baillee aux dames contre Alain and La coppie des lettres envoyees par les dames a Alain (Alain Chartier et al. 2004, 98–100). 6 See Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 110–26). 7 Cayley (2002) and (2006a: Ch. 4), identifies 40 manuscripts belonging to the Querelle. 8 Piaget’s list of imitations (introduced and edited in the Romania articles cited in note 4) includes the following poems which record differing reactions to the BDSM: Accusations (also called Le Parlement d’Amours), Dame lealle, Cruelle Femme, Erreurs de la BDSM, Dialogue d’un amoureux et de sa dame, Le Jugement du povre triste amant banny, Erreurs de l’ amant, L’Amant rendu cordelier, L’Ospital d’amours, Le Traité du reveille qui dort, Le Debat sans conclusion, Le Desconseillé d’amours, Le Loyal amant refusé, La Desserte du desloyal, La Sepulture d’amours, Le Martyr d’Amour, Le Debat de la dame et de l’ecuyer, and La Belle Dame qui eut mercy. 9 The poem is also referred to as Le Parlement d’Amours, the title adopted by Piaget. This title appears to have been assigned for the earliest printed editions and can be seen written in the margins of some of the manuscripts as title in a sixteenth century hand. The title Accusations is more common in the MSS tradition.

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Chartier in Baudet’s poem with as much accuracy as meter and rhyme allow. The poem is left without closure, however, for the Belle Dame can find no lawyer to defend her.10 Lack of closure invites the composition of the second poem of the series, La Dame lealle en amours, extant in thirteen manuscripts, in which the Belle Dame is exonerated when her newly appointed lawyers, the allegorical figures of Truth and Loyalty, reveal the true reason for her refusal of the lover: she has already taken a lover and is remaining loyal to him.11 Since all present understand that love affairs should remain secret and lovers loyal, there is no further argument and the Belle Dame is acquitted and renamed in triumph the “Dame lealle”. The trial, apparently concluded by the second poem, is cleverly reopened in a third episode of the trial, a poem attributed to Achille Caulier and extant in sixteen manuscripts, La Cruelle Femme en amours. A retrial is provoked when a shocking disclosure is made by a friend of the defunct lover: the defendant’s lawyers were not, in fact, Truth and Loyalty, but Fiction and Falsity, disguised as Truth and Loyalty. Convinced by the arrival of the real allegorical figures of Truth and Loyalty who prove that it was indeed Fiction and Falsity who had defended the ruthless woman in the previous trial, and not themselves, the God of Love calls for the Belle Dame to be retried.12 At the conclusion of the re-trial the Belle Dame is convicted and sentenced to the ultimate punishment for a lover: drowning in the well of tears.13 The final (and least popular) episode of the trial, the Erreurs de la BDSM, penned by an unknown poet and extant in only three manuscripts, introduces the Belle Dame’s descendents, who attempt, albeit unsuccessfully, to confront and have overturned the previous judgment because of the harm it is doing to their own reputations. As can be seen by the above synopses of the four sequels, each episode of the ongoing trial is dependant on its antecedents for intertextual quotes and references – these are taken directly from the BDSM, the Excusacion, and each preceding trial poem. Indeed, the narrative continuity of the series depends on the fact that each poet in turn must develop and maintain the overarching narrative of the trial in Love’s courtroom: the Belle Dame refuses her lover and he dies; the ladies and courtiers protest Chartier’s poem; Chartier defends himself; the Belle Dame is tried for murder, but finding no defense lawyer, is granted a delay; the Belle Dame is acquitted in light of new evidence that she already has a lover; the Belle Dame’s lawyers Truth and Loyalty are exposed as Fiction and Falsity and the Belle Dame is retried and convicted; the Belle Dame’s descendants ask for a reconsideration of the verdict. In

10

See stanzas LXXIII–LXXIV of the Accusations. For a discussion of the topos of competition inherent in the continuation of this cycle, see Armstrong (1997). 11 Dame lealle, stanza L (194). 12 Cruelle Femme, stanzas XLI–XLVII (250–2). 13 Cruelle Femme, stanza CXIV (286). See Calin (2006:40).

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order for the reader to follow the Querelle and progression of the trial, the poems need to be read in the following sequence which I number for easy reference later: the BDSM (1), the Lettres of the ladies and the noblemen and the Excusacion (2), Accusations (3), Dame lealle (4), Cruelle Femme (5), and finally the Erreurs (6). Each progressive sequel, built upon the narrative arch, is almost impenetrable without reference to previous installments. The manuscripts which convey the narrative, then, can be expected to respect such order. Indeed, it can be readily observed from looking at various manuscript compilations that by the fifteenth century and even much earlier, there was a keenly developed appreciation for compilation and order, particularly within cycles; many of the Arthurian manuscripts, for example, witness to this aesthetic in their aim of telling the complete story from beginning to end.14 One expects the copyists of the BDSM cycle also to be conscious of order and arrangement in their books. There are, in fact, manuscripts which appear to have been conceived as witness to the Querelle. Of the twentyfour manuscripts in which the trial poems are extant, in varying frequency, nine of them were carefully planned and the sequel poems appear largely in order; four of these carefully crafted books are written on parchment and are beautifully illuminated or decorated.15 The best example of this type of manuscript is the base manuscript for the edition of Hult and McRae, BnF, fr. 1131. Written on parchment in a careful book hand script with gold initials and room for never-completed miniatures, this codex testifies to the sense of order inherent in the scribe’s preservation of the Querelle poems. One expects such manuscripts to be carefully contrived; their parchment support and decorations are attentively prepared, for they have been commissioned by a wealthy or even royal patron. The other five ordered manuscripts are copied on paper. The architecture of several of these paper manuscripts has been elucidated by Emma Cayley.16 She recognizes in BnF, fr. 1169, for example, a manuscript containing Dame lealle (number 4 in our ordered sequence) and the Cruelle Femme (number 5), that the manuscript has been thoughtfully arranged so that its organization ‘institutes a competitive dialogue between the texts’ (229) even as it derives ‘further coherence … from the relation of the individual game of the text to the wider collaborative game of the Querelle’ (229). Likewise, Arsenal, 3521, a paper volume containing the first five Querelle documents in order (it lacks only the final and least popular installment, the Erreurs), was care-

14

On the phenomenon of cyclicity in medieval French texts, see Sturm-Maddox and Maddox. 15 The four ordered manuscripts are: Paris, BnF, fr. 1131; BnF, fr. 2230, made for Marguerite de Rohan, sister-in-law of Charles d’Orléans; BnF, fr. 20026, made for Marie de Clèves, wife of Charles d’Orléans; and BnF, fr. 24440, probably copied from BnF, fr. 1131. 16 Cayley (2002: 226–40); also Cayley (2006a: 166–9).

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fully planned to present the cycle coherently and almost completely within a broader context. As in BnF, fr. 1169, Cayley finds that the guiding metaphor of the Arsenal codex is the image of the chessboard as a metaphor for the game of life (228).17 Such manuscripts show that there was a clearly defined sense of the Querelle, both as metaphor and as narrative, a sense conveyed by careful organization of the codex. Another indication of an expectation of sequential narration is the internal reference to the ‘tiers livre’ (v. 361), that is, the Dame lealle, made in the Cruelle Femme (the BDSM would presumably be the first book, and the Accusations the second book). This expectation is frequently also found in the series of incipits of the poems in several manuscripts, which can reveal the content of the poems even as they introduce a relationship between the poems. The Fribourg-Diesbach manuscript is the best example of this practice;18 the incipits identify and order the episodes of the trial of the BDSM. Thus the plot of the Accusations is outlined as ‘La cruelle femme en amours et comment elle fu jugié te [sic] accusee devant Amours’ (The cruel woman in love and how she was judged and accused before Love); the Dame lealle is identified as ‘ly seconde livre sur la belle dame et est appellee la lealle dame en amours’ (the second book on the Belle Dame and it is called the Loyal Lady in Love) and the Cruelle Femme is summarized as ‘ly tier livre fait sur la belle damme, devisant comment ly belle damme de rechief fut appellee par jugement devant Amours ly cruelle femme en amours et comment ly jugement cy devant de la lealle damme fu reprouvé’ (the third book made about the Belle Dame, showing how the Belle Dame was condemned by Love to be called the Cruel Woman in Love and how the judgment of the previous Loyal Lady was rescinded). Likewise, St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Fr. F. V.XIV.71 identifies the Accusations as ‘Le proces contre la belle dame sans mercy dont elle demanda deslay’ (the trial against the Belle Dame sans mercy in which she requested a delay); the Dame lealle as ‘Le jugement comment la dame fut trouvé loyale en amours’ (the judgment by which the Lady was found loyal in love); and the Cruelle Femme as ‘Cy commence la cruelle dame en amours’19 (Here begins the cruel lady in love). The aforementioned BnF, fr. 1169 also establishes the relationship between the two trial poems it contains: it introduces the Dame lealle as such: ‘La dame lealle en amours’ 17 It is interesting to add here that another one of the Querelle manuscripts, Hague, KB, 71 E 49 also embraces the metaphor of the chessboard. It displays a portrait of the lover and lady playing chess on the opening page of the manuscript, the commencement of the BDSM. 18 The location of the Fribourg-Diesbach manuscript is currently unknown, however, Piaget wrote a detailed description of it (see Piaget in Romania 34, 1905: 597–602) and used it extensively in his editions of these imitation poems. The trial poems appear in order in this manuscript, except for the placement of Chartier’s Debat Reveille matin after the letters and before the Accusations. 19 Most vexing, the items mentioned are arranged out of order in this codex.

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(The Lady Loyal in Love), and the following Cruelle Femme as ‘Le jugement contraire a la lealle dame en amours’ (The judgment against the Loyal Lady in Love). There is also non-scribal evidence which attests to the anticipation of sequential reading of the texts, such as the intervention posted just after the Accusations in BnF, fr. 924, written in the hand of the possessor Jacques Thiboust on fol. 17v, which proclaims in accordance with Love’s court: ‘Nous serons contre la Belle Dame sans mercy’ (We will now be against the Belle Dame sans mercy).20 Despite the impetus to sequential reading, however, a majority of the manuscripts, fifteen of the twenty-four containing the trial episodes, present the poems out of order. It is clear that some factor or factors have interfered in the proper arrangement of the narrative. BnF, fr. 924, for example, is one of the most complete manuscripts of the Querelle. A late fifteenth-century manuscript written on paper, it contains all of the trial poems and most of the ‘imitations’ listed by Piaget. Yet, surprisingly, the episodes are out of order. Chartier’s BDSM (number 1 in the ordered sequence) opens the codex and the Querelle, as one would wish, but the sequence is immediately interrupted – the Querelle almost negated before it is launched – by the presence of a poem entitled La Belle Dame qui eut mercy in which the Belle Dame capitulates to the lover’s request.21 This antipodinal poem is followed by the Accusations (number 3), the instigating Lettres of the ladies and noblemen to Chartier and Chartier’s Excusacion (number 2), Cruelle Femme (number 5), Dame lealle (number 4) and finally the Erreurs (number 6). This gives the arrangement: 1, (X, that is, non-trial poem), 3, 2, 5, 4, 6. The most cursory glance reveals that the narrative is out of order; such disorder would present a disjointed, if not a chaotic, reading experience for the uninitiated. And yet the owner of this manuscript, Jacques Thiboust, lord of Quintilly and a self-appointed mécène of his region, obviously read these works carefully: he has corrected the BDSM according to another exemplar, and as quoted above, noted his personal reaction to the Querelle just after the Accusations: ‘Nous serons contre la Belle Dame sans mercy’. The disorder of BnF, fr. 924 violates the expectation of narrative order and posits the question of why a scribe would be so careless with his copying of the poems. A close inspection of the manuscript, however, reveals this codex was not fashioned in the same manner as BnF, fr. 1131, BnF, fr. 1169, or Arsenal, 3521 mentioned above, all three of which were copied continuously; that is

20

Belle Dame sans mercy is not italicised here as it could refer either to Chartier’s poem or to his character. 21 La Belle Dame qui eut mercy presents a debate between a lover and lady, much like Chartier’s poem, but the lady capitulates to the lover’s pleas after 34 stanzas. It is not clear whether this poem is an imitation of Chartier’s poem or whether it pre-dates it: some have attributed it to Oton de Granson. For an edition of this poem see Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 453–79), and for discussion of its authorship and dating (20–1).

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to say, the explicit of one poem is immediately followed, usually on the same folio, by the implicit of the next poem. BnF, fr. 924 is quite different, for each of the poems in the codex is contained in an individual quire. Moreover, the inner and outer leaves of first item, the BDSM, are protective parchment leaves which embrace the inner leaves of paper. Indeed, each poem was copied in its own quire as an integral piece unto itself, as a ‘booklet’. Pamela R. Robinson’s seminal study of booklets suggests that copying items in a single quire, as a little unbound book, was not uncommon.22 Unlike bound manuscripts or pecia, the booklet was a complete copy of a text that could circulate alone: ‘a small but structurally independent production containing a single work or a number of short works’ (46). Since the cost of binding books was considerable, the booklet offered a less expensive alternative to the traditional bound codex. In addition, it was highly portable and would be easy to lend to family and friends. Robinson’s detailed description of what constitutes a booklet enables the identification of the quires of BnF, fr. 924 as booklets which were later bound together to form the codex. As evidence of the existence of booklets, Robinson cites several items of Charles V’s library – those items described as ‘petit livres’ (sic) or ‘livrets’ which are valued at a substantially lower sum than one would expect, indicating that these items are unbound ‘booklets’. Similarly, the library catalogues of Charles d’Orléans, more contemporary to the time of Chartier and to BnF, fr. 924 owner Jacques Thiboust, also describe the existence of such booklets. The entries distinguish between a bound manuscript, in leather or velvet, with clasps or other ornaments, and the unbound quires.23 Included in the inventories of Charles d’Orléans’s books is a copy of one of Chartier’s early narrative poems, bound only in parchment: ‘item, ung viel Livre des Quatre Dames, en papier, couvert de viel parchemin’24 (Item, an old Livre des Quatre Dames, in paper, covered with old parchment). According to James Laidlaw, ‘the length of the Livre des Quatre Dames is such that it could conveniently be copied to make up a volume of small format.’25 It appears that this copy of the LQD was constructed in the much the same fashion as the first quire of BnF, fr. 924, with the outer folios of parchment serving

22

Robinson (1980). Hence, for example we see a Pizan text: ‘Ung livre des Espitres du debat sur le Romant de la Rose, couvert de cuire rouge, a deux fermaulx de laton’, Champion (1975: 32). 24 Champion (1975: 30). 25 Laidlaw lists six manuscripts which are known which contain only this poem. Manuscript De (Heidelberg, U.B., Pal. Germ. 354) might be the copy mentioned in the catalogue. It is the only extant copy of the LQD on paper, and according to Laidlaw, its text closely resembles that of Pj, (BnF, fr. 20026) which belonged to Marie de Clèves, wife of Charles d’Orléans. Such a copy would surely have been important to Charles if indeed his second wife Bonne d’Armagnac is the Second Lady of the poem. See Alain Chartier (1974a: 34–6, 62), and Altmann in this volume. 23

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to protect the inner leaves of paper. Later items are also probable booklets: ‘ung petit livret de papier, contenant les “Questions d’amours” ’26 (a small booklet of paper, containing the ‘Questions of Love’) and ‘Plusieurs quaiers de parchemin, nouvellement escripts et enluminés, apportés d’angleterre, qui ne sont point reliés’,27 (several quires of parchment, newly written and illuminated, brought from England, which are not bound in any way) among others. Even though the items are not assigned value as were those of the library of Charles V, the descriptions are adequately detailed to reveal which items are bound and which are unbound. The mention of these unbound texts in the catalogue, described as ‘livret’ or ‘quaiers’ is evidence that Charles d’Orléans, like Charles V, collected booklets as well as bound books and that this method of collecting texts was becoming pervasive by the fifteenth century. The description of the contents of both Charles d’Orléans’s and Charles V’s libraries suggests that unbound quires or booklets, self-contained units produced without the additional cost of binding, were circulating among the literate population. More specifically, we can surmise that Alain Chartier’s poems were also circulating in this fashion. Undoubtedly a popular option for a growing readership wanting to spend less money on more texts, booklets must have been abundant at the time. One would hope to find many of them extant, still intact in their wrappings; however, booklets, obviously more fragile than their bound counterparts, rarely survived. They were sometimes preserved, however, because they were eventually bound with other texts to form a cumulative or composite volume.28 Since their true nature is today concealed by the binding, Robinson proposes ten criteria by which a now bound booklet can still be identified. BnF, fr. 924 displays eight of these characteristics. First of all, each item in BnF, fr. 924 is contained in a single quire, with the exception of two poems, item 11: Achille Caulier’s Ospital, considered an integral poem of the wider Querelle, extends to two quires of 14 leaves (quires 8, 9) and item 14: Chartier’s DDFA (quires 12, 13; one of 14 leaves, the other of 12 leaves). The terminal folio of the first quire of both of these texts displays the only catchwords visible in the entire codex. Robinson advises that the dimensions of the folio leaves from one booklet to the next will vary, assuming that a binder has not cropped the margins. In BnF, fr. 924, this characteristic is immediately visible and permits easy thumbing to each poem. In accordance with another of Robinson’s characteristics, the style of decoration differs from the first item, BDSM, which is nicely, if simply, decorated on the first folio, to the others, which have no decoration beyond capitals, rubrics, pen scrolls, and personal doodles. BnF, fr. 924 adheres to yet another characteristic of booklet production in that 26 27 28

See Champion (1911: 323, item [6561]). Champion (1911: 324, item [6562]). See Hasenohr’s classification of manuscripts: Hasenohr (37–50, esp. 39).

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the outside leaves of items 1, 14, and 16 are soiled and rubbed, a condition which suggests that these booklets circulated independently before being bound with the other poems. As indicated earlier, the number of folios of each of the items of the codex differs: quires range in length from 8 leaves to 22 leaves, often with the first or last leaf or leaves canceled. Such is the case for items 3, 4, 6, 9, in which the last folio is canceled, and for items 11, 14 in which the first is canceled. Item 14 is more complicated, since the first and last three folios are canceled and a new leaf is inserted at the end. If a poem ends before the quire and a leaf or two is not canceled, a blank page or pages will terminate the quire, as is the case at the end of items 1, 12, 14, 15, 18, and 19. An additional trait which Robinson does not mention, but which is pertinent when dealing with paper manuscripts, is the watermark. In BnF, fr. 924, each quire uses paper with a single and consistent watermark, whether a barred P, a unicorn, a crowned coat of arms, a pot, or a weather vane; all, that is, except item 1, the BDSM, which combines the papers of two different watermarks: the barred P and the unicorn. The trial poems all have the same watermark except for item 6, Dame lealle, which is unique in its display of the crowned coat of arms watermark instead of the unicorn. The different watermark may well be an indication that Dame lealle was obtained at an earlier or, more probably, a later date. Despite the fact that BnF, fr. 924 does not present Robinson’s criteria of differing scribal hands, we can surmise with probability that this codex is composed of booklets, and thus was originally compiled item by item. Codicological evidence reveals that each poem is contained in its own quire, and that each quire is composed of a different number of leaves. Furthermore, for the first quire, the initial and final folios are made from a single folded sheet of parchment, decorated on the front to serve as a frontispiece. This copy of the BDSM could stand alone, as a single unit, protected by the more durable outer folios of parchment. It appears to have been designed and to have functioned as a self-contained unit, circulating without a binding. Further investigation into other Querelle manuscripts reveals a similar construction. Several other BDSM manuscripts appear to have been produced in the same manner, two of them probably by the same scribe or workshop which copied the quires of BnF, fr. 924: Copenhagen, KB, Ny Kgl. Saml. 1768.2 and The Hague, KB, 71 E 49. Both of these codices contain an initial booklet of the BDSM reflecting the same construction of outer leaves of parchment. In addition, the hand and decorative motif of the initial folio in these three copies of the BDSM is almost identical. As for the other texts in these manuscripts, they, too, display the characteristic organization of one poem per quire, and they share similar textual readings. The Copenhagen manuscript, however, distinguishes itself from the Paris and Hague codices by its multiplicity of hands, but whether this manuscript served as the exemplum, and was written first, or was made as a subsequent copy is not clear.

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A less impressive embodiment awaited the collection of booklets which Florencio Hauweel, another fifteenth-century reader of the Querelle, gathered together. This manuscript owner was apparently attempting to compile a book of the Querelle and eventually had them inexpensively bound and collected in a parchment sleeve on which had been written a charter dated 1476.29 This petite codex of six quires (seventy folios) is now held in the library of Arnhem in the Netherlands, MS 79, and it appears to bear witness to the typical fate of these booklets – either tucked back in a corner or eventually destroyed. This manuscript was almost burned in the nineteenth century as the librarian was cleaning out and was saved just in time: the manuscript still shows blackened scars from the fire. Its parchment wrapper, stained green in three spots by either copper clasps or green ink, is kept in the box with it.30 The six quires of differing length each contain a single poem (with the exception of quire 4 which contains three shorter poems on twelve folios), with several sixteenth-century additions on the originally blank pages at the end of quires. There are four different scribal hands, several page layouts, no original pagination, no table of contents, and the pages have not been trimmed. The trial poems are presented in order, with the exception of quire 4 containing the Excusacion and the only letter included; one of only four extant copies of the Responce des dames;31 followed by Chartier’s Debat Reveille matin. The soiled and worn edges of quire 6, containing Le Naufrage de la Pucelle (not considered an imitation poem by Piaget), suggest that this booklet may have circulated alone. Indeed, as it has little to do with the Querelle de la BDSM, it may have been acquired after the other booklets or added to the collection in order to give it more breadth. Paris, Arsenal, 3523, a manuscript which contains the bulk of the Querelle poems as well as the works of François Villon, presents itself as another interesting case worth considering briefly here. The manuscript description of Jeanroy and Droz is particularly enlightening: Manuscript 3523 of the Arsenal Library is a large paper compilation of 818 pages numbered in the nineteenth century, although the first 119 leaves had been earlier numbered. It was copied by many hands and is probably the work of different scribes of the same workshop. Mr A. Longnon notes that the Lais of Villon are the work of a single copyist; this is possible, although several of the hands are quite similar; but the paper of the Lais, having a watermark of a fleur de lis, is found elsewhere.32

29

See Laidlaw’s description of the manuscript (Alain Chartier 1974a: 124). This wrapping is remarkably similar to Robinson’s plate 3 of Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 220 showing the original binding of that manuscript. 31 The Responce, written in reaction to Chartier’s Excusacion, is extant in only three other manuscripts: Besançon 554, Arsenal, 3521, and the now missing FribourgDiesbach. 32 Jeanroy and Droz (vii–viii). 30

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Note in this description that the authors speak of the pages, page numbering, hands, and even the watermark of the different poems of the codex, but do not mention the quire divisions. It is not, then, that the scholars reject the idea of booklets; rather, it never occurs to them that consideration of the quire structure might be significant. Subsequent examination of this manuscript prompted Di Stefano, on the other hand, to characterize Arsenal, 3523 ‘as synthetic, in the sense that one can identify the hands of several scribes, but especially one recognizes distinct groupings which pre-existed the volume as it is currently composed.’33 He surmises that the current codex is an amalgamation (Hasenohr’s cumulative codex) of at least two earlier manuscripts based on the different hands and the written explicit of ‘Et ho’ of several of the poems. Again, there is no consideration of quire division in the manuscript’s description. Recently, Jane Taylor has argued from another angle, suggesting that Arsenal, 3523 is not a composite, defined as ‘a volume amalgamating sheets and gatherings from more than one pre-existing manuscript.’34 I would concur: we must consider the possibility that this is not a compilation of parts of other codices, but is, instead a compilation of booklets, texts that were collected together and then bound, never having been bound before. Laidlaw provides us with the quire-structure in his description of the manuscript35 and I have confirmed it; each poem is self-contained within a quire (occasionally two quires for the longer items) of varying lengths as a functional booklet. Taylor’s argument is put forward in order to support a theory that there is an underlying and deliberate architecture to the codex, a theory which is undermined if one believes Arsenal, 3523 to have been re-composed from formerly distinct or partial codices. Further reflection, however, suggests that the architecture of the codex need not be jeopardized in any way if indeed the manuscript is a compilation of booklets. For we might consider that the architect of the codex is not the binder of the manuscript or the scribe, but the collector of booklets who chose, purchased, and perhaps arranged the texts for the binder. It is at this point that the manuscript became the ‘coherent and single codex’ that Taylor so persuasively analyses.36 Assemblage was often exquisitely crafted by the collector and/or binder, as she and Cayley clearly show,37 but sometimes was less well done or was completely neglected at the time of binding, as the case of BnF, fr. 924 demonstrates. Moreover, Taylor points out that many manuscripts are written

33

Di Stefano (1988: 17). Jane H. M. Taylor (2001: 25). 35 See Alain Chartier (1974a: 116–17). 36 Jane H. M. Taylor (2001: 25). 37 For a recent discussion of the composition of Arsenal, 3523, see Cayley (2006a: Ch. 4), and (Forthcoming 2008). 34

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in different hands, as is the Arsenal manuscript,38 underscoring, we might conclude, the theory that many texts were being produced in single quires for individual sale and gathered together and bound after they were purchased. Such a production method for manuscripts, however, has garnered little attention in the booksellers’ records of the times or in scholarly notes. We do know that at the time of BnF, fr. 924’s production in the second half of the fifteenth century, the University in Paris still held major control of the production and sale of manuscripts. Regulations strictly controlled the transmission of books, especially with regard to producing new copies of texts by renting or copying from transcripts, tracing the inheritance of books, and selling previously owned books. Works which were allowed for sale on commission were closely watched, and dealers in books were prohibited from buying books themselves to resell except after offering the manuscripts for public sale for a determined period of time.39 When a work was sold, the name of the purchaser and the price received was carefully recorded. New works could only be copied by the stationers after a licence for the new work was obtained. These strict regulations on book production and transferral of ownership were supposed to control both quality and price.40 Other statutes dictated what texts could be held by licensed booksellers and how many copies a bookseller was allowed to stock.41 Theological works, student books and costly illuminated volumes were of greatest concern to the University and stationers’ shops which produced and sold these items. Outside of these shops, however, there was a shadow market for less expensive and non-academic texts, and the need was filled by unlicensed dealers who were not members of the University, but were still under their authority: the book peddlers. These peddlers were not allowed to do business in standing buildings nor could they sell any volume worth more than ten sous.42 Such an arrangement, intended to discourage any selling of serious or valuable manuscripts, must have lent itself well to the production and selling of booklets, as they were inexpensive, portable, and could contain a single work or several short works of current public interest. Indeed, in London, we have evidence that the book trade was developing and expanding in favor of booklets, and away from ‘bespoke’ or commissioned books. As Andrew Taylor states: ‘by the fifteenth century and perhaps earlier the commercial book trade developing in London was beginning to rely on a predictable readership and to produce at least some work on speculation.’43 If we might be allowed to extrapolate from the market process in

38 39 40 41 42 43

See Jane H. M. Taylor (2001: 182 n67). Putnam (vol. 1: 258–9). Putnam (260). Ibid. (257). Ibid. (260). Andrew Taylor (358–9).

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London to imagine the situation in Paris, we can recognize that poems made popular by a vigorous courtly debate, such as those of the Querelle, and which were of interest to readers inside and outside of courtly circles, would have provided a safe bet for such speculative production. A reader could buy in booklet form the poem that he or she had not yet read or was interested in adding to a personal collection, and decide later whether to pay the high cost of binding the collection. Such booklets could be passed around from friend to friend, much as we pass around paperback best-sellers or articles today. Indeed, Julia Boffey and John Thompson suggest as much: ‘Both the French and English versions [of the BDSM] are of a length which would fill one large gathering, or a pamphlet-sized collection of several small ones, and the earliest readers of the work probably handled it in this flimsy form; one of the extant copies of the English translation, in BL MS Sloane 1710, preserves it as a single (now fragmentary) booklet.’44 It seems highly probable, then, that the manuscripts we have examined were indeed produced as booklets, and that it was in a book peddler’s stall that the quires were sold. At some point these quires, each containing its individual poem, were gathered together and taken to the binder for preservation.45 At that time the pages may have been numbered and an introduction and table of contents written on the outer fly-leaf.46 To return to our original question, then: why a scribe would be careless about the ordering of such a self-consciously ordered series, the answer is quite simple, if not exhaustive. It is possible that the scribe had nothing to do with arranging or ordering the codex. The scribe or scribes simply copied each narrative as a single piece, in a single quire (or two quires for the longer items). It was in all likelihood the owner or the binder who was responsible for the disorder of the poems, or indeed the exquisite order of the codex, as Cayley and Taylor have demonstrated in their studies.47 Such a finding, initially perhaps disappointing, is in fact enlightening, for it provides unexpected insight into what may well have been the primary function of the constituent parts of these manuscripts, their eventual construction as a codex, and the resulting disorder of the trial narrative so central to the Querelle de la BDSM. Through the example of these manuscripts we can

44

Boffey and Thompson (283). BnF, fr. 924 was rebound in white leather in 1975 so we know nothing of its original binding. There are two sets of pagination, one, in roman numerals, may be contemporary (late fifteenth century), the other, in arabic numerals, is surely later, probably sixteenth century. 46 The introduction to the manuscript details that it contains ‘les xxii livres de feu Maistre Alain Chartier’. Many of the imitation poems were attributed to Alain Chartier in the contemporary manuscripts. Even the Duchesne collected edition of Chartier’s works in 1617 attributes the Accusations to him, albeit with hesitation. 47 Jane H. M. Taylor (2001); Cayley (2006a). 45

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glimpse how popular texts may have been created, consumed and promulgated to the public. Our expectations of scribal practice must be widened to account for those manuscripts which were not carefully planned, those manuscripts which, although far from being created haphazardly, were constructed item by item from booklets conceived with the intention of disposability. Produced with the intent of portability, not durability, they managed to survive in circumstances which leave scholars with many questions, certainly, but also with clues to the answering of those questions. There are surely many more of these collections of fifteenth-century booklets, some of them fastidiously preserved, some of them surviving by chance. Bound as most of them are today, hands on codicological exploration is essential to identify them. Examination of such codices can be greatly fruitful, as such study will lead to greater exploration into the methods of production and distribution of booklets and glean new information of how ‘best-sellers’, texts like the poems of the Querelle de la BDSM, were disseminated, as well as understood, by contemporary medieval audiences.

7

The Early Reception of Chartier’s Works in England and Scotland JULIA BOFFEY Following the history of the English reception of Alain Chartier’s works affords the opportunity to survey both synchronically and diachronically something of the history of Anglo-French and Franco-Scottish cultural exchange in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Certain of Chartier’s works were known in both England and Scotland for a long time. They circulated in French, in manuscripts written in France and brought to England, and were in some instances translated into English and/or Scottish versions. Some were among the earliest works to be printed in England and in Scotland, and their availability in later printed copies secured them still longer life on into the sixteenth century. The length of time over which the works were produced and read means that as a group these ‘English’ works constitute a useful body of evidence for anyone concerned with the cultural implications of translation and reception during the decades in which the Middle Ages turned into the early modern period. Work undertaken by James Laidlaw and Margaret S. Blayney has gone a considerable way to uncovering the networks which brought Chartier’s works to the attention of English readers, and the forms in which they were transmitted. The fruits of this research mainly concern La Belle Dame sans mercy and a group of prose works, translations of Le Quadrilogue invectif, Le Livre de l’Esperance, and the Latin Dialogus familiaris amici et sodalis, all of which survive in translation in multiple manuscript copies. Some information about English and Scottish readership of French copies of these and other of Chartier’s works, and of further translations, can also be pieced together. It is clear not just that Chartier had a perceptible Anglo-Scottish reputation, but also that this reputation derived from two particular clusters of interest: one concerning the BDSM, and the other the works of secular political council which were to seem especially pertinent to the situation in England during the later part of the reign of Henry VI (1422–61, 1470–71). ‘Mayster Aleyn’ (as Chartier is called in the prologue to the English translation of the BDSM) seems to have become a source of objective wisdom, whose credentials as a royal clerk/secretary and notary may have lent a special weight to writings associated with his name.

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That Chartier’s French works had English readers throughout the fifteenth century is hardly surprising. It would have been difficult for English visitors to France, whether on military or diplomatic service or other kinds of business, to remain unaware of works whose wide circulation is attested by such a large number of surviving manuscripts, and which were later to proliferate in printed editions produced in Paris and other centres. Certain aspects of Chartier’s own biography may have lent a special appeal to some of his writings: his experiences in ‘exile’ from Paris with the Dauphin after 1418 may have had a particular resonance for later English readers in a time of civil strife; his professional connections with circles including not just French royalty and magnates but also Christine de Pizan and her son Jean Chastel (another royal secretary) possibly helped recommend his works to English audiences; and his diplomatic visit to the court of James I of Scotland in 1428 almost certainly had some effect on Scottish knowledge of and circulation of his works.1 While there is a little material evidence from surviving manuscripts that fifteenth-century English-speaking readers perused Chartier’s works in French (and probably scope for much more research into this), the information preserved is not very useful in suggesting a chronology for the transmission and circulation of his writings in these circles. The English verse additions made in a late fifteenth-century hand in London, British Library, MS Royal 19 A III, where copies of the BDSM and Le Breviaire des nobles (probably also made relatively late in the fifteenth century) accompany six other French poems of roughly similar lengths, for example, would seem to postdate the composition of the original French versions of these two works by at least fifty years.2 Even though they may tell us little about early reception of Chartier in England, however, these English verse additions at least suggest something about the contexts in which his works circulated, and about the responses they provoked. The contents of this apparently quite carefully planned anthology, in which Chartier’s poems are accompanied by Baudet Herenc’s Les Accusations contre la Belle Dame sans mercy and works such as Michault Taillevent’s Le Debat du cueur et de l’œil, prompted the English annotator to add a presentation address (of two rhyme royal stanzas) from a true servant in love who offers the volume to a ‘bewtie pereles’: I you beseche of your moste godely hode This litille Boke it might rehersed be Vnto suche fayre that do excile pite Whiche causeth theire louers to morne with peinfull hert And not relesse them of theire peynes smerte. (fol. 16v)3

1 2 3

See Laidlaw’s introduction in Alain Chartier (1974a: 5; 12–13). Warner and Gilson (vol. 3, 317–18). Seaton (113–14).

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The sentiments suggest that the presenter/scribe was concerned to underline the significance of the book’s contents for an audience of would-be lovers, and indeed that he used the opportunity of annotating it in order to draw his own amorous transactions into its context of courtly debate, negotiation, and exchange. It was probably some years, if not decades, before the copying of these stanzas, that Chartier’s BDSM was turned into English.4 The translator supplies a little information about her/himself in a prologue and afterword (these in rhyme royal stanzas, not the eight-line ballade stanzas of the main body of the translation), indicating that the redaction was undertaken ‘For hem to whom I durst nat disobey’ (l. 7), as an act of penance.5 Struck by the distance between ‘Myn unconnyng and my gret simplenesse’ and the rhetorical facility of ‘mayster Aleyn . . . Cheef secretarie with the king of Fraunce’ (ll. 17, 11–12), he takes himself off to a flowery dell to undertake his commission, and concludes it with a humble envoy (headed in some of the copies ‘verba translatoris’) commending the book to the charge and correction of future readers. There are no further clues in the text about the translator’s identity, or about the circumstances in which he received his commission. The range of manuscripts and early printed editions in which this translation is extant, however, helps to construct something of the context in which the translation was undertaken, and in which Chartier was accessible to English readers. All but one of the six surviving manuscripts are anthologies of some kind, mostly combining the BDSM with other courtly dits and débats similar to the French contents of BL, MS Royal 19 A III (and no doubt to many other French volumes in which the poem is preserved).6 In Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16, its closest companions are Hoccleve’s translation of Christine de Pizan’s l’Epistre de Cupide, a humorous game-poem called ‘Ragman Roll’, and Lydgate’s amorous dream vision The Temple of Glass.7 In Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 19, it is in a selfcontained booklet with poems on ‘The Ten Commandments of Love’ and ‘The Nine Ladies Worthy’.8 In The Marquess of Bath’s MS Longleat 258, it follows an anonymous English translation of Taillevent’s Debat du cueur et de l’œil (also in BL, MS Royal 19 A III, as noted above), and is accompanied by Chaucerian and pseudo-Chaucerian love-debates and love-complaints. It 4

Roos (1897: 299–326), and more recently Dana Symons’s edition in Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints (2004), with helpful introductory remarks and annotation. The nature of the translation has been recently discussed in detail by Melissa L. Brown; Kinch, (2006a) and (2006b). See also Honegger. 5 The framing sections are discussed in detail in Kinch (2006b). 6 The exception is London, British Library, MS Sloane 1710, a composite collection, where the BDSM occupies a gathering on its own. 7 Editions are listed in the facsimile: Norton-Smith (Intro.). 8 Editions are listed in Fletcher (Intro.).

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is worth noting that Hoccleve’s Christine de Pizan translation once figured in this manuscript too, according to an original table of contents.9 The last three of these manuscripts are substantial anthologies of mostly courtly material, where a focus on things French is identifiable sometimes in the sources of the English works, sometimes in their known associations (some of MS Fairfax 16’s short works are connected with Charles d’Orléans, for example), and sometimes in the form of French phrases or French mottos. The Gallic flavour persists in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 6, the now well-known ‘Findern manuscript’, even though this collection contains the contributions of many different scribes and seems randomly accretive in its construction, with many more miscellaneous contents added apparently over the course of some time.10 Here the BDSM is copied after the romance, Sir Degrevant, and some heraldic and historical notes, and is followed by a series of short love lyrics. Elsewhere in the manuscript, though, are poems encountered previously in connection with the Chartier translation: Hoccleve’s Letter of Cupid, Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, and several of the Chaucerian and pseudo-Chaucerian poems included in MS Longleat 258. Like a number of the French manuscripts of the BDSM, these collections have a definable interest in issues relating to love, and in debate and dialogue.11 Only BL, MS Harley 372 preserves the BDSM with significantly different material: Lydgate’s long lives of St Edmund and St Fremund, other mainly religious Lydgatian verse, and Chaucer’s Anelida and Arcite.12 The geographical range of the origins of these copies of the BDSM offers further clues to the diversity of Chartier’s English readers. MS Harley 372 was most probably a metropolitan production, connected textually to anthologies produced in the circle of the London scribe John Shirley and those with later access to his anthologies.13 MS Trinity R. 3. 19, possibly of a slightly later date, was also a London production, made up of fascicles copied by a number of scribes associated with the stationer John Multon.14 Although little is clear about the geographical origins of MS Longleat 258, this too was certainly in London in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, where the printer Wynkyn de Worde had access to it, and William Thynne, clerk of the kitchen to Henry VIII, apparently used and probably owned

9

Hammond. See Kate Harris (1983); and Beadle and Owen (Intro). 11 Cayley (2002), and (2006a: 136–88); Calin (2006). 12 Seymour (1995: vol. 1, 37–8). 13 See Connolly (188 n. 50). The origins of MS Fairfax 16 have also been supposed to be metropolitan, on the grounds that its one miniature (inserted on a singleton) was the work of the London artist William Abell. Kathleen Scott’s reassigning of the miniature to the Abingdon Missal Master, probably working in Oxford, rather complicates this view – although she does note that the Abingdon Missal Master is recorded as working with Abell on occasion. See Scott (vol. 2, 280–1). 14 Fletcher (xv); Mooney. 10

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it.15 While all this constitutes substantial evidence for a mainly metropolitan circulation, the origins of CUL, MS Ff.1.6 in the north midlands (probably Derbyshire),16 and the fact that the commissioner of Fairfax 16 hailed from Cheshire,17 indicate a wider dissemination. The identity of the translator of the BDSM is clearly of signal importance to understanding who was reading Chartier in England, and how they responded to it. The single manuscript to offer any information about this is MS Harley 372 – rather curiously, in the light of the somewhat anomalous context in which it preserves its copy of the BDSM. Here the text is introduced with the heading: ‘La belle dame sanz mercy / translated out of ffrenche by Sir Richard Ros’ (fol. 61r), an attribution which was to suggest to the scholar of French poetry, Ethel Seaton, a candidate for the authorship of both the BDSM and many more fifteenth-century anonymous English poems.18 The copies of the translation in MSS Harley 372 and Fairfax 16 may well be the earliest copies, both produced before about 1470 and possibly some time before this.19 Textually, they are closer to each other than to any other of the surviving copies, but their affiliation is not of a sort to confer particular authority, since what they share is a nonsensical order of stanzas which must derive from an exemplar in which some leaves had become disarranged.20 Such disorder may cast doubt on the authority of the ascription. To complicate matters further, there are two individuals by the name of Richard Roos. The earlier candidate is a Richard Roos who became a king’s knight in the entourage of Henry VI, and died in London – by this time in the service of Edward IV – in 1481/2. His nephew of the same name followed the same pattern of Lancastrian-turned-Yorkist allegiance, and died some time after 1493. The knightly status of the elder Richard, coinciding with the ‘Sir Richard Roos’ of the attribution in MS Harley 372, may tip the balance in his favour (although the matter may well have been open to confusion in the mind of a scribe who was recounting hearsay), as may the fact that Sir Richard’s family connections with both the commissioner of MS Fairfax 16 and with some of the families involved in the compilation of the 15

Blodgett. Beadle and Owen (vii–viii). 17 Norton-Smith (xiii). 18 See Seaton. 19 For MS Harley 372 a terminus of 1461 or 1471 is suggested by the conclusion of Lydgate’s Verses on the kings of England with Henry VI (Edward IV came to the throne in 1461 and again in 1471). The likely commissioner of MS Fairfax 16 was dead by 1469; and an early terminus for this anthology is suggested by the note ‘Anno 1450’ in a contemporary hand on fol. 1r. The date at which the translation was executed is discussed by Kinch (2006a: 422–29). 20 The text also preserves idiosyncracies which suggest greater rather than lesser distance from the French; to the extent that a sixteenth-century reader of MS Harley 372 (who may be John Stow) has highlighted these deficiencies by collating the text with another one, possibly an early printed edition. 16

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Findern manuscript21 may be implicated in the appearance of the BDSM in those volumes. Both of these Richard Rooses, as so many other English aristocrats and gentlemen in the fifteenth century, travelled extensively in France. The elder served in the wars under Sir John Talbot, and returned to France in 1444 to witness the proxy wedding between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. The younger was taken prisoner after the siege of Rouen in 1449 by Pierre de Brezé – himself the hero of several love-debates, and later a supporter of Margaret of Anjou during her period of forced withdrawal from England in the 1460s.22 As was the case for so many other aristocratic or gentle prisoners, the enforced leisure available to this younger Richard Roos could have offered time for the scrutiny of manuscripts and for experiments with translation, just as it did for Charles d’Orléans during his English captivity.23 Equally, though, a French copy of the BDSM might easily have crossed the channel to England into the hands of whichever Richard Roos translated it. Those returning to England from service in France certainly sometimes brought French manuscripts with them, and books could come by other routes as well, for instance among the household effects of such noble prisoners as Charles d’Orléans and his brother Jean d’Angoulême. The library of Jean d’Angoulême included at his death some of Chartier’s works, and it is not inconceivable that the volumes travelled with him to England, or were brought to join them there.24 Whatever the accuracy of the authorship attribution in MS Harley 372, the trajectory of either (Sir) Richard Roos’s life and the particular nature of his affiliations make it entirely plausible that he should have had access to Chartier’s writings and some occasion to experiment with responding to them. Moving from the BDSM to explore instances of the English reception of other of Chartier’s works does not in fact necessitate leaving this milieu behind. A copy of the Breviaire, for example, was included in the large presentation volume of romances and other noble works (now BL, MS Royal 15 E VI) which Sir John Talbot – whose follower Roos probably was – presented to Margaret of Anjou, most probably in 1445 on the occasion of her marriage.25 English translations of Chartier’s Esperance, Quadrilogue, and the Dialogus, all made by one individual, have been reasonably convincingly attributed to Sir John Fortescue, political theorist, chief justice, and Lancastrian supporter,26 whose closeness to Henry VI and more especially

21 22 23 24 25 26

Gray. Seaton (35–8). See Arn. See Champion (1911: 121). Warner and Gilson (vol. 2, 177–9) Ca 1397–1479; see Ives.

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to Margaret of Anjou reflects something of the pattern of Sir Richard Roos’s service. Although, like Roos, Fortescue would eventually be pardoned by Edward IV, he left England for Scotland and later France with Margaret from 1461 until both were captured after the Battle of Tewkesbury ten years later – with ample opportunity, one might think, for reading Chartier’s works about the fortunes of the state, and rendering them in English versions. Early testimony to Fortescue’s authorship no longer survives in material form, but his association with the translations derives from a catalogue of the Cotton library, made by Thomas Smith before the fire which damaged or destroyed so much of the collection. Smith there attributes to Sir John Fortescue a translation of the Esperance now preserved in MS Cotton Vitellius E. x in fragmentary form.27 Since on stylistic and other evidence this translator of the Esperance seems also to have been responsible for the English renderings of the Quadrilogue, and the Dialogus (this from Chartier’s Latin rather than the Middle French), Fortescue has been credited with the translation of all three. In the view of their modern editor, Margaret S. Blayney, ‘his authorship cannot be taken for granted’; but she adds that ‘the evidence that he may have been the translator, however, is strong, if not sufficient for positive conclusion’.28 Like the English version of the BDSM, these translations had a comparatively wide transmission. Three manuscripts preserve at least parts of all three works: University of Chicago, Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20; the former Sion Coll, MS L.40.2/E.43;29 and Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D 1.30 The most authoritative copies of the Treatise and the Quadrilogue are found together (without the Familiar Dialogue) in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson A 338, used by Blayney for her edition; and (as mentioned above) BL, Cotton Vitellius E. x preserves a short fragment of the Treatise. The commissioner of at least one of these books can be connected with Fortescue and his circle. As Blayney was able to demonstrate, the Heydon family arms and names in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson A 338 tie that manuscript to Henry Heydon, whose father was a lawyer and a Lancastrian supporter, and whose wife’s sister was married to Fortescue’s nephew.31 Less is known about the early owners and readers of the other manuscripts, although the Newberry Library volume appears to have had early Lincolnshire connections, and the copy now in Lambeth Palace Library (on the flyleaf of which is the curious note ‘explicit Peter Idyll’) was to come to the

27

Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 26). Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 27). 29 Now in Lambeth Palace Library: see Pickering and O’Mara (1999: 81). 30 For descriptions see Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 4–14). 31 Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 6–8, 27). Scott (vol. 2, 352) notes that the borders are by an artist who worked on the book of hours which is now Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 55 (provenance unknown). 28

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library of Sir Robert Coke of Norfolk, son of the sixteenth-century Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke.32 The damaged state of MS Cotton Vitellius E. x does not allow for much speculation about the provenance of this (presumably once-complete) copy of The Treatise of Hope, which has been bound with other charred gatherings into a composite volume whose present contents may originally have been unrelated. But the volume also includes a copy of The Libelle of English Policy which ends with a fragmentary copy of a letter mentioning one John Rich, merchant taylor.33 If the Cotton copies of the Treatise and the Libelle were in some way connected at a stage preceding their binding in this volume, then both may have been read by a Londoner interested not just in trade but more broadly in national policies. Such interests also seem discernible in the single manuscript which preserves another, different translation of the Quadrilogue, Oxford, University College, MS 85,34 where it accompanies two further prose translations from French, the Booke of the Governaunce of Kinges and Princes Called the Secreet of Secreetes and III Consideracions Right Necesserye to the Governance of a Prince.35 The scribe who copied these texts has been identified as the prolific Ricardus Franciscus, possibly an alien craftsman, whose hand appears in metropolitan productions such as a grant of arms to the Tallow Chandlers Company, in de luxe copies of works by Lydgate and Gower, and – most tellingly in relation to Chartier’s works – in a copy of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre d’Othéa in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 570, made for Sir John Fastolf.36 The details of Fastolf ’s biography, and the nature of his literary interests, are usefully representative of the experiences and tastes of the kinds

32

This seems to refer in some way to Sir Peter Idyll or Idley of Oxfordshire, author of Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son (ed. d’Evelyn), who was appointed gentleman falconer to Henry VI in 1453 and in 1456 Controller of the King’s Works (to be relieved of duty under Edward IV in 1461). Outside the context of royal service Idley had no obvious connections to Fortescue, but it is worth noting his involvement in transactions concerning property near Lincoln with John Markham, a justice of the king’s bench, who was to succeed Fortescue as Chief Justice (Idyll, 19–20). See also Nall’s essay in this collection. 33 Meale (1995: 221). Davies notes references to other members of a merchant taylor family of this name (105, 107). 34 Described by Scott (vol. 2, 318–20). 35 The first (Four English Political Tracts, 180–209) also appears in Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Eng 530, textually related to John Shirley’s manuscripts but copied in several other hands. For the second, see Secreta Secretorum (vol. 1, 252–384, even pages only). The badge of a wheatsheaf and the motto “Oubliue ne Doye” in MS University College 85 have been taken to indicate an owner named Wheatley or Wheathill (Alain Chartier 1980: vol. 2, 40), or Garneys (Scott, vol. 2, 320). 36 Scott (vol. 2, 318–20). For further discussion of Ricardus Franciscus, see Catherine Nall’s contribution in this volume.

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of fifteenth-century English readers to whom Chartier’s works appealed. Fastolf saw well over twenty years of often distinguished military service in France, held an important role as governor of the household of John, Duke of Bedford, and after Bedford’s death was one of the executors charged with disposing of his substantial French estate.37 In this role he almost certainly had some dealings with the disposition of what is listed in one of Bedford’s inventories as ‘the grete librarie that cam owte of France’,38 and his interests in French books are recorded in the preservation of a clutch of these ‘in the stewe house’ in his castle at Caister,39 and in the commissions given to his secretaries William Worcester and Stephen Scrope to undertake translations of works such as a French version of Cicero’s De senectute, and the Epistre d’Othéa itself. Worcester has left written testimony to his reading of Chartier’s works in the form of passages copied in his notebook40 in November and December 1453, ‘extractus libri Iohannis Fastolf militis habitantis Parisius’ (taken from the book of John Fastolf, a soldier living in Paris).41 Following the pattern of Fastolf ’s interests, the only books apart from service books to be associated with Sir Richard Roos are French books: a copy of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and La Mort Le Roi Artu, now BL, MS Royal 14 E III (to be identified with the ‘grete booke called saint Grall’ bequeathed in Roos’s will to his niece Eleanor),42 and two manuscripts including copies of Les Voeux du Paon: BL, MS Additional 30864, and New York, Public Library, MS Spencer 9, in the latter of which the names of both Roos and his wife Margaret appear.43 This deeply ingrained English taste for French texts is surely comprehensible enough in relation to those parts of the fifteenth century when political circumstances necessitated frequent travel to and from France on military or diplomatic business, and when the Lancastrian court, with its French queen, was a significant cultural force. Chartier’s works had a place in this world for English readers on all sorts of counts. Strikingly, though, he did not fade from view as circumstances changed. There is plenty of evidence that his works continued in circulation during the last decades of the fifteenth century, and indeed that the availability of printed copies may have given them a new accessibility. John Paston II (1442–79) records two copies of the BDSM in an autograph inventory made some time after 1474.44 One was apparently bound with copies of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and The Parliament of Fowls, Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, and some unidentified works – an assort37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

G. L. Harriss. Stratford (95). Bennett (111). Now BL, MS Royal 13 C I, fols 136–138v. Warner and Gilson (vol. 2, 101–2). Cited in Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 8). Seaton (54); Warner and Gilson (vol. 2, 140.) Seaton (81). Lester (202–4).

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ment strikingly reminiscent of the surviving manuscripts in which it has been preserved. The other, at the time of the inventory ‘lent midelton’, was amalgamated again with The Parliament of Fowls, and with other works which seem to have been Guy of Warwick; Lydgate’s Debate of the Horse, Goose and Sheep, and Fabula Duorum Mercatorum. It is also conjoined with a work called ‘the Dysputson bytwyen Hope & Dyspeyr’, which could have been either Chartier’s Esperance or the Middle English ‘Complaint against Hope’.45 Only a few years later, in 1481, ‘la belle d. s. mercy’ and ‘Les Acusasions de la d.’ figure in an inventory of items belonging to Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, which seem to have accompanied him on a sea-voyage to Scotland.46 These copies were probably manuscripts, apparently predating recorded printed editions of this text. But printed versions of Chartier’s works were fairly quickly to be available, and editions such as that of the Quadrilogue produced by Colard Mansion in Bruges between 1479–84 would presumably have been known at least to Mansion’s former colleague William Caxton, if not more widely. Caxton printed the Curial in 1483 (STC 5057), working from a French version of Chartier’s Libellus curialis to translate the ‘many miseries and wretchednesses’ of court life.47 He notes in the prologue that the copy ‘was delyuerid to me by a noble and virtuous Erle at whos Instaunce & requeste I have reduced it in to Englyssh’ (sig. j), but remains silent about the identity of the patron, as indeed he does about the exact date of printing, which has been deduced by scholarly scrutiny of the state of the types used. The likeliest candidate seems to be Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, a one-time close associate of Caxton, who was beheaded in 1483 after the death of Edward IV and the accession of Richard III, and thus best not named at the time the Curial was printed. Alongside his comprehensive credentials as a European man of culture, Woodville was in fact related by marriage to the Eleanor Roos to whom Sir Richard bequeathed his French Arthurian manuscript;48 his and Caxton’s involvement with the Curial neatly demonstrates the capacity of Chartier’s writings to survive through time and changing dispensations. Caxton had appended to the English version of the Curial a short lyric, ‘Ther ne is dangyer but of a vylayn’, which seems to be his own translation of a French poem (‘Il n’est danger que de villain’) attributed to Chartier in London, BL, MS Lansdowne 380.49 It is tempting, if evidentially unsupportable, to see this as the tip of an iceberg of English translations of a

45

The Complaint against Hope. Crawford (xix, 277). 47 See Alain Chartier (1977); Caxton. 48 After service in the household of Margaret of Anjou, Eleanor married Richard Hawte as her third husband; he was cousin to Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen, and to Anthony Woodville (Seaton, 52–3). 49 See Boffey (1991: 18–19). 46

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widely circulating and fuzzily defined corpus of short poems associated with Chartier’s name.50 Still more provokingly, it is clear that Chartier’s poems (especially his lyrics) were ‘available’ to English writers in modes which may have involved activities rather different from translation. ‘Lealement a tous iours mais’ appears in the context of English lyric collections in BL, MS Additional 34360 and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 20,51 where it is introduced as ‘made by my lord of Suffolk whylest he was prysonnier in Fraunce’,52 as if to enhance the reader’s pleasure through the invocation of a noble name. Appropriations of this sort demonstrate that Chartier’s writings were being used by English readers at a much earlier date than is suggested by the translations which explicitly name him, and hint at features of reception which are hard both to categorize and to spot.53 That Chartier’s name was known in a relatively free-floating way, without attachment to any clear understanding of his output, may explain at least one aspect of his Scottish reputation in the fifteenth century. An anecdote in an early sixteenth-century chronicle records that James I’s daughter, Margaret (betrothed when still young to the Dauphin, son of Charles VII, and thus grandson to the Dauphin in whose service Chartier spent part of his life), admired Chartier’s poems so much that she kissed his lips as he slept.54 While the relative dates mean that this anecdote is certainly apocryphal, Chartier’s visit to Scotland may have helped to substantiate his reputation; and the printing in 1508 of a Scottish prose translation of the Breviaire (The porteous of nobleness, STC 5060.5) might be interpreted as an indication that this reputation stayed alive. The printing of the porteous was undertaken by Chepman and Myllar, Edinburgh printers who had French connections of various kinds: the translation appears to have been supplied by Andrew Cadiou, an Aberdeen notary who had studied in Paris.55 The translator’s envoy, stressing the path of virtue to be followed by all those with pretensions to true nobility, highlights Chartier’s sheer capacious usefulness as a source of moral instruction: Nobles report your matynis in this buke And wysely luk ye be not contrefeit Nor to retrete sen leaute seikis na nuke 50 Chesney’s view was that surprisingly few of Chartier’s lyrics survive, but the corpus assembled in Laidlaw’s edition (Alain Chartier 1974a) suggests a slightly more complex situation. 51 Alain Chartier (1974a: 372). 52 In the Trinity manuscript (32) by John Shirley. 53 London, British Library, MS Royal 20 C VIII, a copy of Honoré Bouvet’s L’Arbre des batailles, containing on its flyleaves (fols 1 and 165) two copies of ‘Triste playsir et doloureuse joye’ (Alain Chartier 1974a: 376), appears from a note relating to ‘John Gamston’ to have been in English hands in the fifteenth century (Warner and Gilson, vol. 2, 374–5). 54 Stewart. See intro 3 fn 18. 55 Booton; for a facsimile, see Beattie.

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And god forsuke breuily for to treit All that fals ar and noblis contrefeit. (unsigned final leaf)

Chartier continued to be read for his wisdom even as Roos’s translation of the BDSM was finding new audiences in printed form in successive editions of Chaucer’s collected works (first in Pynson’s book of fame, STC 5087, and then in Thynne’s massive workes of 1532, STC 5068).56 A version of the Curial translation was printed in London as late as 1549 (STC 5058), and Esperance was to inform the composition of The Faerie Queene.57 The fortunes of the Breviaire in England – in Margaret of Anjou’s presentation manuscript; in two separate manuscript volumes which began in Edward IV’s library and came to Henry VIII’s (BL, MSS Royal 14 E II and 17 E IV);58 in a Scottish printed edition; and in Henry VIII’s library under another guise in the context of several printed editions of Chartier’s works59 – are some testimony to the durability of the English appeal of ‘Mayster Aleyn.’

56

Changes to the framework in the printed editions are discussed by Kinch (2006b: 341–5). 57 See Blayney and Blayney. 58 See Warner and Gilson (vol. 2, 139–40, 259). 59 Carley (2000: 325), under ‘Alain Chartier’.

PART III:

TRANSLATING CHARTIER

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From Invectivo to Inventivo: Reading Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif in Fifteenth-Century Castile CLARA PASCUAL-ARGENTE Maestre Alen Charretiel, muy claro poeta moderno …, en gran elegançia compuso e cantó en metro e escrivió el Debate de las quatro damas, La Bella Dama san mersi, el Revelle matin, La Grand pastora, El Breviario de nobles y El Ospital de amores; por çierto, cosas asaz fermosas e placientes de oýr.1 Master Alain Chartier, most illustrious modern poet …, composed and sang in meter with great elegance, and wrote the Livre des Quatre Dames, La Belle Dame sans mercy, the Debat Reveille matin, La Pastourelle, the Breviaire des nobles, and L’Ospital d’amours; certainly, very beautiful things and pleasant to hear.2

Such is the assessment of Alain Chartier’s verse compositions by Castilian writer and bibliophile Íñigo López de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana and one of the most prominent literary figures of mid fifteenth-century Iberia. In his Prohemio e carta (an epistolary prologue to a collection of his poems circa 1449), Santillana narrates a translatio studii of sorts by briefly reviewing great poets and their works, from the ancient Greeks to his contemporaries. Chartier occupies a place of honor in the French section, next to Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Machaut, and Oton de Granson, and he is the only one who merits a detailed mention of his poetic works. We know that Santillana possessed a codex containing two of the poems he mentions, the Debat Reveille matin and La Belle Dame sans mercy,3 but his choice of Chartier’s works in the quotation above also points to the Marquis’s probable contact with additional manuscripts, since he mentions poems that are not by the Dauphin’s secretary but were often copied next to the BDSM and attributed to Chartier.4 Moreover, some 1

Santillana (1988: 446). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 3 For a description of this manuscript, see Schiff (371–2). 4 This is the case of L’Ospital d’amours by Achille Caulier, ‘considered an integral part of the Quarrel [of the BDSM]’: Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 19). La Grand pastora 2

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scholars have made a case for Chartier’s influence on Santillana’s own poetic production.5 The direct relationship between Santillana and Chartier’s verse work has diverted critical attention from the broader circulation of the French writer’s prose in Castile. However, there exists clear proof of the Castilian diffusion of at least one of Chartier’s prose treatises: the Quadrilogue invectif (1422), translated at some point between 1432 and 1458.6 The translation remains very faithful to Chartier’s text and employs a highly literal style.7 It has survived in three manuscripts, a moderate number by Castilian standards: two composite codices conserved in the British Library in London and the Biblioteca de Palacio in Madrid (manuscripts L and P) and a manuscript compilation kept in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (manuscript M). There are several suggestions as to the identity of its commissioner or its translator, but no one has yet established it with certainty.8 Due to Santillana’s interest in Chartier it was long assumed that the Marquis himself had the Quadrílogo translated for his personal library, but no evidence supports this hypothesis.9 While Santillana may not have been the commissioner of the Castilian Quadrilogue, he certainly remains an excellent example of its most likely class of readers – lay noblemen directly involved in Castile’s rising vernacular humanism. In this essay, I will argue that this kind of reader is central to understanding why a text mostly concerned with French internal affairs was translated into Castilian, and how the work was reshaped through manuscript transmission. The Quadrilogue is a treatise usually read as a French nationalist work, and a parallel patriotic interpretation would certainly have been pertinent in fifteenth-century Castile. However, the Castilian translation’s manuscript context suggests that it was primarily read as a text on chivalry within the debate on ‘arms and letters’. As I will explain, noble lay readers, such as Santillana, were at the heart of a debate that tried to determine whether it was necessary or acceptable for knights to access classical probably refers to La Pastourelle by Oton de Granson, frequently attributed to Chartier as well; see Piaget (1941: 124–6). Manuscript Pc and incunabulum Xa, listed in Alain Chartier (1974a: 103–4, 142–4), contain all of the works mentioned by Santillana. 5 For a bibliographic discussion of Chartier’s possible influence on Santillana, see Gómez Moreno (1990: 128–9). 6 I accept Alvar’s hypothesis here (Alvar, 310–11), for the terminus a quo. It is harder to establish a terminus ad quem, but it seems probable that the Quadrilogue was translated before Santillana’s death in 1458; see my edition in Alain Chartier (2004: xxix–xxxi). 7 For an analysis of translation features, see my edition: Alain Chartier (2004: xxxi– xlix). 8 Rodríguez Velasco (1996b), has suggested Alonso de Cartagena (who was active in clerical circles where he could have known Chartier’s work) or Diego de Valera (who was connected to the Burgundian court) as possible commissioners of the translation (108 n209). 9 For the origin of this erroneous critical assumption, see Alvar (307 n10).

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culture, and if so, which authors and texts would be adequate reading for them. This is a politically charged problem, since the knights’ intellectual formation was directly related to their assigned function in an increasingly monarchic state. The Quadrilogue is a patriotic call for unity under the king’s leadership, in which the clerical order signals the way for the military class to make itself useful in a warring monarchic state. The opposition that Chartier lays out between the two orders is crucial for understanding the work’s Castilian reception, since it directly speaks to clerical anxieties about chivalric culture. Indeed, one of the conflicts underlying late medieval discourses on chivalric education was the competition for political positions in the royal administration between professionally trained clerics and a new class of ‘intellectual’ knights. Interestingly, while Chartier presented his readers with a very favorable portrait of the clerical order to the detriment of knights, Castilian manuscript transmission demonstrates that some Iberian readers turned to the Quadrilogue as a work offering a confirmation of their own chivalric political aspirations. The type of alteration to the original resulting from this context of reception is signalled in the change of title from Quadrílogo invectivo to inventivo in two of the three extant manuscripts. The reference to inventivo suggests a rhetorical operation rather than the ‘invective’ advertised by Chartier. This minor variant indicates that new readers understood the Quadrílogo as a text that had much to offer by way of rhetorical lessons for a chivalric class that traditionally had not been expected to master such a science. The Quadrilogue in Castile: The Civil War and the Debate on Chivalry Chartier’s patriotic and monarchic call for the unity of Frenchmen against the English would have had particular resonance for Castilians. In fact, there is a striking historical parallelism between France in 1422, when Chartier was writing, and Castile during most of the fifteenth century. The main problem described in the Quadrilogue is not war with the external enemy, England, but the accompanying civil strife that was tearing up Chartier’s country. Similarly, Castilians did not seem to be able to finish their reconquista of the remains of Al-Andalus; this ongoing conflict with what they had construed as an external occupation was all but stopped by a never-declared civil war. During the time when the translation was carried out, King Juan II’s powerful counselor Álvaro de Luna led one party, while the king’s cousins, the infantes of Aragon, headed the opposing faction.10 It is not hard to find Castilian political writers whose preoccupations

10 For a historical overview of the conflict between Álvaro de Luna and the infantes, see O’Callaghan (550–6, 562–6).

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seem to echo Chartier’s. Diego de Valera, himself a possible candidate for the commissioning of the Quadrilogue translation, warns King Juan II in two open letters written in 1441 and 1447 about the dangers inherent in a divided realm, and makes a monarchic call very similar to Chartier’s.11 Later in the century, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán looks back on these years as a period in which knights forgot about anything other than ‘creçer e avançar sus estados e rentas, prosponiendo la conçiençia e el amor de la patria por ganar’ (to increase and augment their estates and incomes, set[ting] aside their consciences and their love for their country [in order to obtain benefits]).12 Santillana himself, who was directly involved in the civil war and changed sides on several occasions,13 laments in a letter that Castilians have not learnt from what he calls ‘las nuevas e crueles guerras gállicas, las quales tanto nos son vezinas e de nuestro tiempo que todos días devrían ser ante nuestros ojos’ (the new and cruel Gallic wars, which are so close and contemporary to us that we should have them every day before our eyes).14 Indeed, the commissioner or translator of the Quadrílogo may well have considered it an exemplary patriotic response to a state of affairs that was only too familiar in fifteenth-century Castile.15 However, the abundant glosses and other marginalia present in the three Castilian manuscripts do not reflect such a reading, nor do the codices contain any contemporary treatise asking for peace, or any polemical or historiographical work about the war. A text like Santillana’s Lamentaçión de Spaña, for example, would have been a perfect companion for a Quadrílogo read as a patriotic treatise. Instead, in manuscript M we find Chartier’s work copied next to the Qüestión sobre el acto de caballería, an epistolary exchange between the Marquis and learned prelate Alonso de Cartagena about a possible oath taken by Roman ‘knights.’16 The presence of Santillana’s Qüestión in the manuscript context of the Quadrílogo clearly points to Castilian interest in an alternative reading that would understand Chartier’s treatise, above all, as a text on chivalry. Indeed, most of the works accompanying the Quadrílogo in Castilian manuscripts L, P, and M (see complete list in appendix) are related to an emergent genre dealing with this kind of problem – the ‘theoretical treatise on chivalry’.17

11

Valera’s letters can be found in Prosistas castellanos (3–7). Pérez de Guzmán (1998: 188); translated by Marie Gillette and Loretta Zehngut; see Pérez de Guzmán (2003: 66). Compare to Lady France’s words in the Quadrílogo: ‘los cavalleros devían correr a las armas e corren al dinero’ (Alain Chartier 2004: 9: knights should run to arms, but they run after money instead); French version in Alain Chartier (1950: 14). 13 Pérez Bustamante (42–82). 14 Santillana (1988: 417). 15 Historical exemplarity could also have been central for the two extant English translations, both carried out during the War of the Roses. See Nall in this volume. 16 Both the Lamentaçión and the Qüestión can be found in Santillana (1988: 410–34). 17 See Gómez Moreno (1990), and Rodríguez Velasco (1996b: 25–32). 12

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These treatises are doctrinal and didactic works concerned with providing chivalry with definitions, models, and norms; by reflecting on the origin and function of knights, they articulate key ideas for the Castilian debate on arms and letters. The genre included not only ‘original’ works, but also countless translations of texts that thus suffered a generic recontextualization in much the same way as the Quadrilogue. Significantly, many treatises on chivalry employed devices that we encounter in Chartier’s text: allegory and dialogue or debate forms appear frequently, while Roman models, such as the ones represented in the Quadrilogue by Valerius Maximus’s exempla, are also deeply significant to the genre, as we will see later on. Santillana’s and Cartagena’s Qüestión in manuscript M is an excellent example of a theoretical treatise on chivalry. We can also ascribe to this genre the oratio by Italian humanist Giannozzo Manetti and the Cadira de honor by Juan Rodríguez del Padrón in manuscript L of the Quadrílogo, as well as the Tratado del duelo by a Pedro de Orozco in manuscript P.18 In addition to the Qüestión, manuscript M also contains works loosely related to this kind of treatise: a translation of the Ilias latina by fifteenth-century poet Juan de Mena and an anonymous Castilian version of a Comparación entre Alexandre, Aníbal e Scipión. Both works deal with famous ‘knights’ of the classical world, thus providing useful chivalric models. The proliferation of such a genre reveals a vital trend of political thought in fifteenth-century Castile: the debate on chivalry. This debate often took the form traditionally dubbed ‘el debate de las armas y las letras’ (debate on arms and letters). The locus classicus for this topic in Spanish literature is Don Quixote’s discourse on the preeminence of arms over letters (I, 38), where ironically the hero displays all of his potential for the latter craft. While this early modern elaboration shows the debate as a degraded rhetorical exercise, during the time in which the Quadrilogue was translated, ‘arms and letters’ were a burning political issue, and the central problem was not so much the preeminence of one over the other as the possibility of redefining their boundaries so that it became possible for lay noblemen to access both of them.19 Possibly the most important issue at stake in this debate was whether

18

Manetti’s oratio praises condotiero Malatesta and remarks on his military and intellectual attributes; Rodríguez del Padrón’s treatise deals with types of nobility and with heraldic questions; finally, Orozco’s work offers a compilation of norms related to the aristocratic practice of duels. 19 The ‘debate de las armas y las letras’ in late medieval Castilian culture has been the subject of some excellent studies. Rodríguez Velasco has explored in depth the ramifications of fifteenth-century debates on chivalry (1996b). His scholarship follows the seminal articles of Round (1962), Russell (1978), and especially Jeremy Lawrance (1985), (1986) and (1991). The following exposition about the debate’s general lines is based on these scholars’ insights (particularly on the more nuanced views of Lawrance and Rodríguez Velasco), although it inevitably simplifies some of their arguments.

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knights could legitimately access certain areas of knowledge traditionally reserved for letrados (clerks). Thus, the debate is directly connected to the emergence of a new reading public in fifteenth-century Castile – lay noble readers who demanded manuscript compilations such as the ones in which the translated Quadrílogo appears.20 Whether or not knights could legitimately combine the virtues of fortitudo and sapientia, then, was the question endlessly debated in Castile during the fifteenth century. Santillana himself, in the prologue to a collection of proverbs dedicated to King Juan II’s son, the future Enrique IV, passionately argues for the necessity of this combination: Pero, a más abondamiento, digo que ¿cómmo puede regir a otro el que a sí mesmo non rige?, ¿nin cómmo se regirá nin governará aquél que non sabe nin ha visto las governaçiones e regimientos de los bien regidos e governados? Ca para qualquier prática mucho es neçessaria la theórica, e para la theórica la prática …. Ca çiertamente, bienaventurado Prínçipe, assí como yo este otro día escrevía a un amigo mío: ‘la sçiencia non enbota el fierro de la lança ni faze floxa la espada en la mano del cavallero’.21 But besides, I say, how can one rule someone else if he does not rule himself? And how will someone rule or govern himself if he does not know nor has he seen the governments and rules of those well ruled and governed? Because theory is most necessary for practice, and practice for theory …. And certainly, blessed prince, as I wrote the other day to a friend of mine, ‘science does not blunt the spear’s iron, nor does it loosen the sword from the knight’s hand’.

Of course, courtly vernacular literature had from its inception been linked to nobility, and it did not pose this particular kind of legitimacy issue. Some noblemen, however, were trying to gain access to certain Latin texts, the only ones that, in Jeremy Lawrance’s words, allowed for ‘a study of statecraft, warfare and secular ethics based on empirical examples’ – the ‘theory’ mentioned by Santillana.22 Although most of these knights limited themselves to commissioning translations (sometimes surrounding themselves with libraries, translators, and scribes in a way traditionally reserved for the royal court),23 a few of them did aspire to read those texts in their original language.24

20

For a brilliant analysis of the extent and implications of this phenomenon, see Lawrance (1985). 21 Santillana (1988: 218–19). 22 Lawrance (1986: 67). 23 Rodríguez Velasco (1996b: 46–51). 24 See Lawrance (1991) for an example of the anxiety caused by a nobleman’s desire to read scholastic works in Latin.

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Knights did not crave classical culture and related texts simply because they provided practical models for military technique; according to Lawrance, ‘writers began to express the opinion that a knowledge of literature was an essential training not only for military prowess, but for more general lessons, and especially for fitting noblemen for their role in the governance of the polity’.25 Thus, as Rodríguez Velasco reminds us, the appearance of a vernacular chivalric humanism poses a serious threat to the letrados, because noblemen’s newly acquired culture could enable them actively to participate in government and (re)gain positions previously reserved for clerks.26 Some of them reacted by advocating a complete separation of clerical (intellectual) and chivalric (military) responsibilities,27 as does the biographer of Don Pero Niño, Count of Buelna, who praises him for having resisted the temptation of stepping into a role of royal counselor that should be reserved for clerks: Dios tiene a todos proveýdos de la su graçia, e dada medida de la su graçia a cada uno, e don según la largueza de su misiricordia. A unos da graçia de ser letrados, e a otros de ser buenos mercaderes, e a otros de buenos mecánicos, [e] de ser labradores, e a otros de ser cavalleros e buenos defensores … E ansí deste cavallero, que nunca en ál fue su estudio e su travajo, sino por armas, en arte e ofiçio de cavallería. E aunque él fue tan amado del rey, e fue tan çerca dél que pudiera por muchas vezes, si él quisiera, ser su privado e muy çerca dél, mas por quanto en los privados ay … cosas que non son de ofiçio de cavallería, nunca a ellos se quiso ynclinar.28 God endows all men with His grace and bestows His gifts on all, according to the measure that it pleases Him and the greatness of His mercy. To some He grants the grace of being lettered [letrado], to others, that of being good merchants, to some to be good workmen, to others, to be labourers, and to yet others to be knights and good defenders … But the study and the work of this knight had never been for any other matter than arms, and the art and duty of knighthood; and though he was beloved of the King and placed so near his person that many a time, if he had willed, he could have become his minister, yet since among ministers there are of necessity found … [things] which spring not from the same root as chivalry, therefore would he never turn to such employment.29

25

Lawrance (1986: 70). Rodríguez Velasco (1996b: 360–6). 27 Such is the stance of the fifteenth-century dialogue Qüistión entre dos caballeros, in which the anonymous author makes clear not only the separation of the two orders, but also the necessary submission of knights to letrados. For an analysis of this work, see Weiss in La Qüistión (1995: 200–6); and Rodríguez Velasco (1996a: 126–30). 28 Díaz de Games (1994: 254). 29 Díaz de Games (1928); translated by Joan Evans. 26

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However, the letrados were not the only ones who expressed their anxiety about the cultural ambitions of the emerging nobility. A new dynasty, the Trastámaras, had taken power in Castile at the end of the fourteenth century by murdering the legitimate king. In an effort to win supporters and assure their legitimacy, Trastamaran kings had greatly expanded the nobility by granting titles to their followers.30 This expansion represented a source of anxiety for older lineages, and it was precisely the emerging, relatively ‘new’ nobility who were often at the avant-garde of chivalric vernacular humanism. According to Rodríguez Velasco, through the construction of a ‘classical’ chivalric culture contrasting with the pre-existing ‘courtly’ culture, the emerging lineages were defending two main ideas – that chivalry in itself is equivalent to nobility, and, more importantly for my argument, that virtue is at the basis of both chivalry and nobility, a view that Chartier openly endorsed in his Quadrilogue.31 One last feature of this debate that I would like to highlight is that chivalric ideology’s quest for legitimacy proposed Roman knights, if we may so call them, as models. In Rodríguez Velasco’s analysis, this move has ‘ideological, juridical, and political’ dimensions, and works by ‘positing fifteenth-century chivalry (militia) as the direct heir of Roman ordo equestris’.32 The underlying logic is that a Roman eques participated both in military and government tasks in much the same way as some Castilian knights hoped to do – Roman ‘knights’ were experts in warfare, politics, and rhetoric at the same time.33 This cultural context clearly points to a lay and noble readership as the intended audience for the Quadrílogo invectivo, and it shows us how a text proposing a reform of the knightly estate and constantly referring to classical models (mainly Valerius Maximus’s exempla, also translated into Castilian during this period) could have appealed to a Castilian audience. Which side of the debate on arms and letters, then, was using Chartier’s text? In order to answer this question, it is necessary briefly to review how the Quadrilogue deals with the vexed problem of the origin and function of chivalry. Chartier’s treatise articulates such concerns through a dream vision presenting a dialogue between the four personified figures to which the title 30 Enrique II, the first Trastamaran king, was known as ‘el de las mercedes’ because of the abundant rewards (‘mercedes’) he bestowed on his supporters (O’Callaghan, 525). Many of the families whose members were striving to redefine chivalry rose to prominence relatively late; see Rodríguez Velasco (1996b: 46). 31 The fact that there exists a need to argue that chivalry confers nobility makes clear that the two terms were not necessarily equivalent. See Rodríguez Velasco (1996b), on the relationship between chivalry and nobility in late medieval Castile. However, since this problem does not directly affect my argument, I use them as quasi-synonyms. 32 Rodríguez Velasco (1996a: 121). 33 Rodríguez Velasco (1996b: 369).

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refers: Lady France and her three sons, who are Peuple (People), Chevalier (Knight), and Clergé (Clergy). The dreaming narrator witnesses a scene in which Lady France bitterly rebukes her children for her sorry state.34 Peuple and Chevalier react by exchanging angry reproaches, blaming each other for their wretched situation. The ideological center of the Quadrilogue, however, lies in the long discourse that Clergé utters in response to them. This character plays a strictly secular role and his loyalty seems to lie with the king rather than with the Church; he is expected to study and to offer advice, thus mirroring the Dauphin’s secretary’s own function in the extratextual realm.35 In his speech, the longest in the work, he delivers a passionate criticism of the behavior and raison d’être of the military estate, accepting most of the charges that Peuple had laid out against Chevalier. Thus, the real invective in the Quadrilogue takes Chevalier as its main target. Clergé advocates a reordering of courtly relationships that questions the very foundations of the military order: he asks knights to adapt to a monarchic state where the ideal of ‘common good’ overrules traditional feudal relationships. In the same vein, Clergé links nobility to (chivalric) noble deeds instead of birth, and defines noble deeds, above all, as a willingness to abide by royal leadership. Chartier is thus weighing in on contemporary debates on courtly life and nobility that amount to different ways of redefining chivalry.36 Significantly, the political advice provided by Clergé considerably narrows the audience posited in the Quadrilogue’s prologue, in which the author addresses all three orders.37 The work’s combination of monarchic propaganda and a critique of chivalry in a vernacular language seems to address knights, seeking to inspire them to mend their ways and become a useful force for the monarchic state. Moreover, the Dauphin’s secretary’s construction of Clergé as a secular character unequivocally points to one of the most important instruments of monarchic centralization – the creation of a professional body of clerks ‘that will become a truly autonomous class midway between nobility and bourgeoisie’.38 Clergé’s strong criticism of chivalry seeks to transform it into a viable class for a monarchic political model, where knights would only gain legitimacy by serving the republic.

34 As Florence Bouchet points out in her translation of the Quadrilogue, Alain Chartier (2002: 10), Chartier is writing in one of the bleakest moments of the Hundred Years’ War for the French side. 35 Bouchet in Alain Chartier (2002: 22). 36 Lemaire (1994: 440–54), has analysed in detail the pro- and anti-courtly discourses in fifteenth-century France, where Chartier’s humanist critique of the court occupies an important place. 37 See Alain Chartier (1950: 1); for the Castilian version, see my edition, Alain Chartier (2004: 1). 38 García de Cortázar et al. (550). There exists an obvious parallelism between Clergé’s character as presented by Chartier and the Castilian letrados occupying key posts in the royal administration.

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These features of Chartier’s text would seem to warrant a clerical interest within the Castilian context that I surveyed above. Since the Quadrilogue invectif is, above all, an invective against chivalry in which Clergé is the personification that speaks with real authority, as well as the one called upon to offer useful political advice, it would be only logical to read the text as promoting the value of clerical knowledge, even in order to guide military action. From this point of view, it seems more than reasonable to consider an eminent letrado such as Alonso de Cartagena as a possible commissioner of the Quadrílogo.39 While it would not be wise to rule out this possibility, codicological evidence suggests that at least some of the historical lay noblemen who read the translation looked to Chartier for further confirmation of their cultural aspirations. Even though a letrado might initially have commissioned or translated the treatise, textual transmission shows a progressive chivalric appropriation. M is the most significant of the three extant witnesses of the translation in this respect for several reasons: first, it is the only one originally devised as a compilation; second, it contains the most marginal annotations; and finally, of the three codices, it presents the most evolved state of the Quadrílogo’s textual transmission.40 Chivalric appropriation in manuscript M As we know, medieval translation techniques were interlinked with exegetical methods such as glossing. This was also the case in fifteenth-century Castile, where, as Julian Weiss observes, ‘the practice of writing commentaries and glosses for the benefit of the aristocratic lay reader finally took root’, and ‘most literary glosses were brought into being as a direct result of the increased demand for translations during this period: the two were inextricably interlinked’.41 Glosses thus mediated between the translated text and the reader, either helping the latter understand the text in parts deemed to be linguistically or culturally opaque, or pointing out different ‘uses’ for it – discreetly, by signaling interesting sentences or passages, or openly, by taking the text as a point of departure, as if it were the thema of a sermon, and elaborating a digression from it.42 In manuscript M we find glosses in both Castilian and very basic Latin, probably by the same hand. Both kinds of annotations relate the text to

39

See n8 above. L is the manuscript that seems closer to an early stage of transmission, while P and M descend from a common and different archetype. Of the two, M has undergone more and deeper changes. For a detailed assessment of the Quadrílogo’s textual transmission, see my edition, Alain Chartier (2004: xxxix–xlvi, lxi–lxxii). 41 Weiss (119–20). 42 Weiss (122–5). 40

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Biblical quotes, principles of law, recent Castilian history, or even contemporary vernacular literature, such as Santillana’s Proverbs.43 These glosses not only help the reader understand the Quadrílogo, but also authorize it by comparing it with culturally prestigious texts. Moreover, they mark passages that could easily be reused, such as sententiae or exempla, with a special attention to the abundant Roman exempla provided in the text, which are almost invariably signaled. These features seem to point once again to the interests of a lay noble reader who is keen to assert the authority of a vernacular text and reuse it for his own purposes, and who actively seeks Roman models for self-fashioning. As I mentioned above, manuscript M makes a direct connection between the Quadrílogo and the emergent genre of theoretical treatises on chivalry. Moreover, this chivalric compilation seems to display a parallel generic concentration: most of its works, including Chartier’s, are letters or orationes, that is, works directly addressed to the reader or spectator, and primarily concerned with rhetorical effectiveness. The Qüestión consists of letters exchanged between Santillana and Alonso de Cartagena; the Quadrílogo adopts an epistolary form for its prologue; Mena’s Ilias latina includes an epistolary dedication to the king. The two last works in the manuscript are both orationes, and the Comparación is attributed to ‘Lucianus, orator’. The combination of chivalric texts with rhetorically charged forms would have had an undeniable interest for the aristocratic layman that I have been positing as the intended reader for the translation and most certainly for this compilation, who would have been particularly interested in acquiring rhetorical skills to suit the governmental posts to which he aspired. It is not by chance that translations of such works as Cicero’s De inventione are contemporary with this manuscript.44 This connection with rhetoric would also explain why the Castilian title changed in the textual transmission, from Quadrílogo invectivo to inventivo, where inventivo refers to a rhetorical operation.45 But the most significant indication of a knightly readership in M is the blatant paratextual erasure of Clergé that takes place in the manuscript. As I have mentioned above, Clergé is arguably the most important character in Chartier’s text, since he channels the author’s voice and authority in order to settle the dispute between Chevalier and Peuple. Both French and Castilian

43 For examples and commentary of manuscript M’s glosses and annotations, see Alain Chartier (2004: xliii–xlvi). 44 Alonso de Cartagena translated the first book of De inventione in the 1430s under the title De la rethorica; see Alonso de Cartagena. 45 Only L gives the form ‘invectivo’, while manuscripts P and M use ‘inventivo’. This change is probably due to a misreading of the form ‘invetivo’ (a variant of ‘invectivo’), where the scribe recognized the more common ‘inventivo’. It is significant, however, that the latter word made complete sense in the context of the translation.

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manuscripts identify each character before her or his speech, but this is not the case for Clergé’s only intervention in manuscript M. The label ‘El letrado’ (‘the Clerk’) has disappeared, and instead we read an explanation: ‘Fáblase en concordia destos que así altercaban’ (In which those who disagreed are reconciled). This intervention disfigures the whole structure of the treatise by erasing one of the four characters of the Quadrilogue. The brief accessus that appears before the work in M reflects and reinforces this change: Aquí comiença un muy singular tractado llamado Quadrílogo y mucho útile para los tres estados de la república, conviene saber, rey con sus cavalleros defensores, oradores e labradores … El qual dicho tratado se llamó quadrílogo porque en él es contenido sermón de quatro presonas que fablan: … la una presona fabla por nombre del estoriador o autor que compuso la dicha obra; el otro sermón o fabla es en presona de la patria e regno, que se quexava de los governadores defensores; la tercera habla o sermón es en presona de los cavalleros defensores; la quarta habla o sermón es en presona del pueblo menudo, conviene saber, labradores e ombres plebeyos; e en fin dize el remedio e regimiento que se deve tener en el reino en tiempo de paz e de guerra.46 Here begins a very singular treatise called Quadrílogo, very useful for the three estates of the republic, that is to say, the king with his knightly defenders, orators, and laborers …. This treatise was called quadrílogo because it contains the sermons of four characters who speak: … the first character speaks on behalf of the historian or author who composed the work; another sermon or speech is uttered through the character of the motherland and realm, who was complaining about the governing defenders; the third speech or sermon is uttered through the character of the knightly defenders; the fourth speech or sermon is uttered through the character of the little people, that is, laborers and plebeian men; and in conclusion it presents the remedy and rule to be held in the kingdom in times of peace and of war.

Although the clerical estate merits a cursory mention at the beginning of the translation’s accessus, it is evident that in this reading it plays no part in the overall structure of the work. It is the Quadrílogo itself – a vernacular work sprinkled with references to Roman history – and not Clergé that finally ‘presents the remedy and rule to be held in the kingdom in times of peace and of war’. This last observation before the actual work begins explains clearly how a noble lay reader would have approached Chartier’s treatise. For this kind of reader, the Quadrílogo was proof that exactly the kind of cultural knowledge that emerging strata of Castilian nobility were seeking – rhetorical skills,

46

Alain Chartier (2004: 1), emphasis added.

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vernacular familiarity with the classics – could save a kingdom in danger. A letrado displays this knowledge both in the French text and in the initial stages of the Quadrílogo’s textual transmission. In manuscript M, however, the fact that this cultural solution is voiced no longer by a clerk but by an unidentified character – or as the accessus seems to tell us, the text itself – makes it even easier for would-be heirs of the Roman knighthood to use it. If this is true, what can we make of the strong criticism of chivalry that remains an essential feature of the text? I believe that this new reading public could easily have appropriated it. As I have explained above, there existed an ongoing conflict between different sections of nobility that opposed older to emerging lineages. The emerging nobility’s ideology can be read as a critique of the ‘old chivalry’, the one that fashioned itself after courtly instead of Roman models,47 which are precisely the ones proposed as examples by Chartier. ‘New’ knights could also easily appropriate the strong monarchic ideology of the text as their own, since they were trying to access political positions next to the king. Finally, younger lineages understandably claimed virtue as the source of ‘true nobility’,48 an ideological stance already present in Chartier’s text. Therefore, a noble lay reader with cultural aspirations, Santillana for example, would probably have read the Quadrílogo as a criticism of the old ways of chivalry, and a confirmation that the cultural knowledge that he was trying to gain was fruitful for the king and the realm. In this respect, Lady France’s final exhortation to the narrator before he wakes up not only posits a Roman model once again, but also resonates in this context with Santillana’s words on the necessity of both practical and theoretical knowledge: ‘sirve a la cosa pública de lo que bien puedes, porque tanto enxalçó la gloria de los romanos e levantó sus coraçones en virtud la péndola e bien [fablar de los] oradores como las lanças de los combatientes’ (serve the State by doing what you do well, for orators’ quills and eloquence exalted Roman glory and lifted Roman hearts in virtue as much as soldiers’ spears).49 Her affirmation can easily be read as an invitation to ‘new’ knights who, fashioning themselves after their Roman models, felt a calling to public service in the royal court. For them, Chartier’s work must have been a practical example of how theoretical knowledge can offer solutions to a political conflict within a

47

Rodríguez Velasco (1996a: 117–21). See Diego de Valera’s Espejo de verdadera nobleza in Prosistas castellanos (1959: 89–116), for this line of argumentation. 49 Alain Chartier (2004: 47–8); French version in Alain Chartier (1950: 65). Compare to the following statement by Diego de Valera: ‘sé sforçarme servir mi príncipe no solamente con las fuerzas corporales, mas aun con los mentales e intelectuales’ (I can strive to serve my prince not only with my bodily powers, but also with the mental and intellectual ones: Prosistas castellanos, 7, quoted in Lawrance 1986: 74). 48

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monarchic ideological framework. That is, the Quadrílogo switched emphasis from invectivo, where the title invective was directed by a letrado against an ineffectual chivalric estate, to inventivo, where the rhetorical abilities of an unnamed character take us to the heart of a debate about cultural expectations and anxieties in which translation played a fundamental role, and in which the appropriation of an apparently hostile text served the interests of an aristocratic lay readership.

Appendix Table of contents of the three extant MSS containing the Quadrílogo invectivo L. MS. Egerton 1868, London, British Library. 15th century. Composite MS. 1. Cicero [anonymous Castilian translation], Paradoxa (fols. 1r–31v) 2. Lope de Barrientos, Tres tratados castellanos (fols. 33r–145v) 3. Oración de micer Ganoço Manety, translated into Castilian by Nuño de Guzmán (fols. 146r–89v) 4. Alain Chartier [anonymous Castilian translation], Quadrílogo invectivo (fols. 191r–236r) 5. Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Cadira de honor (fols. 238r–68r) P. MS. II/3059, Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio. 15th century. Composite MS. 1. Alain Chartier [anonymous Castilian translation], Quadrílogo inventivo (fols. 1r–34v) 2. Pedro de Orozco, Tratado del duelo (fols. 35r–46v) M. MS. 3666, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional (olim M–56). 15th century. 1. Juan de Mena, Omero romançado (fols. 1r–19v) 2. Lucian of Samosata [anonymous Castilian translation], Comparación entre Alexandre, Aníbal e Scipión (fols. 20r–22v) 3. Íñigo López de Mendoza & Alonso de Cartagena, Qüestión sobre el acto de la caballería (fols. 22v–30r) 4. Alain Chartier [anonymous Castilian translation], Quadrílogo inventivo (fols. 30r–47v) 5. Leonardo Bruni [anonymous Castilian translation], Contra los hipócritas (fols. 48r–53r) 6. Habla que el embajador de la duquesa de Borgoña hizo al rey don Fernando en Medina del Campo (fols. 53r–56r)

9

William Worcester Reads Alain Chartier: Le Quadrilogue invectif and its English Readers CATHERINE NALL In the October and November of 1453, William Worcester (1415–c.1483), secretary to the famous veteran of the French wars, Sir John Fastolf (c.1380– 1459), was having parts of Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif (1422) copied into one of his notebooks, now BL, MS Royal 13 C I.1 Worcester was an extremely active reader of Chartier’s text: after the chosen passages of the text were copied into his notebook, Worcester then annotated them in Latin, highlighting both their utility and relevance for his own political agenda. Indeed, some of these passages found their way into Worcester’s own composition, a Middle English prose treatise known as the Boke of Noblesse, composed and revised between 1453 and 1475.2 In this work, dedicated to Edward IV, Worcester drew on aspects of Chartier’s text in order to argue for the importance of a new campaign in France, a campaign designed to reclaim the extensive territories the English had lost in Normandy and Aquitaine in the early 1450s. Worcester was not the only English reader taking a keen interest in Chartier’s text at this point. Far from it: the third quarter of the fifteenth century witnessed a flurry of interest in the Quadrilogue, alongside others of Chartier’s works, emanating from a range of readers. Two independent Middle English 1 The title on fol. 143r states that it was written ‘per W. Wyrcestre mensibus Novembris et Decembris anno Christi 1453, extractus libri Iohannis Fastolf militis habitantis Parisius’ (by W. Worcester in the month of November and December in the year of Christ 1453, an extract from the book of John Fastolf, knight, living in Paris) and on fol. 136r: ‘Extrait du quadrilogue maistre alan Charetier secretaire du Roy Charles le vj roy de ffraunce’ (Extracts of the quadrilogue of master Alain Chartier secretary to king Charles VI, king of France) written in Worcester’s hand. 2 Worcester. I am currently preparing a new edition of the Boke of Noblesse and its accompanying codicil with Daniel Wakelin for EETS. Unfortunately, the presentation copy of this text is no longer extant. There is only one surviving copy, BL, MS Royal 18 B XXII, which might be termed Worcester’s ‘working’ copy. It contains extensive annotations and corrections in Worcester’s hand and was written at some point after 1461, revised during Henry VI’s second reign, and then revised again before its presentation to Edward IV in 1475.

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translations of the Quadrilogue were made by two anonymous translators during this period, which circulated in a total of five manuscripts dating from the 1470s and 1480s. At the same time, at least one copy of the Quadrilogue in French was being produced and read in England.3 While Worcester was selecting and translating parts of Chartier’s text for incorporation into one of his notebooks and into his own polemical treatise, Chartier’s text was clearly generating wider interest in England. This paper argues that these translations and manuscripts, and the traces readers left in them, provide suggestive evidence concerning the English reception of Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue in the aftermath of the Hundred Years’ War. The reception of his work among English readers can be mapped in several ways. As I have argued elsewhere, the two Middle English translators, far from corrupting or debasing Chartier’s original text, were in fact creatively rewriting and reinterpreting the Quadrilogue for an English audience.4 The evidence provided by a close study of how these two translators rewrote Chartier’s work necessarily informs us of how they read and interpreted his text and of how they wanted their intended audience to read it. The way Chartier’s text, in either its original language or in translation, was presented by English manuscript producers is also suggestive: the choice of script or decorative programme, for example, and the other texts with which the Quadrilogue was paired, tells us about how it was perceived by its producer or commissioner, as do the physical traces readers left in their copies, in the form of the ubiquitous nota bene, pointing hands, glosses or underlining. We have, then, evidence of three types of reader of the Quadrilogue: the translator of the text; the scribe or producer of the manuscript in which it then circulated; and finally the owner or commissioner of that manuscript. Meanwhile, the evidence provided both by Worcester’s notebook and by his extant political treatise offers an unusually detailed example of how Chartier’s Quadrilogue was read, rewritten and reappropriated by an English reader over the course of the third quarter of the fifteenth century. By the late 1460s or early 1470s, two independent Middle English translations of Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue had been made.5 The first English

3 BL, MS Cotton Julius E.V was, judging by the illumination and pen flourishing, an English production, probably dating from after 1470, but it contains no marks of ownership. Bodl. Lib, MS Bodley 421, BL, MSS Add. 15300 and Harley 4402 were certainly French-produced manuscripts but they may have been in England in the fifteenth century, though as yet I have found no evidence for this. 4 See Nall. At the time of writing I am finishing an article on these two translations of the Quadrilogue which outlines in more detail how the translators negotiated and reappropriated Chartier’s text. 5 These have been edited by Margaret S. Blayney; see Alain Chartier (1974b) and (1980).

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translation of this text, which following its EETS editor I refer to as the U translation, exists in only one manuscript, dating from about 1470.6 There is no evidence concerning who made this translation. The second translation, which will be referred to as the R translation, presumably circulated more widely as it is extant in four manuscripts, dating from the 1470s and early 1480s.7 This translator may also have translated one of Chartier’s Latin compositions, the Dialogus familiaris (1425/6),8 as well as his Esperance (1429), which always appears alongside the R translation of the Quadrilogue in manuscripts. There is also uncertainty regarding the identity of this translator: although there is some evidence to support an earlier claim that Sir John Fortescue translated all three texts, as Margaret S. Blayney has suggested, the actual style of the translation makes it unlikely that Fortescue was the translator.9 Unlike other contemporary translators, these two translators did not add prologues or epilogues to their works and offered no discussion of their role as translators.10 Indeed, they did not even refer to their texts as translations. Thus they retained Chartier’s prologue to the text in their respective translations which created the impression of an unmediated text. For example, the rubric for Oxford, University College, MS 85 reads: ‘The prologe of the tretye folowing entitled and called the quadrilogue of Aleyn Charietere secretarie somtyme to the kynge of Fraunce’.11 Presumably, the translators retained Chartier’s name because they wanted to utilise his authority. In this way also, the texts received by readers appeared to be direct, unmediated representations of Chartier’s works, which seemed to erase the role of the translator as custodian over the meaning of the text. In addition, the translations contain no mention of a patron. As has been suggested in relation to Malory’s Morte Darthur, it seems strange, if there was a patron, that he or she was not identified. Connecting a text to a patron, who would presumably hold some social, political or moral status, often acts

6

The U translation exists in Oxford, University College, MS 85. Judging by the decoration and script, the manuscript was produced in the late 1460s or early 1470s. 7 The R translation is extant in Lambeth Palace Library, MS Arc.L.40.2/E.42; Bodl. Lib, MS Rawlinson A 338; Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D.I; Chicago, Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20. It is impossible to tell which is the earliest manuscript. Newberry MS f.36 is clearly the latest manuscript, but the hands of the other three suggest a date in the early 1470s. 8 The English translation of Chartier’s Dialogus has been edited by Blayney: Alain Chartier (1989b). 9 See Blayney; Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 26–30). Although some of the changes made by the R translator to his source text, particularly concerning the importance of a sovereign’s financial security, reflect arguments employed by Fortescue; see Nall (51–3). 10 See Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 46–70) for a comparison of the two styles of translation. 11 Oxford, University College, MS 85, fol. 1r.

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to elevate a text, helping a given work to secure a particular market or type of authority.12 However, texts, like manuscripts, could be produced on speculation, and not in response to a specific commission.13 The fact that no patron was mentioned by these translators might indeed suggest that they themselves instigated the translations, although presumably even if the translations were not commissioned as such, the translators felt that there would be a market for their works: a potential, if not actual, patron. Furthermore, if presentation copies of the two translations were ever made, they have not been identified. However, the five extant manuscripts do at least provide some evidence of the early ownership and circulation of the two translations. Oxford, University College, MS 85, the only extant copy of the U translation of the Quadrilogue, may have been owned, for example, by the Whetehill family of Calais.14 Richard Whetehill, its probable owner, was controller of Calais from December 1460 and was made lieutenant of Guînes by Warwick in January 1461, a post which he retained under William, Lord Hastings, until his death in February 1478.15 He was also active diplomatically at the court of Louis XI.16 Whetehill also knew the famous Norfolk book-collecting gentry family, the Pastons, who were frequently with Lord Hastings during the 1470s, and thus spent much time in Calais.17 Indeed, John Paston III considered marrying one of Whetehill’s daughters in May 1476.18 In this manuscript, the U translation appears with two other texts, which raises issues concerning its early reception. It appears with the Secreet of Secreetes, an English translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum (fols. 35v–68r), and a mid-fifteenth-century English translation of an anonymous fourteenth-century French text entitled ‘These iij consideracions beth right necesarye to the good gouernaunce of a prince’ (fols. 68v–90r).19 The other texts with which the U translation was paired suggests a reading of Chartier’s Quadrilogue which emphasised its status or potential function as a

12

Meale (1985: 110). Meale (1985: 112). 14 The manuscript contains a badge on fol. 1r showing a man’s arms embowed, clothed, azure, supporting between the hands a wheatsheaf, proper, above a green mound with a motto on scroll below; Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 40). It has been suggested that this manuscript was owned by the Wheatley family of Echingfield, Sussex, or a member of the Garneys family but, given the form of the badge, the Whetehill family seems more likely. 15 Davis (242); Grummitt (2000: 160). 16 Meek (68–9). 17 Grummitt (2001: 266). 18 Richmond (159). 19 Hamer argues that the spellings of the first two texts are so similar that they may have been copied from the same exemplar; Hamer (63–73). See also Boffey’s essay in this collection. 13

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form of mirror for princes, focusing on the guidance it had to offer readers concerning government at either a national or local level. This manuscript was written by the French-trained scribe, Ricardus Franciscus (fl. 1447–c.1475), who copied at least thirteen works including, suggestively, Bodl. Lib, MS Laud misc. 570, an extremely expensive volume of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre d’ Othéa and the Livre des quatre vertus belonging to Sir John Fastolf, and Cambridge, St John’s College, MS H.5, which contains the English translation of the Epistre made for Fastolf by his stepson and ward, Stephen Scrope.20 Franciscus is known to have worked with the same set of illuminators and decorators on several occasions. The artist responsible for the miniatures in Oxford, University College, MS 85, for example, was probably responsible for the first miniature of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes in Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum, MS 439/16, also written by Ricardus Franciscus. The border artist of Oxford, University College, MS 85 worked on three other manuscripts written by Ricardus Franciscus: BL, MS Harley 4775, an English translation of Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 126, Gower’s Confessio Amantis; and Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum, MS 439/16.21 He also worked with the artist William Abell, who was responsible for the miniatures in both Cambridge, St John’s College, MS H.5 and Bodl. Lib, MS Laud misc. 570 mentioned above.22 Bodl. Lib, MS Rawlinson A 338, possibly the earliest copy of the R translation of the Quadrilogue, can be identified with certainty as belonging to the Heydon family of Norfolk.23 The arms of the Heydon family (quarterly, argent and gules, a cross engrailed counterchanged) are painted within the opening initial and the manuscript contains the signatures ‘harry’ in the margin on left-hand side of fol. 34v, ‘elysabe’ on fol. 42r and the bottom of fol. 47r; ‘Anne Heydon’ on fols. 102v, 112r and 111v and ‘Amy’ written on fol.

20 I have also identified this scribe in another manuscript produced for William Worcester. Ricardus Franciscus also wrote Bodl. Lib, MS Ashmole 764 for John Smert, Garter King of Arms, and Nancy, Archives Départmentales de Meurthe et Moselle, MS H. 80 (a copy of the Statutes of the Order of the Garter) dated 1467 and signed ‘R. Franceys “s.R” ’ which may be ‘scriba/sub Rege’ or ‘written/for the King (of Arms)’. The most recent list of his productions can be found in Scott (vol. 2, 318–19). See also Jefferson (18–25). 21 Scott (vol. 2, 319). 22 He also illuminated the Consolidation Charter for Eton in 1447–48 and Cambridge King’s Charter dated 16 March 1446. For a recent list of the manuscripts illuminated by William Abell see Scott (vol. 2, 263–6). 23 Bodl. Lib, MS Rawlinson A 338, is also localisable to Norfolk in terms of production. Scott believes that the borders, the style of which ‘supports a regional location’, were produced in the same workshop as Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 55 (Calendar – Diocese of Norwich), which was produced in Norfolk after 1471 and Oxford, Keble College, MS 32 (Walsingham Breviary); Scott (vol. 2, 352).

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111v. These signatures are those of Henry Heydon and of his wife Anne and two of his five daughters. Henry Heydon was on commissions for Norfolk in the 1470s and seems to have owned other manuscripts, as he refers to his ‘English books’ in his will, although unfortunately no other manuscripts have been identified.24 Heydon, like Whetehill, was also an associate of the Pastons. He bequeathed his ‘best horse’ to John Paston III in his will dated 20 February 1504 and his daughter Bridget married William Paston, Sir John’s son.25 Only one other copy of the R translation can be linked with any certainty to an early owner.26 Chicago, Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20 was probably owned by a Lincolnshire monastery: on the front pastedown ‘Christoforus Lincolne Monachus’ is written in red in fifteenth-century textualis and the final letter is historiated with the face of a monk, which may refer to the scribe or the rubricator. The manuscript seems to have remained in the monastery. Following a summary of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae on fol. 207v is the note: ‘J. Clynton pror« scrpt. 148 –’. All four extant copies of the R translation of the Quadrilogue appear together with the same translator’s renditions of Chartier’s Esperance and Dialogus, which perhaps suggests that readers were interested in collecting the works of Chartier and that their selection process was motivated by that consideration rather than any wider thematic or aesthetic criteria.27 It is only in the latest manuscript, Newberry Library, MS f.32, Ry 20, that different texts were placed alongside these three translations: namely, Anthony Woodville’s translation of The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers (fols. 78r–204r) and John Walton’s translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae (fols. 205v–207v). However, these texts were clearly added to the manuscript later: the Chartier translations are written in a separate booklet, by a different, earlier hand from that of the other texts, which were probably bound alongside the Chartier texts at the end of the fifteenth century. Judging by the manuscript evidence, the owners of these manuscripts took a keen interest in their contents. All five copies of these translations contain

24

He was on the commissions of 2 Dec. 1473, 15 Feb. 1474, 18 May 1474, 10 Nov. 1475, 26 May 1476, 30 June 1476: see Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1467–1477, 1476–1485, passim. 25 Wedgewood (vol. 2, 451–2); Richmond (174). 26 The note ‘be et knone to aull men that I Robert Aulbrow as boute of thomas rade off … xxti bag’ is written on fol. 42r of Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D.I. ‘Aulbrow’ may refer to one of the villages of Alburgh, Aldborough or Aldbrough in Norfolk and Yorkshire, but this name is too common to identify the owner; Blayney in Alain Chartier (1980: vol. 2, 13). The manuscript was probably produced in London as it is written in a hand that appears to be that of a government-trained scribe, who would almost certainly have been working in London. Lambeth Palace Library, MS Arc.L.40.2/E.42 has the name ‘Peter Idyll’, but I am not convinced this is a signature. 27 Although the two considerations are not of course mutually exclusive.

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contemporary annotation and the only copy of Chartier’s text in French produced in England in the period was also extensively annotated by its early, anonymous reader.28 Of course, interest in Chartier’s works amongst English readers was not limited to his Quadrilogue. A range of Chartier’s texts were translated into English in the fifteenth century. In c.1445, Sir Richard Roos translated Chartier’s contentious love debate, La Belle Dame sans mercy, which seems to have secured a market rather quickly, circulating in six manuscripts dating from the second half of the fifteenth century.29 Middle English translations were also made of Chartier’s Esperance and Dialogus, while in about 1484 William Caxton translated and printed Chartier’s diatribe against the courtiers of Charles VII, Le Curial. Interest in the Quadrilogue was then part of a wider process of appropriation of Chartier’s works by, and for, English readers. This interest in Chartier’s works may be seen as indicative of the continuing importance of French ‘as the language of a superior culture’ to English literary production throughout the fifteenth century; an importance underlined by practices such as those of the English scribe John Shirley, who added French titles and rubrics to his own translations of French texts in order to add ‘a sort of cosmopolitan glamour and prestige to the items he was copying’.30 As Watson has suggested, referring particularly to William Caxton’s translation practice and choice of source texts, the ‘prestige of French literature is omnipresent’ in the fifteenth century. French texts were often regarded ‘as the arbiter of good taste and polite behaviour’.31 Codicological evidence likewise points to the prestige attached by English readers to French culture in terms of models of manuscript production. A range of manuscripts produced in the third quarter of the fifteenth century were made in England and contain Middle English translations of French texts, but the script and illustration give the appearance of French-produced books. For example, the miniature contained in the one extant manuscript containing the U translation of the Quadrilogue, Oxford, University College, MS 85, is modelled on those found in French manuscripts and shows France, depicted as a lady, with her three sons representing the three estates: Chevalier (Knight) leaning on his axe, Clergé (Clergy) carrying a scroll, and Peuple (People) holding a shovel.32 As mentioned above, this manuscript was also written by a French-trained scribe and the hand – as well as the decora-

28

Oxford, University College, MS 85 contains scribal marginalia only. See Kinch (2006a: 415–45), for a recent reappraisal of Roos’s translation. 30 The manuscript is Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 20; Pearsall (2001: 22). 31 Watson (350). 32 Compare this with the miniature in Bodl. Lib, MS Bodley 421. Not one copy of the R translation contains a miniature, although Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D I was clearly intended to be illuminated at some point as gaps have been left on some of the folios for miniatures. 29

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tion – give the impression, as Kathleen Scott has argued, of a Continental book.33 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS H.5, a copy of Stephen Scrope’s translation of Pizan’s Epistre, was also written by Ricardus Franciscus and was probably illuminated by William Abell.34 It has pink ruling and illuminated border decoration in a French style, yet it was produced in an English workshop as is clear from the note on the flyleaf: ‘vi payentis ii.c. champis vi. iii.. c. paragraffis. V’. Indeed, the prolific output of Ricardus Franciscus, whose hand has so far been identified in thirteen manuscripts dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, suggests that the ability to imitate French bâtarde was a desirable quality in a scribe, alongside the vogue for Flemish and French styles of illumination. The number of manuscripts which were brought back to England by men involved in the English occupation of France is also indicative of this interest in French-produced texts and manuscripts.35 Although the prestige attached to French texts and culture may have stimulated the production of translations of Chartier’s works and generated interest in those translations by readers, the evidence of the translations themselves points to more than the simple appreciation of, and fashion for, French texts in England. The act of translation not only implies appreciation of French texts but also points to the appropriation and remodelling of those texts by English translators and readers.36 These translators utilised the authority and prestige of Chartier’s Quadrilogue, but rewrote and recontextualised it for their English audiences. Furthermore, readers’ and translators’ investment in the Quadrilogue was not simply the product of a more general interest in the works of Alain Chartier and in texts emanating from France, but was also conditioned and stimulated by the wider political context of the 1470s and 80s. On one level, of course, the Quadrilogue was addressing very similar problems to those faced by England in the third quarter of the fifteenth century – military defeat and civil unrest – and was therefore a particularly appropriate text for an English audience. As others have noted, the Quadrilogue had much to offer the would-be author of a reformist treatise.37 Chartier and Worcester share an optimism about the future of their respective countries. In particular, Chartier’s list of fallen empires seems to offer Worcester consolation and hope.38 Chartier’s sustained discussion of how 33

Scott (vol. 2, 318–19). Scott (vol. 2, 263–6). 35 For copies of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum which were brought back from France, see Briggs (66). Soldiers such as Sir William Porter and Sir Thomas Hoo also brought back Books of Hours from France; Harris (1989: 181). 36 See also the comments in Wogan-Browne et al. (314–30). 37 Allmand and Keen (102). 38 Alain Chartier (1950: 3–4). Worcester had this passage copied into BL, MS Royal 13 C I, fol. 139r and used it in his Boke of Noblesse; Worcester (51). 34

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those who are defeated return as the victors was similarly appealing for Worcester.39 In his Boke of Noblesse, he points out that those who ‘for lak of providence or mysfortune were overthrow’ become ‘conquerours another seson’, and makes it clear that he knows this from his reading of Chartier: in the margin Worcester writes ‘Verba m’ri Alani de Auriga’.40 Worcester, following Chartier, also stressed that even after the catastrophic defeat of the Roman nobility at the Battle of Cannae, the Romans still managed to reform and defeat Hannibal.41 As he says, ‘But the worthy Romains, for alle that, left not the hope and trust of recovering on another day’, but rather ‘by subtile craft of wise policie and good conduyt in actis of werre’ succeeded in effecting ‘the gret discomfiture and destruccion of Haniballe his gret oost of Cartage’.42 Indeed, such hopefulness characterises Worcester’s reading and annotative practices generally.43 In his copy of a French translation of John Wales’ Breviloquium de virtutibus antiquorum principum et philosophorum, Worcester consistently annotated passages which argued that those who are defeated often return as the victors, with the marginal comments ‘pro Recuperacione terrae perditi’ (for the recuperation of the land that has been lost) and ‘pour le courage dez anglez’ (for the courage of the English).44 Yet, to what degree might this also apply to the other readers of Chartier’s text? As stated above, in the absence of direct statements from translators, it is difficult to know why they chose to translate their texts or why they thought it a useful enterprise. However, close attention to the way this text was read supports the suggestion that readers wanted Chartier’s text for similar reasons to Worcester and that their reading of the text was likewise influenced by the troubled context of defeat and internal division in which they found

39

Alain Chartier (1989a: 134–7). Worcester (33). The annotation occurs on fol. 16r of BL, MS Royal 18 B XXII. 41 Chartier uses the story of Hannibal and the Battle of Cannae on two occasions to demonstrate this point; Alain Chartier (1989a: 138); and (1950: 35–6). 42 Worcester (27). Worcester wrote the marginal gloss ‘Syr Alanus de Auriga’ next to this passage; BL, MS Royal 18 B XXII, fol. 12v. 43 There are other examples of contemporary readers annotating their texts in such optimistic ways. The reader of the anonymous English translation of Christine de Pizan’s Livre du corps de policie annotated a story which described how the Carthaginians broke the peace with Rome, believing that they had the superior military strength, but were actually defeated by the Romans in battle; Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5, fol. 54v; Christine de Pizan (1977b: Bk II, Ch. 13, 144). An early reader of the Middle English prose translation of De re militari, contained in Bodl. Lib, MS Douce 291, annotated the passage that argued that those who in the beginning of a conflict are victorious are often later defeated: ‘þe happe wel nygh and endes of alle batailles is þis þat þilke þat in the byginnynge haue yben victores & ouercomeres in þe ende þey haue ben ouercome hem self ’; Bodl. Lib, MS Douce 291, fol. 91v; Vegetius (Bk III, Ch. 27, 155). 44 Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 7870, fols. 52v–53r. These annotations are also discussed by Wakelin (Ch. 4). 40

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themselves. For example, the scribe of Oxford, University College, MS 85, a copy of the U translation of the Quadrilogue, and the scribe of Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D. I, a copy of the R translation, annotated the passage which argued that: ‘The enmyes ben nat made of erthe inmortall nor indeuiable more than ye be. They haue nothir glayues nor harneys but ye haue the same, nor they ben nat of so grete nombre but that ye be as many or more’.45 Early readers of two copies of the R translation of the Quadrilogue also annotated the passage which discussed how a prince ‘which fortune shewith nat his fauour vnto’ might ‘ryse ageyne and take awaye the victory from the victour’.46 Of course, France had not only endured civil war, military reversal and external manipulation, but had also come through those experiences victorious. The English translators and readers of the Quadrilogue were perhaps, like Worcester, seeking to explain how a country could be defeated and then rise again, as France had done. The Quadrilogue legitimised the argument that it was possible, indeed desirable, to learn from those who had conquered you. The scribe of the U translation of the Quadrilogue may have been engaging with this discourse when he wrote in red in the middle of a sentence ‘Nota bene processum’ before the instruction ‘lerne to knowe your infelicite by the happy fortunes of your enmyes’.47 In effect, it was an injunction to learn from the success of your enemies. Of the many lessons the Quadrilogue had to offer, its arguments concerning the importance of good counsel were of particular interest to its English readers, as illustrated by the attention they paid to the well-known biblical example of King Rehoboam. Chartier used the example in his Quadrilogue, arguing that Rehoboam set aside the counsel of wise, old men and followed instead the foolish opinions of the young and ignorant, and as a result lost his kingdom: Assez le peut on noter et prendre exemple du roy Roboan, qui, pour les oppressions de son peuple qu’il ne voult amendrir ne cesser en delaissant le conseil des saiges anciens et ensuivant la sote oppinion des jounes et non saichans, perdy de sa seigneurie dix lignies et demie (23).48 To understand this, one only has to take the example of king Rehoboam, who, because he did not want either to lessen or stop the oppression of his people, in abandoning the counsel of old sages to follow the foolish advice of young idiots, he lost control of ten and a half tribes. 45

Oxford, University College, MS 85, fol. 10r; Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D. I, fol. 7r; Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 165). 46 Lambeth Palace Library, MS Arc.L.40.2/E.42, fol. 20r; Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20, fol. 12v; Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 192). 47 Oxford, University College, MS 85, fol. 8v. 48 Alain Chartier (1950: 23). See also Bouchet’s essay in this volume; passage translated by Cayley.

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Worcester had this story copied into one of his notebooks and used the example in his Boke of Noblesse to provide a parallel to the English loss of territory in France.49 According to Worcester, King Rehoboam ‘lost the kingdom of whiche he had the gouvernaunce’ through poor counsel. Immediately after this story, Worcester encouraged ‘every governoure’ to: have a verray parfit love to the gouvernaunce of a comon wele by wise and goode counceile and to folow the pathis and weies and examples of the noble senatours of Rome, how they were attending to the commyn profit, setting aside singular availe.50

Implicitly, therefore, ‘singular availe’ caused Rehoboam to lose his kingdom.51 Worcester also wrote of ‘yong counceilours [who] had wasted and brought to nought theire inheritaunce callid patrimonie, and the comon profit of theire cite destroied’.52 This interest in the story of Rehoboam was also shared by readers of the U and R translations of the Quadrilogue as indicated by marginal annotations. The scribe of the only remaining copy of the U translation, Ricardus Franciscus, wrote ‘nota bene’ next to the story of King Rehoboam, which argued that because Rehoboam: ‘set apart the counseill of the auncient, sage men and folowing the assottid oppinons of the yonge menne vnwyttely he lost of his seigneurie x kindereddes and an half’.53 This same passage was annotated by a pointing finger in the copy of the R translation of the Quadrilogue contained in Bodl. Lib, MS Rawlinson A 338.54 More generally, readers seem to have been attracted to passages urging the importance of following the advice of experienced counsellors. The reader of a French copy of the Quadrilogue highlighted a passage, which Worcester also copied, that argued that the best counsel came from those who had lived longest.55

49

British Library, MS Royal 13 C I, fol. 136 r. Worcester adds ‘hommes’ after ‘jounes’. The story, taken from an unidentified Latin source, also appears on fol. 53r of the same manuscript. 50 Worcester (58). 51 Fortescue used the story of Rehoboam in his Governance of England in order to make a different point from that of Chartier and Worcester. He argued that because King Rehoboam overtaxed his subjects, ‘the ten parts of the people divided into twelve parts, departed from him, and chose themselves a new king’; Fortescue (105). This is a good example of the different conceptual frameworks or agendas which authors could bring to bear on the same material. Fortescue’s reading of the passage correlates with that offered in a range of late medieval English texts; see Walker (24–5). 52 Worcester (64). 53 Oxford, University College, MS 85, fol. 12v; Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 171– 3). 54 Bodl. Lib, MS Rawlinson A 338, fol. 13v; Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 170–2). 55 BL, MS Cotton Julius E.V, fol. 20v; Alain Chartier (1950: 47). The passage is copied onto fol. 136v of BL, MS Royal 13 C I.

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This reader also annotated the passage that argued that ‘en la loiaulté des conseilleurs gist la sceurté du prince et la salut de la chose publique’ (in the honesty of counsellors lies the security of a prince and the salvation of the commonweal).56 Early readers of two copies of the R translation also annotated passages concerning the importance of good counsel when making military decisions.57 That readers of the Quadrilogue found Chartier’s comments concerning counsel particularly relevant and noteworthy is hardly surprising given the troubled politics of the period and the wider discursive context which centred on ‘poor counsel’. Whether it issued from Cade’s rebels, the parliament which impeached the duke of Suffolk in 1449/50, or the manifesto released by Robin of Redesdale’s rebels in 1469 to justify their opposition to Edward IV, ‘counsel’ was at the forefront of the rhetorical debate waged between the government and its opponents throughout the third quarter of the fifteenth century.58 The theme of ‘poor counsel’ was key to the way contemporaries explained both the loss of the English lands in France in the early 1450s and wider domestic problems surrounding the administration of the law and the king’s finances.59 The removal of such traitors ‘broughte up of noughte’ became one of the main ways in which York and his supporters justified and legitimised their opposition throughout the 1450s, rhetorical ground which was then taken by the earl of Warwick in his opposition to his king, Edward IV, in 1469–71.60 Without wanting to discount the wider social, economic and cultural factors involved in the production and reception of English translations of French texts in the fifteenth century, it is perhaps worth recognising the degree to which interest in Chartier’s Quadrilogue invectif was stimulated by the specific historical context of failing military fortunes abroad and unrest at home. This

56

BL, MS Cotton Julius E.V, fol. 27v; Alain Chartier (1950: 64). Lambeth Palace Library, MS Arc.L.40.2/E.42, fol. 20r; Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20, fol. 12v; Alain Chartier (1974b: vol. 1, 192). The interest in counsel is further reflected by the manuscript context for the circulation of the U translation of the Quadrilogue, where it appears alongside two mirrors for princes, which urge the importance of good, impartial counsel. 58 See, for example, ‘Articles of the commons of Kent at the coming of the Yorkist lords from Calais, 1460’, a recirculation of the 1450 manifesto; ‘York’s articles to the king’ dating from 1450; ‘Warwick’s articles on his way from Calais to Ludlow’ dating from 1459; ‘The articles and causes for the assembling of Robin of Redesdale and the commons of Yorkshire, 1469’; ‘A letter from Warwick and Clarence to the commons of England, 1470’; and Sir John Fortescue’s ‘Example what good counseill helpith’ all printed in Kekewich et al. (211, 188, 208–10, 212–15, 218–19, 225, respectively). 59 See Watts. 60 Those allegedly offering ‘false counsel’ to the king are described as ‘broughte up of noughte’ by Cade’s rebels and by York in his articles to the king, dating from 1450; Kekewich et al. (188, 210). For Warwick’s use of the theme of counsel in 1470 see the documents printed in Kekewich et al. (218–22). 57

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context foregrounded the importance of counsel in political debate, which in turn shaped and informed the way Chartier’s text was received by its early readers. That English readers engaged so fully with Chartier’s text, through translation and annotation, is testament to the enduring popularity and influence of the Quadrilogue. The Quadrilogue’s relevance was far from confined to the specific historic moment of its composition: for the English readers of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, Chartier’s text was perhaps unnervingly apposite.

10

The dit amoureux, Alain Chartier, and the Belle Dame sans mercy Cycle in Scotland: John Rolland’s The Court of Venus WILLIAM CALIN Hugh MacDiarmid, the father of the modern Scottish Renaissance, proclaimed: ‘Not Burns – Dunbar!’1 By this he meant that the most authentic model for a modern resurgence ought not to be associated with Robert Burns and his epigones but with the Makars of the later Middle Ages. C. S. Lewis opined that the best literature in Great Britain, after Chaucer and prior to Spenser, comes from Scotland.2 That literature – written in Scots, generally recognized today to be an independent Anglic language related to English much as Occitan (Provençal) is to French – stands out as a major element in Scottish Studies; it has also been investigated thoroughly by medieval Anglicists. Of course, for three hundred years after the Conquest, French was the language of the upper classes in England, the language of the court, international commerce, the law, and along with Latin, of belles-lettres. Although less pervasive in Scotland, and with major Scottish writing coming under a strong English influence, French remained a powerful focus for all literature in the vernacular. This state of affairs continued in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as the Renaissance arrived in Scotland by way of France, Italy, and England, and the Reformation by way of England, France, and Switzerland. James VI/I himself was an active writer, in verse and in prose, and translated and adapted from French works, including The Uranie and The Furies from Du Bartas, and a treatise on Scots versification from Du Bellay’s Deffence et Illustration. Specialists in Scottish literature were always aware of the French connection. Janet Smith published a meticulous analysis of the French sources for the medieval period.3 More recently, Helena Shire gave us a sensitive, very well-informed study on poetry and music, especially French, at the Stewart

1 2 3

MacDiarmid (35). Lewis (1954). Janet M. Smith.

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court.4 In general, however, scholars have moved in other directions. John MacQueen oriented the profession toward the Latin, with powerful Christian readings of texts.5 R. D. S. Jack also published two very important books on the contribution of Italian.6 In my opinion, it is now time to reconsider the French. This article forms part of a much longer study on the French presence in the literature of medieval and Renaissance Scotland, to follow my study of the French presence in medieval England.7 Since Janet Smith’s time, a spate of hitherto relatively unknown French texts have received scholarly editions, or are now granted an importance denied to them by earlier generations.8 For example, Smith mentions only in passing Alain Chartier’s La Belle Dame sans mercy and does not cite at all the BDSM Cycle. In addition, since the 1930s we have seen new ways of looking at literature, including but not limited to the approaches of the various schools of modern and postmodern criticism. For example, from narratology we have learned to appreciate the comic, unreliable, yet highly self-conscious narrator in Machaut and Froissart. Narratology and intertextuality help us understand how each text in the BDSM Cycle attaches to, comments on, and reshapes the preceding texts and thus contributes to the elaboration of a literary cycle. We can now understand and appreciate the highly conventional, mannered, ludic verse of the later Middle Ages, in contrast to earlier generations of scholars who valued literature only when they thought it was ‘sincere’ and ‘original’. Although I argue for a number of direct influences and direct textual borrowing that the earlier scholars missed, I am concerned primarily with the broader issues of genre, mode, structure, and style rather than the microanalysis of Scottish texts and their French sources, and hope to situate the Scottish books in an enlarged intertextual context. I propose that so much of traditional, medieval, and early modern Scottish culture, which a number of previous scholars wanted to be native to Scotland or to come primarily from England, is strikingly international and European, and that the international, European-oriented Scotland of Smith and Hume, for that matter of MacDiarmid and Muir, was preceded brilliantly in this earlier period. The Court of Venus by John Rolland is a text all but totally neglected in Scottish studies. C. S. Lewis, in his pioneering rehabilitation of the sixteenth century in Middle Scots, cites the book, describing it as ‘an erotic allegory strangely encumbered by the author’s legal interests, and almost (but not quite) without merit’.9 It is mentioned in Maurice Lindsay’s History of

4 5 6 7 8 9

Shire. MacQueen (1967) and (1990). Jack (1972) and (1986). Calin (1994a). Janet M. Smith (141–2). Lewis (1954: 112).

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Scottish Literature, where he says the poem is old-fashioned and not ‘in itself of much importance or interest’.10 Gregory Kratzmann also employs the term ‘old-fashioned’ to designate Rolland’s poetry, in the four-volume History of Scottish Literature published under the general direction of Cairns Craig.11 Furthermore, Janet Smith observes that ‘the old fashion was out of date’ and that ‘Rolland’s mock trial fitly concludes the tradition’ of the law court form, which ‘was an arid, unpoetic style’.12 It may well be that the belatedness of Court – published in 1575, written perhaps before 1560 – explains the absence of scholarly commentary and critical recognition. In my opinion, Court is a major work, a masterpiece if you will, in the style of the French dits amoureux and closer to the French tales of love than any other Scotttish text, including The Kingis Quair and Gavin Douglas’s The Palice of Honour. Given the importance of the trial scene at Venus’s court, it should surprise no one that the BDSM Cycle offers an especially rich fund of themes and motifs to the tradition behind John Rolland, and indeed occupies a central position in that tradition, which he cultivated so well. The apparent ‘foreignness’ of Court may also explain why the book has yet to find a place in the canon. The foreignness here refers in part to Rolland’s closeness to French poets who also were excluded from the canon until quite recently, but also to the phenomenon of belatedness, that is, a very medieval work dating from the 1560s, which cannot be accounted for within our standard Renaissance horizon of expectations. In the 338–line Prologue to Court, the Narrator, also the implied author, discourses on the four tempers in the body, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the four elements, and the four animals to which they correspond. The worst of these beasts is the pig, associated with the element earth and the temper melancholia. After a disquisition on man’s free will as opposed to astral determinism, the Narrator decides to write, in order to avoid idleness and the commerce of bad people who commit vice. He writes for gentlemen and not rural folk, he is willing to be corrected, he says that Venus made him do it, and he sends his book on its way. First of all, the Narrator is making his claim to be an author, that is, a figure of authority. In the medieval and Renaissance tradition, he cultivates conventional rhetorical topoi: captatio benevolentiae, affected modesty, and ‘Go Little Book’ among others. He makes a claim to knowledge and to wisdom which he can then disseminate to his readers. And he places himself in the category of intellectuals born under the sign of Saturn and, therefore, in contact with Venus yet also subject to melancholia and its attendant vice: acedia (sloth).

10 11 12

Lindsay (68). Kratzmann (121). Janet M. Smith (122, 123).

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Secondly, the Narrator states twice that he is writing a ‘Comedie’ (266, 336). Comedic strains can already be detected in the Prologue. They take the form of self-deprecation, for this learned and rhetorically proficient auctor admits, even volunteers that melancholia – inevitably his melancholia – is the worst of the tempers and that it is associated with the worst of animals, the pig. He himself, as a lover, poet, and sage, a man subject to idleness, is implicitly, metaphorically a pig, and the act of writing that will free him from idleness requires a disposition that will bring him ever back to the earth, to Saturn, to melancholy, and to their iconic image. The Prologue over, ‘The First Buik’ begins with a traditional extradiegetic frame narrative: the weather is dreadful, typical of the season in Pisces. It is wet and windy yet also the time for choosing a mate. Alone, miserable, lying in bed, the Narrator nevertheless gets up, bundles himself in warm clothes – including mittens – and goes out to a garden where he cowers under a bush to escape the rain. There he perceives two fine youths and takes care to overhear them, lying low in order not to be noticed: I Jowkit than but dout quhen I thame saw, Behind the Bus (Lord) bot I liggit law. Buir me richt coy, and this my caus, and quhy, To se gif thay wald ony nar me draw, Or gif they had sum secreitis I micht knaw. … That I was thair forsuith thay did misknaw Howbeit I was to thame ane secreit spy. (1: ll. 55–9, 62–3)

This passage contains the reworking in Scots of a number of motifs from the French love poems. Guillaume de Machaut’s Jugement dou roy de Behaingne is probably the first text in which a narrator hides in the grass and eavesdrops on a debate concerning love. He is then followed, amongst others, by Alain Chartier where the narrator in the BDSM hides behind a leafy trellis and overhears a similar love debate: Si m’assis derriere une treille Drue de fueilles a merveille, Entrelacee de saulx vers, Si que nul, pour l’espesse fueille, Ne me peüst veoir au travers. … Et n’y avoit autre destour Fors la treille entre moy et eulx. (BDSM, vv. 156–60, 167–8)13 13 For texts by Chartier, I cite from the Laidlaw edition, Alain Chartier (1974a). For texts from the Cycle, I cite from the Hult and McRae edition: Alain Chartier et al. (2003). For poems in the Cycle not included by Hult and McRae, consult Piaget (1901; 1902; 1904; 1905). The translations are quoted from McRae, Alain Chartier et al. (2004). For a more elaborate analysis of the Cycle, see Calin (2006); Cayley (2006a); Armstrong (Forthcoming 2008).

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(And settled myself behind a trellis, / marvelously thick with leaves, / interlaced with weeping willow, / so that no one, thanks to the density of the foliage, / could spy me through it. / … and there was no other barrier / but the trellis to separate them from me.)

In the BDSM the debate – is love good or bad? is one subject to love or not? – is presented in the guise of a lover wooing the lovely lady, who rejects his suit. The author-figure as observer and, ultimately, as perhaps the arbiter of a love debate is a common motif in the dits amoureux. Examples where the narrator does not hide but participates in the conversation include Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre du Debat de deux amans, Le Livre des Trois jugemens, and Le Livre du Dit de Poissy, and Alain Chartier’s LQD. That the narrator in these texts is unhappy, and particularly unhappy in matters of the heart, is standard in the later texts, specifically in Chartier’s BDSM – itself a variation on the love debate – and in most poems of the BDSM Cycle: in Baudet Herenc’s Accusations; the anonymous Dame lealle; and Achille Caulier’s Cruelle Femme which are quoted below for crosscomparison: Nagaires, chevauchant, pensoye Com home triste et doloreux, Au dueil ou il fault que je soye Le plus dolent des amoureux. (BDSM, vv. 1–4) (Not so long ago, while out riding, I was thinking, / as a man sad and grieving does, / of the woeful state I was in, / being the saddest of lovers) Quant ainsy je me vy contraint D’Amours a la ballade faire, De soucy me trouvay astraint, Pour ce que doubtoye forfaire Les biens d’Amours dont j’ay affaire … Pour quoy il me couvint gesir Par desconfort sus une couche. (Accusations, vv. 9–13, 37–8) (Finding myself thus compelled / by Love to compose this ballad, / I was seized with anxiety / because I feared to forfeit / the benefits of Love, of which I was in great need … / So I had to lie down / out of pure despair on a little bed.) Ce fu ens eu moys de septembre Que tresdollent me complenoye … A poy soubstenir me pouoye, Car en ce point esté avoye Troys jours sans boyre et sans mengier, Que nulle chose ne faysoye Fors le Dieu d’Amours invoquier. (Dame lealle, vv. 25–6, 28–32)

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(It was the month of September / that I was complaining in this way … / I was barely able to stand up, / for at that point I had gone / three days without drinking or eating. / I could do nothing at all / except pray to the God of Love for help.) De Crainte et de Desir contrains, Chevauchoye apart moy seullet, Ainsy mené, ne plus ne mains, Comme ungs homs qui ne sceit qu’il fait. … Que seul estoye en tel esmay, Main levé et fort courouchié. … En grant habondance de plours M’eust on trouvé, baignant en lermes. (Cruelle Femme, vv. 13–16, 27–8, 61–2) (Constrained by both Fear and Desire, / I went out for a ride all alone / in this shaken state, no better and no worse, / like a man who knows not what he is doing. / … that I found myself alone and full of dismay, / having gotten up early and gone to bed late. / … Racked by great sobs, / I could always be found bathing in tears.)

In Chartier’s LQD the narrator, quite like John Rolland’s author-figure, miserable and melancholic, suffering from lovesickness, sets out on the first day of spring to a garden where the four ladies will speak. All of these texts build on the theme of the fumbling, lovelorn, bookish old authorfigure, most competent as a writer and most incompetent as a potential or actual lover. Machaut and Froissart launched this thematic in Le Jugement dou roy de Navarre, Le Voir Dit, and Le Joli Buisson de Jonece. Finally, in Charles d’Orléans’s rondeaux we find the speaker in bed on Valentine’s Day, unwilling or unable to rise and choose his mate: A ce jour de Saint Valentin Que chascun doit choisir son per … A mon resveillier, au matin, Je n’y ay cessé de penser … Mais Nonchaloir, mon medicin, … m’a conseillié reposer Et rendormir son mon coussin. (Rondeau 3) (On this Valentine’s Day / when everyone must choose his mate … / since morning, when I woke up, / I haven’t stopped thinking about it … / but Indifference, my physician, / … prescribed rest / and that I go back to sleep on my pillow.) Quant j’ay ouy le tabourin Sonner pour s’en aler au may, En mon lit fait n’en ay effray

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Ne levé mon chef du coissin, En disant: il est trop matin, Ung peu je me rendormiray. (Rondeau 38) (When I heard the drum / summoning us to go out and observe May Day, / in my bed I didn’t move / nor raise my head from the pillow, / saying: It is too early, / I’ll go back to sleep a little while longer.)

To be compared with Rolland’s Court: This samin day (gif I remember richt) Is consuetude to all kin Foule of flicht, Quha is vakand to cheis thame than ane maik. … To pas the time, and ather solace mak. Bot I alone of sic curage did laik. Pausing far mair how sone wald cum the nicht Me to repois, in my couche rest to tak. (1: ll. 28–30, 33–6)

All this to observe how well and with what thoroughness Rolland assimilated the French tradition, and the extent to which he relates his frame narrative to the Prologue. His Narrator, alone, miserable, and in bed, and later alone, miserable, and hiding from the rain under a bush, makes of him, on the one hand, a lover wallowing in melancholia and sloth, and, at the same time, an author-figure subject to melancholia and sloth. He is committing the very sins that he warns against in the Prologue. His situation is comic because of his inability to adapt to the social world of lovers and participants in the Valentine festivities and because he remains oblivious to the meaning of his situation and how it relates to the confident didacticism of the Prologue. Thus, we can measure a certain distance between the Narrator as storyteller and the Narrator as observer or witness in the story he is telling. The observer is a comic figure, a bit of a fool. The storyteller is, on the contrary, a serious moralist yet not consciously aware of the disparity. He is reliable with regard to the (wildly fictional) events that take place but apparently not at all with regard to how they are to be interpreted. The Narrator overhears two fine young men, superlatively dressed – we are given a long description of their clothes and jewelry – one of whom loves, whereas the other wishes to love no longer, the one blissful in his love life and the other wretched. Among the many French debate poems, a few develop the same thematic. Christine’s Debat de deux amans itself recounts the dispute between an older knight and a young squire over whether love brings more joy or more pain. The knight insists that love causes us to lose our minds and our sense of honor; we are knocked about by Fortune with tragic results: love destroys. The squire responds that love remains ever good and that lovers should accept with joy whatever occurs, keeping with them Esperance and Doux Penser; separation and death are externals that ought never to be blamed on love itself.

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Chartier’s DDFA follows in the wake of Christine’s poem. Here a healthy, happy knight argues that love is always good and it brings joy (with allusion to Esperance) while a sad, sickly (thin) knight responds that love is always bad and it brings misery. A variation on this thematic occurs in Jean le Seneschal’s Cent Ballades with the equivalent of a debate between an old knight (Le Hutin) who counsels love as fidelity and loyalty while a bawdy lady (La Guignarde) upholds love as inconstancy.14 A similar debate, between women, is presented in Le Debat des deux seurs by the fifteenth-century Burgundian poet Vaillant.15 This debate topic recalls the ideological divide in Le Roman de la Rose: Guillaume de Lorris and fin’ amor versus Jean de Meun and amour libre. A second variation on the theme is represented by Chartier’s BDSM where the lover praises love as the embodiment of all virtues whereas the lady lists the reasons why she should not love; one of her central arguments being that love is bad and it hurts people. John Rolland adapts the French pre-texts to his own uses with wit and brio. The two youths have been transformed from knights and squires into allegories. They are given French allegorical names: Esperance, borrowed directly from Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier; and its antithesis, Desperance, a Scots version of the French Desesperance. These female abstract nouns, in the French always given a female gender, are here applied to the two youths. Such play with gender, grammatical and sexual, is hardly unique. In Rose, both Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun ascribe the Rose’s impulse to welcome the lover’s advances by the term Bel Acueil. The masculine noun is personified as a young boy, which allows some deliciously ambiguous situations of an erotic nature. Those in the Scottish public aware of the medieval allegorical tradition would have enjoyed Rolland’s contributions to the game. Rolland’s debate takes place in a series of succeeding and alternate huitains, with one stanza each for each of the debaters, the precise form of Chartier’s BDSM, and of other French debates in the BDSM Cycle. Esperance and Desperance go on and on, mechanically repeating the same arguments, each deaf to the reasoning of the other. Rather like the characters in Chartier, rather specifically like Chartier’s Belle Dame – ‘Amours est crüel losengier, / Aspre en fait et doulx a mentir’ (vv. 313–14: Love is a cruel flatterer, / bitter in deed yet sweet in his lying) – Desperance attacks love and its source, the goddess Venus, but he does so in more virulent terms. According to him, Venus’s works are false, faithless, and odious; love is a poison, it gives rise to slander and shame, it slays the soul; Venus herself is without faith and truth. Actually, ‘lufe’ is allegorized as a woman; love and Venus are the same in the following passages critical of the workings of love:

14 15

See Jean le Seneschal. See Deschaux’s edition: Vaillant; and Cayley’s forthcoming edition.

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That lufe thow speikis hes na continuance. Bot slydis away as dois the snaw or slime. … lufe is full of dissait, And be na way thow sall not find it stabill. Hir warkis ar sa odious and Prophane, Into na sort thay ar not for to vse. I the assure, scho is fals and faithles. … lufe is sa perrellous, To all gude deid it is ane strenthie bar. Of all poisoun it is maist venemous. Sclandour and schame euer to it drawes nar. (1: ll. 323–4, 353–4, 387–8, 407, 513–16)16

Finally, whereas in the French dits amoureux the debaters habitually agree to have their ‘case’ adjudicated by an authority figure, often one proposed by the narrator, in Court, Esperance, overwhelmed by Desperance’s verbal assault against Venus, is so sensitive to the assaults that he falls into a swoon, is on the point of dying, and, in his last breath, calls upon Venus and Cupid to defend him. Venus then arrives and, as did the Lady with Venus in Machaut’s Fonteine amoureuse, she ministers to him, taking him in her arms and kissing him: Adonq la dame s’abaissa … Et plus de cent fois le baisa En son dormant; Et puis elle le regarda Et de son droit bras l’embrassa Et li dist: « Amis, trai te sa! » (3: vv. 2495, 2497–2501) (Thereupon, the lady bent down … / and kissed him more than a hundred times / in his sleep; / then she gazed at him, / put her right arm around him, / and said to him: ‘Sweet love, come close!’) Anone Venus that Ladye fair and bricht, In armes swith scho claucht hir awin trew knicht Comfortit him with kiss ane thousand syis With voce cryand, with all her mane & micht. Awalk, awalk, awalk, thow wofull wicht. (1: ll. 668–72)

16 This same distaste for love can be found in the following passages: 1: ll. 534–5, 580–2, 596–8, 611, 613, 615.

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Humor radiates from Esperance’s near-death or real-death experience. The tradition of chivalry is still alive, at least in books. All the knightly lovers in the French dits amoureux are presumed to be brave and valorous in war. In Christine’s Dit de Poissy one of the ladies suffers from the imprisonment of her beloved, a brave knight captured at the battle of Nicopolis. Similarly, in Chartier’s LQD three of the ladies suffer from the misfortune of their brave beloveds, killed, captured, or missing at the battle of Poitiers. The fourth is perhaps the most wretched; her lover escaped from the battle alive and is, therefore, a coward. It is also true that the wretched lovers in Machaut, Froissart, Christine, and Chartier all speak of dying from love. Yet very few of them do. In Chartier’s BDSM the narrator states that he has heard that the spurned lover later died of chagrin. In Accusations and Cruelle Femme the Belle Dame is accused of being directly responsible for the lover’s death, in other words, of murder. Desir makes the accusation in Accusations, and the lover’s friend, Verité, and Loyaulté make the accusation in Cruelle Femme. Being found guilty of murder is second only to being found guilty of blasphemy and lèse-majesté. The very same accusations are made against Rolland’s Desperance. Furthermore, as is the case with Desperance, in the Cycle the facts of the case (the assumption of death) are questioned. In the Dame lealle, after Desir makes the usual accusation, Verité wonders whether the lover is really dead. We aren’t sure, he affirms. And in the Erreurs de la BDSM, Verité pleads that one of the twelve errors in procedure concerns the lover’s purported death. One month after the fatal verbal encounter he was still alive, she declares. Meanwhile in Court the wretched debater and upholder of great love dies (more or less), simply from hearing the notion of love and Venus verbally denigrated by his debating partner. In a rage over the near death of her knight, Venus demands that Desperance be tried for blasphemy, misogyny, and attempted murder. Thus, instead of a judge deciding which of the two positions (for or against love) is the more truthful or the morally superior, the judge becomes the accuser in a trial which recalls Machaut’s Navarre and, above all, the BDSM Cycle. In Baudet Herenc’s Accusations, since no advocate at Amours’s court is willing to stand in the Belle Dame’s defense, she requests an adjournment in order to seek counsel: Et celle conseil demanda, Pour respondre a ce que on disoit … Quant la dame ouÿ l’apparanse Que conseil n’auroit, clerc ne lay, Estat demanda, pour absense De conseil, pour avoir delay. (vv. 577–8, 585–8) (Then she requested counsel / in order to prepare her defense … When the lady saw that / no lawyer, neither cleric nor layman, would defend her, / she requested a delay)

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Similarly, when Desperance’s trial is scheduled for three days after the bill of indictment is executed, the accused observes how little time he has to prepare his defense (‘Sen this sa schort the mater cummis on case’, 1: l. 881) and will use the three days to find counsel: To Desperance not vnknawin in ane part How that Venus wes set to eik his smart: He him bethocht for to fang sum defence, And for to get sun Aduocat expert: Wald Venus court retreit, cast or conuert, Or in sum part thairin mak resistence. (2: ll. 1–6)

‘The Secund Buik’ is devoted to his quest. And quest it is indeed, a mockheroic quest, as Desperance wends his way through forests, climbs mountains, and fords rivers, in the most inclement weather – wind, rain, and snow – in his all but fruitless search. Henri Bergson explains how the comic is generated by ‘du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant’,17 the juxtaposition of the artificial or the mechanical, and the vibrantly, dynamic, living human, and by the artificial, mechanical repetition of the juxtaposition. Bergson’s notion of the comic can help us understand the sequence of events in Book 2. Desperance seeks help in turn from the Seven Sages of Antiquity, the Nine Muses, the Nine Worthies, the Ten Sybils, the Three Fates, and the Three Graces. From each group he receives roughly the same answer: Venus is very powerful, we cannot help you, but we can send you to someone who can. And thus is played out a delicious comic routine in which the great figures of classical myth prove to be cowards and, therefore, utterly useless vis-à-vis the desperate protagonist, while the desperate protagonist dashes about the countryside, tossed back and forth from one to another. Among other comic motifs can be cited Desperance’s own cowardice: he is afraid to enter the domains of the Muses and Worthies, and he faints away in the presence of the latter, the only masculine authority-figures in his quest. He receives an encouraging prophetic dream from Spes (Hope) but doesn’t know how to interpret it; the Fates predict Desperance’s future but he isn’t listening. Other comic moments relate to the Narrator, who is not sure that he remembers the names of the Nine Worthies (the one list of names that everyone would know); and when Desperance has to be ferried across a river, the Narrator doesn’t know whether or not he paid the toll. Finally, Hoip takes Desperance to Vesta’s palace. Chastity, the porter, won’t let him in. Once inside, he discovers that Vesta is surrounded by far fewer ladies than was the case with Venus. Happily for the young man, Vesta is Venus’s sworn foe, and she agrees to be his advocate in the forthcoming trial.

17

Bergson.

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This trial then comprises the entire ‘Thrid Buik’, in which John Rolland plays with the trial machinery in much the same way that Machaut, Froissart, and the French followers of Alain Chartier play with theirs. For example, just as in Le Jugement du povre triste amant banny, Pitié, defending the accused lover, denounces Amours’s officers, Dangier and Mallebouche, for their responsibility in the affair and, therefore, states that they cannot be allowed as judges, so also, in Court, Vesta contests several of the assessors – Venus’s own mother plus, among others, Phyllis, Medea, Delilah, Jocasta, Deianira, and Thisbe – for having lived always for Venus and against chastity. Venus denies Vesta’s appeal. When Vesta then protests against Venus serving as judge and as advocate at the same time, Venus denies all Vesta’s motions in a fit of anger. What we can call arbitrary justice is more flagrant and more comic in Court than in the Cycle poems. However, the situations are identical. Accused before and judged by Amours and Venus, the Belle Dame and Desperance are doomed from the start. In theory, their best defense would be to deny Amours’s and Venus’s jurisdiction, to declare that they have nothing to do with love and, consequently, are in no way subject to love’s law. But, of course, they don’t. Finally, whereas the allegorical plaintiffs in Navarre culled examples from Antiquity – from history and myth – to attack the Narrator, John Rolland, in a delightful comic sequence, has his mythical Venus and Vesta cite precedents from the Old Testament. Vesta is more of a scholar than Venus, who makes a fool of herself by arguing that Vesta’s ‘storyis’ don’t prove a thing; perhaps some of them are made up: How beit
e haif schawin furth are small legent. I do not knaw gif it be euident For sic storyis I cuir thame not ane prene. And I deny that euer sic hes bene. Bot quhen
e pleis sic castis
e can Inuent, Me to defraude with gyle, and circumuene. Quhair that
e say, seir storyis
e haif sene, In the Testamentis baith ald and new surelie: I gif credence, I traist it may weill be
it sum thair is that
e haif for
et clene, Or ellis I traist
e neuer thame saw with ene. (3: ll. 544–9, 642–6)

Venus questions the reliability of Vesta’s testimony in much the same way that the Cycle poems question the reliability of Alain Chartier’s narratorwitness in the original BDSM. In the BDSM Cycle and in Court defendants face the death penalty for a relatively insignificant misdemeanor: having affirmed that sexual love is a bad thing. In Achille Caulier’s Cruelle Femme the Belle Dame is accused of irresponsible speech, being guilty of tyranny, blasphemy, and lèse-majesté:

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Et puis que le tirant ressemble Puis je bien « tirande » appeller … Pour quoy la puis, sans sournommer, Appeller la Faulse Tirande … Premier, je diz qu’elle a conmis Crisme de leze magesté, Quant de sa bouche a arresté Que pour pluseurs cas [vous, Amours] estes vice. (vv. 665–6, 671–2, 747–50) (And since she acts like a tyrant, / I might rightly name her ‘tyrant’ … / which is why I might, without exaggeration, / call her a ‘false tyrant’ … First of all, I declare that she committed / the crime of lèse-majesté / when from her own mouth she passed judgment and said / that in many cases you inspire vice.)

She is then condemned to be executed by drowning in a well of tears. So too, in the early letters and in the Excusacion, the implied author Alain Chartier is threatened with death both by the courtiers and by the god Amours. He also would be a ‘mauvaise langue’, a busybody and eavesdropper who commits heresy out of spite, that is, his personal failure with the ladies. Then, in the later poems of the Cycle, narratological play gives rise to the various advocates taking as reality the fiction of the BDSM narrator, equated with Alain Chartier, as an observer and witness. Hence, in the poems which defend the Belle Dame Chartier is said to have gotten it all wrong and to have exaggerated what he overheard: in Dame lealle he is assimilated to ‘jengleurs’ (v. 587: rhymers) and ‘mesdisans’ (v. 584: slanderers) guilty of ‘parler villain’ (v. 597: evil talk). The texts which attack the Belle Dame, on the other hand, praise the supposed witness for being, as Achille Caulier puts it, ‘ung tresnotable escripvain’ (v. 466: a celebrated writer) and not at all a ‘faulx enformeur’ (v. 476: false informer). In Rolland’s text, Venus charges Desperance with having slain Esperance and having slandered her, Venus. Vesta observes that Esperance is still alive and that the alleged slander is the truth. In the French books the verdict scenes are relatively straightforward. Such is the case in the BDSM Cycle. In Machaut’s Navarre and Chaucer’s Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, humor is generated by the fact that the author allows his persona – the Narrator – to be adjudged guilty but then to be sentenced only to write more poetry, the one domain in which he stands unrivaled. John Rolland, on the contrary, devotes ‘The Fourt Buik’ to developing, amplifying, and expanding on the humorous elements in the previous tradition. Thisbe, chosen to be the chancellor of the assisers because she was devoted to love yet died a virgin, delivers the bill of judgment. According to the bill, Vesta stands higher and better than Venus, therefore, presumably, spiritual love is superior to the carnal variety. Nevertheless,

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because Desperance is Venus’s vassal (a facet of the case revealed to us now for the first time), he is guilty of feudal treachery. He will be condemned to death. However, Thisbe pleads that Venus show mercy, because women – the category includes Venus – ought to avoid harshness and to manifest womanly pity. This is the very same argument used to condemn Chartier’s Belle Dame.18 In addition, in Excusacion, Amours castigates the implied author Alain Chartier for having, through the character of the Belle Dame, encouraged ladies to show no pity to their suitors: Es tu foul, hors du scens ou yvre, Ou veulx contre moy guerre prendre Qui as fait le maleureux livre, Dont chascun te devroit reprendre, Pour enseigner et pour aprendre Les dames a geter au loing Pitié la debonnaire et tendre, De qui tout le monde a besoing? (Excusacion, vv. 25–32) (Are you crazy, have you lost your mind, are you drunk? / Or do you wish to engage in war against me? / You have written this unfortunate book, / for which everyone should chastise you, / because it teaches / ladies to throw aside / Pity, the debonair and tender, / who is needed by every one!)

In Court, Venus agrees with Thisbe, and Desperance repents. All goes well. But then, because Vesta boasts of her triumph and that she will never again be subject to the likes of Venus, the latter, in a rage, once again condemns Desperance to death and sends him off to a dungeon to await his doom. It is only upon Esperance’s plea for mercy toward Desperance that Venus once again changes her mind and relents. Significantly, Esperance argues that it is wrong for such grave punishments to be allotted for what, between Desperance and himself, was only play, a point that Desperance himself made when first accused by Venus. Here we see that Venus’s bobbing back and forth as a judge and her personal, strictly emotional response to the events around her, characterize her in gendered terms. She is a woman, The Woman, as society envisaged women – emotional, irrational, physical, subject to passion, subject to fickleness and change, a creature of the night with particular ties to the moon and Dame Fortune. Hence the delicious irony that, in the Prologue, it was the goddess herself who purportedly urged the Narrator to tell the story, one in which she plays a sorry role. After Desperance repents again and is taken back into Venus’s service, and after a banquet and an erotic tournament – blows are delivered but no blood spilled – the Narrator reappears in the story. In a delightful spoof of the tradition, Rolland has his Narrator tell us that he remained lurking beneath 18

This motif also appears in Douglas’s Palice of Honour.

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the bush for all this time, that is, for the three days that Desperance took in his quest for an advocate, plus the day of the trial, verdict, sentence, feast, and tourney. We are not told, of course, how this first-person narrator with his limited point of view became omniscient or otherwise found out about Desperance’s quest. We are told, however, that the Narrator’s name is Eild and that, like the old narrator in Machaut, Froissart, and Gower’s Confessio Amantis, it is as a senex amans that he prays to Venus for alms and to be allowed to join the festivities. Despite the fact that he used to be a member of her court, Venus and her retinue mock him. As Venus observes, he may have the will but cannot perform the deed, and she cares only for the deed: Ga way said scho, ane fell freik thow hes bene That weill I knaw be thy beld heid and ene: With thi gude wil thow hes done that thow may Bot thy gude will without gude deid betwene Is not comptit in my Court worth a prene. Trowis thow gude will be payment? … Preif it than in deid with corage fra the splene. (4: ll. 707–12, 714)

Ejected from the garden, the Narrator, this clerkly author-figure, indulges in a comic version of the affected modesty topos, more or less confessing that behind the bush he was cold and remembered badly what took place. He then ends by stating that he writes for lovers, ladies, Venus, Cupid, and Christ. Putting Christ at the end places the entire work in a Christian frame of reference, one which recalls Vesta and Venus citing biblical precedents for their pleas, with Vesta arguing that the virgin martyrs manifest the highest, best love of all. The invocation also provides a last bit of humor, reminding the implied reader/audience of the extent to which Court is a totally secular aristocratic book emanating from a long tradition of secular aristocratic books, of the extent to which it takes Christian and secular motifs – worshiping God, paying feudal homage, and so on – and builds with and upon them a magnificent, mature, urbane, witty dit amoureux, one of the last and one of the best. Given the quantity and quality of analogous themes, motifs, images, passages, and forms, I think it a reasonable deduction that John Rolland was acquainted with the dit amoureux and, more particularly, with the BDSM and the Cycle. Recognizing the ludic qualities of the Cycle, he added, developed, and amplified comedic elements from the material in the Cycle; he drew out and actualized the Cycle’s comic potential. Moreover, whatever his acquaintance with the French texts, we may perhaps envisage Court as a late foreign contribution to the Cycle, rather like Le Dialogue d’un amoureux et de sa dame or Le Jugement du povre triste amant banny, that is, a work with different characters and with no overt reference to the Chartrian pre-texts yet

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employing the same apparatus and exploring the same questions of doctrine and techniques of narration. The Court of Venus testifies to a rich, manifold tradition, especially French, in the dit amoureux, and also to a similar tradition in the debate or judgement poem. The ‘law court form’ fascinated poets and their public in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, from Machaut to Rolland. In this subgenre Alain Chartier and the BDSM Cycle occupy a place of honor, at the center. Far from being arid and unpoetic or without merit, these texts are fascinating cultural artefacts and, at their best, first-class works in the comic vein, first-class comic poetry.

11

‘La Crudele in amore’: Carlo del Nero Reads La Belle Dame sans mercy ASHBY KINCH Very little is known about Carlo del Nero outside of the texts he left behind: a translation of Chartier’s La Belle Dame sans mercy; La Quistione d’amore (1477), which is a translation of Chartier’s Le Debat Reveille matin;1 and an original poem, Zibaldone, which his editor, Giuseppe Sansone, describes as ‘of very little worth.’2 The explicit to his BDSM translation specifies that he completed it in 1471 while in Montpellier: ‘Finisce La dama sanza merzede translata per Carlo del Nero a Monpolieri l’anno 1471 di franzese in toscano.’ This explicit led Söderhjelm to speculate that he might have been a student or teacher at the famous medical school, though he never found any document to substantiate that possibility.3 Despite Del Nero’s evident ability as a poet and the intrinsic interest in his re-casting of the poem, there has been very little critical attention to his text. Aside from two nineteenth-century editions by Fanfani and Söderhjelm, each of which had short headnotes,4 the only discussion before Sansone’s new edition was Hoffman’s somewhat dismissive assessment. Citing Söderhjelm, Hoffman found Del Nero’s to be the ‘least faithful’ of the three extant vernacular translations of the BDSM and stressed the way it ‘wanders from the original’, though Hoffman’s comments suggest that he did not engage the poem directly.5 Indeed, he cites Söderhjelm’s negative judgment of the translation’s accuracy (‘a number of errors and obscure passages not encountered in the French poem which, in many places, make the translation difficult to comprehend’), without noting that in the sentence just before, Söderhjelm had written, ‘In general, the whole introduction is much more lively and picturesque in the Italian poem than in

1

Piaget (1892), was the first to recognize that it was a translation of DRM. Del Nero (1997: 7). 3 Del Nero (1891: 96). 4 Del Nero (1865), where the headnote (219–20), is a breezy, one-page summary; in Del Nero (1891), Söderhjelm provides more context in his Introduction (95–100) and some incisive notes (124–7). 5 Hoffman (82). 2

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the French original.’6 I will return to the aesthetic importance of Del Nero’s prologue later, but here we must note that Hoffman’s dismissive attitude reflects a fairly widespread tendency to ignore late medieval vernacular translations as unnecessary adjuncts, even ‘violations’ of the original, rather than as literary products in their own right. Of course, within nationalist literary traditions, scholars tend to be rather harsh on translations that ‘displace’ the original in the form of errors, mistranslations, or violent re-readings of the original text, and Hoffman is simply echoing the prevailing critical presumption of the incompetence of the translator. Whether Del Nero’s translation is half-empty or half-full as a stylistic exercise, however, Sansone is surely right to recognize that Del Nero attempts to render ‘a good poetic text, in good rhythm and rhyme, faithful where it’s possible, and otherwise, free.’7 In addition to the occasional felicities of style of its terza rima, Del Nero’s translation of BDSM also provocatively rewrites Chartier’s poem through a radical recasting of its narrative voice, a feature that has attracted no attention, despite the obvious way in which it, along with the other two vernacular translations, provides evidence of Chartier’s European reception. Unlike the two other translators, Richard Roos (Middle English) and Francesc Oliver (Catalan), whose interventions in the text proper are only stylistic, Del Nero’s recasting of the poem provides unique evidence of a reader critically engaging Chartier’s work outside his native French readers. In what follows, I argue that Del Nero’s translation subtly alters the tone, and particularly, the ethical context of Chartier’s poem by reconstructing the narrative voice in a way that disambiguates the narrator’s relationship to Amante. I focus on three key areas of intervention through which Del Nero reconstructs Chartier’s poem as a plea for sympathy not only with Amante, but with his own narrative persona: first, his reconstruction of the narrative persona as a conventional courtly lover seeking the good grace of his recalcitrant lady, and his alteration of key aspects of the structure of the poem’s prologue to make it consonant with that different narrative voice; second, his intervention in the dialogue in the form of a running narrative voice; and third, his inflection of Chartier’s text with key additions and subtractions that polarize the reader’s attitude toward the Belle Dame, making it more difficult for the reader to sympathize with her. Del Nero’s text thus joins an ongoing argument about BDSM concerning the Belle Dame’s culpability for Amante’s ‘death’ at the end of the poem, a key issue in the cycle of texts in the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy so frequently transmitted with Chartier’s text. These texts constitute what Cayley has called a ‘collaborative debating community’8 and Del Nero’s 6

Del Nero (1891: 125). Del Nero (1997: 9). 8 See Cayley (2006a). Abundant recent scholarship on the Querelle has reinvigorated the study not just of Chartier’s poem, but also of the energetic literary communities that 7

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unique contribution to this discussion is to stage that argument within a translation of the text of the poem itself, rather than inventing a new literary artifice, engaging in ‘play’ at the level of form and style. One central piece of evidence comes in the translation’s final line, where he uses the word ‘crudele’ at the precise moment that Chartier names his central character ‘La Belle Dame sans mercy’. This usage echoes a dominant strand of reception of Chartier’s poem, most notably, Achille Caulier’s sprawling attack on the Belle Dame, La Cruelle Femme en amours. Though Del Nero’s familiarity with the Querelle texts is impossible to establish beyond doubt, they were so often transmitted with the text that the reasonable inference of his familiarity works to open up Del Nero’s text to a subtly different understanding from the original on which it is based. Del Nero can be seen, like some of the Querelle authors, to be recasting Chartier’s Belle Dame as ‘La Crudele’ for the rhetorical purpose of badgering his own love into reciprocity, threatening her with the defamation of association with the infamous titular character. Del Nero’s decision to write the translation in terza rima has both subtle and obvious impacts on the way he distinguishes himself from Chartier. The cultural role of terza rima as a hallmark of Italian literary style immediately links Del Nero’s poem back to Dante, whose centrality in Italian literature is closely linked with his innovative narrative use of tercets.9 But more than anything it suggests Del Nero’s commitment to translating the poem in the fullest sense of that word: not simply verbum pro verbo, but translating out of one literary system and fully into another. Indeed, the use of terza rima could be said to provide the most robust sense of the manuscript ‘explicit’ that describes the text as ‘translata … di franzese in toscano’:10 ‘toscano’ may be taken here as more than a dialect, but as a literary language, within which terza rima has a privileged place as a high form. In observing such a radical change of form, one might immediately assume that the translation is relatively ‘free’, but what is striking is how closely Del Nero’s Italian clings to Chartier’s French in many complete speeches, and often in strikingly literal translations of entire lines. Del Nero attempts in many cases to translate rhetorical effects, like the chiastic line balancing of Chartier’s ‘Je suis franche et franche vueil estre’ (286: I am free and wish to remain so)11 in Del Nero’s

formed in its wake. See the two recent editions of the Querelle texts, Alain Chartier et al. (2003), and Alain Chartier et al. (2004). See also the essays by Cayley and McRae in this volume. 9 As Sansone puts it in his introduction to the poem, Del Nero makes this formal decision ‘with eyes ever turned toward father Dante’: Del Nero (1997: 8). 10 Del Nero (1997: 54). All citations to Del Nero’s translation are to this edition. 11 Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Chartier and English translations from the Querelle poems are taken from McRae’s edition: Alain Chartier et al. (2004). See Cayley (2006a: 116–17), who notes that this chiastic line crucially stresses Belle Dame’s assertion of her autonomy.

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‘ché io son franca e franca esser intendo’ (291).12 Del Nero also uses the terza rima form to signal his conceptual division of the poem into three units by formally marking the boundaries between prologue, dialogue, and epilogue with a new terzine that does not carry forward the internal rhyme of the previous terzine. The first break occurs after line 166, just before Amante’s first speech inaugurating the dialogue; the second after Dama’s final speech at line 860.13 In general, Del Nero follows quite precisely the course of the dialogue between Amante and Dama, though the amplifications and compressions of material are often revealing of his interests. My Appendix provides a table that compares Chartier’s poem and Del Nero’s translation (with Roos’s text included for comparative purposes). Though a cursory glance indicates that Del Nero’s poem is 94 lines longer, a close look at the table indicates that number is deceptive: Del Nero’s prologue (1–166) is 34 lines shorter than Chartier’s, meaning that there are 128 more lines in the poem’s dialogue section, which makes up 677 of the 800 lines. Considering that Del Nero also skipped 48 lines of the French text later on (681–720, 729–36), the additional material is nearly a 20% amplification and most of the content is not attributable to simple translation issues (padding for clarification, doublets, etc). Forty-four of those 128 extra lines are interpolations by the narrator, who maintains a consistent interventionist presence in the narration in ways that radically alter the tone of Chartier’s text. These interpolations, ranging from one to three lines, often do as little as simply narrate the shifts in voice between the speakers, while others engage in dramatic descriptions of the interlocutors, particularly of Amante. Those forty-four lines do not include the numerous simple interjections of ‘e disse’, ‘ed egli a llei’, ‘rispose elle/ lui’ and ‘disse lui/ella’ throughout the dialogue; there is one such in almost every speaking stanza with only a handful of exceptions. The narrator’s consistent presence in the dialogue section might be partly attributable to Del Nero’s concerted effort to clarify the speaker at any given moment, since he is not using the stanzaic form in which clear separations between the speakers would be evident at stanza breaks. There is, however, evidence that he intends to create a different narrative effect by exposing the reader more fully to the narrator. Sansone has suggested that Del Nero’s poem has a ‘theatricality’ not found in Chartier’s poem,14 and certainly the narrator’s persistent intervention contributes to the theatrical effect. But the

12 Compare Roos, who misses this rhetorical effect with his nonetheless perfectly clear, ‘Free am I now, and free will I endure’ (314). All citations of Roos are taken from Dana Symons’s edn: Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints. 13 To distinguish between the text and translation, I use the names Dama and Amante to refer to Del Nero’s characters, and Amant and Belle Dame to refer to Chartier’s. 14 Del Nero (1997: 9).

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narrative asides also interrupt the reader’s sense that s/he is observing the dialogue at first hand, a fiction that is maintained in Chartier’s narrative because, having introduced the narrator as an eavesdropping auditor, he never again interferes until he abruptly offers his two-stanza moralization at the end.15 The replacement of Chartier’s silent narrator with this intervening voice decisively changes the interpretive dynamics of the dialogue by constructing a third character who mediates the reader’s experience, suggesting that the narrator’s reporting of the dialogue is not disinterested. Del Nero’s narrator, meanwhile, is far from a neutral observer in the way he constructs the reader’s relationship to the lover. First, the narrator describes the lover using diminutives, none of which occur in Chartier’s poem, that make this sympathy explicit: ‘meschin’ (118), ‘el servidore’ (335), ‘el povero/eto’ (158, 356, 507, 651), ‘el gioveneto’ (396, 449), ‘il tristo’ (631), ‘el miser(o)’ (425, 998). Dama, meanwhile, is referred to by the narrator with neutral terms: ‘La dama’ (195, 476), ‘La donna’ (407, 522, 563, 686, 768), or, most frequently, simply ‘ella’. The cumulative effect of these epithets is to depersonalize her, while simultaneously making him into the object of the narrator’s sympathetic identification. This effect is reinforced in the narrator’s descriptions of the two characters, which are limited in Chartier’s text to the pre-dialogue portion of the poem, while in Del Nero they are distributed throughout the dialogue. While Dama’s actual physical presence is never evoked in Del Nero’s text, the narrator’s description of Amante’s reactions draws the reader’s attention to the impact of the dialogue on his physical condition through descriptions of his tears (256, 316), his sighs (426), and, of course, his tears and sighs together (‘lagrime acompagnate da sospiri’, 495). In place of Chartier’s simple, direct description before the dialogue begins (169–90), Del Nero’s choice to weave these descriptions into the dialogue keeps Amante’s distress always in the reader’s mind. Chartier’s brief description of Dama before her first speech (217–20), meanwhile, emphasizes her control over her speech ‘Sans müer couleur ne couraige, / Mais tout amesureement’ (219–20: Without changing color or comportment, but in an evenly measured fashion), a characterization that Del Nero colors further by emphasizing in the dialogue her readiness of speech, her ability to seize the moment rhetorically. The speed and readiness of her response are indicated with asides that describe her as ‘pronti e tosti’ (281), ‘tosto’ (368, 476), and ‘presto riprese’ (686); and that emphasize her rhetorical mastery, speaking with ‘parole di gran peso’ (563: words of great heft) and as ‘che

15 Though the criticism on the vexing issue of the narrator’s interpretive function is too vast to cite effectively here, for two divergent views, see Kibler, and also Giannasi, who offers a provocative alternative. For a cogent recent account of the double moral, see Jane H. M. Taylor (2003).

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‘ntese ben ciò che dicia’ (458: listening carefully to what he said).16 She is an artful rhetor, while he is a blubbering wreck.17 While a reader of Chartier’s poem is free to imagine different representations of the non-verbal dynamics of the conversation, Del Nero goes out of his way to describe those moments. In addition to several dramatic pauses before and after speeches that emphasize the difficulty Amante has speaking (425–7, 494–6), the narrator also describes what we would call an ‘awkward silence’ at the end of one of Dama’s speeches: ‘Poi se tacerno tuti e dua alquanto, / ma ‘l doloroso non cogli ochi secchi. / Poi che taciuto el pover ebbe un tanto’ (315–7: Then both fell silent, but the suffering one not with dry eyes, since, having been hushed, the poor one still had so much sadness). Indeed, all of the narrator’s longer asides, of two to three lines, entail descriptions of Amante’s emotional or psychological state, and they often penetrate his interior state, as when the narrator comments that he spoke ‘non con poco afanno’ (716: with not a little bit of fear); or when he describes Amante’s inner turmoil after one of Dama’s retorts thus: ‘Questo parlar sì gli percosse il core / ch’à poco che lla vita n’à perduta’ (756: this speech so knocked his heart about that his life could scarcely endure). The cumulative effect of this differential treatment is to stack the emotional deck in favor of Amante: though it simultaneously cedes the rational ground to Dama, Del Nero’s reading seems to be based on the premise that the reader’s access to Amante’s emotionality presents him as being more ‘true’, and thus more sympathetic, a victim, not just of love, but of rhetorical bullying. The insidious effect of these subtle, and not-so-subtle, asides can be most vividly seen when the narrator injects a value judgment into his account: ‘El povereto, che moria di doglia / quando sentia parlar sì fiero e duro, / quasi d’ogni speranza si dispoglia’ (356–8: and the poor little fellow, who was dying of suffering when he heard this speech, so fierce and hard, was despoiled of all hope). This aside, coming relatively early in the debate, makes a specific value judgment in narrative voice about Dama’s discourse, judging it ‘fierce and hard’, directly echoing Amante’s own rhetoric, as if the narrator transparently identifies with Amante’s dilemma. Further, it validates his suffering, taking the eminent death from love-longing as a real possibility,

16

My translations of the Italian were greatly clarified and improved through consultation with Evelina Badery and John Hunt, to whom I am most grateful. Any obscurities I acknowledge mine. 17 As Angelo (135–6), has noted, Andreas Capellanus in De Amore foregrounds ‘extreme readiness of speech’ as one of the qualities of the good lover, a characteristic Chartier’s lover clearly lacks. See Andreas Capellanus (33). Cayley (2006a: 120), notes Chartier’s emphasis on Belle Dame’s measure, which is connected to her larger argument about his suspicion of rhetoric disconnected from the pursuit of truth, evident in his poetic and prose dialogues.

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and again it does so outside of Amante’s circumscribed discourse, which Dama is at great pains to critique throughout the dialogue. By accepting in narrative voice the terms that Amante sets for his suffering, Del Nero specifically forecloses the kind of analytic critique that one might view as one of Chartier’s possible authorial positions on courtly discourse.18 The narrator’s interventions are part of a larger strategy of re-casting the affective state of the narrator. As much perceptive criticism has made clear, Chartier’s narrator’s mourning of his dead lady is central to the poem’s emotional and psychological valence. As one who has renounced love and, importantly, the writing associated with love, Chartier’s ‘je-veuf ’, as Brami has described him, highlights central tensions in courtly writing: between joy and suffering; between hope and despair; and between writing that seeks transformation and writing that merely expresses pain.19 The frame of the debate, in which Chartier’s narrator rides his horse, sadly contemplating his lover’s death, entails a partial rewriting of the pastoral motif so prevalent in courtly literature.20 Chartier’s narrator, when he gives up writing, specifically describes those lovers who have reason to make ‘chançons, dis, et balades’ as ‘qui ont espoir d’alegement’ (25–6: who have hope of some relief). Del Nero’s version of the frame differs so radically that one is immediately attuned to an alternative approach to the dialogue that follows. There is no horse-riding, no dead lover, and no abjuration of writing. Del Nero’s narrator wakes up from a restless sleep, and tells us immediately that he is a conventional type: ‘io fui uno infra questi molti, / ché di pene e fatiche sono copioso, / merzé di quella che m’é tanto fiera, / per cui son visso e vivo doloroso’ (2–6: I am one among many who is so full of pain and fatigue, thanks to the one who is so fierce to me, by cause of whom I am conquered and living in deep sadness). Where Chartier signaled his isolation from the courtly tradition by making his narrator a mourner who no longer seeks solace in nature or in love, Del Nero self-consciously re-writes his narrator to conform with convention, referring explicitly in these lines to the large cast of lovers just like him: ‘uno infra questi molti’. The punning use of the word ‘merzé’ in line 5 signals his sly engagement with Chartier’s poem, even as his narrative is built around an entirely different set of concerns. Del Nero’s narrator is miserable, sighing, anxious, and disconcerted, like so many courtly lovers (7–14), but he is also conventionally hopeful of convincing his lady to reciprocate. Del Nero’s narrator awakens with difficulty, shakes off his discomforting sleep (16–19), and resolves to go out into the country to clear his head

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Recent criticism on the poem has emphasized Chartier’s critique of courtly culture via his critique of the superfluous and vacant quality of courtly speech. See, inter alia, Sansone; Swift; Hult (2003); Cayley (2006a). 19 See Brami. 20 See, inter alia, Rieger.

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by seeking out a flower-covered field (20–27), hoping to be replenished by Nature (‘s’amplïare’, 27). Indeed, where in Chartier the pastoral is an escape from sociality into pensiveness, in Del Nero Nature signifies a more conventional desire to mitigate personal despair. He twice uses the verb ‘miticare’ to indicate the way his escape to Nature has diminished his malaise (31, 40–1). It is in this frame of mind, suffering, but hopeful, that he approaches the ‘gente nobile e elitta’ (45: the noble and select company) where he comes to find Amante and Dama. Where Chartier’s narrator stresses that he is forced to join the party against his wishes, Del Nero’s narrator willingly embraces the friends he encounters, commenting on his failure to avoid the friends who entreated him to join their party that ‘non ripentito di mia inavertenza’ (60: I did not regret my inattention). Not just in the narrative ethos, but also in style, Del Nero has made the decision to frame the dialogue within a much more self-consciously aesthetic setting. He draws prolonged attention to the beauty of the natural scenery, but also includes a 5–line description (62–6), entirely absent in Chartier, of the garden where the tables are set for the company to have its meal, shaded with a beautiful fountain. Söderhjelm’s judgment about the narrative frame, cited at the beginning of this essay, must be extended to an analysis of the ultimate intent behind the radical shift in tone. The aestheticizing of this moment serves to reinforce the general salutary effect on the narrator of escaping his solitary pain and joining elegant company.21 The gesture is not far in aesthetic intent from a similar passage in Roos’s translation. Though more literal and wed to a stanza-by-stanza translation than Del Nero, Roos takes poetic liberty when rendering Chartier’s account of the narrator’s arrival at the feast. Here he crafts a beautifully embellished stanza that represents a self-conscious stylistic highpoint of the Middle English poem.22 For a translator, such passages stand as important moments of authorial assertion, and I do not think it is a mere felicitous coincidence that both poets assert themselves at the same place. They both seem intent to make of Chartier’s poem an altogether happier, more ‘replenishing’ experience by dampening the narrator’s suffering, as with Roos; or omitting the mourning as a way of recuperating the notion that court sociality can have a revivifying effect, as with Del Nero. Del Nero’s narrator still hopes for ‘merzé’ and the place where such hopes are nourished is the court. Chartier himself seems studiously to avoid fully endorsing this aesthetic

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For a discussion of the passage in Chartier as a celebration of the fête, see Shapley (100). Certainly, the party is represented positively by Chartier, but the point I am making here is that Del Nero and Roos both invest their narrators’ response to the party with a more positive effect. 22 Lewis (1936), comments on these specific lines in Roos: ‘We have to reconsider our whole conception of the culture of the fifteenth century when we read such an accomplished stanza’ (246). See also Kinch (2006a: 437–39).

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sensibility, as his narrator maintains his distance from the company almost as an act of will. Indeed, one of the more important lines in the poem is the moment in which Chartier’s narrator, seeing Amant among the company, describes his identification with his suffering by saying to himself, ‘Autel fus je comme vous estez’ (120: I once was what you are now). Chartier, attuned as he was to the didactic tradition, may well have meant for us to hear a deeper resonance in this phrase, connected as it is to the maxim ‘I am what you will be’ (Ego sum quod eris), repeated through the Three Living and Three Dead tradition as exemplified in one of the earliest vernacular poems in that tradition by Baudoin de Condé: ‘Nous … Tel serès vous et tel, comme ore / Estes, fumes’ (69–72: You will be such as I am and such as you are, I was).23 Having faced mortality via the death of his lover, Chartier’s narrator now speaks as though he is ‘dead’ to the world of the court in which he circulates.24 The tension between identification and distance, maintained in the difference in tense between ‘fus’ and ‘estez’, is dissolved by Roos and Del Nero in two different and revealing ways. Roos, maintaining a line of thought that he has developed in the feast scene, writes, ‘Suche oon was I, or that I saw these gestes’ (148), emphasizing that being among the gentle company has positively changed his perspective, pulling him away from his melancholy, qualifying the ‘was’ with ‘before.’ Del Nero, on the other hand, dissolves the tension by removing the past tense altogether. Since his narrator is not mourning, his identification with the lover is completely in the present: ‘tal se’ qual sono, e poco ci val arte! / Miglior cagion d’amar ti dia, i’ preco / – dissi ben basso – Amor, ch’a mme n’à dato, / per che lacrime spesso agli occhi reco’ (102–5: I am such a one as he, and artifice is of little use; I pray that Love – I said softly – might give you better opportunity than he gave me, for tears come often to my eyes). This present-tense identification of the narrator and Amante constructs a decisively different attitude toward the narrator’s investment in the dialogue that follows. He sees his own suffering (and consequently, his victimization) as unproblematically related to Amante’s, with the implication that he cannot view neutrally Dama’s wellreasoned retorts. Del Nero’s shift of emphasis in the framing material of the prologue can be quickly ascertained by looking at the way he restructures Chartier’s prologue. He shortens by fifteen lines Chartier’s opening section, in which the narrator takes leave of courtly writing (the ‘joyeuses choses’ that he rejects, 9–24), by cutting his recusatio entirely. He then amplifies by sixteen lines the description of the feast. In the midst of Chartier’s narrator’s comments on the Belle Dame, Del Nero chooses to omit a stanza in which Chartier’s narrator comments on the Belle Dame’s beauty, but also stresses that a discerning

23 24

See Poem 1 in Les Cinq Poèmes des trois morts et des trois vifs (53–63). I develop these ideas further in Kinch (2008).

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lover must consider ‘gré du cuer visé / Autant qu’a la beaulté du corps’ (139–40: graciousness of heart as well as beauty of the body). Perhaps more revealingly, the omitted stanza includes a passage where the narrator remarks that those who believe too easily what they see ‘sans aultre esperance, / Pourroit mourir de mille mors / Avant qu’ataindre a sa plaisance’ (141–4: without any other reason for hope, could die a thousand times before attaining joy). This rare passage of judgment in narrative voice in Chartier’s poem may provide a key interpretive clue for one line of conflict between Amant and the Belle Dame. Throughout the poem, Amant repeatedly deploys the trope of dying for love and the Belle Dame repeatedly insists that it is merely a convention, and, worse still, one of the means by which courtly lovers try to force ladies to accept their suits through rhetorical aggression.25 Since the lover’s ‘reported death’ at the end of the poem is such a contested part of the reception of the poem, both in its own time and in modern criticism,26 this passage is interpretively crucial. It seems to indicate that the ‘mille mort’ that a lover might ‘die’ prior to obtaining his love are a sign of a kind of psychological weakness derived from a love excessively vested in the eyes. Interestingly, Del Nero does recycle the phrase ‘mille mort’, using it later in the poem to translate a phrase Amant later uses to describe the punishment a disloyal lover deserves. He translates Chartier’s, ‘Qui se soubzmet a tel meffait / A plus d’une mort desservie’ (583–4: he who lowers himself to this crime deserves more than one death) with: ‘chi disidera fare così brutto atto / di mille morti e più confesso è degno’ (682–3: he who wishes to commit such a base crime is worthy of a thousand deaths and more, I declare). These decisions provide clear evidence that he is not slavishly hobbling after Chartier, but playing with both sound and meaning. Though Del Nero’s translation decisions might seem small, their cumulative impact can be dramatic, especially when tied to other structural and

25 The cultural status of the courtly rhetoric of dying for love is the subject of two excellent recent critical accounts that emphasize the ethics of sacrifice in courtly writing: see Gaunt (2006), and Fradenburg. 26 Giannasi sees the lover’s death as an exaggeration, part of his ‘hidden agenda of trying to gain sympathy’ (383); his reading may well have been influenced by the Italian translation, which has a much more emphatic focus on the narrator’s plight. Some recent critics have seen Chartier’s indirect reporting of his death as a deliberately ambiguous gesture meant to stimulate debate. See Cayley (2003: 56–57), who focuses on the ambiguity of the lover’s final fate, noting that Chartier’s approach is satirical. For a discussion of the issue in this volume, see Kelly. Earlier critics took his death for granted; see, inter alia, Shapley, who calls it his ‘real death at the poem’s end’ (179). Many critics have interpreted Amant’s death as evidence of Chartier’s distance from court; some more elaborately explain it as Chartier’s announcement of the ‘death’ of courtliness. See, for example Rieger (704–706).

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temporal changes to the poem.27 The end of Chartier’s poem is obviously an area where decisive interpretive intervention is possible: since the reported death of the lover and the double moral stanzas are all written in narrative voice, there are ample opportunities to re-cast that material in light of a different narrative strategy, and Del Nero certainly does so.28 Interestingly, the first major change involves replacing Amant’s speech (773–76), calling on Death to relieve him, with a three-line expansion in the narrator’s voice on Amante’s ‘disira la morte’ (864–7). This is immediately supplemented by the narrator’s explicit injection of his own sympathetic suffering into the narrative: ‘Se mmai vidi uomo vinto da dolore/ questo fu quel, e tal piatà mi venne / che tuto impalidi’ pensando ‘amore’ (867–9: if ever I have seen a man conquered by heartache, such was this one, and so much pity came to me that I grew totally pale thinking about love). None of this is in Chartier’s text, and while Chartier’s narrator quickly turns from Amant’s final speech to the indirect reporting of Amant’s death and then to the broader context of his audience, Del Nero’s narrator remains embedded in his own suffering for a further three lines: ‘quando della mia amata mi sovvenne, / dalla cui grazia assai di men aspetto, / apena il corpor rito si sostenne’ (870–2: When I remembered my love, whose grace I am expecting much less, my body could hardly hold itself up). Omitting Amant’s speech allows Del Nero’s narrator to focus attention on his own suffering, consequently disconnecting Amante’s negativity from his final outcome: he does not ‘talk himself into death’ but is rather much more clearly a ‘victim’ of love, which is precisely the characterization Del Nero’s narrator is building for himself. Because of his personal investment, Del Nero’s narrator chooses to frame the poem’s ending with a much less polemical version of the failings of those who are destroying ‘le païs d’Amours’, whom Chartier describes as ‘ces vanteurs et ces mesdisans’ (786: these braggarts and scandalmongers), urging loyal lovers to call them ‘infames’ (traitors). Del Nero gives only four (rather than eight) lines to the advice to flee bad lovers, who are described with very literal translations of Chartier’s terms: Ricordisi ciascun ch’è d’amor misto fugire e vanatori e maldicenti 27

There is insufficient space to discuss fully the omission of 48 lines late in the poem (lines 681–720, 729–36), on which, see Sansone in Del Nero (1997: 11–12), whose analysis suggests it is not simply a missing page or eye-skip. The case is interesting because, coming out of the deleted stanzas, Del Nero puts in the lover’s voice a stanza originally attributed to the Belle Dame (721–28), and then omits her next speech to reorganize the dialogue correctly. 28 In Kinch (2006a: 431), I argue that Roos chose to add epilogue stanzas that re-frame the debate along more conventional courtly lines, and thus to diminish one element of critique in Chartier’s poem.

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perché co llor non si fa nullo acquisto, ché a amor son troppo violenti. (882–5) I have written this down to encourage those who are mixed up in love to flee braggarts and evil-speakers, because with them nothing (good) can be acquired, who are so violent in love.

In his notes to the text, Sansone glosses ‘misto’ as ‘mescolato’ and ‘coinvolto’, but Del Nero is doubtlessly also alluding through a pun to the distinction in Andreas Capellanus between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed love’. In the eighth dialogue of De Amore (between a man and a woman of the higher nobility), the interlocutors define the highest form of love as that which seeks no physical confirmation, but adds immediately that most are involved in ‘mixed love’, partaking of some of the idealization of the ‘pure’, but nonetheless seeking some physical affirmation.29 Though he is making a case against those who are ‘troppo violenti’ in their desires, Del Nero’s narrator, who is still seeking ‘grazia’ from his own lady, is not advocating a rarefied form of love, merely warning against the danger of the extreme. His eight-line speech to the ladies, meanwhile, does not simply warn them in negative terms, as in Chartier, but encourages them to exhibit certain forms of positive behavior, traits missing in Chartier’s account: ‘ma dolce e amistose e non sì felle: / che sempre siate chiare e non mai brute, / e che si mostri vertù e valore’ (890–892: but sweet and friendly and not so sinister; and always may you be sincere, and never beastly, and show virtue and dignity). Since the narrator is more deeply invested in the outcome of his own love suit, this positive affirmation of the behavior he hopes to see in ‘donne e donzelle’ is central to the poem’s subtle shift of attention to the deserving, living lover, away from the stringent moral and ethical critique that so many readers have found in Chartier’s text. He wants ladies to be ‘dolce e amistose’ because he wants his lady to be more pliant to his demands. With a lady lurking beyond the fringes of the text who can still be ‘won over’, Del Nero’s narrator engages us in an ‘invested’ outcome. The lover’s death, and the much tighter connection between the narrator and the dead lover (‘Tal se’ qual sono’) thus sound a sharper warning about the responsibility of female behavior. In this regard, the most important single word in the translation is ‘crudele’ in Del Nero’s final line: ‘nomata qui la crudele in amore’ (894: named here the Cruel One in Love). Sansone observed that this was ‘a little bit of shrewdness’,30 but readers of the Querelle texts know it to be more than that. The final line of Chartier’s poem is the only place in which Dama is ‘named’ in

29

Andreas Capellanus (120–2). Angelo has laid out a compelling case for the comparative study of BDSM and De Amore (see, esp. 135–40). 30 Del Nero (1997: 10).

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the text, and at that very moment, Del Nero ‘renames’ Dama in a way that directly echoes Achille Caulier, who ‘renamed’ her in his own contribution to the cycle, La Cruelle Femme en amours. Indeed, the renaming of Dama is one of the central rhetorical features of Caulier’s text, which includes Truth’s long tirade against Dama that culminates in the charges of lèsemajesté and murder, the former of which requires, according to Truth, that she be ‘deboutee a tousjours / De vostre court et puis nommee / “La Crüelle Femme en amours” ’ (753–5: banned forever from your court and renamed ‘The Cruel Lady in Love’).31 Love, in his verdict, agrees to her guilt and applies Truth’s sentencing guidelines exactly, allowing Caulier to repeat the key phrase in the voice of authority: ‘Et enjoingz qu’on te nomme et clame / “La Crüelle Femme en Amours” ’ (903–4: Furthermore, I require that you be named and hailed as the ‘Cruel Woman in Love’). As if he knew the importance of reinforcing the ‘rebranding’ of Dama, Caulier in L’Ospital d’amours, refers not just to the ‘name’ but the act of naming itself, as if to call attention to the inextricable link between the pseudo-judicial process and the act of writing in the establishment of ‘precedent’. The narrator, reviewing the exposed corpses of faithless lovers who have received their post-mortem punishment, comes across ‘la ditte dame que l’en dit / “Sans mercy” ’ (466–7: the said lady who is called ‘without mercy’), who has been ‘nommoit l’en par escript / La Crüelle Femme en Amours’ (471–2, my italics: renamed in writing the ‘Cruel Woman in Love’). While we do not know definitively that Del Nero had access to Querelle texts, the deliberative choice to ‘name’ her differently than Chartier, whose text we do know he was translating, suggests strongly that he is siding with Caulier by replacing ‘La Belle Dame’ with ‘La Crudele’. Once Del Nero’s ‘little shrewdness’ locks into place, we note that this keyword appears in his translation in narrative interpolations that do not appear in Chartier’s original poem. The concept of ‘cruelty’ does play a role in Chartier’s poem, most importantly in Amant’s prescient speech in which he predicts that ‘gaigniez le blasme et le desloz / De crüaulté, qui mal y siet’ (677–8: you shall incur reproach and accusation of cruelty for this, which would suit you badly). But Del Nero’s Amante invokes her cruelty three times at the beginning of speeches in a prominent rhetorical position of direct address. The first is a simple claim that cruelty is her dominant trait: ‘Crudeltà più in voi che ‘n altra sale’ (296: there is more cruelty in you than in other women). The passage that follows offers a mystified account

31

McRae notes that Caulier’s poem marks a change of tone in the larger Querelle, after which ‘the litigious proceedings and the specter of death take center stage’, Alain Chartier et al. (2004: 17). Caulier’s poems are also crucial in the transmission of the Querelle in the manuscript tradition: according to Cayley (2006a: 141, 151), Ospital appears in twenty-three manuscripts, Cruelle Femme in sixteen.

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of female sovereignty that equates her cruelty with the abuse of power of a monarch. The second is a direct invocation to her that follows a three-line narrative passage in which his physical discomfort is stressed: ‘E ‘l miser, pien di doglia e di sconforto, / un gran sospiro gli surse dal cuore. … disse: “Crudele, piena di rigore!” ’ (425–28: And the miserable man, full of sorrow and distress, let a great sigh surge from his heart … and said, ‘Cruel one, full of severity’). Coming as it does after a passage in which the narrator has asked us to occupy his mental and physical anguish, the use of that code word ‘crudele’ directly implies a kind of narrative validation of his judgment. The final usage comes in a fourteen-line speech (in the midst of the ‘loyalty’ exchange discussed above), and the first two lines are Del Nero’s interpolations: ‘Troppo crudele siate e dispiatata / e io morrò in ciò continovando’ (652–3: Too cruel and dispiteous you are, and I will die if I must continue this way). These lines offer the ethical threat that the poem itself carries out: he accuses her of cruelty and implies that she will be responsible for his death. Readers of courtly literature are comfortable with this kind of wrangling over terminology so central to court debate. Shades of meaning will be contested; terms will be unpacked, redeployed, allegorized, personified, and dramatized in ways that quickly supplant more abstract meanings; and of course ethical and moral debates will evolve out of the relative weight a given participant attributes to corollary terms, like Pity, Grace, Loyalty, and Franchise. This is, of course, why the act of translation always involves more than finding semantic approximations in a target language, but also requires translating or adapting a value system, inventing a new value system, or testing core values by the transmission of ideas from one context to another. Translations, because they force a writer into choices that can then evolve into a developed line of interpretation of the whole poem, can help to highlight, at the most intense verbal level, the way a text is being engaged by a different readership. Because of this intense verbal engagement, the BDSM translations ought perhaps to be considered part of what Cayley describes as ‘a collaborative debating community’, though they are perhaps more obviously ‘virtual’ than the other interlocutors who take up Chartier’s text.32 Del Nero saw in the concept of ‘cruelty’ embedded in the Querelle texts a device to amplify his own interest in developing a position on the debate between Amante and Dama. Far from being neutral in his act of translation, Del Nero picks a side and thus joins in the debate not only in the local, restricted sense of identifying with Amante, but also in the broader sense of joining those Querelle participants like Caulier who blame Dama for Amante’s death. Far from a feeble attempt to translate the French, it is a concerted effort to translate the very terms of the poem, through subtle shifts of tone and less

32

See Cayley (2006a: 5–7).

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subtle shifts of narrative voice, into a critique of the Lady, executed to carry forward his own conventional love suit. Given its attention to naming, and the importance of naming within the Querelle cycle, might we not then re-name Del Nero’s text, ‘La Crudele in amore’?

Appendix: N = Narrator; A = Amant; BD = Belle Dame Line Correlations for Chartier’s BDSM and Translations Chartier’s BDSM

Roos

Translator’s Prologue: N: 1–190 A: 191–216 (26) N: 217–220 (4) BD: 221–224 (4) A: 225–232 BD: 233–240 A: 241–248 BD: 249–256 A: 257–264 N: BD: 265–272 A: 273–280 N: BD: 281–288 A: 289–296 BD: 297–304 N: A: 305–312 BD: 313–320 N: A: 321–328 N: BD: 329–336 N: A: 337–344 N: BD: 345–352 A: 353–360 BD: 354–368 A: 369–376

1–28 (r. royal) 29–218 219–244 245–248 249–252 253–260 261–268 269–276 277–284 285–292 293–300 301–308 309–316 317–324 325–332 333–340 341–348 349–356 357–364 365–372 373–380 381–388 389–396 397–404

Del Nero 1–166 167–193 (27) 194–198 (5) 199–203 (5) 204–212 (9) 213–223 (11) 224–235 (12) 236–245 (10) 246–254 (9) 255–6 (2) 257–265 (9) 266–280 (15) 281 (1) 282–295 (14) 296–304 (9) 305–314 (10) 315–317 (3) 318–325 (8) 326–334 (9) 335 (1) 336–343 (8) 344–345 (2) 346–355 (10) 356–358 (3) 359–367 (9) 368 (1) 369–379 (11) 380–386 (7) 387–395 (9) 396–406 (11)

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Chartier’s BDSM N: BD: N: A: BD: N: A: N: BD: A: N: BD: A: N: BD: A: BD: A: N: BD: N: A: N: BD: A: N: BD: A: BD: A: BD: A: N: A: N: BD: N: A: BD: A: N: BD: N: A: BD: N:

Roos

377–384

405–412

385–392 393–400

413–420 414–428

401–408

429–436

409–416 417–424

437–444 445–452

425–432 433–440

453–460 461–468

441–448 449–456 457–464 465–472

469–476 477–484 485–492 493–500

473–480

501–508

481–488

509–516

489–496 497–504

517–524 525–532

505–512 513–520 521–528 529–536 537–544 545–552

533–540 541–548 549–556 557–564 563–572 473–580

553–560

581–588

561–568 569–576 577–584

589–596 597–604 605–612

585–592

613–620

593–600 601–608

621–628 629–636

Del Nero 407 (1) 408–424 (17) 425–427 (3) 428–439 (12) 440–448 (9) 449 (1) 450–457 (8) 458 (1) 459–465 (7) 466–475 (10) 476 (1) 477–485 (9) 486–493 (8) 494–496 (3) 497–505 (9) 506–520 (15) 521–532 (12) 533–544 (12) 544–5 (2) 545–553 (9) 554 (1) 555–562 (8) 563 (1) 564–572 (9) 573–581 (9) 582 (1) 583–592 (10) 593–602 (10) 603–610 (8) 611–619 (9) 620–629 (10) 630 (1) 631 (interruption) 632–638 (8) 639–640 (2) 641–650 (10) 651 (1) 652–665 (14) 666–674 (9) 675–685 (11) 686 (1) 687–694 (8) 695 (1) 696–703 (8) 704–715 (12) 716 (1)

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Chartier’s BDSM

Roos

Del Nero

A: 609–616 N: BD: 617–624 N: A: 625–632 BD: 633–640 N: A: 641–648 BD: 649–656 A: 657–664 BD: 665–672 N: A: 673–680 N: BD: 681–688 A: 689–696 BD: 697–704 A: 705–712 BD: 713–720 A: 721–728 BD: 729–736 N: A: 737–744 BD: 745–752 N: A: 753–760 BD: 761–768 N: 769–772 A: 773–776 N: N: 777–800 Translator’s Epilogue:

637–644

717–724 (8) 725 (1) 726–734 (9) 735–737 (3) 738–745 (8) 746–755 (10) 756–7 (2) 758–766 (9) 767–775 (9) 776–785 (10) 786–797 (12) 798–800 (3) 801–809 (9) 810–811 (2) OMIT OMIT OMIT OMIT OMIT 812–823 (12; attrib. to BD) OMIT 824 (1) 825–833 (9) 834–841 (8) 842 (1) 843–850 (8) 851–860 (10) 861–864 OMIT 865–872 873–894

645–652 653–660 661–668 669–676 677–684 685–692 693–700 701–708 709–716 717–724 725–732 733–740 741–748 749–756 757–764 765–772 773–780 781–788 789–796 797–800 801–804 805–828 829–856 (r. royal)

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INDEX As in the Bibliography, medieval authors/figures are listed by given name except where that name is not commonly used (‘Achille Caulier’, ‘Francesc Oliver’, ‘Jacobus de Voragine’, but ‘Boethius’, ‘Caxton’, ‘Santillana’ etc.). Abell, William 108 n13, 139, 142 Achille Caulier: La Cruelle Femme en amours 1 n1, 72 n26, 84, 89, 92 n8, 93, 94, 95, 96, 153, 154, 158, 160, 161, 167, 177 L’Ospital d’amours 84, 88, 92 n8, 98, 119, 177 see also Baudet Herenc; La Dame lealle en amours; Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy adaptation, see rewriting Agincourt 21, 61–2, 63, 70, 71, 72 Alain Chartier: authority 3–11, 22, 29, 32–44, 63, 70–71, 75–87, 105, 128–29, 137, 142 diplomatic/political discourses 3–10, 21, 23 n42, 31, 35, 42–3, 61–5, 68– 72, 75–87, 105, 120–32, 135–47 early printed editions 1–2, 7, 83, 84 n48, 92 n9, 105, 106, 107, 109 n20, 113, 114, 116, 141 European appeal/reputation 1–4, 8, 9, 11, 31, 105–6, 112–13, 115–16, 126, 142–43 ‘joyeuses escriptures’ and serious poems 3 n13, 63, 77–8, 86, 87, 173 mastery 3, 5, 7–8, 38, 56, 75–87 works Ballade XXVIII, ‘Il n’est danger que de villain’ 56, 77 n14, 114 La Belle Dame sans mercy 2, 3, 8, 10, 20, 45–59, 65, 72 n26, 76, 84, 91–9, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 108–13, 116, 119, 141, 149–64, 165–81 Le Breviaire des nobles 19 n16, 21 n33; n35, 77 n12; n14, 106, 110, 115, 116

Complainte contre la mort 19–20, 50 n22, 56 n40, 75, 76 Le Debat des Deux Fortunés d’Amours 65, 76 n9, 85, 88, 98, 156 Le Debat du Herault, du Vassault, et du Villain 21, 69 n21 Le Debat Reveille matin 65, 85, 95 n18, 100, 119, 165 De vita curiali/Le Curial 2, 75 n3, 76, 77 n13, 78, 79, 82–3, 84, 85, 114, 116, 141 Dialogus familiaris amici et sodalis 2, 15 n1, 19 n19, 21, 25 n58, 26, 27 n65, 56, 83, 84, 85, 105, 110, 111, 137, 140, 141 Epistola de puella 23 n46, 71 n22 L’Excusacion aux dames 76 n9, 84, 92, 93, 94, 96, 100, 161, 162 Le Lay de paix 47, 77 n14, 88 Lettre des dames a Alain; Requeste baillee aux dames 84, 92, 94, 95 n18, 96, 100, 161 Le Livre de l’Esperance 2, 3 n13, 5, 15–30, 33 n18, 77 n12, 85–6, 105, 110, 111, 114, 116, 137, 140, 141, 156 Le Livre des Quatre Dames 2, 6–7, 21, 61–72, 76 n9, 88, 97, 153, 154, 158 Le Quadrilogue invectif 2, 5, 6, 9–10, 18 n11, 21, 24 n53, 25, 26 n62, 27, 31–44, 65, 69, 77 n12, 85, 105, 110, 111, 112, 114, 119–33, 135–47 see also anthologization; body politic; court; debate; Humanism; Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy; rewriting; translation

206

INDEX

allegory 6–7, 32, 42, 47–8, 54, 63, 65, 67–9, 72, 82, 92, 93, 123, 150, 156, 160, 178 Alonso de Cartagena 120 n8, 122, 123, 128, 129, 133 Altmann, Barbara K. 4 n22, 5 n26, 6–7, 85 n60, 97 n25 Álvaro de Luna 121 L’Amant rendu cordelier 84, 89, 92 n8 Ambrogio dei Migli 75 n3, 78, 79, 88 Andreas Capellanus 170 n17, 176 Angelo, Gretchen V. 3 n14, 5 n26, 53, 56, 76 n10, 85 n60, 170 n17, 176 n29 Anthoine Vérard 1 anthologization: in early printed editions 1, 2, 7, 83, 107, 114 in manuscripts 76, 83–4, 85, 94–5, 106, 107, 108 archetypus 16, 17, 19 n16, 22 Aristotle 79, 86 Armstrong, Adrian 5 n24, 7 n28, 20 n29, 63 n9, 71 n24, 86 n66, 87 n68, 93 n10, 152 n13 ars dictaminis 80 n29, 81 authority, see Alain Chartier Avignon 79 see also Paris Badel, Pierre-Yves 17 n8, 79 n21 Baudet Herenc, Accusations contre la Belle Dame sans mercy 84, 89, 92, 93 n10, 94, 95, 96, 103 n46, 106, 153, 158 Baudoin de Condé 173 Benedict XIII 79 Bergson, Henri 159 Biblical exempla 6, 7, 15, 25, 28, 29 n75, 30, 31–44, 129, 144, 163 bien, see common good binding (of manuscripts) 8, 26 n60, 97, 98, 99, 100 n30, 101–2, 103, 104, 112, 113–14, 140 Bland, Dave L. 46 Blayney, Margaret S. 105, 111, 116 n57, 136 n5, 137 blueprint, see archetypus Blumenfeld-Kosinski 21 n37, 61 n2, 62–3, 69, 71 Boccaccio, Giovanni 79, 80–81, 82, 86 De genealogia deorum 76, 78, 80, 82, 84

body politic 18, 24–5, 25 n58, 35, 36 n30, 44 see also common good Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 5–6, 15–30, 79, 140 Boffey, Julia 4 n19, 8, 103, 114 n49, 138 n19 Bonaventure 30, 42 Bonne d’Armagnac 72, 97 n25 booklets 8, 97, 98–101, 102–4, 107, 140 booksellers/stationers 8, 102, 108 see also printers Bossy, Michel-André 45 n1, 54 Bouchet, Florence 4 n22, 5–6, 35 n25, 69 n19, 127 n34; n35, 144 n48 Bourdieu, Pierre 87 n70 Bourgain, Pascale 1 n4, 5, 7, 31 n3, 42 n44, 71 n22, 75 n3; n4, 76 n5, 77 n13, 83 n43–6, 88 n72 Brami, Joseph 171 Brown, Melissa L. 47, 107 n4 Brown-Grant, Rosalind 79 n21 Cadiou, Andrew, The porteous of nobleness 115 Calin, William 4 n22, 10, 20 n27; n29, 108 n11, 150 n7, 152 n13 Capellanus, Andreas, De Amore 170 n17, 176 Cayley, Emma 2 n10, 3 n14, 4 n22, 5, 7–8, 15 n2, 18 n13, 20, 21 n31, 26 n60, 31, 35 n25, 45 n1, 52 n25, 55 n35; n38, 56, 61 n1; n2, 63 n7; n9, 65 n12, 71 n24, 91 n1, 92 n7, 94, 95, 101, 103, 108 n11, 144 n48, 152 n13, 156 n15, 166, 167 n11, 170 n17, 171 n18, 174 n26, 177, n31, 178 Caxton, William 2, 83, 114–15, 141 Cecchetti, Dario 80 n27 Cerquiglini, Jacqueline 18 n13, 23 n42 Champion, Pierre 2, 97 n23–4, 98 n26–7, 110 n24 Charles d’Orléans 5 n24, 63, 94 n15, 97, 98, 108, 110, 154 Charles V, king of France 97, 98 Charles VI, king of France 61, 78 Charles VII, king of France 31, 61, 92, 106, 115, 141 Chartier, see Alain Chartier Chaucer, Geoffrey 47, 107–8, 113, 116, 149

INDEX

The Legend of Good Women 113, 161 The Parliament of Fowls 113, 114 chess/chessboard 95 see also game; play chivalry: chivalry and nobility 126 n31 critique of 56, 120, 121–23, 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 158 Christine de Pizan 2, 5, 23 n49, 61, 64, 68, 106 Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc 71 n22 Epistre de Cupide 107 Epistre d’Othéa 112, 113, 139 Le Livre de l’Advision Cristine 23–4, 27, 29 Le Livre de la Cité des dames 10–11 Le Livre du corps de policie 143 n43 Le Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune 42–3 the love debates 61, 153, 155, 156, 158 see also debate; game; Querelle des femmes; Querelle de la Rose Cicero 38, 42, 79, 133 De inventione 86, 129 De senectute 113 circulation (of manuscripts) 2, 8, 76–7, 83, 91–104, 105, 106, 109, 113, 114–15, 120, 135–36, 137, 138, 141, 146 n57 civil war 31, 61, 72, 121, 122, 135, 144 see also Hundred Years’ War closure 55, 56, 71, 72, 82–3, 87, 93, 175 see also Alain Chartier; continuation; play codex, see manuscripts Coke, Robert 111–12 collaboration 7, 80, 85, 87, 94 see also collaborative debating community; competition; continuation collaborative debating community 5, 166, 178 Coluccio Salutati 79, 80, 81 common good/commonweal 21, 26, 43, 85, 127, 146 commonplaces 15, 19–20, 21, 23, 54, 71 community: material 78 poetic 84 see also collaborative debating community competition 5, 85, 93 n10, 94, 121

207

see also collaboration; game; play The Complaint against Hope 114 continuation/s 17, 20 n29, 72 n26, 84, 92–4 see also closure; collaboration; competition; play; Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy Copeland, Rita 9 corps politique, see body politic Cour amoureuse/ cour d’amours/ Court of Love 76, 92, 93, 96, 151, 157–59, 160–64 court: corruption at/of 56, 72, 76, 77, 82–3, 87, 114, 127 n36, 141, 171 n18 taedium curiae 78, 82 Cycle de la Belle Dame sans mercy, see Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy cycles and cyclicity 84 n52, 92, 94, 150, 166 La Dame lealle en amours 84, 89, 92 n8, 93, 94, 95–6, 99, 153–54, 158, 161 Dante Alighieri 1, 16–17, 19, 80, 81, 82, 167 De vulgari eloquentia 81 n32 Divine Comedy 16–17, 19, 81 death 19–20, 21, 22, 23 n43, 24–5, 61, 66, 67, 158, 160, 161–2, 177 n31 dying for love 20, 52, 55, 91, 155, 158, 166, 170–71, 173–75, 178 debate: actual/conceptual/contextual 5, 10, 20, 76, 78, 81, 84, 85–6, 87, 103, 107, 108, 127, 132, 146–47, 166–67, 178 debate genre 2, 5–6, 7, 20, 29 n75, 31, 35 n25, 45–6, 48–50, 53–6, 61–6, 69–72, 76, 85, 152–53, 156–58, 164, 171, 175 n28, 178 debate on ‘arms and letters’ 9–10, 120–24, 126 see also chivalry; dialogue; disputatio; dit amoureux; game; Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy, Querelle de la Rose Débat sur le Roman de la Rose, see Querelle de la Rose Del Nero, Carlo 2, 10, 165–81 La Quistione d’amore 165

208 Delogu, Daisy 3 n14, 61 n2, 85 n60 demande d’amour 45 n1 see also jeu-parti despair/Despair/Desesperance/ Desperance 15, 17, 18–19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28 n69, 64, 153, 156–63, 171, 172 see also grief/mourning; hope dialectic 54 see also disputatio dialogue: actual/conceptual/contextual 45 n1, 49, 55, 94, 166, 168–69, 171, 172, 173 dialogue genre 6, 27, 45, 108, 123, 126–27, 170 n17 see also debate Le Dialogue d’un amoureux et de sa dame 92 n8, 163 Diego de Valera 120 n8, 122, 131 n48 disputatio 33–4, 35, 45 n1 Di Stefano, Giuseppe 101 dit amoureux 10, 149–64 Dixon, Rebecca 80 n25 Don Pero Niño, Count of Buelna 125 Don Quixote 123 Douglas, Gavin, The Palice of Honour 151, 162 n18 dream vision 32, 65, 66, 92, 107, 126–27, 159 see also songe politique Droz, E. 31 n5, 100 Du Bellay, Joachim, Deffence et Illustration 149 Dysputson bytwyen Hope and Dyspeyr 114 Edward IV, king of England 109, 111, 112 n32, 114, 116, 135, 146 Enrique IV, king of Castile 124 epistles 76, 78–9, 80–81, 82, 119, 122, 129 see also debate; Jean de Montreuil; Nicolas de Clamanges Les Erreurs du jugement de la Belle Dame sans mercy 92 n8, 93, 94, 96, 158 Les Erreurs du jugement du povre triste amant banny 92 n8 Esperance, see hope Fanfani, P. 165 Fastolf, Sir John 112–13, 135, 139

INDEX

Florencio Hauweel 100 Foehr-Janssens, Yasmina 64 Fortescue, Sir John 110–11, 112 n32, 137, 145 n51, 146 n58 Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye 174 n25 Francesc Oliver 2, 166 franchise 20, 64, 76, 82, 178 François Villon 2, 5 n24, 100 Gaguin, Robert 83 game 21, 45 n1, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 64, 71, 76, 85, 94, 95, 107, 156 see also competition; play Gaunt, Simon 174 n25 George Chastelain 89 Giannasi, Robert 169 n15, 174 n26 Giles of Rome, De regimine principum 142 n35 Gilson, Simon 80, 81 n35 glosses, see translation Gontier Col 78, 79, 88 see also Querelle de la Rose Gower, John, Confessio Amantis 112, 139, 163 Grands Rhétoriqueurs, see Rhétoriqueurs Gréban, Simon, Les Epitaphes du roy Charles VII 85, 89 grief/mourning 21, 26, 62, 63–7, 69, 71–2, 91–2, 171, 172, 173 see also despair Gruber, Jörn 5 Guillaume Alexis, Debat de l’omme mondain 85, 89 Guillaume de Lorris 17, 119, 156 see also Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose Guillaume de Machaut 5, 61, 86, 119, 150, 158, 160 Fonteine amoureuse 157 Jugement dou roy de Behaigne; dou roy de Navarre 61, 65–6, 152, 154, 158, 161, 163, 164 Hamer, Richard 138 n19 Hasenohr, Geneviève 98 n28, 101 Heft, David 47, 57 Hélinand de Froidmont, Les Vers de la mort 29 Henry V, king of England 61 Henry VI, king of England 2, 105, 109, 110, 112 n32, 135 n2 Henry VIII, king of England 108, 116

INDEX

hermetische Lyrik 5 Heydon family 111, 139–40 Heydon, Henry 111, 140 Hicks, Éric, see Querelle de la Rose Hoccleve, Thomas, Letter of Cupid 107, 108 Hoffman, E. J. 1 n3, 2, 3 n13; n16–17, 19 n17, 78 n16, 86, 91 n3, 165, 166 Honegger, Thomas 107 n4 Honoré Bouvet, L’Arbre des batailles 115 n53 hope/Esperance 15, 16 n7, 18–19, 21, 23 n48, 25, 27–30, 33, 35, 37, 39, 64, 66–8, 142, 143, 156–58, 161, 162, 170, 171, 172, 174 see also despair Hult, David 3 n14, 5 n26, 21 n34, 47, 54, 56 n40, 65 n12, 77 n13, 84 n49, 94, 152 n13, 171 n18 Humanism/humanists 42, 56, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86, 120, 123, 125, 126, 127 n36 Hundred Years’ War 21, 31, 61, 69, 70–71, 72, 127 n34, 135, 158 see also civil war Huot, Sylvia 7 n28, 19 n17, 85 n61, 86 n64 Idyll, Peter 111, 112 n32, 140 n26 intertextuality 5, 10, 37, 42, 45, 86 n66, 87, 93, 150 see also play Isabelle de France 63 Jack, R. D. S. 150 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend 139 Jacques Thiboust 96, 97 James I of Scotland 106, 115 James VI of Scotland/I of England 149 Jardin de Plaisance et fleur de rethorique 1 Instructif de seconde rhétorique 1 Jauss, Hans Robert 6, 45–6 Jean d’Angoulême 110 Jean Bouchet 3 n18 Jean Chastel 106 Jean Froissart 61, 150, 154, 158, 160, 163 Jean Gerson 34 n24, 42 n46, 79 Consolatio Theologiae 24 n52 see also Querelle de la Rose

209

Jean de Meun 17, 19 n17, 27, 31, 67, 68, 81, 119, 156 see also Guillaume de Lorris; Roman de la Rose Jean Molinet 89 Jean de Montreuil 78–82 see also Christine de Pizan; Coluccio Salutati; Gontier Col; Nicolas de Clamanges; Querelle de la Rose Jeanroy, A. 100 Jean le Seneschal, Les Cent Ballades 156 jeu-parti/joc-partit 45 n1 see also chess; debate; demande d’amour Joan of Arc 23 n46, 61, 71, 72 John, Duke of Bedford 113 John Howard, Duke of Norfolk 3–4, 114 Juan II, king of Castile 121–22, 124 Juan de Mena 123, 128, 133 Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Cadira de honor 123, 133 jugement, see trial Le Jugement du povre triste amant banny 92, 160, 163 Kay, W. B. 2, 76–7 Kelly, Douglas 5–6, 15 n2, 16 n4–5, 17 n8–9, 18 n12–13; n15, 19 n16, 23 n49, 85 n61, 174 n26 Kibler, William 169 n15 Kinch, Ashby 3 n14, 4 n22, 10, 52 n25, 76 n10, 85 n60, 86 n64, 107 n4–5, 109 n19, 116 n56, 141 n29 The Kingis Quair 151 Kratzmann, Gregory 151 Lady France 6, 31, 33–4, 35, 36, 39, 40, 122 n12, 127, 131 see also nation; state Laidlaw, James 1, 3 n17, 11, 61 n1, 62 n5, 72 n25, 75 n4, 77, 83 n44, 84 n47–8, 91, 97, 100 n29, 101, 105, 106 n1, 115 n50, 152 n13 language: corruption of 56, 76, 82–3, 85, 127 Latin v. vernacular 5, 8, 41–2, 76, 77, 80–81, 85, 87, 124–25, 126, 127 prestige of French 9, 10, 141–42 see also Querelle des femmes; proverbs; translation Laurent de Premierfait 16–17

210 Lawrance, Jeremy 123 n19, 124, 125, 131 n49 Lemaire, Jacques 127 n36 lèse-majesté 158, 160–61, 177 letrados 124–6, 127 n38, 128, 130, 131, 132 see also debate Lewis, C. S. 149, 150, 172 Lindsay, Maurice, History of Scottish Literature 150–51 Louis XI, king of France 78, 138 Louis d’Orléans 63, 78 Lydgate, John: Debate of the Horse, Goose and Sheep 114 Fall of Princes 139 The Temple of Glass 107, 113 MacDiarmid, Hugh 149, 150 MacQueen, John 150 Malory, Morte Darthur 137 Manetti, Giannozzo 123 manuscripts: Arnhem, Bibliotheek Arnhem, MS 79: 100 Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 C 7 (Hamilton 144): 83 n43 Besançon, BM, 554: 100 n31 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 55: 111 n31, 139 n23 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 19: 107, 108 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 20: 115, 141 n30 Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 7870: 143 n44 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.1.6 (Findern MS): 108, 109 Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.5: 143 n43 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 76 D I: 111, 137 n7, 140 n26, 141 n32, 144 n45 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS H.5: 139, 142 Chantilly, Musée Condé, 686: 91 Chicago, Newberry Library, MS f.32, Ry 20: 140 Chicago, Newberry Library, MS f.36, Ry 20: 111, 137 n7, 140, 146 n57 Copenhagen, KB, Ny Kgl. Saml. 1768.2: 83 n44, 99

INDEX

Fribourg-Diesbach MS: 95, 100 n31 Heidelberg, UB, Pal. Germ. 354: 97 n25 London, BL, MS Additional 15300: 136 n3 London, BL, MS Additional 30864: 113 London, BL, MS Additional 34360: 115 London, BL, Cotton Julius E. V: 136 n3, 145 n55, 146 n56 London, BL, Cotton Vitellius E x: 111, 112 London, BL, MS Egerton 1868: 120, 128 n40, 133 London, BL, MS Harley 372: 54 n31, 108, 109, 110 London, BL, MS Harley 4402: 136 n3 London, BL, MS Harley 4775: 139 London, BL, MS Lansdowne 380: 114 London, BL, MS Royal 13 C I: 113, n40, 135, 142 n38, 145 n49; n55 London, BL, MS Royal 14 E II: 116 London, BL, MS Royal 14 E III: 113 London, BL, MS Royal 15 E VI: 110 London, BL, MS Royal 17 E IV: 116 London, BL, MS Royal 18 B XXII: 135 n2, 143 n40; n42 London, BL, MS Royal 19 A III: 106, 107 London, BL, MS Royal 20 C VIII: 115 n53 London, BL, MS Sloane 1710: 103, 107 n6 Longleat, MS 258: 107, 108 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 3666: 120, 128–30 Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio, MS II/3059: 120, 128 n40 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 126: 139 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 421: 136 n3, 141 n32 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 291: 143 n43 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16: 54 n31, 107, 108, 109 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 570: 112, 139 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson A 338: 111, 137 n7, 139, 145

INDEX

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 220: 100 n30 Oxford, University College, MS 85: 112, 137–39, 141, 144, 145 n53 Paris, Arsenal, 3521: 94–5, 96, 100 n31 Paris, Arsenal, 3523: 91, 100, 101–2 Paris, BnF, fr. 833: 84 n48, 91 Paris, BnF, fr. 924: 96–9, 101, 102, 103 n45 Paris, BnF, fr. 1128: 83 n43 Paris, BnF, fr. 1131: 91, 94, 96 Paris, BnF, fr. 1169: 94, 95–6 Paris, BnF, fr. 1642: 75–6, 83–9 Paris, BnF, fr. 2230: 91, 94 n15 Paris, BnF, fr. 2235: 91 Paris, BnF, fr. 20026: 51 n23, 94 n15, 97 n25 Paris, BnF, fr. 24440: 84 n48, 94 n15 Paris, BnF, nouv. acq. fr. 6535: 19 n17 Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum, MS 439/16: 139 Sion, Médiathèque Valais-Sion, bibl. Supersaxo S 97 bis: 77, 91 n1 St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Fr. F. V.XIV.71: 95 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 71 E 49: 95 n17, 99 Tours, BM, 978: 75–6, 78–83, 87–8 Turin, BNU, L. IV. 3: 77, 91 n1 see also anthologization; binding; booksellers; circulation; community; printers Margaret of Anjou 110–11, 114 n48, 116 Margaret of Scotland 3, 115 Marguerite de Rohan 94 n15 Marie de Clèves 94 n15, 97 n25 Martin le Franc, Le Champion des dames 1 n7 mastery, see Alain Chartier McRae, Joan E. 2 n10, 4 n22, 5 n26, 8, 65 n12, 75 n4, 77 n13; n15, 84, 92 n4, 94, 152 n13, 167 n8; 11, 177 n31 Meyenberg, Regula 1 n3, 5, 15 n2, 16 n7, 22 n38, 23 n42; n46, 24 n52; 56, 28 n69, 29 n75, 31 n3, 42 n47, 82 n38, 83 n41 Michault Taillevent: Le Debat du cuer et de l’œil 106, 107 Le Passe temps 85, 89

211

Le Psaultier des villains 85, 89 Middleton, Roger 77 n13 Minnis, Alastair J. 16 n6, 30 n77, 81 n36 model, see rewriting Mooney, Linne 108 n14 La Mort Le Roi Artu 113 mourning, see grief Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude 3 n14, 20 n26, 23 n42, 31, 32 n12, 43 n50, 82 n38, 85 n59 Multon, John 108 Nall, Catherine 4 n20, 9–10, 69 n19, 112 n32; n36, 122 n15, 136 n4, 137 n9 narrator: identity with author 86–7, 155 in Alain Chartier’s debates 36, 45, 55, 62–6, 69–70, 71, 86–7, 127, 131, 152–54, 158, 160–61, 163, 166–81 in Christine de Pizan’s debates 153 in Guillaume de Machaut’s debates 61, 65–6, 86, 150, 152 in Jean Froissart’s debates 150, 154, 160, 163 in translation 131, 151–64, 166–81 nation 8, 9, 17–18, 21, 24–5, 26, 30, 32, 34, 38, 42, 44, 70–71, 112, 120, 166 see also Lady France; state Le Naufrage de la Pucelle 100 Nicolas de Clamanges 78, 79, 80, 81–2, 88 see also epistles; Jean de Montreuil Octovien de Saint-Gelais, Sejour d’honneur 1 n7, 2 n11 Ornato, Ezio 78 n20, 79 n23, 80 n27 Orozco, Pedro de 123, 133 Oton de Granson, La Belle Dame qui eut mercy 84, 89, 92 n8, 96 Ouy, Gilbert 78 n20 Ovid 18, 79, 86 Ovide moralisé 18 Paris: Royal chancery 75–6, 78, 79, 81 University 79, 102 see also Avignon; booksellers; printers Pascal, Blaise 30

212 Pascual-Argente, Clara 4 n21, 9–10, 69 n19, 120 n7, 127 n37, 128 n40, 129 n43, 130 n46, 131 n49 Paston, Sir John, II 113–14 Paston, John III 138, 140 Paston, William 140 pecia 97 Pérez de Guzmán, Férnan 122, 133 Petrarch 79–82 Pfeffer, Wendy 47 n10 Piaget, Arthur 77 n13, 84 n52, 92, 95 n18, 96, 100, 119–20 n4, 152 n13, 165 n1 Pierre de Brezé 110 Pierre le Caron 2, 83 Pierre Chastellain 85 n56 Contre passe temps (Le Temps perdu) 89 Pierre Fabri, Le Grant et Vrai Art de pleine rhétorique 1, 3 Pierre Michault, Le Procès d’Honneur Féminin 1 n7 Pierre de Nesson, Lay de guerre 89 play/players 5, 7–8, 47, 49–52, 56, 64, 72, 75–6, 78, 85, 87, 156, 161, 167 intertextual, see intertextuality see also chess; competition; game poetrie 18 Poirion, Daniel 2, 18 n13, 26 n61 printers 1, 2, 105, 108, 114, 115, 116, 141 see also booksellers prosimetrum 15, 25, 85 proverbs 6, 32 n6, 36, 39 n35, 42, 45–59, 124, 129 distinction between proverbs and sentences 47 n10 Putnam, George Haven 102 n39–42 Pynson, Richard, book of fame 116 Quadrílogo invectivo/inventivo 120–24, 126, 128–33 Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy 5 n24, 8, 10, 84–5, 91–104; 149–64, 166–67, 176–79 distinction between Cycle and Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy 84 n52 see also Alain Chartier; Querelle des femmes Querelle des femmes 76

INDEX

see also Christine de Pizan; Querelle de la Rose Querelle de la Rose 79, 81, 84–5 see also Christine de Pizan; Gontier Col; Jean Gerson; Jean de Montreuil; Roman de la Rose Queste del Saint Graal 113 Quilligan, Maureen 67–8 Qüistión entre dos caballeros 125 n27 Rassart-Eeckhout, Emmanuelle 46 reception 2–3, 7–8, 11, 75–89, 91–104, 105–16, 121, 136, 138, 146, 166–67, 174 see also manuscripts recontextualisation, see translation recusatio 3 n13, 85–6, 171, 173 Rehoboam, king of Judah 40, 144–45 La Responce des dames 100 rewriting 5–6, 15–30, 136, 142, 166, 171 model v. source 21, 30 see also translation rhetoric 18, 30, 35, 38, 43, 46–7, 48, 49–50, 55–6, 78–9, 81, 82–3, 86, 87, 107, 121, 123, 126, 129–32, 146, 151–52, 167–70, 174, 177 Rhétoriqueurs (Grands) 3, 5 n24 Ricardus Franciscus 112, 139, 142, 145 Richard III, king of England 114 Richmond, Colin 138 n18, 140 n25 Rieger, Dietmar 55 n35, 171 n20, 174 n26 Robinson, Pamela R. 97, 98–9, 100 n30 Rodríguez Velasco 120 n8, 122, n17, 123 n19, 124 n23, 125, 126, 131 n47 Rolland, John, The Court of Venus 10, 149–64 Roman de la Rose 16–17, 21 n37, 27–8, 32, 54 n33, 65, 67–8, 81, 84, 91, 97 n23, 156 see also Guillaume de Lorris; Jean de Meun; Querelle de la Rose Roos, Richard 2, 3, 6, 54, 107, 109–110, 141, 168, 172–73 Rouy, François 5, 15 n3, 19 n17–18; 23 n46, 27 n66, 30 n79, 31 n3, 86 n62 Sansone, Giuseppe E. 3 n14, 45, 54, 76 n10, 85 n60, 165–66, 167 n9, 168, 171 n18, 175 n27, 176–77

INDEX

Santillana, Íñigo López de Mendoza marquis of 3, 119–24, 129, 131 Lamentaçión de Spaña 122 Prohemio e carta 119 Scott, Kathleen 108 n13, 111, n31, 112 n34–6, 139 n20–23, 142 Scrope, Stephen 113, 139, 142 Seaton, Ethel 106 n3, 109, 110 n22, 113 n42–3, 114 n48 Sebillet, Thomas, Art poëtique françois 1 Secreet of Secreetes 112, 138 Seneca 79 sentences, see proverbs sequel/s, see continuation Shapley, C. S. 20 n25, 22 n40, 78 n16, 85 n60, 172 n21, 174 n26 Shire, Helena 149–50 Shirley, John 108, 112, n35, 115 n52, 141 Smith, Janet M. 149, 150, 151 Smith, Pauline 82 n38 Söderhjelm, W. 165–66, 172 Solterer, Helen 3 n14, 20 n26, 76 n10, 82 n39 songe, see dream vision songe politique 65 n14 source, see rewriting Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene 116, 149 state 33–4, 35, 44, 111, 120–21, 124, 127, 131 see also court; Lady France; language; nation stationers, see booksellers suicide, see despair Swift, Helen J. 50 n22, 56, 171 n18 Symons, Dana 4 n22, 6, 50 n21, 107 n4, 168 n12 Talbot, Sir John 110 Tarnowski, Andrea 68 Taylor, Andrew 102–3 Taylor, Craig 71 n22 Taylor, Jane H. M. 5 n24, 7 n28, 21 n37, 47 n7, 54 n33, 75 n2, 84 n53, 87 n69, 101–2, 103, 169 n15 terza rima 166, 167–8 Thompson, John 103 Thynne, William 108–9, 116

213

translatio studii 119 translation: Chartier into Castilian 2, 119–33 Chartier into Catalan 2, 166 Chartier into English 2, 4, 7–10, 50 n21, 54, 83, 103, 105–16, 122 n15, 135–47, 166, 172 Chartier into French versions 2, 76 n5, 83, 85, 88 Chartier into Italian 2, 10, 165–81 Chartier into Latin 83 Chartier into Scots 2, 7, 10, 105–16, 149–64 and glosses 4, 122, 128–9, 136, 143 n42 inter-vernacular translation 9 recontextualisation 5–6, 22, 30, 123, 142 theory of 3, 8–10, 54, 105, 131–32, 142, 166, 178 see also Alain Chartier; language; rewriting transmission, see circulation; manuscripts Trastámaras 126 The Treatise of Hope 111, 112 trial 45 n1, 92–6, 99, 100, 103, 151, 158–60, 163 see also court; debate Vaillant, Ambusche Vaillant [Debat des deux seurs] 85, 89, 156 Valerius Maximus 123, 126 Vegetius 143 n43 Virgil, Aeneid 16–17, 18 Visconti, Valentina 63 Wakelin, Daniel 135 n2, 143 n44 Walravens, C. J. H. 1 n7, 2, 3 n17–18 Walton, John 140 war, see civil war; Hundred Years’ War Watson, Nicholas 9 n29, 141 Wedgewood, J. C. 140 n25 Weiss, Julian 125 n27, 128 Whetehill, Richard 138, 140 Woodville, Anthony 114, 140 Worcester, William 4, 9, 113, 135–47 Boke of Noblesse 4, 135, 142–5 Wynkyn de Worde 108

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