Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner 1843843358, 9781843843351

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Shaping Courtliness_Romance 03/09/2012 10:42 Page 1

Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O’Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Laurie Shepard, Sarah White.

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

SHAPING COURTLINESS IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE Essays in Honor of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

Edited by

Daniel E. O’Sullivan and Laurie Shepard

O’Sullivan and Shepard (eds)

DANIEL E. O’SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; Laurie Shepard is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

SHAPING COURTLINESS IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE

The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and a literary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval ‘courtliness’ is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the profound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field.

Gallica

Gallica Volume 28

SHAPING cOURTLINESS IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE

Gallica ISSN 1749–091X

General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval and Renaissance 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, New York University, 13–19 University Place, 6th floor, New York, NY 10003, USA The Editorial Director, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

Previously published titles in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

shaping courtliness in medieval france essays in honor of matilda tomaryn bruckner

Edited by

Daniel E. O’Sullivan and Laurie Shepard

D. S. BREWER

© Contributors 2013 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 2013 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978–1–84384–335–1

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 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

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

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 Daniel E. O’Sullivan and Laurie Shepard Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner: A Bibliography

15

Part I. Shaping Real and Fictive Courts A Perfume of Reality? Desublimating the Courtly Peter Haidu

25

Shaping the Case: the Olim and the Parlement de Paris under King Louis IX Donald Maddox

47

Charles d’Orléans and the Wars of the Roses: Yorkist and Tudor Implications of British Library MS Royal 16 F ii Michel-André Bossy

61

Part II. Shaping Courtly Narrative Meraugis de Portlesguez and the Limits of Courtliness Kristin Burr

83

The Art of “Transmutation” in the Burgundian Prose Cligés (1454): Bringing the Siege of Windsor Castle to Life for the Court of Philip the Good Joan Tasker Grimbert

95

Thomas’s Raisun: Désir, Vouloir, Pouvoir David Hult

107

Humanimals: The Future of Courtliness in the Conte du Papegau 123 Virginie Greene A Matter of Life or Death: Fecundity and Sterility in Marie de France’s Guigemar Logan Whalen

139

Le Roman de la Rose, Performed in Court Evelyn Birge Vitz

151

III. Shaping Women’s Voices in Medieval France Lombarda’s Mirrors: Reflections on PC 288,1 as a Response to PC 54,1 Elizabeth W. Poe

165

Na Maria: Courtliness and Marian Devotion in Old Occitan Lyric Daniel E. O’Sullivan

183

From Convent to Court: Ermengarde d’Anjou’s Decision to Reenter the World William Schenck

201

From Chrétien to Christine: Translating Twelfth-Century Literature to Reform the French Court during the Hundred Years War Nadia Margolis

213

IV. Shaping the Courtly Other The Favorable Reception of Outsiders at Court: Medieval Versions of Cultural Exchange Laine Doggett

229

Shaping Saladin: Courtly Men Dressed in Silk E. Jane Burns

241

Force de parole: Shaping Courtliness in Richard de Fournival’s 255 Bestiaire d’amours, Copied in Metz about 1312 (Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308) Nancy Freeman Regalado The Poetic Legacy of Charles d’Anjou in Italy: The Poetics of Nobility in the Comune Laurie Shepard

271

Envoi 285 Sarah White List of Contributors

287

Index 291 Tabula Gratulatoria

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Illustrations Charles d’Orléans and the Wars of the Roses Fig. 1. Charles d’Orléans, La retenue d’Amour: Charles being welcomed into Love’s court. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 1. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Fig. 2. Charles d’Orléans Des nouvelles d’Albyon: Charles writing a letter to Philip the Good and sending it off. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 73r. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Fig. 3. Charles d’Orléans, France jadis on te souloit nommer: The Virgin intercedes with Christ for the people of France. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 89. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Fig. 4.  Art d’aimer: Heloise addressing her pupil, with a group of ladies listening. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 137. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Fig. 5.  Les demandes d’Amours: The lover in conversation with three ladies. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 188. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Fig. 6.  Livre de grace entiere: The prince with his counselors and at prayer. Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 210v. © The British Library Board, all rights reserved. Force de parole: Shaping Courtliness in Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours Fig. 1.  Peacock displaying, col. b, detail. MS Douce 308, fol. 95r. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Fig. 2. Col. a, top: Man and woman in conversation, bottom: Reader looks up and sees Trojans approaching, col. b, Man hands scroll to hooded man. MS Douce 308, fol. 86v. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Fig. 3.  Man kneels before woman, col. b, detail. MS Douce 308, fol. 100r. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Fig. 4. Col. a: Man and woman gaze at a cock on a perch. Col. b: Man and woman gaze at a wild ass braying in hunger, MS Douce 308, fol. 87v. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Fig. 5.  Scribe’s name after the explicit: “Bretons l’escrit” and owner’s signature: “C’est au seigneur Renaulz de Gournoy.” MS Douce 308, fol. 106v. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

64 66

71 74 75 77

264 265

266 268 269

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledging those who aided in realizing a collection like this one is always a pleasure, but not one without its pitfalls. Inevitably, one or more people deeply deserving of praise are omitted, and the editors deeply regret any such lacunae. For their encouragement and monetary support, we thank the Department of Modern Languages and College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi as well as the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College. In particular, we wish to express our gratitude to Donald Dyer, chair of UM Modern Languages; Glenn Hopkins, dean of UM Liberal Arts; and David Quigley, dean of BC Arts and Sciences. The editorial team at Boydell and Brewer has demonstrated nothing short of the highest degree of professionalism. Caroline Palmer and Rohais Haughton helped make this collection far better than it ever could have been without their guidance. The Gallica series editor, Sarah Kay, deserves special thanks for so readily supporting the inclusion of our collection in her series. We thank the contributors to the volume for their generosity in sharing their excellent work with us, their patience, and their attention to deadlines when they obviously had other projects to finish. Our families can never be thanked enough, for scholars do not keep banker’s hours, and we often have to work rather than spend more time with spouses and children. We are grateful for their support and forbearance. Finally, we express our deep gratitude to Matilda herself. Both editors acknowledge that it has been a great honor to have known her as our teacher, colleague, and our friend. She continues to inspire us, all of the contributors herein, and countless readers around the world. Thank you, Matilda.

Introduction Daniel E. O’Sullivan

and

Laurie Shepard

The term “courtliness,” derived from Latin curialitas and curia meaning “senate” or “meeting,” pervades discussions of medieval literature, so much so that scholars may take it for granted. Against the medieval social landscape of daily violence, courtliness denotes a civilizing concept whereby behavior in a potentially explosive center of political and social ambition – the court – becomes ritualized. Courtliness aimed to sublimate a warrior’s violent impulses and channel them in both speech and deed to a series of socially sanctioned behaviors. When one knight believed himself to possess superior martial skill, proving it at a tournament was preferred to mortal combat on the battlefield. Or when a knight sought the favors of a beautiful lady, before turning to kidnap and rape he could woo her with clever and seductive words. However, if Freud correctly intuited in Civilization and its Discontents that humans harbor an inherent proclivity towards violence and that civilization constitutes a trade-off of one’s immediate gratification of desire for bodily and psychological security, courtliness is not a universal psychological condition, but a social response grounded in history.1 Civilizing efforts predate the Middle Ages: courtliness was one effort that can be identified with a period of history – the so-called Middle Ages – and studied over time. Moreover, given the wide expanse of time that the Middle Ages is deemed to cover – some one thousand years – it should come as no surprise that courtliness changed over time and was shaped by influences from both within the court and from without as the court interacted with individuals and institutions. As much as any scholar, Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner has shaped the discussion around courtliness and the aesthetic response to the movement, that is, courtly literature, for more than three decades. Through her myriad publications she aids in our comprehension of the phenomenon, but not in the way of some scholars who interpret difficult concepts for a large and general audience. Matilda Bruckner, as uncomplimentary as it might sound at first blush, is not such a scholar. Her modus operandi consists of making matters 1 The work was first published as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (“The Uneasiness in Culture”) in 1939. The standard English edition is James Strachey, ed. and trans., Civilization and its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961).

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more, not less, complicated. Her ability to unpack ideas and lay plain their assumptions alerts her reader to the risk of careless, thoughtless, or superficial modes of reading. Of course, a knight errant must find shelter for the night between his marvelous adventures, but until Bruckner demonstrated this in her first book, Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: The Convention of Hospitality, 1160–1200 (1980), readers might have overlooked the protean nature of the hospitality motif in the genre. In the wake of Paul Zumthor’s Essai de poétique médiévale, Bruckner honed our views on this particular occasion in the narrative art cultivated by the romancers of the twelfth century.2 Basing her analysis on eight romances, she looked closely at the motifs and sequences at play in scenes of hospitality in Old French romance. Not content merely to break down the sequences, she put them back together in context to consider hospitality as a code of “appropriate courtly behavior” (12), linking it to combat, love, and identity. Although published over thirty years ago, the book continues to influence how we look at medieval romance, as more than one essay can attest in the present volume. With her next major publication, Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions (1993), Bruckner offers close readings of several important Old French “romance fictions,” which she defines as including: both romances as normally designated and the short stories, contes and lais, which use the same kinds of materials and operate in the same context for medieval writers and their public. Both types of narrative are clearly perceived as fictions, unbounded by certain principles of reality and yet related in some way to the lived experiences of their public. (1)

Her chosen texts belong for the most part to the major canon of twelfthcentury French narrative: the Folie Tristan d’Oxford, Tristan of Thomas of England, Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de la charette, Partonopeu de Blois, and the Lais of Marie de France. Focusing on the concepts of play and variation, Bruckner offers careful readings of each work, but not to arrive at any final meaning; in this respect, one might understand her subtitle, “Interpretation, Truth, and Closure,” almost ironically. Bruckner certainly engages in interpretation here, but she never proposes that her readings constitute “truth” in the univocal sense and she never wishes to bring “closure” to her discussions. Rather, she illustrates how these fictions remain open to interpretation – after all, she wishes to discuss “shaping” not “shaped” fictions – and posit meanings in ways that always invite further thought and investigation. Songs of the Women Troubadours was published in 1995, and was reissued in paperback with a foreword by W. S. Merwin in 2000. The book was born 2

Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972).

INTRODUCTION 3

of an intense conversation among three colleagues: Matilda Bruckner, whose vision shaped the project, Sarah White, who translated the thirty-six poems included in the collection, and Laurie Shepard, who established the Occitan texts of the poems. What distinguishes Bruckner’s approach to the trobairitz is clearly articulated in her “Introduction”: the poetry of women poets and the voices attributed to women are not examined from the starting point of gender, but from the perspective of the Old Occitan poetic system. The “Introduction” offers an adept portrait of the multilayered and complex society of Southern France, a society characterized by both a finely balanced hierarchy and intense competition. This was the context for women to raise their voices as poets – from the valor of La Comtessa de Dia, to the despair of Na Tibors, to the elegant erudition of Na Lombarda. Their voices were shaped by the existing sophisticated poetic system and they enriched it. Bruckner points to the particularity of the voices of male and female poets as they respond to one another in the tensos, troubadours and trobairitz who are also individuals: Maria de Ventadorn and Gui d’Ussel, or “Domna” and Raimbaut d’Aurenga. As Bruckner puts it, “In each of these examples we see trobairitz and their male counterparts interacting not only within the poetic system as a whole, but more specifically listening and singing to each other, responding to and reinventing each other’s songs, as they refashion the common materials of troubadour lyric. The trobairitz explore that system from a woman’s point of view, without reducing women’s points of view to unanimity” (xxvi). At the core of the “Introduction” we also find the topic of the present volume, that is, the question of courtliness and the way in which notions of courtliness were shaped by literature and by history. Pondering the intricate refraction of a distant ethos that illuminates Old Occitan poetry, Bruckner writes, “it is perhaps one of the great paradoxes of fin’amor, … to have focused on the powerful and disordering forces of love, operating independently of social constraints … and to have elaborated that notion of love not as a malady (as in the classical conception), but as an emotion that can be channeled through a whole set of socially useful actions (courtliness in the largest sense), an emotion to be analyzed and explored with reference to principles of right and wrong” (xxxi–xxxii). Most recently, Bruckner has offered Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations (2009), wherein she returns to romance and its most celebrated Old French representative, Chrétien de Troyes. Supported by an NEH Fellowship, this project, the first book-length treatment in English of the Perceval continuations, studies the late twelfth- and thirteenth-century continuations of Chrétien’s last and unfinished romance, Le Conte du Graal. Bruckner argues that none of these continuations definitively conclude Chrétien’s work; rather, they always lead back to the “father” romance. Or perhaps we should call it the “mother” romance, given Bruckner’s particularly persuasive reading of Perceval’s mother in the legend, who both enables and short-circuits the eponymous hero’s romantic dalliances.

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Questions abound, but to Perceval’s own unasked questions – “What is the grail?” and “Why does the lance bleed?” – Bruckner adds her own: It is not the answers that remain unclarified (although continuators and rewriters will invent others to suit their own purposes). What remains to be determined is rather the role and nature of the questions, or the multiple routes between question and answer for the heroes as well as the readers of romance. In this respect my new question – what is gender to the Grail? – suggests a certain route along which to look for answers that take into account Chrétien’s narrative and the way it frames the questions, calls for question and answer as integral to the unfinishable process of question for the Grail as a web of connections, looks for life-sustaining feminine lines of inclusion that intersect and engage the masculine violence of exclusions, as defined within the Conte’s narrative. (226)

Bruckner’s subtle readings and cautious, sometimes self-effacing hermeneutic that emphasizes open rather than closed readings guarantee that the critical discussion of the Grail continuations will be pursued in the future. Throughout her career, medieval scholars have been treated to articles and chapters by Bruckner that both complement and deepen the questions raised in her books. Questions of humanity and animality in Marie de France’s Bisclavret add a dimension to her work on Marie in Shaping Romance, as well as to her continuing interest in questions of identity as related to human/ animal connections. Her subtle readings of troubadour and trobairitz lyric – from Marcabru and the crusade song to fuzzy logic and mathematical bodies to Na Castelloza’s subjective position in lyric – in addition to articles on Marie de France, the Tristan legend, animals in medieval culture, the theatre of Arras, prose romance, and, of course, Chrétien de Troyes, have appeared regularly in scholarly journals, book chapters, Festschriften. Her thoughtful and thought-provoking erudition has planted seeds that promise to bear fruit for decades to come. The editors of this volume of essays have assembled contributions from several generations of medieval scholars to consider two questions. First, how have discourses both within and outside the court shaped the notion of courtliness, of courtoisie? Historical circumstance played a major role: whether a people was at war or at peace or who sat upon the throne were variables in understanding the concept. Competing ideologies among the court, city, cathedral, and monastery obviously shaped how the court saw outsiders and how outsiders saw the court. Overlapping jurisdictions raised diverse solutions to problems at hand and imagined future conflicts. Despite its centrality to life in the Middle Ages, the court remains enveloped in a certain mystery. The second question then invites us to ponder how the scholarly debate about courtliness was shaped by Bruckner’s many contributions over the last four decades. The question may be posed in another way: although we still and will always comprehend partially, how has Bruckner helped us

INTRODUCTION 5

to probe deeper and understand better? The responses to both questions are rich indeed.

Shaping Real and Fictive Courts The court was the economic, political, and social center of medieval society, and courtiers debated and advanced an agenda by controlling cultural practices and discourses concerning law, and the legitimacy of power and succession. From Peter Haidu’s ideological study of the very notion of courtliness and Donald Maddox’s consideration of interstices of legal and literary discourse to Michel-André Bossy’s close analysis of the compilation, illumination, and reception of a single codex, the essays in our first part make one idea clear: careful management of textual production and dissemination proved key to controlling, to use a juxtaposition associated with Michel Foucault, knowledge and power.3 Court officials sought to ensure that history would judge their motivations favorably, and where one could not prevent something from being written, it was possible to redirect reception of a given text by imposing subsequent layers of meaning and interpretation. Peter Haidu offers an apt beginning to the present volume on courtliness in medieval France. His essay constitutes nothing short of a defiant challenge: do we really know what we mean when we use the words “courtly” and “courtliness”? We may think that we know a great deal after reading of Arthur’s court in Chrétien’s romances, but just how clear is the connection between that court and the reality of twelfth-century courts? How are we to desublimate the courtly from the layers of reference that scholars have heaped upon it for generations? The question is tied inextricably to ideology: much of what occurred in the Middle Ages remains shrouded in mystery because secular and religious institutions had a vested interest in controlling the representation of their own governance and in hiding the violent means that they often employed to ensure their hegemony. Considering the representation of the parlamens in the Roman de Thèbes side by side with court documents from the county of Champagne and the English Domesday Book, Haidu argues persuasively for the need for interpretation of medieval courtly texts within their social contexts and juxtaposed to pertinent historical co-texts, thus restoring materiality and polyvocity to our discussions of courtly culture. In his essay, “Shaping the Case: the Olim and the Parlement de Paris under King Louis IX,” Donald Maddox picks up where Haidu leaves off, but 3 Work on these concepts runs through Foucault’s life work, but the most significant studies include Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), L’archéologie du savoir  (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), and L’ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).

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takes his starting point from Bruckner’s first monograph, Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: The Convention of Hospitality, 1160–1200. In her conclusion, Bruckner makes passing reference to André Jolles’s “Case” in Einfache Formen (1972), and Maddox here links it not to courtly narratives, as did Bruckner, but to documents of the court that may point to unresolved cultural tensions in the decades that followed the composition of some of the narratives analyzed by Bruckner. Examining the collected judicial acts of the Parlament de Paris from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards, known as Olim, Maddox applies to them Jolles’s concept of the “Simple Form,” which brings conflicting issues to the forefront, and his “Intellectual Form,” which takes a step towards the abstracted and “literary” text. He focuses his investigation specifically on cases dealing with the human body: for example, who had jurisdiction over corpses discovered in a particular place or who had the privilege of meting out corporeal punishments such as ear-lopping, or how to deal with lovers who collaborate to imprison the woman’s husband temporarily so that they may continue their affairs. Such cases, detailed in these historical documents, would lend themselves easily to literary elaboration, perhaps shedding light, Maddox argues, on the latent connection between the Case as “Simple Form” and the “Intellectual Form,” a fundamentally literary product that lacks the normative legal sanction that the Case as “Simple Form” provides. Far from suggesting a simple relationship of adaptation and embellishment where the Case as Simple Form merely provides raw matter for an Intellectual Form, Maddox believes we should reconsider the intersections of legal and literary discourse, for doing so sheds light on culturally important attitudes and practices. In the first section’s final essay, Michel-André Bossy offers another documentary study, in this case of British Library MS Royal16 F ii and its design. He examines the historical parallels and forms of courtly savoir faire that the compiler(s) of the manuscript sought to emphasize by highlighting love lyrics by Charles d’Orléans, held prisoner after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, before moving on to excurses on love and the duties of princes. Bossy puts his finger on a seeming paradox: the codex preserves hundreds of French texts, but only three English poems, and yet its illustrative program alludes significantly to English dynastic conflicts, in particular to the War of the Roses and the Tudors. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the program was begun earlier and by someone with Yorkist sympathies. The political conflicts in play in the volume are not confined to illuminations: for example, specific poems may instruct in matters of courtesy and manners while subtly admitting an ideological bias against France and Burgundy. Other instances point to the textual and illustrative programs working in tandem: the Crucifixion scene with the Parisian backdrop surrounded by a border filled with Lancastrian and Tudor emblems may help one read the juxtaposed complainte about France’s recent woes as a sign of lingering English pretentions to the French crown. From careful studies of miniatures, larger illuminations, and poetry,

INTRODUCTION 7

Bossy teases out how this French text could have appealed differently to its Yorkist readers and then, through a continuation of its iconographic program, its Tudor successors.

Shaping Courtly Narrative The courts of medieval France produced a dazzling array of literary documents for the purpose of entertaining those who dwelled within their confines and those who aspired to haunt the corridors of power. “Shaping Courtly Narrative” is the longest section of the present collection, for reasons that stem from Bruckner’s own passion for the medieval narrative arts. Kristin Burr opens this section because her essay helps readers understand courtliness by exploring the liminal space that divides the courtly from the noncourtly. Joan Tasker Grimbert takes on the important question of how texts were shaped and reshaped over time and in response to the audiences for whom they were intended. Her focus on bellicose imagery stands in stark contrast to David Hult’s study of another significant element of courtly tastes, specifically the predilection for long passages in texts dedicated to deep introspection in matters of the heart. Perhaps this longing to sound the psychological depths of the human soul – surely a luxury in a society that faced material hardships from day to day – gave those who dwelled in the court a sense of exceptionalism. Virgine Greene considers similar questions in her analysis of “humanimals” in the Conte du Papegau wherein courtly knights are compared not to vilain peasants but to animals. Animals and humans also figure in Logan Whalen’s study of fecundity and sterility in Marie de France’s lais, particularly in “Guigemar.” Finally, in the last offering, Evelyn Birge Vitz invites us to consider a question that applies to all that has come before: how might courtly narratives have taken shape in the physical space of the court itself through performance? Kristin Burr begins her study, “Meraugis de Portlesguez and the Limits of Courtliness,” by noting that the eponymous hero and the heroine of the romance exemplify courtly values with respect to beauty, learning, and manners. Despite the manifest desire on the part of the author, Raoul de Houdenc, to evoke admiration from his audience, much of the romance relates episodes where courtly behavior goes unrewarded. The heroine, Lidoine, is pursued by two suitors, and while one, Gorvain, prizes her above all for her beauty, Meraugis idolizes her for her inner, personal traits; her courtliness. However, in his quest to prove his worthiness, Meraugis provokes unintended consequences. Repeatedly we see Meraugis and his beloved Lidoine engage in courtly behavior, only to learn that, unless all parties concerned agree to abide by the same courtly code of conduct, courtliness proves remarkably elusive and ineffective. Burr concludes that Raoul does not seek to abolish

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courtliness, but rather to deepen our understanding of its place in the world and to call for flexibility in its application. Joan Tasker Grimber studies the reception of Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès as it was reshaped through a prose rewriting or “transmutation” in fifteenthcentury Burgundy. Naturally, scholars may feel that Chrétien de Troyes was a master romancer and that subsequent adaptations of his works, either in translation, for example, into German, or in Middle French prose versions, cannot compare to the source text, which is so replete with wit and irony. However, it is not a matter of inadequate literary skill that shapes the differences between verse source and prose “transmutation.” The composer of the prose text, Grimbert argues, adapted his tale of adventure to suit the tastes of his fifteenth-century audience. Grimbert provides a nuanced reading of the scene of the siege of Windsor Castle and demonstrates how the prosateur employs rhetorical devices typical of epic to amplify the grittiness of battle scenes and the martial prowess of the hero, Alixandre, far beyond the scope of the mere twenty-five verses that Chrétien dedicates to the episode. Furthermore, the prosateur departs markedly from his source text in recounting the dénouement of the episode. Through Grimbert’s analysis, readers gain insight into the values and literary tastes of the Burgundian court: rather than merely retelling Chrétien’s tale, the prosateur makes it his own. David Hult’s essay, “Thomas’s Raisun: Désir, Vouloir, Pouvoir,” builds upon earlier work by Bruckner and others about the “courtliness” of Thomas’s version of the Tristan and Iseut legend. Hult analyzes Tristan’s monologue in which he ponders marrying Yseut aux Blanches Mains. Hult believes that the value of raisun runs through this particularly subtle and difficult passage to which scholars return time and again precisely because it is essential to understanding the text as a whole. After carefully laying the philological foundation upon which he will build his interpretation – the passage survives in only one, problematic manuscript – Hult draws our attention to the abstract vocabulary employed by Thomas to convey his hero’s act of reflection. The list includes poeir, voleir, desir, amur, deduit, delit, and nature, as well as proeise and, especially, raisun. Hult considers the semantic content of each of these terms in relation with the others. The approach enables him not only to understand this vocabulary with more precision, but also to bring the utilization of these terms back to the literary task that Thomas sets out for himself: laying bare a mind besieged by desire and jealousy by coupling it with an unlikely partner, raisun. Not all courtly narrative centers on desperate lovers agonizing over frustrated passion, as Virginie Greene shows in her essay. The Conte du Papegau is a most unlikely Arthurian text. Past critics have seen it as absurd and dreamlike in quality and thus dissimilar to the more sober texts of Chrétien de Troyes and his ilk. Greene chooses to read the text in the “subjunctive universe” of the “as if,” thereby considering the court “as if” it were a cage and the knight “as if” he were an animal. Greene links the romance’s creation

INTRODUCTION 9

of alternative universes to ritual, a necessary component of human activity which lies at the core of courtliness. Whereas in other romances Arthur stays at court while knights errant accomplish great feats, in the Papegau it is Arthur himself who ventures out into the world and an Other world, the boundaries between which remain always nebulous. In his travels, Arthur meets the Knight of the Parrot, and the parrot in question, who can converse with people, lives in a cage. This makes perfect sense, but the parrot explains that knights also live in cages, cages called courts in which knights and ladies are taken prisoner by their words that bind them together in rituals of love and war. Those who inhabit cages are animals, thus those who inhabit courts are animals or “humanimals.” In addition to a talking parrot, Arthur slays a gigantic “knight” who lives in the sea and whose helmet and weapons form integral parts of its body. After skinning the humanimal’s corpse, it is decided that Arthur has killed a Knight Fish, a particularly poignant – and yes, absurd – example of “species-bending.” Out of all this, Greene argues, the very nature of courtliness is called into question. What is so special about the animal we call “knight” in the cage we call “court”? Logan Whalen studies the work of a woman writer on whom Bruckner has written and spoken on several occasions: Marie de France. He examines how Marie uses images of sterility and fecundity across the lais and in “Guigemar” in particular to shape both narrative and a vision of courtliness. Setting his study against the backdrop of his previous work on memory in Marie de France, Whalen demonstrates convincingly how images of fecundity and sterility are juxtaposed, combined, and contrasted in order develop the theme of love as both productive and unproductive. Reading the eponymous hero as emotionally sterile in light of his seeming lack of interest in love, Whalen proceeds to link this to an important political and cultural question: the imperative to establish a family lineage. In other words, Guigemar’s peers wish him to be a productive member of the courtly society to which he belongs. The androgynous hind, symbol of life (fecundity) and death (sterility), pronounces a curse on Guigemar, which also takes its shape through the same themes: he is condemned to remain gravely wounded – the wound harbors obvious references to impotency, thus sterility – until such a time that someone suffers for love of him. From there, Whalen guides us through similarly antithetical pairs: the castle as both locus amoenus and locus horribilis; the old jealous husband and the old eunuch priest who guards the wife; and the room meant to provide a sterile environment but in which Guigemar and the wife make love, all under the gaze of Venus depicted on the wall. Indeed, Whalen’s discussion promises to bear fruit for future studies of the kind of Marie de France’s lais! An eloquent advocate of orality and performance of medieval narrative, Evelyn Birge Vitz invites us to consider performative modes in regard to that apogee of courtly aesthetics, Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose. Whereas readers think of the Rose as a book, she suggests that the poem

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lent itself to spectacular performances involving acting and miming, musical accompaniment, and costumes. Drawing on her own experiments with staging medieval narrative at New York University and her myriad critical studies on performance issues, Vitz guides the reader through the potential for visual, auditory, and even olfactory performance in the Rose. Vitz admits that her argument is ultimately speculative, but courtly narratives provide ample evidence of performances. She also appeals to the evidence of manuscript iconography: medieval readers obviously wanted to see their narratives unfold before their eyes in manuscript illuminations. Is it so hard to believe that they wouldn’t want to see the same stories in live performance when they had the means and inclination to mount theatrical productions?

Shaping Women’s Voices in Medieval France The four essays in this section offer diverse perspectives on the question of how women’s voices were shaped by and shaped a literary system that was supple enough to actually admit women as full participants. Elizabeth Poe’s essay on Na Lombarda suggests that Occitan poetry, protected by the walls of the court, was a game that allowed aristocratic women in Southern France to play, and to display the maturity of their wit and desire. Also intimating a closed system is the manner in which the potentially “popular” genre of Marian devotional song was shaped by the courtly poetic system in thirteenth-century Occitania: even the portrait of the Virgin, as read by Daniel E. O’Sullivan, is nuanced by the rhetoric of seduction addressed to the courtly domna in ways that open rather than close interpretation. Turning our gaze towards courts in the north, the latter two essays in the group reveal that some women passed freely among aristocratic courts and between courts and cloisters, and that their power as well as their voices extended beyond the walls. Ermengarde, countess of Brittany, who was born in Angers around 1069 and died in 1146, lived an unusually eventful life for her times. When William Schenck examines Ermengarde’s choices in the light of the Vitae of the Frankish Radegund, another pious but less restless princess, he displays the range of institutional resources she exploited in order to achieve a certain personal autonomy, and to confirm her status within the walls of the palace and in Brittany, in the church, and among the lords of France. Three centuries later, Christine de Pisan, a writer firmly rooted in the court in Paris, spoke bravely with the voice of the sage, and, thanks to Nadia Margolis, we better understand her rhetoric of virtue intended both for the court and beyond its walls. Elizabeth Poe’s essay, “Lombarda’s Mirrors: Reflections on PC 288,1 as a Response to PC 54,1,” portrays a poetic system that is elegant, erudite, and self-reflective. She tackles specific interpretive impasses, and premises her interpretation on the assumption of Na Lombarda’s knowledge and apprecia-

INTRODUCTION 11

tion of the tradition, as well as the subtlety of her wit. The puzzling coblas in the tenso with Bernart Arnaut are explained through an intertextual reading of poems by Bernart de Ventadorn and Arnaut de Maroill. The trobairitz’s tour de force epitomizes the closed nature of the Old Occitan poetic system, an intellectual game played by cognoscenti. The reading of the coblas as a subtle and playful vituperium releases the humor and gentle derision of the trobairitz’s response to her interlocutor, and illuminates the description of Na Lombarda as “insegnada” in her vida. Daniel E. O’Sullivan’s essay makes the case for a poetic system that was closed, but also porous and without sharp distinctions between the secular and the sacred. The essay suggests that our modern tendency to isolate the secular from the sacred does not apply to the Occitan poetry of the thirteenth century. Marian songs, O’Sullivan points out, have metrical schemes that are as complex as those of secular lyrics. In fact, courtly lyric traditions and Latin prayers shape devotional lyric. The essay defends spiritual readings of a number of texts that have proven resistant to courtly interpretation, and argues that such readings do not limit but instead enhance the play of the texts. It also offers a compelling spiritual interpretation of the dialog between N’Alaisina Yselda and Na Carenza, a tenso that has long baffled readers. William Schenck’s essay focuses on the life of Ermengarde in the light of the model of devotion provided by three vitae of Saint Radegund. The second counterpoint to Ermengarde’s life of frequent movements between court and cloister is provided by her epistolary exchanges with powerful churchmen (in the essay we only hear the voices of the latter). The Vitae reveal that Radegund, from her convent in Poitiers, was able to display extraordinary piety while pursuing political and ecclesiastic ends. Ermengarde, in a different century and ecclesiastic climate, used the institutional prerogatives at her disposal to maintain personal and political eminence. Indicative of Ermengarde’s success in “managing” her status are letters sent to her by Geoffrey of Vendôme, abbot of La Trinité, which change dramatically depending on whether the abbot is addressing the countess as sinner or as potential patron. Finally we turn to Christine de Pisan, who engaged her pen in the service of the French royal court with a didactic rhetoric that is very different from Na Lombarda’s esoteric reproof of Bernart Arnaut. Nadia Margolis’s essay, “From Chrétien to Christine: Translating Twelfth-Century Literature to Reform the French Court during the Hundred Years War,” argues for Christine as a female Gornemont de Gort or a new Ygerne in a period when the royal court in Paris was failing to prevail in war or peace. The abiding objective of Christine’s vast corpus was the reeducation of the court and the body politic at large to the demands of virtue. Christine’s fervent engagement in translatio studii, and her shaping of a broad range of materials to justify the imperium of the French royal court (translatio imperii), places her among the humanists. This paper also turns to Christine’s use of twelfth-century

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sources, including Chrétien, and draws out parallels between conflicts faced by the twelfth-century knight and Christine’s contemporaries in the court bureaucracy.

Shaping the Courtly Other Courtliness, it is argued in a number of essays in this volume, is an ideal that may be associated with a time, a place, a political system, and an ethos. The four essays in this section explore courtly shape-shifting and the couplings of courtliness with the clerical, exotic, and even the non-human: in other words, the uncourtly or potentially courtly “other.” These pairings tend to shed light on the accomplishments and deficiencies of the ethos of courtliness as it was first conceived and as it evolved in successive generations and encounters with new milieux. Courtliness was a challenging ideal that radically transformed social and personal moeurs, material culture, and artistic expression. It was easy to fall short of the ideal; sometimes even the court of Arthur failed to operate by its fundamental precepts, as Laine Doggett shows in her discussion of Tristan, Chrétien’s Cligès, and Marie de France’s Lanval. Courtliness could not be defined by a stable set of precepts, and the shared assumptions of French court culture concerning what constituted courtliness are turned into a question by E. Jane Burns’s meditation on the dressing of the “other” knight, Saladin. Nancy Freeman Regalado explores Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours and its material context. The work is a lover’s plea that employs the strange imagery of the bestiary not only to breathe originality, wit, and tenderness into the lover’s voice, but also to exemplify another language of the lover’s malady. Finally, Laurie Shepard investigates how Charles d’Anjou’s court inspired a new debate about the ideal of courtliness in Italian comuni, and how the poetic and political sign of nobility took on new meaning in a polemic that was directly associated with Charles’s presence in Italy. Laine Doggett presents courtliness as a prestigious passe partout and the quality that inspired largesse on the part of medieval hosts. Taking her cue from Matilda Bruckner’s early work on hospitality, she explores notions of hospitality in the Tristan legends, Cliges, and Lanval. The three works reveal how rites of hospitality reflect not only the prowess and civility of the stranger, but also the true courtliness of the host. Both the individual, that is, the knight-stranger, and the collective court are put to the test when it comes to recognizing and fulfilling the demands of hospitality. Although the practice of hospitality toward the courtly stranger appears to be rooted in aristocratic culture, Marie de France turns to the other world of fairies to examine its true meaning: Lanval and the fairy queen reveal the utter vulgarity of Arthur’s court, an antimodel of courtliness. Rather than the knight’s armor, E. Jane Burns’s essay, “Shaping Saladin:

INTRODUCTION 13

Courtly Men Dressed in Silk,” looks at his silk. The knight was clad in silk from his undergarments to his costume dress; indeed, silk epitomized the sartorial body of chivalry. But one of the earliest poems to address the theory of knighthood, the anonymous thirteenth-century Ordene de chevalerie, suggests that silk was problematic. In the poem, the crusader Hugh de Tiberias, captured by Saladin (in 1179), first rejects then yields to Saladin’s request to be dressed as a knight, and silk, the perfect material analog to knightly courtliness, reveals itself to be a slippery, polysemous signifier. If, as Hugh explains in his ritual dressing of Saladin, each shape and color of the knight’s costume bears religious and ethical significance, it is nevertheless true that the clothes remake the infidel Saladin, the iconic “other,” into a knight. The contemporaneous rewriting of Alienor’s dalliances in the Holy Land in which she is coupled with Saladin again reveals the tendency to confuse courtliness and knightly virtue with ostentatious luxury. As Burns explains, knights “can be ‘made’ and sustained quite apart from religious conviction or practice.” Nancy Freeman Regalado’s essay considers a confident vision of courtliness that transformed existing traditions. Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours is one of the creative hybrids that reshaped the expression of courtliness, especially as it evolved from the noble court to an urban elite and a new and broader public. Written in about 1250, the work is a salut d’amour in which the lover pleads his case using the imagery of a bestiary. Unlike the source, probably Pierre de Beauvais’s French translation of the Latin Physiologus, Richard de Fournival’s beasts do not provide occasions for Christian moralizing; instead the author, passing rapidly from one beast to another, uses bestiary lore to give voice to the psychological distress his love has caused. Witty and engaging, generous and elegant, the Bestiaire d’amours was an object of prestige, intended for pleasure and study. This is illustrated in the essay by the material history of Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308, which was produced in fourteenth-century Metz and held as a family treasure – as proprietary signatures in the book reveal. In the final essay, Laurie Shepard’s “The Poetic Legacy of Charles d’Anjou in Italy: The Poetics of Nobility in the Comune,” the courtly “other” is explored as the translation of troubadour poetics to the Italian comuni in the period following the advent of Charles in Italy (1265). The essay argues that Charles had an indirect but profound impact on a fundamental cultural development of the comuni: the poetics of nobility in the dolce stil novo. Without any apparent interest in imposing the poetics of his French court on the flourishing poetic circles in different regions of Italy, the political impact of Charles’s power in Italy – which reinforced Guelf and papal power – had a direct impact on the poetics of the sweet new style. *

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The essays in this volume offer eloquent testimony to the provocative and productive body of writing which Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner has shared with her fellow scholars and students of Old Occitan and Old French literature. She has examined courtly texts with a very personal and refined lens, a lens that illuminates medieval writing in the light of ideas drawn from biblical times and the Middle Ages, and from our own day. We are all in her debt. As we have said above, ideas of courtliness were shaped by diverse historical circumstances, conflicting claims of supremacy and hierarchy, and an evolving spiritual culture. The essays remind us of the enduring power of the courtly ideal, and especially of courtly literature which continues to kindle historical and philosophical interrogation. Matilda Bruckner’s books, chapters, articles, and lectures have influenced and will go on influencing the process of shaping courtliness because they challenge our views of courtly literature as well as our habits of reading and questioning texts. We hope that the essays in this volume also enjoin scholars to push the boundaries and to seek new shapes for courtliness. Beyond and by means of her exploration of Old Occitan and Old French courtly literature, Matilda Bruckner has pondered the human condition, both in terms of universal questions that all mankind faces, and of very specific questions born of convergences that are not bound by time or space. Hers is a joyful, inquisitive, scholarly corpus, a body of reading, thinking, and exquisite expression that we hope will continue to grow in the years to come.

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner: A Bibliography Books Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: The Convention of Hospitality (1160–1200). Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum, Publishers, 1980 Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 Songs of the Women Troubadours, ed. and tr. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White. New York: Garland Publishers Inc., 1995 (revised paperback edition, Taylor & Francis 2000). The Introduction has been reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, volume 66. Thompson/Gale, 2004 Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009

Journal Articles “Florimont: Extravagant Host, Extravagant Guest.” Studies in Medieval Culture 11 (1977): 57–63 “En Guise de Conclusion.” Littérature 41 (Feb. 1981): 104–8 “The Folie Tristan d’Oxford: Speaking Voice, Written Text.” Tristania 7.1–2 (Autumn 1981–Spring 1982): 47–59 “The Representation of the Lovers’ Death: Thomas’ Tristan as Open Text.” Tristania 9.1–2 (Autumn 1983–Spring 1984): 49–61. Reprinted in Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook, ed. Joan Tasker Grimbert. New York: Garland, 1995. 95–109 “Na Castelloza, Trobairitz, and Troubadour Lyric.” Romance Notes 25.3 (Spring 1985): 239–53 “Jaufré Rudel and Lyric Reception: The Problem of Abusive Generalization.” Style 20.2 (Summer 1986): 203–19 “An Interpreter’s Dilemma: Why are there so many interpretations of Chrétien’s Charrette?” Romance Philology 11.2 (November 1986): 159–80. Reprinted in Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook, ed. Lori J. Walters. Garland: New York, 1996. 55–78 “Strategies of Naming in Marie de France’s Lais: At the Crossroads of Gender and Genre.” Neophilologus 75 (1991): 31–40 “Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret.” Romanic Review 81 (1991): 251–69 “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.” Speculum 67 (1992): 865–91. Reprinted in Medieval Woman’s Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches, ed. Anne L. Klinck and Ann Marie Rasmussen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 127–51

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“The Poetics of Continuation in Medieval French Romance: From Chrétien’s Conte du Graal to the Perceval Continuations.” French Forum 18 (May 1993): 133–49 “From Genealogy to Romance and Continuation in the Fabulous History of Partonopeu de Blois.” L’Esprit créateur 33.4 (Winter 1993): 27–39 “Conteur Oral/Recueil Ecrit: Marie de France et la Clôture des Lais.” op cit. (Nov. 1995): 5–13 “Mathematical Bodies and Fuzzy Logic in the Couplings of Troubadour Lyric.” Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX 14.1 (1999): 1–22 “Knightly Violence and Grail Quest Endings: Conflicting Views from the Vulgate Cycle to the Perceval Continuations.” Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, 26 (1999): 17–32 “What Short Tale Does Jean Bodel’s Political Pastourelle Tell?” Romania 120 (2002): 118–31 Introduction to a special issue of Tenso with papers from the roundtable discussion at Kalamazoo 2002. Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX 17.2 (Fall 2002): 1–3 “LeFresne’s Model for Twinning in the Lais of Marie de France.” Modern Language Notes 121 (2006): 946–60. “Acts of Nomination: Naming Names and Troubadour Poetry.” Introduction to a special issue of Tenso with papers from a session sponsored by the Société Guilhem IX, Kalamazoo 2004. Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX 22.1–2 (Spring–Fall 2007): 1–8 (published 2008) “Of Cannibalism and Cligès.” Arthuriana 18.3 (Fall 2008): 19–32 “Où sont les Arrageoises dans le Jeu de saint Nicolas?” Romania 126 (2008): 507–17 (published in 2009) “Assigned Reading”: article on RL 357 Memory and Literature. Boston College Alumni Magazine 70.1 (Winter 2010): 18–19 “Marcabru et la chanson de croisade: d’un centre à l’autre.” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 53 (2010): 219–36 “Bodies, Textual, Metaphorical and Real: Problematizing Hospitality in the Bible moralisée.” The New Arcadia Review 4 (2011) (http://www.bc.edu/publications/newarcadia/) “Between Prophecy and Plainte in the Roman de Troie.” Electronic Antiquity. XIV.1 (November 2010 but released in November 2011) http://scholar.lib. vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V14N1/

Chapters/Articles in Collected Volumes “Repetition and Variation in Twelfth-Century French Romance.” In The Expansion and Transformations of Courtly Literature, ed. N. B. Smith and J. T. Snow. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1980, 95–114 “Essential and Gratuitous Inventions: Thomas’ Tristan and Chrétien’s Lancelot.” In Actes du 14e Congrès International Arthurien. Rennes: Presses Univ. de Rennes, 1985. 120–141 (in French) “Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot).” In The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: A Symposium, ed. Douglas Kelly. Edward C. Armstrong Monographs



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on Medieval Literature, 3. Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum Pub., 1985. 132–81 “Intertextuality.” In The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. D. Kelly, N. Lacy, and K. Busby. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1987. I, 223–65 “Marie de France.” In French Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Source Book, ed. Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. 324–34 “Debatable Fictions: The Tensos of the Women Troubadours.” In Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. 19–28 “Reinventing Arthurian History: Lancelot and the Vulgate Cycle.” In Memory and the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy Netzer and Virginia Reinberg. Boston College Art Museum, 1995. 57–75 “Trobairitz.” In Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 201–33 “Aimon de Varennes,” “Florimont,” “Graeco-Byzantine Romance,” “Marie de France,” “Partonopeu de Blois,” “Gautier d’Arras.” In Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn. New York: Garland, 1995 “Rewriting Chrétien’s Conte du graal. Mothers and Sons: Questions, Contradictions, and Connections.” In The Medieval Opus: Imitation, Rewriting, and Transmission in the French Tradition, ed. Douglas Kelly. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 213–44 “Trobairitz,” “La Comtessa de Dia,” and “Castelloza.” In A Feminist Companion to French Literature, ed. Eva M. Sartori. New York: Greenwood Press, 1999 “Marie de France.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 208: Medieval French: The Literature of the French & Occitan Middle Ages, 11th to 15th Centuries, ed. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi and Ian S. Lurie. Detroit/Wahington, DC/London: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1999 “Romancing History and Rewriting the Game of Fiction: Jean Renart’s Rose Through the Looking Glass of Partonopeu de Blois.” In The World and Its Rival: Essays on Literary Imagination in Honor of Per Nykrog, ed. Kathryn Karczewska and Tom Conley. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. 93–117 “Looping the Loop Through a Tale of Beginnings, Middles & Ends: from Chrétien to Gerbert in the Perceval Continuations.” In “Por le soie amisté”: Essays in Honor of Norris Lacy, ed. Keith Busby and Catherine M. Jones. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 33–51 “The Shape of Romance.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 13–28 “L’imaginaire du progrès dans les cycles romanesques du graal.” In Progrès, Réaction, Décadence dans L’Occident médiéval. Etudes recueillies par Emmanuèle Baumgartner et Laurence Harf-Lancner. Geneva: Droz, 2003. 111–21 “Redefining the Center: Prose and Verse Charrette.” In A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol Dover. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003 (paperback 2010). 96–105 “Of Swords and Plowshares: Dislocations and Transformations in Chrétien’s Grail Story.” In Knight and Samurai: Actions and Images of Elite Warriors

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in Europe and East Asia, ed. Rosemarie Deist in collaboration with Harald Kleinschmidt. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik. Göppingen, Germany: Kümmerle, 2003. 31–45 “Alamanda”(I: 15–16), “Azalais d’Altier” (I: 52–3), “Clara d’Anduza” (I: 193–4), “Lombarda” (II: 561–2), “Tibors” (II: 896–7). In Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Katharina Wilson and Nadia Margolis. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004 “Le Chevalier de la Charrette: That Obscure Object of Desire, Lancelot.” In A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2005 (paperback 2010). 137–55 “Clever Foxes, Fierce Lions, Diabolical Dragons: Animals Tell Tales in Medieval Arts and Letters.” In Secular Sacred, 11th – 16th Century: Works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, ed. Nancy Netzer. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2006. 19–42 “Marie de France.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, ed. David Scott Kastan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Online Publication “Arthur in the Narrative Lay.” In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, IV The Arthur of the French, ed. Glyn Burgess and Karen Pratt. Cardiff: The Vinaver Trust and the University of Wales Press, 2006. 186–214 (co-authored with Glyn Burgess; my section is on Marie de France’s Lais, 187–98, 206–8) “Authorial Relays: Continuing Chrétien’s Conte du Graal.” In The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature, ed. Virginie Greene. New York/Houndmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 13–28 “The Miracle of Compound Interest, or Accounting Games in the Jeu de Saint Nicolas.” In “Contez me tout”: Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Herman Braet, ed. Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Frank Willaert. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. 39–55 “Chrétien de Troyes.” In Medieval Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus. New York: Routledge, 2006. 129–131 “The Pitfalls and Promise of Classroom Performance.” In Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freemen Regalado, ed. E. Jane Burns, Roberta Krueger, and Eglal Doss-Quinby. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007. 279–87 “Chrétien de Troyes.” In A Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 79–84 “L’imagination de la mort chez les amants tristaniens: prose et vers, chant et narration.” In Des Tristan en vers au Tristan en prose: Hommage à Emmanuèle Baumgartner, ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner, Laurence Mathey-Maille, Bénédicte Milland-Bove, and Michelle Szkilnik. Paris: Champion, 2009. 309–24 “Speaking Through Animals in Marie de France’s Lais and Fables.” In A Companion to Marie de France, ed. Logan E. Whalen. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011. 157–85 “Trobairitz.” Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (500 words) (reviewed and accepted for publication)



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Reviews Yunck, John A., trans. and intro. Eneas: A Twelfth-Century French Romance (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1974). French Review 49 (Dec. 1975): 274–5 Kelly, Thomas E. Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus. A Structural Study (Geneva: Droz, 1974). French Review 49 (March 1976): 607–8 Smith, Patrick Coogan, ed. Les Enchantemanz de Bretagne: An Extract from a Thirteenth Century Prose Romance. “La Suite du Merlin” (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1977). French Review 52 (March 1979): 635 Maddox, Donald. Structure and Sacring: The Systematic Kingdom in Chrétien’s “Erec et Enide” (Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum, Publishers, 1978). French Review 53 (Feb. 1980): 442–3 Halász, Katalin. Structures narratives chez Chrétien de Troyes (Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem, 1980). Speculum 57 (October 1982): 900–2 Cerquiglini, Bernard. La Parole médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1982). L’Esprit Créateur 23 (Spring 1983): 105–6 Pickens, Rupert T., ed. The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes (Kentucky: French Forum Monographs, 1983). Speculum 59 (October 1984): 941–3 Polak, Lucie. Chrétien de Troyes: Cligés (London: Grant & Cutler, 1982). Speculum 60 (1985): 449–51 Noble, Peter S. Love and Marriage in Chrétien de Troyes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982). Romance Philology 39 (1986): 508–13 Burns, E. Jane. Arthurian Fictions: Rereading the Vulgate Cycle (Columbus: Ohio State University Press for Miami University, 1985). French Forum 11.3 (September 1986): 367–9 Suomela-Härma, Elina. Les Structures narratives dans le “Roman de Renart” (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981). Romance Philology 42.2 (November 1988): 231–4 Crane, Susan. Insular Romance. Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Tristania 13.1–2 (August 1987–September 1988): 108–10 Paden, William D., ed. The Voice of the Trobairitz. Perspectives on the Women Troubadours (Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). Envoi. A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 2.2 (1991): 423–32 Blakeslee, Merritt R. Love’s Masks. Identity, Intertextuality, and Meaning in the Old French Tristan Poems (Arthurian Studies, 15. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989). Speculum 67 (1992): 114–16 Mullally, Evelyn. The Artist at Work: Narrative Technique in Chrétien de Troyes (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 78, Pt. 4. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1988). Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 35 (1992): 183–5 Earnshaw, Doris. The Female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric (Romance Languages and Literature, Vol. 68. New York: Peter Lang, 1988). TENSO: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX 7(Spring 1992): 165–7

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Grimbert, Joan Tasker. “Yvain” dans le miroir: Une poétique de la réflexion dans le “Chevalier au lion” de Chrétien de Troues. (Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages, 25. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988). Speculum 68 (1993): 156–7 Davies, Peter V. and Angus J. Kennedy, eds. Rewards and Punishments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry of Medieval France: Essays presented to Kenneth Varty on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987). Romance Philology 47.2 (Nov. 1993): 198–286 Maddox, Donald. The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Modern Philology 91.4 (May 1994): 477–80 Les Manuscrits de /The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, eds. Keith Busby et al. 2 vols. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993. Speculum 71.1 (Jan. 1996): 143–6 Sigal, Gale. Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages: Voicing the Lady. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1996. Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, No. 24 (1997): 210–11 Gaunt, Simon. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). TENSO: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX 13.2 (1998): 83–6 Sargent-Baur, Barbara. Le Destre et la senestre: Etude sur le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes (Rodopi, 2000). Arthuriana 12.2 (Summer 2002): 162–3 Amer, Sahar. Ésope au féminin: Marie de France et la politique de l’interculturalité. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999. SubStance 31.2–3 (2002): 288–92 Pierreville, Corinne. Gautier d’Arras: L’autre chrétien. (Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen Age, 55.) Paris: Champion, 2001. Speculum 77.4 (2002): 1381–2 Cheyette, Frederic L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Arthuriana 14.1 (2003): 94–6 Huot, Sylvia. Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Speculum 80.3 (2005): 895–7 Gaunt, Simon. Love and Death in Medieval French and Occitan Courtly Literature: Martyrs to Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Speculum 82 (2007): 702–4 Adams, Tracy. Violent Passions: Managing Love in the Old French Verse Romance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Encomia: Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Courtly Literature Society 28 (2006): 19–20 (published 2008) Gautier d’Arras. Eracle, ed. and trans. Karen Pratt. King’s College London Medieval Series XXI. King’s College London: Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, 2007. Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 166 Einbinder, Susan. No Place of Rest: Jewish Literature, Expulsion, and the Memory of Medieval France. H-France Reviews, Vol. 10 (August 2010), No. 106 Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, ed. Rebecca Dixon and Finn E. Sinclair. Speculum 85.1 (2010): 137–8 Luke Sunderland. Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between ethics and



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morality. Gallica. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Medium Ævum 79.2 (2010): 385–6 The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France, ed. and trans. June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Barban. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Co., 2006. Le Cygne 5 new series (Fall 2007; published in 2011): 41–3 Sconduto, Leslie. Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2008. Speculum 86.1 (Jan. 2011): 270–1 D. H. Green. Women Readers in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Modern Philology 108.4 (May 2011) Kirsten Fudeman. Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities. (Jewish Culture and Contexts.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Speculum 86.4 (2011): 1069–71 Laurent Guyénot. La Lance qui saigne. Métatextes et hypertextes du Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes (Essais sur le Moyen Age, 44), Paris: Champion, 2010. Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur. (forthcoming)

Part I Shaping Real and Fictive Courts

A Perfume of Reality? Desublimating the Courtly Peter Haidu For Tilda: Narrative invention, shaping romance with multiple interpretations, creates truths continuations, history and knowledge live or die by. The primacy of materiality is universal Louis Althusser1

The advent of “the courtly” marks a turning point in European literary history – a “beginning” in culture or civilization, rightly celebrated. Yet, as long recognized, something about it isn’t quite kosher.2 Expressions like “courtliness,” “courtly literature,” “courtly love,” or the shamed, self-annulling citational periphrasis “the literature once called ‘courtly,’” have currency in both medievalist and modernist discourses. They purportedly ground the sublimity of literary representations by referring to a historical institution that guarantees the historical existence of the substance designated – manners, literature, love – by connecting representations and a historical institution – standing in for “reality.” The verbal coupling [courtly + noun], its essentialization [courtliness], or even the reference by ellipsis, suggest a conceptual identity derived from lexical contiguity allowing semantic seepage from court to text – or vice versa. Might the usage suggest examination of historical courts? Might such examination discover that the semantic content assumed for “court” disfigures it? Is “courtly” an unexamined ontological warrantee, a seeming historical reference turning into an alibi for the slide into cultural ruminations or a dehistoricized Lacanism built on metonymic strategies of evasion: not 1 “The primacy of materiality is universal … [I]n the philosophical tradition, the evocation of materialism is the index of an exigency, a sign that idealism has to be rejected – yet … one does not break free of idealism by simply negating it …” Louis Althusser, “Philosophy and Marxism,” in Philosophy of the Encounter, Later Writings 1978–1987, tr. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2006), 272. 2 This essay might not have been written without a word of encouragement from Nancy Regalado: she has my gratitude. Since no good deed goes unpunished, Nancy bears all responsibility for the results!

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false, but as extravagantly anamorphic as the skull in Las Meninas?3 Absent a claim to absolute realism, does not all literature present itself as anamorphic, varying only in degrees of perspectivism shading into anamorphy? Point of view, perspective, distortion, and anamorphy assert different kinds and degrees of variance from a hypothetical pure objectivity: all share a semantic kernel of displacement. Beyond that, however, the philosophical idealism of academic criticism, buttressed by remnants of “theory,” undoes historical reference in the wake of a postmodernism that undid reference itself, deconstructing any possibility of historical critique. In Clifford Geertz’s overused metaphor, theory might have “thickened” the sense of that complexity. Instead, history’s compound of event and representation, of act and ideology, of the most vulgar, popular, and necessary notion of material reality with mind, has evaporated. Only fantasmatic wisps of once complex encounters with historical reality subsist. Escaping from vulgar misinterpretations of “Marxist determinism” leaves us bereft of real encounters and experience.4 More simply, “we depend on fantasies as our only means of engaging what we call ‘reality.’”5 We no longer look to texts for mimetic replication of social reality – “realism.”6 Nor, inversely, do we seek simple performative enactments of ideology in social reality.7 Mechanical, clotured dialectics retains no credence.8 Nor, finally, does the simple negation of idealism by materialism,

3 Teresa Brenann, History After Lacan (London: Routledge, 1993). Sans Lacanian baggage, a beginning was made in that most conservative of disciplines, history, by two writers who address archival documentation in full awareness of its representational status: Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Paul Freeman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999). 4 Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1969), 83–109; Giorgio Agamben, Enfance et histoire, tr. Yves Hersant (Paris: Payot, 2002); Slavoj Zizek, “On Alain Badiou and Logique des mondes,” online: http://www.lacan.com/zizbadman.htm. In post-colonialism, compare  Edward Said’s culturalism in Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979) and Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994) with Franz Fanon’s psychoanalysis in Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1952), and Les damnés de la terre (Paris: Maspéro, 1961) on the point of violence. 5 Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2001), 314. 6 Erich Auerbach’s transfer of “mimesis” from nineteenth-century fiction to the Middle Ages was a gross methodological error that has become the refuge of knee-jerk anti-theoretical anti-Marxism:  Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in des abendlichen Literatur (Franck: Berne, 1946; tr. William Trask as  Mimesis: the Representation of Reality [New York: Doubleday, 1957]). 7 Unless, perhaps, in law, redefined as ideological determination of behavior. This assertion disregards the incantatory use of “performative” by some contemporaries. 8 The interest of Erich Köhler’s work on troubadour lyric and romance – the last attempt at a unidirectional dialectics – lies in its imperfections. See his “Observations



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or its reverse, remain receivable, if that reversal simply signals retreat into the opposite.9 Relations among materiality, political history, and worlds of representations are complex, intermeshed, and reciprocal – “thick.” Above all, since representation is part of reality (Borges claimed the reverse), their necessary differentiation cannot be fixed in permanent hierarchy. Given the two registers’ inmixity, might one not suppose that their encounters register something of a real, however corrupted by mediations? A historical real that, against all protestations, invades the imaginary? 9/11? The Anschluss? Little Boy? Auschwitz? Stalingrad? Pearl Harbor? 1066? How about a bludgeon, nightstick, or bullet, encountering human skulls? Jewish massacres in 1096? Medieval mutilations of rebellious peasants? All pass through representations, often problematic, to reach us: are they mere and only “fantasms”?10 Pure ideation? No “reality”? Are the real vases communicants philosophical idealism and revisionist history? Philosophical idealism’s reality-denial is anachronistic, not only as regards the disastrous present, but also the medieval beginnings of “the courtly” around 1150. An early Christian “realism” that syncretized religion and neoPlatonism was in process of radical change around the middle of the twelfth century … a wholly new readiness to open the mind to the concrete reality of the world [occurred] … 11

Today, Slavoj Zizek’s earlier obsession with the cinematic flicker-images of Lacanian fantasmatics in Plato’s cave-as-Rialto yields to a conjugation of Kant, Marx, and Stephen King’s “undead” to affirm, against Lyotard and postmodernism, that “science is not merely a language game, but deals with an unschematized Real.”12 Zizek’s lovely “unschematized Real” is not quite Pieper’s “concrete reality,” but “reality’s” ugly head keeps rearing up. Contemporary materialism rediscovers its speculative philosophical heritage, from Epicurus, Democritus, and Spinoza. Alain Badiou, in the wake of late Althusser’s “aleatory materialism,” jettisons all predictive determinism and teleology, taking both materiality and ideation into account to preserve

historiques et sociologiques sur la poésie des troubadours,”  Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 7 (1964), 27–51. 9 Cf. Gregory L. Stone, “Chrétien de Troyes and Cultural Materialism,” Arthuriana 6.2 (1996), 69–87. 10 See the exemplary meditation of an art historian on a medium whose technological mimesis was unimaginable in the Middle Ages: Georges Didi-Huberman, Images malgré tout (Paris: Minuit, 2004). 11 Josef Pieper, Scholasticism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1960/4), 102. 12 Slavoj Zizek, “Philosophy is Not a Dialogue,” in Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, Philosophy in the Present (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009), 80 (emphasis added).

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the grounding of human life in inescapable material necessities.13 Reality is no longer a given, but rather an abutment. Whoever thinks historical antagonisms of the Middle Ages unrelated to materialities of wealth and power needs to have the fantasms of his scholarship examined.14 Any account of the Middle Ages that excludes class structures oriented towards the extraction of economic value from those without a voice simply continues the discipline’s ideological obfuscations of the continued suppression of the voiceless. That class structure subtends the social, from medieval courts and “courtly love,” to monarchy and today’s globalized “post-capitalism.” Medievals knew it. The eleventh-century bishop who asserted that the lord’s bread, freedom, and culture depended on the servitude of “his” peasants knew it.15 Adalberon of Laon’s enunciation of the truth considered it God’s design, legitimated by and legitimating his own position as bishop. Is the modern medievalist methodologically bound by the “design” that endorsed the medieval bishop’s Sitz im Leben? Or is s/he duty-bound to the desublimation implicit in Walter Benjamin’s edict: “no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism”?

I “What is the court?” famously asked Walter Map, himself a courtier at the court of Henry II. His Nuggets of the Court starts abruptly, archly, citing authority to assert the subject’s inability to define his subject: “I am in time and I speak of time”, said Augustine, adding “I do not know what time is”. With similar amazement I could say that I am in the court, that I speak of the court, but God knows what the court is.16

13 “Aleatory materialism” dates from Louis Althusser’s late work: Ecrits philosophiques et politiques, 1 (Paris: Stock/IMEC, 1994); Philosophy of the Encounter, Later Writings 1978–1987, tr. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2006); see also Alain Badiou, Logique des mondes (Paris: Seuil, 2006) as well as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, Philosophy in the Present (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009). 14 The revision of “class,” problematizing notions of consciousness and identity, must address the issues raised by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility” (2nd version), in The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility, ed. Michael Jennings et al., tr. Edmund Jephcott et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 50 n. 25. 15 Adalberon de Laon, Carmen ad Robertum Regem, ed. Claude Carozzi (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1979), vv. 289–93. 16 Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 29 (modified); Map died around 1209–10; the Nuggets may have preceded his death.



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Map’s uncharacteristic diffidence contrasts with a roughly contemporary analysis of the English Treasury.17 The Treasury was an offshoot of the court, accounting for revenues harvested by the king’s field agents, England’s sheriffs. Precision and repeatability are essential to accounting. The court’s reality was “farming” England as an economic resource, mulcting the country and channeling taxes the Treasury counted.18 The contrast is striking, between the extraordinarily precise account of the king’s counting house, and Walter Map’s wispy, self-dissipatory vagueness regarding the court from which the Treasury emanated. True, large patches of historiographical obscurity subsist. One reason is modernity’s desire for stable, precise definitions encountering the variability of medieval practices, more diverse than modernity’s templates, far more dynamic and mutable than modernity’s static images of an immobile Middle Ages.19 True, there was the court’s historical variability, its unceasing metamorphosis: personnel, the king’s humor and policies, and kings themselves all changed as medieval experimentalism devised new ways of expanding power, affirming centralizing presence, and extracting resources. The court’s extractive policies governed increasingly larger and more complex groupings of territories. A third difficulty is the secretiveness of governance, then as today. When power moves beyond brutal coercion to seek a cover of ideological legitimacy, it adopts secrecy as its modus operandi,20 protestations of “transparency” notwithstanding.21 The court does not merely envelop itself in mystery: 17 Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de scaccario, ed. and tr. Charles Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914) – written in 1179. 18 Here and elsewhere I draw on my words The Subject of Violence: The Song of Roland and the Birth of the State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); and The Subject Medieval/Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle Ages (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004). 19 Recent historiography gives the lie to that immobility, sharpening the sense of historical change earlier registered by  Marc Bloch and Georges Duby: see  Jean-Pierre Poly and Éric Bournazel,  La mutation féodale au Xe-XIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1980), as well as the same authors’ monumental Les féodalités (Paris: PUF, 1998); R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford; Basil Blackwell, 1987) and  The First European Revolution, 970–1215 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and Julia Smith,  Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History, 500–1000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 20 On the violence of “legitimate” power, see the medieval clerical critiques of power, as well as a modern tradition from Walter Benjamin’s “Kritik der Gewalt” (1921) to Etienne Balibar, Violence et civilité (Paris: Galilée, 2010). 21 This is written in December 2010, as the disclosure by WikiLeaks of some 250,000 American documents breaks secrecy and the US government, using the pressures of diplomacy to obtain the Wikileaker’s extradition from abroad, testifies to the ongoing principle of governmental secrecy in its disgraceful scramble to find legal justification for a trial of Julian Assange, and tortures an enlisted soldier suspected as the source of the leaks.

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it constitutes itself as a mystery, proscribing perception of its errors and horrors in order to awe and terrorize its subjects.22 In so doing, secular power overlooks the ideological dimension that religion knew essential to mystery: sustenance by faith and trust. Subjects having lost trust in state ideology, the possibility of actual governance thins to the vanishing point, committing the state to the alternative of terror or implosion. That history serves existing power is not news. With remarkable exceptions of great honor and courage, history (including “literary history”) as an ideological machinery confirms “modernity” in its unique superiority as the cultural pseudonym of capitalism. History represses acknowledgement of historical reality, including documented rebellions, and negates the vitality of the past. The basic technique of falsification is false metonymization. A real integer of the past, snatched from its totality, is made to represent the whole, suppressing the always contradictory character of the past. The traditional “Middle Ages,” defined by a single, totalizing, unifying ideology (Christianity), was one such metonymy. Another was the supposedly universal, uncritical submission to “divinely appointed” power. A third is history’s projection of the past as a sequence of “centuries,” each defined by a single, “dominant” feature, integrated into universal history as progress toward an illuminated future. History, a discourse of veridiction, ordinarily lies. Admirable exceptions exist. Another cliché, more recent to academic favor, is the court and its literature, characterized as disconnected from political, material reality. Court is theatricalized as a site of purely celebratory reunions that civilized participants, an early chapter on the glorious road to contemporary civilization. A study in historical sociology, of considerable inherent interest, is made to redefine “the court” as a finishing school that taught table manners as metonymy of civilization.23 What preceded was barbarism. With the court, voilà table manners, our civilization. Medieval cultural history transforms history into the self-gratulatory genealogy of “our civilization,” eluding the question “What is civilization?” … other than capitalism. Twelfth-century courts were more serious. Some knights probably learned table manners. Some, faced with dominant aristocrats, tempered their violence. But that culturalist view of “the courtly,” taken alone, substituting for “totality” in prescinded fragmentation, strikes me as a radical distortion, an unconscionable narrowing of readily recoverable reality: a substantive misrepresentation. The truth that court occasions were often cele22 This applies to liberal regimes as well as to reactionary or “totalitarian” regimes. Democratic constitutionalism attempted to abolish mystery and awe. Today, “awesome” is degraded to rocking adolescent approval, and “mystery” designates television serials. 23 Norbert Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 2 vols (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1939) – the date is of interest; Eng. tr. The Civilizing Process, 2 vols (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).



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bratory requires complementation. Celebration, like its inversion in Bakhtin’s carnavalesque, is ideologically functional, celebrating “sacrifice” to legitimate existing power. Ritual itself is politically charged.24 Court celebrated its own existence, the glory of rulers, and extortions often rapacious. This truth was understood by medieval intellectuals who prescribed a duty of resistance, even against bishops.25 Contemporary historians differ over the violence of medieval society. Theodore Evergates paints a highly bureaucratized, apparently peaceful principality; Thomas Bisson, addressing a different region, reinstates an earlier view of feudal society as rapaciously violent.26

II – Nomina The vocabulary for the body of the king’s advisors – the “court” – is varied. In Latin: placitum, curia, colloquium, conventus, concilium, and synodus.27 Meanings fluctuate from small gatherings with more or less permanent membership to large, public, shifting assemblies, sometimes coterminous with armies.28 In the vernacular, assemblies are readily called meetings of the court, conseil des barons, or “la cour” tout court: mutability reigns. Modern English “court” and French cour both derive from Old French cort (C.L. curia) meaning both “court” and “courtyard”: an open, mostly uncovered space outside a farming residence, as in “la cour de la ferme” – a space of traversals, undifferentiations, and in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, quasi-industrial weaving by female serves.29 “Curia” also denoted institutional forms of social life, differentiated from the whole as judicial process; the building that housed the process; and the occasion itself. Such courts have both classical and Germanic antecedents. Similarly, curia/cour marks a political occasion eventually transformed into institution and building: Versailles, 24 Philippe Buc, Dangereux rituel. De l’histoire médiévale aux sciences sociales (Paris: PUF, 2003); Eng. tr. The Dangers of Ritual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); and “The Monster and the Critics: A Ritual Reply,” Early Medieval Europe 15.4 (2007), 441–52. 25 Philippe Buc, L’ambiguité du livre. Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994). 26 For Evergates’s titles see note 47 below; Thomas Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 27 Timothy Reuter, “Assembly Politics in Western Europe from the Eighth Century to the Twelfth,” in Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 193–216, here 195. 28 Thomas N. Bisson, “The Military Origins of Medieval Representation,” The American Historical Review 71 (1966), 199–218. 29 Peter Haidu, “The Hermit’s Pottage: Deconstruction and History in Yvain,” Romanic Review 74 (1983), 1–15; and The Sower and the Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Rupert T. Pickens (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1983), 127–45.

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Matignon, the White House … Heeding Freud’s equation of money, gold, and excretion, courts are august institutions that ritualize courtyard crap. Refinements of this undifferentiation result from various combinations with the public assemblies of Germanic tribes noted by Tacitus, the first-century historian whose political acuity was sharpened as senator. Among Germania’s denizens, chiefs settled only minor matters. Important issues were discussed by the entire tribe, the totality, the assembly of the whole, noisy and slow to gather, all remaining fully armed. Silence and order were proclaimed by priests. The king/chief addressed the multitude. If he displeased, rejection was murmured. If he pleased, the crowd signaled the approval of complimentary assent: brandishing spears. Tacitus, contempt laced with admiration, describes an absolute, populist democracy: the face-to-face meeting of the whole for vital decision-making, integrating leadership as its extension into a permanently attached protopod.30 To what degree did that sense – that the whole decides for the whole, with equal voice for all – subsist throughout the Middle Ages, even undocumented, when institutional forms of governance contradicted the principle so overtly? To what extent does it represent a felt universal, even unvoiced? The principle of popular election of rulers was well known, however distorted in practice.31 The multitude rarely left direct traces. Did it sense that the One always unjustly supplants the All, despite all claims at divine legitimation?32 To what degree was established governance – all established governance – experienced as tyranny? Some clerics, “organic intellectuals,”33 made resistance to unjust action a duty; some scrabbled to install themselves in power.34 Theologians derided “democracy” – rule by the people: did the multitude?

30 Such populism always terrifies social democracy: Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2007); … not to mention the framers of the US Constitution. 31 Yves Cattin, L’anthropologie politique de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001). 32 A rare and moving account of medieval doléances from the excluded is Thomas Bisson, Tormented Voices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), based on the work of a scribe who was not one of the subjects whose voices he recorded. The question extends beyond the European Middle Ages, to those subjugated as slaves, serfs, or exploited “free” laborers in whatever polity, under whatever religious dispensation: did they, do they, accept their “fate” as “just”? Works of vernacular history in the Middle Ages mark possibilities of class-consciousness, the affirmation of universal equality, resistance, community organization, and political revolt: Haidu, The Subject Medieval/Modern, 48–51. 33 Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectuals,” in The Prison Notebooks (New York: International, 1971), 5–25; The Modern Prince (New York: International, 1957), 118–25. “Organic” does not necessarily mark approval: “organic” means “integrated into power structures.” 34 For the first option, see Buc, L’ambiguité du livre; for the arrivistes, see R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).



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In the Middle Ages, the question pertains most obviously to those who worked the land, from whose labor lordship and royal governance extracted the surplus value that sustained court life. It also applies to townspeople whose “communes” rebelled against arbitrary extraction and extortion and sometimes purchased limited freedoms from feudal masters, as well as Jewish communities whose relative autonomy, purchased for a price, perhaps provided the model of self-organization for the communes. “Freedom,” variously defined, is always desired. Ask Spartacus. Is that a “universal”? Medieval assemblies have been defined with admirable imprecision, in the negative form appropriate to the meagerness of our knowledge: an assembly consisted of a ruler having in his presence “a substantial number of people who were not permanent members of his entourage.”35 Less admirable is the definition of that nobility as the exclusive “political community” of the Middle Ages. Positivistic acquiescence in the nobility’s claim that it uniquely represents the whole continues the suppression of those without a voice. In historical fact, voices of critique and resistance existed, even in the vernacular, thus: Ceste letre ci vous demonstre Que tout li haut home sont monstre. [This here text demonstrates that all high men are monsters.]36

To the question: “How did assemblies actually operate?” the properly cautious historian answers: “we know surprisingly little about this.”37 The medieval court was a restricted assembly, meeting at the behest of the principatus to discuss matters of moment with a small group of advisors. The prince called the meeting, set the agenda, and formally sought counsel in a process shielded from scrutiny. Court furnished him with information, alternatives, advice, and legitimation. The personnel might comprise the prince himself; permanent officers (chancellor, seneschal, treasurer, scribes, etc.); and occasional visitors invited to participate or specifically summoned to a particular meeting. Meetings might be regularly scheduled or specially convened for specific purposes. “What is a ‘court’?” was Walter Map’s question – an ontological one. Since even he, a knowledgeable medieval courtier, found it unanswerable, alternative phrasings may be useful. Instead of “What is a court?” we might ask: Reuter, “Assembly Politics,” 198. “Li Abécés par ékivoche et li significations des lettres.” Huon le Roi de Cambrai, Œuvres, 1, ed. A. Langfors (Paris: Champion, 1913). 37 Reuter, “Assembly Politics,” 198. 35 36

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“What happens at court?” “What’s it do?” “What’s it for?” To those pragmatic questions, various phrasings respond. One grounds them all. What happened at court was: talk. Everything at court – outside an occasional murder before or behind the arras – consists of linguistic exchanges: questions, demands, answers, retorts, discussions, reports, hypotheses, arguments, proposals, reasonings, decisions, plots, plans, instructions, commands, and so on. Benoît de Sainte Maure, author of the Roman de Troie, favors a word with historical resonance: parlemens. “Parliament” comes from an ordinary word for undifferentiated praxis: parler – talk, conversation. That’s what went on at court: talk. Materialist history recognizes that Parliament is a house of talk, having its own codes (eventually Robert’s Rules of Order) with post-verbal, extra-linguistic effects.

III – Fictional Desublimation: The parlemens of Thèbes The vernacular narrative known as the Roman de Thèbes is not a brilliant work of great literature like Chrétien de Troyes’s novels that invent a world and a “literature” continuous with the modern. It is more, however, than an ignorant scribe’s botched adaptation of Statius’s Thebaid, or a curiously innovative anomaly. Composed in Norman England, the oldest of three classicizing texts that straddled “history” and “fiction,” Thèbes antedates the romans d’Eneas and Troie. All three are associated with Henry II’s court, and are said to establish ideological competition with the Carolingian refulgence of the French Capetians’ invocation of a Carolingian past, in epics like the Song of Roland. Much commends this view, but dating and ideology present problems. Thèbes appears to have been written very early in the 1150s: 1150 or 1152 have been proposed. If so, it precedes the inception of Henry II’s reign in 1154. Furthermore, reading Thèbes as ideological apologue for royalty is odd. In Thèbes, power is tainted from its incestuous beginning, doomed to the violence of internecine warfare, ultimately calling forth divine decision to eradicate. Rather than prospective ideology for Henry II, Thèbes refers to the recent past. The fratricide of the sons of Oedipus parallels the civil war between the siblings Stephen and Matilda that devastated England between 1135 and 1154, even absent incest. Rather than prospective ideology, Thèbes critiques expansive re-centralizing power mediated by the rise of the “court.” As with medieval translations generally, Thèbes transparently adapts. It casts the dreadful story of Oedipus’s progeny into quick, rhymed octosyllabics and the clothes, customs, weapons, and political structures of the twelfth century – its real focus. Describing Thèbes as translation-cum-­ adaptation is not wrong; it just puts the cart before the horse. The classical



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reference distances the text and allows critical perspectives on its twelfthcentury problematics. Statius’s narrative skeleton serves to explore politics as defined, not by anachronism,38 but by recent history’s inscription of nascent political realities. Political problematics come first: Thèbes gleans Statius, adding material as necessary, to construct a twelfth-century story. Political gatherings – private consults, restricted courts, large-scale public assemblies – are frequent, essential narremes. Without reporting on actual medieval conversations, court sessions, or real assemblies, the text narrativizes a type-event, marked by a principle of pertinence to the real that typifies fictional representation in general – “realism” was one historical form in the nineteenth century. A historical Imaginary bears a treasury of potential narrativizations, some realized by actually produced narratives. The text’s political co-text – its Real – contains cultural codes for potential narrativizations. Fictional actualizations enter a domain of representation that is always ideological. Sans “realism,” they bear some relation of pertinence to reality. Thèbes is a political narrative – like all medieval texts.39 Its textualization of contemporary codes effectuates a cultural transformation, tied to new political conditions of discourse attendant on the re-centralization of governance over expanding territories. A greater degree of consultation, earlier recommended by clerical Mirrors of Princes, becomes integral to state-formation. Thèbes moves consultation stage center, displacing established religion by subtraction and substitution – even if the narrative remains freighted with theological implications.40 Thèbes, at the very moment of nascent stateformation, narrativizes early stages of Louis Althusser’s “state Ideology.”41 Precisely because its centrality subtends all other ideologies, “state ideology” appears as unmarked discourse, bearing the “assumptions” of the period and its culture. Court episodes recur thirty-two times in Thèbes.42 They range from private L. G. Donovan, Recherches sur le Roman de Thèbes (Paris: SEDES, 1975), 107–11. To the works cited above, add Haidu, “Text and History,” Semiotica 33 (1980– 81), 1–62; “Semiotics and History,” Semiotica 40 (1982), 187–228; and Sarah Kay, The Chansons de geste in the Age of Romance. Political fictions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 40 The re-discovery that origins leave traces is to the credit of Giorgio Agamben, who then reduces the present to past origins. 41 On the heels of mai ’68, Louis Althusser writes a book on its failure. Parts of the book are excerpted as “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État (Notes pour une recherche),” La Pensée 151 (June 1970), translated as “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” by Ben Brewster in Lenin and Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 127–88 (several reprints). Its prime example of ideology is religious ritual, i.e., Catholic practices. The original text is now available in Althusser, Sur la reproduction (Paris: PUF, 1995). 42 Annie Ménétré, “L’assemblée du conseil, ‘coeur vivant’ de l’Etat: de la pratique politique dans les romans antiques,” in Le roman antique au Moyen Age, ed. Danielle Buschinger (Göppingen: Kummerle Verlag, 1992), 131–47. Several manuscripts survive. 38 39

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consultations marginal to more formal occasions, restricted meetings of small groups of advisors, and stretch out to assemblies of thousands: the lexemes “court” and “assembly” are fluid, elastic narremes. The issues these “courts” address take collective decision-making into multiple domains, among the weightiest any polity faces: an originary genealogy in royal marriage and its institutionalization – a full court unanimously recommends to Jocasta marriage to Oedipus; declaration of war; replacements for a general and an archbishop; a traitor’s trial; and divine intervention to settle human differences, decided by the court of pagan gods. Thèbes also adds major narrative sequences to the Thebaid: the originary story of Oedipus, Jocasta, and Laius; the Darius episode, a major narrative syntagm inserted toward the end as the complex, nuanced representation of the trial of a subject-turned-traitor;43 the Capaneus episode – the one major appearance of divinity – where the Greek gods “banquet.” All three figure meetings of a “court.” What was the tone of political assemblies? Our political historian – a specialist in German history – argued that subservient unanimity was the normative model at assemblies of medieval polities that feared and shunned open expression of conflict and disagreement … they lacked a language in which conflict or opposition could be expressed in controllable form.44

Parlemens, as represented in the Old French Thèbes, differ. They vary in tone from placid unanimity to acute discussion, harsh criticism, and worse. A vassal interpellates the king himself: Rois, fet il, es tu fox ou yvres, qui pais veus faire et es delivres? (7633–6) [King, what are you, nuts or drunk? You want to settle for peace, when you’re free!]

and proceeds to accuse him of criminality, pride, villainy, of being a “mauvés hom.” The king, furious, strikes an intransigent vassal across the face with a wooden stick. The narrator’s irony implies some critical perspective: Two editions based on the earliest manuscript exist: Le roman de Thèbes, 2 vols, ed. Guy Raynaud de Lage (Paris: Champion [CFMA], 1966 & 1971); and Le roman de Thèbes, ed. Aimé Petit (Paris: Champion Classiques, 2008), which reproduces Raynaud de Lage’s Old French text and adds a facing modern French prose translation. The 1995 edition by Francine Mora-Lebrun in Lettres Gothiques uses a different manuscript – the most recent, composed about a hundred years after the first. The manuscripts differ substantially. Textual criticism can select one, or the other, or refer to a manuscript cloud. Only a concrete, individual manuscript represents a surviving medieval material reality. 43 On this episode, see the brilliant discussion by Bernard Ribémont, “A propos d’un épisode du Roman de Thèbes: la ‘Dairéide’ ou la trahison et le jugement de Daire le Roux,” Revue des langues romanes 108 (2004), 507–26. 44 Reuter, “Assembly Politics,” 203.



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Li rois … quant a droit ne se peut prendre, Par tençon veut son tort desfendre. (3749–63) [The king … unable to call on lawful right, defends his wrong with conviction.]

The Capaneus episode subjects “court” to an ultimate parody. The gods meet, Jupiter presiding. Their level of discourse improves over human courts not a whit. Divine intervention in human affairs is decisive, however: they bring peace and concord to men, dispatching Capaneus the blasphemer by splitting him in two with a lightning bolt: a “sign from the gods.”45 Neither narrator nor narrated demonstrate servility to royal eminence, human or divine. The originary story of Oedipus, Laius, and Jocasta not only evokes mythical details forgotten to the medieval public: it produces “positive” meaning. The endless violence between Oedipus’s two sons battling for sovereignty drags their city-states into self-destructive carnage. Their very existence, their violent struggle, predicated on incestuous birth, transposes the Christian theologeme of “original sin” back into pagan figurations: “incest” is the secularized narrative equivalent of “eating the apple.” Augustine followed Paul: all future mankind “inherits” the originary sin of Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God’s command, equivalent to Oedipus and Jocasta’s transgression of the incest prohibition. Mankind’s ills and violence track back to that single, determinative act, which propels the drive towards unique “sovereignty” endlessly. The problem for the gods’ banquet in the Capaneus episode is to inflect destiny, not stop it. The Christian framework is absent from the twelfth-century Thèbes.46 The “pagan” story of incest’s offspring subtracts Christian religion, and remains as paradoxical as Christian free will and divine omnipotence. Thèbes is not an allegory: its narrative of incest, war, and court is a fictional analogue to the parallel history of England’s “anarchy,” Stephen and Matilda. The lack of Christian reference omits any obvious, direct theological freight, but keeps open analogies that allow the text to proceed as a pertinent political narrative. Missing is the Christian scheme of providential redemption. Instead, final images of this “romance” include a host of widows grieving at a parlement, and the two dead brothers continuing internecine combat within the flame of their common funeral pyre.47 In this transposition of “original sin” into non-Christian generative terms, representations of the court as a decisionary vector for consultations regarding narrative actions implement the traditional desire of Mirrors of Cf. “divine justice,” in Benjamin “Kritik der Gewalt.” “Pagan” deities are named, but only occasional clichés can be read as referring to the Christian God, even ironically: e.g., “with god’s help” (1349), or, when a hero is wounded: “By god I’m in good shape!” (3486). 47 Thèbes, vv. 9926, 9931, and 10497–504. 45 46

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Princes to moderate headstrong kingship with clerical advisors who might help restrain royal ill temper, character, and damages. Those texts surrounded and sustained kingship with theologically trained clerics. Thèbes subtracts these, using the recommended consultative process to narrativize secular governance and determinism ab ovo.

IV – Feudal Real(i)ty: Possessing Possesse The fiction of Thèbes instances the period’s complex Imaginary, inscribed in culture and ideational representation. An 1166 document from the court of Champagne instances material political practice. It records the count of Champagne’s performative speech act, oriented towards materialities of land, its political control, and everything “land” implied for the noble elite. Henry I’s utterance constituted a legal reality: the possession and rule of a fief called Possesse, east of Reims, between Châlons-en-Champagne and Bar-le-Duc. Henry of Champagne, upon a meeting of his court after Christmas 1166, rendered the court’s decision in his own name.48 Though he and the king were bound by formal relations of hierarchy, Henry ruled one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and best organized principalities in France – in pragmatic reality, an autonomous statelet. Earlier that year, petitioners had arrived in his court: Guy of Garland and his son Anselm, members of a powerful northern French kindred, lacking a castle of origin but associated with the royal family.49 They appeared before Henry to pose a question of “real estate”: control of territory, authority over a resident population, its production of value and heritable – matters of primordial interest to the nobility, great and small. Such “property” is referred to as an “honor.” The term marks moral quality, social status, and a political economy that grounds social superiority in land worked by peasants: “To possess land is to possess people …”50 The notion that noble “gentlemen” were “above” such considerations is hardly worth dismissing as ideology: it is pure fantasy, as “pure” as academic bourgeois ideology ever gets. A contemporary charter, from a different region, specifies the material values of an honor. The customary rights of a vicar’s fief include 115 manses, 48 “I, Henry, count palatine of Troyes, wish to announce by this letter …” Theodore Evergates, Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 113ff; see also Evergates’s Feudal Society in the Bailliage of the Troyes under the Counts of Champagne, 1152–1284 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1975) and The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 49 Evergates, The Aristocracy, 184. Possesse is discussed briefly on 22. For Thomas Bisson, the Garlande family’s domination of the French royal family precipitated a crisis in 1127, the same year as the murder of Charles the Good (Bisson, The Crisis, 264). 50 Bisson, The Crisis, 254.



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169 1/2 pigs, 88 pairs of chickens, 61 quarters of feed grain: the count of Barcelona receives from this honor tachs and a quarter of the tithe.51 The connection between class, social status, and wealth, their interdependence as evaluated by land, huts, pigs, chickens, and feed grain, was self-evident and shameless to secular medieval nobles. Guy and Anselm petition Count Henry of Troyes for possession of the honor of Possesse. Hugh of Possesse had shared the honor with Guy III and his younger brother John. John became a Cistercian monk, excluding himself from secular property. Hugh left Champagne for the Holy Land the previous year (1165), placing his share of Possesse and its castle under Count Henry’s protection. Hugh only got as far as Calabria, where he married and settled. Holding such a property in trust was profitable for the count: the revenue it produced during the trusteeship was the trustee’s. Guy of Garland’s petition implied divesting the count of a source of revenue. In addition, Hugh of Possesse had a sister, now deceased. She had married Guy III of Garlande. The present Guy was bringing the suit on behalf of her eldest son, his nephew, claiming the barony for his nephew by hereditary right. To consider the matter, Count Henry convened his court at Troyes in Champagne on December 29, 1166. The case presented a conundrum: hereditary right to a barony; multiple claims to an honor: the political role of the count as trustee; his role and the court’s in judging such issues; the court’s rule over the economic base of nobility: the land and the peasantry that made it economically valuable. Territorial rule implied honor as real estate, revenue, wealth, power, the esteem of equals and subordinates. Commoners, the rabble outside the “political community,” provided labor to be exploited. Rule legitimated the use of violence at the disposition of the honor’s ruler, deployed for defense, policing, and the extraction of profits from agriculture and commerce.52 Conflicting claims to rule and property opposed the interests of members of the ruling elite. A number of barons answered the count’s call.53 Participants in the 51 Charter from Catalonia, dated 4/2/1151, quoted by Bisson, The Crisis, 326; italics original. Shorn of theoretical and literary dimensions, but with far greater documentary evidence and precise analysis of historical documents, Bisson’s book provides ample confirmation of the governance thesis of The Subject Medieval/Modern, judged not worthy of review in its journal by the American Historical Association: so much for interdisciplinarity! 52 The classic exposition is Georges Duby’s Guerriers et paysans (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). The attack on “feudalism,” cast as a problem of historiography by British, French and American academics, rebelled against materialist class conceptions of the medieval ground of the European economy. 53 The document lists a dozen by name and refers to unnamed others: the count’s brother Thibaut of Blois; the butler of Champagne Anselm of Traînel and his brother Garnier; Simon of Broyes; William of Dampierre; Hugh of Plancy; the constable of Champagne Odo of Pougy; Girard of Châlons-sur-Marne; Drogo of Provins and his brother Peter; the chamberlain Peter “the Purse”; the marshal William of Provins.

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process, they shared responsibility in its decision. For kings, and princes who ruled principalities as if kings, baronial participation had political value. The barons’ presence testified to the validity of the decision: they might be called on to enforce the decision. Their presence was a technique of representational governance to avoid later conflict amongst nobles, and facilitate enforcement. Count Henry recognized the legitimacy of multiple and contradictory rights: Guy’s, his son, his nephew, Hugh’s, and his own as trustee. The count’s princely legitimacy depended on the discharge of trusteeship in a manner acceptable to the baronage. The nobles at court and their children were all potential heirs. One may reasonably assume that each participant, impelled by self-interest, would want his say in the process, and that pertinent issues of rightful claim and responsibility were touched on in the court’s deliberation. One may hypothesize consideration of various alternatives, even unspecified in the document itself. The degree of agreement and dissensus, possible shifts of opinion among the participants, the tone of the proceedings, are not recorded. The assumption of courtesy and respect toward Count Henry is probably justified. Those present were “nobles,” men of power, part of the ruling elite of Champagne, all with potential for violence. As a class, they were dealing with equals regarding their own social fundament. For Theodore Evergates, it was during this period that Champagne “was transformed from a loose assortment of counties and quasi-independent lordships into a cohesive territorial state.”54 Increased centralization of territorial governance, at the level of the principality as well as the kingdom, was an early state form. In Champagne, under Count Henry, “collegial governance” obtained. Absent contra-indication, nobles were likely to be respectful of the count, even when advancing their own cause. Did this preclude substantive discussion of shared interest? The complex solution to Guy of Garlande’s petition addresses all noble parties’ claims. Hugh of Possesse is allowed one year to return to Champagne and reclaim his land – ample time to choose between his holdings in Calabria and Possesse in Champagne. If Hugh does not return within the year, the count will invest Guy and Anselm with the honor, still reserving Hugh’s right, presumably to be pursued before the court, if he returns at some later point. The decision specifically reserves the count’s right to the redemption fee. The customary law of baronial inheritance is saved. The count maintains his reputation as trustee and his interest: the loss of one source of income will be compensated by the redemption fee. Should an issue arise, the barons listed as participants in the discussion share with the count the responsibility of enforcement.

54

184ff.

Evergates, The Aristocracy, 26. Possesse is mentioned on 22, the Garlandes on



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That’s what a feudal court was for, what it talked about, what its discussions did: consideration of substantive issues arising within the nobility’s “political community,” fusing political, economic, and social considerations that arose in the concrete complexities of historical evolution, especially the materialities that sustain the rest of life: rule of territory and the extraction of wealth from the labor of subjugated peasantries. Court concerned itself not only with table manners, social graces, the aesthetics of cultural production, or amorous refinements, but with the economic flow necessary to the elite life and power of the “nobility,” maintaining legitimacy in its own eyes.55 Possibly, decorum allowed the elite to address the means and assignment of rights of extortion in an equably collegial tone. A later document demonstrates the crucial importance of material heritability for the self-reproduction of the noble class. The court decision regarding Possesse in 1166 dealt with one single honor. Nearly six decades later, in 1224, under the rule of Thibault IV, the court of Champagne revisited the issue after another Christmas meeting. Listing participants and formulating the transformation of cultural practices into their economic and political effects, the decision negotiates the two principles of heritability whose conflict was of increasing concern: primogeniture, which designates the eldest surviving son as heir, as against partibility, which attempts an equitable division among all surviving members of a couple’s descendency.56 Materiality … again?!

V – Royal Reality: Doom Somewhat earlier, across the Channel, an anonymous historian explains how William I and his court celebrated Yuletide 1085. Christmas with councilors at Gloucester; a five-day court; a three-day synod with archbishop and clergy; then, the court got down to brass tacks: the king had important deliberations and exhaustive discussions with his council about this land, how it was peopled, and with what sort of men. Then he sent his men all over England into every shire to ascertain how many hundreds of “hides” of land there were in each shire, and how much land and live-stock the king himself owned in the country, and what annual dues were lawfully his from each shire … So very thoroughly did he have the inquiry carried out that there was not a single “hide”, not one virgate of land, not even – it is shameful to record it, but it did not seem shameful

55 The role of the court of Champagne in the development of “courtliness” has hardly been underestimated in the past. 56 Evergates, The Aristocracy, 197ff.

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to him to do it – not even one ox, nor one cow, nor one pig which escaped notice in his survey.57

This discussion prepared the far-reaching surveys that, gathered together, constituted the monumental Domesday Book, a social construction of the England that William had conquered two decades earlier.58 Domesday was a written representation of the conquered kingdom as an economic resource productive of tax revenues, past, present, and future, upwardly fungible. The populace feared and hated being frozen in script. Rather than communitarian, literacy was an instrument of domination, ink on parchment no less constraining than swords of noble steel. Naming it “The Book of the Day of Doom” marked hatred and fear of eternal imprisonment in endlessly increasing literate oppression. Conceived and planned at court, Domesday evidenced William’s insensate greed. The same chronicle records a poem of complaint some pages later. The king was “hard,” he built castles that were “a sore burden to the poor.” The king took gold and silver from his subjects “unjustly and for little need.” The king was “sunk in greed and utterly given up to avarice.” All resented him: “The rich complained and the poor lamented, but he was too relentless to care though all might hate him.”59 So much for “communities of literacy” and the “political community” of nobles. Literacy had pragmatic, material effects60 that sustained the dominant class at others’ expense. Extraction of surplus-value constituted the class structure willfully created by the nobility, its self-reproductive violence producing resentment, resistance, sometimes revolt. Class antagonism was not an invention of the nineteenth century or Karl Marx. Class conflict was constructed, lived, thought, and repeatedly expressed in the Middle Ages. Modern academics, ensconced in privilege,61 may deny it, but class, its privileges, means, and profits were the fundamental preoccupation of the medieval court. The economic code was permanently an element in nobiliary calculations. Collegiality might reign within the noble elite in a smartly run principality like Champagne. But collegiality was grounded in violence. In 1171–72,

57 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and tr. G. N. Garmonsway (London: Dent, 1953/92), 216. Some clerics found shameful the fundament of noble life – pigs and honor (see above and n. 49) – not nobles! Other clerics found nothing shameful in detailed listings of their territorial acquisitions for the greater glory of God: Suger, Œuvres 1, ed. Françoise Gasparri (Paris: Belles Lettres), 54–154. 58 It still functions today to legitimate certain claims to property. 59 Suger, Oeuvres, 220ff. 60 M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066 – 1307 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). 61 “Tenure” is a feudal term, designating the continued, profitable occupation of land or position. Mouvance, before its adaptation to the problematics of oral literature, is a feudal term meaning subsumption of multiple territories.



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citing Anselm, the son of Guy mentioned in the charter of 1166, Pope Alexander complained to the archbishop of Reims about “the depredations of the ‘noble’ Anselm who burned down a church and an entire village in retaliation against the canons of Châlons …”62 Names and numbers of the victims are lacking; it was just a village of farmers. Who bothers to count victims? Class? Reality? Materiality? Bah! Poppycock!

Conclusion Psychic denial of reality is perfectly understandable, given the murderously totalizing greed that accompanies the contemporary collapse of late-capitalist civilization in its proto-fascist aftermath. The last thing we need is this reality, its deification of profitable efficiency, the financial profits of dehumanization, and its utter corruption of the academy! A rough walking bass rumbles beneath this optative denial of reality: may a chasm open to swallow this despicably corrupt reality! As psychoanalysis knows, however, denial has limited effectivity. The idealization of capitalist culture faces the approaching tornado in the conviction it is nothing but wind! As against modernist denials, the great discovery of twelfth-century theology was the necessity of grounding biblical reading in the literal sense of Scripture. This literalization did not discard allegorical meanings as constructed in the preceding centuries of “realism,” Christianity’s postclassical idealism. It grounded reading in history identified with the narrative word of God.63 Modern literary history has “freed” itself from God, history, and reference, joining a philosophical current of pure, de-materialized ideation-andlanguage. Authors are exsanguinated phantasmata, materially disemboweled, economically de-coded, politically castrated. The title of a recent collection of essays invokes “medieval authors”: only one contribution addresses the author as engaged in history.64 The medieval chapter of the discipline of “literary history,” prophylacticized against material history, floats, a selfinflated Moebius strip in its own bubble, writing itself out of historical existence. Courtly materiality flowers in the dung-heap of the court. Textual materiality has three dimensions. The first is the literal assemblage of words, 62 63

Evergates, The Aristocracy, 184. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell,

1952). 64 Zrinka Stahuljak, “Neutrality Affects: Froissart and the Practice of Historiographic Authorship,” in The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature, ed. Virginie Greene (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 137–56.

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forms, and structures, studied by medieval grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, before modern modes of structural analysis. Its second materiality lies in the relations of representational effects with contemporary realities. Those effects result from the transformative incorporation of ambient signifying codes to produce specific textual enunciations, rarely “realistic,” sometimes ecphrastic, but always inherent to the anthropomorphic dimension of textuality, and pertinent to its function as representation.65 The third textual historicity occurs at the core of the text’s fragmentary structures, and its efforts at the totalizing re-organization of such internal ruptures.66 Authentic critique relocates text in its social co-text, over and against which the concrete text defines itself, in alignment with the polity’s hegemonic forces or in dissensus: nuanced reservation, ideological modification, deconstructive critique, or violent revolt. Positioning text vis-à-vis social hegemony is always problematic: a closed circle of assent can never be assumed, in the Middle Ages or any other period. Even in supposedly “conservative” epochs, the negative arises as irony, selective representation, or structural disjunction, creating possibilities of differentiation, dialogues, or discursive conflicts.67 The reality of the medieval millennium was far from its representation as flatly quiescent and universally conservative. The documents discussed here are “courtly,” issuing from courts as rulers’ political acts, fictions composed for court, or comments on social reality. The pertinence of their representations is defined by the contemporary polis, its nature, and processes. All texts are the polity thinking itself, in a multiplicity of voices, including dissent and critique. The twelfth century invents polyphony. The Middle Ages is polyvocal and conflictual – any narrow historicism, its reduction to single-identity thought, is invalid.68 These texts address the ruler’s honor, the territory the ruler ruled “legitimately” or wanted to acquire.69 Honor granted status, power, and entitlement to use violence. Acquisition, governance, defense of the honor as materi65 The fatras and fatrasie subtract from signification – not from significance – and are exceptional; for the minimal narrativity necessary to lyric, as well as its use of political codes, see Haidu, “Text and History.” 66 Fragmentation was inherent in the conventionalized aesthetics of the Middle Ages (see Haidu, “Repetition: Modern Reflections on Medieval Aesthetics,” Modern Language Notes 92 [1977], 875–87). Fragmentation is not fragging. Contemporary discourses of identity politics, self-righteously masquerading as historical, specialize in fragging medieval textuality: see Haidu, “Fragments in Search of Totalization: Roland and the Historical Text,” in Modernity in the Middle Ages: The Challenge of the Past, ed. Brigitte Cazelles and Charles Mela (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 73–99. 67 E.g., Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Chrétien Continued. A Study of the Contes du Graal and its Continuations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 68 History is not historicism: “Medievalism: Testing Ground for Historicism(s)? Roundtable discussion with Peter Haidu, Alexandre Leupin, and Eugene Vance,” Paroles Gelées 9 (1991), 1–32. 69 Machiavelli’s framing alternative, in his little book on principalities.



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ality productive of further materiality, were the central occupation of barons, kings, and courts.70 The constitutive business of lordship was the conquest of territory and its governance as an economic machine productive of surplusvalue. Some rulers were more successful than others: Champagne, Flanders, and England were three eminently successful examples.71 Metonymic vase communicants marked communication between the material world and its sublimations. Philosophical idealism reduces the perception of “reality” to individual consciousness and language.72 Did psychoanalysis reduce “reality” to unconscious fantasms? The unconscious has always had social and political existence. The unthinking sloganeering of “Ça parle!” erased consciousness of the fascist potentials of the collective unconscious addressed by Freud.73 Its speech is the language of exclusive power, the language of exclusion. Social reality is constructed as commonality, produced by what is postulated as reality. The absolute reduction of reality to “fantasm” is the ultimate reduction of neo-capitalist individualism narrowed to the universalization of scattered singularities – the absolute disintegration of the socius. The inability to construct a shared, collective social reality is precisely the function of neocapitalism’s ideological reduction of the knowable to the individual; then, when the “individual” was discovered to have something of the social in it, to “singularity” as mere radicalization of existence purified of all sociality.

70 This does not dismiss the problem of inherent violence. On the contrary, what unites feudalism and capitalism is the fixation of innate aggression onto the profit motive. 71 None approached the efficiency of exploitation typical of modern capitalism – cause for condemnation or praise? 72 A fuller treatment would require discussion of Husserl’s descendency, from Derrida’s “Tympan” (1972) to Giorgio Agamben’s latest, et al. 73 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, tr. James Strachey (New York: Bantam, 1967).

Shaping the Case: the Olim and the Parlement de Paris under King Louis IX Donald Maddox Matilda Bruckner’s Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century Romance figures among several important recent studies that have shown the extent to which Old French verse romances, while normally culminating in an unmistakable “sense of an ending,” may also illustrate significant socio-cultural tensions and conflicts within the fictive universe without bringing them to any clear resolution.1 In its conclusion, Bruckner notes in passing that the absence of closure in many twelfth-century French romances is comparable to André Jolles’s theoretical conceptualization of the Case, which is one of nine ‘‘elementary forms’’ he defines in his Einfache Formen (Fr. Formes simples).2 In essence, the Case as described by Jolles is an ‘‘open’’ form, antecedent to any achievement of a concluding verdict. As Bruckner puts it, ‘‘Cases pose questions about norms used for judgment and evaluation; they do not include final answers” … “[t]he lack of closure offered by the Case form allowed, on the one hand, a forum in which to express conflicting values generated by social and literary experimentation – without, on the other hand, requiring an explicit resolution of the conflicts involved.”3 Taking my cue from this insight with regard to romance, I propose to consider here how Jolles’s perception of the Case as a formal entity may apply as well to actual judicial cases as they had begun to be entertained in France only a few decades after the initial rise of Old French verse romance. Although Jolles discusses neither Old French romance nor juridical procedures in medieval France, it will be apparent that his concept of the open Case is pertinent to both domains. Like the early courtly narratives analyzed by Bruckner, the documents of the court I shall examine here, while they 1 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: the Convention of Hospitality (1160–1200) (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1980). 2 Bruckner, Narrative Invention, 182–3, 185–6. André Jolles, Einfache Formen: Legende, Sage, Mythe, Rätsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Märchen, Witz (Halle: Saale, 1930) and Formes simples, tr. Antoine Marie Buguet (Paris: Seuil, 1972), “Le cas,” 137–57. 3 Bruckner, Narrative Invention, 185, 186.

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invariably move in the direction of a satisfactory resolution of the litigious matter(s) primarily at issue, may in the process also touch on other, often unresolved cultural tensions and thus provide the historian with a useful and revealing archive of insights into a wide variety of social, political, and religious conflicts. These texts are the products of a major juridical reform achieved under King Louis IX: the establishment of a supreme judicial body at the royal court in Paris that convened several yearly sessions, or “parlements,” hence its official title: Parlement.4 The Parlement de Paris, which first came into prominence around 1254,5 adjudicated a large volume of cases, many of them as appeals from both lay and ecclesiastical parties, seigneurial courts, communes, and other regional venues and petitioners. Its collected acts, almost all of them recorded in Latin, were known as the Olim.6 The entries fall under two rubrics, inquests (enquêtes) and judgments (arrêts).7 Parlement addressed the concerns of a broad cross-section of society, including feudal nobility, clergy, and ecclesiastical orders, communes, bourgeois, free peasants, and serfs, as well as civil and criminal offenders in all of these categories. The Olim thus reflect a wide range of customs, laws, mentalities, and mores. Even the entries from the early years of Parlement reflect a remarkable diversity of challenges to the long-standing hegemony of feudal and ecclesiastical power structures. From the outset the Olim served primarily documentary ends and over the centuries have provided supporting evidence for historians, who often cite 4 On its location, organization, and functions, see Gustave Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement de Paris aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris: Hachette, 1902; rpt New York: B. Franklin, 1970). On its annual calendar, see Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 323. 5 Parlement is first mentioned in 1239, though its extant recorded acts date from the end of Louis’s first crusade in 1254. See William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 142–4, and Margaret Wade Labarge, Saint Louis: The Life of Louis IX of France (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 170. 6 “l’innovation la plus importante du règne, en matière de conservation d’actes royaux, est la constitution, à partir de 1254, des actes du Parlement de Paris,” Le Goff, Saint Louis, 323. “These records were nicknamed the Olim from the first word of the case with which the second book begins,” Labarge, Saint Louis, 171n. Jean de Montluçon, the first parliamentary scribe (“greffier”), redacted the Olim between 1254 and 1273 but did not begin writing them up until 1263 and omitted some of the cases entertained during that period. For a descriptive inventory of entries between 1254 and 1328, see Edgar Boutaric, Actes du Parlement de Paris, 2 vols (Paris: Plon, 1863–67). 7 “The enquête was not the inquest itself, but the decision given after the receiving of the report of an inquest, its examination, and the settlement of the disputed questions of procedure and fact. An arrêt was a decision given by parlement either immediately following the plea or after personal deliberation by those serving as judges. Both could deal with very minor affairs, as well as the important questions of disputed rights and privileges” (Labarge, Saint Louis, 173).

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them merely in brief excerpts or in passing. Prompted by Jolles’s definition of the Case, I wish instead to consider them from two distinct perspectives. His notion of the “Simple Form” of the Case initially leads me to examine a few intrinsic features of the Olim that constitute “a forum in which to express conflicting values.” My second perspective, which takes its cue from Jolles’s assertion that the “open” Case lends itself to further development as a corresponding “Intellectual Form,” moves my exploration into the realm of literary writing. Jolles defines the Case as “Simple Form” in terms of three basic components: a transgression, the legal norm prescribing its sanction, and the evaluative dynamic that ascertains the relations between the two. He specifies that “[t]he offense or crime is identified with a prescription whose validity and scope neither can nor should be subject to doubt within a given sphere … Acts of all sorts … are evaluated according to a law or a norm … on the basis of which a judgment determines whether or not they are of a punishable nature.”8 Like the emblematic Balance of Justice, the Case “weighs” factual evidence against juridical norms in order to locate the equilibrium between the two.9 Such calibration is frequently apparent throughout the Olim. For example, in the case of the Knights Templar vs the royal bailli10 [in the Berry, the Templars, maintaining that the late Raoul Cofin of Issoudun had consecrated his body and belongings to the Order, laid claim to his possessions.11 The royal bailli] countered that Raoul, as a manservant (“homo de corpore”) of the king, could not, upon settling in Issoudun, have become a free man able to bequeath his possessions. The Templars were vindicated by a charter of franchise (1190) in which the lord of Issoudun allowed all inhabitants of that city who paid the property tax (census) to make bequests as they pleased.12 In the light of case theory and legal practice today, such coordination of facts and legal norms exemplified in this brief is a matter of Jolles, Formes simples, 140. Translations from the French edition are my own. “a universe in which circumstances comprise a reality that can be judged and evaluated according to norms regularly produces Cases” (Jolles, Formes simples, 152). 10 “The bailli or seneschal [in the Languedoc] was the lynchpin of local administration, the visible symbol of royal power: he was appointed and paid by the king, and served as his direct representative” (Labarge, Saint Louis, 180–1). Cf. Jordan, Louis IX, 57–8; 45–6; 160–1. 11 “Quidam burgensis Exolduni, qui vocabatur Radulphus Cofin, dedit se et sua Templariis. Postmodum, mortuo ipso Radulpho, Templarii saysiverunt bona ejusdem.” Olim ou registres des arrêts rendus par la cour du roi sous les règnes de Saint Louis, de Philippe le Hardi, de Philippe le Bel, de Louis le Hutin et de Philippe le Long 1, 1254–1273, ed. Arthur Beugnot (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1839 = O, I. O, I, Candlemas 1261), XIII, 531. 12 “cum per cartam concessum sit hominibus existentibus in censa Exolduni quod de rebus suis, tam in morte quam in vita, possint disponere prout eis placuerit …”, Olim ou registre, Ibid. On this charter, see Emile Chénon, Les jours de Berry au Parlement de Paris de 1255 à 1328 (Paris: L. Tenin, 1919), 184. 8 9

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routine. In 1262, however, it was part of an innovative appellate process that had only recently been systematized. More generally, the parliamentary “machine” that came into being under Louis IX and gradually matured during the later Middle Ages stood in stark contrast with long-standing procedures in earlier use, notably those that were normally implemented in order to instantiate the immanent justice of God. As Frederic Cheyette puts it, “[r]ight was decided not by an appeal to law – that is, to a legal norm – on the basis of certain facts … Instead, until the very end of the twelfth century one went immediately to the administration of proof – the oath, re-enforced perhaps by co-jurors, and, if this was considered insufficient, by the ordeal or the duel.”13 In a monumental shift during the early thirteenth century, legal procedures anticipatory of Jolles’s view of the Case were just beginning to mature in France and England. “Only when the new procedures and methods of proof had introduced professionals … to the distinction of law and fact, did substantive legal rules begin to play a role in judicial judgment. And by the mid-thirteenth century the professional judges were starting to monopolize the determination of those rules. The judges – or those who controlled the judges – kept their monopoly from then on.”14 Indeed, we find many of these “new procedures” beginning to take shape in Parlement, along with a host of judges who meet Jolles’s third criterion, the evaluative process. In its more mature, late medieval form, the parliamentary process normally began with the maîtres des Requêtes de l’hôtel, judges who “met the public” and carefully screened their petitions – requêtes – in order to see that requisite materials were in order while also, when possible, resolving minor issues themselves.15 Weightier matters went on to the maîtres des Requêtes du Parlement, judges who decided which cases, in view of their gravity, complexity, or the status of the petitioners, should proceed through subsequent phases of the process.16 Prior to trying a case, a separate inquest (enquête) was sometimes necessary and could entail lengthy investigations, including hearings at remote sites held by judges known as commissaires (commissioners).17 Summarized inquests comprise a substantial subset of entries in the Olim.18 Ultimately, any necessary trials were 13 See Fredric L. Cheyette, “Custom, Case Law, and Medieval ‘Constitutionalism’: A Re-examination,” Political Science Quarterly 78 (1963), 362–90, here 369–70. 14 Cheyette, “Custom, Case Law,” 374. 15 This initial phase of the judicial process became more fully systematized during the fourteenth century. 16 Ducoudray, Les origines, 74–80. 17 The enquête was in some respects a precursor of the instruction in modern French jurisprudence. On the functions of specially appointed enquêteurs under Louis IX, see Jordan, Louis IX, 51–6, 141, 151–3, Labarge, Saint Louis, 185–6, and Le Goff, Saint Louis, 225–8. 18 See Beugnot, Olim 1, 3–348, for the recorded inquests (Inquisiciones) from 1254 to 1270.

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scheduled and convened in the Grand-Chambre before a tribunal of both lay and ecclesiastical judges. During the early years, the founding monarch’s frequent intervention in the proceedings unfolding in the Grand-Chambre was a hallmark of his reign.19 The court’s findings were recorded in arrêts which make up the other major textual group in the Olim.20 In this intricate system, the basic fulcrum of the Jollesian Case, whereby transgressions are matched with norms, was sustained by a remarkably flexible process. This could entail sworn testimony from witnesses, consultation of charters, ratification of applicable regional and local customs, and recourse to tenets of Canon and Roman Law.21 A few selections from the earliest entries in the Olim will help to illustrate briefly some of the basic procedures and the social conflicts they reflect. Most of these texts, especially the early ones, are quite succinct; typically they may evoke, without citing in full, supporting documents and testimonies.22 While relatively routine matters – determination of property rights, civil status, tax liabilities, apportionment of successions and so forth – arise quite frequently, a few salient passages reveal that the venerable legists were sometimes grappling with unfamiliar, obscure, even bizarre issues that made resolution difficult if not impossible. Whatever the conflict, however, these texts often yield revealing cultural perspectives, some of them merely incidental to the central issue under litigation. Jolles’s view of the open Case thus usefully broadens our focus sufficiently to include culturally significant accessory material in the Olim. For my sampling of cases, I have selected entries from the Olim featuring details that fall under a single rubric, albeit a highly significant one from a juridical point of view: the human body. In their 2003 survey of research on the cultural significance of the body in medieval Europe, Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong cite an abundance of recent work that falls under several subheadings, though one finds little having specifically to do with juridical matters.23 They would no doubt readily concur, however, that medieval jurisprudence also merits considerable attention in this regard. Indeed, even a casual reading of the Olim reveals that the human body is frequently the primary site at which conflicting values come into sharp relief. 19 On Saint Louis’s well-known direct involvement in legal matters in and out of courts, see Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Dunod, 1995), 178–80. 20 See O, I, 417–814 for the Arrêts from 1254 to 1270. 21 Cheyette, “Custom, Case Law,” 376, 378. For advice on courtroom procedures to be used by plaintiffs and respondents in Parlement, see Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis 1, ed. Amédée Salomon (Paris: Picard, 1899), chapters 6 and 7, 98–134. 22 While concision is quite characteristic of the earliest Olim, those from the later Middle Ages are frequently much longer. 23 Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong, Une histoire du corps au Moyen Age (Paris: Editions Liana Levi, 2003).

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Let us first glance at three cases in which corpses are the focal point of conflict. In an entry from 1268,24 we read that, for reasons unspecified, Mathieu de Roye (ca. 1230–85), the castellan of la Ferté Saint-Riquier, removed the body of a drowned man from a site near his domain. Because the king and the count of Ponthieu jointly held legal authority over this site, the royal bailli in Amiens sued Mathieu for wrongful removal of the deceased. After he formally acknowledged his error – “idem Matheus confessus fuit, in plena curia, quod ibi non habet altam justiciam”25 – the high court ordered that the site be formally reclaimed in the name of the crown (“quod locum resaisiret, pro jure Regis conservando”).26 From 1262 we read that a horse thief attempting to sell a mare was caught red-handed by the animal’s owner.27 This having occurred in Bourges, a city under the king’s aegis, the royal bailli had confined the culprit to the municipal prison where he eventually died. However, because this thief had been a manservant in the cathedral chapter, the latter sued the crown for possession of the corpse, on the basis of a charter issued by Louis VII (1174) granting it the right to sanction its own men.28 Accordingly, the king himself overruled his bailli and ordered the chapter to repossess the body.29 In May 1257 knights from the abbey of Saint-Germaindes-Prés apprehended two counterfeiters at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.30 Both were summarily hanged on the abbey gallows in Villeneuve.31 But the Paris prévôts32 objected that the crown’s law obtained “ratione alte justicie” in public places, and so the king ordered that the bodies be taken down and “re-hanged” (dependerentur et rependerentur) on land held jointly by crown and abbey. The king’s decree notwithstanding, however, a subsequent inquest demonstrated that only the abbey held jurisdiction.33 The court thus had the O, I, Pentecost 1268, V, 715. O, I, Pentecost 1268, V, 715. 26 O, I, Pentecost 1268, V, 715, my emphasis. 27 O, I, Candlemas 1262, XVII, here 550. 28 Except when they had committed murder or rapt outside the cloister. See Chénon, Les jours de Berry, 188 n. 4. 29 “determinatum fuit quod capitulum haberet justiciam de ipso homine, et precepit dominus Rex quod resaysirentur de ipso homine” [it was established that the chapter will have jurisdiction over this man, and the king prescribed that they recover his remains (my emphasis and translation)]. O, I, Candlemas 1262, XVII, 550. 30 O, I, Nativity of Our Lady 1257, XV, 19–20. 31 Counterfeiters were severely sanctioned. Cf. Jordan, Louis IX, 208: “as antiquaries so often like to point out with evident glee, one boiled false-moneyers or buried them alive.” Cf. “Qui fait fausse monoie, il est bouliz,” Les établissements de Saint Louis 2, ed. P. Viollet (Paris: Renouard, 1881), Livre I, XXXII, 48 n. 27. The Etablissements, compiled after the king’s death, combine laws, customs, and ordinances established during his reign. 32 “Up until about 1260 Paris was under the administration of two royal prévôts.” The prévôt was primarily responsible for the “collection of domain revenue in the towns and their banlieux; with this duty they also carried limited judicial powers and responsibilities,” Jordan, Louis IX, 171, 161. 33 O, I, XV, 20. Saint-Germain-des-Prés had in fact held Villeneuve-Saint-Georges 24 25

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gallows held jointly by king and abbot destroyed and mandated a public re-re-hanging – “dicti suspense asportati et resuspensi coram populo ad primas furcas” – back on the abbey gallows.34 Corporeal sanctions of the living also provoked litigious conflicts, as we see in the many cases pertaining to mutilation. When in 1258 the royal bailli at Mantes and the abbot of Saint-Magloire in Paris both claimed the exercise of “justicia sanguinis et mutilacionis” in Saint-Léger-en-Haye, the abbot secured the privilege on the basis of an earlier “cartam regiam.”35 In the same year, Sibille, the sister of the mayor of Roches, sued the local prior for unjustly severing her daughter Jeanne’s ear. However, the high court deemed that punishment to be appropriate for Jeanne’s (unspecified) infraction and found against Sibille: “Non est probatum quod idem prior injuste fecerit abscidi auriculam ipsius Johanne …”36 Judicial “ear lopping” – essorillement, or essoreillement – was in fact part of an official hierarchy of corporeal punishments: Qui amble riens en mostier et qui fait fausse monoie et qui amble soc de charrue, et qui amble autre choses, robes ou deniers, ou autres menus choses, il doit perdre l’oroille dou premier meffait, et de l’autre larrecin, il pert le pié, et au tierz larrecin il est pandables; car l’en ne vient pas dou gros manbre au petit, mais dou petit au gros.37

Here, as in matters pertaining to corpses, the (often grisly) penal procedures themselves were seldom challenged. Controversies were far more likely to arise over the legal “competence” of those who implemented them. Consider for example an arrêt from 1260 abolishing a “bad custom” (prava consuetudo) upheld in Touraine, whereby any man or woman convicted of stealing a chicken, wine, or bread from his or her lord was to lose “aliquod membrum,” the limb to be excised presumably being at the discretion of the disciplinarian.

since the ninth century. On this incident, see J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Français 4 (Brussels, 1836), 432–3. 34 O, I, XV, 20. 35 O, I, Pentecost 1258, XVIII, 38. 36 O, I, Pentecost 1258, XV, 37. 37 “Whoever steals from church, counterfeits, purloins a plowshare or things like clothes, coins, or other small items, shall for the first offense lose an ear, for the second a foot, and for the third be hanged. For one proceeds not from large limb to small, but from small to large,” Les établissements de Saint Louis, vol. 2. Livre I, XXXII, 49–50. My translation. Cf. Sébastien Barret, “Réputation, justice et chancellerie au XIVe siècle: Autour d’un acte de Jean le Bon,” Labyrinthe, atelier interdisciplinaire 4 (1999), 19–33, here 21–2: “C’est sur l’oreille que se portent une bonne part des mutilations judiciaires au Moyen Age. Attesté chez Grégoire de Tours, qui montre déjà l’aspect public et indissimulable de cette mutilation, l’ essorillement concerne au Moyen Age principalement le voleur, le blasphémateur, le parjure et celui qui porte illégalement des armes, avec bien sûr des variations importantes dans l’espace et dans le temps.”

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The king himself proclaimed this abolition, not on account of the severity of the punishment, but because the defective custom wrongly allowed the feudal lord himself, and not a recognized legist in the judicial pyramid, to inflict it as he pleased, and upon members of his own household (“familia”).38 These entries pertaining to bodies give us a sense of how components of the Jollesian “Simple Form” of the Case may afford interesting insights into a considerable variety of issues and conflicts evoked in the Olim. We see how several parties – crown, nobility, commune, and religious chapters, as well as individual petitioners – might find themselves in league or at odds depending on the specific issue at hand. Two types of juridical “competence” come to the fore: ratione loci, when jurisdiction was determined by ownership of the land on which a body was found or apprehended, and ratione personae when the determining factor was the civil status of the deceased.39 Apart from Sibille’s suit against the ear-lopping prior, jurisdictional competence is the primary issue in these cases – precisely what person or party, of what social status, may hang the culprit; remove or re-hang the corpse; or hold the privilege of mutilating the offender? Such quarrels are frequent in the early records of Parlement. Many were over material benefits, as we see in the case of a man who died the day after he had attempted suicide – his relatives, a local lord, and the Paris prévôt all grappled over his estate.40 This abundance of struggles for legal privileges was the cumulative legacy of many centuries during which multiple jurisdictional agencies each functioned independently, depending on locale, social status, religious authority, and other determinants of judicial privilege. The many entries like these reveal how, at a time when a uniform standard of written rules and norms was just beginning to take shape, Parlement was gradually establishing precedents – case by case – for sorting them out. These examples also typify the many entries, most of them concerning appeals, that vividly describe corporeal procedures for maintaining order and rendering justice. They attest to a considerable variety of archaic bodily sanctions that had been in use since time immemorial, some of which judges still deemed viable despite their being practices which by today’s standards would readily qualify as “cruel and unusual.” Undoubtedly to edify as well as to “shock and awe” the general public, hangings and other bodily sanctions took place conspicuously. Capital punishments frequently appealed to the beholder’s “scopic drive” through public spectacles; hangings attracted throngs of curious sightseers; suspended cadavers could remain aloft to putrefy indefinitely, as grotesque reminders of capital crimes, their authors, and those who had sanctioned them. These viscous, fetid, garish human pendulums could also be a nuisance: during an inquest held in Béziers by royal commis38 39 40

O, I, Saint Martin’s Day 1260, XIX, 497. See Chénon, Les jours de Berry, 187–9. O, I, Candlemas 1257, VI, 442.

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sioners, young Caecilia, a hapless orphan, lamented that she could not make enough money from her little agricultural venture to sustain her wretched existence (“miserae vitae”) because onlookers flocking to behold the royal gallows erected in the middle of her field trampled her fragile crops, while her potential helpers were hopelessly repelled by the stench of rotting corpses (“propter foetorem suspensorum”).41 The material body was typically sanctioned according to authorized protocols or in rituals performed by officials representing legitimate parties. A custom in Touraine was invalidated for being “bad” because it lacked a legally “competent” officiant to ensure a valid mutilation. In Bourges, despite a long-standing royal charter that had just been re-authenticated by the reigning monarch, the cathedral chapter’s suit against the royal bailli for wrongful arrest of one of its men was not resolved until it had actually repossessed the latter’s corpse. The royally mandated “re-removal” of the body found near Saint-Riquier was to be formally re-enacted using a simulacrum of the corpse.42 At Villeneuve, the ritualized hanging, re-hanging, and re-rehanging provided empirical authentications of each successive phase of the jurisdictional feud between abbey and crown. In sum, our corporeal examples retrieved from within the “simple” sphere of a few cases in the Olim are indicative of how, in an age when written legal records were just beginning to be produced, and primarily for consultation by a limited coterie of jurists rather than for reproduction and distribution to society at large, the juridically sanctioned body was quite literally “pressed” – or otherwise contorted – “into service” as a kind of anthropomorphic “corposcripture,” one that was “readable” by, and in the presence of, the general public. Quite apart from, or in place of, any official document, the legally punished body, albeit permanently mutilated or even a cadaver, could readily provide a visible material signifier of justice upheld. My second perspective on the Olim is prompted by Jolles’s suggestion that the Case as “Simple Form” may provide material for a corresponding “Intellectual Form” (Forme savante). As Bruckner emphasized, Jolles conceives of the Simple Form as an open, unresolved entity. Indeed, the Case ostensibly moves toward a judgment that nonetheless lies beyond its confines: “matters are weighed [but] no outcome is given … the Case … ceases to exist as such when a definitive verdict obviates the necessity to decide.”43 Yet Jolles also holds that exemplars of the “simple” Case may stimulate the elaboration of more complex accounts featuring a larger assortment of specific characters, 41 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 24, ed. L. Delisle (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1904), part 2, 363–4. 42 “par un nouveau simulacre de levée de corps au lieu indiqué, on ferait acte de juridiction royale,” Jules Hénocque, Histoire de l’abbaye et de la ville de Saint-Riquier 3 (Amiens: A. Douillet, 1888), 467. 43 Jolles, Formes simples, 151, my emphasis.

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functions, and circumstantial details: “[These] Intellectual Forms, for us that means literary forms which are specifically conditioned by the choices and interventions of an individual … in which maximal internal coherence is attained through unrepeatable artistic activity.”44 His postulation of a literary “future” for the “Simple” Case thus prompts us to ask how materia contained in some of the cases summarized in the Olim might be recycled, evoked, or otherwise reflected in medieval literary inventions. As before, our necessarily limited sampling from the Olim brings in cases featuring bodily issues, this time involving conflicts over living female bodies. In an arrêt from 1256, after a knight named Guillaume de Charenton was accused of adultery with Etienne du Bois’s wife, a woman purported to be Guillaume’s relative, the royal bailli of Bourges had ordered Guillaume not to set foot in the du Bois household again.45 That prohibition had fallen on deaf ears, for Guillaume had indeed crossed the forbidden threshold and forcibly confined Etienne while dallying with the latter’s wife for an hour or so. Bent on revenge, Etienne had challenged him to a judicial duel, and when the case reached Parlement they had already exchanged wagers of battle. In 1256 that would have been an untimely move, however, for Louis IX had begun taking measures against judicial duels during the 1250s and would formally outlaw them in favor of proof by inquest in the Ordinance of 1260.46 Indeed, the high court proscribed the battle between Etienne and Guillaume. It also sent the philanderer to prison for an indefinite period “at the will of the king” and confiscated all of his possessions, save those required for the sustenance of his wife. This triangular dynamic of apparently willing wife, intrepid lover, and cuckolded husband is of course reminiscent of situations variously illustrated in contemporaneous fabliaux. Consider by contrast two later entries evocative of more sober generic types. An arrêt from 1269 details the sudden invasion of a convent. One day Baudouin de Bailleul and his accomplices had forged into a chapter of the Filles-Dieu in Chartres where his daughter had recently taken her vows.47 The intruders waylaid the startled prioress and broke into the dormitory where they found Baudouin’s daughter piously arrayed in her religious garb. Despite the maiden’s vigorous protests that she would never foreswear her vows, the henchmen violently subdued her and carried her off so that her father could deliver her to one Robert Maimbrolles, the young squire intent upon marrying her. Parlement nonetheless found in favor of the sanctity of her cloistral vows and fined Baudouin 400 pounds, awarding half of it to the Jolles, Formes simples, 144–5, my emphasis. O, I, Candlemas 1256, X, 7–8. 46 See P. Guilhermoz, “Saint Louis, les gages de bataille et la procédure civile,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 48 (1887), 111–20; Labarge, Saint Louis, 172–3; Jordan, Louis IX, 204; Le Goff, Saint Louis, 244. 47 O, I, Candlemas 1269, VIII, 322–3. 44 45

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Filles-Dieu and the other half to the king. A somewhat earlier arrêt describes a similar situation: Nicolas de Blainville, a knight, entreated the court to secure the release of his young relative, a girl of fourteen whom another knight, Jean de Tillay, had forcibly carried away in order to marry her to his son. The kidnapper was intractable, protesting that any girl of fourteen was certainly old enough to reside wherever she pleased, and he invoked in support of his contention a custom supposedly maintained by the bailli of Verneuil. The high court rejected that specious argument and placed the girl with a reliable party designated by her family.48 These accounts show salient affinities with stories in which young women are subjected to the tribulations of family members, interested suitors or other parties with matrimonial designs on them. Similar motifs and situations are especially notable in stories of female saints – one thinks, for example, of the fifth-century life of Saint Agnes and its medieval avatars – as well as in the lives of exemplary women; the spiritual biography of Christina of Markyate from the preceding century comes readily to mind.49 These legal cases thus feature elements that would readily lend themselves to literary development: coercive schemes involving sequestration or abduction; the use of women as sexual or matrimonial capital; females who, albeit passively, mediatize both negative and positive relations between males – lover versus husband; father abetting prospective son-in-law, and so forth. Women tend to occupy the less powerful roles in these cases, which are ultimately adjudicated within the overwhelmingly masculine universe of Parisian jurisprudence. Despite the apparent silence of women before the tribunal, however, Parlement did after all designate a portion of Guillaume’s assets for support of the wife he had betrayed, and it severely sanctioned two attempts to arrange a forced marriage, upheld a woman’s religious vocation, and arranged for the protection of a female minor. Women’s rights were clearly not a matter of indifference in the high court of Saint Louis, and these cases are by no means the raw material of purely “masculist” fictions. From this necessarily brief pursuit of suggestive parallels between entries in the Olim and literary works in various genres we begin to see what Jolles most likely had in mind with regard to the potential relationship between the Case as “Simple Form” and the fundamentally literary “Intellectual Form,” which in his view would correspond to it. Jolles maintains that the Intellectual Form would be a narrative akin to the fairy tale – the Märchen (Fr. Conte)

O, I, Candlemas 1267, XVIII, 704–5. See A. J. Denomy, The Old French Lives of Saint Agnes and Other Vernacular Versions of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938); and C. H. Talbot, ed. and tr., The Life of Christina of Markyate – a Twelfth-Century Recluse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 48 49

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or, in Europe after the fourteenth century, the Nouvelle.50 This historically quite limited categorization, in support of which he offers little in the way of examples, has the unfortunate effect of locking his “Intellectual Form” into a generic strait-jacket. If, however, we think beyond that conceptual impasse and more in terms of a broader horizon of literary narrative in general, we may consider how materia in the makeup of the Simple Form of the Case could serve as a model or otherwise nourish the “artistic activity” of a wide range of adapters, from oral storytellers to clerical writers steeped in the arts of the Trivium. Particularly revealing in this regard is his observation that even a few “minimal additions” to elements accessory to discovery of the legal “norm” closing off the Simple Form would lend such a unique aspect to the Case “that the unfolding scene would almost cease to embody the norm or any articles of the law … its character as a Simple Form would be entirely lost” (145, my emphasis). Here we have a richly suggestive evocation of the Intellectual Form as an “unfolding scene” in a literary narrative. Moreover, we see that precisely those elements which are lost during its elaboration as a literary work are “the norm or any articles of the law.” For Jolles, then, what the Intellectual Form would lack is precisely the normative legal sanction ostensibly conditioned by the Case as Simple Form. This is indeed what we perceive in the medieval literary inventions suggested by the parliamentary cases in our sampling. The case of Guillaume de Charenton would become “fabliau-esque” once the nature and terms of the legal sanction imposed upon him were removed, leaving only the tale of an adulterous triangle, most likely culminating in a type of non-juridical sanction, such as ludic victimization of the hapless cuckold. Nor in the literary counterparts of the dossiers of Baudouin de Bailleul’s daughter and Jean de Tillay’s kidnapping victim would we find the case being resolved by a hefty fine in the first instance or placement of the victimized minor in a foster home in the second. Instead of ending with the spotlight trained on how the ravishers bent on imposing an unwanted marriage were finally punished, the featured story would focus on the young woman’s ultimately positive experiences after the devious matrimonial designs on her had been foiled. For example, she might fulfill a spiritual vocation, as in some hagiographic stories or spiritual biographies, or achieve a remarkable social promotion, an eventuality more often featured in narrative lay and romance. Even from these few examples we can already see that Jolles’s chapter could easily lead to renewed discussion of how literature and law may interrelate. Of course, it would obviously be reductive to perceive his view of that relationship as a mere matter of the adaptation of “artistic” narratives from the particulars of a given legal case and to embark on a search for literary

50 Jolles devotes a separate chapter to “Le Conte” (Märchen) as a Simple Form in Formes simples, 173–95.

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works derived from entries in the Olim or from any other corpus of legal documents. His bi-focal view of the Case brings to mind associations with a much larger theoretical dimension. It recalls on the one hand Hegel’s assertion of the vital relationship between law, history, and narrative; on the other hand it anticipates Hayden White’s observation that “narrativity, whether of the fictional or the factual sort, presupposes the existence of a legal system against which or on behalf of which the typical agents of a narrative account militate. And this raises the suspicion that narrative in general, from the folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully realized ‘history,’ has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or more generally, authority.”51 While Jolles clearly shares similar interests, his view significantly nuances White’s unduly general “suspicion” concerning how literature and history relate to law. His theory of Case brings into relief a fundamental contrast between narrative and juridical discourse, which has to do with the type of sanction each of them determines. While the Simple Form of the Case theoretically conditions one valid sanction predicated on the norms of jurisprudence (i.e., a strictly legal sanction), literary exemplars of the Intellectual Form may entail a wide variety of sanctions, such as public acclaim, marriage to a ruler’s daughter, achievement of sovereignty, bestowal of wealth, initiation into an elite assembly, spiritual fulfillment or enlightenment, and so on. Sanctions within the literary sphere may also be determined by generic or conventional norms, as Bruckner has admirably demonstrated in her Narrative Invention in Twelfth-Century French Romance: the Convention of Hospitality (1160– 1200). In sum, from this brief inquiry into the early acts of the Paris Parlement with Jolles’s concept of the Case in mind, we can see that consideration of these texts from the two perspectives he adopts with regard to its “Simple” and “Intellectual” forms may lead us to “bright moments” of insight into culturally significant attitudes and practices. Jolles’s hypothetical argument offers us a suggestive and rewarding means of “rethinking” the cultural significance and literary affinities of the Olim. As for present matters, I am grateful for Bruckner’s suggestion that we venture into the tangled thickets of dialogic romance mindful of both the within and the beyond of the Case. I have found it most helpful in redirecting our gaze toward the vast analytical horizon opening onto the en deçà and the au-delà of the Olim.

51 Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1987), 12–13, citing G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), 60–3. On the traditional association between fiction and legal procedure, see Kathy Eden, Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

Charles d’Orléans and the Wars of the Roses: Yorkist and Tudor Implications of British Library MS Royal 16 F ii Michel-André Bossy

The British Library’s Royal Manuscript 16 F ii was composed in the late fifteenth century to instruct a young English prince in the courtly repertories of love and, for finale, to offer him some simple ethical advice on how to govern.1 The question implicitly raised by the book’s design is whether the emotional and rhetorical exploration of love will hinder or, on the contrary, assist the youthful Plantagenet reader to become an astute and just ruler. The dominant figure in the anthology is, curiously enough, Charles d’Orléans, a Valois enemy seized in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt and only released from English captivity a quarter of a century later. The codex houses some 164 poems by Charles, which then fill more than half of its total number of folios. The poet-duke’s looming presence in the book is underscored by three full-page illuminations that show him successively as a boy about to be admitted to the court of Love, a captive attempting to negotiate his release, and a great lord humbly beseeching the Virgin Mary to rescue his homeland (figures 1–3). The present paper examines the historical parallels and forms of courtly savoir faire that the makers of Royal 16 F ii intended to impress upon their readers and patrons by first setting Charles’s poems on center stage and then ushering in prose disquisitions on love and the duties of princes. Since the texts gathered in Royal 16 F ii are all in French (save for three short English poems by Charles), it might appear odd that the ornate borders around all of its full-page illuminations refer at least as much to English dynastic conflicts as to the earlier wars with France. That is however the case: the details within the frames fill our eyes with dynastic and political insignia. Every badge holds some latent connection to the Wars of the Roses. In particular, each border exhibits heraldic emblems from the House of Tudor, as if to prompt the beholder to reinterpret the texts from a current standpoint, to recast them in terms of Henry VII’s accession to the throne and his aims

1 It measures 370 by 260 mm and comprises 248 folios. The writing is a clear cursive Gothic script (écriture bâtarde).

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as a monarch. It would profit a Tudor prince or courtier to examine how Charles’s lyrics manage both to distill inner longing into sensitive displays of art and to craft subtle diplomatic messages. Skills could be picked up here that would help readers to consider shrewdly their political circumstances and speak deftly. The Tudor iconography indicates that the manuscript was finished after Henry VII had taken the throne, most likely under the direction of Quentin (or Quintin) Poulet, the king’s librarian.2 He was a native of Lille and hence fluent in French. Having started his career as an illuminator in Bruges during the 1470s, he knew well how to design eye-catching miniatures and border decorations for an anthology. The execution of those pictorial tasks he entrusted to a Bruges-based artist: for lack of biographical information, art historians refer to him as the Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500.3 The outfitting of Royal MS 16 F ii in high Tudor livery probably won but tepid approval from another French-speaking man of letters at court: Bernard André, the Augustinian friar from Toulouse who was the tutor of Henry VII’s heir, Prince Arthur.4 The readings that André selected for his pupil consisted entirely of classical texts from antiquity and humanist writings.5 The works 2 Janet Backhouse, “Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts,” in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), 23–41, especially 32–8; “Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family,” in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Benjamin Thompson (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), 175–87, here 175–6; “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” in Charles d’Orléans in England, 1415–1440, ed. Mary-Jo Arn (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 157–63. Also Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1977), 42–6. 3 Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, 36–40; Backhouse, “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 160–2; Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, ed., Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 394–400; Lieve De Kesel, “Cambridge University Library MS. Add. 4100: A Book of Hours Illuminated by the Master of the Prayer Books of circa 1500?” in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscripts in Cambridge Collections, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10 (1992), part 2, 182–202; Lieve De Kesel, “Heritage and Innovation in Flemish Book Illumination at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century: Framing the Frames from Simon Marmion to Gerard David,” in Books in Transition at the Time of Philip the Fair: Manuscripts and Printed Books in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Low Countries, ed. Hanno J. Wijsman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 93–130, here 97, 106, 122–8; Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, “Marketing Books for Burghers: Jean Markant’s Activity in Tournai, Lille, and Bruges,” in Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context, ed. Elizabeth Morrison (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), 135–48, here 142. 4 David R. Carlson, “Royal tutors in the reign of Henry VII,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 22 (1991), 253–79, here 254–60; Kipling, The Triumph of Honour, 16–20. 5 André lists the books taught by him and other pedagogues (such as John Rede) in his biography of Henry VII: Historia regis Henrici Septimi a Bernardo Andrea tholostate conscripta, ed. James Gairdner (London: Longman, 1858), 6–7 and 43.



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compiled in Royal MS 16 F ii are vernacular and, save for the final item, intent on sorrows of the heart and conventional seduction games. The volume opens with a collection of 167 poems, all but a few by Charles d’Orléans. Most are love lyrics, yet several embrace matters of history and diplomacy important for a Plantagenet prince to know.6 Next come two anonymous “arts of love.”7 The first, derived from Andreas Capellanus’s De amore, purports to be a lecture on love conduct delivered by Heloise to a young man who visits her at the Paraclete. The second is a dialogic game in which a lady and a gentleman quiz each other about principles and dilemmas of love (Demandes d’amour). The closing text sets aside amatory rhetoric in order to set forth the duties of rulers (Livre de grace entiere). As a mirror for princes, its aim is to furnish simple, sensible advice on how to govern a realm – precepts that Henry VII would recommend to his sons.8 But was the work perhaps begun under an earlier reign? An intriguing clue resides in the badge of a white rose surrounded by sun rays (rose-en-soleil), painted four times on the first folio (fig. 1) and later repeated in the capital of a love ballade.9 Since the rose-en-soleil was Edward IV’s favorite personal badge,10 it may be surmised that the manuscript was initially commissioned by a Yorkist patron during his reign, and possibly as a future gift to him. Janet 6 For a mostly accurate list of contents, see Francisque Michel, Rapports à M. le Ministre de l’Instruction Publique sur les anciens monuments de l’histoire et de la littérature de la France qui se trouvent dans les Bibliothèques de l’Angleterre et de l’Écosse (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1838), reprinted in Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, publiées par ordre du roi et par les soins du Ministre de l’instruction publique. Rapports au ministre (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839), 61–72. 7 Leslie Brook, ed., Two Late Medieval Love Treatises: Héloïse’s ‘Art d’Amour’ and a Collection of ‘Demandes d’Amour’ (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literatures, 1993). 8 In a separate manuscript – Royal 19 C viii, dating from 1496 – Poulet offered Henry VII yet another mirror for princes, whose illumination he also assigned to the Master of the Prayer Books (Backhouse, “Founders,” 32–3 and 35–6). This mirror, which Poulet calls L’imaginacion de vraye noblesse, is in fact a version of L’enseignement de vraie noblesse by Hugues de Lannoy, earlier attributed to his more illustrious brother, Gilbert or Guillebert; see Bernhard Sterchi, “Hugues de Lannoy, auteur de l’Enseignement de vraie noblesse, de l’Instruction d’un jeune prince et des Enseignements paternels,” Le Moyen Age 110 (2004), 79–117. 9 Fol. 78v, Pourtant se souvent ne vous voy, v. 19; Charles d’Orléans: Poésies, 2 vols, ed. Pierre Champion (1923–27; Paris: Honoré Champion, 1971), Vol. 1, Ballade 13; Ballades et rondeaux. Edition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, ed. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler (Paris: Librairie générale française, Collection Lettres Gothiques, 1996), Ballade 13. The capital for v. 10 of this ballade displays the arms of England. 10 Jean C. Wilson, “‘Richement et pompeusement parée’: The collier of Margaret of York and the politics of love in late medieval Burgundy,” in Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences. Essays in Honor of Sandra Hindman, ed. David S. Areford and Nina A. Rowe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 109–33, here 115 and 125 n. 32.

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Fig. 1.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 1, Charles d’Orléans, La retenue d’Amour: Charles being welcomed into Love’s court.



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Blackhouse speculates that this patron was an English bibliophile stationed in Calais – possibly its treasurer, Thomas Thwaytes.11 Also in the 1480s, another artist painted the renowned miniature of Charles d’Orléans sitting in the Tower of London and writing a letter in 1439 to his second cousin, Philip the Good of Burgundy (fig. 2, fol. 73). The frontispiece strings together several successive actions: Charles writes his letter at a desk, he gazes out from a window, later stands in the yard below and hands the letter to a genuflecting messenger, who then rides off toward Flanders. Charles had been a prisoner of war in England since 1415. The letter-writing scene encapsulates an important act of political reconciliation, a turning point in history. By pledging loyalty to Philip, Charles is bringing to an end the war between the houses of Orléans and Burgundy. Philip’s father, John the Fearless of Burgundy, had unleashed the bitter feud in 1407 by ordering the assassination of his cousin Louis, duke of Orléans, Charles’s father. The frontispiece calls attention both to the duke’s long captivity in England (close to a quarter century!) and to his diplomatic stratagem in 1439. Having obtained permission to write Philip a letter, he boldly seizes the opportunity to instigate a switch of alliances. His flattering ballade to Philip is an olive branch tendered in order to end the bitter, costly feud between their two houses. The image illustrates a specific ballade, Des nouvelles d’Albyon,12 which readers can then correlate with five other ballades of loving friendship exchanged between Charles and Philip in 1439 – they are copied in nearby folios, interspersed with several other pieces.13 Charles’s enlistment of Philip’s aid in his negotiations with his captors can be seen as a tribute to Philip’s diplomatic brilliance – especially in his ability to influence the Lancastrians even after distancing himself from them by means of the 1435 Treaty of Arras. One can understand why a Continental illuminator, working for Burgundian and/or Yorkist patrons, would showcase the ballades exchanged between the two dukes. The epistolary exchange was the most noteworthy section of the Charles d’Orléans anthology: it stood out like a historical landmark 11 On Thwaytes and other book collectors in Calais during the reign of Edward IV, such as Lord Hasting, lieutenant of Calais, and John Dunne, see Backhouse, “Founders,” 28–38; “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 157–9; also Anne F. Sutton and Livia VisserFuchs, “Choosing a Book in Late Fifteenth-century England and Burgundy,” in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 61–98, here 78 and 82–3. 12 Fol. 73–4v; ed. Champion, Ballade 89; ed. Mühlethaler, Ballade 112. 13 The six epistolary ballades are found in fol. 64–5, 67v–8, 71–1v, and 73–5v; ed. Champion, Ballades 87, 87a, 85, 89, 88a, and 88 (87a and 88a are composed by Philip, in reply to Charles’s 87 and 88); ed. Mühlethaler (with omission of Philip’s replies), Ballades 110, 108, 112, and 111. For an analysis of the whole series, see Estelle Doudet, “Orléans, Bourbon et Bourgogne, politique de l’échange dans les Ballades de Charles d’Orléans,” in Lectures de Charles d’Orléans: les ballades, ed. Denis Hüe (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 125–40, here 132–8.

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Fig. 2.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 73r, Charles d’Orléans Des nouvelles d’Albyon: Charles writing a letter to Philip the Good and sending it off.



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within vast tracts of love lyrics and allegorical self-narrative. The miniature alerts readers that after many innocuous love ballades and courtly allegories of love, they are now perusing poetry of a more actively political and historical nature. In that frame of thought, a Yorkist book collector in Calais might experience mixed feelings about Charles’s success in winning the support of Philip, whose niece, Marie of Cleves, he had subsequently married. Philip’s reconciliation with his Valois cousins to the south had led to major English setbacks in France. A Yorkist reader would recall, too, that Charles d’Orléans was a kinsman of three of Edward IV’s Lancastrian foes: Henry VI, Jasper Tudor, and his nephew, the future Henry VII. All the same, after Philip’s death in 1467, the new duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, had become an ally of the house of York and had wed Edward IV’s sister, Margaret. Tudor readers around 1500 would also have been of two minds about the epistolary rapprochement between Charles d’Orléans and Philip of Burgundy. Their reconciliation and mutual trust after decades of bitter feuding had to be admired. It was a model of the peace that Henry VII was attempting to establish between the camps of the two roses. Even in terms of diction and style the ballades served up exempla of good diplomacy, as in these verses sent in 1439 to Philip and his duchess, Isabella of Portugal:14   Et sans plus despendre langage, A cours mots, plaise vous penser Que vous laisse mon cuer en gage Pour tousjours sans jamais fauser. Sy me vueilliez recommander A ma cousine ; car croyez Qu’en vous deux, tant que vous vivrez, J’ay mise toute ma fiance ; Et vostre party loyaulment Tendray, sans faire changement, De cuer, de corps et de puissance.   Or y parra que vous ferez Et se point ne m’oublierez, Ainsi que j’y ay esperance. Adieu vous dy presentement, Tout Bourgongnon suis vrayement De cuer, de corps et de puissance. (Fol. 74–74v)15 [And without spending more speech, My words brief, may you be pleased to think 14 During summer and autumn 1439 in the vicinity of Calais, Isabella took up Charles’s cause and vigorously lobbied English emissaries and statesmen on his behalf: see Pierre Champion, La Vie de Charles d’Orléans (Paris: Champion, 1911), 285–94. Being John of Gaunt’s granddaughter, she was Henry VI’s first cousin once removed. 15 Pour la haste de mon passage, vv. 23–39; edited (in a variant version) by Champion as Ballade 88; by Mühlethaler as Ballade 111.

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I leave my heart with you as a warrant For always, never proving false. So please commend me To my cousin, for believe That in you two, as long as I live, I’ve placed all my trust. And I’ll faithfully take Your part, never changing, With heart, body, and might. Now we shall see what you can do and Whether you do not forget me, As I hope you won’t. I tell you good-bye for the present. I am truly all Burgundian, With heart, body, and might.]16

Such epistles might instruct a young prince on how to craft messages that are both courteous and shrewd. At the same time, the exchange of ballades would caution him to remain on his guard when dealing with France and Burgundy. Despite their frequent mutual enmity, both powers might at times seek to harm the Tudors. A case in point was that each of them, for a different reason, had assisted the would-be usurper Perkin Warbeck in his repeated attempts to overthrow Henry VII. In short, reminders of how Charles d’Orléans had embraced his Burgundian cousin could have a disgruntling effect. Moreover, Charles’s huge ransom debt still remained largely unpaid, which prompted long, tortuous litigation. The English debt holder and plaintiff against Charles’s heirs was Henry VII’s very mother, Margaret Beaufort.17 Returning to the manuscript’s inner chronology, we know, thanks to Janet Backhouse, that its six large illuminations were created by three distinct artists and in two separate “campaigns.”18 The first campaign, entrusted to artists numbers one and two, was completed before Edward IV’s death in 1483. The dating can be deduced from the rose-en-soleil badges and also from the “steeple” head-dresses (or hennins) worn by ladies in the miniature – conical hennins were to wane from fashion by the late 1480s. The second “campaign” was carried out in the 1490s by artist number three, none other than the Master of the Prayer Books. With a team of associates, he 16 R. Barton Palmer, tr., Poetry of Charles d’Orléans and his Circle: A Critical Edition of BnF MS. fr. 25458, Charles d’Orléans’s Personal Manuscript, ed. John Fox and Mary-Jo Arn (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2010), 285. 17 Michael Jones, “Henry VII, Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Orleans Ransom,” in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherborne (Gloucester: A. Sutton; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 254–73. 18 Backhouse, “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 159–62; “Founders,” 36–8; “Illuminated Manuscripts,” 175–6.



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painted the rest of the full-page illuminations – four in total (fig. 3–6). He decorated the borders with emblems that commemorate Henry VII’s rise to power after vanquishing Richard III at Bosworth and marrying Elizabeth of York (January 1486).19 For instance, on the lower border of folio 89 (fig. 3), we observe a wilting white rose of York bowing in submission before a red rose of Lancaster that is flanked by a white greyhound and a red dragon, Henry VII’s heraldic animal supporters, which were now also added below the 1480s miniature depicting the Court of Love (fig. 1).20 On the righthand side, we see a portcullis gate bearing a crown, the badge of the king’s Lancastrian mother, Margaret Beaufort. Opposite to it, on the left, an ostrich feather is pinned to the motto “ic dene” (i.e., ich dien, “I serve”): those are the prince of Wales’s insignia.21 Within that frame the Prayer Books Master sets a Crucifixion scene with a panorama of Paris as its backdrop. The view onto the Ile-de-la-Cité is from the Petit-Châtelet, the fortified bridge-gate on the south bank of the Seine. Above Christ and the Virgin Mary rise the unmistakable towers of NotreDame. They are encircled by three French royal emblems, all three invoked in the poem: a fluttering pennant with a golden cross and lilies, a crowned blue shield bearing three fleurs-de-lis and the Holy Ampulla, which the dove of the Holy Spirit is bringing from heaven to anoint French kings during their coronations in Reims. The image counterpoints the previous artist’s depiction of Charles in the Tower of London within a “bird’s eye view” of river and city, and it does so in a later pictorial style, one notably more attentive to effects of perspective. In contrast to all his busy, peripatetic activity in fig. 2, Charles is now a motionless figure, clad in red and kneeling devoutly next to the Virgin, while her hand rests protectively on his shoulder (fig. 3). The contrasting images convey different reading advice. One invites us to admire the diplomatic maneuvering within the ballades. The other recommends paying attention to the selfless piety he voices.

19 For examples of other books similarly redecorated to proclaim Henry VII as their new owner, see Backhouse, “Illuminated Manuscripts,” 180, and Kathleen L. Scott, “Manuscripts for Henry VII, his Household and Family,” in The Cambridge Illuminations: The Conference Papers, ed. Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2007), 25–6. 20 The white greyhound of Richmond recalls his descent from John of Gaunt. The red dragon of Wales harks back to the legend of King Arthur via Merlin’s prophecies in Geoffrey of Monmouth. See Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London: Seaby, 1992), 34–6 and 57–60; also Virginia K. Henderson, “Retrieving the ‘Crown in the Hawthorn Bush’: The Origins of the Badges of Henry VII,” in Traditions and Transformations in Late Medieval England, ed. Douglas Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove, and A. Compton Reeves (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 237–60, here 255. 21 Ever since the time of Edward III and his son, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince.

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The poem introduced by the Crucifixion scene is Charles d’Orléans’s eleven-stanza complainte on his country’s misfortunes, France, jadis on te souloit nommer.22 Berating France for her sins, he urges her to show repentance and beseech the Virgin for peace and redress: Dieu a les bras ouvers pour t’acoler, Prest d’oublier ta vie pecheresse ; Requier pardon, bien te vendra aidier Nostre Dame, la trespuissant princesse, Qui est ton cry et que tiens pour maistresse. Les sains aussi te vendront secourir, Desquelz les corps font en toy demourance. Ne vueilles plus en ton pechié dormir, Trescrestien, franc royaume de France ! (vv. 73–81) [God’s arms open to embrace you, Ready to forget your sinful life. Ask for pardon; Our Lady will surely come To your aid, the princess so very powerful, Whom you call upon and think your mistress. The saints as well will come to your assistance, Whose bodies find their resting place in you. Slumber no longer in your sinfulness, Kingdom of France so Christian and noble!]23

Charles probably composed this prayer in summer 1433. At that juncture he was making his English captors the following offer: if they freed him, he would recognize Henry VI as his liege lord and would help them to negotiate favorable terms of peace in France.24 Within the poem, however, he carefully avoids declaring who should rule France – Henry VI and the Lancastrians, or Charles VII and the Valois? Four years earlier, the Valois dauphin, disinherited by the 1421 Treaty of Troyes, had been crowned and anointed in Reims, whereas the young Henry VI and his regent, the duke of Bedford, had to settle for a much less inspiring ceremony in Paris (1431). One of the miniature’s aims may have been to signal the legitimacy of the Paris coronation. Surrounding as it does Notre-Dame and French dynastic symbols, the border filled with Lancastrian and Tudor emblems hints at persisting English hopes of recovering the French crown. Nostalgia for France would thus serve as a common bond between the captive poet and English readers regretting the loss of Aquitaine, Normandy, and other Plantagenet possessions. The compilers of Royal 16 F ii had intended to draw particular attention to Complainte 1, ed. Champion, 1: 258–61 (notes, 2: 574). Palmer, tr., Poetry of Charles d’Orléans, 257. 24 Champion, La vie, 205–8; Daniel Poirion, “Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre,” in Mélanges de philologie et de littérature romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem (Liège: Marche Romane, 1978), 505–27, here 515–16. 22 23



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Fig. 3.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 89 Charles d’Orléans, France jadis on te souloit nommer: The Virgin intercedes with Christ for the people of France.

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the celebrated ballade in which Charles gazes longingly from Dover toward France: En regardant vers le pays de France [“While gazing toward the country of France”].25 So that the ballade might be adorned with a miniature, they left its facing page blank (fol. 108v). Had it been painted, the miniature would conceivably have depicted Charles first looking from the top of a cliff toward Calais, then seeing to it that his Ship of Hope was loaded with memories of his youth and hopes of eventual peace: Alors chargay en la nef d’Esperance Tous mes souhais, en leur priant d’aler Oultre la mer, sans faire demourance, Et a France de me recommander. Or nous doinst Dieu bonne paix sans tarder ! Adonc auray loysir, mais qu’ainsi soit, De voir France que mon cuer amer doit.  (vv. 15–21) [Then I loaded all my desires into the ship Of Hope, entreating them to make their way Over the sea, not stopping, And recommend me to France. May God grant us a good peace without delay! Then I’ll have the chance – if it is so – To look at France, which my heart should love.]26

The envisioned image would have underscored both the connection and the difference between this ballade and the complainte read nineteen folios earlier. France, jadis on te souloit nommer called for universal contrition and a plea to heaven from the whole nation. En regardant vers le pays de France focuses more on the lyrical self. Charles voices there his melancholy as a poet who is exiled from his own dreams as well as his homeland; yet his heart can still hope to reach peace after the tribulations of desire.27 By virtue of hindsight, English readers of the 1480s and 1490s would know all too well how the peace prayed for in each poem had turned out: by 1452 Henry VI had lost all of France, save Calais. At the mid-century mark, peace came to France but not to England, which then for three decades would be torn by the Wars of the Roses. There was a parallel between their internal warfare and the Armagnac–Burgundian civil strife that had beset France from 1407 until 1435. As the readers turned from image to text, Charles’s call for French contrition in the 1430s could transpose itself in their minds into a call for English contrition. A Tudor prince, in particular, would view the complainte as an exemplum on how to beseech heaven for an end to civil war.

25 26 27

Fol. 109–109v; ed. Champion, Ballade 75; ed. Mühlethaler, Ballade 98. Palmer, tr., Poetry of Charles d’Orléans, 259. Poirion, “Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre,” 519–20.



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Later in the manuscript we come across three more full-page illuminations that highlight the Lancastrian red rose rehabilitated by the Tudors, set alongside the white rose of York and protected, as it were, by Henry VII’s heraldic animal supporters and the crowned Beaufort portcullis. Red-andwhite Tudor roses stand out in two of them: the frontispieces to Demandes d’amour (fig. 5, fol. 188) and to Grace entiere, the mirror of princes at the very end (fig. 6, fol. 210v).28 French lilies, for their part, show up again in two places: first on a blue shield in the first capital of pseudo-Heloise’s art d’amour (fig. 4, fol. 137), and finally on the Valois crown worn by the prince in the Grace entiere frontispiece (fig. 6). A chapel scene, farther back in perspective, shows him clad for prayers in a blue cloak speckled with gold lilies (fig. 6). All those lilies tacitly invite English readers to look upon the French texts in the anthology as valuable items to read. In fig. 4, above the arms of France, Heloise and her pupil, the aspiring lover Gaultier, are portrayed as urbane speakers engaged in an earnest discussion. The text of their art d’amour, however, is less polished than the image.29 As a remake of Andreas Capellanus’s treatise it is rather slipshod: an assortment of scribal blunders and inconsistencies in the handling of dialogue suggest that whoever penned it did not find its contents very riveting.30 In contrast, the Demandes d’amour present themselves as a tidier, better transcribed text. But is their content altogether noble and refined? A detail in the frontispiece suggests otherwise (fig. 5). With their graceful stances and fashionable attire, the young people in the miniature look like fine practitioners of the casuistry of love. Unfortunately, however, the young man has clumsily tied up his codpiece: a sliver of his thigh flesh can be seen, and the startled ladies cannot help gazing at it. This visual joke hints that some dilemmas to be debated in the Demandes might prove a little lewd, despite the agenda of refined casuistry. Readers are being cautioned to take the work with a grain of salt, and to keep their more serious attention in reserve for the concluding mirror of princes. Grace entiere’s preamble purports that the treatise was composed in the year 1500 on orders from a crown prince of high merit, who would therefore have to be Henry VII’s eldest son, Arthur:

28 In both frontispieces, the red and white petals are sorted into alternating quarter sections instead of the usual concentric rings. 29 The rubric curiously mislabels this art d’amour as Heloise’s letters to Abelard, which Jean de Meun had translated into French: “Les epistres de l’abesse Heloys du Paraclit” (fol. 137 and 187v). The Heloise of Royal 16 F ii reflects the literary legend that Jean de Meun entwined around her in that translation as well as in the Roman de la Rose: see Peter Dronke, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1976), 28–31. 30 Some of the slip-ups are listed by Leslie Brook in the introduction of his edition (6–17).

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Fig. 4.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 137, Art d’aimer: Heloise addressing her pupil, with a group of ladies listening.



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Fig. 5.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 188, Les demandes d’Amours: The lover in conversation with three ladies.

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En l’an de septante et trente ce Tenans quatorze cens de sente, Un prince de royal noblesse, Qui en age de jeunesse Est grant et excellent seigneur, Ordonné a estre greigneur Par succession naturelle, Dit sagement parolle telle: “Sur toutes choses je desire Que de la grace nostre sire Je puisse avoir entendement De moy gouverner sagement, Et de bien garder et tenir, L’estat où Dieu m’a fait venir …”  (fol. 210v) [In the year seventy plus thirty Within the trail of fourteen hundred, A prince of royal blood Who already in his youth Is a great and excellent lord – And will surely become even greater As he naturally matures – Wisely speaks the following words: “Above all other things, I yearn to gain, By our Lord’s grace, The understanding needed To govern myself wisely And to keep and uphold well The estate to which God has brought me …”]

In point of fact, the other two manuscripts of this treatise state that it was written in 1347, not in 1500, and that, as interestingly recalled by heraldic details in fig. 6, the work was intended for a French dauphin – King Philip VI’s son, the future King John II, yet another Valois captured by the Plantagenets (Battle of Poitiers, 1356). Quentin Poulet removed Grace entiere’s original frontispiece folio in order to slip in the miniature and incipit presently found there.31 He

31 The compiler of Royal F 16 ii has altered the preamble’s first two lines in order to make the date 1500. The other two Grace entiere manuscripts state: “En l’an de dix sept et trente / Tenans de treize cens la sente,” i.e., “In the year seventeen plus thirty along the track of thirteen hundred,” Jean-Philippe Genet, ed., Four English Political tracts (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 210; see also 176–9. Royal F 16 ii substitutes: “In the year seventy plus thirty along the track of fourteen hundred.” The other two manuscripts are: Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1233 (Y.26), fol. 165–82, and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), MS fr. 15352, 151–208. Both call the treatise L’estat et le gouvernement comme les princes et seigneurs se doivent gouverner.



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Fig. 6.  Royal MS 16 F ii, fol. 210v, Livre de grace entiere: The prince with his counselors and at prayer.

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also had new frontispiece folios created for pseudo-Heloise’s lecture and the Demandes d’amour.32 The ostrich feather and “ic dene” motto prescribed (most likely by Poulet) for every border particularly befit Grace entiere: sight of his own badge and motto would encourage the prince of Wales to look upon the treatise as his vade mecum, his very own manual. Henry’s heir in 1500 was his oldest son Arthur, whose marriage to Katherine of Aragon was to be celebrated the following November, less than five months before his untimely death. Why was a French mirror of princes expressly copied and decorated for Arthur Tudor?33 Two intents were likely. First, the heraldic emblems would be flattering reminders to Arthur that his ancestry was Capetian and Valois as well as Plantagenet. (He was the great grandson of Catherine of Valois, who had married Owen Tudor after the death of her first husband, Henry V; she was also first cousin to Charles d’Orléans.) Second, the emblems would encourage Arthur to project his thoughts toward dynastic history even as he browsed through love poems and bantering disquisitions on love. By reading between the lines he would be able to infer historical parallels and figurative meanings. The badges and arms in the illuminations could all be correlated with memorable events in persistent dynastic conflicts. The long wars with France, though officially concluded by the Treaty of Picquigny (1475), still smoldered in the guise of triangular diplomatic intrigues between England, France, and Burgundy. The devastating Wars of the Roses, which Henry Tudor hoped to have quelled through his Lancastrian victory at Bosworth and his marriage to Elizabeth of York, might break out once more if a Yorkist pretender managed to stir up a vast uprising, as Lambert Simnel had attempted in 1486–87 and Perkin Warbeck in 1491–97. Though both were impostors, each had received considerable backing from Margaret of York, dowager duchess of Burgundy. Though Elizabeth was her niece, Margaret wished to see Henry VII overthrown. To that end she was willing to feign that Simnel and Warbeck were her nephews. Grace entiere would help to prepare Arthur mentally for such perils. The Grace entiere frontispiece shows the prince gravely reading a scroll in the company of older counselors (fig. 6). The schooling of the prince by women – as shown in the miniatures of fig. 1, 3, and 4 – belongs to the past. He is now ready for schooling in political conduct. On matters of state, warns Grace entiere, a ruler is to seek only the advice of trusted men. His secret

Backhouse, “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 161. In the mid-fifteenth-century Grace entiere had been translated into English as The III Consideracions Right Necesserye to the Good Governaunce of a Prince, in Genet, ed., Four English Political Tracts, 174–209. This text, preserved in three manuscripts, appears to have fared well with English readers, a factor that may have already encouraged the Yorkist compilers of Royal 16 F ii to select Grace entiere as a grande finale. 32 33



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deliberations must not be known to any lady – not even the wife whom he loves as much as himself: Et touteffois sceure chose n’est mye que – ja soit que ce que le prince doive aymer la dame comme soy – qu’il luy dye les secretz des grans consaulx et des grandes besongnes qu’il a a faire pour son estat et pour sa terre, ne qu’il se gouverne par elle, mais ait tousjours la seigneurie, ou aultrement moult de perilz en pourroyent venir. (Fol. 240) [And how be it that a kinge or Prince shulde love his lady and wyf in maner as him self, yit it is nat expedient that he uttyr unto hir, and discloose the secrees, greete counseilles and greete thinges that he hath to doon for his estate and for his lande, ne that in such thing he be governed aftir hir at som tyme, but he shulde at alle dayes reserve unto him self the lordship and souvereyntee, or ellys many perilles may betyde.]34

The Grace entiere miniature depicts a prince who has reached maturity. It fits well with three of the preceding miniatures, which denote successive stages in his education and growth, from boyhood (fig. 1) into adolescence with its apprenticeships of love (fig. 4 and 5). Even though it dates from the earlier reign of Edward IV, the first illumination contributes to that life trajectory. To illustrate Charles d’Orléans’s allegorical account of his youth in La Retenue d’Amour,35 it depicts Charles as a diminutive figure (almost a puppet) being ushered by Lady Youth into the Court of Love (fig. 1, fol. 1). He is greeted there by Plaisance and Bel Accueil. As a likely nod toward the prince of Wales, Bel Accueil wears a conspicuous ostrich feather in his cap. In the left border, the arms of Henry VII’s queen, Elizabeth of York, have been painted over a shield that under Edward IV’s reign had probably displayed the three crowns of Saint Edmund.36 The insertion of Elizabeth’s arms as a match for Henry’s (on the right side) was a reminder that she came from the House of York and that the book was intended for her offspring.37 For under the shields of the king and queen appear those Genet, ed., Four English Political Tracts, 204–5. A punning title that means both the “Retinue of Love” and “Love’s retainership letter”: Arn, Poetry of Charles d’Orléans, li. 36 Backhouse, “Founders,” 37, and “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 159. Elizabeth’s arms quartered the royal arms of England and France with those of her Mortimer and de Burgh ancestors. Her arms were thereby kept distinct from those of the king: for the political implications of that heraldic decision, see J. L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 184. 37 An earlier queen of England had ordered her arms even more conspicuously emblazoned in a book planned, as Rosemarie McGerr explains, for her son’s education: the manuscript of the New Statutes of England at the Yale Law School (Goldman Library MssG +St11 no. 1) – see Rosemarie McGerr, A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes: The Yale Law School New Statutes of England (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 6–7, 15, 30–44, 94–101, and plates 1–3. Several borders painted in the 1450s within the Yale New Statutes display Margaret of Anjou’s arms opposite the royal arms of her 34 35

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of their sons: Arthur, prince of Wales, and his younger brother, the future Henry VIII.38 Starting with fol. 89, every illuminated page includes the prince of Wales’s ostrich feather and motto, which suggests that the manuscript is in large part addressed to him. Consequently, the young men shown in the frontispieces might even be deemed his doubles. Miniatures 2 and 3 interrupt the boyhood to adulthood progression. Even so, they can fit into the general scheme as omens of the prince’s future. They presage that, in keeping with the lessons of Grace entiere, he will eventually devote himself to matters of state and to spiritual endeavors. Like Charles in the letter-writing scene, he will be creating and modifying alliances. Like Charles kneeling next to the Virgin, he will often pray on behalf of his subjects and realm. Royal 16 F ii unabashedly yokes together opposites: bantering love poems with devout prayers, precious love casuistry with surprising interludes of bawdiness, and astute verses of diplomatic scheming with moralizing disquisitions to princes. It tells us a good deal about the medley of literary tastes and interests that played well in late-fifteenth-century courts, within which hand-copied illuminated manuscripts were circulating along with early cohorts of printed books. Royal 16 F ii also lets us guess what responses Charles d’Orléans’s poetry elicited from English book-collecting readers. From the life­story and politics embedded in Charles’s poetry such readers were more than likely to draw parallels between the civil wars of France earlier in the century and the Wars of the Roses. Telltale clues as to how they related segments of the anthology to their own historical circumstances emerge from the miniatures and heraldic emblems painted into the manuscript during its two illumination campaigns. Thanks to those clues we can infer what distinguished the Tudor reception of Charles’s poetry from the earlier Yorkist reception. Yorkist readers were particularly interested in how the captive Charles came to seek assistance from his Burgundian cousin and erstwhile foe, Philip the Good. Tudor readers, in contrast, focused more on how Philip’s reconciliation with Charles had ended the war between their houses and hence prefigured how Henry VII was putting an end to the Wars of the Roses. The captive French duke’s lyrics could lead both successive groups of English readers to discern how love poetry might sharpen the wits of rulers and their courtiers. spouse, Henry VI (fol. 55, 139, and 198). That pairing of arms is akin to what we see in the borders of Royal 16 F ii, fol. 1. Yet another manuscript, the “Talbot Shrewsbury Book” (British Library, Royal MS 15 E vi), was designed as a wedding present that Margaret of Anjou might eventually use to instruct her future son (M.-A. Bossy, “Arms and the Bride: Christine’s Military Treatise as a Wedding Gift for Margaret of Anjou,” in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. Marilynn Desmond [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998], 236–56, at 246–8); it too repeatedly displayed her arms as well as the king’s (fol. 2v [McGerr, Plate 40], 3 [Plate 41], 4v, 5, 25, 70, 155, 207, 227, 405, and 439). 38 Backhouse, “Charles d’Orléans Illuminated,” 158–9.

Part II Shaping Courtly Narrative

Meraugis de Portlesguez and the Limits of Courtliness Kristin Burr

Identifying the courtly heroine in an Old French romance often requires only a glance: her remarkable beauty makes her easy to recognize. Lengthy enumerations of a lady’s perfect physical traits – from her long blond hair to her slim hips – further underscore the importance of her visible attractiveness.1 While intangible traits are essential, too, composers typically pay them less heed. Such is not the case, however, in Raoul de Houdenc’s thirteenth-century Meraugis de Portlesguez. From the opening episode, the tale’s heroine, Lidoine, stands out from her peers not only for her extraordinary loveliness, but also for her exceptional courtliness. The attention to her inner qualities as well as on her looks allows Raoul to examine the importance of each in a courtly lady and suggests that the former plays a key role in determining worth. The romance’s eponymous hero also holds courtliness in particularly high regard, both in matters of love and in his own behavior. Yet Raoul’s depiction of courtliness proves to be more complex than it originally seems. Even as he insists upon the privileged place of inner nobility, Raoul invites the audience to consider carefully the relationship between courtliness and success, revealing that courtly behavior is no guarantee of victory. Unlike many romances, Meraugis opens with the heroine rather than with the hero. This choice may be unconventional, but the initial portrait of Lidoine is not. She is lovely, and her beauty is presented in great detail. She is bodily perfection, thanks to her gleaming blond tresses; smooth, high forehead; perfectly arched brown eyebrows; captivating eyes; straight nose; pretty mouth; sparkling teeth; crystal white throat; long neck; and golden shoulders, arms, and hands (11–71).2 There is, the narrator informs us, no woman so lovely all the way to Macedonia. Immediately after providing the catalog of her visible attributes, though, Raoul brings courtliness to the 1 See Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1965), esp. 69. 2 All references are to Raoul de Houdenc, Meraugis de Portlesguez: Roman arthurien du XIIIe siècle, publié d’après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque du Vatican, ed. Michelle Szkilnik (Paris: Champion, 2004). Translations are mine and numbers in parentheses refer to verses.

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forefront of the tale by highlighting Lidoine’s personal traits. The narrator remarks that her intelligence and virtue outweigh her beauty, to the extent that she becomes a site of pilgrimage, with young women traveling great distances to see her and hear her speak (79–97). Her courtliness, like her beauty, is established beyond the shadow of a doubt, and Raoul’s presentation of her dual superiority reveals that courtliness is to be no less prized – and perhaps even more valued – than a lovely appearance. Lidoine’s courtly characteristics stand her in good stead when her father dies and she becomes his heir. For three years she earns everyone’s praise as she rules, further enhancing her position. Since Lidoine is possessed of so many admirable qualities, it is no wonder that she captures the heart of the tale’s hero at a tournament. What is surprising is that Meraugis is not the sole knight to pursue Lidoine – and that Raoul uses the competition between the men to further accentuate the importance of courtliness. When Meraugis and his good friend Gorvain Cadrus arrive at the tournament, both are struck by Lidoine’s charms. Gorvain falls in love with her immediately, overwhelmed by her physical beauty. He contends that any traits beyond her looks are merely incidental, affirming that he would love her regardless of her social class or any faults. For Gorvain, Lidoine’s loveliness is reason enough for adoring her, no matter what lies within – even if it were a devil, crane, phantom, or serpent (507–10). Meraugis, on the other hand, is smitten with Lidoine’s courtliness, determining that he loves the lady only after speaking with her. While he gives his heart less readily than his friend, he is, we learn, more than one hundred times as captivated as Gorvain. Impressed by the maiden’s goodness and virtue, he insists that his love is “natural” (572) and that his feelings would remain unchanged were she entirely unattractive. Firmly entrenched in their opinions, Meraugis and Gorvain come to blows to settle their argument. There is no middle ground for these men: Lidoine is to be loved for either her courtliness or her beauty, rather than for the two together. Despite the emphasis on the value of both beauty and courtliness, the romance at first suggests that the latter takes precedence over the former. After Lidoine intervenes and forbids Meraugis and Gorvain from continuing their battle, Guinevere and her Court of Ladies step into the dispute, claiming the right to adjudicate any matters involving love (and just as well, since Keu proposes that the rivals share Lidoine, each having her for a month at a time).3 The ladies take their role seriously, delving into the question at hand before agreeing that courtliness and beauty cannot be separated: one is worthless without the other, and neither Meraugis nor Gorvain should claim

3 This is the first instance of battle being deferred or minimized in the romance, an occurrence repeated throughout the tale.



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the entire lady when each loves only half of her. Still, the quarrel demands resolution. The ladies conclude that beauty is a subjective designation and is accompanied by pride, whereas courtliness has no negative consequences, for it engenders only more courtliness. Meraugis’s love is thus deemed more sincere (968–93). As Gorvain leaves, disgruntled, and Lidoine obeys the king’s request to accord her love to Meraugis, Raoul has created the expectation that courtliness is of paramount importance. Yet the matter is not as straightforward as it appears. Lidoine informs the court that the kiss she awards Meraugis is the only one that he will receive for a year, during which time he will have to prove himself worthy of her. Her response hints that Meraugis may be a better suitor than Gorvain but that he is not ideal. A closer look at Meraugis’s words as he explains his love to Gorvain also leads to the conclusion that the role of courtliness may be problematic. As noted earlier, Meraugis insists that Lidoine’s appearance makes no difference: “Que s’ele estoit baucens ou noire, / Ou fauve … / Ja por ce mains ne l’ameroie” (580–2) [If she were piebald, black, or fawn-colored I would not love her less]. The adjectives he uses all typically describe not people (even ugly ones) but horses, making the comparison especially striking. Meraugis’s argument intends to reinforce the lack of importance he places on his lady’s looks; it is also a moot point, since the description does not apply to Lidoine. Yet the fact that he places ladies and steeds in the same category undermines the loftiness of his sentiment. While emphasizing the importance of qualities other than Lidoine’s beauty and announcing that he values courtliness above all, Meraugis chooses words that are less than courtly when taken in context.4 Raoul further complicates the portrayal of courtliness once the Court of Ladies reaches a decision. Unlike many young knights, Meraugis does not need to undergo a series of challenges to establish his valor in combat. As the tale opens, he is already a superior warrior; his chivalric prowess is never in doubt.5 That is not to say that physical conflicts are unimportant: Meraugis must continue to dominate his adversaries in order to maintain his reputation, and his main opponent is quite formidable. Nonetheless, the challenges that Meraugis faces do not arise in a process of chivalric development. Instead, they come on other fronts. In the introduction to her edition of the romance, Michelle Szkilnik proposes that Meraugis may be viewed as a nice, not in

4 Meraugis’s equine description may also imply that he has limited experience in the realm of love. 5 See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Arthurian Heroes and Convention: Meraugis de Portlesguez and Durmart le Galois,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, vol. 2, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), 79–92. Blumenfeld-Kosinski notes that, technically, Meraugis is a hero from the outset, as he is already engaged in competitions and quests (80–1).

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the manner of Perceval (who lacks experience), but because he has contented himself with a life of tournaments rather than adventures that test an Arthurian knight.6 Szkilnik contends that the hero is not wanting for courage or understanding of chivalric rules, but rather for “romance experience” – he does not know literary conventions (15). I agree with Szkilnik’s assessment, for Meraugis’s troubles often arise because he cannot anticipate correctly what others will do. Yet, armed with his knowledge of chivalry and courtliness, Meraugis is not ignorant of all traditions. The problem is that he follows the conventions that he knows too closely, expecting everyone else to follow suit. Putting great stock in courtliness in particular, he often meets with frustration, for he is unable to modify his behavior or expectations to conform to the situation. His limitations become especially clear in his interactions with key characters after Lidoine has set her terms. Since Meraugis has a year in which to prove that he merits his lady’s love, he needs a way to do so. Fortunately, it is not long before a dwarf arrives at Arthur’s court and reminds the king that Gauvain has long been missing. This news incites Meraugis to set out in search of Arthur’s nephew. Shortly after leaving the court, Meraugis and Lidoine come across the dwarf, who had departed earlier, this time without the horse he had ridden into Arthur’s domain. The dwarf promises Meraugis the opportunity to transform shame into glory by reclaiming the horse from the old woman who took it from him.7 The words that the dwarf chooses ensure that Meraugis will assist him. When Meraugis asks who has knocked the dwarf from his horse, the man responds: “Qui? … Franz, plains d’onor, / Car change honte por honor” (1403–4) [Who? Noble one, full of honor, exchange your shame for honor]. To Meraugis’s protests that he has no reason for shame, the dwarf promises that he will – without the dwarf’s help, to be provided in return for his horse.8 The dwarf uses elegant language to convince Meraugis to do as he requests, continuing in the same register by reminding the knight

6 In this respect, she differs from Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart, tr. Margaret and Roger Middleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Schmolke-Hasselmann views Meraugis as evolving throughout the romance; she argues that at first Meraugis is shy, in need of self confidence, indecisive, credulous, and lacking in independence (151). 7 For more on this scene, see May Plouzeau, “Une vieille bien singulière (Méraugis 1463–1478),” in Vieillesse et vieillissement au Moyen Age, Senefiance 17 (Aix-enProvence: Publications du CUERMA, 1987), 391–411. 8 Blumenfeld-Kosinski views the dwarf as a character who illustrates the danger of conflating appearance with substance, for he is of noble birth and displays a keen sense of cortoisie in setting Meraugis on the path to honor (82). I take a less positive view of the character, for the dwarf is motivated by his self-interest: he needs Meraugis to serve as his champion at a tournament to be able to wed the female dwarf he loves.



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of the embarrassment the dwarf experiences by being unhorsed. Upon the conclusion of the dwarf’s plea, Meraugis does not hesitate before galloping toward the old woman; the dwarf has achieved his end. The dwarf’s words, however, stand in contrast to what he wishes Meraugis to do. To be sure, the Vieille has acted in an uncourtly fashion in taking the dwarf’s horse, and justice demands that she return it. Where, though, is the glory for Meraugis in defeating – whether literally or figuratively – an old woman? As is the case when Meraugis gives less-than-courtly examples in implicitly linking Lidoine to horses, the context here creates an odd juxtaposition. Meraugis, too, chooses courtly words when he catches up to the Vieille. The old woman strikes Meraugis in the face with the horse’s reins – and is then shocked when he takes them from her. To the woman’s query about if he is going to hit her, Meraugis replies courteously that he will not, but that she will not have the horse for much longer. She displays somewhat less tact in her retort: “S’il vos en poise, / Ce me siet mout, fuiez de ci” (1469–70) [If it bothers you, it pleases me. Go away!]. Meraugis remains patient: Avoi, damoisele, merci! Ne soiez mie si sorfete. De la honte que m’avez fete, Vos claim ge cuite tot le droit, Mes que tant faciez orendroit Que rendez le cheval au nain. (1471–6) [Come now, mistress, please! Don’t be so arrogant. I forgive you for the shame you caused me, if you will return the horse to the dwarf right away.]

Meraugis’s generous treatment of the woman bears fruit when the Vieille agrees to accede to his request if he knocks down a shield hanging from an ash tree. The knight achieves his goal of reuniting the dwarf with his mount, thanks, it seems, to his persistently courtly behavior. The act of felling the shield from the tree, however, brings about unanticipated consequences that diminish Meraugis’s accomplishment. The promised honor does not await, for the dwarf refuses to tell Meraugis how to transform shame into glory. Worse, two women in a nearby tent greet Meraugis not with praise for his victory but with loud weeping – a reaction that moves Lidoine, too, to tears. Meraugis’s attempts to determine the cause for this grief meet with failure; he elicits enigmatic responses. Only two hundred verses later does he (along with the audience) discover that by carrying out the Vieille’s behest, he has liberated the fearsome Outredouté, a formidable adversary who now has a pretext to avenge his honor and who can thus leave his captivity. Meraugis, unable to surpass the boundaries of courtliness by taking into account his circumstances, has unwittingly behaved in a most uncourtly manner. As Schmolke-Hasselmann notes, the knight intends to do good but

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each helpful deed brings trouble in its wake.9 The courtly language he uses and to which he responds so quickly leads to obstacles rather than solutions. The episode in which Meraugis learns the repercussions of his encounter with the Vieille demonstrates further the way in which the knight’s naïve view of courtliness can lead to unexpected and ignoble results. While the sobbing tent maidens refuse to tell the knight the reason for their sorrow, another knight that Meraugis meets and defeats is less reticent. Laquis de Lampadés insists upon the character flaws of the Outredouté – along with the man’s impressive feats – over the course of more than one hundred verses (1829–1956). Champion of wrong over right, with a twisted spirit, the Outredouté has terrorized many. It is no surprise, therefore, that Laquis reacts with fear to Meraugis’s order that he present himself at the tent to console the maidens and await the Outredouté as Meraugis’s messenger. To Meraugis, the command is entirely reasonable. Since he must continue his quest for Gauvain and cannot return to the tent himself, he will send Laquis in his stead. He does not foresee any danger for his emissary, whose role is merely to lead the enraged Outredouté to Meraugis for battle. The plan is a good one, except for one thing: it depends upon the Outredouté’s tacit agreement to comport himself in a courtly fashion. Once again, Meraugis is unable to envision that others might not behave as he does. Meraugis’s mistaken assumption leads to tragic consequences for Laquis. Despite Laquis’s protestations that it was Meraugis who removed the shield from the tree, the Outredouté demands combat. Even when he acknowledges Laquis’s innocence, he refuses to leave in search of Meraugis until he has first fought against Laquis. His reason is at once logical and far from noble: if Laquis is stronger than he, he has no desire to find Meraugis, who has already defeated Laquis and would thus prove superior to the Outredouté as well (2076–9). Clearly, courtliness does not guide the Outredouté, for whom self interest takes precedence. Laquis pays a steep price. Despite a valiant attempt to defend himself, the overmatched knight loses an eye. The Outredouté spares his opponent’s life, but the reprieve is temporary: the cruel victor intends to slay Meraugis and then kill Laquis. The sequence simultaneously sets the stage for Meraugis to demonstrate his prowess (much later, he will defeat the Outredouté in a bloody battle) and delays the hero by adding another quest to his path. No less important, it reveals the limits of courtliness as Meraugis understands it. He misjudges the situation and sends Laquis into an unwinnable combat because he believes the Outredouté will behave as courtliness dictates. While the Outredouté makes no pretense of adhering to the chivalric code, Meraugis cannot grasp what others intend to do to him, as Schmolke-Hasselmann remarks.10 The knight’s inability to

9 10

Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, 151. Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, 152.



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imagine an uncourtly response – which one can certainly anticipate, given Laquis’s description of the Outredouté and his acts – leads directly to the loss of Laquis’s eye. Meraugis’s determination to remain courtly also creates difficulties when he attempts to gather information after arriving at a promontory upon which twelve damsels sit. The beautiful women speak of the future, placing them in a position to help Meraugis. The knight, unfortunately, can find no way to reach the damsels. He appeals for assistance graciously, asking “Dames, par ou irai ge la?” (2629) [Ladies, how can I get up there?]. The maidens quickly rebuff him, with one explaining that there is no way for him to come up and asking what he wants. When Meraugis replies that he wishes to speak with them, the lady repeats her question. Meraugis remains polite in his refusal, albeit with words less courtly than they have been: Ce n’avint onques Que ge de ci … Vos die en haut que jë ai quis. Mes fetes moi lasus monter. (2635–8) [I will not yell from here what I seek. Help me get up there.]

While the ladies have been civil toward Meraugis until this point, their attitude changes in the face of the knight’s persistence. The damsel who has been speaking with him sits back down and rejoins her conversation with her compatriots. When Meraugis continues his efforts to engage the damsels in conversation, the women’s responses grow increasingly contemptuous. They endeavor to ignore him and then repeat only that no one can ascend. Meraugis finally entreats them simply to tell him if they know any news of Gauvain. At this, all civility leaves the conversation on the part of the damsels. The head damsel offers one rude piece of guidance, saying, “Di va, chevalier aniuieus, / Va t’en, se tu croire me veuls, / La voie a destre contremont” (2652–5) [Now then, bothersome knight, go away and take the path to the right, if you want to believe me]. Meraugis is not yet discouraged. He makes a final attempt to elicit information, asking for the most direct path to reach the Esplumoir de Merlin, where he is supposed to hear news of Gauvain. The damsel’s reply is singularly unhelpful: Vez ci l’Esplumeoir: g’i sui. Assez porras muser mes hui, Ne ja mes plus ne t’en diron, Ne ce, ne qoi, ne o, ne non. (2668–71) [This is the Esplumoir; I’m there. You can wait uselessly now, but we will not say one word more to you, not this, nor what, nor yes, nor no.]

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Meraugis finally loses his temper, threatening that he could get the information he seeks by force, if only he could get to the top. Arrogantly breaking her word, the damsel speaks one more time, telling the knight that it is fortunate that the promontory is so high and that his yelling is tiresome (2685–8). Although Meraugis does at last evince his anger in this scene, it is notable that his behavior remains courtly in comparison to that of the damsels. He never resorts to using their unkind language. While the women go from behavior that is relatively courtly to acting in a way that is decidedly less than polite, Meraugis maintains his path. Once more, he is unable to step outside the boundaries of courtliness, and he cannot succeed. His attempts to remain courtly lead to frustration. During his exchange with the damsels, Meraugis finally demonstrates an awareness of the limitations of courtliness, turning to the threat of physical force. In the rest of the romance, he finds a better method of accomplishing his goals: he begins to rely on ruses.11 When Meraugis finds Gauvain, Arthur’s nephew is being held captive on an island by a lady whom he serves as champion. Meraugis devises a ploy by which he and Gauvain will fight, Meraugis will feign his death, and he will then cross-dress to trick the boatman who brings provisions daily, and help Gauvain flee from the island. The plan works perfectly, except that in his determination to rescue Gauvain, Meraugis forgets Lidoine until well after their escape. Like the other spectators at the battle between Meraugis and Gauvain, Lidoine believes that her beloved has met his demise. Raoul devotes the second part of his romance to Meraugis’s quest to be reunited with his lady. Because the pair is separated, there is a greater focus on Lidoine than in the first half. On her journey homeward, accompanied by a young woman named Amice, she, too, gathers firsthand experience of the limits of courtliness. During their voyage, the two encounter Bergis le Louche, whose outer ugliness mirrors his inner wickedness. The words with which Bergis offers the two women hospitality, however, mask his evil ways. He speaks warmly: Dame, Bien soiez venue, par m’ame. Terre et avoir et quanque j’ai Vos offre e vos hebergerai, Së il vos plest, anuit molt bien.

11 Schmolke-Hasselmann posits that chevalerie and cortoisie are in conflict in the second half of the romance and that Meraugis must use cunning to get himself out of difficult situations. For Schmolke-Hasselmann, “Perfect chevalerie and total cortoisie involve the use of whichever means are appropriate for each situation” (The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, 153). I contend that Meraugis’s ruses offer a third path, outside of both traditional chevalerie and cortoisie.



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Vostre peres ama le mien, E ge lui. (3740–6) [Lady, welcome, by my soul. I offer you land and good and all that I have and I will lodge you well tonight, if you wish. Your father was my father’s friend, and I was his.]

Once Lidoine has accepted and Bergis learns of Meraugis’s death, his attitude changes. As promised, Bergis lodges Lidoine and Amice well for the night – but when the women prepare to depart the following morning, Bergis informs Lidoine that she is not going anywhere and that his son, Espinogre, will be her new ami. Lidoine does not rejoice at this news. Nevertheless, she continues to display her renowned courtliness in her lengthy exchange with Bergis. Rather than reveal her true feelings or reject her host’s wishes straightforwardly, she couches the reasons that she cannot marry Espinogre in gracious terms: Sire, s’einsi estoit Qu’il vos pleüst, mout me pleroit Cest marïage a compasser. Car ne me sai a porpenser D’ome qui autant me pleüst Come vostre filz se il fust Chevaliers e il li plaisoit. Bele aventure me vendroit Së il e vos le volieez. Tant valez que bien tendrieez Mes tenemenz. E neporquant En mon païs m’estuet avant Aler, que je pregne segnor. Me fetes mie lonc sejor Mes mandez que vostre filz soit Noviax chevaliers. S’il l’estoit Sachiez que par tenz revendroie En la marche, sel recevroie A segnor e si seroit rois. Mes aler m’en covient ainçois. (3792–811) [Sire, if it was such that it pleased you, it would delight me to to carry out this marriage. I cannot imagine a man who might please me more than your son, if he were a knight and accepted. It would be a fortunate occurrence for me if you and he wished it. You are so worthy that you would hold my land well. However, I must return to my country before taking a husband (lord). Don’t take a long time but command that your son be made a knight. If he were, please know that I would return, wed him, and he would be king. But first I must leave.]

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Lidoine adopts several strategies in her reply. She first casts herself as submissive, making her own feelings secondary to Bergis’s. She also praises her host and implies that she would gain from an alliance. At the same time, she calls upon Bergis’s respect for social conventions – it would be inappropriate for her to wed a young man who is not yet a knight – and draws attention to her obligations to her people. Just as she remains courtly, her response is designed to appeal to her interlocutor’s refined sensibilities – she offers a very polite, indirect refusal. Bergis, however, has already shown a certain lack of nobility and does not place any stock in Lidoine’s words. His response is blunt and lacks the courtliness of his initial invitation: Lidoine, einsi n’ira il pas Dou tot a la vostre devise. C’est por noient, vos estes prise! Ja mes de ci ne vos mouvrez Nul jor devant que vos avrez Receü mon filz a segnor, Si qu’il sera rois de l’onor D’Escavalon e vos roïne. (3813–20) [Lidoine, it will not happen as you wish. It’s all for nothing: you are a prisoner. You will never leave here until you have married my son and he has become king of Escavalon, and you queen.]

He makes it very clear that she has no say in the matter, for only his son’s interests – which are his own – count. All the while thinking exactly the opposite, Lidoine remains measured in her response, acceding: “Ceste saisine / Me plest mout quant il est einsi. / Or de par Deu, je serai ci / Tant com vostre plesir sera” (3821–4) [This seizin pleases me greatly since it is thus. By God, I will be here as long as you wish it]. While recognizing her plight with the legal term evoking Bergis’s power over her, she never voices any opposition. To the contrary, she uses positive (and untrue) language to express her reaction. She maintains decorum in the face of extremely trying circumstances. The scene reveals that courtly language can be affected and manipulated to very uncourtly ends and that noble manners can be a mere façade. Bergis employs his words to lure Lidoine to his castle, where she is literally trapped. The episode also reinforces the idea that courtliness ultimately holds little sway. Lidoine’s gracious reply to Bergis – a response that is undoubtedly calculated in the hopes of gaining her freedom – gets her nowhere. She may be famous for her courtliness, and she may never behave openly in any but the most dignified manner, but the result is that she is imprisoned in a castle and forcibly betrothed to a young man who is not even yet a knight but who will become the ruler of a kingdom if he marries her. Her courtliness is important, but also powerless when it counts the most.



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Rather like Meraugis, who acknowledges the limits of courtliness when he devises the ruse to liberate Gauvain, Lidoine recognizes that courtly language is not always the solution. Her courtly words, too, can mask her intentions, for while ostensibly submitting to Bergis’s will, she plots with Amice to request the aid of Gorvain and the Arthurian knights. In the rest of the romance, Lidoine is reunited with Meraugis, freed from captivity, and won by our hero on the battlefield as he emerges victorious from combat with Gorvain.12 The two friends reconcile and, we may imply, everyone lives happily ever after. It has been a long journey, yet in the end the initial decision of the Court of Ladies is upheld: Meraugis is a more worthy suitor, and courtliness takes precedence over beauty, although both are necessary.13 Even as he draws attention to the value of courtliness, then, Raoul underscores its limitations. The traditional system works only when all parties involved agree, at least implicitly, to behave in a courtly fashion. Meraugis’s adventures (and misadventures) frequently arise from his misinterpretation of a situation and from his reliance on everyone else to follow the courtly code as he does. The characters who do not – notably the Vieille, the damsels at the Esplumoir, and the Outredouté – cause delays and much frustration during Meraugis’s quest. The knight is thwarted because of his expectations concerning the courtliness of others and his determination to remain above the fray. He begins to succeed when he breaks the rules when necessary, as when he frees Gauvain. According to Schmolke-Hasselmann, Raoul wants to show that cortoisie can be understood in a general sense as a way of life and is the only basis for lasting love; she writes: “The wanderings of the heroes in the thirteenth-century Arthurian romances are primarily designed to further the acquisition of cortoisie and through it the perfection of the person” (158). I would argue that Raoul is not merely drawing attention to the importance of courtliness, but also that he is demanding its flexibility. By dismantling, transforming, and re-forming notions of the concept, he underscores the complex definition of courtliness. It involves more than following a specific set of rules: a situation may call for force or a ruse rather than a noble attitude, and courtly words can be deceiving and without real power.

12 Her release also results from a ruse. Following his victory over the Outredouté, a gravely wounded Meraugis is taken to Bergis’s castle, where he recuperates in anonymity (although Lidoine does recognize him). He joins forces with Bergis’s men and meets Gauvain in combat. Arthur’s nephew surrenders to Meraugis once he identifies his opponent, for he is indebted to Meraugis for his earlier rescue. Following Gauvain’s example, Bergis and his men proclaim themselves to be the victor’s men. Soon thereafter Meraugis reveals his identity and asserts his right to Lidoine. 13 Schmolke-Hasselmann sees Lidoine’s love of Meraugis despite his wounds and illness after the battle with the Outredouté as proof that cortoisie is more important than beauty for her, too (The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, 154).

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Lidoine and Meraugis are the perfect pair, but only once they realize that courtliness, while prized, does not always suffice to reach their ends. You can take the boy out of the court and, it turns out, sometimes you have to take the courtliness out of the boy.

The Art of “Transmutation” in the Burgundian Prose Cligés (1454): Bringing the Siege of Windsor Castle to Life for the Court of Philip the Good Joan Tasker Grimbert “Transmutation” is the term used by the anonymous authors of two midfifteenth-century Burgundian prose romances to designate the process by which they transform two of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances, Erec et Enide and Cligés.1 The author of the prose Cligés, noting his contemporaries’ willingness to pass their time reading and listening to romances and histories, proposes to better serve them by transposing – the verb is transmuer – Alixandre’s and Cligés’s adventures from Old French verse to Middle French prose. But transmutation is not just translation. The prose redactors appropriate Chrétien’s texts and modify them to such an extent as virtually to reinvent the original romances. These are not simply the verse romances stripped of Chrétien’s inimitable irony and humor, as earlier critics had claimed.2 While the prose texts respect the general outline of the original plot, the transformations affect every aspect: language, style, and content. Many of the changes can be attributed to “acculturation,” a process of updating whereby, according to Jane H. M. Taylor, “the socio-culturally unfamiliar is recast in familiar terms, so that the reader can understand systems and phenomena in a source text as corresponding to his own ideologies, preconceptions and behaviour patterns.”3 As Taylor points out, even details that seem truly minor can provide insights into the culture for which the new text was written. 1 George Doutrepont, La Littérature française à la cour des Ducs de Bourgogne: Philippe le Hardi, Jeans sans Peur, Philippe le Bon, Charles le Téméraire (Paris, 1909; rpt Geneva: Slatkine, 1970). The ducal library included a volume containing Chrétien’s Le Chevalier au lion, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, and Cligés. 2 The first critic to emit an opinion regarding the prose Cligés was Wendelin Foerster, who published it as an appendix to his edition of Chrétien’s romance: Christian von Troyes, Sämtliche Werke: Nach allen bekannten Handschriften. Vol. 1: Cligés (Halle, Niemeyer, 1884); prose Cligés, 281–338. Gaston Paris, who reviewed Foerster’s edition in Romania 13 (1884), 441–6, characterized the prose as very mediocre. 3 Jane H. M. Taylor, “The Significance of the Insignificant: Reading Reception in the Burgundian prose Cligès,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998), 183–97, here 183.

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Paying attention to the details of these prose romances, especially ones added to or omitted from the verse romances, is one way to understand how courtliness is reshaped in late medieval romance. By the mid fifteenth century, this concept, as presented in late-twelfth-century French romance, had been radically transformed, particularly at the court of Burgundy where Philip the Good presided over one of the most splendid courts in Europe. The duke gave extravagant feasts and held numerous tourneys. At all court events, etiquette and protocol were strictly defined and extended to chivalric practices of all kinds, some borrowed from the literature that the dukes had in their excellent library. A striking case of life imitating art was Philip’s creation of a special order of elite knights known as the Order of the Golden Fleece (1430), which, like the Order of the Garter in England, was modeled after Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table.4 In those troubled times, though, warfare was not just make-believe. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for as long as the Hundred Years War lasted and the dukes of Burgundy were consolidating their power through military and diplomatic channels, war was a constant of daily life. Not only did the dukes seek to expand their domains, they also had to put down rebellions, especially in towns like Bruges and Ghent, where the citizens, jealous of their traditional system of self-government, rebelled against ducal authority. In the dukes’ eyes such resistance constituted treachery, and they were particularly ruthless in imposing their will.5 Moreover, for  their  armed conflicts, they had access to the most sophisticated weaponry, and Philip the Good, in particular, assembled an impressive store of artillery.6 The only one of Chrétien’s romances that contains a war is Cligés; indeed, it features two. One of the most dramatic episodes in that work is the description of the siege of Windsor Castle. As we recall, King Arthur entrusts his kingdom to Count Agrés on leaving England for a brief sojourn in Brittany. When he learns that Angrés has taken advantage of his absence to seize power, he returns to London and is soon at war. The count, for his part, loses no time fleeing to his castle in Windsor, which he has heavily fortified in anticipation of Arthur’s return. The king’s Greek guest, Alixandre, protagonist of the first part of the romance, plays a starring role in this episode. Michelle Szkilnik has compared the prose and verse accounts to demonstrate how the prose writer amplifies Chrétien’s description of the siege, in part

Earlier critics, such as Martha Wallen, had described how the prose writer “modernized” Chrétien’s story; see her 1972 U of Wisconsin dissertation, “The Art of Adaptation in the Fifteenth-Century Erec et Enide and Cligès,” esp. chapter 9, “Modernization in Cligès.” 4 On Philip’s reign, see the classic study by Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London: Longmans, 1970; new ed. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002). 5 See Bertrand Schnerb, L’État bourguigon 1363–1477 (Paris: Perrin, 1999), 380–91. 6 Robert Douglas Smith and Kelly DeVries, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy 1363–1477 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005).



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by focusing on Alixandre in a way that his character projects an image of singular power more in conformity with the kind of military leadership that would have resonated with the Burgundian public. Szkilnik also shows how the prosateur’s emphasis on treachery and the cruel punishment of the rebels reflect practices in which Philip of Burgundy engaged in order to put down rebellions of his own, particularly in Flanders. Finally, she cites macabre descriptions of executions found in other late medieval romances such as Ysaÿe le Triste.7 Szkilnik clearly establishes the skill and deliberation with which the adaptor modifies Chrétien’s account of the siege in response to the changed political and literary climate of the mid fifteenth century. To complement her analysis, I would like to propose a reading designed specifically to highlight the prose writer’s literary artistry – the structural changes, additions and omissions, and stylistic flourishes used to enhance the dramatic nature of the siege in order to render it more vivid for readers at the Burgundian court. Such changes are also linked to acculturation, for the redactor was clearly mindful of the values and tastes of his contemporaries, which he no doubt shared. According to Szkilnik’s calculations, the description of the siege of Windsor, which is interlaced with that of the growing love between Alixandre and Soredamors, represents fully one-fifth of the prose romance, whereas in Chrétien it accounts for only one-sixth of the work. However, the prosateur, who is plainly much more interested in military exploits than in amatory matters, abbreviates substantially the interviews between the Greek hero and his beloved,8 devoting only one-sixth of the siege episode to these scenes, which in his model occupy no less than one-third of it. Thus it is only the war component that benefits from the episode’s expansion in the prose. But these figures tell only part of the story, masking the very real stylistic differences that characterize the two texts. The prose author revels in graphic, detailed descriptions and exhibits a true fascination with warfare and gruesome executions that Chrétien does not appear to share. The prosateur makes the entire siege episode more compelling in part by using formulae associated with epic: exaggeration, enumeration, and epic address, and even by evoking the enemy’s pride (oultrecuidance), that epic sin par excellence. Such devices increase the melodramatic nature of the episode, as we can see in comparing the verse and prose versions of a scene as banal as Arthur’s men pitching camp on the banks of the Thames under the watchful eyes of the traitors. Chrétien paints an impressive picture 7 Michelle Szkilnik, “Le Prince et le félon: Le siège de Guinesores dans le Cligès de Chrétien et dans la prose bourguignonne,” Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales 14 (2007), 61–74. 8 On the prosateur’s treatment of these scenes, see Norris J. Lacy. “Adaptation as Reception: the Burgundian Cligés,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998), 198–207.

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of Arthur’s camp and also refers to the reaction of Windsor’s men, that of apparent nonchalance. The prose writer makes the scene more of a spectacle by drawing his readers in with his epic address: “si veissiés” (82) [then you would have seen (92)] and elaborating on the description of the tents (six colors instead of two) and the sunlight’s effect on them.9 Next, he makes the nonchalance of Windsor’s men even more striking by showing them engaged in playful exercise, displaying an insouciance that, we are told, is rooted in pride. In Chrétien’s text, Alixandre says their attitude shows that they consider Arthur’s men to be cowards, whereas in the prose he refers specifically to their pride, marveling at their great presumption.10 The melodrama inherent in this situation can be seen in the ensuing skirmish, which Alixandre and his men win handily, proving how greatly the rebels had misjudged Arthur’s men, and it gives the newly knighted Greeks a golden opportunity to prove their mettle for the first time. Chrétien lavishes a disproportionate amount of attention on Alixandre’s call to arms, in which he names each of his companions successively. Once the Greeks are armed and mounted and plunge into the ford, the account of the actual battle is almost comically succinct, and when reinforcements arrive from Arthur’s camp, there is nothing more for them to do than to pursue Windsor’s men. The prosateur, for his part, favors a more melodramatic vision: he accords equal attention to the enemy, describing the disarray of Windsor’s men, who in their unarmed state do not try to flee but rather, “comme folz qu’ilz sont” (83) [foolish as they are (93)], lower their lances and attempt to fight. Seeing how the Greeks unhorse everyone they meet, the rebels are distraught, since their strongest men are cut down with a single lance blow. Their complete change of heart is patent, as their proud self-assurance gives way to fear. Windsor’s men, “nagaires cuidans fere merveilles” (84) [who thought a short time before that they would work marvels (93)] can think only of fleeing to the safety of the castle. When the prosateur turns to the actual siege of Windsor Castle, he shows the same concern with painting both sides of the conflict more equally than his predecessor. Chrétien describes very succinctly the initial phase of the 9 For Chrétien’s text, I cite Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell, eds., Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés. Arthurian Studies 28 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993). The translations are my own, although I have been guided by William W. Kibler’s Cligés in Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (London: Penguin, 1991). For the prose Cligés, I cite Maria Colombo Timelli, ed., Le Livre de Alixandre Empereur de Constentinoble et de Cligés son filz: roman en prose du XVe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2004). The English translations are from Joan Tasker Grimbert and Carol J. Chase, tr., Chrétien de Troyes in Prose: The Burgundian Erec and Cligés, Arthurian Studies LXXVIII (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010). 10 On the types and effect of authorial intervention in this romance, see Martine Thiry-Stassin, “Interventions d’auteur dans le Cligés en prose de 1454,” in Hommage au professeur Maurice Delbouille, special issue of Marche Romane, 1973, 269–77.



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siege: (1) the arming of the royal troops and the crossing of the Thames; (2) the reaction of Windsor’s men; and (3) the dramatic execution of the four traitors captured by Alixandre during the initial skirmish. The prose writer expands all three parts with detail that might best be described as cinematic. In part one, the narrator conveys his excitement at the battle’s approach as he launches into his description of the arming of Arthur’s men, using the epic “Si eussiéz veu” (86) [you should have seen (94)]. The king does not forget his prisoners, he adds, observing that they make a great deal of noise as they move along. The sights and sounds of the approaching army with the chained prisoners in tow spur Windsor’s men to action. For part two, the adapter expands exponentially a very concise account. In the verse, the traitors view the spectacle of the army and prepare to defend it, but their defense does not begin until after Arthur has punished the prisoners. Cil del chastel s’an pranent garde Et voient venir la mervoille De l’ost, qui defors s’aparoille Por le chastel confondre et prandre, Si se ratornent del desfandre. Mes einz que nul assaut i ait … (1488–93, my emphasis) [Those in the castle notice this and see the spectacle of the army preparing to take and destroy the castle; they for their part make ready to defend it. But before launching any attack …]

In the prose, on the contrary, the traitors haul out the big guns and begin an ardent defense even before they are attacked and before the quartering of the captives: Ceulx du chasteau s’en donnent garde, si se mettent pareillement en point, et font les quennonniers venir avant, lesquelz a l’aborder gectent canons, bonbardes, culeuvrines, crapaudeaux, weuglairez, feu gregois, et mesmez les archiers et arbalestriers bendent leurz arcs et font voller saiettes et telz manierez de besongnes tant espessement que si hardi d’aprocier et qu’il y a honneur a aller devant. (86) [Those in the castle take notice and likewise ready themselves, and they put in front the artillerymen who, on the army’s approach, fire cannons, bombards, coulovrines, crapaudeaux, veuglaires, and Greek fire. Even the archers and crossbowmen bend their bows and send forth volleys of arrows and all types of attack material so profusely that there is no one so bold as to approach, and there is honor in going forward. (94)]

In this impressive show of force, highlighted by the use of enumeration, we see, in essence, a list of the most up-to-date pieces of artillery to be found in Philip the Good’s considerable arsenal. In Chrétien’s time, siege machines consisted of little more than catapults. Not so in the mid fifteenth century, at

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the close of the Hundred Years War, when the prose Cligés was composed, and the prose redactor seems to relish enumerating the sophisticated weapons available in Philip’s time.11 Also significant is the mention of the archers and crossbowmen, who at the time represented fully 70 percent of the ducal army!12 As we move into the third part of the initial phase of the siege, we see that the prosateur has again expanded it. He provides a riveting account of the captives’ execution, using much more detail than Chrétien to conjure up a horrific scene that has the desired effect of instilling shock and awe in the enemy – and no doubt the reader.13 Chrétien’s account is remarkably succinct: Mes einz que nul assaut i ait, Le rois antor le chastel fait Traïner a .iiii. chevax Les traïtors parmi les vax Et par tertres et par larriz. Li cuens Angrés est molt marriz Por itant que traïner voit Ces devant lui que chiers avoit. (1493–1500, my emphasis) [But before launching any attack, the king has the traitors dragged by four horses beneath the castle walls and through the valleys, over the hillocks and across the barren fields. Count Angrés is very upset to see those he held dear dragged before him.]

The prose description of this dreadful punishment is much more vivid. The redactor elaborates on Chrétien’s mention of valleys, hillocks, and barren fields by enumerating the specific elements that stud the landscape – rocks, thistles, brambles, nettles, and thorns – and mar the prisoners’ bodies as they are carried along the trajectory followed by the galloping horses. The victims suffer disfiguring torture before dying. Moreover, by noting how the count is watching this ordeal from an opening in the castle – a detail that increases the pathos of the situation – the prose writer invites us to share with those in the castle the unfolding spectacle and to experience the visceral fear instilled in them:

11 For a brief description of how the introduction of artillery changed warfare in Western Europe, see M. G. A. Vale, “New Techniques and Old Ideals: The Impact of Artillery on War and Chivalry at the End of the Hundred Years War,” in War, Literature, and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), 57–72. 12 Schnerb, L’État bourguigon, 267. 13 Other critics have noted the prose writer’s expanded account of this cruel punishment: Colombo Timelli, Le Livre de Alixandre, 33–4; Szkilnik, “Le Prince et le félon,” 69, who also mentions the addition of the “bourreau,” official executer of royal justice.



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Nonobstant ce le roi fait devant soi venir les IIII prisonniers, et adjuge qu’ilz soient atachiés aux queues de chevaulx par piés et par mains, et qu’en ce point ilz soient detraynés tant que mort s’en ensuive. Le bourreau les ampoigne, puis les atache comme dessus est dit. Et, a mesures qu’il sont loiés, il chasse lez chevaulx au loingz; si s’en vont courant ci les ungz lez aultres par montaignes, rociers, chardons, ronces, ortiez, espines, tant que lez IIII meschans hommes furent executéz a mort et qu’ilz furent tellement deffigurés qu’il ne leur demoura membre nul entier. Le conte de Guinesorez par ung pertruis lez voit morir, et par grant admiracion lez monstre a ses complices … (86) [Nevertheless, the king has the four prisoners brought before him and orders that they be attached to the tails of horses by their hands and feet, and then in this position dragged until death ensues. The executioner seizes them and attaches them as described above. And once they are bound he chases the horses into the distance, and they all gallop off through mountains, rocks, thistles, brambles, nettles, and thorns, until the four evil men were put to death and so disfigured that not a single one of their limbs remained whole. Through an opening [in the castle wall], the count of Windsor sees them die and in great awe points them out to his accomplices … (95)]

Following this initial phase of the battle waged by Arthur, we move on to the siege itself. Here again, the prose description is considerably more compelling than the verse. The assault begins once Arthur has managed to get his men over the moats and securely in place right at the foot of the castle. The account alternates back and forth between the actions of the assailants – “ceux de dehors” (87) [those on the outside] – and the defenders – “ceux de leans” (87) [those on the inside] – punctuated by the narrator’s excited exclamations: “Si veissés bel assault, car l’en n’eust pas oÿ Dieu tonner: il sambloit que le ciel deust fendre” (87) [You would have seen a fine assault, for you would not have been able to hear God thunder: it seemed as though the sky would burst open (95)].14 Elaborating on this apocalyptic assessment, the narrator goes on to juxtapose in rapid succession the elements of offense and defense: Arthur’s men raise ladders, which Windsor’s men knock down using iron forks, precipitating the assailants into the moat; foot soldiers attack the walls using large picks – to no avail, so solidly is the castle constructed; the defenders heave large stones from the battlements, and from the machicolated towers they hurl and shoot out darts, javelins, cannonballs, arrows, crossbow bolts, and the like; even the women get into the act, bringing water, oil, tar, and boiling hot ashes to dump on those below. The narrator notes: “[I]lz se deffendent par ung tel hardement que l’en ne voit que pierres rondes et quarrees descendre

14 This is one of the examples of authorial intervention picked up by Thiry-Stassin, “Interventions d’auteur,” 273–4.

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et assoir ausi espessement comme se c’estoit pluye” (87) [they defend themselves so bravely that all you can see are round and square stones falling and landing as thick as rain (95)]. The battle continues all day until the assailants are surprised by nightfall and Arthur sounds the retreat. Noteworthy in this passage is the effect of enumeration, which mimics the relentless nature of the rebels’ defense. The mention of the women’s active role is also quite striking.15 The passion that the prose writer exhibits in this description is again put to excellent effect in the description of the battle in which Alixandre engages that night in response to the rebels’ surprise attack. Chrétien’s account of the mêlée, a kind of generic battle of lance and swordplay, is relatively colorless, enlivened only by recourse to a simile describing the ardor of both armies, which he likens to lions who devour all those they reach. The prosateur, for his part, begins his evocative rendition with an exclamation recording the effect that the mere sight of the Britons has on Windsor’s men: “Dieux, comment sont esperdus ceux du chasteau quant ilz voient leurz ennemis!” (90) [God, how bewildered were those from the castle when they saw their enemies! (97)]. Then he paints with broad strokes a vivid picture of the clash from the viewpoint mostly of the hapless rebels, a focus that heightens the emotional impact of the scene. The only element of Chrétien’s account preserved in the prose is the colorful simile, which is applied to the royal army alone and put to excellent effect to record their unmitigated success: “ce samblent lions affamés courans aprés leurz proyes, et ne y a nul qui soit ataint de ceulx de Bretaigne qui ne soit merquié par telle façon que trop sont durez lez enseignes, puisqu’il convient que mort s’en ensuive” (90) [they seemed like starving lions pursuing their prey, and there was no one they reached who was not cut down in such a way that the wounds were not mortal and death did not ensue (97)]. In both verse and prose, the narrator proceeds to highlight Alixandre’s performance. Here, the prose account, composed of a series of powerful images, proves that its author is much more keenly interested than Chrétien in bringing the action to life before his readers’ eyes. Chrétien devotes no more than twenty-five verses to describing Alixandre’s exploits and offers very few combat details. After noting that Alixandre strikes his first victim a mortal blow, he then limits himself to recording his performance in metaphorical terms. Moving from the hero’s first combat to his second, the narrator says, Quant a celui ot trive prise, A un autre offre son servise, Ou pas ne le gaste ne pert:

15 Chrétien also evokes the presence of women and children, but only at the moment of great lamenting in the castle over the number of men slain in the castle.



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Si felenessemant le sert Que l’ame de son cors li oste, Et li ostex remest sanz oste. (1761–6) [When he has won a truce from that one, he offers another his service and does not waste or lose it. Thus he serves him so brutally that he drives the soul from his body and the hostel remains without a host.]

The metaphorical description continues: Alixandre thrusts his lance through his third victim such that “l’ame prant congié au cors” (1771) [the soul takes leave of the body]. In a concluding simile, the Greek hero’s sweep through enemy lines is likened to “foudre qui vole” (1774) [fleeting thunder]. The prose writer takes an entirely different approach to describing Alixandre’s stellar performance. Szkilnik has noted that he invents a single combat between the Greek hero and the count’s seneschal, adding that Alixandre’s prestige is such that he also merits the subsequent intervention of Gauvain to rescue him from the assault of a throng of archers. Both of these elements are absent from Chrétien’s account, but what is also missing – strikingly – is the profusion of graphic detail, added, presumably, to satisfy the audience’s thirst for combat scenes. The effect is almost cinematic and recalls contemporary films of medieval warfare like Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. After noting how Alixandre thrusts himself into the thickest part of the fray, striking left and right, the prose narrator zeroes in to provide close-ups of his first two exploits. For the first: Il treuve ung chevalier a unes indes armes faisant ses fringes et les rens trambler environ soi, dont il a grant talent de l’essaier. Si tire vers luy, et son bienvignant lui fiert de l’espee sur l’espaulle de telle randonnee qu’il lui separe du corpz l’espaulle avec le chief tout en travers, et mort le trebusce a terre. (91) [He found a knight bearing indigo arms capering about and causing the battle lines to tremble all around him, and he wanted very much to test him. So he approached him and in the guise of a greeting struck a sword blow to his shoulder with such force that he severed it from his body and left his head dangling, then sent him sprawling to the ground dead. (97)]

Similarly, when attacked by a knight seeking to avenge the victim, Alixandre rushes so violently at him that he unhorses him with such brutality that his neck breaks and his horse collapses under him. In both cases, the prose writer substitutes graphic detail for Chrétien’s metaphors. For the final phase of the siege, which takes us inside Windsor Castle, the prose writer again constructs a considerably more dramatic account than that found in his model. In both versions the Greeks manage to penetrate into the inner courtyard by donning armor stripped from their slain enemies on

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the field and, after throwing off their disguises, proceed to attack the rebels. However, the confrontation between the count and Alixandre, which in Chrétien features a fairly equal combat until the count suddenly takes flight, is in the prose transformed into a single, decisive encounter: the count attacks Alixandre, breaking his lance against the shield of his adversary, who simply rides up to him and clobbers him with his shield, felling both him and his horse. Stunned, the count flees. The most conspicuous difference introduced in the prose occurs once the count abandons his single combat with Alixandre and follows his men in flight. As Szkilnik has pointed out, Alixandre proceeds to mete out an unforgiving punishment to the rebels who are left behind. Twice he rounds up the defeated men, even those who surrender, leading them to the battlements, where he forces them to jump into the moat. The prose writer increases the melodrama by inventing a scene in which the gatekeeper imagines a way to deliver the rebels over to Alixandre in order to save his own life. Finding inspiration in the ruse just employed by the Greeks to penetrate into the castle, the gatekeeper instructs the arriving rebels to enter single file by the postern gate and remove their helmets to ensure that none of the enemy is among them. The unsuspecting men, helmet in hand, are delivered directly to Alixandre, who crisply beheads them one after the other. This invented scene conjures up powerful images, as does the following one, for which the prose writer elaborates skillfully on Chrétien’s succinct description: Alixandre finds the count hiding in one room and pursues him around and around a post until he manages to strike him on the top of his helmet, stunning him and forcing him, with his head spinning, back against the walls of the room, where he stops and falls in a heap, all sense and memory gone.16 Again, Alixandre collects the vanquished rebels and tosses them into the moat. From this point until the end of the episode, the prose diverges sharply from its verse model. Alixandre’s victory is now complete, but those in the camp are still in the dark. Chrétien recounts at length (vv. 2048–128 – eightyone lines!) how Arthur’s men, upon finding Alixandre’s armor on the field, and unaware of the exchange of arms that enabled the Greeks to enter the castle, assume they are dead, and embark on a long series of loud lamentations. He then describes the traitors’ fate: although they beg to be killed immediately, Alixandre insists on sparing them, making them promise to go surrender to Arthur, who, he assures them, will be merciful. The count, for his part, deserves no mercy, and is handed over to Arthur and summarily executed.

16 As Szkilnik observes, no doubt the gatekeeper’s ruse was invented to reveal his base character and the account of the count’s final defeat serves to ridicule him (“Le Prince et le félon,” 68). But what is important for our purposes is that the prose writer is such an engaging storyteller.



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The prose adapter, in describing the aftermath of Alixandre’s victory, could not have strayed farther from his model. Seeing no appeal in the superfluous mourning of Arthur’s deluded men, he moves to a final dramatic scene of his own invention – complete humiliation of the treacherous count. In a single sentence, he unapologetically proposes to pass over the exploits of Sir Gauvain and Arthur’s other knights. Making short shrift of the Britons’ lamentations (a half-sentence!), he provides an astute juxtaposition of illusion and reality: Je passe les fais de messire Gavain et des noblez princes du roi Artus, qui, aprés pleniere victoire, conme ilz trouvassent les armes d’Alixandre sur ung corpz mort, ilz cuiderent que ce fust il, si en demenerent grant et angoiseux doeul et longuement plorerent la mort de cestui Alixandre, qui de ceste heure estoit monté a la muraille et monstroit a ceulx de la ville leur conte, qu’il avoit loyé de cordes et despouillié tout nud en belle chemise. (96) [I shall pass over Sir Gauvain’s exploits and those of King Arthur’s noble princes, who, after complete victory and on finding Alixandre’s armor on a corpse, believed it was he. Thus, they mourned him with anguish, weeping copiously over the death of the very Alixandre who at this hour had climbed up to the top of the outer wall and was presenting to the entire town their count, whom he had bound with rope and stripped down to his fine shift. (100–1)]

There ensues in the prose an epic dialogue in direct discourse between Alixandre and the count, who bewails his destiny in the strongest of terms, adding blasphemy to his sins as he curses God for allowing him to be created the most evil man there ever was. Although he pleads to be killed forthwith, such a fate is too light, declares Alixandre, adding ominously: Or regarde dont de com grande affliction et martire ta charongne doit estre tourmentee pour la reconpensacion de ton delict et de celle grant perte de monde que tu avoies seduit, enchanté et suborné par tes faulces parolles. (97) [Now see with what grievous affliction and suffering your flesh will surely be tormented to compensate for your crime and the great loss of the people you had seduced, bewitched, and suborned with your false words. (101)]

Here Angrés is taxed with the sin of having betrayed not just Arthur but also the many men who were seduced into following him and paid with their lives. When Alixandre throws open the castle gates, planting a banner at the highest point, he delivers his prisoner to Arthur, who has him beheaded and quartered and his head stuck at the end of a lance and placed in the middle of the first gate. It is truly a wretched end for this traitor – and one that would

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serve as an example to any who might consider betraying the trust of Arthur – or of Philip of Burgundy. Indeed, as Szkilnik has observed, Alixandre’s unforgiving treatment of the rebels may well have served as a lesson to the audience for which the prose Cligés was composed.17 We began this essay by evoking the phenomenon of “acculturation” and how aspects of the prose Cligés reflected the reshaping of courtliness in fifteenth-century romance. We have seen that process at work in Szkilnik’s analysis of the siege of Windsor Castle, which lays bare the ideology of this romance. Acculturation is also the motor that determines the prose writer’s decision to downplay the scenes charting the evolving passion of Alixandre and Soredamors.18 More important for our purposes is that it is also at the source of the lively literary style that he adopts. Mindful of the values and tastes of his contemporaries – for whom the details of war and the pageantry associated with it were far more captivating than those of other manifestations of late medieval court life – the prosateur “transmuted” his model in myriad ways, all of which conspire to bring the siege to the forefront and to “stage” it in a more vivid and appealing fashion than had Chrétien. Martha Wallen once observed that the adapter “must have been personally fascinated by battle scenes,”19 and that fascination – apparently absent in Chrétien – makes our anonymous prose writer a terrific teller of war tales.

17 Philip’s treatment of those who revolted against him in Bruges was similarly severe. Ten capital executions occurred on April 30, 1438, and the heads of the condemned were set above the doors of the city (Schnerb, L’État bourguigon, 379). 18 On the other hand, he appears to take considerable interest in love themes when he reworks the passion linking Cligés and Fenice in the second part of the romance. See Joan Tasker Grimbert, “The Fifteenth-Century Prose Cligés: Better Than Just Cutting to the Chase,” Arthuriana 18.3 (2008), 62–72, and “Love and War in the Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Prose Cligés: The Duke of Saxony’s Passion for Fenice,” in War and Peace: Critical Issues in European Societies and Literature 800–1800, ed. Albrecht Classen and Nadia Margolis (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2011), 443–61; and Jonna Kjaer, “Cligés et Fenice, un couple d’amoureux exemplaires dans le Cligès en prose du XVe siècle, roman bourguignon: Le Livre de Alixandre empereur de Constentinoble et de Cligés son filz,” Le Moyen Age 68 (2011), 91–107. 19 Wallen, “The Art of Adaptation,” 284.

Thomas’s Raisun: Désir, Vouloir, Pouvoir David F. Hult

In an important contribution to the interpretation of Thomas’s version of the Tristan romance, Matilda Bruckner built on previous critics’ discussions of structural patterns in the romance, in particular the obsessive recourse to doubling and the continual oscillation between images of unity and duality, one and two, coupling and separation – neatly encompassed, for instance, in the repeated use of the verb partir, and its nominal derivates, which can mean either “to leave, to separate, to divide” or its opposite, “to share” – but extended the framework decisively by including the gestures of the narrator figure in the mix.1 The latter’s participation in this oscillating pattern suggests that there is no single conclusion we can draw about how he, and by extension Thomas, feels about his fictional characters and their actions. As Bruckner puts it succinctly, “[Thomas] can neither endorse nor condemn, but – to the best of his limited ability – only tell.”2 Space does not permit a full discussion of the critical situation to which Bruckner was responding, but suffice it to say that Jean Frappier’s forceful restatement of the “courtly” foundation of Thomas’s work, his articulation of the work’s ideology of fine amor, “la religion de l’amour … principe d’une éthique et d’une foi,”3 was then, and remains today, an unavoidable point of reference, most recently for those who disagree with Frappier’s self-proclaimed idealistic stance (“la foi de Thomas dans l’idéal des ‘fins amants’”4). Important objections to Frappier’s courtly interpretation include those of Tony Hunt, who considers Thomas a “pessimistic commentator on the vicissitudes of earthly love”;5 of Joan Tasker Grimbert, who concludes 1 “The Representation of the Lovers’ Death: Thomas’ Tristan as Open Text,” Tristania 9.1–2 (1983–84), 49–61; later reworked and incorporated in the author’s Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 37–59. Cf. Susan Dannenbaum, “Doubling and Fine Amor in Thomas’ Tristan,” Tristania 5.1 (1979), 3–14. 2 Bruckner, “The Representation,” 58–9. 3 Jean Frappier, “Structure et sens du Tristan: Version commune, version courtoise,” Cahiers de Civilisation médiévale 6 (1963), 255–80 and 441–54, here 260. 4 Frappier, “Structure et sens,” 454. 5 Tony Hunt, “The Significance of Thomas’s Tristan,” Reading Medieval Studies 7 (1981), 41–61, here 52.

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that the work is doubly subversive, undermining both Christian and lay ideals of love;6 and of Tracy Adams, who, adducing an Augustinian model of corrupt human will after the Fall, asserts that, “far from being a glorification of passionate love, Thomas’s version illustrates the plight of a man torn by his unruly will.”7 The majority of critics, both those who see Thomas as a proponent of fine amor and those who conceive of him as a scathing critic of the lovers’ behavior, presuppose that Thomas was a commentator, a moralist, or an ideologue, standing coolly at a distance as he produced a narrative of exemplary or instructional value. Is there a way to negotiate these two conflicting characterizations of the romance narrator, on the one hand, as per Bruckner, a double voice of “lyric identification and critical distance”8 that defers judgment to the readers of the text, and, on the other hand, the narrator as self-conscious commentator on the positive or negative aspects of love? In the introduction to their recent edition and translation of Thomas’s romance, Ian Short and Emmanuèle Baumgartner provide an unusually subtle assessment of the narrator’s relation to his fiction, echoing the way many readers interpret the text, especially through Thomas’s lengthy treatment of Tristan’s inner deliberations before marrying Yseut aux Blanches Mains, which they term a “monologue de la mauvaise foi”: “Il est évident que Thomas condamne au nom de la morale autant que d’un certain bon sens une décision qui n’est pas fondée en raison mais qui ne fait que dénuder le désir de jouissance du héros.”9 Yet they also recognize, as did Bruckner, the affinity between narrator and protagonist: “Les jeux sur le langage, cette permanente dissection du moi auxquels se livrent le héros et le narrateur …”10 But, as Bruckner suggested so eloquently, the narrator, as an authorial construct, denies all pretentions to authority or mastery. Her discussion proposes an alternate possibility, if not a corrective, to critical approaches that try to import a predigested critical paradigm (be it the fuzzy one of the “doctrine of courtly love,” the anti-adultery stance of Christian morality, or even the modern discourse of “psychoanalysis”) to explain an authorial intentionality that is not only difficult to discern, but perhaps willfully ambivalent. Indeed, the ambivalence of Thomas’s technical vocabulary is frequently twisted to fit the interpretive paradigm, rather than being analyzed on its own terms in order to produce an interpretation. What I would like to do in the pages that follow 6 Joan Tasker Grimbert, “Voleir vs. poeir: Frustrated Desire in Thomas’s Tristan,” Philological Quarterly 69.2 (1990), 153–65. 7 Tracy Adams, “‘Pur vostre cor su jo em paine’: The Augustinian Subtext of Thomas’s Tristan,” Medium Aevum 68 (1999), 278–91, here 288. 8 Bruckner, “The Representation,” 59. 9 Thomas, Le Roman de Tristan, suivi de la Folie Tristan de Berne et La Folie Tristan d’Oxford, based upon the texts as edited by Félix Lecoy. Champion Classiques (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 33–4. 10 Le Roman de Tristan, 35.

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is to come back to Tristan’s monologue and the accompanying commentary by the narrator in order to show, through a careful analysis of Thomas’s terminology, that there is a type of continuity that runs through the passage, a continuity anchored, ultimately, in the key concept of raisun. Let’s start at the beginning. Thomas’s romance, widely circulated in the Middle Ages, has come down to us in a sequence of fragments that amount to no more than 25 percent of its putative original length. The fragments cover parts of the romance that cluster around the ending parts of the narrative, which is to say that if we accept Félix Lecoy’s estimate that Thomas’s poem numbered perhaps 12,000, but a maximum of 13,000, total lines, all but 154 of the surviving lines of Thomas’s poem, some 3150 in total, would be found in the final third of the romance, roughly within lines 7500–12,000 of the hypothetical complete romance, extending from the moment of Tristan’s flight from Mark’s court, after having received Queen Yseut’s ring, to the tragic conclusion.11 At best, it is methodologically questionable to take these parts of the romance as representing the whole or as constituting Thomas’s attitude toward his material or even his interests as an artist, as so many critics have done, given its distinctly somber tone (as though he were singlemindedly preoccupied with infidelity, pain, sorrow, and a death urge). Yet it is perhaps even more questionable to follow Frappier’s path, which means relying on a hypothetical and potentially unfounded vue d’ensemble based on the other surviving versions of the Tristan legend and paying little attention to the letter of the text.12 Indeed, one of the reasons readers come back continually to Thomas’s fascinating fragmented romance is attributable to his extraordinary rhetorical genius and his intense, if not opaque or even incoherent, account of Tristan’s deliberations before choosing to marry Yseut aux Blanches Mains, to which I now turn.

11 For these calculations, see Félix Lecoy, “Sur l’étendue probable du Tristan de Thomas,” Romania 109 (1988), 378–9; and Michael Benskin, Tony Hunt, and Ian Short, “Un nouveau fragment du Tristan de Thomas,” Romania 113 (1992–95), 289–319. 12 It is astonishing to consider that Frappier’s nearly fifty-page discussion of Thomas’s romance focuses predominantly on two aspects that have not survived among the fragments that have come down to us: the nature and effect of the love potion; and Yseut’s exculpation before God. In both cases, Frappier relies therefore not on Thomas’s text, but on Bédier’s reconstruction, in order to make authoritative statements about Thomas’s meaning and the global structure of his romance. Methodologically speaking, this is flawed to say the least, for it leads Frappier to accept Bédier’s reconstruction of Thomas’s text as the original, for example: “Chez Thomas en effet Marc a bu pendant la nuit nuptiale une part de ce qui restait du philtre, alors qu’Yseut s’est bien gardée de l’imiter” (“Structure et sens,” 275). Not only had Bédier put part of this passage in italics, showing it to be a borrowing from Eilhart von Oberg (whose version, as is well known, represents a tradition unrelated to that spawned by Thomas), but the recent discovery of the Carlisle fragment strongly suggests that the version containing this detail, itself explicitly rejected by Gottfried von Strasburg in his adaptation of Thomas, was not in the latter’s original text.

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The problems in appoaching this episode are both philological and interpretive. The passage containing Tristan’s inner deliberations and the narrator’s commentary upon it is transmitted in a single surviving manuscript fragment, Sneyd 1, and, as any editor knows, no handwritten copy is exempt from error or incoherence, due to missing lines, mechanical error, or misunderstanding (and, consequently, revision) on the part of the scribe. Sneyd 1 is no exception. Since Bédier’s landmark edition published in 1902, editors have varyingly emended or rearranged the text in order to “make sense” of it, yet rarely do critics take account of the potential disparities lying either between the author’s original and the necessarily flawed scribal copy or between the manuscript reading and the edited text.13 While editors can “silently” emend their text, such as is the case in the Lettres Gothiques edition by Philippe Walter, most recent editors have carefully recorded their difference from the manuscript reading, either at the bottom of the page (Wind, Bonath) or within a textual apparatus in an appendix (Payen, Lecoy, Gregory, Marchello-Nizia, Short/Baumgartner), frequently acknowledging emendations made by Bédier in his edition, which remained the primary source for Thomas’s text during the first half of the twentieth century. But if readers don’t pay careful attention to a given editor’s changes they are at his or her mercy and, indeed, abandon the text’s rich interpretive possibilities to hypothetical manipulations, which are, in the style of editors, meant to reduce, rather than highlight, possible ambiguities. Of course, one can monitor editorial alterations, but scribal ones cannot always be ascertained, so that the results of a lexical study such as what follows, attempting to articulate neighboring semantic fields, can only be considered tentative, reflecting broad tendencies at best. Let me take one example where a seemingly microscopic editorial adjustment makes a huge difference in our understanding of Tristan’s occasionally twisted musings. At the crucial moment that Tristan, based upon his physical longing for Yseut aux Blanches Mains, decides that he must not only sleep with her but in fact marry her, the narrator provides the following reasoning:

13 Joseph Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, poème du XIIe siècle, SATF, 2 vols (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1902–5). Other editions consulted and referred to in this essay are Les Fragments du Tristan de Thomas, ed. Bartina H. Wind (Leiden: Brill, 1950); Les Tristan en vers, ed. Jean Charles Payen (Paris: Garnier, 1974); Thomas, Tristan, ed. Gesa Bonath (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1985); Tristan et Iseut: Les poèmes français, La saga norroise, ed. Philippe Walter with Daniel Lacroix (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1989); Le Roman de Tristan, ed. Félix Lecoy, CFMA 113 (Paris: Champion, 1991); Thomas of Britain, Tristran, ed. Stewart Gregory, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series A, vol. 78 (New York and London: Garland, 1991); Tristan et Yseut: Les premières versions européennes, gen. ed. Christiane Marchello-Nizia (Paris: Gallimard, 1995); and Thomas, Le Roman de Tristan, ed. Baumgartner and Short (see n. 8). References to Thomas’s text will identify the fragment and line numbers from Wind’s edition, followed by line numbers from the edition by Baumgartner and Short, indicated by B/S.

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Pur ço volt femme espuser Qu’Isolt nen puisse blamer Que encontre raisun delit quierge, Que sa proeise nen afirge. (Sneyd 1, 193–6; B/S, 399–402)

This is the text as found in the manuscript, with the exception of punctuation and diacritical marks, of course. As written, “Isolt” almost of necessity functions syntactically as direct object of the verb “blamer” (since there is no other object expressed), so the passage would translate as “He [Tristan] wants to marry a woman so that he will not be able to blame Yseut for seeking pleasure against the dictates of reason, and without it befitting her worthiness.” As part of the psychological portrait sketched by Thomas, the marriage will in some way act as a remedy for Tristan, one that will eradicate any spiteful blame caused by his jealousy (as expressed earlier in the knight’s monologue) concerning her continued intercourse with her husband – for he will be in exactly the same position! At least one editor, following the lead of Bédier, has emended the second line of this passage, replacing the manuscript reading nen with nel (or ne le), an alteration that totally reverses the grammatical structure of the line: “He wants to marry a woman so that Yseut cannot blame him for seeking pleasure against the dictates of reason, and without it befitting his valor.” Three editors (Lecoy, Bonath, Gregory) have accepted the emendation (thus preferring the second reading of the line), while one editor (Wind) punctuates “nen,” simple negative, as “n’en” and treats the en as a pronoun referring proleptically to the potential reasons for blame.14 Finally, two editors (Marchello-Nizia,Walter) maintain the manuscript reading but translate the passage as though it were the emended text, thus including a masculine direct object pronoun in their respective translations that is absent from their edited text. Manifestly, the text, emended or not, is a brilliant example of Thomas’s ambiguity and twisting of perspective, of ideas, and of words throughout this passage – a twisting that is itself complicated by the rational view projected upon the text by the editor/translator: it is fairly straightforward to understand that Tristan protects himself from reproach by dint of the marital obligation (as opposed to simply sleeping with Yseut aux Blanches Mains in order to satisfy his carnal needs); it is considerably more unexpected to understand the narrator as saying that Tristan wants to marry the second Yseut in order to effect an alteration of his own feelings.15 14 In a lengthy note to l. 194 of Sneyd 1, Wind elaborates the two possibilities, showing a preference for the first translation. Her translations do not however take account of the fact that both verbs at the rhyme, quierge and afirge, are subjunctives, dependent upon the verb blamer as potential reasons for blame rather than declarative statements. 15 In his note to this passage, Lecoy entertains this more complex understanding of the passage: “l’idée que Tristan a ici en vue autant la justification d’Yseut que la sienne propre (les deux allant d’ailleurs de pair, du moins dans son esprit) ne manque pas de délicatesse” (137).

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This passage further illustrates one of the nagging problems of Thomas’s narrative and which I would like to explore in the brief space remaining: the sometimes inscrutable, and apparently contradictory, proliferation of abstract terms. The words raisun, which is itself a questionable factor in a decision plagued by unruly passion, and proeise are worth considering. The latter term is typically used to refer to courage in battle, prowess – decidedly masculine qualities. In Thomas’s use of the term elsewhere (two times), it refers exclusively to Tristan. Depending upon the two possible translations listed above, the reference of the term here shifts from Yseut (first translation) to Tristan (second translation). Is this an argument in favor of the second reading of the passage, or rather a less usual, but acceptable, application of the term to Yseut, referring to her honor, her dignity, her valor (as, for instance, Payen understands it)? One has to say, I think, that the context, principally determined by syntax, as is so often the case in Old French, provides the answer to the question. If the editor changes the syntax, transforming nen to nel, (s)­he changes the meaning of the term. The understanding of raisun in Thomas is decidedly more delicate and itself merited an extended discussion by Frappier in an article that, published in tandem with his important Tristan essay, served as an important companion piece to it.16 In the passage in question, Frappier interpreted the use of the word raisun as reflecting “une valeur morale, on est même tenté de dire une valeur spirituelle,” because “‘raisun’ s’oppose à delit (plaisir charnel, œuvre de chair) et se trouve à peu près synonyme d’amur.”17 Tony Hunt rightly opposed this interpretation, but his reasons are not particularly convincing since, following upon a sequence of quotations from religious texts, he sees in raisun a “dispassionate, moral faculty,”18 which is clearly not operative here. The point is not whether raisun is opposed to carnality (clearly it is not, for raisun never seems to have opposed Tristan’s sexual pleasures taken with Queen Yseut), but rather why Tristan (or Yseut) cannot be blamed for seeking pleasure in opposition to “reason.” The answer in either case has nothing to do with morality per se, but rather with a context determined by social rules and restraints: it is lawful marriage that sanctions, indeed obliges, sexual relations between spouses and therefore does not allow of blame. In the case of Tristan, at this troubled moment in his deliberations, marriage will make him blameless for paying the marital debt, just as Yseut is herself blameless for submitting to her husband’s will, over which she has no choice. Raisun is here neither “love,” as Frappier would have it, nor morality (pace Hunt), but rather a social logic that dictates (and excuses) certain comportments. From Tristan’s perspective, 16 Jean Frappier, “Sur le mot ‘Raison’ dans le Tristan de Thomas d’Angleterre,” in Literary and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Helmut A. Hatzfeld, ed. Alessandro S. Crisafulli (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), 163–76. 17 Frappier, “Sur le mot ‘Raison,’” 171–2. 18 Hunt, “The Significance,” 48.

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Yseut might disapprove of his having sex with his wife (it could be “against her will”), but once he is married she can’t claim that it is contrary to the expected comportment in that situation, nor can she say that it is incompatible with his valor, his proeise. The idea of a form of “reason” that is not anchored in one particular context but rather as a faculty that directs the logical analysis of a particular situation according to any of a number of possible contexts, implicitly moving from such analysis to action, provides in my opinion a better way of synthesizing Thomas’s use of the term than Frappier’s analysis would indicate. Frappier admits that the majority of examples of the term refer to a motive, an excuse, or a justification for an action – logical ways of understanding the relationship between a cause, an act, and its consequences. The point of Frappier’s study of the term, however, was to show that in five examples of its usage Thomas is introducing a new notion of the term, giving it a moral valence and, further, as we have noted above, making it an equivalent to love itself. But this attempt to fit Thomas’s text to his preconceived notion of fine amor, as a function of individual will, leads Frappier to the dubious move of equating amur and raisun when the two terms are associated, as when Thomas declares that “Amur et raisun le [Tristan] destraint, / E le voleir de sun cors vaint” (Sneyd 1, 601–2, B/S, 807–8) [Love and reason exert pressure upon him and vanquish the will of his body]. Frappier’s commentary: the “étroite association des deux mots indique assez leur synonymie.”19 But doesn’t the association of the two words simply imply a concordance between the two distinct faculties, as I might say that “my mind and my heart determined me to act in this way,” without implying that my mind and my heart are equivalent to each other? Isn’t Thomas suggesting, rather, that raisun represents here a mental faculty that is in support of the protagonist’s love, a logic or rationale of love that dictates how to act in a specific situation?20 In another one of Frappier’s examples of this interpretation, Thomas decries the fickle nature of humankind and states: Car trop par changent lor talent E lor desir et lor voleir Cuntre raisun, cuntre poeir. (Sneyd 1, 294–6; B/S. vv. 500–2) [For they excessively alter their inclination, their desire and their will against reason, against poeir.]

Frappier is a bit more judicious in his interpretation of this passage, saying Frappier, “Sur le mot ‘Raison,’” 173. Bonath, in particular, totally dismantles Frappier’s argument, if not his entire article: “raisun geht nicht in amur auf, sondern steht neben amur” (34) [raisun is not absorbed by amur, but stands side-by-side with it]. 19 20

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that one could take raisun to designate here “l’élément modérateur de la pensée, la rectitude d’esprit, l’équilibre du jugement” but that the context would seem to make of it “une loi fondamentale de la fine amor,” as though these two statements were totally incompatible.21 Indeed, it does seem to show raisun as a faculty of mind, denoting stability, rationality, and logical behavior, that is itself a necessary component of love. The context does not indicate that this is a “fundamental law” of fine amor, even less a synonym for love, but rather that those who think they are advancing the cause of love or, alternately, who want to deliver themselves from love by taking certain actions, are bringing disaster upon themselves by not listening to reason, that is, their good sense and the logical comportment it dictates. Before we continue with the implications of the idea of raisun, a few words need to be said about Thomas’s use of abstractions in a more general sense and the way that critics have dealt with the most prominent of them: poeir, voleir, desir, amur, deduit, delit, nature. Some of these terms are fairly transparent, such as delit and deduit, both of which refer to joy and pleasure taken in a physical context, delit (with its verbal form delitier) being most often pointed toward a narrowly carnal sense, and deduit (along with deduire) referring to joy more generally, extending from physical pleasure to the mental joy or even euphoria accompanying it.22 As critics have noted, however, Thomas’s use of voleir, desir, and poeir poses distinct interpretive problems. Both Frappier and Jodogne have criticized Thomas for his inconsistency or imprecision, but counter to their arguments Bruckner rightly suggested that “it does not seem … to be a lack of precision on Thomas’s part, so much as a sign of his penetration into the world of his own character’s ambiguity and ambivalence.”23 Initially, the key word desir refers unambiguously to Tristan’s unwavering passion for Queen Yseut, while poeir refers to what is currently under his control or within his power, namely Yseut aux Blanches Mains’s expressed affection for him, as in the following couplet:

Frappier, “Sur le mot ‘Raison,’” 172. It is unclear to me what Jodogne had in mind when he criticized Thomas for using deduit to refer to “la joie complète, celle du cœur et celle des sens” (105) in Turin 1, v. 74 (B/S, v. 1168): “E nuls d’aus nen i a deduit” [And none of them [the four lovers, Mark, Yseut la Blonde, Tristan, Yseut aux Blanches Mains] has any deduit in the situation]. It seems clear that, as in other examples, deduit can refer to pleasure, joy, or happiness without there being any intimation of carnal pleasures. After all, it is stated only a few lines later that Mark has his way with Yseut’s body, but that he is not satisfied with this situation: “Del cors puet faire son delit./Mes ice poi a lui soffit” (Turin 1, vv. 83–4; B/S, vv. 1177–8). To use Thomas’s terminology, Mark has delit without deduit. It is noteworthy that every instance of delit in Sneyd 1 refers to physical pleasure or joy in a love relationship whereas deduit and deduire are also used to refer to joyous celebration in public with no sexual component whatsoever (Sneyd 1, 385; Douce, 619, 797, 887). 23 Bruckner, “The Representation of the Lovers’ Death,” n. 8, 60. 21 22

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Quant mun desir ne puis aveir, Tenir m’estuit a mun pueir. (Sneyd 1, 35–6; B/S, 241–2) [Since I cannot have my desire, I must abide by what is in my power.]

There is a slight shifting of the valence of the word poeir, however, when Tristan attributes it to Queen Yseut, for Yseut’s problem is of course that she is powerless in her situation. So when Tristan turns back from his jealousy to reassert Yseut’s faithfulness to him, he states that her heart “m’ad bien tenu / E cumforté a sun poeir” (Sneyd 1, 60–1, B/S, 266–7) [has been devoted to me and comforted me to the extent it was possible (lit: in her power)]. Here and in other subsequent references to Yseut’s poeir (Sneyd 1, 70, 75, B/S, 276, 281), it applies not to her power but, used in a hypothetical construction, to a possibility or potentiality for action. A later use of the word confirms this use of poeir as a “potential” for action: when Tristan joins Yseut aux Blanches Mains in their nuptial bed, he notices the ring that the queen had given him at their last meeting and instantly regrets what has happened; the narrator states, “Sis poers lui est a contraire” (Sneyd 1, 399, B/S, 605) [His possibility to take action [that is, to consummate his marriage] is in opposition to him]. In one final example several lines later, the word is used to refer to the failure to take action in bed, and therefore designates simply his comportment, whether or not it involves an exercise of power: “Ele savra par mun poeir / Que vers altre ai greinur voleir” (Sneyd 1, 509–10, 715–16) [She (Yseut aux Blanches Mains) will know by my behavior that my longing for another is greater].24 As critics have frequently noted, the distinction between desir and voleir (with the associated term volunté) is difficult, partly due to an apparent inconsistency in Thomas’s use of them. Jodogne’s characterization of desir as “l’amour sous ces deux formes [“le désir sensuel” and “le sentiment”], ou l’une d’entre elles” and voleir as “la volonté délibérée” provides a good

24 Because Grimbert does not consider the broad semantic range of poeir, only seeing it in its narrowest meaning as “power,” she interprets buen poeir in Sneyd 1, 253–4, B/S, 459–60 (“E gurpisent lor buen poeir/Pur prendre lor malveis voleir”), against context, by considering it to be “the power and will to renounce bad habits rather than substituting one misguided passion for another” (“Voleir vs. poeir,” 159). With the understanding of poeir as a potentiality, we can easily understand the meaning of the expression in context as a “good possibility,” referring to Tristan’s potential to obtain the object of his desire (Yseut la Blonde) eventually, if only he remains constant, a meaning that accords with the narrator’s criticism of people’s fickleness and his restatement of buen poeir only a few lines later as “le bien que aveir puet” [the good that he has the possibility to obtain] (Smeyd 1, 257; B/S, 463). Tony Hunt glosses the expression in accordance with this reading, but pointing it toward Tristan’s behavior with Yseut aux Blanches Mains, his “freedom to remain disengaged” (“Textual Notes on Béroul and Thomas: Some Problems of Interpretation and Emendation,” Tristania 1 [1975], 19–38, here 30).

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starting point for analysis.25 The definition of desir itself begs another question: what is the relationship between amur and desir? Are they merely synonyms, as some have suggested? Initially, it would appear that the two terms are used differently, desir designating the inner manifestation of love in an individual and amur, either the disembodied feeling (subject, for instance, to personification) or the state seen as a kind of abstraction.26 Whereas desir frequently occurs in locutions with the verb avoir – to have or, more often, not to have one’s desire – this is only exceptionally the case with amur, which tends to be found as a noun by itself, as the object of a preposition, or as the object of a verb indicating eradication or loss of this state (gurpir l’amur, oblier l’amur, se jeter d’amur, tolir l’amur, retraire d’amur). The two words are sometimes interchangeable, but not always: (en)cuntre amur and (en)cuntre desir occur side by side and one of the closing lines of the work, “Tristrans murut pur sun desir” (Sneyd 2, 816; B/S, 3271) is repeated two lines later with amur substituted for desir; however, it is hard to imagine desir being substituted for amur in the expressions “talenz d’amurs,” “delit d’amur,” “nostre amur,” or “l’amur partir de nos.” Furthermore, the narrator provides a sort of theory of fine amor (Sneyd 1, 317–36; B/S, 523–42), but there is no comparable “theory” of desir. As far as the distinction between desir and voleir is concerned, their interrelationship evolves in a specific direction during the stages of Tristan’s deliberations in Sneyd 1.27 In the first five uses of desir in the fragment, the term consistently refers to Tristan’s desire/passion for Yseut la Blonde, in negative locutions indicating his despair and anguish, either in connection with a form of the modal verb poeir and the verb aveir (e.g., “Quant mun desir ne puis aveir”) or with the verb gurpir (Sneyd 1, 33–4; B/S, 239–40). In this initial stage, voleir seems to refer to a will pointed toward some action, as Jodogne suggested: the narrator speaks of Tristan wanting to change his will (voleir) when he cannot have his desir, so that he can do what is in his power; Tristan speaks of Yseut’s will (voleir) to comfort him (Sneyd 1, 70; B/S, 276) or to have someone look for him (Sneyd 1, 93; B/S, 299), which cannot be realized because she doesn’t have the power to do so. Whereas desir seems unwavering, voleir in these initial passages connotes change and variability, as when Tristan jealously imagines Yseut’s way of dealing with her situation, a mirror image of his own:

25 Omer Jodogne, “Comment Thomas d’Angleterre a compris l’amour de Tristan et d’Iseut,” Les Lettres romanes 19 (1965), 103–19, here 104. 26 Jodogne further argues cogently that, unlike Chrétien de Troyes or even Béroul, Thomas does not personify the concept of amur (“Comment Thomas a compris,” 107–12). 27 I limit my discussion to the noun desir and the nominalized infinitive voleir, as the verbs desirier and voleir (and for that matter, covaitier), when used in conjugated form, have a much looser semantic range (similar to the English verb to want or modern French vouloir) and are frequently interchangeable with each other.

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Prenge ço que puet aveir, E aturt bien a sun voleir. (Sneyd 1, 113–14; B/S, 319–20) [Let her [Yseut] take what she can have and simply align it with her will.]

It is surprising, then, to find Tristan using the word desir to apply to Yseut’s feelings for Mark by dint of her carnal relations with him: “Quant de lui ad sun desir” (Sneyd 1, v. 101; B/S, v. 309). Given that the reference to Yseut’s desir being satisfied by King Mark is voiced by Tristan in the midst of his jealous rant, it is highly likely that Thomas was using this confusion (or even perversion) in terminology in order to reflect Tristan’s inner mental state. A next stage in the use of the two terms punctuates the climactic point at the end of the narrator’s commentary on Tristan’s monologue when he announces Tristan’s decision to marry Yseut aux Blanches Mains by coupling voleir and desir with each other as though equivalents: Pur le nun e pur la belté Que Tristrans i [in Yseut aux Blanches Mains] ad trové Chiet en desir e en voleir Que la meschine volt aveir. (Sneyd 1, 229–32; B/S, 435–8) [On account of the name and the beauty that Tristan found in Yseut aux Blanches Mains, he succumbs to the desire and the will to possess the maiden.]

The alliance thus established between the two terms continues through the narrator’s further commentary on the shortcomings of fickleness, culminating in the debasement of desir to the level of voleir, in which the unthinkable occurs: malveis voleir is doubled by malvais desir (Sneyd 1, 254, 256; B/S, 460, 462), very nearly a contradiction in terms, inasmuch as “evil” or “debased” desire is about as incongruous (in Thomas’s context) as “evil” or “debased” love. A few lines later in this downward spiral, the narrator shows desir itself to be no longer a sentiment bespeaking constancy but itself subject to change: Mais trop par aiment novelerie Homes e femmes ensement, Car trop par changent lor talent E lor desir e lor voleir Cuntre raisun, cuntre poeir. (Sneyd 1, 292–6; B/S, 498–502) [But men and women alike are excessively smitten by fickleness, for they too often alter their inclination and their desire and their will, contrary to reason and contrary to what is possible.]

Rather than see this shift as simply a sign of Thomas’s (or his narrator’s)

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inconsistency, it is important to note that here the latter is recapitulating Tristan’s quandary both from the inside and from the outside: Tristan’s confusion bleeds into the narrator’s own moralizing discourse, or rather, the perverse decision to marry Yseut aux Blanches Mains betrays the very vocabulary used to denote the internalization of an unwavering love, namely, desir. The terminological dynamic then transitions into a third stage when desir and voleir are not only distinguished once again, but repositioned so that voleir occupies the unique position of a debased will, distinguished by its “concupiscence charnelle,” as Bédier put it, acting against the nobler leanings of desir, henceforth realigned both with raisun and amur, as in the following crucial passage: Sa nature proveir se volt, La raison se tient a Ysolt. Le desir qu’il ad vers la reïne Tolt le voleir vers la meschine; Le desir lui tolt le voleir, Que nature n’i ad poeir. Amur e raisun le destraint, E le voleir de sun cors vaint. (Sneyd 1, 595–602; B/S, 801–6) [His lust wants to manifest itself, [but] reason is on [Queen] Ysolt’s side. The desire he has for the queen removes his sexual appetite for the maiden: Desire removes his carnal attraction, for lust has no power there. Love and reason restrain him and vanquish his body’s carnal urge.]

As with the terms raisun and poeir that we have already discussed, desir and voleir, however closely allied they may be, have fairly broad yet largely distinct semantic ranges. The reason why voleir can in the last instance come to mean “carnal desire” corresponds to its semantic field from the beginning, which pertains to the active will, subject to changeability and redirection, and pointed toward outward action of some kind. In this last passage, it is not frequently noted that there are two different voleirs, two forms of wilfullness, at work: “A sun voleir est a contraire / De laissier sun buen u del faire” (Sneyd 1, 593–4, B/S, 799–800) [it is contrary to his voleir, whether he refrains from having his way [with Yseut aux Blanches Mains] or whether he performs the act]. One voleir is dictated by nature and his carnal desire for his wife (the “voleir de sun cors”), the other is urged by amur, raisun, and desir (for Queen Yseut) which, acting in concert, inspire him to perform in quite the opposite way, leading him to the choice of abstinence (the voleir inspired not by his body but by his heart, by his desir). One must thus understand abstinence here as an act, not only dictated by the statement that it is contrary to his voleir, but also, as we saw above, that it is associated with the term poeir.

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The above rapid discussion of Thomas’s abstract terminology – clearly an ordering principle of the episode known as “The Marriage” – illustrates one important point about the medieval romancer’s work, the fact that the various terms function together as a system teasing out the subtleties of Tristan’s deliberations. The isolation of one or another of these terms, as is so often the case in the critical tradition, not only risks misinterpreting the text but it also tends to be reductive in terms of the romancer’s global structuring of psychological, rational, and physical motivations. A careful reading of the text shows an author fully in control of his rhetorical tools at the same time that he might be constrained, as some critics have suggested, by the limited lexical sophistication of his twelfth-century vernacular.28 On the other hand, as Bruckner and others have reminded us, Thomas significantly attenuates any position of authoritative mastery by deferring to his readers’ judgment at a few points in the fragments, including the oft-cited epilogue, while likewise claiming a lack of personal experience in (and therefore a lack of “knowledge” of) the sentiments he describes for us. What indeed is the relationship for Thomas between knowledge and experience, between reason and love, between mastery and desire? As Frappier noted, in addition to the examples we have already discussed, Thomas uses the term raisun for “aesthetic” purposes, in order to justify the particulars of his version of the Tristan legend, of which he tells us there were many in circulation: Thomas iço [the version told by others] granter ne volt, E si volt par raisun mustrer Qu’iço ne put pas esteer. … [Thomas explains his reasons for the superiority of his version] Il [the other storytellers] sunt del cunte forsveié E de la verur esluingné, E se ço ne volent granter, Ne voil vers eus estriver; Tengent le lur e jo le men: La raisun s’i pruvera ben! (Douce, 862–4, 879–84; B/S, 2284–6, 2301–6) [Thomas does not wish to give his consent to this [version], but instead wants to show through rational proof that it could not have happened thus.   The other storytellers have strayed from the story and distanced themselves from the truth, but if they do not want to accept this, I 28 In a note to Sneyd 1, 194, Wind states, “Dans tout ce passage nous sentons Thomas aux prises avec une langue qui ne se prêtait pas encore à ses raffinements psychologiques” (Les Fragments, 73).

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don’t wish to argue with them. Let them maintain their [version] and I mine: What makes sense will be readily apparent!]

Used twice in this passage, the word raisun, coupled with verur (“truth”), designates a concept related to plausibility or vraisemblance, “truth” here being understood as a function of fiction, not historical event. It is important to note that both versions of the story are means to an end, paths (to use Thomas’s metaphor) constructed by the author to lead to the same conclusion, in this case Tristan’s fatal wound leading directly to the tragic death of the two lovers as imposed by the legend itself. In this regard, one often forgets that the elaborate monologues of Tristan and the narrator’s commentary – the bulk of what is contained in Sneyd 1 – are themselves without any doubt Thomas’s modification to an earlier version of the legend which, if we may judge by Eilhart’s version (or even by the Norse Saga), would have left Tristan’s marriage to Yseut aux Blanches Mains unexplained, perhaps because it was simply incomprehensible. Why in the world would Tristan, victim of the love potion, marry another woman and only then refuse to consummate this marriage, fulfill the wedding debt, because of his love for the queen? How to account not only for the fatal decision, but for the stunning reversal? This was the task Thomas set for himself and, with his inexorable raisun, he proceeded to provide the “reason” (both “explanation” and “reasoning”) behind Tristan’s folly. But at the same time, he explains Tristan’s return to reason on his wedding night, shown to be a return to amur and desir, not through a rational calculation, but through sensual perception (vision) and a physical token, the ring, figuring Yseut and her fidelity as a true presence trumping the seductive physical presence of his new bride. Ultimately, I think that the challenge taken up by Thomas was how to communicate a story of passion, of desire – a variety of folly – through a discourse of reason. How to reconcile the rational vision of the clerc and the passionate feelings of the lover? Perhaps the answer is to be understood in Thomas’s famous epilogue, where he dedicates the story to lovers of all stripes, suggesting that it might serve as an essample, but providing no guide to what that exemplary meaning might be. He does however say that all types of lovers can hopefully use the text as a form of consolation, presumably a comparison of Tristan and Yseut’s story with their own trials and tribulations, and find therein “Choses u se puissent recorder.” It is clear that recorder is a key concept here, but one that is scarcely straightforward. Most often translated in a non-reflexive way, the reflexive verb soi recorder can be rendered as “to remember,” “to reflect,” or “to meditate.” The Anglo-Norman online dictionary adds to these definitions “to take heart,” while Christiane Marchello-Nizia translates it as “se reconnaître” [to recognize themselves]. I think that Thomas’s use of the verb to describe the work left to his intended readers – every type of lover, as he specifies – probably incorporates all of

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these faculties: memory, reflection, self-recognition. But it is important to note that the center of the infinitive – cor – comes from the word for “heart,” somewhat at a remove from the cool reasoning and analytical powers typically associated with the romance writer. Now, there is a passage on the heart which is typically passed over in Tristan’s monologue, a passage devoted to communication and understanding by and through the heart – one brief, sublime moment when Tristan’s jealousy and lack of faith in Yseut are set aside: Jo sai bien, si parti em fust, Mis cuers par le suen le soüst; Mal, ne bien, ne rien ne fist, Que mis cuers tost nel sentist. Par le mien cuer ai bien sentu Que li suens m’ad bien tenu E cumforté a sun poeir. (Sneyd 1, 55–61; B/S, 261–7) [I know well that if she had separated from me, my heart would know it from hers; never did she do anything, good or evil, without my heart instantly feeling it. Through my heart I have truly felt that hers has remained devoted to me and comforted me to the extent possible.]

The communication by and through the heart, not according to certain knowledge but rather to a type of intuition, not according to rational argumentation but to the feelings stirred up by narrative fictions, this perhaps was Thomas’s impossible goal as he chose to realign the consummate legend of fatal passion to an uncommon yoking of amur and raisun.

Humanimals: The Future of Courtliness in the Conte du Papegau Virginie Greene

When I chose the Conte du Papegau as the focus of my essay for this volume, I did not realize I was following a tradition. The Papegau figures among the studies given to Hans-Erich Keller in 1993, Douglas Kelly in 1994, and Karl Uitti in 2000. Since the authors of these dedicatory essays are Norris Lacy, Jane Taylor, and Lori Walters, I feel that I am in excellent company. Something in this atypical Arthurian romance may make it particularly fit for celebrating the works and career of a colleague, mentor, and friend. I therefore propose to transform an unspoken nascent practice into the custom that all future Festschrift offered to a specialist of French medieval literature include a study on the Papegau.1 For Gaston Paris, the Conte du Papegau was a conte à dormir debout.2 The expression implies that if a story induces you to fall asleep on the spot, it is not because the story is deadly dull but because it is as absurd, inconsistent, and implausible as a dream. Modern scholars would agree with Paris about the oniric quality of the Papegau, but after Freud, Jung, and surrealism, it is difficult to reject a work of art under the pretext that it feels like a dream. Still, the Papegau does not feel like the dream of someone who would have a personal unconscious, feeding his or her creative self. It feels more like a collective dream, fed by deliberate clichés and well-known motifs. The unconscious revealed in this text (if any) is the unconscious of medieval Arthurian literature, in its dotage.3 1 The romance has been known for a long time under the title Le Chevalier au Papegau, but the editors of its most recent edition have prefered Le Conte du Papegau, according to the explicit of the unique manuscript. All my Old French citations come from Le Conte du Papegau, ed. Hélène Charpentier and Patricia Victorin (Paris: Champion, 2004). 2 Gaston Paris, “Le chevalier du perroquet,” Histoire Littéraire de la France 30 (1888), 103–10, here 109. Cited by P. Victorin, “Le perroquet en cage et le chevalier Arthur à la découverte du monde dans le Chevalier du Papegau: le monde, l’autre monde et l’immonde,” in Le monde et l’autre monde: actes du colloque arthurien de Rennes (8–9 mars 2001), ed. Denis Hüe and Christine Ferlampin-Acher (Orléans: Paradigme, 2002), 397–423, here 423. 3 On the feeling of decadence the Papegau may provoke in readers who know

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Patricia Victorin, the author of four articles on the Papegau and one of the editors of the Champion edition, has obviously developed a liking for it, but her appreciation remains restrained and almost apologetic: Cette petite parenthèse qu’est le bref roman du Chevalier du Papegau ne laissera guère de traces dans la littérature arthurienne, comme en témoigne l’unique manuscrit conservé ou encore la réticence actuelle des médiévistes qui hésitent à étudier un récit comparable à une marqueterie sans prétention, un petit roman facétieux et divertissant où l’itinéraire du chevalier le destine purement et simplement à rentrer à sa cour.4 [The small parenthesis which is the short romance The Knight with the Papegau will not leave much of a trace in Arthurian literature. A proof of this is that it is preserved in a single manuscript and that reticent medievalists are currently hesitating to study a story comparable to an unpretentious marquetry, a mischevious and entertaining small romance, in which a knight’s itinerary simply leads him back to his court.]

Victorin sums up the general impression that scholars who have made a detour via this parenthetical work express in their own parenthetical writing about it. The Papegau is charmingly light, fluffy, and decadent, deliberately out of touch with reality, and shamelessly derivative. Gaston Paris sees as its only redeeming quality “une certaine rapidité dans le récit” [a certain rapidity in the narrative], which prevents its inconsequential absurdities from becoming unbearably boring.5 Since the 1990s, medievalists have become more tolerant and curious with regard to later Arthurian texts. After all, their authors were, if nothing else, experts in early Arthurian literature. The Papegau is not only a remake of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances and Renaut de Baujeu’s Le Biau Desconnu, but also a remake of remakes such as the German Wigalois, the Italian Carduino, the English Lybeaus Desconus, and probably others.6 This the Arthurian corpus well, see Anne Berthelot, “Arthur ou le Chevalier du Papegault. Décadence d’une fonction, décadence d’un genre,” in König Artus und der Heilige Graal, ed. Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok (Greifswald: Reineke, 1994), 17–26; Danielle Régnier-Bohler, “Arthur en enfances (Le Chevalier au Papegau),” PRIS-MA 13.1, 1997, 91–106; Élisabeth Gaucher, “Le Chevalier au Papegau: ‘Enfances’ ou déclin de la littérature arthurienne?” in Enfances arthuriennes. Actes du 2ème Colloque arthurien de Rennes, 6–7 mars 2003, ed. Denis Hüe and Christine Ferlampin-Acher. Medievalia 57 (Orléans: Paradigme, 2006), 255–66. 4 Victorin, “Le Perroquet en cage,” 421. 5 Paris, “Le Chevalier du perroquet,” 105. 6 Monique Malfait-Dohet uses the expression “remake” for the Papegau and late Arthurian literature in her article, “La Fonction épique d’Arthur dans le Chevalier du Papegau, voyage pseudo-initiatique du Moyen Age finissant,” Ollodagos 5 (1993), 183–226, here 187. For a summary of identified sources, see Victorin’s introduction to Le Conte du Papegau, 12–20.



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bookish, second-hand quality tends to put off readers who look for originality, sincerity, authenticity, and depth, and to attract readers who look for inventive recycling, irony, or parody. What kind of reader would claim to read for shallowness? That is precisely the challenge of the Papegau. I can deal with the rehash, the absurdities, and inconsistencies of the tale. But am I ready to welcome its haste to move away from any bigger issue than the immediate concern of the hero: kill this one, spare that one, kiss that one, and move on? Moreover, am I willing to adopt a shallow critical style to avoid digging in a non-existent depth?7 Norris Lacy acknowledges the absence of psychological texture, the lack of motivation or meaning of traditional motifs, and the “impression of randomness” that remains at the end of the tale, while pointing out that these traits are negative only if we read the Papegau retrospectively. Lacy pleads for readings looking “forwards, perhaps toward a Rabelais, rather than backward, to Chrétien” and recognizing “the ludic spirit” in later romance texts.8 Jane Taylor develops the idea of romance as play or game.9 She views romances like Le Petit Jehan de Saintré and the Chevalier au Papegau as reflecting not the decline of chivalry as an ideal but its triumph as a sport.10 Lori Walters, too, privileges the ludic aspects of the Papegau, but, for her, the game is a deconstruction of the genre it supposedly performs.11 Lacy, Taylor, and Walters propose in different ways to shift the angle of approach from hermeneutics toward pragmatics. The Papegau is not a thoughtful story, but it does something to its readers. To appreciate the Papegau, the reader must read skin-deep and accept going along with the grain of the story, perceived as a surface without depth, but with many pleats and wrinkles.12

7 Danielle Régnier-Bohler warns the reader against the temptation of “parcourir à l’aune des profondeurs temporelles et des destins le récit ténu” [to use temporal depths and destinies to read through the thin narrative] (“Arthur en enfances,” 91). 8 Norris Lacy, “Convention and Innovation in Le Chevalier du Papegau,” in Studies in Honor of Hans-Erich Keller: Medieval French and Occitan Literature and Romance Linguistics, ed. Rupert T. Pickens (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993), 237–46, here 246. 9 Jane Taylor, “The Parrot, the Knight, and the Decline of Chivalry,” in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994), 529–44, 539–41. 10 Taylor, “The Parrot, the Knight, and the Decline of Chivalry,” 542. 11 Lori Walters, “Parody and the Parrot: Lancelot References in the Chevalier du Papegau,” in Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Kevin Brownlee, Mary B. Speer, and Lori J. Walters (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 331–43, here 341. 12 “Le Papegau fait du motif de la peau le signe emblématique d’une écriture qui va à contre-courant de l’évolution romanesque, et démontre ainsi qu’il existe un rapport complexe entre peau, sens et formes esthétiques” [The Papegau uses the skin motif as the emblematic sign of an écriture that goes against the grain of the evolution of the romance,

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In this essay, I will explore the conjunction between skin (superficiality) and game (lack of seriousness) in the Papegau through two instances of “as if” at play in the story: the court as if it were a cage and the knight as if it were an animal species. I borrow the notion of “as if” or “subjunctive universe” from the collective book Ritual and its Consequences, in which ritual is viewed as the polar opposite of sincerity, through “creating an order that is self-consciously distinct from other possible worlds.”13 Ritual is as necessary to human lives as sincerity: “the ability, really the necessity, of humans to reside simultaneously in multiple worlds, ceaselessly playing upon the boundaries between them, may be universal.”14 This necessity is at the root of courtliness, which I define as the imaginary space of social rituals for medieval culture. I claim that the Papegau links worlds in a Mœbius-band fashion, operating deliberately at the superficies of things and beings. Bretagne in the Papegau is like Kansas in the Wizard of Oz.15 It is the real place from which the hero starts, leaves without realizing, and to which he returns at the end of the journey. We never know exactly when Arthur has left his kingdom. His departure takes place in one sentence: “Et quant il ot ce fait, il se fist armer de toutes armes, et est monté sur son destrier, et yssi de la cité entre luy et la demoiselle, et toute la baronnie aussi pour luy convoyer, et chevauchent tant ensemble que ilz vindrent en la forestz de Camellot” (76–8) [When he had accomplished this, he had himself clad in armor, mounted on his charger, and he left the city together with the young damsel, and all his barons as escort, and so they rode until they came to the forest of Camelot (2)].16 If the city of Camelot is in Bretagne, then the forest of Camelot should be there too. But as soon as the barons have returned to the city and Arthur starts to ride alone with the damsel, adventures happen. This does not mean that he has left Bretagne, since it is the land of adventures, but that he now

and thus shows that there is a complex relation among skin, meaning and aesthetic forms]. Sébastien Douchet, “La peau du centaure à la frontière de l’humanité et de l’animalité,” Micrologus 13 (2005), special issue on the Human Skin, 285–333, here 304. 13 Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon, Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 20. Jeff Rider views Arthurian other worlds as narratives that “permit the representation and imaginative satisfaction of its materially or materially unrealizable desires; they confirm and elaborate its identity through representations of what is not,” “The Other Worlds of Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta K. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 115–31, here 129. 14 Seligman et al., Ritual, 180. 15 I do not translate “Bretagne” to avoid choosing between Britain and Brittany. I believe that, for a fifteenth-century French-speaking audience, “Bretagne” in Arthurian romances means both, alternatively or simultaneously. 16 The English translation (with slight modifications) is from The Knight of the Parrot (Le Chevalier du Papegau), tr. Thomas E. Vesce (New York: Garland, 1986).



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experiences the peculiar nature of his kingdom, in which the strange and the familiar coexist and interfere.17 The Papegau represents the paradoxical nature of Bretagne by inscribing the passage from one world to another on a continuous, linear itinerary. The hero tells his first defeated enemy (the Chevalier de la Gaste Lande) to go to Camalot (82, 4). But to his second opponent, Lion sans Merci, Arthur says that he will have to stay in prison until “le roy Artus de Bretaigne mandera que tu viengnes a luy parler en sa court” (92) [King Arthur of Bretagne shall call you forth to his court to speak to him (10)]. By spelling his title in full, he indicates that he has got the feeling he is not in Bretagne anymore. Readers should not be troubled when after his penultimate adventure (in the Château Périlleux), the Knight of the Parrot decides to “aler par mer en Bretaigne” (226) [return to Bretagne by sea (82)], although he never crossed the sea to arrive wherever he is. In the Papegau, since the errant knight is Arthur himself, the center becomes peripheral and the periphery acquires the quality of the center as soon as Arthur enters it. Thus the distinction between “Other World” and “World” is even more difficult to establish than in other Arthurian romances.18 The itinerant king is accompanied by a cage, which first appears when Arthur is going to fight Lion sans Merci: Si venoyent environ soi dames et damoiselles a son d’arpes et de vielles moult joyeusement, et après eulx venoit ung nain qui estoit vestus d’escarlate fouree de vair, qui chassoit devant luy ung pallefroy qui pourtoit une cage la ou estoit dedens le papegau de qui je vous ay fai autres foys mention. (86) [There also came around her ladies and damsels, joyously playing on harps and viols; and these were followed by a dwarf, dressed in scarlet lined with vair, who goaded before him a palfrey which carried a cage in which was to be found the parrot I have previously mentioned to you. (7)]

This crowded vignette assembles bodies and things by contiguity. In the middle of the vignette, the cage opens up like a reliquary or a jewel case.19 Denis Hüe, “Avant-propos,” Le Monde et l’Autre Monde, 8. On the Other World of Arthurian romances, see Sébastien Douchet, “Du cor au corps: les incursions de l’Autre Monde dans l’univers arthurien (Corps et espace dans Le Roman de Caradoc),” in Le Monde et l’Autre Monde: Actes du colloque international arthurien de Rennes (8 et 9 mars 2001) (Orléans: Paradigme, 2002), 113–28, here 114; Tom Klonski, “Réflexions sur la notion d’Autre Monde: De la critique au texte,” in Le Monde et l’Autre Monde, 211–22, here 220. Victorin views Arthur’s travels as resulting in a fusion of the courtly and the merveilleux, “Le perroquet en cage et le chevalier Arthur à la découverte du monde dans le Chevalier du Papegau: le monde, l’autre monde et l’immonde,” in Le monde et l’autre monde, 397–423, here 406. 19 Victorin, “Le perroquet en cage,” 403; E. Gaucher, “Le Chevalier au Papegau,” 259. 17 18

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It is also a portable throne, giving the parrot the dignity of a king and the mobility of a knight. Later, the cage is described as an art piece, made of gold and precious stones, chiseled into birds and animals, and adorned with four carbuncles emitting light (98, 12–13). It represents nature as only a courtly sensibility can envision nature: with unabashed artificiality.20 The cage has certainly been designed by the same “philosophes” who have created the beautiful bedroom the Dame aux Cheveux Blonds prepares with a certain purpose in mind. The room is, like the cage, richly ornamented with gold and precious stones sculpted in the shape of birds and animals (126).21 The very rich cage and bedroom are twin spaces, epitomizing the sensory experience that this romance associates with the idea of a court. As “Bretagne” is the signifier for “space,” “cage” is the signifier for “place,” a signifier packed with analogies in the same way that the cage-bedroom is packed with a surfeit of wealth, arts, and crafts – all that for a single bird, which is not an inaccurate description of a court. In the late twelfth century, Walter Map wrote a memorable description of the royal court in the introduction to his Courtiers’ Trifles, although he claims that the court is as indescribable as time is according to Saint Augustine. The court is a place of confusion and permanent change, associated with the mutability of Boethian Fortune, and the variegated torments of hell.22 The court is awful and wonderful, repulsive and attractive. It generates stories, such as those which Walter Map tells in the Courtiers’ Trifles, including Breton ones. The author of the Papegau most probably did not read Courtiers’ Trifles, which has been preserved in a single manuscript. However, the portable cage reconnects the late Arthurian tradition with the court of Henry II Plantagenet, the king for whom Map was supposed to have written parts or all of the prose Lancelot Graal.23 In the Papegau, Map’s hell of a court is miniaturized, 20 On the parrot as a luxury item in late medieval courts, see Régnier-Bohler, “Arthur en enfances,” 101; Patricia Victorin, “Psittacisme et captivité dans le Chevalier du Papegau et Tirant le Blanc,” in Du roman courtois au roman baroque; Actes du colloque des 205 juillet 2002, ed. Emmanuel Bury and Francine Mora (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004), 135–59, here 156. 21 For a detailed analysis of the parallel between the cage and the bedroom, see Catalina Girbea, “Du dragon au perroquet: Les débuts de la royauté arthurienne entre la corne et la plume,” in Cornes et plumes dans la littérature médiévale: Attributs, signes et emblèmes, ed. Fabienne Pomel (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 91–110, here 105–6. 22 Walter Map, De nugis curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles), tr. Frederick Tupper and Marbury Blader Ogle (New York: Macmillan, 1924), 1–4. 23 On the relation between Walter Map, the court of Henry II, and Arthurian literature, see N. J. Carman, A Study of the Pseudo-Map Cycle of Arthurian Romance (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 1973); Virginie Greene, Le sujet et la mort dans La Mort Artu (Saint-Genouph: Nizet, 2002), 76–81; Ronald E. Pepin, “Walter Map and Yale MS 229,” in Essays on the “Lancelot” of Yale 229, ed. Elizabeth M. Willingham (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 15–16.



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trivialized, and prettified, but, besides its luxurious connotations, the cage maintains its main denotation, that of a prison and a punishment. In Old and Middle French, “prison” means first the act of seizing or the fact of having been seized, and second a place of imprisonment. It is often used metaphorically, in particular in love poetry and religious writing. “Cage” is generally a term reserved for birds, but can be used for other animals, or even humans.24 It is appropriate that the parrot travels and lives in a cage, which he seems to consider his home, as when he asks his dwarf to cover or uncover the cage with a silk cloth (99 and 166). But he speaks often of prison and captivity. For instance, the parrot tells Arthur a story about a lady unjustly imprisoned (116); he accuses the Dame aux Cheveux Blonds of having imprisoned his master in dishonor when she forced him to fight at his worst (134–6). When Arthur is relieved of his promise and can fight at his best, the parrot tells the lady: Dame, le mien chevalier est prez au tournoyement, et ores le pouez vous bien veoir se vous voulez. Il n’est ore pas en prison, ains cuide bien qu’il me gettera de vostre gage ou je suis pour luy. (148) [My lady, my knight is presently in the tournament, and now may you see him if you wish. He is not now in prison, rather I believe that he will release me easily from your pledge wherein I am for him. (41)]

The knight is now free from the prison of love the lady had forced him to enter, and the papegau is soon to be freed from being a gage, exchanged between the two knights before the tournament (134). The parrot describes the court as a cage made of promises and other binding words. Who will end in the cage and who outside the cage depends on the players’ aptitude to speak, love, and fight according to rituals. When the lady pushes the love ritual to the point of threatening the fight ritual, she meets with an uncourtly thrashing, following to the letter her order that the knight should act as “le plus maulvais chevalier d’armes qui soit en tout le monde” (130) [the worst knight at arms to be found in all the world (30)].25 This lady did not understand that the absolute power courtly love attributes to the lady works only in a subjunctive mode, in the realm of “as if,” as part of a courting and courtly ritual. She is in the cage of binding words just as her knight and his parrot are. She is in her lover’s prison as he is in hers, as long as they play the game.26

24 See Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, electronic edition (Paris: Classiques Garnier Numérique, 2002). 25 See Taylor, “The Parrot,” 542. 26 For Lori Walters, the author of the Papegau “suggests that the exalted domna of Provençal lyric and classic ‘romance’ was never more than a literary convention that corresponds to little in the real world” (“Parody and the Parrot,” 341).

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On two occasions, the parrot asks his knight or his dwarf to be released from the cage: once during the fight against the knight from the sea (102) and once in a boat during a tempest (228). Confronted by natural disasters, the parrot believes – not unreasonably – that he has more of a chance to survive if he could return to his natural state, cage-free. It turns out that he is not freed and does survive. Thus he is brought back to the castle of Windsor, where he becomes a king’s parrot instead of a knight’s parrot (248). The court that Arthur left at Camelot becomes a court with a parrot, mirroring itself in the beautiful cage imprisoning the bird who imprisons the court in his beautiful tales. Friedrich Wolfzettel reads the court as a cage from a historical perspective, as he comments on a scene in Tirant lo blanc, a fifteenth-century Catalan romance. Arthur, kept in a cage in the imperial palace at Constantinople, can explain the rules of chivalry as long as he has his sword with him. Deprived of Excalibur, he remains silent.27 For Wolfzettel, this episode represents the rejection of traditional Arthurian literature in favor of a literature opened to history.28 The main problem of Arthurian romances that follow Chrétien’s model is that their world is a “monde clos” [a closed world] (Wolfzettel, 579), cut off from history and society, and of a “caractère ludique et rituel” [ludic and ritual character (588)]. Elizabeth Gaucher too views the cage as the emblem of an escapist literature written for an aristocracy attempting to deny its decline.29 Both readings imply that the ludic, ritual, and ornamental quality of Arthurian romance (the quality that the Papegau parrots, and that Tirant lo Blanc reduces to automatic speech) is morally wrong and on the wrong side of history. The authors of Ritual and its Consequences would say this is a “sincerist” position.30 A sincerist position can identify the cultural pockets driven toward ritualism, but will fail to explain their function and enduring appeal. Neither Arthurian literature nor aristocracy disappeared in the fifteenth century. As subjunctive as they could be, they had a future. To this day, they 27 Joanot Martorell and Marti Joan de Galba, Tirant lo Blanc, tr. David H. Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 333–9. 28 “Le roi Artus en cage paraît donc symbolique à deux égards: la cage semble symboliser la prison précieuse d’une littérature consacrée uniquement à la célébration de valeurs aristocratiques; mais en allant plus loin, on dirait aussi un symbole de l’immobilité d’un univers fondamentalement cyclique” [King Arthur in a cage seems symbolic under two respects: the cage may symbolize the precious prison of a literature devoted only to celebrating aristocratic values; but, going further, it may symbolize too the immobility of a universe that is fundamentally cyclical], Friedrich Wolfzettel, “Artus en cage: quelques remarques sur le roman arthurien et l’histoire,” in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, 575–88, here 578. 29 “La cage de l’oiseau symbolise cette prison précieuse dans laquelle s’affirme le légitimisme d’une classe devenue obsolète,” Gaucher, “Le Chevalier au Papegau,” 260. 30 They view the tension between ornamental art and representational art as another case of the tension between ritual and sincerity (Seligman et al., Ritual, 148).



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have enjoyed their decadence, constantly threatened by other literary forms (epic, novella, novel) and by the ever up-and-coming bourgeoisie. The resilience of Arthurian romance and the aristocracies that produce it lies in their common ability to maintain a certain type of “as if” in the face of reality. In a court, behave as if you were in a cage; in a cage, behave as if you were in a court. Wherever, behave as if at home and away from home were the same thing. Slide on the surface of life, and if you have to fall, fall in style. The residents of a court viewed as a cage ought to be animals – which they are, according to Aristotle.31 Modern science continues to hold the view that “human” is a species of the genre “animal,” although everyday language tends to oppose “human” and “animal” as mutually exclusive. “You are a beast!” means that you are not an animal and should not behave like one. Zoos never exhibit any humans among the species they display. So, as John the Scot noted, we are and we are not animals.32 The Papegau plays shrewdly with that contradiction. The day Arthur is crowned king, a damsel comes to his court asking that a knight be sent to help her lady against “un chevalier qui converse en la mer et chascun jour la vient destruire sa gent et sa terre” (74) [a knight who dwells in the sea and who each day comes to destroy her people and her land (1)]. A knight who dwells in the sea and wreaks havoc on land is a strange knight and an exotic animal. Lancelot lived in a lake from infancy to adulthood, but without webbed feet or gills.33 When Arthur encounters the sea knight, he (Arthur) has turned into the “Chevalier du Papegaulx” (96) after having defeated a knight named “Lion sans Merci” (90). These nicknames do not signal a crossing of species boundaries but verbal games related to totems, heraldry, and well-known stories.34 “Being an animal” means adopting an animal as a distinctive sign, whether metaphorically as Lion sans Merci does, 31 On the philosophical issues concerning the categories “human” and “animal” in the Aristotelian tradition, see Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 91–7. 32 John the Scot opposed the physical and irrational aspects of man, which makes of man an animal, to his spiritual and rational aspects, which sets man apart from all animals. See Johannes Scotus Erigena, (De divisione naturae 4.5) Periphyseon: On the Division of Nature, tr. Myra L. Uhlfelder (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), 220, cited in Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 168. 33 Tom Klonski notes that when the young Lancelot, strolling in the woods outside of his lake, is asked where he comes from, he answers simply, “de l’autre païs” [from the other land], which indicates a contiguity of lands and not a passage from one element into another (Klonski, “Réflexions,” 222). 34 The prize-hawk in Erec and Enide becomes a prize-parrot, the knight with the lion becomes a knight with the parrot, a lion without mercy becomes a knight of the cart in a carnivalesque series of scenes. Norris Lacy calls this game a “recasting” (“Convention and Innovation,” 243).

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or metonymically, as the Knight with the Parrot does. This action is symbolic, and emphasizes the exclusive difference between humans and animals. Only a human can pretend to be an animal. An animal cannot pretend anything. But what about a parrot talking like a human? The parrot is introduced by a lady who claims that he is “le meilleur oysel du monde pour chanter doulx chant amoureux plaisant et pour parler mieulx et a droit ce que vient a plaisir a cuer d’omme et a cuer de femme” (82) [the best bird in all the world who sings the sweet, pleasant song of love and converses cleverly about matters which warm the hearts of men and women (5)]. From this description, it is not clear that the parrot masters speech like a human. He may be a gifted parrot, like the African grey named Alex, who knew about 150 words.35 The first time our parrot speaks, it appears that he knows more than 150 words and is able to express desire, impatience, curiosity, pride, and first class knowledge of Arthuriana: Mais nul ne vous pouroit dire la noise que faisoit le papegaulx, car il dist au nain qu’il le meine au plus hault lieu qu’il pourra, et si cria: “Nains, nains, porte moy veoir le meudre chevalier du monde! C’est celuy de qui Merlin parla tant en sa prophecie qu’il dist que le filz de la brebis devoit soubzmectre le Lion sans Mercy plain d’orgueil et de felonie et d’ire. Ha! nain, ne demourez plus! Pourtez moy tost a luy, car il m’a conquis.” (92–4) [But no one can possibly describe to you the noise the parrot made; for he told the dwarf to lead him to the highest place he could, and he cried out: “Dwarf, my dwarf, bring me to see the best knight in the whole world! It is he about whom Merlin spoke so much in his prophecy when he said the son of the ewe would subdue the Merciless Lion full of pride, felony and anger. Ha! dwarf, do not tarry now any longer! Bring me quickly to him for he had won me.” (10)]

A human would not be able to “say the noise” that a parrot makes, but can translate it into words. As human as his speech sounds, the parrot never claims to be human. Besides speaking, he behaves like a bird, at times quiet, raucous, scared, or content.36 Commentators tend to characterize his behavior according to human psychology, talking about his cowardice, selfishness, frivolity, arrogance, curiosity, indiscretion, talent, humor, or anger.37 It is 35 Irene M. Pepperberg, “Talking with Alex: Logic and Speech in Parrot,” in Scientific American Presents: Exploring Intelligence (available online, Copyright 2004, Scientific American Inc.). 36 Walters notes that “a naturalistic knowledge may be indicated in the scene of Arthur’s shripwreck where the parrot suggests putting a cloth over his head to calm his fears and silence him, a procedure that works well on parrots as well as on other caged birds, whether talking, like magpies, or non-talking” (“Parody and the Parrot,” 333–4). 37 For instance: “The papegau character is thus constructed as a talented entertainer,” M. Lawrence, “Comic Function,” in Arthurian Literature XIX: Comedy in Arthurian



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difficult not to do so because of the parrot’s sophisticated speech, but he never says “I am angry, afraid, happy.” He says: “Ha nain, ne me laisse pas cy morir!” (102) [Ha, dwarf, do not leave me here to die! (14)], or “Ou est le meilleur chevalier du monde? Que ne me fait-il porter avec soy?” (110) [Where is the best knight in all the world? Why does he not have me carried around with him? (20)]. He is a fine psychologist for humans (a “humanarian” or a veterinarian in reverse) when he guesses that his knight is angry (130), but his immediate emotions and needs drive him and he does not practice introspection. The parrot is the opposite of Marie de France’s Bisclavret, who in animal form acts like a human deprived of speech to the point that the king says “Ceste beste a entente e sen” [This beast has understanding and sense].38 After Arthur has vanquished the evil marshal, the parrot sings a beautiful song: Et le papegau mesmes en a tel leesse et tel doulceur que, quant il ot chanté son chant, il se laissa cheoir envers sa cage, et cuida chascun qu’il fust mors, quand son seigneur vint a luy qui luy dist: “Ha, beau papegau, je vous prie, se il puet estre, que vous ne me laissiés si tost!” Et si tost comme le papegau l’oÿ parler, il se leva sus et commença a chanter si liement. (224) [And the parrot too had so much delight and sweetness in it that, once he had finished his song, he let himself fell down in his cage, and all thought him to be dead, but his lord went up to him and said: “Ha, my good parrot, I pray you, if it is at all possible, not to leave me so soon.” As soon as the parrot heard him speak, he got up and began to sing all the more gaily. (82)]

This scene is loaded with literary reminiscences of the false death motif, including Phenice’s faked death, Erec’s deathlike swoon, and Yvain’s lion’s

Literature, ed. Keith Busby and Roger Dalrymple (Cambridge: Brewer, 2003), 135–51, here 142. “Tour à tour divertissant, consolant, il confère au récit diversité, humour et une réelle tonalité burlesque en raison de sa couardise notamment” [Alternatively entertaining or comforting, he brings the story versatility, humor, and a true burlesque tonality especially because of his cowardice] (Victorin, “Le Perroquet en cage,” 417). “Le perroquet est plus qu’un animal accompagnateur, c’est un personnage de plein droit, doté d’un instinct de conservation et d’une aptitude au bonheur” [The parrot is more than an animal companion, he is a full-fledged character, gifted with a sense of self-preservation and an aptitude to hapiness] (Girbea, “Du dragon au perroquet,” 103); “L’oiseau, par sa couardise, son bavardage, sa curiosité et ses colères, a des airs de jeunesse” [The bird, thanks to his cowardice, prattle, curiosity, and tantrums, evokes youth] (Gaucher, “Le Chevalier au Papegau,” 259). 38 Marie de France, “Bisclavret,” in Les Lais, ed. and tr. Alexandre Micha (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1994), 134, v. 157. As Bruckner put it, “transformed in the shape of a wolf, Bisclavret is no less human than he was at the beginning of his story” (“Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret,” Romanic Review 82.3 [1991] 251–69, here 256).

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failed suicide.39 It has also been interpreted as a moment when the parrot pretends to be dead, like an actor or mime imitating the nightingale of lyric poetry.40 Another way of reading this passage is to let the text say what it says, which does not reveal any intention on the part of the parrot, but describes a contagion between the quality of the parrot’s song and his behavior. The text does not say that the parrot “feels” but that he “en a” [has] the same sweetness and delight in himself as the song carries to others. From that delight and sweetness, he “se laissa cheoir” [lets himself fall], which can be understood as a willed or unwilled gesture, conscious or unconscious, associated with the intensity of the song. Unlike the wolf kissing the foot of the king in Bisclavret – a gesture hard to imagine being performed by a wolf – one can envision a caged bird falling from its perch after a particularly vigorous song. Bestiaries told that if a parrot falls, it falls on its beak, which is so strong that it can prevent the parrot from harm.41 If this is what the author had in mind, no matter how zoologically inaccurate it is, it relates to animal behavior, not to minstrels’ behavior. Are minstrels supposed to fall out of their perch after they have sung with particular gusto? The Papegau creates a subtle balance between human and animal by avoiding psychological explanations. It is a behaviorist text, which should make us realize how prompt we are to interpret our pets in human terms. Since it is impossible to transcribe the noise that a parrot makes, the text attributed to the parrot may be what human listeners imagine him to say – what they would like the parrot to say. At the same time, the proximity and companionship between Arthur and the parrot is described as a bond which makes both of them “humanimals.” The knight with the parrot changes easily and happily into a parrot with a knight in a vision of life that has gotten rid of humans and animals, souls and bodies, reason and senses, nature and culture, to stick to the surface of sounds, gestures, contacts, and movements. The parrot demonstrates the proximity of humanity and animality in a comic and positive sense. The knight from the sea exposes the dark side of the conjunction. Instead of two beings involved in acts of inter-animal communication, this “knight” is neither a human nor an animal of a recognizable species. His denominations in the text move him on a scale that goes from the slightly strange to the utterly monstrous. The knight dwelling in the sea (74, 1) turns out to be a knight of gigantic size with a powerful voice:

39 Lori Walters has suggested Bernard de Ventadour’s lark falling “per la doussor c’al cor li vai,” and Lancelot’s swoons and ecstasies in The Knight of the Cart (“Parody and the Parrot,” 336). 40 Victorin, “Psittacisme et captivité,” 157. 41 Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp, The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary (London: Duckworth, 1991), 163.



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le cheval estoit bien aussi grant come ung olifant et le chevalier aussi grant comme il convenoit au cheval. Et cryoit si treshault que la voix du cryz faisoit retentir pierres et harbres et terre bien une lieue envers soi. (100) [for his horse was as big as an elephant, and the knight was as large as was needed to ride upon it. He approached shouting so loudly that the mere sound of his yelling caused the rocks, trees and the earth to resound all around him within a radius of a mile. (14)]

He uses his voice not to speak but to terrorize. He fights like a knight, but bleeds when hit on his shield or other parts of his equipment. He never asks for mercy even when he is obviously done for, so Arthur lets him die, from a cautious distance, since his agony causes trees to fall (104, 16–17). This passage makes me think, anachronistically, of dinosaurs, that is, of animals that were never in contact with humans, except in fiction, and represent the animal realm at its most hostile for humans. The gigantic knight appears in the Papegau as a thought experiment, born out of traditional monsters such as the centaurs and sagitarii that medieval iconography and taxonomy inherited from the classical world.42 His slaughter starts a process of identification through observation, which goes against the grain of the traditional story of the hero slaughtering a monster to defend civilization. The hero generally knows what he is fighting against. The knight with the parrot does not know. In fact, no one knows, hence the vague information he received from the damsel about a knight dwelling in the sea. The reason no one knows is that no one has survived close contact with the creature. It has to be dead to be identified. The first stage of observation not only involves sight, but also, and more importantly, touch.43 Arthur must touch what he thinks is a helmet to realize it is warm and cannot be detached from the head for “il se tenoit en la teste et tout estoit une chose” (106) [was held fast to the head and that everything was all one piece (17)]. After more seeing and touching, Arthur finds out that “le chevalier et le destrier et le haubert et le heaulme et l’escu et l’espee et la lance fut tout une chose” (106) [the knight, destrier, hauberk, helm, shield, sword, and lance were all one and the same thing (17)]. He continues to call the creature “knight” by default, on the basis of external analogy. It looks like a knight on a horse, therefore it must be a knight, although it also looks and 42 See Francis Dubost, “L’autre guerrier: l’archer-cheval. Du Sagittaire du Roman de Troie aux Sagittaires de La Mort Aymeri de Narbonne,” in De l’étranger à l’étrange ou la conjointure de la merveille (en hommage à Marguerite Rossi et Paul Bancourt), Senefiance 25 (Aix-en-Provence: CUERMA Université de Provence, 1988), 173–84, here 174–6; Nathaniel Smith, “The Man on a Horse and the Horse-Man: Constructions of Human and Animal in The Knight of the Parrot,” in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), 241–8, here 241–2; Douchet, “La peau du centaure,” 286–91. 43 Douchet, “La peau du centaure,” 297.

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sounds like an elephant, lives in the sea, and has a skin resembling a snake skin that covers his body, horse, and weapons. More will be found the next day, when the lady orders her marshal to skin the corpse and bring the skin to her city: Et quant il l’ot fait escorchier, si ne trova fors ung cuir du destrier et du chevalier. Et ce ne fu pas merveille, car c’estoit toute une chose. Car l’en trouve en livre qu’on appelle Mapemundi qu’il est ung monstre qui en mer a sa conversion que l’en clame Poisson Chevalier, qui semble avoir destrier, heaulme et haubert et lance et escu et espee, mais il est tout de luy mesmes, et tel estoit celluy. (118) [When the body was skinned, only one hide was to be had from both horse and knight. Nor was this something to be amazed by, for the body was all of a piece. Anyone may find in a book known as Mapemundi that there is a monster who has its home in the sea and is named the Knight Fish, who seems to have a mount, helmet, hauberk, lance, shield, and sword, but who is made up of all this into one being, just like this one. (24)]

The boundaries of the creature having been established, it falls within the animal realm of sea monsters. Instead of completing the series of “Knight with …” or “Knight of …” with a “Knight with the Fish,” the tale introduces us to a specimen of the species “knight fish,” as in “cat fish,” “monk fish,” or “sword fish.”44 It is a fish, as the book attests, whose unusual shape has been misinterpreted as a sign of humanity. A knight fish is not a knight, because “knight” is not an animal species, which “fish” is. Knights who forget that their species is “human” and not “knight” are in danger of becoming monsters without species, doomed to be skinned and exposed to human curiosity. Nathaniel Smith views the episode as a cautionary tale against social hyper-specialization.45 Humanimality lurks in the tendency to naturalize one’s persona when one wishes to appear like a force of nature. The knight fish represents a wish shared by medieval knights and other warriors or warrior-like people: the wish of being all of a piece with one’s trappings, and being all of one species with one’s peers, that is, a wish tending toward a kind of inhumanity.46 The nightmarish or gruesome aspect of this wish is already indicated in Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval ou le 44 Gaston Paris links the knight fish to the sword fish (“Le chevalier du perroquet,” 106). I prefer to translate “poisson chevalier” as “knight fish,” rather than “fish knight” as Thomas Vesce does. Whereas the French speak of a “poisson chat,” the English speak of a “catfish.” In both languages, no matter the word order, “fish” is the subject and “cat” the predicate. 45 “The Fish-Knight embodies the noble who has become imprisoned in his function as if in his own unwieldy armor, unequipped for anything other than battle, unable even to dismount from a horse that has become a part of himself” (Smith, “Construction,” 246). 46 Francis Dubost suggests that the sagitarii in the Mort Aymeri de Narbonne are



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Conte du Graal, when Perceval finds himself unable to unarm a dead knight. Jane Burns sees in this passage an example of what she has aptly deemed “a sartorial body.”47 The knight fish may seem singularly deprived of any sartorial aptitude for he does not wear any clothing at all, but he can also be seen as representing a deep wish for naturalizing clothing and animalizing the clothed body. Why do fashion models walk unsmilingly on a “catwalk”? Once the knight fish is killed and his skin preserved as a curiosity48 and a warning, the hero can meet with other humanimals of various kinds and hides (two giant knights, a dead knight who can take the shape of a red stagdragon, a wild woman, a giant born from a couple of dwarves and raised by a unicorn) without losing his own identity nor straying out of his own species. Since the parrot remains in his cage, as a courtly animal, Arthur does not risk becoming a knight parrot, and, at the end of the tale, can resume his career as king, in a beautiful cage of his own (250, 96). Matilda Bruckner defines twelfth-century romances as a genre able to “shape” literary forms, and the secular society using them in inventive ways.49 Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances continue to exploit these shapes in a different world and for a different society. They are not shaping romance, since this has been done. They are not reshaping it, either, since the romance shape invented in the twelfth century was already based on “the reuse of the already-said and the return to favorite stories” (Shaping, 217). It was supple enough to maintain the open-endedness and mouvance associated with oral tradition within a written tradition (219). The Papegau does to romance what the marshal does to the knight fish: it skins it and exposes its skin to public viewing. Hence the haste the narrative voice expresses repeatedly: “Que vous feroye je long compte?” (98) [But why should I make a long story of this? (13)]. Instead of a “long compte,” the reader is presented with a thin one that is “toute une chose” (118) [all of a piece (24)]. The reader who accepts to move swiftly, without psychologizing or allegorizing, should be able to see the map and play the game with glee. Is the exposure of romance as a curiosity the sign that it is a dead dinosaur, an empty ritual, a historical dead end? If the only type of humanimality exposed in the Papegau were the knight fish, yes. But the parrot and his knight present another “as if” in the game “if I was an animal, which one would I be?” This particularly disturbing because they resemble humans more than animals (“L’autre guerrier: l’archer-cheval,” 184). 47 See her essay “Shaping Saladin: Courtly Men Dressed in Silk” in this volume. 48 Victorin links the taste for curiosities in the Papegau to the development of the novella. See her introduction to Le Conte du Papegau, 37–40. 49 “The incredible gift for experimentation we see in the formal shapes invented by romance fictions during this period is matched by their free-wheeling experimentation with the shapes of a secular society trying to translate conflicting ideas into practice,” Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 224.

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opens anew the question of courtliness: what sort of humans are humans who pretend to be so special? It opens the question without answering it with the typical open-endedness that is an essential aspect of romance (Shaping, 219). But it definitely connects courtliness to animalness, in a constantly reversible relationship. The Papegau is not a nostalgic text. It uses materials at hands, which are still part of the fabric of everyday rituals for late medieval aristocracies. It bends the romance shape toward the future.50 It anticipates Stendhal’s mirror by imagining romance as a parrot that is carried along the roads.

50 Victorin views the Papegau as forward looking rather than nostalgic. See her “Le reste et le remanant: Le cor et la plume dans deux romans arthuriens de la fin du Moyen Age,” in Cornes et Plumes dans la littérature médiévale, 111–27, 126.

A Matter of Life or Death: Fecundity and Sterility in Marie de France’s Guigemar Logan E. Whalen

I have argued extensively elsewhere that memory represents the most prevalent theme in all the works attributed to the late-twelfth-century poet, Marie de France.1 However, other themes appear with notable frequency in the twelve tales that she assembles in her first work, the Lais. Adventure, the marvelous, love, and the juxtaposition of fecundity and sterility all enjoy special status in this collection, and in one way or another structure the narratives contained in it. For example, from the first lai, Guigemar, to Eliduc, the final lai, all of these brief, courtly stories are shaped around the subject of love, often around adulterous love,2 but occasionally around love that would appear impossible to obtain, as in Fresne and Les Deus Amanz. Marie also frequently organizes her narratives around the interplay of fecundity and sterility. Vocabulary, places, events, objects, and animals in her stories may highlight life, or they may reinforce death. She may engage discourse that is productive, or that which is destructive, depending on the lesson she seeks to portray through her characters. Desire may be honest and lead to love that flourishes, or it may be inappropriate and carry negative consequences for the human relationships she presents. One of the most well-known examples of Marie’s technique of juxtaposing productive and destructive imagery is found in Chevrefoil. In this lai the botanical metaphor of the hazel branch and the honeysuckle vine stands as a symbol of the love of Tristan and Iseut: D’euls deus fu il [tut] autresi Cume del chevrefoil esteit Ki a la codre se perneit: Quant il s’i est laciez e pris E tut entur le fust s’est mis, 1 Logan Whalen, Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 2 At times Marie clearly condemns these adulterous affairs, as she does in Equitan and Bisclavret, while in other texts, such as Yonec and Guigemar, she approves of the extramarital unions, and in fact rewards them.

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Ensemble poënt bien durer; Mes ki puis les volt deservrer, Li codres muert hastivement E li chevrefoil ensement. (68–76)3 [The two of them resembled the honeysuckle which clings to the hazel branch: when it has wound itself round and attached itself to the hazel, the two can survive together: but if anyone should then attempt to separate them, the hazel quickly dies, as does the honeysuckle.]4

As Tristan tells Iseut, these objects represent the love between them, and the couple can live only if they remain together: “Bele amie, si est de nus: / Ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus” (77–8) [Sweet love, so it is with us: without me you cannot survive, nor I without you]. Although this theme of life and death occurs regularly throughout the Lais as a whole, the following study specifically focuses on the images and discourse of fecundity and sterility in Guigemar and examines the ways in which they reinforce the central theme of productive and sterile love in that text. Only one manuscript, London, British Library, Harley 978, contains all twelve of Marie de France’s lais, and is the only one to preserve the so-called General Prologue that precedes the collection.5 The author presents the theme of fecundity in the very beginning of this prologue that will help shape the narrative texts that follow it: Quant uns granz biens est mult oïz, Dunc a primes est il fluriz, E quant loëz est de plusurs, Dunc ad espandues ses flurs. (5–8) [When a truly beneficial thing is heard by many people, it then enjoys its first blossom, but if it is widely praised its flowers are in full bloom.] 3 All references are from Alfred Ewert, ed., Marie de France: Lais (Oxford: Blackwell, 1944); rpt with introduction and bibliography by Glyn S. Burgess (London: Bristol Classics, 1995). My italics for emphasis throughout the citations, and the numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 4 All English translations of the Lais are from Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, tr., The Lais of Marie de France, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1999). 5 Some scholars do not believe that this 56-line text was originally written before all the lais that follow it in the manuscript, but that Marie composed it later to be placed at the head of her tales. In this way, it would represent a synopsis of her literary motivations more than displaying the beginnings of a literary career, “le résultat de sa plus grande maturité créatrice,” as Rupert T. Pickens remarks. See his “La Poétique de Marie de France d’après les prologues des Lais,” Les Lettres Romanes 32 (1978), 367–84, here 368. Whether it was written before or after all the lais, this exordial matter was nonetheless designed to open her collection.



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The floral metaphor in these opening verses recalls the début printanier that was common in medieval French romance and lyric. The fertile season of spring brings life as reflected in the full blossoms of the flowers. She uses a botanical image as well at the end of the General Prologue when she dedicates her Lais to the king, most likely to Henry II: En l’honur de vus, nobles reis, Ki tant estes pruz e curteis, A ki tute joie se encline, E en ki quoer tuz biens racine, M’entremis des lais assembler, Par rime faire e reconter. (43–8) [In your honor, noble king, you who are so worthy and courtly, you to whom all joys pay homage and in whose heart all true virtue has taken root, did I set myself to assemble lays, to compose and relate them in rhyme.]

Marie portrays Henry II here as an honorable and courtly king in whose heart all virtue is grounded, or quite literally “has taken root.” Thus the General Prologue that opens the collection of lais is framed with images of fecundity. Guigemar, the first lai after the General Prologue in Harley 978,6 opens with a 26-line prologue of its own that is constructed according to the same rhetorical plan as the larger one that immediately precedes it:7 Celui deivent la gent loër Ki en bien fait de sei parler. Mais quant il ad en un païs Hummë u femme de grant pris, Cil ki de sun bien unt envie Sovent en dïent vileinie; Sun pris li volent abeisser: Pur ceo comencent le mestier Del malveis chien coart felun, Ki mort la gent par traïsun.

6 Two other manuscripts contain Guigemar: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 2168 and nouv. acq. fr. 1104. 7 See Jean Rychner, ed., Les Lais de Marie de France, Classiques Français du Moyen Age 93 (Paris: Champion, 1983). He suggests that, in lieu of the General Prologue, the first eighteen verses of the lai of Guigemar were originally intended as the prologue to the Lais: “Il est possible que nous ayons dans les v. 1–18 [de Guigemar] un petit prologue plus ou moins indépendant que Marie avait peut-être placé dès l’abord en tête de son ouvrage et qu’elle ne supprima pas lorsqu’elle composa son prologue-dédicace [des Lais]; c’est que notamment elle y avait signé son œuvre” (239). Pickens elaborates on Rychner’s distinction between the prologue to Guigemar and the General Prologue to the Lais by proposing that we view the former as the first, and the latter as the second (see n. 5).

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Nel voil mie pur ceo leissier, Si gangleür u losengier Le me volent a mal turner; Ceo est lur dreit de mesparler. (5–18) [Those who gain a good reputation should be commended, but when there exists in a country a man or woman of great renown, people who are envious of their abilities frequently speak insultingly of them in order to damage this reputation. Thus they start acting like a vicious, cowardly, treacherous dog which will bite others out of malice. But just because spiteful tittle-tattlers attempt to find fault with me I do not intend to give up. They have a right to make slanderous remarks.]

In his article on fecundity and sterility in the works of Marie de France, Rupert T. Pickens sees in these opening verses an opposition of courtliness and uncourtliness through the expression Marie uses in verse six, en bien parler, “to praise or to acclaim,” and the infinitive of verse eighteen, mesparler, “to misspeak or to slander”; for Pickens this opposition represents “the major theme of the Guigemar prologue.”8 In fact, this juxtaposition of productive and destructive behavior prefigures the theme of fecundity and sterility in the lai it opens. Toward the beginning of Guigemar, Marie presents the audience with one of the central images of unproductiveness in the lai. Guigemar is the most handsome and brave knight of the land and is loved by everyone. He has only one character flaw, but it is a serious one in Marie de France’s narrative world: “De tant i out mespris nature / Kë unc de nul’ amur n’out cure” (57–8) [But Nature had done him such a grievous wrong that he never displayed the slightest interest in love]. His is a psychologically or emotionally sterile defect at this point in the tale, but as we shall see it soon becomes physical too. Marie prepares us narratively for this central image, just a few verses earlier, by introducing a subtle reference to the theme of sterility and fecundity. She states that the land of King Hoilas in Brittany was often at peace, but that it was just as often at war. Thus she establishes from the very beginning of the narration proper, in the second verse to be precise, the theme of life and death, of fecundity and sterility that will structure the rest of her lai. Guigemar’s emotionally sterile condition carries consequences for others as well. Marie tells us that his friends, and even strangers, consider his state to be a serious one: Nuls ne se pout aparceveir Kë il volsist amur aveir.

8 Rupert T. Pickens, “En bien parler and mesparler: Fecundity and Sterility in the Works of Marie de France,” Le Cygne n.s. 3 (2005), 7–22, here 7.



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Pur ceo le tienent a peri E li estrange e si ami. (65–8) [He showed no visible interest in love and was thus considered a lost cause by stranger and friend alike.]

Much later in the text, after Guigemar’s return from another land, his friends, presumably the same ones here, encourage him to take a wife. Their concern for his emotional well-being certainly goes beyond the bounds of friendship. To maintain the lineage of his royal family he must marry and produce heirs who will continue to protect those who live in his land, stranger and friend alike. Fertility thus represented a real anxiety for those living in twelfthcentury England or France, and could truly be a matter of life or death. Marie’s interest in the theme of sterility as it pertains to lineage re-emerges later in the collection in the lai of Fresne. Gurun’s knights reproach him severely for his relationship with his lover, Le Fresne, “Ash Tree,” and try to persuade him to take a legitimate wife: Lié serei[en]t s’il eüst heir, Quë aprés lui puïst aveir Sa terë e sun heritage; Trop i avrei[en]t grant damage, Si il laissast pur sa suinant Que de espuse n’eüst enfant; Jamés pur seinur nel tendrunt, Ne volenters nel servirunt, Si il ne fait lur volenté. (319–27) [They would be happier if he had an heir to inherit his land and it would be a grievous loss if he did not have a child by a wife on account of his concubine. They would never more consider him their lord, nor serve him willingly, if he did not do their bidding.]

In counseling Gurun to give up his concubine, Fresne, in favor of her sister, Codre, the knights evoke the theme of sterility and fecundity through a botanical metaphor made possible by two species of trees that bear the same name as the sisters: Pur le Freisne, que vus larrez, En eschange le Codre av[r]ez. En la Codre ad noiz e deduiz; Freisne ne portë unke fruiz. (337–40) [In exchange for Le Fresne, whom you will give up, you will have La Codre. On the hazel [codre] there are nuts to be enjoyed, but the ash [fresne] never bears fruit.]

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Those associated with Guigemar’s court obviously share the same concerns as the ones with which Gurun’s knights are preoccupied in Fresne. The next significant image of sterility and fecundity occurs when Guigemar participates in a hunting adventure. In the heart of a large bush he encounters a white hind that has on its head the antlers of a stag. Just as this androgynous hind embodies at once both male and female characteristics, s/­he also represents sterility and fecundity, life and death. Life is represented through the fawn that accompanies the hind, but death is depicted when Guigemar mortally wounds the creature with his arrow. Before the beast dies, the episode assumes yet another layer of fecundity and sterility. The arrow rebounds from the hind and pierces Guigemar deeply in his thigh. It is well known that a wound in the thigh in medieval literature can serve as a euphemism for male impotence. The protagonist of Marie’s story is not only uninterested in love, he is also now completely incapable of its sexual manifestation. He has become, for all intents and purposes, both emotionally and physically sterile. However, the episode actually ends with an element of hope, if not for the creature, then for the person who has wounded it. Androgyny is not the only marvelous characteristic of the hind. We learn that the beast has a solid command of Old French as it begins to speak to Guigemar: Jamais n’aies tu med[e]cine! Ne par herbe ne par racine Ne par mire ne par pociun N’avras tu jamés garisun De la plaie ke as en la quisse, De s[i] ke cele te guarisse Ki suffera pur tue amur Issi grant peine e tel dolur Ke unkes femme taunt ne suffri; E tu ref[e]ras taunt pur li, Dunt tut cil s’esmerveillerunt Ki aiment e amé avrunt U ki pois amerunt aprés. (109–21) [May you never find a cure, nor may any herb, root, doctor, or potion ever heal the wound in your thigh until you are cured by a woman who will suffer for your love more pain and anguish than any other woman has ever known, and you will suffer likewise for her, so much so that all those who are in love, who have known love or are yet to experience it, will marvel at it.]

While the prophetic discourse that s/he utters certainly communicates anger toward the hunter, it nonetheless harbors a proleptic reference to Guigemar’s ultimate healing, his only chance to transform his condition from one of sterility into one of fecundity. His life hangs in the balance, and Marie tells



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her audience that though the hero is gravely wounded he does not intend to let himself die. Guigemar then makes his way down a green path through the woods to a harbor. We should note that Marie de France’s simple and small detail here of green, a color associated with vegetal fecundity, brings the hope of life at a moment when the hero is threatened with death.9 In this harbor, Guigemar discovers a magic ship for which Marie provides a detailed description. This sumptuous vessel in and of itself represents fecundity since it will mysteriously and safely transport Guigemar to another land without a pilot, or anyone else on board for that matter. And within Marie’s elaborate description of this object lies yet another life-giving image, producing a type of narrative mise-en-abyme of fecundity. The center of the ship contains a bed with a pillow that possesses a marvelous quality: “Ki sus eüst sun chief tenu / Jamais le peil n’avreit chanu” (179–80) [No one who had lain his head on it would ever have white hair]. The ship finds a favorable wind and takes Guigemar to the capital city of another realm where it docks close to a castle. The castle belongs to a very old man, the lord of the city who rules over the land, whose wife is courtly and beautiful. Marie juxtaposes the positive qualities of the wife with the negative ones of the husband: Mult fu velz humme e femme aveit, Une dame de haut parage, Franche, curteise, bele e sage; Gelus esteit a desmesure; Kar ceo purportoit sa nature. Ke tut li veil seient gelus – Mult hiet chascun kë il seit cous – Tels [est] de eage le trespas. (210–17) [She was noble, courtly, beautiful and wise, and he was exceedingly jealous, as befitted his nature, for all old men are jealous and hate to be cuckolded. Such is the perversity of age.]

Marie’s use of the word “nature” here recalls her earlier allegorical use of the word to describe Guigemar’s lack of interest in love: “But Nature had done him such a grievous wrong,” she states in verse fifty-seven, that he lacked any amorous emotions. Whereas Guigemar showed no interest in love at the beginning of the lai, the old man seems to show a great deal of it here. However, jealousy rules his nature and he loves to excess, or “a

9 In addition to the traditional association of the color green with life and regeneration, Narelle Fletcher notes more precisely that Marie’s use of the color here signals a pivotal moment in the narrative: the green path leads Guigemar from the forest where he was wounded toward the place where he will be healed by love. See her “La fonction symbolique du vert dans les lais narratifs,” PRIS-MA 2 (1986), 13–16, especially 14–15.

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desmesure,” a behavior that one must avoid at all costs in courtly society. This old husband may in fact be consumed with jealousy because he may no longer be able to act upon his sexual desires. If his old age has rendered him impotent then his sterile condition would reflect that of Guigemar as he arrives at the castle. Indeed, images of sterility and fecundity abound in this episode, as we shall see below. The lord’s castle functions as both a locus amoenus and a locus horribilis. On one hand, it is the location where the androgynous hind’s prophecy will be fulfilled as Guigemar encounters within its walls the woman who will heal him physically and emotionally.10 On the other, it serves as the prison in which the old jealous man holds his noble wife. Her “cell,” in fact, is a beautiful chamber whose walls are decorated with a striking painting: La chaumbre ert peinte tut entur: Venus, la deuesse d’amur, Fu tresbien [mise] en la peinture, Les traiz mustrez e la nature Cument hom deit amur tenir E lëalment e bien servir; Le livre Ovide, ou il enseine Coment chascun s’amur estreine, En un fu ardant le gettout E tuz iceus escumengout Ki ja mais cel livre lirreient Ne sun enseignement fereient. (233–44) [The walls of the chamber were covered in paintings in which Venus, the goddess of love, was skillfully depicted together with the nature and obligations of love; how it should be observed with loyalty and good service. In the painting Venus was shown as casting into a blazing fire the book in which Ovid teaches the art of controlling love and as excommunicating all those who read this book or adopt its teachings.]

In contrast to its first two appearances in the text, the term “nature” carries here a fecund quality as it evokes the positive aspect of love. The goddess of love is shown in the painting as casting Ovid’s book into a fire and as excommunicating all those who read it and adhere to its teachings.11 The

10 Like the green path that leads Guigemar toward the land where he will be healed, the walls of the room in which the jealous husband has imprisoned his wife are also green, “De vert marbre fu li muralz” (221), and reinforce the positive qualities of love. These are the only two uses of the color green in the lai of Guigemar. See Fletcher, “La fonction symbolique,” 14–15. 11 Several scholars have proposed the Remedia amoris as the book represented in the painting. See Paula Clifford, Marie de France: Lais (London: Grant & Cutler, 1982),



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wall fresco serves to shape Guigemar’s courtliness for it is in this place that he will discover how to love. The hero will view this scene every day of his sojourn in the castle with the mal-mariée and he will ultimately take its message to heart: love should be dynamic, not static, fecund, not sterile.12 The admonition of the goddess of love helps mold Guigemar into a more rounded courtly individual, a knight who not only exhibits courage and honor, but one who experiences amorous passion as well. The room in which the lady is imprisoned is guarded by a priest who is old, like the jealous husband. Furthermore, at least in the mind of the lord of the castle, the physical condition of the priest represents no sexual threat to his wife: Uns vielz prestres blancs e floriz Guardout la clef de cel postiz; Les plus bas membres out perduz: Autrement ne fust pas creüz. (255–8) [An old priest with hoary-white hair guarded the key to the gate; he had lost his lower members, otherwise he would not have been trusted.]

The priest’s impotence reflects that of Guigemar up to this point in the story, and even that of the jealous husband if he himself is in fact sterile; but unlike Guigemar, the eunuch’s wound is permanent. The image of sterility embodied in the priest stands in opposition to the encouragement to let love flourish that is represented by Venus in the painting.

24; Philippe Ménard, Les lais de Marie de France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 29–30; and Yolande de Pontfarcy, “La souveraineté: Du mythe au lai de Guigemar,” Acta Litteraria Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 32.1–2 (1990), 153–9, especially 158. However, Herman Braet signals Marie’s ambiguity here, whether the Ars amatoria or the Remedia amoris. See his “Note sur Marie de France et Ovide: Lai de Guigemar, vv. 233–244,” in Mélanges de philologie et de littératures romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, ed. Jacques de Caluwé (Liège: Cahiers de l’A.R.U.Lg., 1978), 21–5. See also Robert Hanning, “Courtly Contexts for Urban Cultus: Responses to Ovid in Chrétien’s Cligès and Marie’s Guigemar,” Symposium 35 (1981), 34–56. He believes the reference represents “the whole Ovidian system (Ars and Remedia alike)” (45) and suggests that Guigemar is anti-Ovidian (34). For further discussion of this episode see chapter 2, “Enigmatic Beauty,” in SunHee Kim Gertz, Echoes and Reflections: Memory and Memorials in Ovid and Marie de France, Faux Titre 232 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), and my “A Medieval Book-Burning: Objet d’art as Narrative Device in the Lai of Guigemar,” Neophilologus 80 (1996), 205–11. 12 Within a decade or two after the composition of Marie’s Lais, Andreas Capellanus noted in his regulae amoris (rules of love) that love is either increasing or decreasing; there can be no neutral ground: “Semper amorem crescere vel minui constat” (rule IV). See Andreae Capellani. Regii Francorum: De amore, libri tres, ed. E. Trojel (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1972), 310.

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And love does indeed blossom within these castle walls in complete accordance with the prophetic discourse of the androgynous hind. Guigemar falls in love with the lady and entreats her, through courtly discourse, to grant him her love. She agrees, and love that was once sterile now abounds: Ensemble gisent e parolent E sovent baisent e acolent; Bien lur convienge del surplus, De ceo que li autre unt en us! (531–4) [They lay together and talked, kissing and embracing. May the final act, which others are accustomed to enjoy, give them pleasure.]

The irony of this episode lies in the fact that a room that was designed to promote sterility, to stifle love, is in fact decorated with an image that encourages fecundity through unbridled amorous expression. Eventually, Guigemar and his lady are discovered by the lord of the castle. Faced with the threat of death, Guigemar recounts his story to the lord who agrees to set him free.13 The same magical ship then transports him back to his homeland and the old, jealous husband imprisons his wife in an even more sterile environment than before, this time in a tower of dark-hued marble where she spends over two years of suffering before escaping.14 After she escapes from her prison, the lady makes her way to the harbor where she boards the ship that has twice transported Guigemar. This vessel, clearly a symbol of fecundity, now carries her safely to a castle in Brittany, but her situation is only somewhat more favorable now than it was before. Meriaduc, the lord of the castle, seeks her love, but she is unable to grant it since it belongs to another. Even though she is well served, honored, and richly dressed, she nonetheless remains his prisoner and is once again deprived of the love she truly desires. In this way, Meriaduc represents for the lady the same kind of threat of sterility that her old, jealous husband did. Before the lovers were discovered in the castle in her homeland, they had created signs by which they would recognize one another in the event that they ever became separated: a knot in Guigemar’s shirt that only she could untie and a belt whose buckle only he could open. These objects serve as symbols of fecundity by eventually bringing about the reunion of the couple and allowing their love to flourish once again. 13 Several times throughout the narrative, Guigemar and his lady recount their stories, a discursive representation of fecundity as their analeptic speech ensures the constant regeneration of Marie’s own text. 14 The dark marble of this tower stands in contrast to the green marble of the room in which the husband had originally imprisoned his wife (221), thus further accentuating the sterile nature of this location.



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Guigemar and the lady of the castle have experienced a textual, as well as a sexual, healing over the course of the story. The mal-mariée once again knows the pleasure of love after having spent years in the sterile room of her husband’s castle where she was deprived of it, despite the fecund message adorning the walls that surrounded her. At the beginning of the narrative, Guigemar suffered sterility in all matters amorous, but now his tribulations, both emotional and physical, have ended, as Marie informs us at the end of the text. In conclusion, both of the central characters in the lai incarnate the themes of sterility and fecundity that permeate not only the lai of Guigemar, but also the entire corpus of Marie de France’s Lais. The author molds her characters into well-rounded courtly individuals while she shapes her courtly lai by juxtaposing images of productiveness and unproductiveness. Through the art of inventio, or literary topical invention, Marie meshes these disparate elements into a unified whole: the reference to war and peace in the second verse of the lai, the old, jealous husband, the androgynous hind, the magic ship, the eunuch priest, the fresco on the castle wall, and the knot and the belt all work together to form her conception of courtliness. Guigemar and the imprisoned lady undergo a narrative transformation in the domain of love from a state of sterility to a productive and fecund relationship in which their affection blossoms, then enjoys full bloom, just like the flowers in the General Prologue. After much emotional and physical suffering on their part in what was at times quite literally a matter of life or death, they finally experience life through love. The prophecy of the androgynous hind came to pass, and the message in Marie de France’s Guigemar has been continually reborn for countless audiences since its conception at the end of the twelfth century: her story of passion has become an example for all lovers past, present, and future.

“Le Roman de la Rose, Performed in Court” Evelyn Birge Vitz

What a pleasure to be honoring Matilda, whom I have known for a very long time, and to be thinking – with her decades-long interests in mind – both about medieval court culture and about performance. I loved the piece she did for Cultural Performances in Medieval France, the Festschrift for Nancy Freeman Regalado: “The Pitfalls and Promise of Classroom Performance.” So here’s to you, Matilda! For us today, The Romance of the Rose is a book, as it was for many people in the Middle Ages as well.1 It is likely that a wide variety of reading and reception practices were involved in the presentation of the Rose to medieval audiences. I have worked on some of these issues myself. I have argued that the Rose lent itself to “erotic reading”: that is, reading aloud in intimate settings by a man and a woman, one to another – a courtly reading practice that promoted love and couple-formation;2 I have also argued that divergent, and evolving, reading and performance practices may have fed the famous “querelle du Roman de la Rose.”3 But I do not believe that the Romance of the Rose was just a book in the Middle Ages, or that it was exclusively read, whether silently or aloud. I think it is likely that the part of the work by Guillaume de Lorris was also performed in court in other, strongly auditory and visual ways. G ­ uillaume’s

1 Most scholars treat Le Roman de la Rose as functioning as a book in the Middle Ages. Major examples are Pierre-Yves Badel, Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle: Etude de la réception de l’œuvre (Genève: Droz, 1980); David F. Hult, Self-fulfilling prophecies: Readership and Authority in the first Roman de la Rose (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 [henceforth Huot, Rose/Readers]); Lori Walters, “Reading the Rose: Literacy and the Presentation of the Roman de la Rose in Medieval Manuscripts,” Romanic Review 85 (1994), 1–26. 2 Evelyn Birge Vitz, “Erotic Reading in the Middle Ages: Performance and Re-performance of Romance,” in Performing Medieval Narrative, ed. Vitz, Nancy Regalado and Marilyn Lawrence (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 73–88. 3 Vitz, “Review-article of John Fleming. Reason and the Lover,” Modern Language Quarterly 46 (1985), 202–8.

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Rose was, like other romances of its day, probably recited sometimes from memory by minstrels and other entertainers, with appropriate gestures, possibly props and, not infrequently, musical accompaniment.4 But in these pages I would like to take this a step further and present the possibility – indeed, in my view, the strong likelihood – that the first part of the Rose also gave rise to court performances of a truly spectacular nature, including mime and acting, costumes and props, music and dance. It lent itself to becoming a spectacle in the large sense of the word – a spectacle led by and grounded in storytelling, but one that would have involved other performing arts.5 In particular, it would have shown the influence of court theatre, now rising in importance. In the past decade I have done a considerable amount of experimenting with the performance of Guillaume’s Rose in the classroom, primarily in a course called “Acting Medieval Literature,” largely animated by talented students from the Tisch Drama School at New York University. A performance website6 that I co-direct contains over a dozen clips of scenes from the Rose, drawn from my students’ work. I can affirm that we have found Guillaume’s Rose to be highly performable. But while this ongoing workshop has been important to my thinking and my understanding of performance, my argument about the Rose’s vibrant performability finds its primary support in various kinds of medieval evidence, beginning with internal evidence from the Rose itself. The opening passages of the Rose already invite performance. Let us posit a performer of some type (perhaps originally Guillaume?) reciting or reading aloud from the narrative. The performer-narrator can simply tell the story, describing the young man that he himself was, five years earlier, and narrating all the moving and dramatic things that happened to him. But as many scholars have noted, the narrator is telling about someone who is both himself and someone different: an earlier self – someone he no longer is.7 4 See, e.g., Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early Verse Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer) 1999. 5 In this context, it is worth noting that Eric Rohmer’s film “Perceval, le Gallois” (Les Films du Losange, 1978) represents a remarkable attempt to suggest the rich performability of a medieval romance – Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval – by drawing, within cinema, on a wide range of performance strategies: storytelling; dramatic acting, with multiple actors wearing costumes and using props; singing; and musicians playing instruments, including small, hand-held, mechanical birdsong imitation devices (on birdsong imitation, see below). 6 Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video Showcase. http://www.nyu.edu/ projects/mednar/. I co-direct another performance website that may be of interest – one that focuses exclusively on scenes from medieval Arthurian literature: “Arthurian Legend Performed” in “Vimeo” http://vimeo.com/user6874655/videos. 7 See, e.g., Vitz, chapter 2, “The ‘I’ of the Roman de la Rose,” in Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology: Subjects and Objects of Desire (New York: New York University Press, 1989).

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This key figure in the story – the young man whom the narrator is telling about – might very well have been silently mimed while the narrator or storyteller told, or read, the story. Lors m’iere avis en mon dormant Que matins estoit duremant. De mon lit tantost me levai, Chauçai moi et mes mains lavai; Lors trais une aguille d’argent D’un aguiller mingnot et gent, Et pris l’aguille a anfiler. Hors de vile oi talent d’aler … Cousant mes manches a videle, Lors m’en vins touz seus esbatant Et les oisselez escoutant Qui de chanter mout s’esjoissoient Et nule foiz ne reposoient. Jolis, gais et pleins de liesce Vers une riviere m’adresce Que j’oi illeques bruire, Que ne me soi aler deduire Plus bel que sus cele riviere … (85–107)8 [Then it seemed to me, as I slept, that it was full morning. From my bed I arose right away, I put on my shoes and washed my hands; then I drew out a silver needle from a dainty and elegant needle case, and I took the needle to thread it. I wanted to go out of the city … Sewing my sleeves into gathers, I went off all alone, having a good time, and listening to the birds who greatly enjoyed their singing and didn’t stop at all. Jolly, gay, and full of happiness, I go toward a river that I heard burbling there, for I knew of no more beautiful place to go enjoy myself than on this river. (My translation)]

But before proceeding, let us ask: what is the likelihood for mimed performance of such a scene – that as the narrator told, or read, the story, another performer acted it out? Scholars who have worked on the pre-history and early history of medieval theatre – figures such as Richard Axton, Glyn Wickham, and Grace Frank; and historians of medieval performance in general, such as Edmond Faral and Allardyce Nicoll – have strongly emphasized the presence and importance of mime in the medieval period, as both leading into full-fledged drama, and also as supplementing various kinds of performance.

8 Quotations are from Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. and tr. Armand Strubel (Paris: Lettres Gothiques, 1992) and the numbers in parentheses refer to verses.

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Mime, both silent and spoken, played a significant role in vernacular performance, starting already in an early period, and certainly by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There is, then, no anachronism in hypothesizing the presence of mime for this scene as performed. If we take the possible presence of mime as a working hypothesis, how would this play out? In the early lines of the romance, we might see an actor quietly awaken, arise from his bed, put on his shoes, and wash his face; dress himself, sewing his sleeves; and begin to move through an attractive space – as the narrator spoke or read the descriptive lines. But the young man is by no means the only figure here who invites mime. The youth sees beautiful – that is, esthetically presented – images of ugliness painted on the wall of a garden. What we have here, rhetorically speaking, in the images of Haine and her companions, is ecphrasis: word painting; the vivid depiction of a person or through verbal description. But these figures might very well have been mimed, by additional performers. The allegories painted on the garden wall might well have sat or stood – posed – as the storyteller introduced them, then have stepped forth one by one from benches or niches of some sort (or from behind painted images) to display and in part act out the vice or negative characteristic in question. We certainly see such details in many of the illustrated manuscripts. Costumes and even props seem likely, along with the appropriate gestures. Thus, for example, Avarice would hold a purse, clutching it tightly to her, refusing to take anything out of it (227–31); Pauvreté would be the most poorly dressed, and tremble with cold and cower like a wretched dog in a corner (447–554). Thus, in these very early scenes of the romance, we might already have mimed figures for the central character in the story and also for the images on the wall. Is the acting out – the embodying and performing – of allegorical personifications, termed simply “personnages,” already historically attested in this period? The answer is, yes, amply so. Hildegard of Bingen gave us performed allegories in her twelfth-century religious musical drama, The Ordo Virtutem, about the Vices and Virtues. Another nice example, from among many, is in the thirteenth-century romance Silence, in the wonderfully dramatic characters of Nature and Nurture, who are so violently at odds. Allegorical figures were, thus, seen as performable – and they would be performed increasingly, for example in works in which the Vices and Virtues or the Daughters of God played important roles. Mime is not, however, the only kind of performance that this work invites. We see this clearly as we move forward in the romance. Up through the scene with the figures on the wall (to line 463), no character has spoken – no voice has been heard other than that of the narrator. The young man and all the allegorical figures have been entirely silent. But after the description of the images on the outside of the garden, we seem to move into a more complex, blended, and dynamic kind of performance. We hear the singing of birds; then, human voices. Then strong physicality and dance join with mime to

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produce an increasingly lively court-style performance, with a full range of performing arts. First come the birdsongs. From outside the garden wall the narrator can hear birds singing beautiful songs on the inside (481ff; they were already briefly mentioned in 95ff). Were these birdsongs only imaginary for the audience – just conjured up in words by the narrator? Maybe. That is what we are obliged to do for ourselves today when we silently read this scene. But the description of the birdsongs might have been amplified and fulfilled by real song: by live music. There are many possibilities here: birdsong imitation was a sort of music practiced by medieval instrumentalists, for example by players of flutes and recorders – and right after this passage, Guillaume speaks of flute-players (746). (One is reminded of La Messe des oiseaux by the thirteenth-century minstrel Jean de Condé.) Whistling is yet another option. Many lyrics also contain suggestion of birdsong imitation by singers – and these birds are said to sound like angels (664), which might invite trained singers, perhaps even a small choir of some sort. Yet another option: there were, apparently, birds trained to sing (just as other animals were trained to do tricks of various kinds). Finally, mechanical birds existed, along with other kinds of early automata, especially in Byzantium.9 The Middle Ages loved special effects, as is clear in drama. In short, some sort of music may very plausibly have accompanied this description of beautiful birdsongs, adding another dimension to the varied and indeed increasingly synesthetic performance possibilities of this work. After the voices of birds, we hear human voices. Oiseuse is the first character to speak, other than the narrator himself. We have now, it appears, moved beyond mime. It is not just the door to the garden of courtly delights that is now opening before us, but also a door toward more strongly dramatic courtly performance possibilities. Performance does, however, remain grounded in storytelling: the narrator is always present, telling his story. Oiseuse is quite a “personnage” – a very fetching female (524ff), attractively decked-out, and she holds in her hands a mirror in which to admire herself (557). Oiseuse talks at some length (582–618), explaining that when she has finished doing her hair and getting dressed, her day’s work is done! (Leisure is definitely what allows entry into this garden – into the beautiful life of the court.) In response to her speech and invitation, the young man

9 The Emperor Constantine VII had a tree of mechanical birds (and other amazing things), as Liutprand of Cremona reported in the tenth century. Liutprand tells us about the devices the Byzantines used to impress foreign visitors. Describing an ambassador’s reception by Constantine VII a number of years earlier, he states: “In front of the Emperor’s throne was set up a tree of gilded bronze, its branches filled with birds, likewise made of bronze gilded over, and these emitted cries appropriate to their different species.” http:// depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/cities/turkey/istanbul/istanbul.html. Accessed May 2, 2012.

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– who up to now has said not a word – finally speaks, for the first time. He begs to be allowed to come into the garden (621–30), to meet the elite and joyous assembly that gather there. Now a new round of allegorical figures appear – and this set, unlike the figures painted outside the garden, are both beautifully dressed and physically animated. As the young man follows a little path perfumed with fennel and mint, he meets Déduit; Liesse, le Dieu d’Amour, Beauté; Richesse (with her paramour), Largesse, Courtoisie, and Jeunesse. Unlike the figures on the wall, who were largely if not entirely immobile, these elegant figures move: they dance a carole together, as the narrator names them and points them out to us, one by one (713ff). It is perhaps useful to make clear exactly what I am suggesting: I propose that, at least in some court performances of Guillaume’s part of the Rose – occasions where there were plenty of money, and an abundance and wide range of available performers – these grand and beautiful allegorical figures were embodied and performed. Members of the courtly audience may well have participated in the dance, along with the professional performers. This was their world! They would have been playing themselves – their own wealth, beauty, elegance, youth, their lovable-ness. We appear to have precisely this sort of performance situation in the dance presented as part of the elaborate wedding festivities in the thirteenth-century Occitan romance Flamenca: the king asks all the court to rise and dance together to the music of minstrels, with the queen leading Flamenca, and the king dancing as well. We are then told that Jois [Joy] and Jovens [Youth] direct the dance, along with their cousin Valor [Proesa]. (While they dance, Avolesa [Meanness] and Cobezesa [Covetousness] complain how much money is being spent!)10 I propose as well that, along with the senses of sight and sound, the sense of smell may have come into play here. Audiences may well have experienced the beautiful smells of this garden paradise – just as the spectators of the Jeu d’Adam enjoyed the opportunity to smell the sweetness of the Garden of Eden through floral props, mentioned in the play’s instructions.11 As the dance ends, the young man, again alone, promenades in the garden. We are once again in scenes that are conducive to silent mime. Thus we might, for example, see the story of Echo and Narcissus as a mimed scene. In much of the second part of Guillaume’s Rose, there is no single performance

10 The Romance of Flamenca, ed. and tr. E. D. Blodgett (New York and London: Garland, 1995), vv. 714ff. 11 The Jeu d’Adam, from the late twelfth century, contains instructions about how things should be done: how paradise should be represented; how the characters should be dressed, how they should speak, and what sorts of gestures they should make. And it specifies that Paradise should smell good – be full of “sweet-smelling flowers and branches.” See Le Mystère d’Adam (Ordo representacionis Ade), ed. Paul Aebischer (Genève: Droz; Paris: Minard, 1964) and especially the initial stage directions, 27.

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mode. Rather, we find an alternation between mime – sometimes enlivened with song, music, and dance – and more dramatic acting; this latter mode is increasingly dominant. Something of the same sort of alternation and performance variation occurs in Aucassin et Nicolette12 – and this makes perfect sense: we are in a period where much experimentation with performance modes is taking place. A few examples of this alternation in Guillaume’s Rose will be useful: we see the potential mime/drama alternation in the long scene (1678–2765) where the God of Love attacks and vanquishes the young man, then talks to him at length. In the early parts of the scene, we might well have mime: we see Love and his archer, bow at the ready, silently pursuing the carefree young man as he wanders through the garden. They then shoot personified arrows – Beauty, Courtesy, and others – into the youth, and he collapses from his many love wounds. This scene could be mimed in a number of fairly stylized ways. But dramatic possibilities soon crowd out mime, and permanently – before the poem breaks off, and the narrator falls silent. Once the young man has been vanquished and is now a Lover, the performance nature of the passage changes; forceful characters abound. From verse 2788 to 4056, the work is quite strongly dramatic – that is, with memorable embodied characters interacting with each other. The God of Love having left (2765), now arrive a whole host of such strongly differentiated characters as Bel Acueil, Dangier, Raison; Ami, Franchise, Pitié, Malebouche, Honte, and Peur – not to mention Vénus, who chews out Bel Acueil (3440–70) for being unkind to the lover, as she waves her hot torch around (the kiss is thereupon granted). We hear the voices of these characters a great deal. There is much dialogue here – and many speeches are of substantial and dramatic length. Reason’s, for example (3096–70), is 75-lines long: long enough to have weight as a dramatic speech, but short enough to be part of a performed dialogue, and not just function as a lengthy (even perhaps ponderous) monologue. We also see the characters’ gestures and actions: Bel Acueil is direct, charming, and friendly – but he takes fright when the Lover confides to him his desire to pluck the rosebud, and runs away in fear. Danger is rude, boorish, and violent, shouting and acting crazy, and swinging a prickly cudgel. He yells at the Lover and chases him, making him leap over the hedge to get away. By contrast, Reason looks down at the Lover from her tower, then comes down and speaks wisely to him. She is queenly and controlled – but the Lover answers her grumpily, and angrily rejects her advice (3071–93); he then weeps and complains bitterly to himself. Some of the scenes seem potentially quite comic – as for example

12 See Vitz, “Performing Aucassin et Nicolette,” in Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, ed. Eglal Doss-Quinby, E. Jane Burns, and Roberta Krueger (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), 239–49.

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when the Lover jumps over the wall to escape from Danger, who can himself be performed as either primarily funny or frightening. The basic point is, I trust, clear: Guillaume’s part of the Rose invited performances of strongly physical and varied kinds. I do not mean that this was “theatre.” What I do mean is that this work was not exclusively read silently, or even aloud. Moreover, it was not just recited. It was, I believe, at least sometimes performed and enlivened in court settings in a rich multitude of ways, even within a single performance of the poem. It is important to address the larger question: what justifies such a view, which might seem arbitrary or far-fetched? It is certainly not the standard way in which scholars think of and approach the Roman de la Rose. What might be the arguments against this view? It is true that I cannot prove what I am saying – any more than others can demonstrate that the Romance was ­“typically” read silently, or even read aloud; none of this, on either side, is provable.13 (The number of things that we can actually “prove” about the Middle Ages is very small indeed.) The fact that we today are all clerks (professionally trained intellectuals), all silent readers, should make us reluctant to assume that this was true of court audiences 700-plus years ago. While Sylvia Huot focuses on the impact of the Rose on a particular set of readers, she notes that different people in the Middle Ages responded to many different aspects of the this rich, complex, and bi-authored work: “The evidence of the manuscripts shows, then, that medieval reception of the Rose was pluralistic rather than monolitihic.”14 People responded to it in a multitude of ways – one of which may well have been through, and toward, performance. The issue is: what was possible? Or more precisely, what kinds of things were being done, performance-wise, in this period? I think that various kinds of evidence support the view that Guillaume’s Rose was in a position to call forth richly theatrical and sensorial performances. My argument, then, flows from our (not just mine, but our) knowledge and understanding of medieval taste, and of the poetic and performance genre-bending that was going on in the thirteenth century. A key issue is how common was the introduction, into narrative storytelling, of mime and dramatic interactions, and of recourse to several performers? That is, how frequent was this sort of blend, as distinct from pure narration by a solo storyteller – the simple voicing of the story by a minstrel or a reader? We should recognize and respect the medieval esthetic, and also what we might term the performance pressures of the time. In the 13 It can be shown that certain clerkly readers responded to a particular manuscript in certain ways – as in Huot, Rose/Readers. But it cannot be demonstrated that most people, especially in aristocratic courts, knew and enjoyed the Rose as read; they may well have heard and seen it performed. 14 Huot, Rose/Readers, 37; see also 10. She speaks of the “Protean Rose,” 323–37. Badel speaks in much the same way throughout Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle.

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early to mid thirteenth century, we are in the period when secular drama takes off, both in urban settings and in the court: its rise is significant. This means that performers who do romances are now competing with actors in plays – competing for patrons and for audiences. There is evidence that storytellers did include drama, music, and dance to enliven their performers; performance genres are being bent and experimented with. Poets and performers are playing with the limits and the combinability of traditional genres and forms of discourse. Jean Renart in his Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole introduced sung parts into the narrative, as did other thirteenth-century romance poets. These experiments went across the board, in terms of genre: Adam de la Halle, in his Robin et Marion, combined drama – with characters and subject matter borrowed from the lyric pastourelle – and dance. In this context, it is well worth noting that one of the important early manuscripts of the Rose – BnF fr. 1569 – contains just two works: Guillaume’s Rose coupled with Robin et Marion.15 If we assume that manuscript context gives us important information about the interpretation and purpose of a work as memorialized in a particular instance, the cohabitation between these two works is a strong indicator of performance.16 But let us look further at the manuscript evidence, especially at iconography. Hundreds of manuscripts (some of them fragmentary) of the Rose survive: the count is now well over three hundred. Many manuscripts contain illustrations, and some are extraordinarily richly illustrated. (Many are now available for viewing online, especially at the wonderful Johns Hopkins Rose website.17) Clearly, medieval people who liked the Romance of the Rose did not share what is arguably the “modern” esthetic, the “modern” understanding of the ideal relationship of reader to text, where the text narrates and describes things that we then imagine – but only imagine – in our mind’s eye. Or perhaps it is better to say that this was the modern esthetic: film, television, and other contemporary media are fast expelling it. We are now coming closer to the situation of medieval audiences – reverting to their sort of auditory/visual mindset and taste. Medieval people – patrons and patrons alike – apparently wanted to see the story shown before their physical eyes. If they wanted to see the story performed in their manuscripts, why should we expect them not to have wanted to see it also performed aloud – live! – 15 See Ernest Langlois, Les Manuscrits du Roman de la Rose: Description et classement (Lille: Tallandier; Paris: Champion, 1910), 25–6. Some other manuscripts as well put the Rose (especially the first part) in with a few works with strong performance potential such as a fabliau, a conte, a lai, or lyrics; see, e.g., Langlois, 49–50 (re BnF fr. 12786), 60–1 (re BnF fr. 24390), 87–90 (re Bibl. James de Rothschild 2800); 139 (re Rennes Bibl. Mun. 243). See also Huot, Rose/Readers, 34. 16 For a valuable recent study of the importance of manuscript context, see Elizabeth Wright, Manuscript Meanings: The Genres of Adenet le Roi’s ‘Berte as grans pies’ in Compilation and Reception (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2009). 17 See http://romandelarose.org/#home. Accessed May 2, 2012.

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and we know that most works of this period were intended to be performed aloud. Indeed, the creators of the early manuscript may have gotten the idea of (and ideas for) illustrations of the Rose precisely from seeing it performed. (Some later manuscripts may indeed be compensating for the loss of such live performance.) The illustrations of the Rose do not follow clear programs: there are no fixed models for visualizing the performance of the Rose.18 This may suggest that some illustrators drew on performances they had actually seen. An important question remains: do I believe that Guillaume de Lorris actively, consciously intended his work to be performed as I have argued it may have been? That is, as a highly variegated and sensorial, indeed synesthetic spectacle? I am not sure. But in any case, when we unlock and push open the door to performance in this work, the door swings open remarkably fast before us – and it opens surprisingly far. I believe that medieval court performers discovered the same thing. It may well be that the popularity of the Romance with performers and their audiences helps account in part for the astonishing success of the Rose in the Middle Ages. This romance was remarkably well known, but in a period with few literates in court – which means that it has to have been, in some sense, performed, not read privately. I think that strong and musical performance may have contributed to making this work the “hit” that it was. Jean de Meun was able to climb aboard an already successful work19 – which of course he modified drastically. (Jean may have gotten the Rose into libraries and given it authority, but Guillaume certainly launched it as a performable poem!) To deal adequately with performance of the second part of the Rose – Jean’s massive continuation – is beyond the scope of this paper. It is, however, too important an issue to be entirely set aside, and a few brief comments are in order. First, one important early family of Rose manuscripts – the “B” family of fourteen manuscripts – appears to have been produced by, or for, those who had already known and loved Guillaume’s poem, and before

18 To clarify: there are models for individual scenes and characters (for example, Oiseuse is often modeled on images of Luxuria). But there is no standard iconography for the Rose as a whole, as visualized in manuscripts. This is the case even when one manuscript is copied from another, and both have the same number of illustrations. On these issues, see Meradith T. McMunn, “Reconstructing a Missing Manuscript of the Roman de la Rose: The Jersey Manuscript,” Scriptorium 53 (Fall 1999), 31–62, and plates 3–15; “Illustrated Fragments of the Roman de la Rose,” in Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, ed. Linda Brownrigg and Margaret Smith (Los Altos: Anderson Lovelace; The Red Gull Press, 2000), 97–113; and “Representations of the Erotic in Some Illustrated Manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose,” in Romance Languages Annual 4 (1993), 125–30. I thank McMunn for sharing with me her remarkable collection of Rose illustrations, and for her valuable comments. 19 On the circulation of manuscripts of Guillaume’s poem on its own, see, e.g., Huot, Rose/Readers, 5.

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Jean’s continuation achieved its full (and very great) authority.20 In these manuscripts (such as B1 [BnF fr. 25524]), Jean’s part is very greatly abridged – shortened to some three thousand lines. This made it performable more or less along the same lines as Guillaume’s work. Other, later families of manuscripts present a very different picture: in them, Jean’s full, massive text is retained (generally with idiosyncratic variants). A poem of eighteen thousand lines is simply not performable in toto. It is however clear that many people (mostly men?) knew and recited from memory substantial chunks of Jean’s work; some of these passages are precisely the ones that made Christine de Pisan so mad. So, to a limited degree, Jean’s continuation did in fact respond to and indeed continue the performance call of Guillaume’s Rose. Guillaume’s work was, and it remains today, rich in performance possibilities; my students and I have enjoyed exploring them. These possibilities include mime and dramatic acting, vocal and instrumental music; stage sets; costumes and props of all kinds – including sweet olfactory ones; and choreographed movement and dance. All these possibilities are latent, present in the work – but it has all been largely ignored. It is time to begin to approach and appreciate this work in a new way: as performable, indeed as performed.21

20 See Huot, Rose/Readers, especially chapter 4: “Adapting Jean de Meun to Guillaume de Lorris: The Rose of the B manuscripts,” 130–62; also xiv. The B family of manuscripts is further indication of the success of Guillaume’s poem. 21 My thanks (once again!) to Nancy Regalado for her useful comments.

Part III Shaping Women’s Voices in Medieval France

Lombarda’s Mirrors: Reflections on PC 288,1 as a Response to PC 54,1 Elizabeth W. Poe Inasmuch as the trobairitz personae are reflected through the mirrors of a whole set of different images for the woman, the domna, and the troubadour poet, we will truly hear their voices only when we enter into that hall of mirrors and follow the intricacies and echoes of its play.1

I have chosen in this essay to accept Matilda Bruckner’s open invitation to enter the “hall of mirrors” that reflect the various images of the trobairitz and to “follow the intricacies and echoes of its play.” Specifically, I shall look at the “precious”2 (in the best sense of that term) verses left to us by Na Lombarda, which, with their thematization of the mirror, lend themselves even better than the works of other trobairitz to scrutiny and ultimately to speculation. I am of course not the first to examine the two coblas that constitute the small but rich poetic legacy of Na Lombarda. Indeed, during the brief span from 1989 to 1991, four important studies appeared, all written by women, each of whom views the verses of this trobairitz through a slightly different lens.3 Sarah Kay focuses on how Lombarda uses derived rhyme to underscore, at a linguistic level, the reversal of gender roles that is at issue in this lively poetic debate. Tilde Sankovitch provides a feminist-psychoanalytic reading, in which she suggests that Lombarda’s mirror serves as an “instrument of self-examination, allowing the trobairitz to access her self-affection reflected 1 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours,” Speculum 67 (1992), 865–91, here 890. 2 Jean-Marie-Lucien Dejeanne, “Les coblas de Bernart-Arnaut d’Armagnac et de Dame Lombarda,” Annales du Midi 18 (1906), 63–8, here 65. 3 Sarah Kay, “Derivation, Derived Rhyme, and the Trobairitz,” in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 157–82; Tilde Sankovitch, “Lombarda’s Reluctant Mirror: Speculum of Another Poet,” in The Voice of the Trobairitz, 183–93; Angelica Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen höfischen Lyrik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991), 242–54; Katharina Städtler, Altprovenzalische Frauendichtung (1150– 1250): Historisch-soziologische Untersuchungen und Interpretationen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1990), 252–4.

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in and recorded by her proper name.”4 For Angelica Rieger, Lombarda’s cobla-exchange with Bernart Arnaut, which we know to date from sometime between 1214 and 1219, is less about courtly love than about regional politics at a critical juncture in the Albigensian Wars.5 Adopting what she describes as a socio-historical approach, Katharina Städtler argues that Lombarda’s verses, with their semantic and stylistic sophistication, belong to a tradition of texts that were composed in writing to be read by their recipient, either in private or at a gathering of literati. All four of these studies, while diverging both in their points of departure and in their conclusions, rest on a common assumption: that Na Lombarda was “comfortably integrated into the literary … world of her class and region.”6 And yet the “treasure trove” of literary allusions contained in her coblas7 remains largely unexplored. My purpose here is to trace several of the threads of the intertextual nexus that feed into Lombarda’s verses and inform their meaning. I have organized my inquiry around five conspicuous questions raised by her cobla-exchange with Bernart Arnaut which, I believe, can best be addressed from an intertextual perspective: (1) What is the significance of Bernart Arnaut’s comparison of Lombarda with Alamanda and Giscarda? (2) If, as has been proposed, Bel-Veser is a senhal,8 who uses it and what are the qualities associated with it? (3) Why does Lombarda need clarification about the mirror that Bernart Arnaut is gazing into? (4) What is the acord to which Lombarda refers? (5) What is it that her name reminds her of about herself? In treating these questions, I shall draw from the poems of troubadours who were active either earlier than or at the same time as Lombarda, poems with which she was in all likelihood acquainted. I begin with the text and a translation of the cobla-exchange.9

4 This phrase actually comes from Sankovitch, “The Trobairitz,” in The Troubadours: An Introduction, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 125. 5 According to Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 248ff, Bernart Arnaut offers the territories ruled by the French to Jordan while keeping those under the rule of the count of Toulouse, Raimon VI, for himself. Bernart Arnaut’s declaration of loyalty to the count of Toulouse is all the more remarkable in that his brother, the count of Armagnac (upon whose death Bernart Arnaut would inherit the title), had just made a pact with Simon de Montfort and the French invaders. 6 Linda M. Paterson, The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c. 1100–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 262. 7 Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 252. 8 Jean Baptiste La Curne de Sainte Palaye, Histoire littéraire des troubadours (Paris, 1774; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 248ff; Don Victor Balaguer, Historia politica y literaria de los trovadores, 5 (Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1879), 225ff; Kay, “Derivation,” 172; Städtler, Altprovenzalische Frauendichtung, 252, 252 n. 249; Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 254. 9 This text, which occurs uniquely in troubadour manuscript H (Vat. Lat. 3207), has been edited several times in recent years; see Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der



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Coblas sent by Bernart Arnaut to Na Lombarda (= B.A.) I Lombards volgr’eu eser per na Lonbarda, Q’Alamanda no·m plaz tan ni Giscarda, Qar ab sos oiltz plaisenz tan jen mi garda, Qe par qe·m don s’amor, mas trop me tarda, Qar bel veser E mon plaiser Ten e bel ris en garda, Com nuls no·l pod mover. II Seigner Jordan, se vos lais Alamagna, Fransa e Peiteus, Normandia e Bretagna, Be me devez laisar senes mesclagna Lonbardia, Liverno e Lomagna. E si·m valez, Eu per un dez Valdre·us ab leis q’estragna De se tot avol prez. III Mirail de Pres, Conort avez; Ges per vila no·s fragna L’amor en qe·m tenez.

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[I would gladly be a Lombard for Lady Lombarda, for neither Alamanda nor Giscarda pleases me as much, for with her pleasing eyes, she watches me with such nobility that it appears that she is giving me her love, but she delays too much, for she keeps under her watch Fair Seeing and My Pleasure and Fair Laughter so that no one can remove them. Lord Jordan, if I leave you Germany, France and Poitiers, Normandy and Brittany, you should leave for me, without dispute, Lombardy, Livernon, and Lomagne. And if you help me, I will help you ten times more with her who keeps her distance from all uncourtliness. Frau, 242ff; Städtler, Altprovenzalische Frauendichtung, 252ff; Kay, “Derivation,” 177ff; Sankovitch 187ff; and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, ed., Songs of the Women Troubadours (New York: Garland, 1995), 70ff. The only significant modification that I have made to the text as it has been rendered by the aforementioned editors is to read taises in the final verse as the third-person singular imperfect subjunctive of the intransitive verb tanher “to be suitable,” rather than as a second-person plural form of the transitive verb tazer “to silence.” If one retains the lui of that same verse without making the radical emendation to las introduced by Dejeanne and accepted by Jean Boutière and A. H. Schutz, Biographies des troubadours, 2nd edn, with the collaboration of I.-M. Cluzel (Paris: Nizet, 1973), 416ff, taises must be the intransitive (with indirect object) tanher and not transitive tazer. See Cesare de Lollis, “Appunti dai MSS provenzali vaticani,” Revue des langues romanes 33 (1889), 157–93, here 164; Pierre Bec, Chants d’amour des femmes-troubadours (Paris: Stock, 1995), 162ff, here 163 n. 36.

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Mirror of Worth, you have consolation: may the love in which you hold me never be shattered by a base man.] Na Lombarda’s coblas of response (= L.): I Nom volgr’aver per Berna(r)d na Berna(r)da E per Arnaut N’Arnauda apellada, E grans merses, seigner, car vos agrada C’ab tals doas domnas m’aves nommada. Voil qe·m digaz Cal mais vos plaz Ses cuberta selada, E·l mirail on miraz. II Car lo Mirailz e No Veser descorda Tan mon acord c’ab pauc vo·l desacorda; Mes can record so qe·l meus noms recorda En bon acord totz mons pensars s’acorda. Mas del cor pes: On l’aves mes, Que sa maiso ni borda No vei que lui taises.

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[For Bernard I would gladly be named Lady Bernada and for Sir Arnaut be called Arnauda, and many thanks, sir, that it pleases you to have named me with two such ladies. I want you to tell me which one pleases you most, without concealment or dissimulation, in/and the mirror in which you are gazing. For the Mirror Without Seeing disrupts my song so much that it almost turns it into discord; but when I remember what my name recalls, all my concern resolves itself in good accord. But I ponder where you have placed your heart, for I see neither its house nor the hut that would be suitable for it.]

Alamanda and Giscarda Alamanda (B.A., 2) has been recognized as the Alamanda of Giraut de Bornelh’s tenso, S’ie·us qier conseill bell’ ami’ Alamanda.10 Whether she was a real person or a product of Giraut’s imagination continues to be debated;11

10 PC 242,69, in Ruth Verity Sharman, ed., The Cansos and Sirventes of the Troubadour Giraut de Borneil: A Critical Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 384ff. 11 See, for example, Frank M. Chambers, “Imitation of Form in the Old Provençal Lyric,” Romance Philology 6 (1952/53), 104–20, here 115. Rieger argues that the very fact that Bertran de Born and Bernart Arnaut refer to her by name is proof of her real existence (Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 195).



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however, her textual existence is undeniable and is corroborated by Bertran de Born, who, in a sirventes that is a contrafactum of Giraut’s piece, identifies his model as “Alamanda’s song.”12 Nevertheless, Alamanda remains disturbingly elusive: is she the handmaiden who speaks for her unnamed mistress, as the text implies, or is she the lady herself, as tradition would have it? The medieval biographer assumed that there were two Alamandas: the haughty lady by whom Giraut has been rejected and the approachable maiden in her employ to whom he has turned for counsel.13 Alamanda the donzela is portrayed by Giraut simply as bella (1, 18, 49, 53, 65) and blonda (18) with a tendency to say more than she should [trop parleira] (33), whereas Alamanda the dompna is accused by him of being “deceitful” [truanda] (3), full of “pride” [orgoill] (17), “mendacious” [il m’a mentit] (34), “inconstant and frivolous” [camiairitz ni leugeira] (42). It is perhaps significant that precisely at the midpoint of the text (31 of 62), the speaking female, whom Giraut has consistently identified by her beauty, refers to her speechless counterpart as beautiful [son bel cors], thereby suggesting that the two are really one and the same. Giscarda (B.A., 2) is almost certainly Guischarda de Beljoc of Burgundy,14 whose arrival in Limousin on the occasion of her betrothal to Viscount Archambaut V of Comborn was heralded by Bertran de Born in a ceremonial song.15 She was irresistibly beautiful, a delight to the eye of all her suitors: Per que tuit sei corteiador Parton denant lei ab desire, Tant lor a sos vezers sabor; C’om no la ve que on conssire C’anc de sos oilz non vi jensor.16 [All of her suitors leave her presence full of desire, the sight of her has such savor for them; no one can see her without considering that he has never seen a more beautiful woman.]

12 PC 80,13, D’un sirventes no·m cal far loignor ganda, in William D. Paden, Tilde Sankovitch, and Patricia H. Stäblein, ed., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 184ff. 13 “E [Girautz] venc s’en ad una donzella q’ell’avia, que avia nom Alamanda, si com la domna,” razo to PC 242,69, in Boutière and Schutz, Biographies des troubadours, 43. 14 Fritz Bergert, Die von den Trobadors genannten oder gefeierten Damen (Halle: Niemeyer, 1913), 17; Stanislaw Stronski, La Légende amoureuse de Bertran de Born (Paris, 1914; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973), 62–9, 97f; Jean Mouzat, ed., Les Poésies de Gaucelm Faidit (Paris: Nizet, 1965), 263–70. 15 PC 80,1, Ai Lemozis, francha terra cortesa, Paden et al., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, 130ff. 16 PC 80,10, Sel qui camja bon per meillor, vv. 26–30, Paden et al., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, 134ff.

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Bertran called her his Mieils-de-Ben “Better-Than-Good,” and in his fantasy the perfect lady would have her seductive body. A mo Mieils-de-ben deman Son adreich nou cors prezan, De que par a la veguda La fassa bon tener nuda.17 [Of my “Better-Than-Good” I ask her straight, young, distinguished body, the sight of which makes it apparent how enjoyable it would be to hold her naked.]

Bertran is joined in his adulation of this better-than-good lady by Gaucelm Faidit and Arnaut Daniel,18 who credit her with moral qualities commensurate with her extraordinary physical charms. Na Mieills de Ben es flors d’enseignamen, Dompna de joi, rehina de valenssa, Seignoressa d’onors e de beutatz.19 [Lady “Better-Than-Good” is the flower of knowledge, mistress of joy, queen of merit, and princess of honor and beauty.] Que tuig bon aip – pretz e sabers e sens – Reignon ab liei, c’us non es meins ni·n resta.20 [For all good qualities – virtue, knowledge, and good sense – reign in her, since not a one is lacking or absent there.]

Alamanda and Giscarda are mirrors of themselves and of each other: Alamanda is two ladies with one name, while Giscarda/Mieils-de-Ben is one lady with two names. Alamanda is both the loquacious trobairitz who tells the troubadour what she thinks and the silent lady whose thoughts he can only imagine. Giscarda, as Guischarda de Beljoc, is the flesh-and-blood patron of troubadours; as Mieils-de-Ben, she is the fiction created by those same poets who are seeking favor at her court. In assuring Lombarda that he prefers her to Alamanda and Giscarda, Bernart Arnaut accords her a spot in what one might call the “domna hall of fame.” She recognizes the compliment and thanks him for it (L., vv. 3f), albeit with some irony. Alamanda and Giscarda

17 PC 80,12, Dompna, puois de mi no·us cal, vv. 47–50, Paden et al., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, 150ff. 18 Stanislaw Stronski, La Légende, 97ff. 19 PC 167,61, Tot so qe·is pert pels truans amadors, vv. 55–7, Mouzat, Les Poésies de Gaucelm Faidit, 263ff. 20 PC 29,17, Si·m fos Amors de joi donar tant larga, vv. 23f, in James J. Wilhelm, ed., The Poetry of Arnaut Daniel. (New York: Garland, 1981), 70ff.



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were in their prime in the 1180s, more than thirty years earlier. How grateful should Lombarda feel to be relegated to the ranks of such old ladies?21

Bel Veser Though bel veser, as Bernart Arnaut employs it (B.A., v. 5), could mean simply “her fair look” or “the beautiful sight (of her),” the expression immediately (and probably deliberately) recalls one of the most famous senhals of the Occitan lyric tradition.22 Like the reference to Alamanda and Giscarda, who were celebrated by Giraut de Bornelh, Bertran de Born, Gaucelm Faidit, and Arnaut Daniel, the allusion to Bel-Veser takes us back to the ladies sung by the great troubadours of the past, in this instance Bernart de Ventadorn and Arnaut de Maroill.23 Even if Bernart de Ventadorn’s Bel-Veser may not be identical with Arnaut de Maroill’s, their experience of her is essentially the same. She causes “grief” [ira] and “confusion” [esmai] in her suitor, who sees himself as the victim of her “bad treatment” [maltraih].24 Furthermore, she does not respond to him as he would have expected: “Be·m meravilh de vos / Com etz de mal respos” [I am greatly surprised by your bad response].25 He feels betrayed by what he perceives as her duplicitous behavior. While she gives the appearance of being noble and good toward others, she is haughty toward him who is in her power. E sembla·m trassios, Can om par francs e bos E pois es orgolhos Lai on es poderos.26

21 According to Rieger (Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 253), not only were both of these women still alive, Lombarda may have known them personally. We know that Giscarda died c.1221 and, if Rieger’s identification of Alamanda is correct, she died in 1223. When we consider that Lombarda figures as an independent lady, possibly a widow, in a document dating from 1206, she was no spring chicken herself at the time of her cobla-exchange with Bernart Arnaut. 22 See Frank M. Chambers, Proper Names in the Lyrics of the Troubadours (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), for a full list of references to Bel-Veser. 23 See Simon Gaunt, “The Look of Love: The Gender of the Gaze in Troubadour Lyric,” in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, ed. Emma Campbell and Robert Mills (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 79–95. It is worth noting that Gaunt concentrates his whole essay on Bernart de Ventadorn and Arnaut de Maroill precisely because of their use of the senhal Bel-Veser. 24 PC 70,8, A! tantas bonas chansos, vv. 18ff, in Moshé Lazar, ed., Bernard de Ventadour: Chansons d’amour (Paris: Klincksieck, 1966), 120ff. 25 PC 70,28, Lo gens tems de pascor, vv. 59ff, Lazar, Bernard de Ventadour, 124ff. 26 PC 70,28, Lo gens tems de pascor, vv. 61–4, Lazar, Bernard de Ventadour, 124ff.

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[It seems to me an act of treachery when one appears to be noble and good, then to be haughty when one is in a position of power.]

Even worse for the suitor than a bad response from his lady is no response at all.27 The indifference of his Bel-Veser makes Arnaut de Maroill question his fidelity to her. Lonc temps aurai suffert em patz Per Mon Belh Vezer grieu dolor, Ni anc no vis nulh amador No·s cambïes mas quan sol me.28 [For a long time I have suffered patiently heavy sorrow on account of my Bel-Veser, nor did I ever see any lover who did not change, except for me.]

In spite of his dissatisfaction, the suitor remains true to his Bel-Veser because he is captivated by sos bels olhs amoros [her beautiful loving eyes].29 Her gaze acts as a charm making him forget all the pain that he has endured on her account. Mas era sui tan joyos Que no·m sove del maltraih. D’ira e d’esmai m’a traih Ab sos bels olhs amoros, De que·m poizon’ e·m fachura, Cilh que m’a joya renduda.30 [But now I am so joyful that I no longer remember the bad treatment. She who returned joy to me has brought me out of sadness and torment with her beautiful loving eyes, which enchant me and charm me.]

With her cryptic reference to No-Veser (L., v. 9), Lombarda signals her recognition – and apparent rejection – of the Bel-Veser role that Bernart Arnaut would have her play. Yet the ambiguities inherent in her verses make her attitude unclear. It has been assumed that the names Bernart and Arnaut that she claims she would be willing to adopt (L., vv. 1f) are the double first names of Bernart Arnaut, brother of the count of Armagnac, and that he is the author of See Gaunt, “The Look of Love,” 91ff. PC 30,18, Lo gens temps m’abellis e·m platz, vv. 19–22, in R. C. Johnston, ed., Les Poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil (Paris, 1935; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973), 108ff. 29 Bernart Arnaut has alluded to Lombarda’s eyes (B.A., v. 3). Notice, however, that he describes them merely as plaisenz, not amoros. 30 PC 70,8, A! Tantas bonas chansos, vv. 17–22, Lazar, Bernard de Ventadour, 120ff. 27 28



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the coblas addressed to her. While there is no reason to dispute this attribution, which goes back at least as far as the thirteenth-century biographer,31 it is nevertheless an amusing coincidence that would not have escaped the literate Lady Lombarda that the two troubadours who sang the praises of BelVeser were Bernart (de Ventadorn) and Arnaut (de Maroill). Her acceptance of the names Bernart and Arnaut coupled with her negation of her interlocutor’s Bel-Veser could be her way of pointing out the discrepancy between the Bel-Veser of Bernart Arnaut and the Bel-Veser of the two troubadours with whom he shares first names. Perhaps she is hinting that she accepts the comparison between herself and their Bel-Veser, but not his.

The Multi-Faceted Mirror It is not surprising that Lombarda should seek clarification (L., vv. 5–8) about Bernart Arnaut’s choice of Mirail-de-Pres as a senhal for her (B.A., v. 17), since “mirror” in the lyrics of the troubadours has a variety of connotations. Bertran de Born uses it as a senhal, Bel-Miralhs, to designate a specific lady whose outstanding features are her “gaiety” [sa gaieza], her “stately bearing” [son garan e son bel estan], and her “constancy” [no s’en cambia ni·s muda].32 “Mirror,” in the sense of “paragon,” can be used more generally to show how a lady’s lovely figure can reflect an ideal. Dompn’ ab cors gai, cortes, Flors de joi e d’amor, E miraill de beutat.33 [Lady, whose body is gay and courtly, flower of joy and of love, mirror of beauty.]

The “mirror” can also be the eyes of the lady in which the loving subject, like Narcissus, sees himself and “dies.” Anc non agui de me poder Ni no fui meus de l’or’ en sai Que·m laisset en sos olhs vezer En un miralh que mout me plai. Miralhs, pus me mirei en te, M’an mort li sospir de preon,

Boutière and Schutz, Biographies des troubadours, 416. PC 80,12, Dompna, puois de mi no·us cal, vv. 56–60, Paden et al., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, 150ff. 33 PC 30,6, Aissi cum mos cors es, vv. 25–7, Johnston, Les Poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, 31ff. 31 32

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C’aissi·m perdei com perdet se Lo bels Narcisus en la fon.34 [I have not had any power over myself and I was not my own from the moment when she allowed me to look into her eyes, into a mirror that pleases me greatly. Mirror, since I have gazed at myself in you, the sighs from the depths have killed me, such that I have destroyed myself just like Narcissus in the fountain.]

Most germane to the present discussion, though, is the “mirror” in the heart of the loving subject, enabling him to contemplate the image of his beloved. As Arnaut de Maroill explains, “Qu’el cor [Amors] m’a fag miral ab que·us remir” [for Love has made in my heart a mirror with which I can gaze upon you].35 Thanks to this mirror, the suitor does not have to be in the presence of his Bel Veser in order to “see” her. He carries her image in his heart wherever he goes. Thus, Bernart de Ventadorn is able to console his Bel-Veser, “Domna, si no·us vezon mei olh, / Be sapchatz que mos cors vos ve” [Lady, if my eyes do not see you, rest assured that my heart sees you].36 Similarly, Arnaut de Maroill can reassure his Bel-Veser, “El cor vos mir ades” [In my heart I gaze on you constantly].37 Such “seeing,” which involves contemplation [repaus mos huoills], memory [non oblidos], and imagination [cossir], can occur only in the heart [el cor]. Ves lo païs, pros dompna issernida, Repaus mos huoills on vostre cors estai, E car plus pres de vos no·m puosc aizir, Tenc vos el cor ades e cossir sai Vostre gen cors cortes, qui·m fai languir, E·l gen parlar e·l deport e·l solatz, Lo pretz e·l sen e la beutat de vos, Don pois vos vi non fui anc oblidos.38 [Toward the country where you are, Noble Lady of distinction, I rest my eyes where you are, and since I cannot approach any nearer to you, I hold you constantly in my heart. And I can imagine your fine courtly body, which makes me languish, and your fine words and the pleasing things that you do and your company and your

PC 70,43, Can vei la lauzeta mover, vv. 17–24, Lazar, Bernard de Ventadour, 180ff. PC 30,26, Us jois d’amor s’es e mon cor enclaus, v. 45, Johnston, Les Poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, 22ff. 36 PC 70,41, Can par la flors josta·l vert folh, vv. 41f, Lazar, Bernard de Ventadour, 152ff. 37 PC 30,21, Ses joi non es valors, v. 23, Johnston, Les Poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, 64ff. 38 PC 30,22, Si cum li peis an en l’aiga lor vida, vv. 25–32, Johnston, Les Poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, 44ff. 34 35



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merit and your wit and your beauty, which I have never forgotten since I saw you.]

Meanwhile, “heart” is precisely what is missing from Bernart Arnaut’s amorous overtures. He can call Lombarda his “Mirror of Worth” if he wants to, but unless his heart is in it, there will be no seeing [no veser]. Bernart Arnaut tries to convince her that she has “consolation” [conort] (B.A., v. 18), but she notices that his heart is nowhere in his verses and calls attention to its absence. Indeed, she does so in a most emphatic way, by means of an intricate rhetorical play built on words having cor(d) “heart” as their root (L., vv. 9–12).39 Combining annominatio, derived rhyme, and internal rhyme, she manages, within the space of four decasyllabic verses, to accumulate seven words in which cor(d) is embedded (des-cord-a, a-cord, des-a-cord-a, re-cord, re-cord-a, a-cord, a-cord-a) before expressing in unadorned terms her real concern: Mas del cor pes / On l’aves mes [but I am pondering where you have placed your heart].

Lombarda’s Accord Her rather convoluted statement about how the Mirror with No Seeing disrupts [discorda] her acord so much that it almost destroys it [descorda] has left scholars wondering what her acord could be. For Rieger, Lombarda’s acord is a legal agreement of some kind; for others, it is her “inner harmony,” her acceptance of who she is.40 For Jean Maillard, acord is an identification of genre.41 Lombarda’s insistence on the tension between descord (descorda, desacorda) and acord (acord, acord, s’acorda) is reminiscent of the following

39 Kay, “Derivation,” 172; Städtler, Altprovenzalische Frauendichtung, 253ff; Bruckner et al., Songs of the Women Troubadours, 170 n. 29–32, suggest that only record(a) has “heart” cor(d) as its root. I assume that they are basing this on François Just-Marie Raynouard, Lexique roman ou dictionnaire de la langue des troubadours, 6 vols (Heidelberg: Winter 1836–), 45, which lists acort and descort under the stem corda “string” (II, 480ff) and record(a) under cor “heart” (II, 473ff). Regardless of the real historical development of these words, the repetition of the sound cord would have evoked “heart” in the imagination of thirteenth-century listeners. 40 Rieger 250; Jean-Charles Huchet translates acort as “song” in “Les Femmes Troubadours ou la voix critique,” Littérature 51 (1983), 59–93, here 87. 41 Jean Maillard, “Notes sur l’acort provençal,” Revue de langue et littérature provençales 3 (1960), 44–53, here 47; Erich Köhler, “Descort und Lai,” in Les Genres lyriques, Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, Tome I, fasc. 4, Band II (Heidelberg: Winter 1980), 1–8, here 4. While not necessarily proposing that acord here means “song” or designates a particular genre, Kay points out that it belongs to “literary as well as reflective discourse” (“Derivation,” 172).

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verses extracted from one of the very few surviving songs to label itself as an acort, or anti-descort. Amors, ben es mos acords Que acords S’apel mos cants tostemps mais, Entre·ls fins aimants verais, Cui platz solaç e deports Que descorts Non deu far qui non s’irais; Per qu’ieu lais Descorts, Per far acords gais Entre·ls gais.42 [Love, it is indeed my acord that my song should henceforth be called acord among faithful true lovers, who like amusement and distraction, for a descort should not be made by someone who is not angry; therefore, I leave aside descorts in order to make gay acords among the gay.]

According to this logic, if Lombarda’s coblas remain within the boundaries of the acort and do not cross over into the domain of the descort, it is because she “is not angry” [non s’irais]. She does not take offense at Bernart Arnaut’s vacuous declarations of devotion. As far as she is concerned, this exchange of verses is nothing more than a source of “amusement and distraction” [solaç e deports], a game of wits, which she is clearly winning.

Lombarda’s Name Lombarda delivers the knock-out punch with the reminder about the meaning of her name (L., v. 11). Most scholars have assumed that she is referring here to the stereotype of the Lombards as merchants,43 but I believe that she has 42 PC 461,37, Bela domna cara, vv. 65–75, in Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta and Robert Lafont, Las Cançons dels trobadors (Toulouse: Institut d’Estudis Occitans, 1979), 732ff. 43 Dejeanne, “Les coblas de Bernart-Arnaut,” 68 n. 11; Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours (New York: Norton, 1980), 175; Linda M. Paterson, “Stéréotypes géographiques et ethniques en Occitanie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale della Association Internationale d’Etudes Occitanes, Torino 31 agosto-5 settembre 1987, 2 vols, ed. Giuliano Gasca Queirazza (Turin: Dipartimento di Scienze Letterarie e Filologiche, Università di Torino, 1993), I, 269–82, here 272; Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 138. In an original and very different interpretation, Städtler, Altprovenzalische Frauendichtung, 253ff, reads Lombarda as a cryptogram of amor: l-OM-b-AR-da.



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something else in mind. After all, she is a woman, not a man, and her name is Lombarda, not Lombard. Thus, it is the stereotype of the Lombardas, not the Lombards, that we should seek in attempting to interpret her remark. As it happens, we know what that stereotype is because it is described in a tenso with which both Lombarda and Bernart Arnaut must have been familiar. [See full text in Appendix.] This tenso is a debate between Raimon (de la Salas?) and someone named Bertran about who is superior on the battlefield and at court: the Provençaux or the Lombards.44 Raimon takes the side of the former; Bertran defends the latter. That the tenso between Raimon and Bertran provides a key to the understanding of the coblas exchanged by Bernart Arnaut and Lombarda is evident from the outset.45 Bernart Arnaut’s opening announcement, “Lombards volgr’eu eser” [I would want to be a Lombard, v. 1], is a less-than-subtle reformulation of Bertran’s “Lombartz vuoill esser” [I want to be a Lombard, v. 12]. And Bernart Arnaut’s promise to return tenfold any help he receives from his rival Jordan borrows the rhymes pretz and detz as well as the verb valer from Raimon’s unfavorable comparison of the Lombard ladies with those of Provence: “E lai son las dompnas de pretz, / Que l’una cuich qe·n val ben detz / De Lombardas …” [And there (in Provence) are the worthy ladies, for I think one of them is easily worth ten Lombard ladies … vv. 53f]. Lombarda knows as well as Bernart Arnaut what comes next: the Lombardas, in the estimation of Raimon, who is undoubtedly voicing the opinio communis, are inferior to the ladies of Provence because they are ‘‘femnas grans c’apenas neis sabon far bels semblans’’ [big women who are hardly able to make a good appearance, vv. 55f].46 The humor of this stereotype as it applies to her situation vis à vis Bernart Arnaut would have been obvious to the astute Na Lombarda. The psycho-physiological process whereby the image of the beloved lady enters the heart of the man who loves

44 PC 406,16, Bertran si fossetz tant gignos, in Frank M. Chambers, “Raimon de las Salas,” in Essays in Honor of Louis Francis Solano, ed. Raymond J. Cormier and Urban T. Holmes (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 29–51, here 46ff. Like the cobla-exchange between Bernart Arnaut and Lombarda, this tenso contains allusions to developments in the Albigensian Wars. Specifically, it states, “And I think that [Simon] will return his fief to the count [Raimon],” which situates the writing of this text between the siege of Beaucaire in 1216 and Simon de Montfort’s death in 1219. See Chambers, “Raimon,” 51 n. 24. Lombarda’s cobla-exchange with Bernart Arnaut predates 1219, the year in which the latter took over the title count of Armagnac. 45 Though I am convinced that Bernart Arnaut and Lombarda were aware of the tenso between Raimon (de la Salas) and Bertran, my interpretation of Lombarda’s understanding of her name does not require her familiarity with that text. Both the tenso and the coblaexchange are referring to a stereotype, which must have been common knowledge in her day. 46 PC 406,16, Bertran si fossetz tant gignos, vv. 53–6, in Chambers, “Raimon,” 46ff.

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her was a topic of fascination among the poets of her day.47 It is the Italian, Giacomo da Lentini, who states the problem most succinctly: Or come pote sì gran donna entrare per gli oc[c]hi mei, che sì pic[c]ioli sone? e nel mio core come pote stare, che ‘nentr’esso la porto laonque i’ vone?48 [Now how was such a big lady able to enter through my eyes, which are so small and how was she able to reside in my heart so that I carry her in it wherever I go?]

Moreover, one does not have to look beyond the Occitan tradition to find evidence that the mechanics of this process were a source of perplexity for rational men who found themselves in Love’s grip. Folquet de Marselha, for instance, marvels at what has happened to his heart, which now, like a mirror, holds the image of the one he loves. Estiers no puesc durar, Amors, E no sai cossi s’esdeve De mon cor – qu’aissi·us a e·us te Que re non par que n’ai’ alhors – Quar, si be·us etz grans, eissamen Podetz en me caber leumen Quo·s devezis una grans tors En un pauc miralh.49 [Love, I cannot endure otherwise and I do not know what is happening to my heart, which is already so occupied with keeping you that nothing appears to exist any more [for it], for although you are big, you can find a place in me, in the same way that a tall tower is reflected in a small mirror.]

Common to both of these examples is the emphasis on the disparity of size between the person being imagined and the heart where the image is held. The lady is big, and the heart is small: how can one thing contain another that is greater than itself? The facetious reasoning seems to be that the taller the lady, the harder it is for her to reside in the heart of her lover. According to this line of thought, Lombarda, who, if she fits the stereotype, is unusu47 Giorgio Agamben, “Eros at the Mirror,” in Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, tr. Ronald L. Martinez (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 73–89. 48 Gianfranco Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento, 1 (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), 76, cited in Agamben, “Eros,” 80. 49 PC 155,14, Mout i fetz gran pechat Amors, vv. 41–50, in Stronski, Le Troubadour Folquet de Marseille (Cracovie: 1910; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 40ff.



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ally tall, would have more trouble than most women entering a man’s heart. Recalling the reputation that her name carries with it, Lombarda accepts with a smile the absurdity of this exchange of coblas: she does not have to worry about being squeezed into the heart of Bernart Arnaut because his heart is nowhere to be found. Lombarda’s closing comment about not being able to find the house (or hut) appropriate for Bernart Arnaut’s heart (L., vv. 15f) may be her way of saying that she cannot think of any lady who would want to take up residence there. The motif of the beloved lady treating the troubadour’s heart as her home is developed more fully in a canso by Folquet de Marselha. E pos mos Cor, dona, vos a dinz se, Si mals li·n ve, Pos dinz etz, sufrir lo·us cove; Empero faitz del Cors so que’us er bo E·l Cor gardatz si qom vostra maizo.50 [Since my heart, lady, holds you inside it, if anything bad happens to it, since you are inside it, you will have to suffer. Therefore, do with my body whatever you like, but keep my heart as your home.]

Conclusion Lombarda’s coblas are themselves a mirror of sorts. Formally, they are a mirror of Bernart Arnaut’s coblas with their a 10’ a 10’ a 10’ a 10’ b 4 b 4 a 6’ b 6 metrical pattern;51 rhetorically, her verses mirror his with their play on proper names and, semantically, with their repetition of his words volgr’, veser, and mirail. Lombarda’s coblas are also a mirror of something much bigger than themselves. Like the heart of the poet which holds the image of his lady, Lombarda’s little text mirrors many of the major motifs of the Occitan lyric tradition in general as well as several of its best-known songs.

50 PC 155,8, En chantan m’aven a membrar, vv. 16–20, in Stronski, Le Troubadour Folquet, 27ff. 51 Bernart Arnaut’s coblas may themselves be a mirror, metrically speaking, of Alamanda’s song. István Frank observed the similarity between the two in Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 1966), I, 5 n. 19; see also Martín de Riquer, Los Trovadores: Historia literaria y textos, 3 vols (Barcelona: Planeta, 1975), 506; John H. Marshall, “Pour l’Étude des Contrafacta dans la poésie des troubadours,” Romania 101 (1980), 289–335, here 323; Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau, 252.

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Appendix: PC 406,16 Bertran si fossetz tant gignos (from Chambers, “Raimon de las Salas,” 46–51) 1. Bertran, si fossetz tant gignos Que saubessetz lo mieils triar D’aisso qe·us vuoill demandar, Tenssons fora ben de nos dos. Digatz: cal ant plus pretz cabal, Li Lombart o li Provensal; Cals razonatz ni tenetz per plus pros, Per mieils faire gerra, conduih ni dos? 2. Raimon, destas doas razos Qe·m partetz, la cals mieiller par, L’una pren, l’autra lais estar. Lombartz vuoill esser ad estors, Car de Proenssa no me cal; Per q’ieu chausisc sai, que mais val Lombardia, on trob cavalliers bos, Francs e cortes; e·m platz lor messios. 3. Bertran, al mieu entendemen Chausit avetz la sordejor. Trop son plus ric gerrejador Li Proensal e plus valen Per gerra e per mession. Tolon la terra a·N Symon, E·il demandon la mort a lor seignor, E al comte cuich que rendra s’onor. 4.

Raimon, trop lor datz d’onramen, Q’a Belcaire en lor honor Lor fetz Symons tant de paor, E si eron dos tans de gen. En apres, a gran mespreison, Renderon li sa garnison; Per q’en totz faitz sont li Lombart meillor E plus honrat e mieils combatedor.

5.

Bertran, a doble vos envit De la tenzon que razonatz, Que lai es proesa e barnatz Mantengutz, larguesa e convit; Lai dona hom cavals e destriers E fant rics conduitz e pleniers. En Lombardia podetz ben, si·us platz, Morir de fam si deniers non portatz.

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Raimon, fort avetz joc marrit, que qand es perdutz, l’envidatz.

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Sai son plus donador assatz, E·il Lombart son mais issernit, Qu’il dan cavals, draps e deniers, E·ls tenc d’armas plus fazendiers Qe·ls Proensals que vos tant me lauzatz, E sai es hom plus soven convidatz.

7. Bertran, del tot avetz gran tort, Qe lai a trobadors prezans Que sabont far e vers e chans, Tenssos, sirventes e descort; E lai son las dompnas de pretz, Que l’una cuich qe·n val ben detz De Lombardas, mas qe sont femnas grans C’apenas neis sabon far bels semblans. 8. Raimon, aissi non a conort Q’ieu ja·us en sia contrastans, Car li Lombart d’aitals bobans No·is plazon, ni d’aital deport; Car vos mezeus, si vos voletz, Atressi conoisser devetz Que de las dompnas nais lo grans engans, C’als maritz fant noirir autrui enfans. 1.

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Bertran, if you were clever enough to be able to choose the better (side) in what I wish to ask you, there could well be a tenso between us. Tell me: which have more excellent worth, the Lombards or the Provençaux; which do you consider or esteem more noble and better at making war, hospitality, and gifts? Raimon, of these two choices that you give me to decide which seems better, I take one and leave the other alone. I wish to be a Lombard in battles, for I care nothing for Provence. Therefore I make my choice here, for Lombardy is better, where one finds good, noble, courtly knights; and I like their liberality. Bertran, in my opinion you have chosen the worse (side). The Provençaux are much bolder warriors and more meritorious in war and in liberality. They are taking the land away from Sir Simon and are asking their lord for his death, and I think he will return his fief to the Count (of Toulouse). Raimon, you do them too much honor, for at Beaucaire in their fief Simon frightened them so, and yet they had twice as many men. Afterward, with very bad judgment, they gave him back his garrison. Therefore, in all matters the Lombards are better and more honored and better fighters. Bertran, I challenge you to a double stake (I double the bet) in the tenso that you are defending, for prowess and nobility, generosity and hospitality are maintained there (in Provence); there one gives

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horses and steeds, and they offer rich and lavish entertainments. In Lombardy, if you please, you can easily starve to death unless you carry money with you. Raimon, you have a bad (position in the) game, for when it is lost you challenge it (you raise the stake). Here are many more patrons, and the Lombards are more discerning, for they give horses, clothes, and money, and I consider them better men at arms than the Provençaux that you praise to me so much, and here one receives more frequent invitations. Bertran, you are completely wrong about the whole thing, for there (in Provence), there are distinguished troubadours who know how to compose vers and songs, tensos, sirventes, and descorts; and there are the worthy ladies, for I think one of them is easily worth ten Lombard ladies, furthermore they (the Lombard ladies) are big women who scarcely even know how to make a good appearance. Raimon, here there is no encouragement for me to argue with you about that, for the Lombards take no pleasure in such ostentation or in such amusements; for you yourself, if you will, must also admit that from ladies comes great deceit, for they make their husbands feed other men’s children.

Na Maria: Shaping Marian Devotion in Old Occitan Song Daniel E. O’Sullivan

When I undertook a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, a work that would become my first book, I had observed that the mere mention of the Virgin Mary or of Marian song elicited flat responses from critics, both alive and long gone.1 According to them, it was a foregone conclusion and therefore the end of analysis to say that Marian song in Old French was merely the product of substituting the Virgin Mary for the Lady of secular courtly song. Bruckner herself took on a similar problem of “flattening out” in her 1986 article, “Jaufré Rudel and Lyric Reception: The Problem of Abusive Generalization”: Lured by the enigma of Jaufré’s amor de lonh, many scholars have sought to explain or identify that elusive love and decipher (or invent) some satisfactory narrative that will account for, order, and classify the six poems of his corpus into a unified structure. The trouble is, such unity usually comes at the price of flattening out our appreciation of Jaufré’s poetic variety, since most of these critical efforts, from the vida on, focus on the two poems of far-off love and consider the other songs as either buildup to or distraction from the poetic heights of amor de lonh. (205)

Bruckner poses here a question central to both medieval textuality and literary hermeneutics in general: can we understand a literary tradition without assimilating specific textual examples of that tradition and, no less importantly, can we understand those particular texts without recourse to that tradition? Bringing a similar argument to bear in the case of the Virgin Mary in Old French song, I conclude that Mary in Old French literature is a protean figure that poets adopt and adapt to suit them and their varied literary goals.

1 Daniel E. O’Sullivan, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). See especially 3–4 for a discussion of Pierre Bec’s characterization of religious song as a “registre parasite” in his very influential La Lyrique française au Moyen Age (XIIe–XIIIe siècles): Contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux, 2 vols (Paris: Picard, 1977).

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Now what of the Virgin Mary in Old Occitan song? Like critics of the Old French tradition, scholars have spent little energy discussing Mary in the troubadour tradition, focusing instead on the larger secular corpus, perhaps assuming that where she is present, she plays her typical church-sanctioned role of intermediary between people and God.2 In fact, with the notable exception of two scholars, little work has been done on Marian or even religious song in general in Old Occitan. Francisco J. Oroz Arizcuren published a critical edition, entitled La lírica religiosa en la literatura provenzal antigua, in 1972. The edition’s prefatory material is more concerned with philological considerations than commentary, but it remains an excellent source for the study of religious lyric in Old Occitan and the notes on the individual songs often prove insightful.3 The second recent contribution comes in Patrick S. Diehl’s survey, The Medieval European Religious Lyric: An Ars Poetica.4 Diehl’s work is twofold: it offers a synthetic analysis of the functions, genres, forms, structure, and rhetoric of medieval European religious song followed by short commentary and select bibliography on each linguistic tradition (which he calls “orientations”: Catalan, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Middle English, Old French, Old Norse, Portuguese, Provençal, and Spanish).5 In regard to his entry on the troubadours, Diehl makes some excel2 Joseph Anglade is quick to point out, for example, in his edition of Guiraut Riquier, “La religion n’eut point de part à la naissance de la poésie lyrique provençale” (Le troubadour Guiraut Riquier. Etude sur la décadence de l’ancienne poésie provençale [Bordeaux: Feret, 1905], 283). A few scholars of the same or next generation did think religious song in Old Occitan worthy of study: Victor Lowinsky, “Zum geistlichen Kunstliede in der altprovenzalischer Literatur bis zur Gruendung des Consistori de Gai Saber,” Zeitschrift fuer neufranzoesische Sprache und Literatur 20 (1898), 163–271; the two-part article by Dimitri Scheludko, “Die Marienlieder in der altprovenzalischen Lyrik,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 36 (1935), 29–48, and Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 37 (1936), 15–42, as well as “Ueber die religiose Lyrik der Troubadours,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 38 (1937), 224–50; and Diego Zorzi, Valori religiosi nella letteratura provenzale: la spiritualità trinitaria (Milan: Pubblicazioni dell’Università cattolica del S. Cuero, 1954). 3 In his commentary on the religious corpus as a whole, he takes his cue from a single expression in the vida of Lanfranc Cigala – “trobava volontiers de Dieu” [he gladly sang of God] – and wonders if the troubadour composed more religious songs than are extant or if crusade songs should be considered part and parcel of the religious corpus (La lírica  religiosa  en la literatura  provenzal antigua [Pamplona: Diputacion Foral de Navarra, Institucion Principe de Viana, 1972], 21–32). 4 From this study, I exclude discussion of the influence of the cult of the Virgin Mary and its accompanying literary production in Latin on the conception of fin’amors. Henri Joseph Turrin treats this extensively in his Ph.D. thesis, “Figures of the Feminine Ideal in Medieval Writings: With Special Reference to the Virgin Mary in the Latin Tradition and the Troubadour’s Domna in the Twelfth-Century Provençal Love-Lyric,” Clare College, Cambridge, 1979. While certainly worthy of study, the question figures outside the scope of this study: the explicit thematization of Marian devotion in Old Occitan song. 5 Patrick S. Diehl, The Medieval European Religious Lyric: An Ars Poetica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Strangely for Diehl, who shows himself to be



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lent global comments but does not provide specific textual evidence. He also tends towards interpreting these poems perhaps a bit too personally: These poets want to talk, to you, to each other, to anyone who will listen, even (on occasion) to God or Mary – to include the whole world of talkers and listeners in their circles. This quality of intimacy, of direct, addressed speech is what distinguishes their Marian lyric and gives the reader so strong a sense of the human space that surrounded the writing and the saying or singing of their work. (258)

Scholars now read troubadour texts not as autobiographical, personalized expressions of emotion, but rather as entries in a socio-literary game. I would argue that we need to step away from reading these songs as personal, latein-life confessional literature that stand apart from, rather than form part of, the troubadour tradition. Courtly song provided form and a lexicon to express Marian devotion in Old Occitan song, but those forms and lexemes were utilized in ways that add meaningfully to, rather than subtract from, the courtly lyric tradition. In the following pages, we will glimpse – space will not permit an exhaustive analysis – how Marian devotion in Old Occitan songs adds another dimension to the poetic game that the troubadour played in ways that do not cut off intepretive possibilities; rather, it opens new ones. (The incipits of the forty-four songs of my corpus are listed in an appendix.) In a first step, we will recall that all medieval song relied on convention and that religious songs were no different: they can hardly be accused of monotony, especially in regard to form and music, for that was how the game was played. From that point, we will consider the specific case of Guiraut Riquier, who left us more songs to the Virgin Mary than any other troubadour. More important than the sheer number of songs he composed, however, a consideration of where these songs appear in the poet’s Libre demonstrates their full integration into Guiraut’s lyric project. Finally, we will see how Old Occitan songs to the Virgin Mary exhibit what may very well be one of the most important characteristics of troubadour song: a ludic dimension that delights in irony, polyvalence, and ambiguity. I conclude that the troubadour corpus must be gently reshaped to allow these songs to return from the margins of scholarly debate and take their rightful place side by side within the wider troubadour song tradition.

careful virtually everywhere else, he omits Francisco J. Oroz Arizcuren’s edition from his bibliography.

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Mary against the Landscape of Old Occitan Song Marian devotion in Old Occitan songs was a phenomenon that belonged to Occitania of the thirteenth century. A few poets from Italy (Bertolome Zorzi, Lanfranc Cigala, and Peire Guilhem de Luzerna) and Catalunya (Cerveri de Girona) did compose Marian songs in Old Occitan, but the vast majority hail from Occitania proper. Moreover, few examples of Old Occitan Marian songs predate the thirteenth century – one important exception being “O Maria Deu maire” (which, curiously, does not appear in Arizcuren) which was most likely composed close to Saint-Martial de Limoges, an important center for Latin devotional song in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.6 No, the vast majority of troubadour songs belong to the thirteenth century, well after the voices of the classic period, the Bernart de Ventadorns and Raimbaut d’Aurengas, fell silent. The relatively late flourishing of this poetics coincides with the surge of vernacular religious poetics in other traditions such as the Old French repertory initiated seemingly by Gautier de Coinci in the early thirteenth century and the cantigas in Galician-Portuguese associated with Alfonso X in Spain. While it would be a case of abusive generalization to say that all Marian songs in Old Occitan are songs of praise and supplication, many extant songs do just that. Of Lanfranc Cigala, the Genoese nobleman from the middle of the thirteenth century, four religious songs are extant. In three, Mary looms large. One has only to cite the incipit of “Gloriosa sainta Maria” to understand Mary’s role in the song, and the same holds true for “Oi, mair’e filla de Dieu.” His third song, “Em chantar d’aquest segle fals,” combines the common motif of repentance of sin with a call for help to Mary herself: En chantar d’aquest segle fals ay tant’obra perduda, don tem aver penas mortals, si merces no m’aiuda; per que mos chans se muda: eu·l vuelh ofrir

6 In addition to chapters 1 and 3 of Turrin’s dissertation, see Margaret Switten’s important article, “Modèle et variations: Saint-Martial-de-Limoges et les troubadours,” in Contacts de langues, de civilisations et d’intertextualité: Actes du IIIe Congrès international de l’Association Internationale d’Etudes Occitanes, Montpellier, 20–26 1990, ed. Gérard Gouiran, 3 vols (Montpellier: Centre d’Etudes Occitanes de l’Université de Montpellier, 1992), II, 679–96. Switten believes that the melody of Guiraut Bornelh’s well-known alba, “Reis glorios,” was based on the music of “O Maria Deu maire,” which, in turn, was grounded in the famous Latin hymn, “Ave maris stella.” Further comments on formal recognition and adaptation between Latin and Occitan repertories can be found in Catherine Léglu’s Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric, Research Monographs in French Studies 8 (European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford: Legenda, 2000).



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lai don venir me pot complid’aiuda, sol no·m sia irascuda la Maire Dieu cuy mos chantars saluda. (1–11)7 [In singing of this false world I have wasted so much effort that I fear suffering mortal punishment, if mercy does not come to my aid; for this reason, my singing is changed: I want to offer it there where secure aid can come to me, if only the Mother of God, whom my song addresses, is not angry with me.]

This combination of the fugus mundi topos with acknowledgement of past misdeeds informs many songs to the Virgin Mary whose importance is here buttressed formally through the subsequent repetition of “Maire de Dieu” in the tenth line of each of the song’s remaining nine stanzas. Similarly, in Cigala’s last religious song, “Pessius de cor e marritz,” the singer laments his sinful life, decries the state of the world, and broods over his dread before final judgment. However, whereas Mary is omnipresent in “En chantar d’aquest segle fals,” Mary appears only in the tornada of “Pessius de cor et marritz”: Maire de Dieu, totz mos anz mi faitz far vostres comanz, qu’aissi serai certz de salvacion, per qu’eu·s en prec com cel que vostr’om son. (49–52) [Mother of God, all my life I do as you ask so that I can be certain of salvation, since I pray to you as one who is your man.]

Mary may be mentioned only once, but as it comes in the tornada where praying to her is linked explicitly to eternal salvation, the one mention is significant. “Domna, flor” by Aimeric de Belenoi also reads like a “typical” Marian song: the singer praises Mary and associates her with gaining access to Jesus Christ, who ultimately grants salvation: Domna, flor, [frug] d’amor, domna senz vilania, resplandor e color de tota cortezia: vostr’amor,

7 Unless otherwise noted, I take all citations from Arizcuren and all translations are my own. Numbers in parentheses refer to verses.

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sai, socor aicel qu’en vos s’en fia. (1–8) [Lady, flower, fruit of love, lady without baseness, resplendent with and made brilliant by pure courtliness: your love, I know, helps the one who trusts in you.]

Aimeric, like Marian poets before and after him, uses the metaphors of flowers and fruits for Mary and highlights her purity using courtly vocabulary: she is senz vilania and possesses cortezia. Not content to leave off this first stanza with this general statement about her aid, he finishes this initial stanza with a more specific goal in mind: car de vos pres charn humana Jesus Christz, qi lav’e sana totz vostres amics de mal, per confessïon leial. (13–16) [since Jesus Christ took flesh in you, he who washes and protects all of your faithful from evil through sincere confession.]

Mention of the Incarnation as the ultimate trope for Mary’s intercessory role between humanity and divinity makes plain the heuristic goal of the song: it is a plea for deliverance from sin and entrance into God’s company after death. Conventional does not equal monotonous, of course, in this tradition, for audiences delighted in the play of theme and variation, especially in terms of formal virtuosity. Religious songs in Old Occitan are far from staid compositions and their composers employ, like in their secular counterparts, highly complex metrical schemes.8 In “Domna, flor,” Aimeric utlizes an intricate prosodic design: a3 a3 b6’ a3 a3 b6’ a3 a3 b6’ a3 a3 b6’ c7’ c7’ d7 d79

Combining shorter and longer verses, masculine and feminine rhyme, and four rhymes into sixteen-verse coblas capcaudadas (plus tornada), Aimeric achieves a virtuosic display of the kind of formal bedazzlement that troubadours and their listeners appreciated. In “Ben es adreigz,” the Italian trou-

8 Diehl has noted this tendency; however, his remarks remain couched in terms of excessive personalization: “The traditional stress on novelty of form also meant that originality and individuality were favored, as well as a high degree of self-consciousness about the creation of the text” (The Medieval European Religious Lyric, 258). 9 Following convention, I use the small letters to denote rhymes, Arabic numerals to designate the number of syllables in a verse, and an apostrophe to signal an unstressed (i.e., feminine) rhyme.



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badour, Bertolome Zorzi, employs a similarly complex scheme for his six coblas alternas (plus tornada): a4 b6’ c4 d6 a4 b6’ c4 d6 a4 e6 f4 g6’ h4 g6’

And by way of transition to our treatment of Guiraut Riquier, we might note here that his “Ajssi quon es sobronrada” is composed of six coblas doblas and a tornada is a metrical scheme to rival even the most virtuosic of troubadours: a7’ b7 a7’ b7 c3 c3 d2’ d5’ d2’ e7 e7 f7’ f7’ g7

In addition, the music of “Aissi quon es” is flowing and melismatic and features four-, five-, and even six-note neumes, especially towards the ends of lines, thus highlighting the rhyme words.10 In another religious song, “Ihesus Christz, Filh de Dieu viu,” an eleven-note melisma is intoned over the word “Christz” in its incipit. Elizabeth Aubrey notes that Guiraut’s melodies demonstrate a “melismatic character and remarkable variety in motivic manipulation,” and it is clear that Guiraut did not differentiate between his religious and secular repertory – a point that we will buttress below – in styling his music.11 While one might assume that composers of religious songs would adopt relatively simple formal schemes so as not to obscure their message, the songs seen briefly here belie such a hasty idea. Close analysis leads us to conclude that Marian songs in Old Occitan are just as formally complex and intriguing as the secular song that modern scholars seem to favor.

Guiraut Riquier and the Fusion of Marian and Secular Poetics Guiraut Riquier, often called the last troubadour, makes for an interesting case in Old Occitan songs to the Virgin Mary for various reasons: for one, he left us the largest number of Marian songs. In eleven of his fourteen religious songs, Mary is praised. For another, his Marian corpus demonstrates interesting ties with other genres, especially the sirventés.12 And finally, when we

10 For my musical analysis, I rely on the text and music established in Hendrik van der Werf, The Extant Troubadour Melodies (Rochester, New York: by the author, 1984). 11 Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 234. 12 There are other intergeneric aspects of Old Occitan Marian song that space does not permit for inclusion here. In particular, the Old Occitan alba oscillates between the earthly, erotic dawn song to one imbued with religious fervor as recently explored by Christophe Chaguinian and John Haines, who edit the text and music of the nineteen extant Old Occitan albas in Les Albas occitanes, Classiques Français du Moyen Age

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look at the place that songs to Mary occupy in Guiraut’s Libre, we see how integral they were to the work of this important troubadour, suggesting that we should reconsider the place of Marian devotion in the wider troubadour corpus. In her study of the sirventés, Catherine Léglu identifies the versus tripertitus caudatus or strophe couée or versicle structure aab as characteristic of both the Latin sequence and the Old Occitan sirventés.13 This not to say that all sirventés were wrought from this structure, but the pattern is there, and its use in other compositions may call to the mind of a listener an association to satire. It is therefore significant to note that this structure appears quite often in Old Occitan Marian songs. In Guiraut’s religious corpus, it is in evidence in eight of his songs: “En tot quant qu’ieu saupes,” “Gauch ai, quar esper d’amor,” “Humils, forfaitz, repres e penedens,” “Ihesus Christz, Filh de Dieu viu,” “Ops m’agra que mos volers,” “Qui.s tolgues,” “Qui velha ses plazer,” and “Yeu cujava soven d’amor chantar.”14 Over and above this formal observation, we note that satiric thread runs through much of Old Occitan Marian song, such as in Guiraut Riquier’s “No puesc per ren.” It opens with an aab structure: No puesc per ren    lo ben que conosc far, ni ges nos puesc al contrari fugir. (1–4) [I cannot for anything accomplish the good that I know, nor can I flee from its opposite.]

Later in the song, the singer laments his own powerlessness to lead a good and pure life and to change the world before taking up the rallying cry that we must not lose hope (42–50). Three tornadas finish the song, in the last two of which the singer calls upon the Virgin for help in persevering in this quest for good and justice. The final tornada, in fact, is a stripped down prayer: “Per tu, dona, esper que cobraraj / so que perdut per mo falhimen ay” 156 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008). Five of them (26 percent) are religious and all five involve Mary. 13 Léglu, Between Sequence and Sirventes, 34–62. 14 The same structure appears in the following religious songs: Aimeric de Belenoi, “Domna, flor”; Cadenet, “Be volgra, s’esser pogues”; Folquet de Romans, “Quan be me suy apessatz”; Fraire Menor, “Cor ay e voluntaz”; Guilhem d’Autpol, “Esperansa de totz ferms esperans”; Guilhem de Saint Leidier, “Aissi cum a sas faissos”; Johan Esteve de Beziers, “Lo senhor qu’es guitz”; Lanfranc Cigala, “Pessius de cor et marritz”; Peire d’Alvernha, “Dieus, vera vida, verays”; Peire Guilhem de Luzerna, “Ai, vergena en cui ai m’entendenza”; Cerveri de Girona, “Axi con cel c’anan era la via” and “De Deu no.s deu nuylls hom maraveyllar”; and Anonymous, “Qui vol savi viur’e membradament.” All appear in Oroz Arizcuren, La lírica religiosa.



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(59–60) [Through you, Lady, I hope to recover that which I have lost through my weakness]. In “No puesc per ren,” Mary is placed squarely in the universe of the sirventes, where she functions no longer as the docile, passive figure of so much Marian literature. She’s a kind of medieval Marianne, leading the charge against worldly hypocrisy, vice, and evil. She may still be the rose, but this rose has thorns. Occasionally, the sirventés and songs from other genres weave historical details into their textual fabric, and Old Occitan Marian song is no different. In Guiraut Riquier’s “Humils, forfaitz, repres e penedens,” the singer, as in the songs above, pleads with Mary for forgiveness of his sins, begging that he be protected and that she intercede for him before Jesus Christ. However, the two tornadas take us from the abstract and to the concrete: Per nos, dona, verges regina, fos maires del filh de Dieu tot poderos: doncx acaptatz d’elh a nos esta guida. Dieu prec del rey de Castella n’Anfos, que a son cors don honramens e pros lonc temps ab grat et espirital vida. (36–41) [For our sake, lady, virgin queen, you became mother of the son of almighty God: therefore please secure help for us from him. God, I pray for the king of Castille, Lord Alfonse, that you grant honor and worth to his body for a long time with gratitude and everlasting (i.e., spiritual) life.]

The first tornada typifies a call for the Virgin’s intercession and could be applied to anyone, but in the second tornada a prayer is uttered for the salvation of the soul of dead king Alfonso el Sabio (d. April 4, 1284). Of course, Alfonso is known perhaps most for the Cantigas de Santa Maria that are often attributed to him. Guiraut not only inserts himself into contemporary politics, but also into Marian lyric production writ large. The final reason why Guiraut’s Marian songs help us better understand their place among the wider troubadour corpus relates to the context in which his œuvre was preserved. His last song was composed in 1292 and written down writing in Paris, BnF fr. 856 (troubadour MS C), composed in or around Narbonne shortly after 1300. By this time, strategies for recording, ordering, and preserving songs in collections were well developed, and Guiraut’s songs come down to us according to a particularly well-developed system, what is known as his Libre: a generic and chronological arrangement of fifty-four cansos and vers, three retroenchas, six pastorelas, and a final section that contains an array of genres including the alba, descort, breu doble, serena, and a prayer. Michel-André Bossy argues convincingly that Guiraut or his compiler sought to create a number of symmetries and inversions of ratios

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through the arrangement of the songs in his Libre.15 Cansos were, of course, love songs, and vers, Bossy contends, is used by Guiraut as a kind of catch-all marker that includes didactic, political, and devotional poems, “all of which shun the high-flown emotionalism and courtly conceits of the cansos” (281). Interestingly, Marian songs transcend this division, and religious cansos and vers are extant in Guiraut’s corpus. He studies the arrangement of songs in Guiraut’s Libre and sees in the initial large section a play of inversions of ratios that breaks that 54-song section into a possible two halves or threethirds. In addition to permeating the lines of Bossy’s generic categories of canso and vers, Mary does not occupy a discreet place within this highly intricate codicological scheme, which may be more significant than it first seems. Mary finds her way into each of these subcategories: occupying slots 11, 21, 44, 45, and 48, Marian cansos and vers find their way into each part in ways that complement each other. If we divide the Libre into halves, we find a Marian canso and vers in the first half and then a canso and two vers in the second. If we divide the Libre into thirds, the first third contains a Marian canso, the second a Marian vers, and the third one a canso and two vers. A Marian alba and prayer find their way into the last two slots of Guiraut’s Riquier, again in ways that complement the distribution of secular or Marian songs in other parts. After the section of cansos and vers, the reader comes upon three retroenchas or refrain songs, then six pastorelas, then a series that begins with a secular alba, then a descort, a breu doble, a serena, and then our Marian alba, offsetting the secular alba in a passage that goes from profane love in the first alba to a descort that signals a rupture, then the breu doble that talks of how love kills the singer. The serena talks of anticipation of the evening in which love is to be consummated, which is then offset by our Marian alba that announces the desire for a new day, which becomes renewed in the prayer that finishes out the Libre. The conclusion is inescapable: Mary is everywhere in Guiraut’s œuvre. She belongs neither only to the end of his career – his first religious song, “Ajssi quon es sobronrada,” was composed, according to the Libre, in 163, decades before the troubadour’s death – nor to a delimited space in his work. Guiraut makes this observation easy on us, given the state in which his work is preserved, but it should prompt us to wonder about the place of Marian song in the wider troubadour tradition.

15 Michel-André Bossy, “Cyclical Composition in Guiraut Riquier’s Book of Poems,” Speculum 66 (1991), 277–93.



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Shadows of Mary in Old Occitan Song In some songs, the composer plays on the listener’s horizon of expectation by never explicitly mentioning Mary or by revealing the identity of Mary late, sometimes at the very end of the song. All along the way, motifs common to both secular and Marian song are included to prolong the suspense. Folquet de Lunel opens “Tant fin’amors totas horas m’afila” like the most courtly of love songs, keeping the identity of his domna secret, but hinting at the Virgin Mary throughout. His third stanza keeps the listener on tenterhooks as to the identity of the lady: Midons es tals que franc cor et humil a verayamen a fin aman humil, quan lo troba lïal, non en re vila, que no s’azaut ia de far cauza vil; tant es d’onrat luec e senhoril que part totas dompnas pretz senhoril ha. (17–22) [My Lady is such that she shows an honest and humble heart to a fine, humble lover, when she finds him loyal and base in nothing, for she cannot consent to any baseness; she comes from such an honored and noble place that she retains noble worth over all women.]

Is he talking about the Virgin Mary or not? Before answering, it is important to know that this is no exception. Similarly, in “Sj quon la fuelh’ el ramelh,” he begins his song like many other troubadour cansos: it is springtime, and amid the budding flowers and leaves, he undertakes his song; in the second stanza, he turns his focus to his lady, his midons, and her good words and deeds, and that kings and emperors would receive honor in loving her; he then exclaims in the next stanza that his lady wants only a loyal lover, a fin amador; it is in stanza IV that the identity of the woman begins to come into focus: tant es bella sa valors qu’a Dieus es belh tot quan fai, e·l preyador sieu son mai e·l lauzador que d’autra qu’om dompn’apelh. (32–6) [her worth is so high which to God was so pleasing that he did, in sight of both admirers and detractors, more for her than for anyone called a lady.]

As if to prolong the suspense just for one more moment, Folquet takes our focus off of Mary in stanza V to compliment and praise his lord, the count of Rhodes; then, in the first tornada, he calls on the “Queen, powerful Virgin,

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daughter of virginal father” (46–7) because he believes that the count errs if he loves any woman other than the Virgin Mary. Folquet makes his way progressively from an entirely secular point of view to one that makes clear an anti-secular stance that reminds us of unambiguous religious songs like Lanfranc’s “En chantar d’aquest segle fals.” This kind of ambiguity and playfulness is highly prized in troubadour song, both in its day and today. If Mary’s presence is subtle in these Old Occitan songs, where else may she be hiding? In one song, she may be hiding in plain sight. A canso attributed to Beitris de Roman, a trobairitz, makes direct address to a Na Maria in very much the way a troubadour would address his lady. A woman praising another woman? Perhaps the attribution is wrong: after all, no grammatical features mark the voice as distinctively feminine. Maybe this is a case of homosexual love since the second stanza opens: Per qe vos prec, si.us platz, qe fin’amors e gausiment et doutz umilitatz me puosca far ab vos tan de socors. (9–11)16 [For this I beg you, please, to let pure love, delight, and sweet humility give me the help I need with you.]

The evocation of “fin’amors” would certainly seem to justify an interpretation of romantic love. Then again, perhaps this is a case of women expressing deep friendship.17 Interpretations abound with no clear literal reading at hand. There is yet another possible reading: the Na Maria in question could be the Virgin Mary. In the first stanza, she praises Maria as a lady of virtue, pure worth, joy, wisdom, beauty, graciousness, honor, noble speech, and so on. Mary is praised in these very same terms in many religious songs. The third stanza of Peire Cardenal’s “Vera vergena Maria” reads: Tu fust nada de Suria, gentils e paura d’arnes, humils e pura e pia e fatz, en ditz et en pes. (21–4) [You were born in Syria, noble [in spirit] and poor in clothing, humble and pure and pious in deeds, in speech, and thoughts.]

16 I take both citations and translations of “Na Maria, pretz e fina valors” from Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, ed. and tr., Songs of the Women Troubadours (New York: Garland, 1995). Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 17 See Angelica Rieger, “Was Beiris de Romans Lesbian? Women’s Relations with Each Other in the World of the Troubadours,” in William Paden, ed., The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 73–94.



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Similar words of praise come in Bietris’s song. In stanza II, the singer begs Na Maria’s help “qe mi donetz, bella dompna, si.us platz, / so don plus ai d’aver gioi esperansa” (12–13) [so you will grant me, lovely lady, please, what I most hope to enjoy]. In so many Marian songs, the singer makes similar requests of the Virgin where the hoped-for reward is eternal salvation. A religious reading becomes especially plausible when the first of two tornadas is intoned: E car beutas e valors vos enansa sobra tutas, c’una no.us es denan, vos prec, se.us plas, per so qu.us es onransa qe non ametz entendidor truan. (17–20) [As beauty and worth exalt you above all other women (none surpass you) I pray you, please (for this will bring you honor) not to love any deceitful admirer.]

The topos of a woman exalted above all others sounds like it comes right out of the Ave Maria, the most famous Marian prayer – “Benedicta tu in mulieribus” – but then again, many troubadours praise their ladies as beautiful above all others. Then again, Folquet de Lunel uses such superlatives in his subtle Marian songs as evidenced above. Moreover, the question of asking Mary to shun deceitful lovers or suitors (entendidor) may seem odd given the Virgin’s role in helping to save all of mankind. However, such requests for divine intercession must be made sincerely, thus the qualification that such people must not be deceitful (truan).18 It is the combination of her name, terms common to both the secular and Marian canso, and the description of her being above other women that leads us to suspect that the Maria of Bietris’s song may be the Virgin Mary. Must we read “Na Maria” as a Marian song to the exclusion of other interpretations? Certainly not. The song perfectly exemplifies how a religious interpretation adds to, rather than takes away from, the interpretive experience. After all, there is no mention of God in the song; common Marian metaphors – Mary as rose, door, bridge, etc. – are absent; mention is made of neither virginity nor motherhood, and even the expression used for the reward, “gioi esperansa,” harbors some erotic overtones. Instead of pinning down the identity of Maria as the Virgin or not, it might be more prudent and more fruitful to extend the play of possibilities in the song, for that playfulness lies at the very core of the lyric tradition. Not to put too fine a point on it, this song makes perhaps the strongest case for seeing Old Occitan Marian songs as full participants in the troubadour poetic system. 18 One is reminded here of the Miracle de Théophile by Rutebeuf wherein the eponymous hero calls upon the Virgin for aid, but when she appears, she refuses at first to help him perhaps because she does not believe him to be sincere in his call.

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One final, shadowy example of Mary’s presence in Old Occitan song, also from the trobairitz corpus, bears mention before concluding. The tenso between N’Alaisina Yselda (or Na Alais and Na Yselda) and Na Carenza has, like “Na Maria,” caused much ink to be spilt among romance philologists in the effort to arrive at even a basic comprehension of the poem.19 Even the number of participants is in question – are there two or three women? Furthermore, the central theme of the song is very uncourtly indeed: instead of debating fin’amors, the perfect lover, or questions of fidelity, these women talk of marriage and child-rearing. Two sisters declare to Na Carenza that they wish to have husbands, but they don’t want the trouble of bearing and raising children: Penre marit a vostra conoscenza o starai mi pulcela, et si m’agenza, que far fillos non cuiç que sia bos e ssens marit mi par trop anguisos. (5–8)20 [Shall I, in your opinion, take a husband or remain a virgin as it suits me? For making babies doesn’t appeal to me, yet life with no husband seems to me so painful.]

In the following stanza, Na Carenza advises them to take a husband “coronat de scienza” (14) [crowned with wisdom] by whom they will both bear a “filh glorios” (15) [glorious son] yet remain a virgin: “Retenguta.s pulsel’a cui l’epos” (16) [She who has him as spouse remains a virgin]. Perhaps Na Carenza is suggesting that they take holy vows. Nuns are said to marry either the Church or Christ, thus marriage without children. Moreover, and somewhat paradoxically given her maternal role, Mary functioned as a behavioral model to nuns in the Middle Ages. Mary’s subtle presence, however, may not be limited to this rather oblique relationship between her and religious orders. Upon leaving the two sisters, Na Carenza asks: “sovinenza / aiaç de mi en l’umbra de ghirenza” (22) [remember me when you are in the protecting shadow]. The exact meaning of this verse has eluded us and many have interpreted it differently, including Pierre Bec who proposed a radically different editorial reading.21 However, there is a protective shadow associated with Mary: in the Gospel of Luke

19 See the notes to the song in Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner et al., Songs of the Women Troubadours, 177–9. 20 I take both citations and translations of “Na Carenza al bel cors avinenz” from Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner et al., Songs of the Women Troubadours. Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 21 Pierre Bec, “Avoir des enfants ou rester vierge? Une tenson occitane du XIIIe siècle entre femmes,” in Henning Krauss and Dietmar Rieger, ed., Mittelalterstudien: Erich Köhler zum Gedenken (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1984), 21–30.



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and the account of the Annunciation, we read: “respondens angelus dixit, ‘Ei Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te et virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi ideoque et quod nascetur sanctum vocabitur Filius Dei’” [In response the angel said, “The Holy Spirit will overcome you and the power of the Almighty will overshadow you and by consequence the Holy One whom they will call the Son of God will be born to you”]. Therefore, Mary’s shadowy presence is made known through an (admittedly difficult) allusion to a shadow that she herself occupied when God impregnated her. This veiled allusion to Mary’s role in the Annunciation makes the Virgin’s presence in the song and her function as a role model for the women even more plausible, even if, as in the songs by Folquet de Lunel and Na Bietris de Romans, the possibilities of interpretation remain open.

Conclusion The assertion that courtly song shaped vernacular expressions of Marian devotion is the beginning, not the end, of reading and interpretation. Many songs to or in praise of the Virgin Mary in Old Occitan employ the vocabulary of the courtly canso and motifs typical of Latin religious poetry. However, when more closely examined, we see how Mary also plays an integral role in songs that transgress generic boundaries, particularly between canso-like panegyric songs and the sirventés. Then, in one of the most distinctive collections of songs – Guiraut Riquier’s Libre – we see that Mary does not occupy the margins of the œuvre, but functions as an integral part. Finally, Mary makes her presence felt more subtly in other songs, thereby illustrating that religious songs can also participate in the playfulness and ambiguity that characterizes some of the most appreciated troubadour songs. Much more than a flat, stock motif to be calqued onto secular song, Marian devotion fulfills many functions in the Old Occitan lyric corpus, leading us to conclude that the troubadour universe, as it has been treated by modern scholarship, needs to be gently reshaped to allow more space for these songs in the critical debate.

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Old Occitan songs in which the Virgin Mary appears by poet, incipit (Pillet-Carstens number) Aimeric de Belenoi “Domna, flor” (PC 9,9) Alaisina Yselda and “Na Carenza al bel cors avinenz” (PC 12,1)  Carenza Arnaut Catalan “Dieus verays, a vos mi ren” (PC 27,4b) Bernart d’Auriac “Be volria de la mellor” (PC 57,1) Bernart de Venzac “Lo Pair’e.l Filh e.l Sant Espirital” (PC 71,2) “Ben es adreigz” (PC 74,3) Bertolome Zorzi “Jesus Cristz per sa merce” (PC 74,6) “Na Maria, pretz e fina valors” (PC 93,1) Bietris de Roman Cerveri de Girona “Axi con cel c’ana erra la via” (PC 434a,8) “Qui finamen sap cossirar” (PC 124,15) Daude de Pradas “Dompna bona, bel’e plazens” (PC 154,2) Folquet de Lunel “Sj quon la fuelh’ el ramelh” (PC 154,6) “Tant fin’ amors totas horas m’afila” (PC 154,7) “Vers Dieus, el vostre nom e de sancta Maria” Folquet de Romans (PC 156,15) “Cor ay e voluntatz” (PC 159,1) Fraire Menor “A Dieu en qu’es totz poders (PC 220,1) Guilhem d’Ieiras “Ajssi quon es sobronrada” (PC 248,7) Guiraut Riquier “Gauch ai, quar esper d’amor” (PC 248,31) “Humils, forfaitz, repres e penedens” (PC 248,44) “Ihesus Christz, Filh de Dieu viu” (PC 248,46) “Kalenda de mes caut nj freg” (PC 248,47) “No puesc per ren” (PC 248,59) “Ops m’agra que mos volers” (PC 248,61) “Qui velha ses plazer” (PC 248,70) “Sancta verges, maires pura” (PC 248,73) “Christian son per Ihesu Christ nomnat” (PC 248,86) “Yeu cujava soven d’amor chantar” (PC 248,88) “Esperanza de totz ferms esperans” (PC 206,1) Guilhem d’Autpol Guilhem de Saint Leider “Aissi cum a sas faissos” (PC 234,2) “Em chantar d’aquest segle fals” (PC 282,2) Lanfranc Cigala “Gloriosa sainta Maria” (PC 282,10) “Oi, mair’e filla de Dieu” (PC 282,17) “Pessius de cor e marritz” (PC 282,18) “Vera vergena Maria” (PC 335,70) Peire Cardenal “Dona, delz angils rehina” (PC 338,1) Peire de Corbian “Ar levatz sus, francha corteza gens” (PC 342,1) Peire Espanhol Peire Guilhem de Luzerna “Ai, vergena en cui ai m’entendenza” (PC 344,1) “Verges, en bon’hora” (PC 370,15) Perdigon “A Dieu done m’arma de bon’amor” (PC 401,2) Raimon Gaucelm de  Beziers “Flors de paradis” (PC 461,123) Anonymous



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“Par vous m’esjau, done du firmament” (PC 461,192a) “O Maria Deu maire” (no PC number)

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From Convent to Court: Ermengarde d’Anjou’s Decision to Reenter the World William Schenck At first glance, Ermengarde of Anjou, the countess of Brittany who died in 1146, does not seem especially suitable for a study of the role of women in the emergence of secular literature in the aristocratic court. She is not named as a patroness in any roman courtois, and only one extant lyric celebrates her beauty, not the work of a troubadour or trouvère, but a Latin poem written by Marbode, the bishop of Rennes.1 Nonetheless, in La femme au temps des cathédrales, Régine Pernoud uses Ermengarde as an example of how women could inspire an attitude of “courtliness,” of love and respect, in even the most austere men of the church. Furthermore, Pernoud explicitly connects this twelfth-century “courtliness” to the sixth-century poet Venantius Fortunatus, who expressed himself in similar terms in the Latin poems he addressed to the sainted Merovingian queen and nun Radegund.2 Despite this common thread, the experiences of Ermengarde and Radegund were quite different, and these differences lead one to question the simple relationship between “courtliness” and respect for women proposed by Pernoud. Fortunatus and Marbode both extol the beauty and grace of their addressees, but their poems are firmly rooted in the culture of the church. Fortunatus praises Radegund, a cloistered nun, for scorning the world and shedding tears in order to harvest the true joy of heaven, and Marbode advises the young Ermengarde to turn away from worldly things in order to make herself beautiful to Christ.3 What is the relationship between this sort of “courtliness” and the development of secular literature at the aristocratic court, whose values could be different from those of the church? A study of Ermengarde’s life in light of the experiences of Radegund can help answer this question at the same time as it reveals how twelfth-century aristocratic

1

Carmina varia I 23, in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. 171, cols 1659–

60. Régine Pernoud, La femme au temps des cathédrales (Paris: Stock, 1980), 143–9. Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina VIII 5, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctorum Antiquissorum (Berlin: Weidman, 1881, 4, part 1), 193. 2 3

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women could chart a path for themselves through the cultural and political opportunities and constraints that surrounded them. Although there is no way to prove that Ermengarde read the Vitae that tell of Radegund’s life, it is very likely that she was familiar with the story of the sixth-century queen who fled from the Frankish king, Clothar I, her captor and husband, and founded the abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers.4 Consequently, I argue that it is legitimate to examine the sources for Ermengarde’s life in light of Radegund’s Vitae. As Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner suggests in her analysis of the Chevalier de la Charette, the historical implications of women’s prominence in medieval literature cannot be understood from the perspective of the literary texts themselves.5 Without external historical evidence, attempts to understand the relationship between the historical Marie de Champagne and Chrétien de Troyes only lead to further “story-making … that more often than not casts Marie as Queen and Chrétien as Lancelot in the tournament episode: capricious lady manipulates obedient servant.”6 Likewise, modern attempts to understand women’s role at the court through non-literary historical sources like charters, letters, chronicles, and theological treatises risk being overly influenced by either the scholars’ own ideological presuppositions or those of their medieval predecessors.7 The charters and letters that provide direct historical evidence of women’s economic and political power offer a very incomplete picture,8 and a modern scholar may be unconsciously using his or her assumptions about medieval life to construct a coherent narrative from fragmentary evidence. Conversely, it can be easy to forget that the often misogynistic worldview expressed by clerical writers was an aspirational vision and not necessarily an accurate representation of medieval society or even the attitudes of the rest of its members. When taken together, however, literary and historical sources can balance each other and reveal the complexity of medieval society and attitudes. 4 Ermengarde may have briefly been married or betrothed to William IX of Aquitaine, see below. The nuns of Sainte-Croix commissioned an illuminated manuscript containing their founder’s Vitae in the late eleventh century and Hildebert of Lavardin composed a new Vita in the early twelfth. See La vie de sainte Radegunde par Fortunat: Poitiers, Biliothèque Municipale Manuscrit 250 (136), ed. Robert Favreau (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 253–4. For translations and commentary on Radegund’s life, see “Radegund,” in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, ed. and tr. Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Wheatly. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 60–105. 5 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth and Closure in Twelfth-Century Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 84–90. 6 Bruckner, Shaping Romance, 84. 7 Greene alludes to these risks in “The Knight, the Woman, and the Historian,” in Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 45, 51–63. 8 See Kimberly LoPrete, “Adela of Blois,” in Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, ed. Theodore Evergates (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 9.



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Therefore, I will examine three different types of documents: literary texts, charters, and the normative texts written by clerics, in this case in the form of letters. The literary texts are the three Vitae of Radegund; the two written at the end of the sixth century and the new version produced in the twelfth.9 The key documentary sources relating to Ermengarde’s life are noted in the short biography that Jules de Pétigny includes in his edition of Robert of Arbrissel’s letter to the countess,10 and that letter, as well as two by Geoffrey of Vendôme and two by Bernard of Clairvaux, represent the normative texts written by clerics. I suggest that a reading of Ermengarde’s and Radegund’s lives in light of each other will demonstrate that the contradiction between women’s autonomy and the ideological and practical constraints placed on them that is seen in twelfth-century literature and society is not just the product of disagreements between modern scholars, but was at the heart of the lived experience of the aristocratic women in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Before examining Ermengarde’s life, it is important to understand the model offered by Radegund. The Frankish queen-turned-nun was remarkable enough to merit almost immediate canonization, and two hagiographic vitae were composed shortly after her death, the first by the bishop-poet Venantius Fortunatus, who had written several dozen poems to Radegund during her life, and the second by a sister of Sainte-Croix, Baudonivia. Both writers knew Radegund personally, and although certainly influenced by the literary conventions of hagiography, the portrait of the saint that emerges from their work is distinctive, whether it is historically accurate or not. Although Baudonivia writes that her text is intended to complement Fortunatus’s and the two seem to have been considered parts of a whole in the Middle Ages, much has been written about the differences between the two Vitae.11 In effect, while Fortunatus concentrates more on Radegund’s extraordinary acts of asceticism, and Baudonivia highlights her engagement with the world even after she has entered the convent, both Vitae present the saint as simultaneously active and contemplative, according to the ideal of the bishop-

9 John Kitchen offers a fine overview of the history of the study of hagiography as literature in Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3–17. For English translations of the first two lives see McNamara, Sainted Women, 70–105. Latin texts edited by Bruno Krusch are found in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 2, 358–95. There is no English translation of Hildebert’s version – for the Latin, see Acta Sanctorum, Aug. III, 83–92. 10 Jules de Pétigny, “Lettre inédite de Robert d’Arbrissel à la comtesse Ermengarde,” in Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres 15 (1854), 209–35. 11 In his analysis of previous scholarship, Kitchen argues against what he sees as the tendency to view those differences strictly in terms of Baudonivia’s status as a female writer, 134–53.

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monk exemplified by Saint Martin of Tours.12 The Radegund that appears in the composite Vita is an ascetic whose practices of self-mortification earn her the title of martyr, a contemplative who is granted visions of her savior, and a healer who cares for those in need through practical ministration and miracles. It is the combination of these elements that makes Radegund such a fascinating model. The story of Radegund’s life is divided into two major periods, before and after her entry into religious life. Radegund was a Thuringian princess captured by the conquering Franks when they killed all of her immediate family, except one brother.13 Considered part of the spoils of war, she was awarded to King Clothar, who married her once she reached the appropriate age and made her his queen. In describing her time in the secular world, Fortunatus and Baudonivia both comment on Radegund’s generosity towards the poor, her eagerness to listen to the teachings of holy men, and her ascetic and devotional practices.14 After Clothar had her one surviving brother killed, Radegund fled, was consecrated a “diaconess” by Bishop Médard,15 and eventually founded a convent in Poitiers, where she lived as a simple nun. The two writers each give a slightly different emphasis to their accounts of her religious life. Fortunatus praises Radegund for taking her ascetic practices beyond self-denial and engaging in self-mutilation. The saint regularly fasted and wore a hair shirt, he writes, but one Lent she wrapped herself in an iron chain that bit into her flesh and had to be cut out at the end of the season. On another occasion she branded herself with a hot brass plate shaped like a cross and once literally roasted her own flesh over a “water basin full of burning coals.”16 In the eyes of Fortunatus, these practices allow Radegund to earn the title of martyr, despite the misfortune of not living in a time of persecution. Baudonivia mentions no exceptional ascetic practices, but instead narrates two episodes that highlight Radegund’s continued engagement with the world. First she writes that Radegund was “always solicitous for peace and worked diligently for the welfare of the fatherland.” She prayed for the peace

12 For the importance of the Martinian model in Latin hagiography, see Claudio Leonardi, “I modelli dell’agiografia latina dall’epoca antica al medioevo,” in Passaggio dal mondo antico al Medio Evo da Teodosio a San Gregorio Magno. Convegno Internazionale, Roma, 25–28 maggio 1977 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1980), 435–77; for its relevance to Radegund, see Franca Ela Consolino, “Due Agiografi per una regina: Radegonda di Turingia tra Fortunato e Baudonivia,” Studi Storici 29 (1988), 143–59. 13 The poem De Excidio Thuringiae, most likely written by Fortunatus in Radegund’s voice, tells of this event and of Clothar’s subsequent murder of the surviving brother (McNamara, Sainted Women, 65–70). 14 Fortunatus §2–11, Baudonivia §2. 15 McNamara discusses this term, Sainted Women, 75 n. 53. 16 Fortunatus §25–6.



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of the Frankish kingdoms, imposing fasts and vigils on herself and her nuns as penitence, and even sent letters urging the various kings and princes not to take arms against each other.17 Baudonivia also writes that Radegund eagerly collected relics, culminating with the acquisition of a piece of the True Cross, an accomplishment that required all of her diplomatic ingenuity.18 When the two Vitae are taken together, Radegund appears to be a super-human, ascetic athlete, who, despite being cloistered, was still willing and able to act in the world, playing an important role in the political and religious events of her time. She was not a recluse who rejected the world to pursue her own sanctification, but a saint whose extraordinary devotional practices allowed her to occupy the earth, leading the entire Christian people towards the kingdom of heaven, as Claudio Leonardi argues was typical of Merovingian hagiography.19 While Ermengarde was not a saint, there are sufficient similarities between her life and Radegund’s for the Frankish queen to be used to understand the twelfth-century countess. As a member of the princely elite, Ermengarde appears in charters, letters, and narrative histories just often enough for a basic sketch of her life to be reconstructed, but there is nothing analogous to Fortunatus and Baudonivia’s Vitae for her. Most modern accounts of Ermengarde’s life can be traced to Pétigny’s short biography, which in turn is largely based on the archival work of the early-eighteenth-century historian of Brittany Dom Gui Alexis Lobineau.20 Because of Ermengarde’s movement back and forth between the cloister and the court, Lobineau, Pétigny, and their successors almost all argue that Ermengarde was a passionate and devout woman, but lacking in constancy. When examined in light of Radegund’s Vitae, however, Ermengarde’s choices can be seen as a response to the constraints and opportunities she encountered and not just the product of her idiosyncratic personality. The daughter of Fulk IV, the count of Anjou, Ermengarde was born around 1069 and raised in Angers. She may have been briefly married or at least

Baudonivia §10. Baudonivia §16. 19 Leonardi, “I modelli dell’agiografia latina,” 470. 20 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 213–24. Gui Alexis Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne (Paris: La Veuve François Muguet, 1707), vol. 1, 105, 116, 123–38, 149 and vol. 3, Preuves, which includes editions of many of the relevant charters, 180, 244, 263–84, 348. In addition to Pernoud, La femme, 143–9, Ermengarde’s life is treated in Jacques Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel: Sex, Sin and Salvation in the Middle Ages, tr. Bruce Venarde (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 67, 93–101, and Venarde’s edition of the sources of Robert’s life: Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 68–70. Phillipe Carrer’s biography Ermengarde d’Anjou: l’Autre duchesse de Bretagne: la Couronne ou le voile (Spézet: Coop Breizh, 2003), contains no references to its sources and is of little scholarly value. 17 18

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betrothed to William IX of Aquitaine,21 but she was certainly married to Alan Fergant, count of Brittany, by 1092.22 This was evidently an unhappy marriage, because at some point before 1109,23 Ermengarde fled and tried to have her union with Alan dissolved. It is not surprising that Ermengarde would be attracted by the religious life. There were many voices extolling the superiority of sexual continence over married life in northwest France at that time. Even the poem Marbode wrote in Ermengarde’s honor tempers its praise of her beauty with reminders that “the honor of virginity is greater, because the woman joined to a man could never equal the chaste,” and encourages her to “love Christ and despise this world” (vv. 5–6, 37). Ermengarde’s flight brings to mind Radegund’s, but its outcome was quite different: rather than being consecrated into religious life, Ermengarde was ordered to return and submit to her husband. The founder of the mixed, male and female abbey of Fontevraud, Robert of Arbrissel, wrote a letter to console and instruct her about how to make the best of this difficult situation.24 Using scriptural language, he concedes that the land of Brittany is “polluted with blood,” its clergy “simoniacal,” and its princes “wicked and thieving,” but he tells Ermengarde that she cannot be separated from her husband because she does not “have witnesses willing to testify” for her.25 Unlike Radegund, who, through the force of her will, was able to compel Médard to consecrate her despite Saint Paul’s injunction not to separate those who are married,26 Ermengarde had to hope that she could have her marriage to Alan dissolved on grounds of consanguinity. The witnesses to which Robert refers would have been experts in genealogy who could demonstrate that she and her husband were related within the prohibited seven degrees.27 Considering that Ermengarde and Alan apparently were consanguineous,28 we can deduce that Ermengarde did not have the ecclesiastic influence to obtain a favorable ruling or perhaps even to have her case considered. The fact that twelfthcentury society depended more on personal relationships than the rigorous application of written law could work to aristocratic women’s detriment as well as to their advantage.

21 Ruth E. Harvey, who argues that Ermengarde and William were never married, analyzes the sources and the debate about this issue in “The wives of the ‘first troubadour’, Duke William IX of Aquitaine,” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993), 307–25. 22 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 213–16. 23 See Pétigny’s date for the letter, “Lettre inédite,” 217–20. 24 See Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel. 25 §5, 4. The translation is from Venarde in Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel, 73–9. 26 Fortunatus §12. 27 For the relationship between consanguinity and divorce, see Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 24–8, 44–8. 28 Pétigny notes that the genealogy later used to dissolve the marriage of her daughter demonstrates a relationship between Ermengarde and Alan (“Lettre inédite,” 220 n. 1).



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The piety Robert proposes to Ermengarde in the letter is similar to how Radegund lived before she fled from her husband, but there are important differences. Robert advises the countess to live in the world as if she did not belong to it (§6), but also to avoid extremes, writing that “virtue is the middle ground between vices” (§1). He instructs her to pray, to fast, and to give alms to the poor, but reminds her that “prayer from the heart, not the lips, is acceptable to God” (§11), and clarifies that in fasting she should “not kill the flesh immoderately, because he who kills the flesh kills its inhabitant” (§15). Robert argues that the kind of extravagant piety praised by Fortunatus in Radegund is not appropriate for the countess of Brittany. Ermengarde fled from her husband like Radegund, but the outcome of her flight could not be more different. Her attempt to dissolve her marriage was denied and she was sent back to her husband with instructions to moderate her devotion. This situation only lasted a few years, however, because in 1112 Count Alan retired from secular life, entered the abbey of Redon, evidently with Ermengarde’s consent, and remained there until his death in 1119.29 The government of Brittany was left to their son Conan, and there was nothing to keep Ermengarde from entering an abbey like Fontevraud and remaining there the rest of her life, as many other women of her rank did.30 But Ermengarde did not. She may have spent at least a few years in Fontevraud around this time, but even if she did, it was not a permanent arrangement.31 She appears alongside her son in a charter dating to 1118, and for the next dozen years she participated in “all the religious and political assemblies” of Brittany, to the point that Pétigny claims she almost “governs in the name of her son.”32 In the early 1130s Ermengarde’s life changed again, this time through her connection to Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian order. In a short narrative about his mother that serves as the prologue to the foundation charter of the Cistercian abbey of Buzay, Ermengarde’s son Conan writes that his mother was “recently veiled and consecrated by the lord abbot of Clairvaux in the priory of Larrey near the city of Dijon.”33 Two letters written by Bernard to Ermengarde while she was a Cistercian nun survive. The passionate affirmations of spiritual love they contain, while typical of the tone used by twelfth-

Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 220. Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel, 64–9. 31 Pétigny assumes she did enter Fontevraud (“Lettre inédite,” 220) while Venarde is skeptical (Robert of Abrissel, 69). 32 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 220–1. The charters appear in Lobineau, Preuves, 276ff. 33 Not published in Lobineau, the charter can be found in Jean Baptiste Jobin, Saint Bernard et sa famille (Paris: Berche et Tralin, 1891), 578–9. The relevant passages are also cited in Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 222 n. 1 and 224 n. 1. 29 30

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century ecclesiastics to address each other, are unusual in a letter to a woman and testify to Ermengarde’s remarkable character.34 Despite this attention from the illustrious founder of her order, Ermengarde did not remain a Cistercian nun. She soon abandoned Larrey to travel to Palestine on the invitation of her brother Fulk, who had become king of Jerusalem. There she worked to rebuild the Church of the Holy Savior by Jacob’s Well in Nablus.35 But even this situation was not permanent. The narrative in the Buzay charter ends on June 28, 1135, with Ermengarde at Conan’s side, jointly responsible for the foundation. Ermengarde also appears in the charter of the second foundation of Buzay, dating to sometime between 1141 and 1145, and one last time at a political assembly in 1146.36 She died on June 1, 1147, but not before finally entering religious life, near Redon, where she was also buried. Ermengarde never found, or perhaps never wanted, the stability of Radegund. She fled from her husband, but was forced to return to him. When his death and retirement freed her to remain at Fontevraud, she returned to the court. She became a Cistercian nun and exchanged letters with Bernard himself, but later left the cloister and went to Palestine to rebuild an ancient church. How can these choices be explained? Ermengarde was certainly a very different person to Radegund, with a different personality. Dom Lobineau concedes that Ermengarde may have had motivations “that are unknown to us,” but he wishes “that she had demonstrated more constancy in the way of life she had at one time embraced.”37 For Pétigny, each decision in Ermengarde’s life can be explained by her passionate but inconsistent character, and her piety that was “so ardent in appearance” but whose source was “in the imagination rather than the heart.”38 While personality certainly played a role, I argue that another explanation is suggested by several pieces of twelfth-century evidence: secular and religious life both offered advantages and restrictions, and Ermengarde chose to move between the two as the circumstances of her life changed. Two letters addressed to Ermengarde by Geoffrey of Vendôme, abbot of La Trinité, reveal the tension between the widespread admiration for chastity and undivided devotion to God and the recognition that a person caught up in secular affairs could do good. Geoffrey was a strong supporter of the 34 As remarked by Pernoud, La femme, 147–8; Dalarun, Robert of Arbrissel, 97–8, and Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 222–3. Only eighteen of Bernard’s 495 extant letters are addressed to women, and none are as affectionate as the two to Ermengarde. For the relationships between ecclesiastic writers, see Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 97–107. 35 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 223–4. 36 Lobineau, Histoire, 137–8 and Preuves, 294, and Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 224. 37 Lobineau, Histoire, 138. 38 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 214.



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Gregorian reform,39 and his first letter to Ermengarde is a rebuke for having abandoned religious life: “If you had considered his beneficence, you would not have allowed the tongues of flatterers to separate you from your Creator, and, once you had left, you would not have rejoined the world, in which you will find nothing that is not marked with death.”40 Robert of Arbrissel may have reassured Ermengarde that it was possible to live a holy life in the midst of secular concerns, but Geoffrey warns her that “whoever embraces [the present world] is hardly or never able to have God.” Marbode’s poem and Geoffrey’s letter are undoubtedly only a small sample of the voices urging Ermengarde to embrace religious life. It is not unlikely that she either ceded to this pressure or even internalized it, which would explain her flight from her husband and her two or more experiences with religious life. The second letter Geoffrey wrote to Ermengarde is of a completely different tone. Rather than castigating her for having returned to secular life, he praises her for ruling justly, maintaining the peace, and devoting herself to caring for the needy to such an extent that she seems “to be fighting for God rather than caught up in worldly affairs.”41 The man who had criticized Ermengarde so harshly is now congratulating her for performing works of charity that could only be performed by an aristocrat with ample political and economic power. What caused this change in perspective? Geoffrey immediately explains himself. He writes that it is “astonishing” that Ermengarde, who has been so generous with other churches, has neglected the monastery of l’Évière in Angers, a dependant of La Trinité, and the place where her father was buried. Fulk IV had died in 1109, and Geoffrey had provided for his tomb and the monks to offer prayers for him from the resources of his own abbey. The relationship between a high-ranking churchman like Geoffrey and an aristocrat like Ermengarde was complex. Geoffrey had no qualms about rebuking Ermengarde, but he was also dependent on her economic patronage. The power that Ermengarde exercised as countess of Brittany gave her real influence, even over the bishops and abbots who considered themselves the moral arbiters of Christendom. There is no record of whether Ermengarde ever made a donation to l’Évière, but she did endow many other churches and abbeys.42 She also participated in the political life of Brittany. She had ruled while Alan participated in the First Crusade,43 and after his retirement and death she ruled alongside her son, who was of legal age, but apparently amenable to his mother’s continued involvement. Like other women of her rank and station, Ermengarde exer39 See Geneviève Giordanengo, Geoffroy de Vendôme: Œuvres (Paris: Brepols et CNRS Éditions, 1996), viii–xxx. 40 Epistula 75, edition and translation in Giordanengo, Geoffroy de Vendôme, 142. 41 Epistula 110 in Giordanengo, Geoffroy de Vendôme, 212. 42 Pétigny, “Lettre inédite,” 224. 43 Lobineau, Histoire, 106.

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cised a certain amount of personal power and freedom, especially the power to dispose of property and the freedom to move. Would she have had the same power and freedom as a nun? The contrast between the relative power and freedom Ermengarde enjoyed as a countess and the restrictions imposed on nuns marks one of the most important differences between Ermengarde’s experiences and Radegund’s. According to Baudonivia’s Vita, Radegund remained active in worldly affairs even after she entered the cloister in Poitiers. She corresponded with the various Frankish kings and princes and sent a diplomatic mission to the Byzantine court to obtain a relic of the True Cross. It is unlikely that Ermengarde could have maintained that level of activity in a twelfth-century cloister. The abbesses of major monastic houses like Fontevraud were certainly wellconnected, powerful women who administered large amounts of property, but Ermengarde was never appointed abbess of Fontevraud, and regular nuns there were strictly forbidden from taking juridical oaths or participating in secular affairs.44 Some powerful aristocratic women apparently did continue to interact with the secular world after their monastic retirement,45 but the general trend from the twelfth century on was to impose stricter and stricter claustration on female religious.46 Despite Geoffrey of Vendôme’s claim that there was “nothing that is not marked with death” in the secular world, there were things, including positive things that could earn Geoffrey’s praise, which a woman like Ermengarde could do as a countess that she could not do as a nun. The Vita of Saint Radegund compiled by Hildebert of Lavardin corroborates the theory that the twelfth century was less amenable to the continued involvement of cloistered women in secular affairs than the sixth. Hildebert’s Vita has never received the critical attention of Fortunatus’s or Baudonivia’s, because it contains nothing that is not in the two earlier texts. As a historical document about the sixth century it is completely superfluous and as a work of literature it is barely noteworthy. It is very instructive, however, to see how a twelfth-century bishop interprets Radegund’s life and which details he includes or excludes. In his prologue, Hildebert declares that, having examined both Fortunatus’s and Baudonivia’s work, he decided to follow Fortunatus, because of the greater authority conferred by his episcopal dignity. Nonetheless, he includes some elements from Baudonivia: “not all of

44 Berenice Kerr discusses the Rule of Fontevraud in Religious Life for Women: c.110c.1350: Fontevraud in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 52–5. 45 LoPrete writes that Adela of Blois continued to act in the world after her monastic retirement at Marcigny, but she acknowledges that her actions were unusual enough to “lend credence to later convent traditions that Adela became the nuns’ prioress,” a position with recognized public functions (“Adela of Blois,” 40–1). 46 Jo Ann McNamara discusses this issue in Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 268–323.



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them,” he writes, but “only those which, in telling, more worthily affirm the most blessed woman’s merits and reward” (§1). Hildebert recounts Clothar’s attempt to recapture Radegund after she entered the monastery, several details about her persistence in prayer, and the vision of Christ she was granted right before her death, but he tells nothing of her efforts to secure peace for the kingdom or her acquisition of a relic of the True Cross, a feat that Baudonivia declared made her the equal of Saint Helen. In Hildebert’s opinion, Radegund’s efforts to remain in the cloister, her piety, and her visions are more congruent with her holiness than her continued involvement in the world outside her monastery. Comparing the sixth- and twelfth-century versions of Radegund’s Vita sheds light on the constraints and opportunities experienced by a twelfthcentury aristocrat like Ermengarde. Secular life offered a relative degree of freedom to a powerful woman who held economic and juridical rights over property. Ermengarde experienced this when she ruled Brittany during her husband’s absence and alongside her son after his death. But she also experienced the negative side of secular life. Her marriage to Alan was apparently not a happy one, and, if Robert of Arbrissel is to be believed, life in Brittany could be unpleasant, even for a countess. Amidst those difficulties, the example of Radegund, along with many similar saints, offered an alternative: flight from the shipwreck of the secular world for the security and structure of religious life. Ermengarde’s autonomy was far from absolute, however, and unlike Radegund, she was forced to return to her husband. His retirement and death gave her the freedom to enter a monastery, but they also gave her the freedom to rule over Brittany with her son and to visit her brother in Palestine. Thus, the inconstancy of Ermengarde’s character lamented by Pétigny and Lobineau can also be seen as an expression of the circumscribed autonomy that characterized the experience of women like Ermengarde. The choice between religious and secular life was not a simple one: each offered a combination of limitations and possibilities. The comparison of Ermengarde and Radegund reveals two visions of the secular court. According to one vision, the court, like the secular world in general, is a place of violence, coercion, and sexual sin that stands in contrast with the convent or monastery, a place of peace, self-denial, and contemplation. According to the other vision, however, the court is not irredeemably negative. The cultural, economic, and political power wielded there can be used for some positive end, whether for the defense of the weak, the support of religious life, or the even the production of literature. Both sets of sources portray the court from both perspectives; the difference lies in how the two women related to these two visions and which they embraced. According to the hagiographic sources, Radegund wholeheartedly embraced a vision of the world that pitted religious and secular life against one another. Even though she had been able to use the wealth and power she enjoyed as queen to feed and clothe the poor and support the religious, this was only a way to make

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the best of a bad situation until she could flee from the court and totally dedicate herself to Christ as a nun. Some of the texts addressed to Ermengarde, especially Geoffrey of Vendôme’s first letter, offer the same stark contrast between secular and religious life, but others, including Geoffrey’s second letter, offer a more positive view of the potential to do good at the court. And perhaps more tellingly, the charters collected by Dom Lobineau in his Preuves demonstrate how, as countess, Ermengarde had the power to make gifts to the monasteries and churches that she wished to support and, by extension, perhaps refuse to patronize those who displeased her. The constraints and opportunities experienced by Ermengarde at the beginning of the twelfth century help us understand the role of women in courtly literature and its production. As long as Radegund’s hagiographic example of flight from the world and dedication to religious life is the only option available to women that can earn them the praise of writers, the literature addressed to them and inspired by them remains within the cultural context of the church. But when, whether because of genuine conviction or economic self-interest, even ardent reformers like Robert of Arbrissel and Geoffrey of Vendôme acknowledge and valorize the ability of an aristocratic woman to support those she favors, the door is opened for her values to push back and influence what was written for and about her. But this power was never as absolute as Guinevere’s control over Lancelot at Noauz. Female aristocrats were always subject to the domination of fathers, husbands, and brothers, and the censure of churchmen. Nonetheless, as Ermengarde demonstrates, they could make real choices and chart their own path in life, even if it was severely constrained. Women like Marie of Champagne and those praised in lyric poetry were not simply the passive object of men’s devotion, but had the economic and cultural power to influence what was written for or about them, even if their choices were between limited goods and lesser evils.

From Chrétien to Christine: Translating Twelfth-Century Literature to Reform the French Court during the Hundred Years War Nadia Margolis Throughout her entire œuvre, comprising over forty titles, the Venetian-born poet and moralist Christine de Pizan (1364/5–ca. 1430) attempts to shape courtly ideals in some way or other as part of her larger program to enlighten her adoptive country of France during one of the darkest phases in its history. In attempting literally to educate her compatriots out of their crisis, her incorporation of classical-antique and Italian-humanistic wisdom – mostly through contemporary translations, including her own, from Latin or Italian into French – has benefited from abundant scholarly investigation in recent years. Such findings also confirm her ability to integrate authoritative texts quite ingeniously, rather than simply harvesting and inserting them into her own, often adding her feminine perspective, as essential aspects of her distinctive message.1 More specifically, scholars point to Christine’s rediscovery and implementation of antique learning, in her native culture’s civic-humanistic mode, toward improving France’s moral-political situation as evidence of her own brand of vernacular humanism. In this pursuit she displays more prescience than her male colleagues supposedly privileged by their Latinity, since she, as supposedly Latin-deprived, would foresee and promote the triumph of the vernacular as France’s literary and philosophical language.2 1 For Christine’s sources, see the introductions and notes to these critical editions of Christine’s works by these editors: Karen Green, Constant Mews, and Janice Pinder, ed., The Book of Peace (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 33–40; Christine Reno and Liliane Dulac, ed., Le Livre de l’Advision Cristine, Études christiniennes 4 (Paris: Champion, 2000), xxv–xxxix; Gabriella Parussa, Epistre Othea, TLF 517 (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 31–70; Angus J. Kennedy, Le Livre du corps de policie, Études christiniennes 1 (Paris: Champion, 1998), xxvi–xxxviii; Barbara K. Altmann, The Love Debate Poems of Christine de Pizan (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), passim; Charity Willard’s introduction and notes to Sumner Willard’s translation of the Fais d’Armes, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 1–10, and passim. 2 Christine could read Latin but left no Latin writings. See, most recently, Nadia Margolis, Introduction to Christine de Pizan, New Perspectives in Medieval Literature 1 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), 130.

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Furthermore, as this study intends to demonstrate, the value of Christine’s mission in her overall œuvre consists of still more than deftly compiling ancient and current, pagan and Christian, Latin and French, and Italian and French learning, as exemplified in works ranging from her moral teachings and proverbs for her son (Enseignemens moraux), 1399–1402; the Proverbes moraux, 1405; her exegetical manual for princes (Epistre Othea [Epistle of Othea]), 1400; her allegorical, learned pilgrimage, the Chemin de lonc estude [Path of Long Study], 1402–3; her biography describing the “deeds and good practices of the wise king” Charles V (Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V), 1404; her conduct manual for the duke of Orléans, later reworked for Queen Isabeau, titled the Livre de Prodommie/Prudence [Book of Man’s Integrity/Prudence], 1405–6/1408; her conduct manual for women of all classes centered on the “three virtues” of reason, rectitude, and justice (Livre des Trois Vertus), 1405–06; her political-theoretical treatise on the body politic, the Corps de policie, 1407; her manual on warfare as “feats of arms and chivalry” (Fais d’armes et de chevallerie), 1410; to the Livre de Paix [Book of Peace], 1412–14. Her advice mode also resurges in outwardly lighter, lyric genres to warn women of love’s social dangers, notably the Livre de la pastoure [Shepherdess’s Tale], 1403, in Lorete’s cautionary tales, and especially in Sebille’s letters in the Duc des vrais amans [Duke of True Lovers], 1403–5. Likewise, Dame Opinion and other sibylline figures counsel Christine – narrator/pupil in her literary-autobiographical Advision Cristine [Christine’s Vision], 1405; while she herself acts as militant oracle in her fervently polemical wake-up calls to the ruling class concerning the imminent, then raging, civil war – Epistre a la reine [Epistle to the Queen], 1405, and Lamentacion sur les maux de la France [Lamentation on France’s Ills], 1410 – and later, in the wake of the tragic Battle of Agincourt, the consolatory Epistre de la Prison de Vie humaine [Epistle on the Prison of Human Life], 1416–18, for Marie of Berry.3 Moreover, it might be argued that another, less-appreciated, aspect of her “translation” and reforming efforts lies in her attempts to assimilate what she considers the best of twelfth-century courtly ideals – themselves steeped in that era’s own brand of humanism, replete with its particular view of classical antiquity, as represented in the so-called romances of antiquity. Principal among these were the Roman de Thèbes, Roman de Troie, and Roman d’Eneas – adapting, if loosely at times, the antique epics of Statius (Thebaid), Homer (Iliad), and Virgil (Æneid), respectively, to mid-twelfth-century courtly mores and genre. In addition, the more finely wrought French Arthurian romances, particularly those by Chrétien de Troyes, may also have impressed themselves upon her moral and artistic vision, whereas the antique romances may have served her more as historical

3 For reasons of space, Christine’s works are usually cited here in their standard abbreviated form.



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material. The following study in no way purports to treat all of Christine’s pertinent works fully in this regard, but rather aims simply to introduce the Christine–Chrétien connection as a potentially fruitful line of inquiry into the evolution of courtly conduct ideals and women as mentors.

No Time for Romance: Courtly Conduct and Mirrors for Princes As the peacetime component of the chivalric ideal, courtliness, constituting an essential facet of a good nobleman’s education, instilled within the knight, and even the prince, the more refined and thoughtful aspects of his existence. Cultivated within more serene circumstances than the jousting arena, courtliness’s tenets underlay lyric poetry and romance, often in the form of conversations between the hero and a mentor figure. But such rules were more explicitly spelled out, lest their serious nature become lost in literary subtlety, in conduct manuals following a tradition often known as “mirrors for princes.” While sometimes framed as dialogues or debates, these manuals were undeniably more univocal in their message and more pointed in purpose than romance and lyric in striving not only to civilize the warrior at court, but also to fortify his courage in the heat of battle: reminding him of the valor of ancient heroes, of his oath to his suzerain, and also to protect women and the less fortunate. Courtesy books for women instructed them in proper conduct, and in what might be deemed another type of courage, that befitting the wives and mothers of princes and knights. Mirrors for princes did not neglect women’s roles, even though they understandably granted them less space than did conduct or courtesy books exclusively for women. Manuals for both sexes often bore titles containing forms of the word “chastise” or “castigate” (e.g., French chastoiement, Spanish castigo) based on an austere clerical, master–disciple model, as well as the more neutral enseignements [teachings], to educate aristocratic men and women for their respective roles. The significance of the author-instructor’s maternal or paternal voice, associated with tone and content, will become clearer later in this study, but the overall severity heralded by the “reprimand” label of these teachings gradually shifted from the young prince’s or princess’s routine discipline per se to the grave nature of the moral-political principles themselves.4

4 Donald Maddox, “Avatars courtois d’un genre du discours clérical: le chastoiement,” in Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture/ Höfische Literatur und Klerikultur/ Littérature courtoise et culture cléricale. Selected Papers from the tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society at the Universität Tübingen, 28 July – 3 August 2001, ed. Christoph Huber and H. Lähnemann (Tübingen: Attempto Verlag, 2002), 161–73.

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In general, conduct manuals, while instructing knights in chivalric morality and deportment, at first tended to subordinate women, even queens, to their masculine counterparts. Queens and noblewomen exercised real power nonetheless, particularly in their roles as consorts, regents, and mothers to future generations. As these roles acquired greater political meaning and mystique over time, especially for queens (who, as mothers and intercessors, found their ideal counterpart in the Virgin Mary, as also noted by Chrétien scholars5), later-medieval conduct theorists, especially Christine, acknowledged this reality (indeed, Christine, as a struggling nobleman’s widow, had lived it) and stressed preparing women to assume their multiple functions more responsibly and intelligently for the good of court and kingdom.6 Yet Christine was not the first to enhance women’s need for education. Rosalind Brown-Grant reveals that Christine’s older contemporary, Philippe de Mézières, already exemplifies a certain egalitarianism by equalizing his moral demands on princes and princesses, while Christine takes this a major step farther by adapting her advice to enable both genders to rule virtuously in real-world situations rather than as otherworldly Christians inhabiting Philippe’s ideal.7 Because each author makes an exceptional effort to present a balanced perspective – with the pious Philippe avoiding the inherent misogyny of his precursors and Christine restraining herself from a sort of Amazonian feminist supremacy – on both genders’ conduct at court and its implications, such egalitarianism implies not equal powers for both king and queen, but rather different, yet complementary, and equally impor5 See, e.g., Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, “Rewriting Chrétien’s Conte du graal – Mothers and Sons: Questions, Contradictions, and Connections,” in The Medieval Opus: Imitation, Rewriting, and Transmission in the French Tradition: Proceedings of the Symposium Held at the Institute for Research in Humanities October 5–7 1995, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, ed. Douglas Kelly, Faux Titre 116 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 213–44, esp. 219. 6 See Roberta L. Krueger, “Courtesy Books,” in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler, Grover A. Zinn, et al., Garland Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages 2 (New York and London: Garland, 1995), 265–6; Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark, ed., Medieval Conduct, Medieval Cultures 29 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), esp. Krueger’s essay, “Christine and the Chevalier de la Tour Landry and Menagier de Paris” (49–85); for women’s real power, see, e.g., Janet L. Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” and Christine Owens, “Noblewomen and Political Activity,” in Women in Medieval Western European Culture, ed. Linda E. Mitchell, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 2007 (New York: Garland, 1999), 179–207, 209–19 resp.; Janet L. Nelson, “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Monstrous Regiment?” and Lois L. Huneycutt, “Female Succession and the Language of Power in the Writings of Twelfth-Century Churchmen,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John C. Parsons (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), 43–60, 189–201, resp. 7 Brown-Grant, “Mirroring the Court: Clerkly Advice to Noble Men and Women in the Works of Philippe de Mézières and Christine de Pizan,” in Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture (see above, n. 4), 39–53, here 53. See later in this study for Philippe’s specific works.



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tant prerogatives for male and female rulers. Another commonality between the woman poet and moralist and the veteran soldier-diplomat as conduct theorists lies in their familiarity with Dante and Petrarch. Finally, unlike other courtesy-manual authors, who tended to be career clerics or knights only incidentally setting down advice to young men and women, both Philippe and Christine are constantly teaching in various ways to convey a larger moral vision of society, history, and even the cosmos, as evidenced in each author’s career corpus. Both authors, and, as we shall note, other contemporaries like Alain Chartier, endeavored to save France from moral degeneracy and political-military destruction as linked phenomena.

In Search of a New Courtly Code: The Mirror as Manifesto On the national-political level, the need for a new code of chivalry and courtliness emerging in France during the later Middle Ages arose not only from the mere passage of time, but also and mainly from the repeated series of shocks to the kingdom’s geographic boundaries, royal succession, and national identity known as the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). On the military level – the pragmatic side of chivalry – France needed to start winning battles again, after increasingly disastrous defeats at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). Only Du Guesclin’s victories on behalf of Charles V (1370–80) – Christine’s favorite monarch – afforded a respite from this relentless losing streak. In 1396, John the Fearless, future duke of Burgundy, tried a different venue, leading French troops to Nicopolis, in the Middle East, against nonEnglish adversaries, in a quixotic attempt (mistakenly assessing Bayazid’s crack Turkish janissaries as easier marks) – to re-enact the erstwhile glory of the Crusades victories, resulting in grand-scale disaster. Returning to the Hundred Years War: when Henry V, aided by bad weather as though favored by God in demolishing Charles VI’s more numerous and heavily armed troops at Agincourt (1415), France’s political and spiritual situation plunged abysmally. Well before this demoralizing slaughter, as introduced in our comparison of Christine and Philippe above, concerned poets, moralists, and historians had sensed a link between battlefield losses and poor character and conduct at court. Even back during the so-called “Twelfth-Century Renaissance” in France, courtly life under Henry II Plantagenêt and other nobles and bishops caused commentators to deride and lament the corrupt and corruptive aspects of these outwardly hallowed spaces.8 Such discontent with courtly depravity, highlighted in the early fourteenth century by the allegorical-satirical Roman

8 See, e.g., Walter Map’s De nugis curialium [On Courtly Trifles], portraying Henry’s court as hell on earth; John of Salisbury’s Policraticus.

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de Fauvel, attained full-blown despair or cynicism after Charles V’s death (1380) in late-medieval French authors, whether knights or clerks, poets, or historians and moralists. Certain accomplished lyric poets were moved to turn their energies to penning histories or moral treatises as did Christine’s older contemporary Froissart, in his Chroniques and narrative dits, and the younger, more Latinate, Alain Chartier in such portentously titled works as the Quadrilogue invectif (1422), to the De vita curiali/Le Curial [Life at Court], c.1427, and unfinished Livre de l’Espérance [Book of Hope], 1428. The prolific Eustache Deschamps, in certain ballades (e.g., 31, 44, 118), lais (e.g., 307), and rondeaux (e.g., 578–30), tended to satirize or lament rather than propose actual solutions.9 From among the prose polemicists of officialdom, we have Jean de Montreuil’s A toute la Chevalerie de France [To All of France’s Knighthood], c.1408–13, while the great preacher and theologian Jean Gerson wrote educational treatises for the French dauphins at this time.10 As a more romance-like Franco-Italian hybrid entry we might include Thomas of Saluzzo’s Chevalier errant [Wandering Knight], 1394–96; while the aforementioned Philippe de Mézières, the least secular among them, sought to form an entire order of perfect knights and their women devoted to Christ, in his Ordre de la Passion versions (1368–96), Songe du vieil pelerin [Old Pilgrim’s Vision], 1389, and Vertu du sacrement de mariage (1385–89). Arguably more than her contemporaries, Christine experimented with different generic conventions while testing their limits. She also believed that the new code lay in the old – beyond the earlier Middle Ages, all the way back to antiquity, or at least what was then known of it – so that French culture could more directly apprentice itself as heir to the golden ages of Greece and Rome. This literary topos of translatio studii constituted a crucial aspect of reform, especially in conjunction with its political counterpart, translatio imperii: since this “carrying over” of both learning and empire legitimized France’s claim to this cultural inheritance. Though her intermediary sources had already partially assimilated ancient culture into current mores for her in such widespread compilations as the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César and glossed translations like the Ovide moralisé, and Simon Hesdin’s and Nicolas de Gonesse’s French version of Valerius Maximus’s Facta et dicta memorabilia [Memorable Deeds and Sayings], 1375–1401, she nonetheless added her own touches, notably her concern for women and the lower classes –

9 For a survey of court-centered critiques throughout French medieval literature, see Joël Blanchard and Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Écriture et pouvoir à l’aube des temps modernes (Paris: PUF, 2002), esp. 59–81. 10 Both men having also participated in the now famous/infamous Debate of the Roman de la Rose: Montreuil was pro-Jean de Meun; Gerson was Christine’s principal anti-Meun ally.



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menu people – to a more humane degree than one encounters in the usual clerkly and courtly texts.11 Generally speaking, Christine de Pizan seems to attempt to shape courtly ideals according to three principal parameters, most of whose exemplars were dead: (1) the ideal prince/princess (Charles V/Jeanne of Bourbon and various), (2) the ideal vassal-courtier/noblewoman (her husband Estienne de Castel, Marguerite de Guyenne), and (3) the ideal circumstance (peace and justice). Looming in the background too we have the ideal learned advisor, her father Thomas de Pizan.12 These positive parameters provide models for their current imperfect counterparts, Christine’s “pupils”: (1) Louis of Orléans/French Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, (2) most of the French nobility, and (3) interminable war, against England and civil war within. In such texts as the Epistre Othea, Chemin de lonc estude, Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, Livre de Prudence, and – for women – the Cité des dames and Livre des Trois Vertus, she sought to promote the first ideal; in the Trois Vertus, Corps de Policie, Fais d’armes et de chevallerie, and again the Prodommie/Prudence, she counseled perfecting the second domain; and the Livre de Paix, advising the dauphin Louis de Guyenne on how to achieve and maintain peace, promulgated the third. Charles V’s role as royal paragon appears first in Christine’s dream-vision poem, the Chemin de lonc estude. Philosophically launched by Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae and structurally based on Dante’s Commedia, in that the Cumaean Sibyl (Virgil’s female analogue of sorts) leads the griefstricken poet-narrator on an edifying cosmic pilgrimage, the Chemin ends, not in an actual, ready-made ideal court, but in a debate among the enthroned female allegories Sagece, Noblece, Chevalerie, and Richece [Wisdom, Nobility, Chivalry, and Wealth] to determine the ideal prince. More of a four-way filibuster moderated by Reason, herself counseled by Opinion, with Christine designated official stenographer, and in which Charles V predictably receives high praise, this lengthy discussion, not surprisingly dominated by Sagece (given the king’s epithet), reaches no definite answer. This seeming lack of concrete resolution characterizes most of the debates in Christine’s works, including the real-life Debate of the Rose. But equally typically, the Chemin’s reader learns much about each side’s virtues and liabilities, as conveyed by diction as well as content during the amplified process, until Christine’s mother wakens her from this dream vision (vv. 6396–8). As Sarah Kay movingly concludes, Christine’s ideal, here enunciated via Sagece, is an 11 See Margolis, 141–3, 158, 178, 186–8, 196, 232 (under Walters); Susan Dudash, “Christine de Pizan and the menu peuple,” Speculum 78 (2003), 788–831. 12 For the significance of her father, husband, and Charles V in her concept of justice and related virtues, see, most recently, Bernard Ribémont, “Christine de Pizan, la justice et le droit,” forthcoming in Le Moyen Age. My deepest gratitude to Professor Ribémont and Professor Liliane Dulac for supplying a copy of the typescript.

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“impossible dream,” yet also “a fabulous hymn to the power of the intellect to transform melancholy … into a celebration of eternal beauty from which all will benefit” to overcome misfortune and instability.13 Along these lines, Christine could also be said to personify France at this time: at first depressed and grief-stricken and then revived by reasonable and wise princes. Christine’s thoughtful counsel to queens in the first section of her Trois Vertus, itself dedicated to the dauphine, Margaret of Burgundy (1405), perhaps also intended, among other functions, to fill the relative void on queenship left in her Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, a conduct manual disguised as a biography praising the qualities and exploits of King Charles V as ideal monarch and leader of the world’s finest court. Here too, although Christine reverently describes his queen, Jeanne of Bourbon, as his equal in character and conduct, she is nonetheless depicted as “ruled” by him (as suggested by the term rigle in the rubric to I.20) in the first of two chapters devoted to her. The same term, rigle/regle, figures prominently in the Trois vertus, whether in dictating hierarchy or conduct and self-control, for all classes of women, but since noblewomen are the highest ranking, they must observe the highest standards, as models for the lesser women. However briefly mentioned, Queen Jeanne in Charles V, I.20 receives high praise. Her virtues are reaffirmed in the chapter entirely devoted to her death and funeral (III.50), detailing how Charles and his court attest their worthiness of her through highly ritualized involvement in her funeral ceremony, in which solemn observance of ordre trumps displays of emotion.14 In defining the ideal court, although she enjoyed the patronage of various dukes and other nobles, both male and female, Christine tended to consider the royal court of France as “The Court”, especially after the death of Philip the Bold of Burgundy (1404), in contrast to earlier authors and contemporaries like Froissart, who praised their patrons’ individual courts (in Froissart’s case, for example, that of Gaston Phébus, count of Foix and viscount of Béarn). Christine maintains this centralizing vision of the royal court to help counteract France’s actual fragmentation by rivalry among its various courts. No longer could intra-curial competition justify itself by pointing to the resultant cultural enrichment of the kingdom as a whole despite a few tiffs among nobles. The conflicts dividing the mad King Charles VI’s male relatives threatened the kingdom because the powerful duke of Burgundy gradually allied himself with England specifically against Louis, duke of Orléans, and then against Charles VII. By emphasizing the primacy of the royal court 13 Sarah Kay, The Place of Thought: The Complexity of One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry, The Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 150–85, here 175. 14 Livre des Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, ed. Suzanne Solente, 2 vols, SHF, 437, 444 (Paris: Champion, 1936, 1940; rpt Geneva: Slatkine-Mégariotis, 1977), esp. 1: 53–7, 2: 133–6.



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over the ducal ones (despite the latter’s patronage of her), and of its head, Charles V, and then his son, Charles VI, Christine hoped to encourage unity within the French kingdom, which, despite her pleas and warnings and those of others, had erupted into civil war between the Orléans-Armagnac faction and the Burgundians in 1407. Also, using the same system of hierarchical modeling as she deploys in her Livre des Trois Vertus, in which the queen and noblewomen receive the most space, by giving the most attention on this highest-level court, with the king himself (in her Charles V, Corps de policie, and others) as supreme princely example, she hopes the king’s good qualities will sift down through the courts of the lower nobility, just as the queen’s behavior should favorably permeate all classes, no matter how lowly, in the Trois vertus. Daisy Delogu’s thorough analysis of the Charles V notes the importance of Christine’s portrayal of Charles V as the “architecte” and “prudent ordeneur” of the ideal kingdom and court, both literally and symbolically.15 This affords him a more deterministic, creative role than the Corps de Policie’s merely equating a king with the body politic’s head and similar corporealclass analogies throughout the political hierarchy. Christine’s Charles matched the trend of his times in that he was both clerk and knight in his approach to governing; his intelligence and love of books and their potential enabled his clerkly side to take over when illness prematurely curtailed his combat activity.16 Christine’s king understood as well the value of the court as a stage upon which the all-important processions and rituals of governing were performed daily with meticulous order and grace. Through such reassuring reenactments, which revised the concepts of chivalry and courtliness, Charles generated a sense of order intended to emanate from his court throughout his realm, even in tumultuous times.17

Translating Genres and Genders: Christine as a New Ygerne Christine’s preference for learned, moralistic, and theological sources – mostly from classical and late antiquity, but with some, such as Denis Foulechat’s Polycratique (1372), based on the twelfth-century theorist John of Salisbury’s Policraticus – together with her famous disdain for “courtly love”

15 Daisy Delogu, Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign: The Rise of French Vernacular Royal Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 153–83, esp. 163–7, 170, 174–5. For “architecte,” etc. in Charles V, see esp. vol. 2: 33–41. 16 Delogu, Theorizing, 167. 17 Delogu, Theorizing, 162–3; see also A. Strubel, “Le ‘chevauchier’ de Charles V: Christine de Pizan et le spectacle de la majesté royale,” in Penser le pouvoir au Moyen Age (VIIIe–XVe siècle): Études d’histoire et de littérature offertes à Françoise Autrand, ed. Dominique Boutet and Jacques Verger (Paris: ENS, 2000), 385–99.

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because of its inherent doctrinal and practical perils for women, as expressed in her by now familiar Rose Debate letters and ancillary works, and also her Duc des vrais amans, might lead one to assume she dismissed the twelfthcentury French courtly romances altogether. But upon closer examination, if the Arthurian world does not figure hugely in her allusive repertory, these and other texts from this earlier “renaissance” do contribute to her vision of courtly reform, if with some modification. The urge even within romances to cut to the moral message also began well before Christine, in such mid-twelfth-century examples as the Roman d’Enéas.18 In addition, as Matilda Bruckner has suggested, such twelfthcentury authors as Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France hinted at the resonance between the courtly-love conflicts they presented and courtly-societal ones.19 Roberta Krueger elucidates how in twelfth-century romance, Chrétien’s Perceval’s mother’s advice on becoming a good knight in the Conte du Graal [Story of the Grail] was recast by didactic author Robert of Blois in his romance Beaudous as a sort of mini-moral treatise more prominently woven into the romance’s story-line and launching a new didactic genre.20 Indeed, as Bruckner further leads us to surmise, the significant role accorded Perceval’s teacher figures – Ygerne, Gornemant, and the hermit uncle – serve to make Chrétien’s last romance the fountainhead of chivalric courtesy manuals; in other words, Chrétien has already effected the transition from romance to conduct manual,21 the courtesy-book genre whose ontogenesis relative to Christine and her contemporaries has been sketched above. In general then, as clerkly discourse superseded chivalric discourse as the more influential rhetorical mode because of the power transition from court to city, and desperation wrought by the Hundred Years War and Great Schism, the problematics of knighthood became usurped as the main focus of social reform by that of the moral-political questions glossed by the urban clerks as lawyers, diplomats, and public intellectuals. And yet these two sets of paradoxes and questions – the knight’s and the clerk’s – remained highly analogous, with each pursuing a triangle: if Lancelot’s or Tristan’s involved the adulterous conflict between his loyalty to his king versus his love-service to his lady and ensuing repercussions, then a clerkly humanist like Jean Gerson or Christine had to deal with his/her own contradictory triads: for Maddox, “Avatars courtois,” 163. See, for example, in her Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 104, 212–13, 221–3. 20 “Introduction: Teach Your Children Well: Medieval Conduct Guides for Youths,” in Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, ed. Mark D. Johnston and ed. and tr. Kathleen Ashley, Medieval Academy Books, 111 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), ix–x; and Krueger, “Courtesy Books,” 265. 21 Bruckner, Shaping Romance, esp. 215–18. 18 19



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example, the intellectual/moralist defending the king’s sanctity despite the allegedly wise Charles V’s unquestionably disruptive role during the Great Schism in recognizing the pope in France over the one in Rome – a clear conflict between God and king for any clerkly conscience. Christine’s reformist vision is thus first attributable to her singular status: that privileged marginality as summed up in her self-portraying epithet, seulete: a solitary – first by fate, then by choice – little woman, a native of France’s cultural rival, who nevertheless dedicates most of her career to “integrating her compatriots, male and female, into an orderly society morally defensible.”22 Yet she provides a more intriguing persona as Christine-moral preceptor in conjunction with Chrétien: that of the author-teacher as female advice-giver vs the more accepted authority of male authors, whom she challenges as an equal and may even surpass by incarnating both. In recalling Christine’s widowhood, both as legal status and literary persona, as well as her multiple works advising her son, the future royal notary, we can perceive her functional resemblance to Perceval’s widowed mother, Ygerne, as maternal advisor, while also granting her the roles of Gornemant the preudome and the saintly hermit, as paternal advisors for her reader, in turn a late-medieval Perceval. Pursuing this hybrid paradigm then, we may categorize under maternal (authoritative female) advice for women the Trois Vertus, and the abovementioned passages in the Pastoure and Duc des vrais amans, as well as the final chapter of the Cité des Dames (3.19); for men, her Epistre Othea (“Text” sections of each chapter), Enseignemens, Proverbes, and Prodommie/ Prudence. To the paternal or masculine-authoritative advice category, we would assign the more dispassionate and systematic Epistre Othea’s chapters’ “Glose” and “Allegorie” sections; also the Corps de Policie, Fais d’armes, and much of the Livre de Paix. The other works listed at the beginning of this essay, such as the Charles V, may well be considered bi-vocal, a technique she had already honed in her lyric poetry.23 In all three categories, the gendering of advice was determined as much from content and tone as from the speaker’s gender, with the masculine, paternal tone being less personalized and concretely systematic, and the maternal one being gentler, focusing more on emotions and similarly nuanced, less tangible details. Christine’s teaching, though interweaving both pedagogical threads as found in Chrétien’s Graal, nonetheless causes less contradiction to perplex her reader/pupil. If both authors, like other conduct theorists, stress the importance of governing one’s speech-as-action, each conveys the principle 22 Douglas Kelly, Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Gallica 4 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), 180. 23 On this aspect see J. C. Laidlaw, “L’Unité des Cent Balades,” in The City of Scholars: New Approaches to Christine de Pizan, ed. Margarete Zimmermann and Dina De Rentiis, European Cultures 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 97–106, esp. 101.

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differently. Chrétien’s Perceval is advised by his mother not to question, yet upon obeying this advice, via Gornemant’s instruction, he, like Enide before him, realizes that he should have spoken at a key moment. By contrast, Christine bases her lessons not on any specific dos or don’ts, but rather more on understanding prudence, which would in turn signal the proper moment for either speech or silence. Prudence in Christine’s view automatically prevents speech from becoming excessive: no danger of annoying loquacity or inappropriate silence risked by Perceval and, in Chrétien’s other romance dealing with well-timed speech, Enide, in Erec et Enide. Did Christine read Chrétien’s Conte du Graal and/or Erec et Enide? Although we find mention of Arthur, Lancelot, and Tristan in her writings, we uncover none of Perceval, Gawain, Galahad, or the Grail.24 If she did read Chrétien, at least his Erec et Enide, and modify his love-lessons, as Thelma Fenster convincingly implies,25 he did not haunt her (almost) every thought in the way Jean de Meun did through his deadly combination of brilliance and (in Christine’s eyes) misogynist defamation in the Roman de la rose. No, she probably consigned Chrétien to the same ideological salon des refusés as she did that similarly courtly–clerkly poet of the early thirteenth century, Guillaume de Lorris, first author of the seductive Rose, since even Chrétien’s and Guillaume’s more respectful, even admiring, objectification of women denies this gender’s autonomous intelligence and capacity for virtue.

Conclusion In any case, a salient element of Christine’s reformism over thousands of verses and lines of prose derives from her preference for advising in and furnishing models for problem-solving instead of decreeing absolute answers. Virtually all of the debates in her works, whether on love, morality, or politics, therefore end up enlightening us yet without actual verdicts. This deliberately in-flux approach may well be due to her constant attention to fortune’s “mutations” and uncertainty, no matter how ardently she might seek certi-

24 See Laidlaw’s Christine de Pizan Database 2, invaluable though not exhaustive because of the unavailability of searchable editions of some of her works: http://www.arts. ed.ac.uk/french/christine/conc2_g.htm, accessed May 2, 2012. Christine cites Arthurian figures in her Cent Balades 4, 92 (Arthur), Cent Ballades d’amant et de dame (Tristan); Debat de deux amans (Arthur, Lancelot, Tristan), Dit de la pastoure (Tristan), Chemin de lonc estude (Arthur), and Mutacion de Fortune (Arthur, Lancelot) euhemeristically, as historical figures. 25 Thelma Fenster, “Christine at Carnant: Reading Christine de Pizan Reading Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide,” in Christine de Pizan 2000: Studies on Christine de Pizan in Honour of Angus J. Kennedy, ed. John Campbell and Nadia Margolis, Faux Titre 196 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 135–48.



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tude.26 Despite Christine’s keen yearning for order, she realizes that no one member of the body politic alone, nor any one source of power (recalling the Chemin’s debate) – not even wisdom – can shape the court definitively. Rather, it is the unique virtue of prudence, which, when practiced by all body-politic members from the king downward, is the only resource teaching us how to select and deploy the most effective remedy for fate’s ceaseless, often unpredictable, mutability.

26

See Kelly, Christine’s Changing Opinion.

Part IV Shaping the Courtly Other

The Favorable Reception of Outsiders at Court: Medieval Versions of Cultural Exchange Laine E. Doggett Matilda Bruckner’s work on hospitality in romance inspired me to reflect on the related topic of the favorable reception of strangers at court. If hospitality is one side of the coin, a convention that requires hosts to respond favorably to those who request lodging and sustenance, the other side is what the stranger at court does, especially those behaviors that lead to court admiration, appreciation, and a warm reception. In such cases the outsider does not threaten or alienate, as one might imagine, but enhances the court by increasing its courtliness and, in turn, its prestige. Bruckner distinguishes commercial hospitality (in which one pays for services such as lodging) from courtly hospitality (in which services are offered freely, but as part of an exchange of courtly goods and services at the heart of the feudal economy). In the courtly model, a castle lord enhances his status by offering hospitality and thereby accruing status through the act of demonstrating his wealth and largesse.1 The feudal economy recognizes the lord’s offering as an indication of his good manners, behavior that the court expects and reads as an indicator of the lord’s status and the court’s prestige. The hospitality convention does not require any contribution on the part of the outsider – its purpose is to bolster the position of the lord of the castle, and it successfully fulfills that purpose. However, the lord and his court can also gain from the outsider, specifically status and prestige. This is shown in the narratives analyzed below, those of Tristan, Cligés, and Lanval, in which a stranger contributes to the court in ways that increase its courtliness and thus prestige. In these cases the outsider makes a highly favorable impression through courtly manners, customs, skills, and/or virtues, as well as physical beauty and luxurious clothing and accoutrements. In other words, the outsider brings in ideas, approaches, and methods from a different culture that increase the courtliness and glory of the court. The court in some cases gains actual wealth, but this is a by-product 1 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Narrative Invention in Twelfth-century French Romance: The Convention of Hospitality (1160–1200) (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1980), 118–19.

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of the virtue of generosity. Even when wealth is attained, the court focuses on its increased glory though courtly ways and further refinement. In a world where outsiders with different approaches could be dismissed, threatened, or perhaps even killed, these examples of courtly literature show no xenophobia at the appearance of an outsider but rather a welcome embrace – as long as he or she contributes to the refinement and consequent prestige of the court.

Tristan Tristan gains entry to the Cornish court by what he does, not who he is. As the nephew of the Cornish King Mark, Tristan would be welcomed as a friend of the court, but he does not use his parentage to gain entry at court. Tristan arrives alone in an unknown land that he eventually learns is Cornwall.2 We see this in the episodes of the presentation of the deer to King Mark, and in Tristan’s application of his musical abilities. These episodes are no longer extant in either the Roman de Tristan of Thomas d’Angleterre or that of Béroul, both of which provide only small parts of the narrative. However, there is an Old Norse translation available today in Icelandic manuscripts by Brother Robert. Parallel reading of extant sections of Thomas and corresponding sections from Robert show that Robert follows Thomas’s Tristan very closely,3 with only limited additions such as Scandinavian place-names or a prayer over Tristan’s body.4 The translator does omit parts, especially descriptions and monologues, so that Robert’s text is one-third shorter than Thomas’s.5 However, given that Robert virtually copies the sections he includes, Robert’s translation serves as a reasonable text from which to infer events in the story. Although this approach is not ideal, it can provide some insights and is merited due to the importance of the Tristan story as an intertext for other works. Upon his arrival in Cornwall, Tristan laments his fate, saying “I can find no one to give me help or comfort, or to teach me the manners and customs

2 We recall that Tristan had been kidnapped by Vikings who thought he would be valuable to them because of his knowledge of languages. However, they fear that their misdeed has been punished by a fierce storm, so they release him in a small boat. For another analysis of strangers at court that focuses on aspects such as language differences and barriers, see William MacBain, “The Outsider at Court, Or What is So Strange about the Stranger?” in The Court and Cultural Diversity, ed. Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). 3 Daniel Lacroix and Philippe Walter, ed. and tr., Tristan et Iseut: Les poèmes français, la saga norroise (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1989), 497. 4 Lacroix and Walter, Tristan et Iseut, 499. 5 Knud Togeby, “L’influence de la littérature française sur les littératures scandinaves au Moyen Age,” in Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, 1 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1972), 339–40.



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of this county” (25, emphasis mine).6 Tristan thus indicates that cultural knowledge eases one’s way. An opportunity quickly presents itself for Tristan to demonstrate his courtly manners. He encounters a hunting party giving chase to a deer, and the dogs take down the deer. The hunters prepare to clean the animal, but Tristan volunteers to show the courtiers how this practice is done in his country. The lead hunter, described as “courteous and modest and well accomplished in all of the customs of courtly behavior” (26–7), notices Tristan’s rich dress and appearance (27), and so accepts Tristan’s offer. After Tristan completes the task he explains that the deer’s head should be courteously presented to the king (27). The hunters beseech Tristan to “demonstrate this capital and courteous craft, for we do not know how to follow this practice” (27). Tristan agrees to lead the procession to the king and make the presentation. The narrator summarizes the courtiers’ reactions as follows: “For never before in that country had a stag been broken up in such wise, nor had the catch of huntsmen been carried home in such a dignified manner, nor had the king been honored so seemingly by anyone” (28). These episodes give Tristan entry to the court. Afterwards, he resides at the king’s court, often goes hunting, and follows this same procedure each time, one that the Cornish recognize as superior to their method. Both King Mark and the courtiers deeply respect the unknown young man, the king for the honor bestowed upon him and the court members because Tristan’s manners are more refined than theirs.7 Tristan’s courtly behavior alone gains his acceptance at court. His behavior consists of nothing more than the custom of his land and so to him surely seems quite ordinary. But to Mark and the members of that court, Tristan establishes from first contact the image that will persist there of a subject who outshines everyone around him, including the king. In this situation, the court values refined behavior so much that its members assume that anyone who exhibits such behavior should be considered one of them even if they know absolutely nothing else about him. No one asks who he is, or by extension, who his family is. It is only much later that Tristan’s ancestry is revealed. A second episode where the courtiers respond favorably to Tristan because of his courtly skills and manners results from Tristan’s musical skills at the Irish court of Princess Iseut and her parents. The Cornish court had already appreciated Tristan’s musical skills: he often played and sang, thereby gaining the admiration of the courtiers (28–9). The situation in Ireland is more fraught: Tristan must conceal his identity since he slew Morholt, the 6 All quotes from The Saga of Tristam and Ísönd, tr. Paul Schach (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1973) and numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the edition. 7 Later in the story, Tristan furthers his position at court through knightly prowess in his defeat of Morholt, who terrorized the kingdom. No knight except Tristan was willing to fight him.

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brother of the Irish queen, and so he calls himself Tantris. (He put himself in this dangerous situation because Morholt had wounded him in the fight and said that only his sister knew how to cure the wound.) Upon arrival in Cornwall, Tristan’s musical skills create a buzz: “Now he began to demonstrate his mastery of the harp, and the courtly and courteous demeanor of which he was capable, and news of his pleasing appearance and accomplishments quickly spread” (46). When the queen’s daughter, Princess Iseut, hears of his skill, she wishes to study music with him. Iseut’s parents consent, but Tristan’s stinking, festering wound draws the attention of Queen Iseut. She offers to cure the wound: “(The queen) said to him, ‘I shall gladly help you for the sake of my daughter Ísönd,8 so that you may teach her as best you can with kindness and consideration anything she wishes to learn of that which you know” (46). Tristan’s musical ability paves the way for his favorable impression at the Irish court, and he agrees to give Princess Iseut regular lessons.9 Tristan is welcomed, and Queen Iseut and her daughter undertake the healing process with plasters and bandages. Tristan stays on at court for some time to give Iseut lessons in music, letters, and other arts (47). Court members recognize and deeply appreciate Tristan’s knowledge and skills in art, and this leads the courtiers to accept and embrace him. Tristan moves from being a complete unknown from another country to full acceptance in the life of the court because of his refined ways. Both the Cornish and Irish courts welcome him and learn quickly and avidly from his courtly presentation after a hunt and from his musical and literary knowledge. The desire of the courtiers to achieve ever more refinement and courtesy leads them to embrace anyone who can enhance court life, and so influences from other lands are welcomed. The court shows no fear or mistrust of foreign customs or ways, but instead an open embracing of them. In the Tristan legend, the courtly milieux are quite similar: the Celtic lands of Ireland, Cornwall, and Tristan’s homeland, Brittany. In Cligés, the cultural difference is greater, first between the Arthurian and Greek courts, then between those of Germany and Greece.

Cligés In Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés, two nobles of different generations come from Greece, first Alexandre and some years later, his son, Cligés. The glory and renown of King Arthur’s court draw Alexandre and lead him to encourage his son to go there. In spite of his father’s promise that Alexandre

The Icelandic version of Iseut’s name. This recognition of Tristan’s skills is similar to that of the Vikings who abducted him for his languages and skill in chess. 8 9



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can be knighted immediately in Greece and will later ascend to the throne of emperor (122–34; [88–9]),10 Alexandre ardently desires to be knighted by Arthur because of the prestige it will bring.11 Alexandre’s father explains what his son must do: “Mes gardez que molt soiez larges / Et cortois et bien afeitiez” (184–5) [make sure that you are generous and courtly and that you present yourself well],12 adding “Largesce est dame et reïne / Qui totes vertuz anlumine” (193–4) [generosity is the lady and queen who enhances all virtues (89)]. The father knows well that his son’s success depends on how he is perceived by others at court and that generosity is central to this perception. Generosity at court runs two ways: it is not only the lord of the castle who must show this behavior, but also the rich visitor who hopes to be well received and whose sharing of wealth is a mark of virtue. At King Arthur’s court, the barons immediately notice the Greeks: “Por ce que biax et genz les voient” (321) [The nobility and beauty of the handsome youths made all the barons stare at them (91)] because “Et molt erent de bel aage, / Gent et bien fet, de lonc corsage” (325–6) [most handsome were they for their age, noble men both comely and tall in stature (91)]. At first glance the physical appearance and clothing of the Greeks gains them admiration and respect. This points to the exchange function between the two courts. We recall that Alexandre’s motivation is increased personal honor and renown, but he is able to attain this because he offers something in return to the courts he visits: courtly manners, refinement, and wealth which have the potential to increase the prestige of the court. Arthur welcomes the Greeks, and the barons do so as well (387, 391; [91]).

10 All references are from Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés, ed. Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993) and numbers in parentheses refer to verses. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are from David Staines, tr., The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990) and numbers after the translations refer to pages in the translation. 11 The episodes I analyze here differ for the most part from those read as ironic by Peter Haidu and Norris Lacy. See Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Cliges and Perceval (Geneva: Droz, 1968), and Norris Lacy, “Cligés and Courtliness,” Interpretations 15.2 (1984), 18–24. For the episodes we both discuss, Haidu describes Alexandre’s behavior as “willful” (72). Douglas Kelly offers a different, non-ironic reading in “Honor, Debate, and Translatio imperii in Cligés,” Arthuriana 18.3 (2008), 33–47. Further discussion of the interest in and increase of courtliness is found in C. Stephen Jaeger, “Courtliness and Social Change,” in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-century Europe, ed. Thomas N. Bisson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), and his The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), and Linda Paterson, “Great Court Festivals in the South of France and Catalonia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Medium aevum 51.2 (1982), 213–24. 12 My translation.

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Alexandre’s refinement and virtues are seen in both speech and action. When he addresses King Arthur, he prepares “A bien parler et sagemant” (341) [to speak wisely and well (91)]. In turn, the barons welcome him graciously, and Alexandre establishes himself at court: “Bele vie a son ostel mainne / Et largemant done et despant” (410–11) [He lived well in his lodgings, giving and spending generously (92)]. The court is enhanced by his courtly manners and his wealth.13 Some years later, Alexandre instructs his son, Cligés, to go to Arthur’s court to prove himself. Moreover, Cligés should go anonymously, “Que tu n’i soies coneüz / Jusqu’a tant qu’as plus esleüz / De la cort esprovez te soies” (2593–5); [(conduct yourself) with such deportment that your identity remains unknown until you test yourself against the finest members of the court (118)].14 Should one not make the link between Cligés and Tristan, the narrator points it out: Ce fu Cligés, qui an lui ot San et biauté, largesce et force. Cist ot le fust atot l’escorce, Cist sot plus d’escremie et d’arc Que Tristanz le niés le roi Marc Et plus d’oisiax et plus de chiens: En Cligés ne failli nus biens. (2766–72) [This was Cliges, who possessed wisdom and beauty, generosity and strength. He had the timber as well as the bark. He knew more about fencing and archery and about hawks and hunting dogs than Tristan, the nephew of King Mark. No good quality was lacking in Cliges. (121)]

The factors that positively influence the arrival and acceptance at court of Alexandre and Cligés, the Greek outsiders, include their courteous speech and actions, as well as their handsomeness. Cligés and the other Greeks also make a favorable impression at the court of the German emperor when they petition him to grant that his daughter, Fenice, marry the Greek emperor: Molt fu liez de cest mandemant L’empereres et lieemant 13 As in the case of Tristan, Alexandre cements his place at Arthur’s court through knightly deeds, in this case capturing Count Angres (who has rebelled against Arthur) and killing many of Angres’s men. 14 This and other similarities to the Tristan narrative have resulted in many analyses of the relationship between the texts. A recent example is Peggy McCracken’s discussion in Zrinka Stahuljak et al., Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), 140–3.



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Lor a otroiee sa fille, Car de neant ne s’i aville Ne de rien s’enor n’apetise. (2649–53) [Delighted by these tidings, the emperor gladly presented his daughter to them, for the act in no way demeaned him or diminished his honor. (119)]

The understatement here reinforces the notion that the emperor and, by extension, his court, will increase in prestige and honor if the German emperor’s daughter marries the Greek emperor, even though the German emperor has already promised his daughter to the duke of Saxony. Since the duke is less important and poorer, the German emperor’s court will gain prestige, honor, and brilliance from the better match. The German emperor correctly anticipates a challenge for the maiden from the duke.15 He warns that the Greeks will have to fight off the duke when they leave with Fenice, a situation the Greeks accept (2656–60; [119]). Cligés proves to be the best knight by killing the duke’s nephew (the emissary), routing the Saxons with the other Greeks, and finally forcing the surrender of the duke himself (3368–4185; [128–38]). The romance narrator lingers on physical descriptions of the eponymous hero which reveal his “biauté” (v. 2741) [beauty (120)] in details such as his golden hair (2756, 120) and “sa face rose novele” (v. 2757) [his face like a fresh rose (120)]. Court members read Cligés’s physical beauty as a guarantor of his nobility and the court greatly appreciates this quality. Both Cligés and his father win over the barons by their courtly appearance (physical beauty and clothing), their courtly presentation, and their generosity. They enhance the prestige of the court by their presence and actions, and the courtiers respond favorably to this. The Greek and German courts mutually benefit from the expressions of courtesy and generosity as well as the appreciation of physical beauty.

Lanval If Cligés posits King Arthur’s court as the epitome of courtly culture, Marie de France’s Lanval calls the cultural superiority of that court into question. The lai presents a complex situation in which hospitality and the perception of it at court fuel much of the plot.16 At the beginning King Arthur rewards 15 The duke sends as emissary his nephew, who, despite his courteous speech, is not welcomed at court because he brings a threat from the duke. 16 My argument dovetails with the discussion of patronage and Bourdieu’s symbolic capital in Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, “Magical Mistress Tour: Patronage, Intellectual Property, and the Dissemination of Wealth in the Lais of Marie de France,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 25.2 (2000), 479–503.

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those at his court with luxurious gifts (19; [17]).17 In this way, he fulfills the role of the hospitable lord – for the most part, because King Arthur forgets to give anything to Lanval. Lanval, the son of a king (27–8; [105–6]), and an outsider, a “franc hume d’altre païs” (431) [noble man from another land (429)], also looks and acts according to courtly expectations, but he does not receive the usual return: “Pur sa valur, pur sa largesce, / pur sa bealté, pur sa pruësce / l’envoiënt tuit li plusur” (21–3) [For his valor, for his generosity, / his beauty and his bravery, / most men envied him (21–3)]. Due to this envy, no one speaks up for Lanval (19–20). In contrast to the German, Cornish, and Irish courts, Arthur’s courtiers fail to respond as the conventions dictate. It will be necessary for Lanval to visit another court for the code of behavior to work for him. As he is resting alone in a prairie, he is invited to another world of beautiful women and extraordinary wealth. The ladies in waiting describe their lady as “curteise e bele” (72) [courteous and beautiful].18 Before Lanval sees any of the fancy trappings, they set up the expectation that courtesy and refined behavior follow naturally from one’s rich surroundings. He also observes that her tent is “beals e bien asis” (81) [beautiful and well placed (81)], richly decorated (87–90; [87–90]), and that she has rich clothing and furniture (97–9; [97–8]). The fairy mistress insists on the link between beautiful, luxurious surroundings and excellent manners and courtesy when she tells Lanval that “Se vus estes pruz e curteis” (113, emphasis mine) [If you are brave and courtly (113)], no emperor, count, or king will have “tant joie ne bien” (115) [such joy or good (115)]. Thus for her, courteous behavior is a necessary condition for being received at court. Lanval understands and responds to the expectations set forth by the fairy mistress: he responds “avenantment” (120) [in a suitable way (120)] and pledges to do whatever she asks because of her love for him (127–34; [124–9]). She warns him that he must not tell anyone about her and that if he does, he will lose her forever. Lanval accepts this stricture. In this case, it is not only Lanval’s courteous response, but also his promise of love service that attain for him a warm reception as a foreigner at court. If King Arthur and his courtiers were unable to see Lanval’s value, the fairy mistress more than makes up for these lapses. Lanval is only invited to this otherworldly court after he has given all he has (30; [30]), and he has become a stranger alone because there is no one at court from whom he can ask for help (36–8; [36–8]).

17 All Old French quotations from Lanval are from Marie de France, Lais, ed. Karl Warnke and tr. Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990). Numbers refer to verses. All translations, unless otherwise noted, from Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, tr. and intro., The Lais of Marie de France (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1978). Numbers following the translations refer to verses as well and are put in square brackets when cited right next to the original’s verse numbers. 18 My translation.



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In the new court, Lanval has little to offer, and so begins by mostly receiving. First, he is given new clothes so that “suz ciel nen ot plus bel dancel; / n’esteit mie fols ne vileins” (176–7) [there wasn’t a more handsome youth in all the world; / he was no fool, no boor (176–7)]. The rich clothing telegraphs Lanval’s high status. Next, he participates in several aspects of courtly behavior in succession: hand washing, an elaborate meal, and leavetaking. The narrator points out the refined behaviors as part of these. During the meal, he “fu serviz curteisement” (183) [was served with great courtesy (183)]. When his horse is brought for the leave-taking, Lanval “mult a trové riche servise” (192) [was very richly served (192)]. Lanval also receives riches during his visit. The money and other goods that Lanval obtains go hand in hand with the refined behavior that he observes, participates in, and later repeats on his own. He understands and applies the lessons of the fairy court. The irony is that by the time Lanval arrives at her court, he can offer no generosity, only receive it, since he gave generously at Arthur’s court but did not receive in return. He receives a favorable reception at the court of the fairy mistress only for his courtesy, promise of loyalty, and love service. Returned to Arthur’s court, Lanval again gives prodigiously (209–14). His good behavior earns him no reward again, but an accusation by the queen, who claims that Lanval has insulted and humiliated her (315–21; [315–19]). The barons, charged with deciding the case, ask Lanval to prove the existence of the fairy mistress. Lanval refuses to do so (451–68; [449–60]). At this point, he expects nothing of her because he has broken his promise that he would never speak of her. The fairy mistress, however, responds with a form of generosity because she appears at court – in a terse performance of courtly beauty, accoutrements, and presentations – in spite of Lanval’s broken promise. The lai reaches its climax with the arrival of a succession of gorgeously dressed, lovely women. Their spectacular display (in both senses of the word: they are superior to those around them and they create a stir, or spectacle, when they arrive) leaves no doubt of their royal wealth, but it, too, emphasizes courtliness and refinement. The courtiers observe first their fine silk tunics (515; [511]) and that they are “mult acesmees e mult beles” (526) [well adorned and very beautiful (522)]. Many audience members praise their beauty, which surpasses that of the queen (535–6). They descend before the king to present their message, and here their behavior influences their reception: “L’ainznee fu curteise e sage / avenantment dist sun message” (537–8) [The older one was courtly and wise, / she spoke her message fittingly (533– 4)]. The message consists only of a request that the king prepare a chamber for their lady who will soon arrive. When she shows up, her beauty, her fine horse, her attendant, every aspect of her person amazes the onlookers (553–604; [550–600]). Although Lanval did not make the expected favorable reception at court, the system works as expected for the ladies who are well received because of their beauty, rich clothing, courtesy, and refined speech.

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The details of this performance of courtliness are carefully scripted for maximum impact. Everyone is already astonished at the lavish display of wealth and beauty, but then “Sun mantel a laissié chaeir, / que mielz la peüssent veeir” (621–2) [And she let her cloak fall / so they could see her better (605–6)]. In response, they praise her beauty (628; [612]). King Arthur behaves as expected according to the courtly norms: he rises quickly to welcome her, since he “mult fu enseigniez” (623) [was well bred (607)]. So too the members of his court, who “de li servir mult se penerent” (626) [offered to serve her (610)]. This short series of actions stages a contest that the fairy mistress wins: she is clearly more beautiful than is Arthur’s queen. Her beauty and luxurious clothing are ciphers for her advanced social standing which cause King Arthur and the others assembled to treat her with the courtliest of behaviors. The fairy mistress’s beauty speaks so loudly that she has very little to say, nor does she wish to: “kar de demurer nen ot cure” (630) [she didn’t want to wait (614)]. Lanval is acquitted and goes with her to Avalon: no mention of any leave-taking or parting words is made. This is a surprising departure from the standard courtly action of “prendre congé” [leave-taking] that is usually enacted at court, and that indeed Lanval carried out when his horse was brought to him at the appointed time of his departure during his visit to the fairy mistress (193; [190]). Lanval has no need or cause to stay because he has earned a place in a court that outshines Arthur’s. Despite the courtly behaviors of some and the clear awareness of the need and desire to display courtliness, King Arthur, his queen, and their courtiers fail to rise to the highest standards of courtliness in this lai: Arthur, because he overlooks Lanval at the beginning of the lai and therefore did not show the proper generosity toward him, the courtiers whose envy prevents them from pointing out Arthur’s lapse, and his queen when she falsely accuses Lanval because she is angry that he will not return her advances. Compared to the fairy mistress, King Arthur’s court and his queen pale. When the parade of beautifully dressed and extremely courteous women arrives one after the other, King Arthur and the courtiers understand immediately and without protest that the beauty, fine apparel, refinement, and courtesy of the ladies far exceed those of Arthur’s court and so the king defers to them. Lanval does not make a favorable impression at Arthur’s court, and this might seem to disconfirm the notion that outsiders make good impressions at court with courtesy, generosity, and good looks, were it not for the fact that in Lanval Arthur’s court serves an anti-exemplum in which the weaknesses are exposed for all to observe. They are so palpably evident that everyone admits them, and the fairy mistress, even more of an outsider than Lanval, has little reason to speak.



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Conclusion The stranger at court who brings added value through courtly manners, customs, skills, and physical beauty, as well as wealth and generosity, is the flip side of the coin of the lord’s requirement to provide hospitality to his visitors. In the courts of Cornwall, Ireland, and Germany, as well as Arthur’s court in Cligés, the court’s leader (emperor or king) and the courtiers show a fundamental openness to the outside world and a belief that the courtly outsider has the potential to improve the court by enhancing its prestige. In these circumstances the courts show no xenophobia or even the limiting belief that “what we have here is all we need.” Instead, a clear recognition prevails that there is always room for improvement, always the possibility to become further refined and more courteous, and the practice of keen observation of others for how they can contribute to that refinement. In Lanval, the inability of King Arthur’s court to see these advantages from Lanval is the exception which works as an anti-example used to inspire more courtliness. This openness to outsiders with refined ways who enrich the court functions as a kind of cultural exchange and opens the way for cultures to enrich each other.

Shaping Saladin: Courtly Men Dressed in Silk E. Jane Burns

Chrétien de Troyes’s twelfth-century romance Perceval ou le Conte du Graal stages a telling encounter between the naïve and bumbling Perceval and his newfound chivalric mentor, Gornemont de Gort, in which the mentor asks, “Et de vos armes, biax amis, / Me redites que savez faire?” (1391–2), [Tell me again, my friend, what can you do with your arms/armor?]. Perceval responds curiously: Jes sai bien vestir et retraire, Si com li vallés m’en arma Qui devant moi en desarma Le chevalier qu’avoie mort. (1392–5)1 [I can put them on and remove them, just like the squire who armed me after disarming the knight I had slain.]

Perceval’s seemingly silly reply appears at first to miss the point of Gornemont’s inquiry. Instead of attesting to his skills as a knight, the newly dubbed Perceval can speak only of his skill at dressing and undressing as a knight. And yet, Perceval’s remarks aptly convey the importance of material culture, especially clothing, in the creation of chivalric masculinity within the Arthurian world. As Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman have shown in Cinematic Illuminations (in which they analyze both Chrétien’s text and the film version of it, “Perceval Le Gallois,” directed by Eric Rohmer), knights in King Arthur’s realm have to perform chivalry constantly in order to maintain it. Indeed, Finke and Shichtman argue that the continual process of dressing and undressing of the knightly body creates its courtly identity, so much so that a knight’s armor functions as a kind of social skin.2 For example, after killing the Red Knight, Perceval is literally unable to separate the armor from his opponent’s body, as he explains to incredulous onlookers: 1 Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou le conte du Graal, ed. William Roach (Geneva: Droz, 1959). Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 2 Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 264–9.

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Je quidoie de vostre roi Qu’il m’eüst ces armes donnees, Mais ains avrai par carbonees, Trestot esbrahoné le mort Que nule des armes en port, Qu’eles se tiennent si au cors Que ce dedens et che defors Est trestot un, si com moi samble, Qu’eles se tiennent si ensamble. (1133–42) [I thought your king had given me these arms. But I will have to cut the dead man in pieces to remove the armor, which is so stuck to the body that the inside and the outside are one; it seems to me they are joined together.]

This is a particularly cogent example, as Finke and Shichtman explain, of what I have called in another context a “sartorial body,” a body formed as much from fabric as from flesh. I advanced that argument in Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture concerning the bodies of courtly ladies.3 In this instance, however, it is the heavy metal of arms and armor that create a knight’s social skin or what we might call the social skin of chivalry. Both Perceval and the Red Knight, whose armor he eventually does acquire, can be said to inhabit sartorial bodies created initially by King Arthur at the time of their dubbing and then constantly recreated through subsequent acts of dressing and undressing.4 But what might these ritual practices of Western courtly and chivalric dressing have to do with the historical Saladin or with silk? At times in the Arthurian world, the fully encased knightly body is set off against the light and flowing delicacy of silk that lavishly adorns so many elegant ladies in the courtly world. In Erec et Enide, for example, when the hero Erec runs his lance through a rival knight’s body, we are told of the slain knight that “Ne li escuz, ne li haubers, / Ne li valut un cendal pers” (3577–8) [Neither his shield nor his hauberk offered him any more protection than a piece of dark blue silk].5 In this instance, silk is for show, not protection. But in other contexts it plays a crucial role in the making and marking of courtly masculinity. In Jean Renart’s thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole we see a company of fifty knights parade through the streets on their way to 3 E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 24–6; 53–6. 4 A similar process pertains to the investiture of the medieval clergy as Dyan Elliott has shown in “Dressing and Undressing the Clergy: The Rites of Ordination and Degradation,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 54–69. 5 Literally, “His shield and hauberk were worth no more than a piece of dark blue silk,” Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Champion, 1976).



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a tournament, splendidly outfitted with painted lances and silk banners. Even their warhorses are draped in gold brocaded silk:6 Les escuz, les lances, l’afere, Les covertures, les pennons De cendauls et de ciclatons. Fut tot bien fait ainz .xv. jors! (1966–9) [The shields, lances, material for combat, and horse coverings and flags of lightweight silk and patterned silk were all ready within two weeks.]

Three of the emperor’s noblemen carry shields secured by a strap of gold brocade, “Et .iii. escuz, dont les enarmes / Soient de soië et d’orfrois” (1958– 9). And Gui himself is said to wear a: trop bele chemise, Toz deffublez em pur le cors Fors d’un sercot dont le ados Ert bendez d’orfrois d’Engleterre l’en porroit ja assez loig querre Ançois qu’en trovast le pareil: La pene ert d’un cendal vermeil. (2194–200)7 [splendid chemise and over it only a sleeveless surcoat with a band of English gold silk brocade on the back. You’d have to look far and wide to find its equal; it was lined with red silk.]

These French knights are “made” of both armor and silk. But what happens when we move eastward, toward the Levant and the Crusader states, the very source of so much of the silk marked in Old French texts as coming from the Orient, Alexandria, Damascus, or Baghdad?8 The anonymous thirteenth-century Ordene de chevalerie, one of the earliest Old French poems to address theories of knighthood, stages the historical capture of Hugh of Tiberias (here called Hue de Tabarie) by Saladin in 1179 in what are vaguely termed “pagan lands.”9 Negotiations between the two rivals lead

6 On luxurious horse coverings see Sarah Grace Heller, “Fashion in French Crusade Literature: Desiring Infidel Textiles,” in Desiree Koslin and Janet Snyder, ed., Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 103–19. 7 Jean Renart, Le Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, ed. Félix Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1962). Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 8 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, 183–7. 9 Margaret Jubb explains that the first mention of Saladin becoming a knight is found in the Itinerarum, which gives a hostile account of Saladin’s early years but states he was dubbed in ca. 1167 by Humphrey of Toron, lord of Kerak. The deeds of the historical

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ultimately to Saladin’s request to learn “how knights are made” [comment l’on fet les chevaliers (80)].10 Initially, Hugh refuses, saying that such an act would no more be possible than “dressing dung in silk” (89–90), a point to which we will return shortly. First we should note, however, that Hugh’s facile dismissal of Saladin’s request is followed almost immediately by complete capitulation, which takes the form of an elaborate ritual of dressing.11 Indeed, in order to “teach” the putatively ignorant Saladin “how knights are made,” Hugh actually “makes” Saladin into a knight (though not a Christian) by enfolding him in a series of garments, followed by golden spurs, a sword, and a cloth head covering (coiffe): si l’a vestu De blans dras qui erent de lin … Aprés li vest robe vermeille … Aprés li a chauces chauciees De saie noire delïees … Si li çaint une çainture Blanche et petite de feture. (138–9, 147, 159–60, 175–6) [He dressed him in white linen underclothes … then in a red outfit … then he put delicate black silk leggings (on Saladin) … and he put around his waist a narrow white belt.]

In this brief account of chivalric dressing, much as in the descriptions of Perceval and the Red Knight mentioned above, garments are shown literally to constitute (rather than simply clothe) the chivalric body. Hugh, it seems, cannot merely describe “how knights are made”; the process is utterly dependent on the donning of specific garments and can only be illustrated by actually dressing up the male body. In Saladin’s investiture, however, arms and armor are less important than other items of chivalric dress, and silk becomes the reigning metaphor for the process. Although not all the individual garments mentioned in this

Hugh of Tiberias (on the Sea of Galilee), stepson of Raymond of Tripoli and one of the foremost nobles in the Latin Kingdom, are recorded in the Eracles and the Estoire d’Outremer, which assert that he was taken prisoner by Saladin in 1178 or 1179. See Jubb, The Legend of Saladin in Western Literature and Historiography (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 67–8. 10 Raoul de Houdenc. Le Roman des eles/ The Anonymous Ordene de chevalerie, ed. Keith Busby (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company), 1983. Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 11 As Benjamin Kedar explains, by the middle of the twelfth century, purely military chivalry has been displaced in many contexts by the ritual initiation of courtly chivalry, “The Crusades and the Military Orders,” in La Chevalerie et l’Orient, ed. Paul de Breuil (Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1990), 131–2.



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“dressing” ceremony are characterized specifically as silk – indeed, only the leggings (“chausses de saie”) are so qualified – the “vermeil robe” [red suit of clothes] and even the white belt call forth a storehouse of pat descriptions of other luxury robes and belts that adorn knights and ladies in the courtly world, items that are most often characterized in romance texts as being made of silk.12 While dressing the non-Christian and unbaptized Saladin as a knight, Hugh emphasizes the symbolic Christian meaning of each article’s color.13 The red robe signifies the red blood shed by knights in defense of God’s holy law, the black hose warn against pride in the earthly realm, the white belt signifies virginity and purity of the body. All attest to a chivalric hero free from luxuriousness (183) and filth, “Quar Diex het molt si fete ordure” (187) [God truly hates (a knight) to indulge in filth]. The white coiffe too is clean and pure and without the “filth” of fleshly sin, “Que ceste coiffe est sanz ordure” (227). These references to non-chivalric filth are of special interest because they reiterate the overall distinction drawn in Hugh’s initial rejection of Saladin’s request for knighthood: a distinction between Christian knights who wear silk and pagan warriors not worthy of the fabric. When Saladin says to Hugh, “Fais moi sage, quar j’ai talent / De savoir trestot l’errement … Comment l’en fet les chevaliers” (77–8, 80) [Enlighten me since I want to know everything about how knights are made], Hugh responds: Et grant folie entreprendroie Se un fumier de dras de soie Voloie vestir et couvrir Qu’il ne peüst jamés püir. (87–90) [I would be engaging in sheer madness if I tried to dress up and conceal a dungheap in silk, as if that would prevent it from stinking.]

The phrase would have been familiar to French audiences in the thirteenth century since it appears, among other places, in Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose where the Jealous Husband makes a similar point about women. Excoriating his wife for donning inappropriately lavish adornment,14 whether she uses roses, violets, lilies, or (most important for our purposes) silk cloth, the Husband claims that these false ornaments change nothing. They merely

Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, 26–9; 182–96. The symbolic system detailed here recurs in Geoffroi de Charny’s fourteenthcentury The Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, tr. Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 91. 14 For its use in other Old French texts such as Floris et Lyriope and the Menagier de Paris, see Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, 47–51. 12 13

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draw a seductive veil over the corrupted flesh of a female body which, like dung, continues to stink: Qui voudroit un fumier covrir De dras de saie ou de floretes Bien colorees et bien netes, Si seroit certes li fumiers, Qui de puir est costumiers, Tex com avant estre soloit. (8878–83)15 [Whoever might wish to cover a dungheap with silk cloth or cheaper silks of beautiful, attractive colors, it would still be a dungheap and would surely continue to stink as it had before.]

Thus does silk in the highly ritualized chivalric context of the Ordene de chevalerie function ostensibly in at least two ways: as a vestment for Christian knights whose identity becomes inseparable from the luxurious fabric they wear, that is, as part of the social skin that makes them knights; conversely, in the case of pagans generally, we are told, silk functions as nothing more than a removable cover, a deceptive cloak hiding a polluted infidel body that persists unchanged beneath a thin textile veneer. The Ordene pushes the point further, by linguistically tying the ritualized process of “making” a knight [coment l’on fet les chevaliers] to the actual “making” of the material garments like silk leggings, belt, and robe used to create or fashion that knight. When we hear, for example, that Hugh cinches the belt around Saladin’s waist to make him a knight, we are also told how the belt itself was “made,” “Si li çaint une çainture, / Blanche et petite de feture” (175–6) [my emphasis] [He (Hugh) put a belt around his (Saladin’s) waist, a white belt made to be narrow].16 The very process of dressing Saladin in Western chivalric attire of course belies the Ordene’s elaborate attempt to impute ideological significance to silk. To be sure, the message stated clearly in the closing segments of the Ordene de chevalerie is that knights “dressed in silk” do the work of protecting the Christian Church and its treasures against foes like Saladin himself: Saracens, Albigensians, Barbarians: Se li mauvés ne les cremoient Ja li bon durer ne porroient Se n’estoit fors Sarrasins, 15 Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la rose, ed. Félix Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1965). Numbers in parentheses refer to verses. 16 The belt’s feture is an especially crucial story element in Jean Renart’s Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole. See E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 87–99.



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D’Aubigois et de Barbarins Et de genz de mauvese loi Qui nos metroient a belloi; Mes il doutent les chevaliers. (443–9) [The good would never be able to endure if the wicked did not fear them [knights], and if there were only Saracens, Albigensians and Barbarians and people of evil faiths who would do us harm. But they fear knights.]

Here silk has obviously shed the long-standing clerical disapproval of it as an excessive and ostentatious fabric to become instead a defining marker of French knighthood and Western political success in the Levant and in France. Yet it does so at a historical moment when France’s crusading fortunes were failing. Indeed, the Ordene shows us an imprisoned Hugh disarmed and defenseless. The pagan Saladin, who has succeeded in taking Hugh prisoner, holds the high card in their negotiations, as Saladin reminds his Christian foe, “Quar je vous tieng en ma prison / Si vous convient mon voloir fere” (98–9) [Since I am holding you prisoner, you must do my bidding]. In stark contrast to Perceval’s mentor, Gornemont, Hugh does not teach his lesson of chivalric dressing willingly, but is forced by his tactical disadvantage to explain “fully the manner in which knights are made.” Hugh’s only weapon in this encounter turns out, curiously, to be silk, that lightweight fabric described as ineffectual in defending Erec’s rival in the passage we discussed earlier. Silk here is wielded ideologically by the vanquished and unarmed Hugh as a potent weapon in the larger cultural standoff between East and West. Dressing an infidel in silk, Hugh contends initially, is utterly unthinkable (grant foloie; pure madness) because silk represents in this cultural paradigm “la sainte ordre de chevalerie” [the holy order of chilvary]. The irony of this formulation could not be more pointed since, as we know, silk came to the West in the Middle Ages from what this text would call “pagan lands,” that is, Muslim Spain and the areas around Hugh’s stronghold in Tiberias: Damascus, Tyre, and Antioch to the north. Indeed, Muslims make, market, sell, transport, and wear silk long before Western Christians do.17 In addition, the city of Tiberias in particular holds special significance for East–West relations during both the First and Third Crusades. Margaret Jubb reminds us that Tiberias was the first city taken by the Christians in the First Crusade and the first city retaken by the Saracens, led by Saladin, in

17 See, for example, Maurice Lombard, Les Textiles dans le monde musulman du VIIe au XII siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1978); Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Karla Malette, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–1250: A Literary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); and for an overview, Burns, Sea of Silk, 47–54.

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1179, a battle which launched the sequence of Christian defeats: at Hattin and then Jerusalem (1187) up through the failed Third and Fourth crusades.18 The Ordene further underscores the irony of Hugh’s invocation of silk as a marker of Christian knighthood through its repeated allusions to the work of chivalric hands. All of Hugh’s precisely detailed gestures in dressing Saladin (vestir, 138, 147) whether the acts of chaucier (159), caindre (175), metre les esperons (189) caindre l’espee (205), metre la coiffe (222–3) require the specific use of Christian hands, but in this instance that means the hands of a Christian knight (Hugh) held captive along with his troops, we are told, “by Saracen hands” [Ses genz qui erent en prison / … Entre les mains aus Sarrasins (371, 373)]. Indeed, they are the hands of a king, a “molt loiaus Sarrasin” (17), who had earlier taken Hugh “by the hand” to ask how knights were made: Mes li rois l’a par la main pris Et en sa chambre le mena, Et molt doucement li proia: “Hues, fet il, par cele foi Que tu doiz au Dieu de ta loi, Fai moi sage, quar j’ai talent De savoir trestout l’errement (Je savroie molt volentiers) Comment l’en fet les chevaliers.” (72–80) [But the king took him (Hugh) by the hand, led him into his chamber and entreated him gently, “Hugh,” he said, “by the faith that you owe to your God, enlighten/teach me, since I want to know and am most willing to learn everything about how knights are made.”]

And what is the outcome? After an initial refusal, Hugh uses his Christian hands to make the “loyal Saracen” Saladin a knight by dressing him in a combination of arms and silk that reflect the historical Saladin’s own military treatise on how knights are made. The Ordene’s wishful appropriation of silk to the Christian cause is undercut perhaps most pointedly by a brief Islamic military treatise on arms and armor, composed specifically for Saladin by an author living in Fatimid Alexandria. The treatise describes the use of silk in actual military dress. Amid detailed and extensive descriptions of the diverse types of steel used to make Islamic sabers, accounts of methods of fabrication for bows and arrows, arbaletes, lances and shields, recipes for napalm, and instructions for building siege engines and “miroirs ardents,” we find descriptions of two kinds of cuirasses. Those made by the Persians are composed of small pieces of iron, horn, or 18 Jubb, ed., A Critical Edition of the Estoires d’outremer et la naissance Salehadin (London: University of London, 1990), 198–9.



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skins. But the cuirasses invented by the mixed descendants of the Arabs are said to be refined chainmail tunics “que l’on revêt de vêtements rembourrés de soie et de mastic” [that are covered with padded silk garments], that is “vêetements de dibaj ou autres que l’on coud sur elles et que l’on embellit par des broderies de soie” [garments of heavy silk brocade (dibaj) sewn onto them [to the tunics] and embellished with silk embroidery].19 Ostensibly written as a practical guide to aid Saladin in his fight against the infidels,20 this treatise claims to offer information necessary to military success as its Arabic title (here translated into French) indicates: “Explication des maîtres de l’esprit sur les manières de se mettre a l’abri des dommages et le développement de l’instruction aux équipements et aux engins servant a affronter les ennemis.” Although it is not known whether this small luxury volume, bearing an inscription that attributes it to Saladin’s library, was composed before or after the fall of Jerusalem,21 it refers to silk as a material component of actual Islamic military dress. The historical Saladin’s own treatise on arms and armor could not then be more different in purpose and application from the Old French Ordene de chevalerie where courtliness rather than military effectiveness is at stake. In an important sense, however, silk plays a key role in shaping the knight in both contexts, whether Muslim or Christian, whether on the battlefield or during courtly investiture. The fundamental if unstated question raised by the Ordene de chevalerie, then, is “Who is Saladin?” and “Can we determine his identity based on his attire?” To what extent do armor and silk give him a recognizable shape? And how can we assess whether that shape connotes the enemy “other” or a knight more like the ostensibly courtly Frankish crusaders? In brief the Ordene asks, “How do we read the identity of this knight?” Matilda Bruckner asked a similar question a number of years ago in regard to an equally problematic and putatively courtly character: the iconic knight Lancelot in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance Le Chevalier de la charrette. In the scene devoted to the Tournament of Nouaz, Bruckner explained, the measurement of Lancelot’s valor and value remained a matter of dispute not only for inhabitants of the romance but for a long line of critics and scholars, who had argued for and against Lancelot as a hero.22 Bruckner’s answer to the question “who is Lancelot?” or more specifically “Who is the knight dressed in full armor and yet still incognito at the Tournament of Nouaz?” suggested that Lancelot was a knight deftly clothed in the many and varied stories

19 Claude Cahen, “Un traité d’armurerie composé pour Saladin,” Bulletin d’études orientales 12 (1947–48), 138. 20 Cahen, “Un traité,” 103. 21 Cahen, “Un traité,” 103. 22 Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-century French Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 83.

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that shaped him. By consistently keeping his identity hidden throughout his quest for Queen Guinevere, Lancelot allows other characters in the romance to invent individual stories about his identity, casting him alternately as the most perfect knight or an abysmal chivalric failure, thus giving this paragon of courtliness a variable, kaleidoscopic, and often contradictory form.23 Within the French tradition, Saladin too is repeatedly clothed in competing stories of Western courtliness that range from his legendary Alexandrine generosity to his illicit courtship of yet another queen: the historical Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. The mid-thirteenth-century anonymous pseudo-chronicle entitled Récits d’un menestrel de Reims reiterates earlier accounts by the chronicler Philippe Mousket and historian Matthew Paris that cast Eleanor as a demonic and faithless wife who, dismayed by the “cowardice” (lacheté) of her husband, King Louis, during the Second Crusade, falls madly in love “de la bravoure, de la prouesse, de la sagesse et de la générosité de Saladin” [with the bravery, prowess, wisdom, and generosity of Saladin].24 These are qualities attributed to Alexander the Great in accounts from William of Tyre to Jacques de Vitry.25 And they persist into the fourteenth century, where they are invoked in Geoffroi de Charny’s treatise on Christian chivalry as required clothing for knights who should be “dressed decently, neatly and elegantly” and without excessive “feminine” adornment: One should leave to noble ladies and damsels these rich adornments … for those [men] of worth who have the will to rise to great achievement, how can they better adorn themselves than by being equipped for it all by good qualities? They can do so by being men of worth, wise, loyal, without arrogance, joyful, generous, courteous, expert, bold and active, and of good conduct toward all others.26

When the story of Eleanor and Saladin recurs in the segment of the Second Crusade Cycle entitled Saladin, we hear the ostensible voice of Eleanor Bruckner, Shaping Romance, 75. Le Menestrel de Reims, tr. Marie-Geneviève Grossel (Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennces, 2002), 31. See Jean Flori, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Rebel, tr. Olive Chasse (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Peggy McCracken, “Scandalizing Desire: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Chroniclers,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 247–63. 25 Jubb, The Legends of Saladin, 34–42. Accounts of Saladin’s French noble descent are found in Baudouin de Sebourc and La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu. See Jubb, The Legends of Saladin, 55; and further Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, “Temps historique et temps romanesque: Saladin et Baudoin de Flandre,” in Dire et penser le temps au Moyen Age, ed. Emmanuelle Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris: Presses Sorbonnes Nouvelles, 2005), 241–3. On Saladin in the Fille au Comte de Ponthieu, see Sharon Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries: Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 176–99. 26 Geoffroi de Charny, The Knight’s Own Book, 104. 23 24



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herself apply these courtly virtues to Saladin, “quel tresor ce seroit a une dame de parage d’un tel amy avoir, qui tant est gracieux, et de toute courtoisie garny, que je croy qu’on ne trouveroit son pareil” (95) [what a treasure it would be for a noble woman to have such a lover, someone so gracious, so endowed with courtliness that I do not believe one could find his equal].27 Jean Flori explains these fictive accounts of Queen Eleanor’s rash dalliance with the Muslim “enemy” as a rewriting of the Antioch episode, in which the historical Eleanor was accused of adultery with Raymond of Antioch. Accounts pairing Eleanor with Saladin instead of Raymond exonerate the brave crusader, “universally praised as a valiant warrior who died fighting Saracens,” and shame the troublesome Eleanor as a traitor to Christendom.28 Indeed, in an odd twist of the epic theme of the Saracen princess who falls in love with a crusader conqueror, converts, and marries, it is Queen Eleanor in the Menestrel de Reims who proposes to convert to Islam and marry the unparalleled knight, Saladin.29 Here courtliness trumps religion, putting all the virtues in Saladin’s camp. When Louis “s’habille et s’équipe” in an effort to wrest Eleanor from escaping with Saladin in the Menestrel, the pious Christian king’s armor conveys nothing of the “bravery, valor, wisdom or generosity” that Eleanor is said to have admired in Saladin. Louis’s armor is just a suit of clothes, a shiny metallic cover for nothing of substance. This fleeting reference to Louis’s suit of armor provides an odd recasting of Hugh’s metaphorical allusion to dung covered in silk as an excuse not to knight the ostensibly substanceless “infidel” Saladin in the Ordene de chevalerie. The tales of Eleanor and Saladin consistently assert, along with the Ordene, that courtly knights, and indeed the best of courtly knights, can be “made” and sustained quite apart from religious conviction or practice. The Old French accounts that clothe Saladin in the virtues of courtliness do not require his conversion. Michele Warren has argued convincingly that, for many reasons, the knighting ceremony in the Ordene de Chevalerie should be read as an elaborate parody of a chivalric initiation in which the initiate is an “infidel” who actually undergoes no substantial transformation (he is not converted to

27 Indeed, the legend of Eleanor’s dalliance with Saladin is most fully developed in the fifteenth-century French Prose Saladin where Hugh of Tiberias is called Huon Dodequin. See Jubb, The Legends of Saladin, 55. Larry Crist explains that the fifteenth-century MS tradition of the cycle includes three works: Jehan d’Avesnes, La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu, and Saladin. Earlier, in the First Crusade Cycle, a kind of “pre-Saladin” text exists that includes (in BnF fr. 78) a version of the Ordene de chevalerie, “Introduction,” in Saladin: Suite et fin du deuxième cycle de la croisade, ed. Larry S. Crist (Geneva: Droz, 1972). 28 Flori, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 221. 29 Grossel, Le Menestrel, 31.

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Christianity and does not receive the accolade).30 To be sure, the concluding segment of the poem which lauds Christian knights defending the church (424ff) does not apply to Saladin, the very knight who was “made” in the course of this account. In thus delegitimizing the conventional terms of both chivalry and crusade, Warren argues, the Ordene de chevalerie exposes the tenets of European chivalry and the “seemingly immutable differences” they espouse as ideological fictions.31 Part of this story, as I have tried to show here, is told through clothes, and especially through silk. By the thirteenth century, when the Ordene de chevalerie was composed, Joachim de Fiore had identified Muhammed and Saladin as figures in the Apocalypse, predicting Christendom would be devastated by an alliance between Saracen armies and Cathar heretics: those Saracens and Albigensians that the concluding passage of the Ordene decries. Opposing camps were at times identified uniquely by their clothes. In the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), for example, Pope Innocent III moved to place legal restrictions on all non-Catholics: lumping together Greek and Oriental Christians, heretics, Jews, and Muslims to avoid sexual relations, or what is called social “contamination,” by requiring “distinctive dress” for Muslims and Jews, further stipulating that these groups could not wear lavish or expensive garments in public during Holy Week.32 Even earlier, the Council of Nablus (1120) sought to identify non-Christians visually by forbidding Saracens from wearing Frankish dress.33 The Ordene de chevalerie shatters these categories, showing us the iconic Christian knight, Hugh (who had become something of an epic hero by the thirteenth century), dressing the legendary arch rival, Saladin, in the same chivalric clothes that Hugh himself wears, while underscoring at the same time the extent to which Christian knights were already dressing like pagans. The Muslim chronicle called The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (1198–1216) recounts a visit between Saladin and a man of high repute in 1188–89, a man of high learning and good works who, returning from pilgrimage, stopped to see Saladin in Jerusalem. Upon his departure, Saladin the paragon of chivalry, generosity, and liberality confers upon him a robe of honor – a lavish garment adorned typically with the most costly elements: gold and silk.34 Conversely, as Stephen Runciman reminds us: “in the great 30 Michele Warren, “Joking with the Enemy: Beyond Ritual in the Ordene de chevalerie,” Exemplaria 15.2 (2003), 263–96. 31 Warren, “Joking,” 289. 32 John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 196–7. 33 Benjamin Kedar, “On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem,” Speculum 74 (1999), 319. 34 Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Rāfi’ Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, or al-Nawādir al-Sulṭāniyya wa’l-Maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya, tr. D. S. Richards (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), 36. On silk used for Islamic robes of honor see Paula Saunders, “Robes



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family seats such as Kerak in Moab or Tiberias, the castellan lived more splendidly than any king in western Europe. The clothes of the settlers soon became as Oriental and luxurious as their furnishings. When a knight was not in armor he wore a silk burnouse and usually a turban.”35 In the Ordene, as in these historical examples, the fabric of silk provides a porous material border between cultures, enabling Hugh and Saladin to cross identities and mix chivalric attributes quite apart from the crusading mission of the Western Christian church. Indeed, within its ideologically charged account that pits Christian knights against pagan infidels, the Ordene tells another story about the coming together of Hugh and Saladin as armed men dressed in silk.

of honor in Fatimid Egypt,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 225–39. 35 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 317. Additional examples of hybrid dress resulting from a century of Franco-Oriental contact in the eastern Mediterranean are provided by Benjamin Kedar who comments on the minting of bilingual and bi-cultural coins, which included, for example, coins created in Antioch by the Frankish ruler Tancred who had himself represented as a “Christian emir” wearing a turban that bore the image of a cross, “The Crusades and the Military Orders,” 128.

Force de parole: Shaping Courtliness in Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours, Copied in Metz about 1312 (Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308) Nancy Freeman Regalado

Nule forche de parole ne me puet vers vous riens valoir. Richard de Fournival, Bestiaire d’amours

It is a pleasure to offer Matilda Bruckner this article on Richard de Fournival’s delightful Bestiaire d’amours, to honor our forty-year friendship, and to reflect her own interest in animal/human connections expressed in her “Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret” (1991), continued with her piece on “Beasts” for the 2005 Boston College exhibit Secular/Sacred, and most recently made manifest in the series of events that she organized at Boston College in the fall of 2011 under the rubric, “Animals and the Medieval Imagination.”

Courtliness Courtliness is a style defined initially in the latter part of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century by literary works and associated social practices and performances (the rise of heraldry and tournaments, the production of illustrated manuscripts of vernacular literature). It emerges first in particular aristocratic milieux such as the royal court of Anglo-Norman England, the aristocratic courts of Occitania, Champagne, and Flanders, and then spreads to Paris and France (as well as Italy, Spain, Germany, and Crusader kingdoms to the East) – spectacularly in thirteenth-century Arras – and eventually also to wealthy cities such as Metz in Lorraine, an independent Francophone city within the German Empire during the later Middle Ages. The literary works we use to define courtliness are the medieval lyric and romance. These are works composed in the vernacular and intended for readers living in the secular world. The style and themes of courtliness are specially developed in artful songs composed by nobles and professional poet-minstrels in their circle, the troubadours and trouvères. Outside its satirical and political themes, the courtly lyric centers on first-person expres-

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sion of unrequited love. Courtly narratives are focused on male chivalry and display playful, high-minded ideas about love in works that often voice women’s views and actions as romance protagonists.1 Eventually, an abundant literature of didactic courtliness begins to be produced in the first half of the thirteenth century in works that borrow forms such as allegory and dialectic from the clerkly tradition to produce narratives and also manuals of speech and manners that exemplify and describe courtly behavior, most notably Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose (ca. 1230). It is here, where the courtly and clerkly traditions meet, that we can place Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours (ca. 1250)2 and the works often copied with it such as Richard’s Consaus d’amours, where a learned brother advises a sister about matters of love, the Commens d’amours, a manual of courtly conversation and other thirteenth-century arts of love in the Ovidian tradition.3 In this article I consider two important questions of “shaping courtliness” in Richard de Fournival’s charming Bestiaire d’amours. First, how does Richard use courtliness – that is, the registre of the courtly lyric (first-person subjectivity, its themes, and key words but not its lyric envelope) – to shape the material he borrows from the clerkly bestiary, derived from classical treatises on real or legendary characteristics, that is the natures of animals from which moral allegories were drawn?4 Second, how did courtly works such as Richard’s popular Bestiaire shape the cultural practices of new audiences in the early fourteenth century? I consider the copy of Richard’s courtly Bestiaire made for wealthy patricians in Metz around 1312 (Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308, fols. 86–106v). I have had the good fortune to collaborate with colleagues in a comprehensive study of this manuscript and its milieu.5 MS Douce 308 exemplifies the ways in which books were a powerful force spreading the language and values of 1 I thank E. Jane Burns for giving me a draft of her article “Courtly Traditions/ The Practice of Courtliness,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in the Middle Ages, ed. Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), where she brings out the “competing cultural values” between chivalric and amorous practices. 2 Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’Amour et La Response du Bestiaire, ed. and tr. Gabriel Bianciotto, Champion Classiques (Paris: Champion 2009); henceforth Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire. 3 See Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire, 26–7, 38–40. See also Marc-René Jung, Études sur le poème allégorique en France au Moyen Age (Berne: Francke, 1971); Peter Allen, The Art of Love: Amatory Fiction from Ovid to the Romance of the Rose (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), and Don A. Monson, Andreas Capellanus and the Courtly Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 2005). 4 Bibliography in Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire, 139–46. 5 Lettres, musique et société en Lorraine médiévale: Autour du Tournoi de Chauvency (Ms Oxford, Bodl, Douce 308), ed. Mireille Chazan and Nancy Freeman Regalado (Genève: Droz, 2012); henceforth Lettres, musique.



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courtliness outside the courts, thanks in part to the increased production and circulation of vernacular manuscripts during the latter half of the thirteenth century.6

Richard de Fournival slips the bestiary tradition into courtly dress Gabriel Bianciotto’s fine 2009 edition and translation of the Bestaire d’amours summarizes research to date on this engaging work by Richard de Fournival – surgeon, scientist, astronomer/astrologer, chancellor of Notre-Dame d’Amiens, and a skilled trouvère whose songs include sixteen courtly chansons and two jeux-partis.7 Despite Sylvia Huot’s definitive study,8 however, critical interest in identifying the sources of Richard’s Bestiaire has overwhelmed consideration of how Richard gives a courtly shaping to his materials. Let us therefore watch Richard play the game of mixed forms (clerkly and amorous) which so delighted thirteenth-century readers.9 First, the overall generic shape of the Bestiaire d’amours: it is misleading to speak, as does Bianciotto, of the Bestiaire as a narrative, for it contains no plot, no events, no story to speak of. However, Bianciotto, like others, has noted the continual presence of the lyric “I,” the lover who writes so fervently to his lady throughout the Bestiaire. This combination of firstperson discourse with epistolary form points to the courtly genre of the salut d’amour, a first-person verse epistle addressed to a lady,10 which Richard wittily adapts in prose, explaining that his songs have failed to win her love: “Je esprouvai bien que l’eure que je miex chantai et que je miex dis en chantant, adonques m’en fu li pis” (5, 6–9, 164) [I discovered that at the hour when I sang my best and executed my best lyrics, things were at their worst for me (5)].11 The constant mediating presence of the lyric “I” in the Bestiaire 6 Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Narrative in Manuscript, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 2, 531. 7 L’œuvre lyrique de Richard de Fournival, ed. Yvan G. Lepage (Ottawa: Editions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1981). 8 Sylvia Huot, “The Audiovisual Poetics of Lyrical Prose: Li Bestiaire d’amours and Its Reception,” in From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 135–73, (overlooked in Bianciotto’s comprehensive bibliography, Le Bestiaire, 139–47). 9 See Ardis Butterfield, Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean de Renart to Guillaume de Machaut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 17 and passim. 10 See Paul Meyer, “Le salut d’amour dans les littératures provençale et française,” BEC 28 (1867), 124–7; Pierre Bec, “Pour un essai de définition du salut d’amour: Les quatre inflexions sémantiques du terme,” Estudis Romànics (2006), 191–201. The anonymous Response calls Richard’s epistle a “requeste d’amours” (38, 7, 280). 11 All citations from the Bestiaire d’amours are to paragraph, line(s), and page(s) in Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire; page references for translations are to Master Richard’s Bestiairy of Love and Response, tr. Jeanette Beer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

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d’amours utterly transforms the structure and sense, the movement and tone of the traditional bestiary. The example of the cricket – which Richard adapts from his likely model, Pierre de Beauvais’s prose translation (before 1206) of Physiologus, the Latin bestiary – illustrates the rigid, two-part structure which was standard in the classical and medieval bestiary. In the first part, an animal nature is described; in the second part, an allegorical interpretation of the nature is provided. Pierre de Beauvais: Une petite bestelete qui est apelee crisnon, Phisiologes nos dist que sa nature est tele qu’il aime tant le canter qu’il en pert son mangier; et qu’il s’entroublit tot en chantant et s’en laise a porcachier, et muert tot en chantant.   Par le crisnon prendons example del juste home qui adés est en bienfaits et en penanche; et met totes les choses del monde et tos delis del cors en obli, et pense pour la joie pardurable et est adés en oroison et muert tot en orrant, c’est a dire qui einsi meurt qu’il muert tot en cantant aisi comme li crisnon.12 [A little creature is called cricket. Physiologus tells us that his nature is such that it loves to sing so much that it loses its appetite, forgets itself in song, lets itself be caught and dies singing. The cricket gives us the example of the just man who is always doing good deeds and penance, and forgets all about the things of this world and bodily pleasures, and thinks about everlasting joy and is always in prayer, and dies praying, that is that he dies singing just as does the cricket.]13

Although Richard copies the animal lore from his sources, almost without change, the presentation and pace of the material is entirely reshaped. The swift-flowing movement of Richard’s courtly recasting overruns the strict two-part boundaries that separated nature and interpretation in the traditional bestiary. Richard’s Bestiaire is dominated by a rhetoric of accumulation, where he cites animal after animal to explain, for example, why he writes in prose instead of singing to his lady. Richard de Fournival: Et une autre raisons de che meisme si est prise en le nature du crisnon dont je me sui molt bien pris garde. Car li crisnons aime tant son canter qu’il se muert en cantant, tant en pert son mengier et tant s’en laisse a pourcachier. Et pour che me sui je pris garde que li chanters m’a si peu valu et que je m’i peusse bien tant fier que jou i perdisse meisme moi, si que ja li chanters ne me secourust; nommeement a che que je esprovai bien que l’eure que je miex chantai et que je miex dis en chantant, adonques m’en fu il pis. Ausi con del cisne, car il est un païs la 12 Le Bestiaire, version longue attribuée à Pierre de Beauvais, ed. Craig Baker (Paris: Champion, 2010), 159. In the following citations animal names are in bold, words commented are in italics. 13 All translations are my own unless otherwise specified.



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ou li chisne cantent si bien et si volentiers quant on harpe devant aus, il s’accordent a le harpe aussi con li tabours au flagol, et nommeement en l’an qu’il doit morir, si c’on dist, quant on en voit .j. bien cantant: “Chis cisne morra auwen.” Tout aussi con d’un enfant quant on le treuve de bon engien, si dist on qu’il ne vivera ja longement. Pour che di jou que pour le paour que je oi de le mort au cisne quant je cantai plus joliement, et de le mort au crisnon quant je cantai le plus volentiers, pour che laissai je le chanter a cest arriereban faire, et le vous envoiai en maniere de contreescrit; car tres dont deusse je bien avoir le vois perdue que li leus me vit premerains, c’est a dire que je reconuit que je vous amoie devant la que je seüsse a quel chief jou en porroie venir. Elas, si m’en sui je tante fois repentis de che que je vous avoie proie pour vo douche compaignie perdre! Car se je peusse faire aussi con li chiens, qui est de tel nature que quant il a vomi, qu’il repaire a son vomissement et le remenguë, jou en eusse mout volentiers ma proiere rengloutie .c. fois puis qu’ele me fu volee des dens. (15, 1–28, 164, 166) [Yet another reason why [my composition is not in lyric form] is found in the nature of the Cricket, for which I have been much on my guard. Such is its nature that the poor creature so neglects to eat and search for food and it so delights in singing that it dies in song. And I took heed of that because singing has served me so little that to trust myself to song might mean even my self-destruction and song would never rescue me; more particularly, I discovered that at the hour when I sang my best and executed my best lyrics, things were at their worst for me, as with the Swan.   For there is a country where the swans sing so well and so easily that when a harp is played to them, they harmonize their song to it just like the tabor to the flute, particularly in their death year. So one says, when hearing a swan in full song, “That swan will die this year,” just as one says also of a child who shows particular brilliance that he is not long for this world.   And so I tell you that because of my fear of the swan’s death when I sang my best, and of the cricket’s death when I sang most easily, I abandoned song to make this arriere-ban [call-up of reserve troops], and I sent it to you as a sort of counterstatement. For from the moment that the Wolf saw me first, that is to say, that I realized that I loved you before I knew what the fate of my love might be, I was destined to lose my voice. Alas! I have so often since repented that I entreated you and thus lost your sweet company. For if I could have acted like the Dog, which is of such a nature that, after vomiting, it can return to its vomit and re-eat it, I would happily have swallowed down my pleading a hundred times, after it flew out through my teeth. (4–5)]

Although Richard has copied the animal lore from his source, he makes no reference to the old Christian interpretation. Richard has treated the senefiance, the moral application, as an open slot where meanings can vary.14 14 Thus the lady speaking in the Response turns all Richard’s interpretations against him. See Helen Solterer, The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 78–130.

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Moreover, in Pierre’s bestiary, animal facts and moral interpretation are neatly separated into double boxes setting forth a natural truth, and a spiritual truth, introduced by words such as signifiance, essample, moralité and bone sentence. Richard, on the other hand, weaves back and forth from feelings to various animals, moving swiftly from cricket to swan to wolf to dog. These images are introduced not with the words signifie and essemple, which Richard almost entirely omits, but with formulae of comparison (set out in italics in the passage cited above): une autre raison, pour ce, ausi come. Richard’s Bestiaire therefore does not moralize the bestiary materials by offering an interpretation. The feelings of love have become the literal level of the text: the animal images are summoned as figures to convey the message of love. The bestiary’s traditional demonstration of higher truths through lower is thus converted into a way of speaking, of conveying inner feelings. However, there is no fusion of lower and higher truths: Richard’s comparisons do not become metaphors as did those of the Bestiaire divin by Guillaume le Clerc (ca. 1210) who called Christ the true pelican, the true panther, the spiritual unicorn. Richard’s animals remain only comparisons, in a text richly expressing a single, inner, erotic truth through a series of sustained animal comparisons linked together in a complex, multifaceted argument. It is the erotic theme taken from the courtly lyric that shapes Richard’s Bestiaire. It governs the selection and regrouping of material from the traditional bestiary: the theme of the death of the self through love, and the hope of the resurrection and healing of the lover by the beloved. The first half of the animal examples in Richard’s text show the ways that the lover is deprived of his faculties, lulled to sleep through his five senses, killed by the siren’s voice, like the unicorn trapped by the perfumed scent of the maiden. The remaining animal natures express the lover’s pleadings to be revived, healed, or nourished by his lady’s love, as the lion and the pelican revive their dead young. Richard thus selects from the traditional bestiary only those elements he needs in order to speak of love in a courtly manner. Richard integrates many lyric themes in his Bestiaire: condemning flatterers; maintaining the duty to keep love secret; even inserting citations from Ovid and the “poitevin” poets (33, 18–33, 256–8). But the shift from verse to prose and the combination of the bestiary material with courtly love has an extraordinarily enriching effect upon the language and themes of his work. Richard has avoided most purely lyric imagery: he does not include the nightingale so temptingly present in Pierre de Beauvais, choosing rather the memorably grotesque ostrich as well as the pelican, stork, and crane. Although he follows one principle of bestiary interpretation, finding no natural element too low to be interpreted or used as a comparison, he has discreetly avoided what Guillaume de Lorris terms “vileine chose” (Roman de la Rose, v. 2109). Crude anatomical words are tastefully refined: when the lover asks the lady to give him her heart to put an end to his importunate pleadings, as the beaver



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castrates himself to escape his hunter, Richard replaces the bestiary term “coilles” with the politer formula “.i. membre sour soi qui porte medechine” (21, 1–2, 226) [a member that contains healing medecine (20)] Such images may seem incongruous or grotesque, as does the lover’s comparing his wish to take back his unavailing verse to a dog’s returning to eat his own vomit, cited above. But the rich texture, the shifts in diction, and the wit of Richard’s Bestiaire come from his weaving together themes of courtly love with a number of non-courtly, non-erotic expressions of love. Almost half of the animal images portray animal young being abandoned or hurt, then healed, nourished, and revived by a parent. Richard imagines himself at length as an abandoned egg (30, 10–33, 12, 248–54) calling his lady his mother and begging her to hatch and feed him: “Et se vous me voliés nourrir, bele tres douche mere, je vous seroie aussi bons fiex comme li faons de le choinne et de le huple, sont a leur meres. … se vous me voliés couver et nourir, c’est a dire retenir comme a ami” (32, 12–15, 33, 7–9, 254) [And if you wished to nourish me, fair, very sweet, beloved mother, I would be as good a son to you as the young screech owls and the hoopoes are to their mothers … if you wished to hatch and nourish me, that is to say retain me as your love (30)]. Such maternal imagery, diffused throughout Richard’s Bestiaire, adds a wonderful degree of sweet tenderness and glinting humor to the usual expression of courtly love, just as Jean de Meun’s praise of fecundity adds depth and virility to his reworking of Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose. In the passage about the cricket cited above, Richard declares his text to be a “contreescrit.” To the extent we read his Bestiaire as a parody of the courtly lyric, we may be reminded of the medieval taste for contrefacta, lyric parodies where new words in a religious or satirical vein were set to pre-existing melodies, a practice developed by troubadours and by courtly and religious trouvères such as Gautier de Coinci (d. 1236),15 who set verses of praise of the Virgin to borrowed secular melodies. In a similar spirit, both clerkly and courtly readers would have enjoyed Richard’s Bestiaire, each appreciating how it recasts the prose of the learned bestiary which, in turn, reshapes the lyric mode of courtly discourse.

Richard de Fournival’s courtly Bestiaire shapes urban readers in Metz The place of Richard’s Bestiaire d’amours in Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308, copied in Metz around 1312, tells us much about how written texts could 15 Gautier, however, uses “contrescrire” to mean to make a fair copy (Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. Koenig, vol. 4 [Genève: Droz, 1966], 11 Epi 33, vv. 102, 110). I thank Karen Duys for this reference and for her overview of Gautier’s practice of contrefactum and citation, presented in her book in progress, Shaped by Song: The Miracles de Notre Dame of Gautier de Coincy).

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contribute to shaping the values and practices of courtliness in audiences far removed from the original aristocratic and clerkly milieux where the Bestiaire d’amours was first received. Table I Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 308 Four booklets, illustrated in the early fourteenth century, bound in the fifteenth century A = Jacques de Longuyon, Les vœux du paon (The Vows of the Peacock) epic laisses; Lorraine; ca. 1312; Artist 1 B = Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’amours (The Bestiary of Love) prose; Amiens; mid thirteenth century; Artist 2 C = Jacques Bretel, Le tournoi de Chauvency (The Tournament at Chauvency) verse; Lorraine; 1285; Artist 1  Chansonnier, 504 courtly lyrics (430 unica) without music: songs; Lorraine, after 1309; Artist 1 → D = Last page of Li prophetie Sebile (The Sibyl’s Prophecy) prose; Lorraine; Artist 2   Huon de Méry, Li tornoiemens Antecrist (The Tournament of the  Antichrist) verse; Ile-de-France/Normandy, ca. 1234; Artist 2 → London, British Library, MS Harley 4972: (separated from Booklet D)   Moralized translation of the Apocalypse prose; Lorraine; Artist 2   Li prophetie Sebile (The Sibyl’s Prophecy) prose; Lorraine; Artist 2

Douce 308 is a vernacular compilation of four fascicles or booklets, illustrated in the second decade of the fourteenth century by two Metz artists,16 bound in the fifteenth century, and owned by members of the Le Gronnais family, wealthy urban patricians of Metz. I have described it as a “library”

16 See Alison Stones, “Le contexte artistique du Tournoi de Chauvency,” in Lettres, musique, 151–203. I thank Alison Stones most warmly for giving me the pages on Douce 308 from her book Gothic Manuscripts: c.1260–1320 (A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France) (London: Harvey Miller, forthcoming).



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for a model knight.17 Three of the five works18 it contains are “regional material” (Busby, 2, 537–50), that is, recent compositions by poets from eastern France. Booklet A contains the earliest known version (1312) of the immensely popular Voeux du paon attributed to the Lorrainer poet Jacques de Longuyon.19 Booklet C contains a large Chansonnier (1312) of 504 lyric pieces,20 preceded by an illustrated copy of the Tournoi de Chauvency,21 which recounts a festive tournament held at Chauvency in Lorraine by nobles of the northeast in 1285; some noble names from the Chansonnier reappear in the Tournoi. One of the earliest known French festival books, the Tournoi circulated quickly in northern courtly circles, for it is cited in the late-thirteenthcentury Roman du Chatelain de Couci by Jakemes, a Picard poet (Tournoi, xiv). Writing skillfully, the poet Jacques Bretel recounts the chivalric feats and the courtly songs, dances, conversations, and feasts of the week-long tournament22 by aristocrats whose names and titles would have been familiar to patrician readers in Metz and whose style the patricians emulated in their own urban jousts,23 while they resisted their political domination.24 Two popular works from the first half of the thirteenth century were also selected for copying in Douce 308, the Bestiaire d’amours in Booklet B and the Tornoiemens Antecrist in Booklet D: both are courtly reshapings of moral genres. The Tornoiemens Antecrist (ten MSS) by Huon de Mery (ca. 1234– 40) adds the weight of spiritual considerations to the Douce 308 compilation. The Tornoiemens is a moral psychomachia where the Vices and Virtues are costumed in glorious heraldic dress; in addition to scenes of chivalric valor,

17 See Nancy Freeman Regalado, “Les ailes des chevaliers et l’ordre d’Oxford, Bodleian Ms Douce 308,” in Lettres, musique, 47–70, here 48; republished in English, “The Wings of Chivalry and the Order of Bodley, MS Douce 308,” in Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe, ed. Anne D. Hedeman and Karen Fresco (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012). 18 The last page of the Prophecie Sibylle remained in Douce 308 when this work was bound separately with the moralized Apocalypse in London, BL Harley 4972. 19 On the attribution, see Hélène Bellon-Méguelle, Du Temple de Mars à la Chambre de Venus: le beau jeu courtois dans Les Voeux du Paon (Paris: Champion, 2008), 471–88. 20 The Chansonnier of Oxford Bodleian Ms Douce 308, ed. Mary Atchison (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 21 Le Tournoi de Chauvency, ed. Maurice Delbouille (Liège-Paris: Droz, 1932), known only in two MSS, Mons, Bibliothèque municipale, 330–215 and MS Douce 308; hereafter Tournoi. ` 22 See Nancy Freeman Regalado, “Picturing the Story of Chivalry in Jacques Bretel’s Tournoi de Chauvency. Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 308 [Metz ca. 1312],” in Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander, ed. Susan L’Engle and Gerald B. Guest (London: Harvey Miller-Brepols, 2006), 341–55. 23 See Pierre Pegeot, “Joutes messines,” in Lettres, musique, 337–43. 24 See Robert Lug, “Politique et littérature à Metz autour de la guerre des Amis (1231–1234): le témoignage du Chansonnier de Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” in Lettres, musique, 451–86.

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Fig. 1.  MS Douce 308, fol. 95r, col. b, detail: Peacock displaying.

there is also a courtly interlude where the speaker, wounded by an arrow of Love, is comforted in Venus’s tent. Richard’s Bestiaire d’amours (seventeen MSS) was undoubtedly selected and decorated for its value as entertainment but especially as a model of elegant, courtly discourse, illustrated also by the colloquies in the Voeux25 and the Tournoi, and further amplified by the lyric Chansonnier.26 Two aspects of the copy of the Bestiaire d’amours in Douce 308 emphasize its courtly shaping.27 First is its animal association with the peacock in the adjoining Voeux du paon, on whose signifying body knights and ladies make 25 On the aesthetic and ethical value of conversation in the Voeux, see Mark Cruse, “A Monument to Cortoisie,” in Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), 13–60. I thank Mark Cruse for giving me a pre-publication copy of his book. 26 On Richard’s Bestiaire in compilation, see Huot, From Song to Book, 148–57, 166–70. In his recent overview of Bestiaire manuscripts, Christopher Lucken does not find any “objectif particulier” in the works collected in Douce 308 (124), but he overlooks the association of the Bestiaire with the Voeux du paon (126) and does not consider its particular audience (“Les manuscrits du Bestiaire d’Amours de Richard de Fournival,” in Le Recueil au Moyen Age: Le Moyen Age central, ed. Yasmina Foehr-Janssens and Olivier Collet [Turnhout: Brepols, 2010], 113–38). 27 Elizabeth Wright offers a valuable methodology for determining how compilation and manuscript associations define the genre of multiple copies of a single work in her Manuscript Meanings: The Genres of Adenet le Roi’s Berte as grans pieds: Compilation and Reception (Saarbrûcken: VDM Verlag, 2009).



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Fig. 2.  MS Douce 308, fol. 86v, col. a, top: Man and woman in conversation, bottom: Reader looks up and sees Trojans approaching; col. b, Man hands scroll to hooded man.

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Fig. 3.  MS Douce 308, fol. 100r, col. b, detail: Man kneels before woman.

a dozen vows to accomplish courtly feats of love and war.28 The peacock plays a central role too in Richard’s Bestiaire as a figure of “pourveanche, qui doit garder toutes les vertus” (16, 49, 208) [prudence which protects all the virtues].29 The many courtly conversations in the Voeux further associate it with the lyric themes of the first-person monologue of the speaker in the Bestiaire d’amours (Fig. 1). A second feature lends a courtly cast to the Bestiaire d’amours in Douce 308: the presence of a man and a woman together in fifteen of the sixty illustrations.30 These fifteen miniatures remind viewers insistently of the under28 On the value of the peacock in the Voeux and related texts, see Jean-Marie Privat, “Les Voeux du paon ou la roue des signes,” in Lettres, musique, 137–49, and Cruse 39–49, 47–52. 29 See Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire, 16, 58–65, 77–80, 208, 210; 68, 3–6 and 69, 1–5, 300, 302. 30 Fourteen miniatures from the Douce 308 Bestiaire are published in Jeanette Beer’s

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lying lyric theme of Richard’s Bestiaire, the lover’s pleading. In just two miniatures, however, the man and woman are alone. On the verso side of the initial folio 86, col. a, top, the man speaks to the woman, setting the stage for the miniatures to follow (Fig. 2). In a second image, towards the end of the Bestiaire, a man kneels before a woman, and they exchange speaking gestures (Fig. 3). Ironically, this image illustrates the speaker’s condemnation of the deceitful seducer who wins a lady’s love but tells all.31 In thirteen other images, however, the man and woman gaze together at the exemplary animals, an unusual feature,32 as if the speaker conjured up the animals by his words, by sheer “force de parole.” On fol. 87v, they look together at a cock on a perch, which, like the unfortunate lover, sings loudest at midnight, the hour of totally despairing love (3, 8–9, 160) (Fig. 4). In these images, there is what Cruse calls a “beastly contrast” (34) between the animal imagery and the courtly eloquence of Richard’s speaker, exemplified by the lovers gazing at the madly braying hungry wild ass in the second miniature on fol. 86v. The notion that the speaker’s words have the power to bring forth the animal images is sustained by the wonderful miniature on fol. 87v, col. a, bottom, where the reader of a book of history looks up to see an army of Trojans advancing towards him (Fig. 2). Richard thus affirms the force of words, “Car quant on voit painte une estoire ou de Troies ou d’autre, on voit les fais des preudommes qui cha en arriere furent aussi con s’il fussent present.” (20, 21–4, 156) [For when one sees the depiction of a history of Troy or of some other place, one sees the deeds of those past heroes as if they were present (2*)].33 There are two signs of the special standing of the Bestiaire d’amours booklet for its patron and owners. On the last page (fol. 106v), a scribe sets down his name “Bretons” in the careful script and black ink that characterize his hand; he is the only scribe identified in Douce 308.34 Even more important is the signature below the colophon, where one owner of this booklet inscribed his name, “C’est au seigneur Renaulz de Gournoy,” which reapBeasts of Love: Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour and A Woman’s Response (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003). 31 See 26, 38–50, 236. The text below the image in Douce 308 reads “Mais qui pis est, il li samble qu’il cuide avoir un menestrier qui crie a la bretesce que cil ne fait prouesse se pour l’amor a cette damoliselle.” [But what’s worse, is he thinks he should have a minstrel yell up to the spectator stand that all his prowess is done for love of this lady (my translation).] The Tournoi cites heralds making such speeches (Regalado, “Picturing Chivalry”; similar warnings in Richard’s Consaus d’amours (cited Bianciotto, Le Bestiaire, 237 n. 70). 32 See Huot, From Song to Book, 171–2. 33 See Huot, From Song to Book, 171 and Fig. 12. 34 On scribal signatures, see Busby, Codex and Context, I, 41–8.

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Fig. 4.  MS Douce 308, fol. 87v, col. a: Man and woman gaze at a cock on a perch, col. b: Man and woman gaze at a wild ass braying in hunger.

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Fig. 5.  MS Douce 308, fol. 106v: Scribe’s name after the explicit: “Bretons l’escrit”; owner’s signature: “C’est au seigneur Renaulz de Gournoy.”

pears at the end of the Tournoi (fol. 139v) and the Chansonnier (fol. 250v) (Fig. 5). Thanks to Mireille Chazan’s study of Metz book ownership,35 we are well informed about the social position of the Le Gronnais family. Wealthy patricians descended from a family of Metz bankers, they owned lands around Metz, bore the title of “chevaliers,” and served among the maitre-echevins [master aldermen] who ruled the city of Metz. Book ownership was a feature of their noble lifestyle;36 books were carefully listed in an inventory of the family’s posessions and handed down from generation to generation as Douce 308 passed from “Renaulz” to François (d. 1525), who signed his name on fol. 3, then to his son-in-law Michel Chaverson.37 35 Mireille Chazan, “Littérature et histoire dans les bibliothèques des patriciens messins à la fin du Moyen Age,” in Lettres, musique, 205–35. See also Busby, Codex and Context, 2, 720–4. 36 Mireille Chazan analyzes a Metz compilation gathered by the patrician Desch family of Metz that demonstrates similar courtly aspirations in “A propos des relations culturelles entre la Champagne et la Lorraine à la fin du Moyen Age: le cas du recueil de la famille Desch (Ms Epinal 217),” Annales de l’Est, no spécial (2009), 5–32. 37 On evidence of book ownership by patricians in Metz, Busby notes that “theirs is a somewhat different cultural environment and heritage to that of the ancient aristocracy.

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This signature tells us about the value this copy of the Bestiaire had for its owners, a status symbol for this upwardly mobile family whose ownership of the Bestiaire and the other booklets comprising Douce 308 is recorded not just in inventories but on the very pages of the book. Prized as a possession, the Bestiaire d’amours was also a valuable model for elegant speech, enabling the owners to emulate the courtly style of earlier generations. Its “force de parole” is a hallmark of the courtliness that shaped the aspirations and values of a new generation of urban readers in the city of Metz.

Indeed, it may be the desire to acquire this same heritage and to integrate themselves with the more established families that stimulated their interest in books” (2, 723; see 720–4).

The Poetic Legacy of Charles d’Anjou in Italy: The Poetics of Nobility in the Comune Laurie Shepard for Matilda whose nobility of spirit is exemplified by clarity of thought and eloquence

Charles of Anjou (1226–85), the youngest brother of King Louis IX, entered Italy in 1265 on a crusade: offered the Kingdom of Sicily by the French Pope Urban IV, he had first to extirpate the Hohenstaufen “race of vipers.”1 In June 1265, another French pope, Clement IV, crowned Charles. The king’s military success transformed the political, economic, and social landscape in Italy; it promoted an enduring alliance of the church, French military power, and Florentine capital.2 Initiatives by Charles and the empowered papacy led to changes in the composition of the nobility and intensified debates about the legitimacy of the supremacy of the nobility in Guelf comuni.3 Questions about courtliness and the nature of true nobility also reverberated in poetic circles. In the years following Charles’s triumph, the shape of courtliness was the subject of political and poetic debate in the Italian comuni, and nobility (onor, valor, gentilesa/gentilezza) became a fundamental sign defining selfworth, courtly love, and poetic composition. This paper examines three milestones in the poetic debate about nobility that are associated directly or indirectly with Charles’s court and presence in Italy: the didactic composi-

1 The expression, from Matthew 23:33, was used by the papacy to characterize the Hohenstaufen dynasty. 2 Florence and the many Florentine bankers who had set up shop in France provided money and soldiers to Charles: “A disposizione dell’angioino e i guelfi posero fin dall’inizio dell’impresa grosse somme di denaro e valorose compagnie di guerrieri composte per gran parte di esuli, che avevano eletto naturalmente il principe francese campione dell’attesa rivincita” [From the beginning they put at the disposition of the Angioin and the Guelfs large sums of money and noble militias composed mostly of exiles who had, naturally, elected the French prince as the champion of the anticipated reprisal], Bianca Ceva, Brunetto Latini. L’uomo e l’opera (Milan: Ricciardi, 1965), 26. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 3 Stefano Gasparri, I milites cittadini: studi sulla cavalleria in Italia (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo. n.s. 19. 1992), 101.

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tions of Sordello and of Brunetto Latini, and the debate between Guittone d’Arezzo and Guido Guinizelli.4 It argues that Charles’s presence in Italy fostered a fierce polemic about the language of true nobility that would later empower poets like the young Dante Alighieri. Charles’s court in Naples had very little direct impact on the Italian poetic tradition; it was conceived as a French court, and the poetic practices there were not “grafted” onto an existing Italian tradition. Poets and courtiers including Raoul de Soissons, Rutebeuf, Perrin d’Angicourt, Jean de Meung, Adam de la Halle, and Sordello paid homage to Charles, and his Neapolitan court attracted prominent voices, among them Adam de la Halle and Sordello.5 The Mantuan Sordello di Goito (c.1200–c.1269) was dubbed the exemplary poet-knight in the service of Charles, and several anthologies from the period feature poets who were also knights: Cadenet, Blancasset, Sordello, Betran de Lamanon, and Bonifaci de Castellana (in M: BnF fr. 12474), which suggests a renewed affirmation of the centrality of knighthood in poetic culture.6 The great warrior Charles was at least an occasional poet,7 and the evidence points to his preference for poetry intended for song or dance to ideological debates.8 Troubadour poetry already flourished in Italian courts and cities before the victorious arrival of Charles. Besides the Italian troubadours – Rambertino Buvalelli, Luca Grimaldi, Luchetto Gattilusio, Perceval Doria, Simon Doria, Alberico da Romano, and, of course, Sordello – there were two conscious processes of adaptation of trans-alpine poetics, the first by Uc de Saint Circ (fl. 1217–53), who emigrated to Italy sometime after 1220 and settled in Treviso where he composed poetry and collated troubadour verse with vidas and razos, many of his own devising, to promote troubadour tradition among

4 Paolo Borsa makes a persuasive case that the concept and language of nobility that is fundamental to the dolce stil novo are, at least in part, the consequence of the polemics provoked by the powerful papal–French alliance that came into being with Charles’s defeat of the Hohenstaufen in La nuova poesia di Guido Guinizelli (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2007). 5 See Jean Maillard, “Charles d’Anjou, Roi-Trouvère du XIIIème siècle,” Musica Disciplina 21 (1967), 23–8, and Martin Aurell, La vielle et l’épée. Troubadours et politique en Provence au XIIIe siècle, especially chapter 3, “Le règne de Charles d’Anjou, (1245–1284): un pouvoir contesté,” (Paris: Editions Aubier Montaigne, 1989). 6 Stefano Asperti, Carlo I d’Angiò e i trovatori. Componenti “provenzali” e angioine nella tradizione manoscritta della lirica trobadorica (Ravenna: Longo, 1995), 218–19. 7 Maillard confidently attributes two cansos to the prince, Trop est destroiz qui est desconfortez and Li granz desirs et la doce pensee que j’ai por vos (“Charles d’Anjou,” 7). 8 Asperti, Carlo, 215. Maillard praises Charles’s melodies more than his poetry, claiming that “seules ses mélodies révèlent parfois un charme qui n’est pas à dédaigner” (“Charles d’Anjou,” 7).



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a new public.9 The other adaptation occurred at the court of Frederick II in the 1230s, when the imperial jurist Giacomo da Lentini and a circle of court officials appropriated troubadour poetics as a prestigious pastime, compensating the absence of music with metrical complexity.10 Lyric poetic circles took root in Ghibelline cities with imperial viceroys,11 and in the years after the emperor’s death and Charles’s defeat of Hohenstaufen power, the poetic communities spawned by the imperial court continued to thrive. At the courts and in the cities of Northern and Central Italy writing poetry was an exercise in self-elevation, or more likely an affirmation of elite social status. Dilettante poets, trained as jurists, notaries, and bankers, came from the nobility or the arti maggiori.12 This period of adaptation saw experimental hybrids of the Occitanic, Sicilian, and Tuscan traditions. Largesse, beauty, and a collection of accomplishments define nobility, and more generally courtliness in earlier troubadour poetry; for example, in the planh for the young King Henry, Bertran de Born (c.1140–1215) offers a catalog of aristocratic qualities.13 But by the mid thirteenth century, poets were articulating a more complex notion of nobility in both France and Italy. Vernacular discussions make a persistent claim for the transformative potential of personal virtue, an idea that challenged the medieval model of ordained collective or corporate social identity. From his unique vantage of poet/counselor to monarchs, both Ramon Berenguer IV and Charles of Anjou, Sordello defines a concept of nobility (onor) that is guaranteed by an individual’s practice of virtue. In his famous planh for Lord Blancatz, Planher vuelh en Blacatz en aquest leugier so, written in 1236–37, the troubadour demeans the lords he invites to share in the consumption of the heart of En Blancatz; identified as emperor, prince,

9 Elizabeth Poe, “The Vidas and Razos,” in A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 185–98. 10 Aurelio Roncaglia, “Se quibusdam provincialibus translatis in lingua nostra,” in Letteratura e critica. Studi in onore di Natalino Sapegno 2 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1975), 1–36, and “Per il 750o Anniversario della Scuola Poetica Siciliana,” in Rendiconto della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 8, 35 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1984), 321–33. 11 See, for example, Rosario Coluccia, ed., I Poeti della Scuola Siciliana. 3. Poeti Siculo-Toscani (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), XXIII–XLII. 12 Roberto Antonelli and Simonetta Bianchini, “Dal clericus al poeta,” in Letteratura italiana 2. Produzione e consumo, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), 188–9. The most prominent guild was the prestigious Ars notaria, which had close social and economic ties to the nobility. 13 The young king Henry epitomized “the specific values of a new chivalric culture of his time,” write the editors of The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, ed. William D. Paden Jr, Tilde Sankovitch, and Patricia H. Stäblein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 9–10. Bertran de Born eulogized him with the words: “larc e gen parlan / e gen cavalgan, / de bella faiso / e d’umil senblan / per far grans honors. …” (vv. 5–9).

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or duke, they are collectively addressed men or baro: (“qu’om li traga lo cor e que.n manjo.l baro / che vivon descorat” v. 7–8 [that someone extracts the heart and that the baro eat some of it / for they’re all heartless men]), and again in verse 41 “Li baro.m volran mal de so que ieu dic be” [The baro will wish me ill for the good I speak].14 Sordello’s 1327-verse Ensenhamens d’onor, written for Charles before he left France for Italy, posits onor as the source of all good. The poet explicitly rejects the idea that lineage guarantees nobility, or that natura ensures character. Dos n’i a, que natura forsan diversamen, et s’en esforsan l’uns per be e l’autres per mal; e dirai vos don son ni qual: l’uns es de gentilz genz mogutz, e l’autres de borges nasqutz: lo borges ama tan onor qu’el en fai totz faiz de valor; e.l gentilz no fai re ni diz per qu’esser deia al mon grazitz. (vv. 613–22) [There are two types who contend against nature / in different ways: the one strives / for the good, and the other for evil: / and I’ll tell you where they’re from and which they are: / the one stems from noble stock, / while the other’s born from town folk; / the townsman loves honor so much / that he performs all deeds of valor; / and the nobleman never does or says / a thing to make himself pleasing to the world.]

The question of onor is etched with the recognition that the judgment of others determines true nobility: onor must be earned and acknowledged by others. Sordello explicitly elaborates the potential for the bourgeois to display the aristocratic values: per qu’es tot, qui que plaza o tire, en noble cor, qui.n vol ver dire, lo be que om fai tota via, de qualque gen qui mogutz sia. Donx non pot om dir que noblesa mova de sola gentillesa, que.l gentilz es soven malvatz,

14 See the discussion of the planh in Stefano Asperti, “Sordello tra Raimondo Berengario V e Carlo I d’Angio,” Cultura neolatina 60 (2000), 152. The texts and modified translation of Sordello are from James J. Wilhelm, ed. and tr., The Poetry of Sordello (New York: Garland, 1987).



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e.l borges valenz e prezatz; pero nobles cors e gentils es de totz bos faiz segnorils. (vv. 631–40) [Because, like it or not, it is all / in the noble heart, if one speaks truly; / the good that one does, / from whatever ancestry one is born. / So one cannot say that nobility / moves only from the aristocracy, / because the aristocrat is often evil / and the bourgeois gallant and worthy. / But a noble and aristocratic heart / is the master of all good things.]

Distinguishing the virtue of nobility, for which he uses the term noblesa, from the social status of aristocracy, il gentillesa, Sordello describes nobility not as a series of attributes but as a praxis, and he emphasizes that others determine the success of the practitioner. Without abandoning the troubadour theme of onor, Sordello is able to “change the sign profoundly” and reinterpret the meaning of nobility in terms of the evolving culture.15 In Italy, the radical rethinking of the nature of nobility also predates Charles’s intervention. At mid-century, Northern and Central Italian cities were founding governments known as the Signoria del Popolo, with citizen representatives performing the various functions of governance. Ronald Witt observes that “by bringing into question the legitimacy of regimes controlled by milites, (that is, by members of old feudal families and ‘new men,’ whose wealth and knightly style of life identified them as milites), the popular challenge undercut the assumption that milites had a natural entitlement to power.”16 The transition from an oligarchy of churchmen and aristocrats to one of merchants, bankers, and lawyers would be fiercely contested throughout the second half of the thirteenth century; the question was also debated in poetic circles, and poetry became a privileged form of expression in the debate. The most celebrated voice of new politics of the Signora del Popolo is that of the Florentine Brunetto Latini (1220–94). Returning from a diplomatic mission in which he had been commissioned to seek the assistance of Alfonso X of Castile against the imperial pretender Manfred, Brunetto never reached his native city: news of the Ghibelline victory at Montaperti (1260) sent him into exile in France. Six years later, following Charles’s defeat of the imperial party at Benevento, Brunetto was back in Florence, a city that would flourish because of its military and economic association with the papacy and Charles.17 A writer and teacher with roots in the practice of politics, Brunetto

Asperti, “Sordello,” 158. Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients. The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 45. 17 Ceva, Brunetto Latini, 25. 15 16

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served both the city and the Anjouin court in various important offices.18 While residing in France, Brunetto set out the precepts of self-ennoblement in Li Livres dou Tresor, written in French but intended primarily for an Italian audience.19 He returned to the same theme in the Tesoretto, his vernacular adaptations of Ciceronian orations and letters, and La Rettorica, a cultural translation of Cicero’s De inventione composed to teach effective persuasion to the still experimental government of the Popolo.20 In Li Livres dou Tresor, Brunetto, like Sordello, emphasizes virtue, or more precisely, self-elevation above vice, as the means of ennoblement: Et por ce que la foiblece des homes est si decheables as visces, dit Senekes, ha, comme lì hom est vil chose et despisable, s’il ne eslieve sor les humaines choses. Et quant il si est eslevés donc est il nobles, lor est il gentil et de trés haute nature; car la u la volentés est obeissans a raison, lors di je que la plus noble partie de celui est dame et roine dou roiaume dou cuer. (Li Tresor II.54.7)21 [And because the weakness of men makes him so prone to vice, says Seneca, (ha) so man is a weak and despicable thing if he does not raise himself above the human condition. And when he raises himself, then he is the nobleman, then he is a gentleman and of a superior nature; because when the will obeys reason, then I say that the noblest part is dame and queen of the kingdom of the heart.]

The form of Brunetto’s lesson takes is as interesting as the content; he uses the reflexive pronoun (“il si est eslevés”) to describe a transformative appropriation of nobility by the individual. The term nature is without a hint of class status or family. Adverbial pairing emphasize personal agency: action and consequence: quant and donc/lor, and la and lors. The lessons of Seneca are separated from the ancient source text and personalized by the master of the new Guelf culture: “lors di je que la plus noble partie de celui est dame et roine dou roiaume dou cuer.” 18 Brunetto Latini was engaged by the Florentine comune in 1267, he served as protonotario for Charles’s vicar in Tuscany in 1269–70, and in 1273 he became notaro for the Consiglio del Comune. Brunetto was also the consul for the most prestigious guild, the Arte dei Giudici e dei Notai, in 1275. 19 Witt, In the Footsteps, 178–9. 20 As Brunetto proposes in La Rettorica, “La eloquenzia mise in sì alto stato i parladori savi e guerniti di senno, che per loro si reggeano le cittadi e le comunanze e le cose publiche, avendo le signorie e li officii e li onori e le grandi cose …” [Eloquent speech placed wise men endowed with good judgment in such high estate, that cities, communities, and republics were ruled by them, holding the signorie, government offices, and honors and high positions], Brunetto Latini, La Rettorica. Testo critico, ed. Francesco Maggini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968), 31. 21 Francis J. Carmody, Li Livres dou Tresor di Brunetto Latini (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 229.



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Brunetto’s contribution of vernacular instruments for the education and refinement of the rulers in Florence was accompanied by innovative lessons on the proper expression of a new dignity.22 “Latini had insisted on the importance of the relationship between eloquence and virtue,”23 challenging his compatriots to renew vernacular communication: for rhetoric to embrace clarity, for prose to become fluent, its syntax limpid and supple.24 The corollary is that poetry, the most elevated form of vernacular expression, assumes the same lucidity. Guittone d’Arezzo (1235–94), the major Italian poet of the period, defends verbal obscurity in his poems on the basis of the elevation of his thought in Altra fiata aggio giá, donne, parlato: “E dice alcun ch’è duro / e aspro mio trovato a savorare; / e pote esser vero. Und’è cagione? / che m’abonda ragione …” (vv. 163–6) [And someone says that my poetry is hard / and harsh to understand, / and it could be true. Why is this? / Because reason is so abundant in me],25 while the Bolognese Guido Guinizelli (c.1230–76), and later the Florentine Guido Cavalcanti (c.1250–1300), define a new, dolce or piano poetic syntax as the vehicle for the expression of the nobility and excellence of the poet. All three poets were members of the elite and elitist in their sympathies, but in accordance with the lessons of Brunetto Latini, Guinizelli and Cavalcanti practice a different poetic and strive for clear expression as a sign of distinction. Ahi lasso! Or è stagion di dolor tanto [Alas! Now is the season of great pain]: Guittone’s 97-verse canzone opens with an expression of the deep sense of personal loss following the Guelf defeat in a battle at Montaperti in 1260. In Florence and other cities, Guelf aristocrats and leaders were exiled and their properties razed; Guittone went into self-imposed exile from Arezzo. The papacy renewed its appeal to the royal house of France for

Antonelli and Bianchini, “Dal clericus al poeta,”191. Witt, In the Footsteps, 240. 24 “Ciò che della retorica è accolto nella lingua di Brunetto è soprattutto un’esigenza di ordine e di chiarezza, che si esplica da un lato nella cura costante dedicata all’assetto generale della trattazione, con l’indicazione dei vari argomenti, formule di raccordo e simili; dall’altro – con piú diretti riflessi sulla sintassi – nella sensibile ricerca di una limpida sostenutezza del periodo” [The rhetoric at play in the language of Brunetto is above all an insistence on order and clarity, which is realized on the one hand with constant attention to the general structure of the treatise, with the introduction of the various arguments, connecting formulas, and so on, and on the other – with a more direct impact on the syntax – in the palpable seach for a limpid fluency of the sentence], Cesare Segre, Lingua, stile e società. Studi sulla storia della prosa italiana (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963), 178. 25 Guittone d’Arezzo left an extensive corpus – attributed to him are fifty canzoni, as many prose letters, and over two hundred and fifty sonnets – which confirms his ties with important men throughout the region. The many poets who imitated his distinctive style, including the young Dante, is also evidence of Guittone’s prominence. All texts by Guittone are from Le Rime di Guittone d’Arezzo, ed. Francesco Egidi (Bari: Laterza, 1940). 22 23

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assistance: Charles became the Christian prince in whom the piety of the French royal house was united with youth, fervor, and strength, the prince who could serve as Christ’s athlete. On February 10, 1266, Charles defeated Manfred at the Battle of Benevento, and on August 23, 1268, he captured sixteen-year-old Conradin, a second Hohenstaufen pretender, at the Battle of Tagliacozzo. Pope Clement exalted at the success of his champion: “Tu enim es electus a Domino in sui populo defensionem … Tu quies ecclesie, tu pax fidelium.” [Truly you are chosen by God to defend his people … You are the quietude of the church, the peace of the faithful.]26 Charles entered Florence with pomp and ceremony in May 1267 and was named podestà of the city for seven years. The new political alignment as well as the prestige of the French royal scion revitalized the Italian aristocracy. Contrary to trends in other Western European territories, Italy saw an increase in the number of investitures in the period following the advent of Charles, the rite identical for Guelf and for Ghibelline nobles.27 Lavish ceremonies included the ritual of dubbing, tournaments, and feasts, and the knight’s new status, which came with privileges, demanded a lifestyle premised on the display of wealth and power.28 The multiplication of the new aristocracy contributed to the perception of a need for the anti-magnate legislation, which was formulated in different comuni governed by a Signoria del Popolo in the second half of the thirteenth century.29 The papacy actively opposed the Signoria del Popolo, in spite of the nominal Guelf affiliation. One of the instruments created to control the 26 Quoted by Alessandro Barbero, “Il mito angioino nella cultural italiana e provenzale fra Duecento e Trecento,” Bolletino Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino 79 (1981), 116. 27 Many traditional noble Italian families owed allegiance to the German imperial dynasty and not the comune. Even the newly dubbed nobility made claim to an authority that transcended the comune (Gasparri, I milites cittadini, 80). The historian also suggests that the perception of an increase in ceremonial investitures may have been the result of the attendant pomp and grandeur, which caught the attention of chroniclers (Gasparri, I milites cittadini, 79). 28 The perceived necessity for pomp and rich display may have been exasperated by the fact that there was no judicial definition of nobility in Italy. Poor or wealthy, nobles engaged in a wide range of political and economic activities, with the single exception of manual labor (Gasparri, I milites cittadini, 131). 29 Gasparri argues that the debate over the proper role of the nobility in urban governments in the Guelf comuni of the second half of the thirteenth century was not ideological but was spurred by economic concerns and the need to spread the burdens of taxation more broadly: nobles, whether from wealthy military families of ancient lineage, or the more recent “ritual” nobility, were exempt from certain taxes in exchange for their military service to the city. “Sarà opera del secolo XIII la lenta, e a lungo imperfetta, sottomissione dei nobili del contado alla fiscalità (e con ciò all’autorità) cittadina” [The slow and far from perfect submission of the nobility of the contado to the fiscal rule, and with it, the authority of the city, will be the work of the thirteenth century] (I milites cittadini, 99).



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Popolo was a new order of brothers, the Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae, commonly known as the Order of Jovial Brothers or Frati Gaudenti; founded by two noblemen in 1260, the order was approved by Pope Urban IV in 1261. Essentially modeled on the Knights Templar, it was deeply engaged in papal politics as they played out in the comuni. To extend his secular control, Pope Clement IV named the two founders of the order, Loderingo Andalò and Catalano dei Malavolti, as co-signori in Bologna in 1265 and 1267, and Florence in 1266.30 The pope also supported the order as a way to enlarge the Guelf nobility and his influence over it, and even to co-opt the Ghibelline nobility. The exordium of the Rule for the order, Sol ille verus, was originally written by Pope Alexander IV in 1259 for the Ordinis humilium ancillarum Beatissimae Mariae Virginis founded by Isabelle, sister of Louis and Charles, at Longchamps,31 and its axiomatic status is confirmed by Clement’s decision to reuse it for the Jovial Friars. In a pronouncement of political theology, the exordium establishes the divinely ordained exceptionalism of nobles and aristocrats: The true sun, flashing with perpetual brightness … often touches nobles and aristocrats with more sparkling rays of light, … so that, contemplating with a more perceptive insight, they understand higher things more freely, elect the more lofty of them more discriminatingly, and embrace them more ardently.32

The traditional understanding of nobility based on ancient lineage is spiritualized and defined in terms of a characteristic valuable to the ruling class: nobles and aristocrats are marked, often, by intellectual superiority, wisdom and virtue. The language is important because it lays the groundwork for a debate over the idea of nobility that animates the dolce stil novo.33 In 1265, the same year that Charles arrived in Italy, Guittone d’Arezzo renounced the poetry of courtly love, joined the Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae, and challenged his public to recognize his new superiority as a Borsa, La nuova poesia, 152. Only one change occurs in the exordium in the Rule for the Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae: the binomial “nobilies et potentes” replaces the original “reges et principes.” Isabelle’s order also, by all accounts, deviated from standard rules. 32 “Sol ille verus perpetuo fulgore coruscans … sepe nobilies et potentes micantioribus contingens radiis in eorum mentes lucem ingerit potiorem, per quam iidem intuitu perspicaciori sublimius contemplantes altiora liberius comprehendunt et celsiora etiam de hiis subtilius eligunt, et ardentius amplectuntur, adeo quod et ad suavem gustum et amore celestium alios suo salutari exemplo vehementius animant et inducunt …” (Borsa, La nuova poesia, 121). The translation is by Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 75. 33 Borsa, La nuova poesia, 152–3; 147–92. 30 31

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poet guided only by God. Borsa argues that Guittone’s conversion to divine wisdom was driven by motives that were not strictly pious: “the conversion … responded to the politics of the papacy engaged in disciplining the urban aristocracy in spirituality and orthodoxy, and it represented, at the same time, a form of ideological alignment with the Anjouin court, pervaded with the spirit of (anti-Ghibelline) crusade …”34 The nexus between the noble estate and divinely ordained wisdom that defines the Rule for the Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae underlies Fra Guittone’s challenge to his community of interlocutors and admirers. In the song of conversion, Ora parrá s’eo saverò cantare [Now it will be shown if I know how to compose poetry], Guittone defies his vast public to recognize his worth and primacy, based solely on wisdom born not from love but from God. Ora parrá s’eo saverò cantare e s’eo varrò quanto valer giá soglio, poiché del tutto Amor fuggo e disvoglio,
 e piú che cosa mai forte mi spare! Ch’ad om tenuto saggio odo contare che trovare – non sa, né valer punto, omo d’Amor non punto … (vv. 1–7) … Ma chi cantare vole e valer bene,
 in suo legno nochier diritto pone,
 ed orrato saver mette al timone,
 Dio fa sua stella e ver lausor sua spene … (vv. 17–20) [Now it will be shown whether I know how to compose poetry and if I have the worth I once had, since I shun and reject Love completely and hate him more than anything else.35 Because I hear a man considered wise say that one not pierced by love does not know how to write poetry, nor has he any worth. … But he who wants to write poetry and to be worthy, takes justice in his craft as his helmsman, and honored wisdom for tiller, God is his star and true praise his hope.]

Guittone scoffs at the courtly sagacity of Bernart de Ventadorn, the “om tenuto saggio” who posits the worth of his poetry in his love; the Aretine’s sense of his own worth – and the verb valer is repeated twice in the first line 34 Borsa, La nuova poesia, 158. In fact, even before his conversion from love poetry to spirtual poetry, Guittone had rejected the ethos of courtly love; see D’Arco Silvio Avalle, Ai luoghi di delizia pieni. Saggio sulla lirica italiana del XIII secolo (Milan: Riccardi, 1978), and Lino Leonardi, ed., Guittone d’Arezzo. Canzoniere. I sonetti d’amore del codice laurenziano (Turin: Einaudi, 1994). 35 “spare: riesce odioso,” Gianfranco Contini, Poeti del Duecento I (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), 214 n. 4.



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in a polyptoton, and in one form or another seven times in the poem – is premised on the ideology of Sol ille verus.36 One of Guittone’s staunchest adversaries was the Bolognese judge, Guido Guinizelli. Guinizelli, like Guittone, came from the urban elite; his family participated in government and pledged to provide military service to the comune. Brother Guittone and the judge Guinizelli engaged in an antagonistic poetic exchange on a number of questions. Trained in the sapientia juridica, Guinizelli took issue with the political theology in the Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae that was embraced by Guittone,37 and as a student of courtly poetics, he rejected Guittone’s bid to replace love, the traditional inspiration for courtly poetry, with godliness.38 Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amor, Guinizelli’s canzone on the nature of nobility, is considered the manifesto of the dolce stil novo. The first image, which is also the dominant theme, declares that love and the noble heart are connatural, simultaneous, and inseparable, rebutting Guittone’s song of poetic conversion. Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore come l’ausello in selva a la verdura; né fe’ amore anti che gentil core, né gentil core anti ch’amor natura … (vv. 1–4) [Love return always to a noble heart / Like a bird to the green in the forest. / Nature did not make love before the noble heart, / Nor the noble heart before love.]39

36 In much of the post-conversion corpus, however, the poet’s focus is different, as he dedicates himself to denouncing sin that sullies the divine gift. As he writes in O cari frati miei, which Leonardi dates to the year of his conversion (XIII), the many gifts of nobility are tarnished by sin: “Che se descrezione, / arbitrio, poder, cor, senno e vertute / noi fue dato in salute, / a nostra dannazion lo convertemo …” (vv. 7–10) [Because if discretion, will, strength, courage, wisdom, and virtue were given to us in our salvation, we convert them into our damnation]. 37 Borsa, La nuova poesia, 160–1. 38 “Gli attacchi ai gaudenti contenuti in caro padre meo, in Omo ch’è saggio, e, forse, in Al cor gentil, sono parte della critica condotta da Guinizelli contro frate Guittone …” [The attacks against the gaudenti contained in caro padre meo, in Omo ch’è saggio, and perhaps in Al cor gentil, are part of the critique of Brother Guittone conducted by Guinizzelli] (Borsa, La nuova poesia, 157–8). There appears to be a clear ironic reference to Sol ille verus in line five of the sonnet Omo ch’è saggio: “Foll’è chi crede sol veder lo vero …” (my emphasis). Borsa offers multiple complex and cogent arguments to demonstrate that Al cor gentil was written in response to Fra Guittone’s attacks against him, and more generally, Guittone’s attempt to condemn love as the wellspring of inspiration for lyric poetry. See Borsa, La nuova poesia, 181–92. Because of constraints of space, the present discussion is limited to the verbal attacks most pertinent to the language of nobility. 39 The text and translations are from Robert Edwards, ed. and tr., The Poetry of Guido Guinizelli (New York: Garland, 1987).

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The theme recurs and is developed by means of different “proofs” from natural philosophy in the second and third stanzas. The first stanza also mocks the metaphysical language of the incipit Sol ille verus: Guinizelli insists that the sun is a physical entity bound by time and space: “ch’adesso con’ fu ‘l sole, / sì tosto lo splendore fu lucente, / né fu davanti ‘l sole;” (vv. 5–7) [As soon as the sun appeared, / Brightness shone forth / But it did not exist before the sun.] In the second stanza of the canzone, love and nobility are examined in a slightly different relationship that is not connatural but contingent: the potentially noble heart is elect by nature but only made active by love in the form of a lady. Foco d’amore in gentil cor s’aprende come vertute in petra prezïosa, che da la stella valor no i discende anti che ‘l sol la faccia gentil cosa; poi che n’ha tratto fòre per sua forza lo sol ciò che li è vile,
 stella li dà valore: così lo cor ch’è fatto da natura asletto, pur, gentile donna, a guisa di stella, lo ‘nnamora. (vv. 11–20) [Love’s fire catches in the noble heart, / Like the power of a precious stone / Whose potency does not descend from the star / Until the sun makes it a noble object: / After the sun has drawn out / Everything base with its own force, / The star confers power on it. / In such a way, a lady, / Like the star, transforms the heart / Chosen by Nature and made pure and noble.]

If the excellence of the heart is determined by nature, an idea that may be interpreted as traditional, the poet goes on to insist that love serves as the proof of nobility, and love poetry as the manifest sign. In opposition to Guittone, Bernart’s Chantars no pot gaire valer is reclaimed and transformed. This powerful reformulation was embraced in the Signoria del Popolo, where men who were not necessarily of noble lineage strove to demonstrate their personal superiority, and the writing of love poetry became the emblem of a man’s nobility. The fourth stanza of Guinizelli’s canzone returns to the image of the sun, but offers a negative proposition from natural science: exposed to the sun all day, mud remains unchanged; in fact, there is no interaction between that which is vile and the sun. “Fere lo sol lo fango tutto ‘l giorno: / vile reman, né ‘l sol perde calore;” (vv. 31–2) [Sun strikes the mud all day long; / It remains base (vile), nor does the sun lose heat.] The heart that is not naturally elect is inert and unalterable. But the poet immediately rejects the notion of nobility that is not based on personal virtue: Guinizelli calls the man “mud”



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who presumes that nobility is inherited (the “nobilies et potentes” of Sol ille verus); contrary to the assertions of the exordium of the Rule for the Jovial Brothers, such a man is proud but devoid of intellectual capacity. Dis om alter, “Gentil per sclatta torno”; lui semblo al fango, al sol gentil valore: ché non dé dar om fede che gentilezza sia fòr di coraggio in degnità di rede, sed a vertute non ha gentil core. (vv. 33–8) [A proud man says, “I am made noble by birth.” / I liken him to the mud and noble worth to the sun. / No man should believe / That nobility exists outside the heart / By right of lineage, / Unless he has a noble heart disposed to virtue.]

The thesis that this canzone was written in response to Guittone and the Frati Gaudenti also sheds light on the ironic or even impudent final stanza. In response to Guittone’s defiant poetics embracing the papal pairing of personal worth and divine wisdom, the doctrine of Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore renews the traditional coupling of nobility and love, linking both to the individual’s disposition toward virtue. Nobility is not only liberated from the chains of ancient lineage, but is defined in a way that could be claimed by ambitious young men like Dante Alighieri. Guinizelli’s manifesto was not written in a vacuum; his language is sharpened by the polemic over the nature of true nobility and personal efficacy, a debate that challenged rigid contours of a divinely ordained collective identity of the sort claimed in Sol ille verus. The stakes were high. Behind Guinizelli’s despised rival, Fra Guittone, there was the real power of the Jovial Friars, enforcers of the papacy who were in turn reinforced by the nobility and military prowess of Charles. Although Charles’s Neapolitan court had little or no discernible direct influence on the Italian lyric tradition, the French king’s presence in Italy and his alliance with the papacy did have a precise impact on the fundamental poetic signs of nobility and love in the second half of the thirteenth century in Italy. Brunetto Latini, restored to his native city by Charles’s victories over the Ghibellines, translated the idea of personal excellence and virtue, already articulated as synonymous with true nobility by Sordello, into the stylistic imperative of clarity and syntactic flexibility. The strongest Italian poets of the period, Guittone and Guinizelli, debated the fundamental problems of courtliness, that is, of love, virtue, and nobility, as well as syntax, and coming to different conclusions, offered new directions to future poets.

Envoi Joglar, fly to our Friend in her estate. Sing truly and in tune. She might invite you in. (She wrote the book on Hospitality.) You’ll see in her an avatar of trobairitz whose secret wit she illuminates. You’ll see a new Marie de France shaping narrations of the past – lai, romance, continuations without end – a boy who tries and never gets it right, a cart and an imperfect knight. Speak kindly to her pets – her dragon, lion, dog-in-boots, and parrot. Finally, deliver a gift we have the nerve to give her – our work, our best, dreyt nien – nothing our Friend does not deserve. Sarah White

Contributors Michel-André Bossy is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and French Studies at Brown University. His publications include Medieval Debate Poetry: Vernacular Works (Garland Publishing, 1987) in addition to studies of troubadour lyrics, the creation of medieval poetry collections and anthologies, and the politics of literature in medieval courts. E. Jane Burns is the Druscilla French Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and author of Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature and Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993 and 2002, respectively). She has also edited Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Cloth work and Other Cultural Imaginings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and served as one of the subject editors for Women and Gender in the Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2006). Her most recent book is Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Kristin L. Burr is Associate Professor of French at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on thirteenth-century Old French literature, and especially on questions involving gender roles and chivalry. With John F. Moran and Norris J. Lacy, she is the co-editor of Old French Fabliaux: Essays on Comedy and Context (McFarland, 2007). She has published on topics ranging from medieval French romance to the fabliau. Laine E. Doggett is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of International Languages and Cultures at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She is the author of Love Cures: Healing and Love Magic in Old French Romance (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009) and articles on Old French romance. Virginie Greene is Chair and Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author of Le Sujet et la Mort dans La Mort Artu (Nizet, 2002), the editor of Towards the Author: Essays in French Medieval Literature (Palgrave, 2006 ), and the translator in modern French of the Débat sur le Roman de la Rose (Champion, 2006). She has contributed to the edition of an anthology of Proust’s letters (Proust, Lettres, Plon: 2004). She is one of

288 CONTRIBUTORS

the five co-authors of Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes (D. S. Brewer, 2011). Joan Tasker Grimbert is Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Catholic University of America. Author of numerous book essays, primarily on the Tristan legend and Arthurian film, she has written, edited, or co-edited six books: Chrétien de Troyes in Prose: The Burgundian “Erec” and “Cligés” (D. S. Brewer, 2011), A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes (D. S. Brewer, 2005), Philologies Old and New: Essays in Honor of Peter Florian Dembowski (Edward C. Armstrong Monographs, 2001), Songs of the Women Trouvères (Yale University, 2001) Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook (Routledge, 1995; 2002), and “Yvain” dans le miroir: Une Poétique de la Réflexion dans le “Chevalier au lion” de Chrétien de Troyes (Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages, 1988). Peter Haidu is Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California at Berkeley. His numerous publications include Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Cligès and Perceval (Droz, 1968) and The Subject Medieval/Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle Ages (Stanford University Press, 2004). David F. Hult is Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, and his publications have been devoted to numerous authors and works, including Chrétien de Troyes, Jean de Meun, Alain Chartier, Christine de Pizan, and the Ovide Moralisé. Most recently, he has published a new edition, with modern French translation, of the Mort du roi Arthur (LGF, 2009) and an English translation of the Debate of the Romance of the Rose (The University of Chicago Press, 2010). Donald Maddox is Professor Emeritus of French Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His most recent book is Melusine, or, the Noble History of Lusignan, by Jean d’Arras, an English translation; with Sara Sturm-Maddox (The Pennsylvania State University, 2012). Nadia Margolis is Visiting Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Mount Holyoke College. Her most recent publications include An Introduction to Christine de Pizan (University Press of Florida, 2011) and “Joan of Arc and the French Right” (in Jeanne la Pucelle: Batailles et Prisons, 2012). Daniel E. O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi. His publications include Marian Devotion in ThirteenthCentury French Lyric (University of Toronto Press, 2005) and Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: A Fundamental Thought Paradigm of the Premodern World (De Gruyter, 2012). He also serves as the editorin-chief of Medieval Perspectives and an editor for Textual Cultures. Elizabeth W. Poe is Professor of French at Tulane University. She is the author of From Poetry to Prose in Old Provençal (Summa, 1984) and

CONTRIBUTORS 289

Compilatio: Lyric Texts and Prose Commentaries in Troubadour Manuscript H (Vat. Lat. 3207) (French Forum Publications, 2000). Nancy Freeman Regalado is Professor emerita of French at New York University. The author of many books and articles, Regalado has most recently co-edited with Mireille Chazan Lettres, musique, et société en Lorraine médiévale: Autour du Tournoi de Chauvency et le MS Oxford Bodl. Douce 308 (Droz, 2011). William Casper Schenck is the Associate Director of the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi. He completed his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures under Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner’s direction at Boston College in 2008. Laurie Shepard is Associate Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Boston College. She is the author of Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics in the Early Thirteenth Century (Garland Publishing, 1999), and co-editor of Bruckner, M., Shepard L. and White, S. Songs of the Women Troubadours (Garland Publishing, 1995). Evelyn (Timmie) Birge Vitz is Professor of French at New York University. Long interested in issues of performance of medieval literature, she is the author of Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (D.S. Brewer, 1999); co-editor, with Nancy Freeman Regalado and Marilyn Lawrence, of Performing Medieval Narrative (D.S. Brewer, 2005), and co-editor, with Arzu Ozturkmen, of Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean (Brepols, forthcoming). Two websites, “Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video Showcase” (www.nyu. edu/pmnt) and “Arthurian Legend Performed” (http://vimeo.com/ArthurPerform) make contemporary performances of medieval texts accessible to students and scholars the world over. Logan E. Whalen is an Associate Professor of French at the University of Oklahoma. His publications include Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory (Catholic University of America Press, 2008) and A Companion to Marie de France (Brill Academic Publishers, 2011). Sarah White is Professor Emerita of French and Italian at Franklin and Marshall College. She is the author, most recently, of Alice Ages and Ages, a collection of poems and variations (BlazeVox, 2010), and served as co-translator, with Matilda Bruckner and Laurie Shepard, of Songs of the Women Troubadours (Garland Publishing, 1995).

Index Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner  1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 44n67, 47n1–3, 55, 59, 107, 108, 114, 119, 137, 165, 167n, 175n39, 183, 194n16, 196n19, 202, 216n5, 222, 229, 249 Narrative Invention in the Twelfthcentury French Romance: The Conventions of Hospitality, 1160–1200  2, 6, 47n1–3, 229n1, 249n2 Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth and Closure in TwelfthCentury French Fictions  2, 3, 222n21, 250n23 Songs of the Women Troubadours 2, 194n16, 167n 196n19, Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte de Graal and its Verse Continuations  3, 44n67 Medieval Authors and Works Alamanda  166, 168–71 Adalberon of Laon  28 Adam de la Halle  159, 272 (Le Jeu de Robin et Marion) 159 Aimeric de Belenoi  187, 188 Alais, N’  196 Alaisina, Na  196 Alixandre Empereur de Constentinoble et de Cligés son filz, Livre de (prose Cligés)  98n9, 106n18 Andreas Capellanus  63, 73, 147 De amore  63, 73, 147n12 Antoine de la Sale  125 Le Petit Jehan de Saintré 125 Arnaut Daniel  170, 171 Arnaut de Maroill  11, 171–75 Aucassin et Nicolette 157 Baudonivia  203–205, 210, 211 Life of Saint Radegund 203–205, 210, 211

Beitris de Roman  194, 195, 197 Benoit de Sainte Maure  34 Bernart de Ventadorn  11, 171–74, 186, 280, 282 Bernard André  62 Bernart Arnaut  11, 165–82 Béroul 230 Roman de Tristan 230 Bertran de Born  273, 169–71, 173, 273 Brunetto Latini  275, 276, 277, 283 Li Livres dou Tresor  276 La Rettorica 276 Carenza, Na  196 Cavalcanti, Guido  277 Cerveri de Girona  186 Chanson de Roland  34 Charles d’Orléans  6, 61–80 Retenue d’amour  64 (Fig. 1), 79 Chartier, Alain  217, 218 Chrétien de Troyes  2, 3, 8, 11, 12, 31, 34, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 214–16, 222–24, 232–35, 239 Chevalier de la charette  2, 95 Le Conte du Graal  3, 4, 222–24 Cligès  8, 12, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104m  232–35, 239 Erec et Enide  95, 224 Chevalier au lion 95 Perceval 136–37 Christine de Pisan  11, 161, 213–25 Chemin de lonc estude  214, 219, 224n24, 225 Epistre Othea  214, 219, 223 Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V  21, 220 Trois Vertus  214, 219, 220, 221, 223 Corps de policie  214, 219, 221, 223 Dante Alighieri  217, 219, 272, 283 Demandes d’amour  63, 73, 75 Eilhart von Oberg  109n12, 120 Etablissements de Saint Louis 52n31 Flamenca 156

292 INDEX Folie Tristan d’Oxford  2, 108n9 Folquet de Lunel  193, 194, 195, 197 Folquet de Marselha  178, 179 Froissart, Jean  218, 220 Gaucelm Faidit  169n14, 170, 171 Gautier de Coinci  186, 261 Geoffroi de Charny  245n13, 250 Giacomo da Lentini  178, 273 Giscarda  166, 168–71 Gottfried von Stasburg  109n12 Grace entiere, Livre de  63, 73, 76, 77 (Fig. 6), 78–80 Guillaume le Clerc  260 Le bestiaire divin  260 Guillaume de Lorris  9, 10, 151, 153n8, 160, 224, 256, 260, 261 Roman de la Rose  9, 10, 256, 260, 261 Guinizelli, Guido  277, 281, 282, 283 Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore 281, 282, 283 Guiraut de Bornelh  168–71 Guiraut Riquier  184n2, 185, 189–92, 197 Guittone d’Arezzo  277, 279, 280, 281, 283 Altra fiata aggio giá, donne, parlato 277 Ahi lasso! Or è stagion di dolor tanto 277 Ora parrá s’eo saverò cantare  280 Hildebert of Lavardin  203, 210, 211 Life of Saint Radegund  203, 210, 211 Hildegard of Bingen  154 Ordo Virtutem 154 Huon de Méry  262, 263 Li tornoiemens Antecrist  262, 263 Jacques Bretel  262, 263, 264, 267, 269 Le tournoi de Chauvency  262, 263, 264, 267, 269 Jacques de Longuyon  262, 263, 264, 266 Les vœux du paon  262, 263, 264, 266 Jakemes 263 Le roman du Chatelain de Couci  263 Jaufré Rude  183 Jean de Joinville  51 Vie de Saint Louis 51 Jean de Meun  73n29, 151–61, 153n8, 160, 161, 218, 224, 261 Jean Renart  159 Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole 159

Jeu d’Adam  156 Joannot Martorell and Marti Joan de Galba 130 Tirant lo Blanc  130 John the Scot  131  On the Division of Nature 131 Lanfranc Cigala  184n3, 186, 187 Lombarda, Na  165–82 Map, Walter  28, 29, 33, 128, 217 Courtiers’ Trifles 128 Maria, Na  193–95 Marie de France  2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 139–49, 222, 235–39 Lais  2, 139–41, 146n, 147n, 149 General Prologue (to Marie de France’s Lais), 140, 141, 149 Bisclavret  4, 133, 134, 139n Guigemar  7, 9, 139–42, 146n,147n, 149 Lanval  12, 235–39 Chevrefoil 139 Eliduc 139 Equitan 139n2 Fresne  139, 143, 144 Les Deus Amanz 139 Yonec 139n2 Meraugis de Partlesguez  7, 83–94 Mirrors of Princes  35, 37–38 Mystere d’Adam  156 Old Norse Tristan 12 L’Ordene de chevalerie  13, 243, 244n10, 246–49, 251, 252 Paix, Livre de  214, 219, 223 Papegau, Conte du  7, 8, 9, 123–38 Partonopeu de Blois  2 Peire Cardenal  194 Peire Guilhem de Luzerna  186 Philippe de Beaumanoir  51 Coutumes de Beauvaisis 51n21 Pierre de Beauvais  13, 258 Le Bestiaire 258 Philippe de Mézières  216, 218 Li Prophecie Sebile 262 Prose Cligés  95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106 (see also Livre de Alixandre Empereur de Constentinoble et de Cligés son filz) Prose Erec 95 Prose Lancelot  131

INDEX 293

Querelle du Roman de la Rose 151, 218n10, 219, 222 Raimbaut d’Aurenga  186 Raimon (de la Salas?)  177–82 Raoul de Houdenc  83, 84, 85, 90, 93 The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin  252 Richard de Fournival  12, 13, 255–70 Bestiare d’amours  12, 13, 255–70 Commens d’amours 256 Consaus d’amours 256 Response (anon.)  256, 257, 259 Robert 230–32 Saga of Tristram 230–32 Robert of Blois  222 Rutebeuf 195n18 The Second Crusade Cycle 250 Silence, Roman de 154 Sordello  272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 283 Planh vuelh en Blacatz en aquest leugier so 273 Ensenhamens d’onor  274 Thèbes, Roman de  5, 34–8 Thibault IV of Champagne  41 Thomas of England  2, 8, 107–21, 230 Tristan  2, 8 Uc de Saint-Circ  272 Ventantius Fortunatus  201, 203–205 Life of Saint Radegund 201, 203–205 Ysaÿe le Triste  97 Yselda, Na  196 Zorzi, Bertolome  186, 189 Ancient Authors and Works Aristotle 131 Augustine of Hippo  28, 37, 128 Cicero 276 De Inventione  276 Democritus 27 Epicurus 27 Ovid  146, 147, 256n3, 260 Ars amatoria  147n Remedia amoris 146n–47n Physiologus  13, 258 Plato 27 Seneca 276 Spartacus 33 Statius 34 Tacitus 32 Virgil  214, 219

Documents Domesday Book  5, 42ff Olim  5, 6, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57, 59 Ordo humilium ancillarum Beatissimae Mariae Virginis (Rule) 279 Parlement de Paris  47, 48, 50, 54, 57, 59 Acts (see Olim) Sol ille verus  279, 280, 281, 282, 283 (Rule of Ordo Militiae Mariae Gloriosae) Historical Figures Alan IV Fergant, Duke of Brittany  206, 207 Alexander IV, Pope  279 Alfonso X el Sabio  186, 191, 275 Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales  62, 76, 78, 80 Bernard of Clairvaux  207 Catherine of Valois  78 Charles of Anjou  12, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 278, 279, 283 Charles V  214, 217–21, 223 Charles VI  220, 221 Charles VII of France  70 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy  67 Christina of Markyate  57 Clement IV, Pope  271, 278, 279 Clothar, King of the Franks  202, 204, 211 Conan III, Duke of Brittany  207, 208 Edward IV of England  63, 79 Eleanor of Aquitaine  13, 250, 251 Elizabeth of York  69, 78, 79 Ermengarde of Anjou, Countess of Brittany  10, 11, 201, 202, 205–212 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor  273 Geoffrey de Vendôme, abbot of La Trinité 11, 208, 209, 210 Heloise  63, 73, 74 (Fig. 4), 76 Henry I (of Champagne)  38, 40 Henry II of England  28, 32, 141 Henry V of England  78, 217 Henry VI of England  70, 72 Henry VIII of England  61–63, 67, 69, 78, 79, 80 Hugh of Tiberias  243, 244, 245–48, 251 Isabella of Portugal  67 Isabelle of France  279 Jasper Tudor  67 John II of France  76

294 INDEX John, Duke of Bedford  70 John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy  65 Katherine of Aragon  78 Louis VII, King of France  52 Louis IX, King of France (Saint Louis) 47, 50, 56, 57 Louis d’Orléans  65 Manfred, King of Sicily  275, 278 Marbode, Bishop of Rennes  201, 206 Margaret Beaufort  68 Margaret of York  78 Marie of Cleves  67 Mary, Virgin  183–97 Owen Tudor  78 Philip VI of France  76 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy  65, 67, 68, 80, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 106 Poulet, Quentin  62, 76 Radegund of Poitiers  10, 11 201, 203–205, 210–12 Ramon Berenguer IV  273 Richard III of England  69 Richard fitz Nigel  29 Robert of Arbrissel  206, 207, 211 Saladin  13, 241–53 Simnel, Lambert  78 Thwaytes, Thomas  65 Urban IV, Pope  271, 279 Velasquez, Diego  26 Warbeck, Perkin  68, 78 William I of England  41 William IX, Count of Aquitaine  206 Authors and Critics Adams, Tracy  108 Allmand, C. T.  100 Althusser, Louis  25, 27, 28, 35 Arizcuren, Francisco J. Oroz  184 Asperti, Stefano  272n6,n8, 274n14, 275n15 Auerbach, Erich  26n6 Backhouse, Jane  62n2, 63n8, 65n11, 68, 69n10, 76n32, 79n36,  80n38 Badiou, Alain  26n4, 27, 28 Baumgartner, Emmanuèle  108, 110, 250n25 Bakhtin, Michael  31 Bédier, Joseph  109n12, 110, 111, 118 Beer, Jeanette  257n11, 266n30 Benjamin, Walter  26, 28

Bisson, Thomas  31, 32n32, 38, 39n51, 233n11 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate  85n5, 86n8, 126 Bonath, Gesa   110–11, 113n20 Borges, Jorge Luis  27 Borsa, Paolo  272n4, 129n30, n32, n33, 280, 281n37, n38 Bossy, Michel-André  5, 6, 7, 61–80, 191, 192 Brown-Grant, Rosalind  216 Brownlee, Kevin  125n11 Burns, E. Jane  12, 13, 137, 157n12, 241–253 Burr, Kristin  7, 84–94 Busby, Keith  85n5, 244n10, 257n6, 263, 267n34, 269n35 Chase, Carol J.  98 Chazan, Mireille  256n5, 269 Cheyette, Frederic  50 Classen, Albrecht  106, 202n7 Colombo Timelli, Maria  98, 100 Delogu, Daisy  221 DeVries, Kelly  96 Diehl, Patrick S.  184–85, 188n8 Doggett, Laine E.  12, 229–239 Doutrepont, Georges  95 Dronke, Peter  73n29 Evergates, Theodore  31, 40 Fenster, Thelma  224 Foerster, Wendelin  95 Foucault, Michel  5 Frappier, Jean  107, 109, 112–14, 119 Freud, Sigmund  1, 32, 45, 123 Civilization and its Discontents 1 Gasparri, Stefano  172n3, 278n27, n28, n29 Gaunt, Simon  166n4, 171n23, 172n27 Geertz, Clifford  26 Gramsci, Antonio  32 Greene, Virginie  7, 8, 9, 42n64, 123–38, 202n7 Gregory, Stewart  98, 110, 111, 112, 115n24, 233 Grimbert, Joan Tasker  7, 8, 95–106, 107, 108n6, 115 Haidu, Peter  5, 25–45, 233n11 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  59 Hult, David F.  7, 8, 107–121, 151n1 Hunt, Tony  107, 108n11, 109n11, 112, 115n24 Huot, Sylvia  151n1, 158, 159n15,

INDEX 295

160n19, 161n20, 257, 264n26, 267n32, n33 Jodogne, Omer  114–16 Jolles, André  6, 47, 50 Case  47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 59 as Intellectual Form (Forme savante) 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 as Simple Form (Forme simple) 49, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 Formes simples (Einfache Formen) 47 Kant, Immanuel  27 Kay, Sarah  26n5165, 35n39, 165, 166n4, 219, 220n13 Keller, Hans-Erich  123 Kelly, Douglas  85n5, 123, 125, 216n5, 223n22, 225n26, 233n11 Kibler, William W.  98 Kjaer, Jonna  106 Krueger, Roberta  222 Lacan, Jacques  25 , 27 Lacy, Norris J.  97, 123, 125, 233n11 Le Goff, Jacques  48n4,n6, 50n17, 51, 56n46 Lecoy, Félix  108–11, 243n7, 246n15 Luttrell, Claude  98n9, 233n10 Maddox, Donald  5, 6, 46–59,136, 215, 222 Maillard, Jean  175, 272 Marchello-Nizia, Christiane  110–11, 120 Margolis, Nadia  10, 11, 106n18, 213–225 Marx, Karl  26, 42 McMunn, Meradith T.  160n18 Meyer, Paul  257n10 O’Sullivan, Daniel E.  1–14, 183–199 Paris, Gaston  95, 123, 124 Paterson, Linda M.  166n6, 176n43, 233n11 Payen, Jean Charles  110, 112 Poe, Elizabeth W.  10, 11, 165–82, 273 Rabelais, François  125 Regalado, Nancy Freeman  12, 13, 151n2, 255–279 Rieger, Angelica  165n3, 166, 166n5,7,9, 175, 194n17 Roehmer, Eric  152n5 Sankovitch, Tilde  165, 166, 167, 169, 273 Schenck, William  10, 11, 201–12 Schnerb, Bertrand  6, 9, 100, 106 Shepard, Laurie  1–14, 271–83

Short, Ian  108, 109n11, 110 Smith, Robert Douglas  96 Speer, Mary B.  125n11 Spinoza, Baruch  27 Städtler, Katharina  166 Stendhal 138 Switten, Margaret  186 Szkilnik, Michelle  85–86, 96, 97, 100, 103, 104, 106 Taylor, Jane H.M.  95, 123, 125, 129n25 Thiry-Stassin, Martine  98, 101 Truong, Nicola  51 Uitti, Karl  123 Vale, M. G. A.  100 Vaughan, Richard  96 Vitz, Evelyn Birge  7, 9, 10, 151–61 Wallen, Martha  96 Walter, Philippe  110, 111 Whalen, Logan E.  7, 9, 139–49 White, Hayden  59 White, Sarah  285 Wind, Bartina  110, 119n28 Witt, Ronald  275, 276n19, 277n2 Zumthor, Paul  2 Essai de poétique médiévale 2 Johns Hopkins Roman de la Rose Website 159 Manuscripts London, British Library, Harley 497: Apocalypse  262, 263 London, British Library, Harley 978: 140–41 London. British Library, Royal 16 F ii:  6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 308: 262, 263, 264 269 Oxford, Bodleian Library, French d.16 (Sneyd 1):  110, 111n14, 114, 115n24, 116, 119n28, 120 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 856 (troubadour C):  191 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 2168:  141n Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 25524 (B1):  161 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. fr. 1104:  141n

Tabula Gratulatoria Josiah Blackmore Michel-André Bossy E. Jane Burns Kristin Burr Laine Doggett Eglal Doss-Quinby Virginie Greene Joan Tasker Grimbert Peter Haidu David F. Hult Sarah Kay David S. King Marilyn Lawrence Rupert T. Pickens Elizabeth W. Poe Vincent Pollina Peggy McCracken Donald Maddox Nadia Margolis Daniel E. O’Sullivan Nancy Freeman Regalado William Schenck Laurie Shepard Evelyn Birge Vitz Logan Whalen Sarah White Jocelyn Wogan-Browne

Already Published 1.  Postcolonial Fictions in the ‘Roman de Perceforest’: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, Sylvia Huot 2.  A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben Ramm 3.  Fashion in Medieval France, Sarah-Grace Heller 4.  Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Douglas Kelly 5.  Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, eds Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, E. Jane Burns 6.  The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred, Andrew Cowell 7.  Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology, Roy J. Pearcy 8.  Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci, Tony Hunt 9.  Philippe de Vigneulles and the Art of Prose Translation, Catherine M. Jones 10.  Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song, Helen Dell 11.  Chartier in Europe, eds Emma Cayley, Ashby Kinch 12.  Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography, Emma Campbell 13.  Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, eds Rebecca Dixon, Finn E. Sinclair with Adrian Armstrong, Sylvia Huot, Sarah Kay 14.  The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, Ruth Harvey, Linda Paterson 15.  Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between Ethics and Morality, Luke Sunderland 16.  The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents, ed. Cynthia J. Brown 17.  Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France, Katherine Kong 18.  The Old French Lays of Ignaure, Oiselet and Amours, eds Glyn S. Burgess, Leslie C. Brook 19.  Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken 20.  Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry, Julie Singer 21.  Partonopeus de Blois: Romance in the Making, Penny Eley 22.  Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264: The Manuscript as Monument, Mark Cruse 23.  The Conte du Graal Cycle: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance, Thomas Hinton 24.  Marie de France: A Critical Companion, Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken 25.  Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia, Rima Devereaux

26.  Authorship and First Person Allegory in Late Medieval France and England, Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath 27.  Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, ed. Philip John Usher, Isabelle Fernbach

Shaping Courtliness_Romance 03/09/2012 10:42 Page 1

Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O’Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Laurie Shepard, Sarah White.

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

SHAPING COURTLINESS IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE Essays in Honor of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

Edited by

Daniel E. O’Sullivan and Laurie Shepard

O’Sullivan and Shepard (eds)

DANIEL E. O’SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; Laurie Shepard is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

SHAPING COURTLINESS IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE

The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and a literary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval ‘courtliness’ is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the profound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field.

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