People and Texts: Relationships in Medieval Literature

People and Texts Relationships in Medieval Literature

COSTERUS NEW SERIES 166 Series Editors: C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen and Erik Kooper

People and Texts Relationships in Medieval Literature Studies presented to Erik Kooper

Edited by

Thea Summerfield and Keith Busby

Amsterdam-New York, NY 2007

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2145-7 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in the Netherlands

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

v

Abbreviations

vii

Illustrations

viii

Preface

ix

Bart Besamusca The Human Condition, Friendship and Love: The Epic of Gilgamesh and Medieval Arthurian Romance

1

Frank Brandsma Kin: Hector and Lancelot in Part 3 of the Prose Lancelot

17

Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr. The Gesta Herewardi: Transforming an Anglo-Saxon into an Englishman

29

Keith Busby Erec, le Fiz Lac (British Libary, Harley 4971)

43

D.J. Curnow and Ad Putter Textual and Familial Relationships: The Place of the Michigan Fragment in the Evolution of Sir Eglamour

51

Frans N.M. Diekstra Robert de Sorbon on Men, Women and Marriage. The Testimony of his De Matrimonio and Other Works

67

vi Juliette Dor Caroline Spurgeon and her Relationship to Chaucer. The Text of her Viva Presentation at the Sorbonne

87

Karen Hodder and John Scattergood Wynnere and Wastoure 407-414 and Le Roman de la Rose 8813-8854

99

Geert van Iersel The Twenty-Five Ploughs of Sir John: The Tale of Gamelyn and The Implications of Acreage

111

Douglas Kelly The Trojans in the Writings of Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure

123

Edward Donald Kennedy Gawain’s Family and Friends: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Its Allusions to French Prose Romances

143

Jane Roberts A Lancashire Lease

161

Elsa Strietman All human life is here: Relationships in Het Spel van Sinnen van Lazarus Doot

175

Thea Summerfield Teaching a Young King about History. William Stewart’s Metrical Chronicle and King James V of Scotland

187

Select Bibliography of the Writings of Erik Kooper

199

ABBREVIATIONS

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

DOST

Dictionary of the Scots Language

EETS

Early English Text Society

LALME

A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English

MED

The Middle English Dictionary

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (on line) http://www.oxforddnb.com

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

SATF

Société des Anciens Textes Français

STC

Short Title Catalogue

ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate 1:

London, British Library, Additional Charter 17692, Lease of John of Langton to Thurstan of Atherton, Lancashire. Reproduced with the kind permission of the British Library

Cover Illustration: Erik.

Painting by Wil Kooper-Stoel; Photograph of painting by Jasper Kooper.

Photograph of Erik Kooper by Wil Kooper-Stoel.

PREFACE THEA SUMMERFIELD KEITH BUSBY Two years ago “there came to our minds a most splendid idea”: to present Erik Kooper on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday with a volume of articles written by an international assembly of friends, colleagues, and students, some belonging to all three categories at the same time. We chose the subject of textual and personal relationships for the volume as it reflects more than any other both Erik’s research and his personality. Having first worked as a teacher of English in a grammar school for two years, Erik joined the English Department of the University of Utrecht on 1 January 1970 on a temporary contract, which, after a number of extensions, was converted to tenure in September 1975. Although officially his connection with the University ended on 31 January 2007, when Erik had reached the age of sixty-five and official retirement age, it is unlikely, and indeed hard to imagine, that his links with the University of Utrecht and especially the English Department and Department of Medieval Studies will be severed abruptly at that date. He has for decades, if he will pardon the expression, been the glue which has held us all together. In the course of his working life Erik has played a leading role in many committees and societies, for example, in the English Department, the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies (UCMS), the University Council, the Medieval Chronicle Society, the ‘Harting Committee of the Dutch Universities for Dutch Students of English Abroad’ and the International Courtly Literary Society (International Vice-President from 1995-2001, President from 2001-2004). Erik has always been an indefatigable promoter of relationships between students in Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, between the

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Preface

various English departments in the Netherlands and Belgium, and between researchers from England, Eastern Europe, the United States and the Netherlands. Numerous students have been stimulated by him to spend a year in Great Britain or Ireland on the Harting Exchange Programme, and have come back to Utrecht, full of their new experiences and learning, and speaking a startlingly authentic English with the accent of the region of their year abroad. Dutch and Belgian colleagues involved in teaching Old and Middle English met, at Erik’s instigation, once a year for nearly three decades to exchange news and ideas, and listen to papers. Many famous guest speakers from outside Belgium or the Netherlands made their appearance at these symposia, staying, as often as not, as houseguests with Erik and his wife Wil. For many post-graduates these symposia were the platform for a first paper. Erik Kooper’s personal kindness towards colleagues and students is a measure of the man. From welcoming a new colleague into his house for the first few nights in a strange land through to guiding his students through to their dissertation defence, all of Erik’s acts are those of someone who does as he would be done by. His understanding of the challenges faced by others is exemplary and provides a model we could do worse than emulate. His friendship is something we treasure and which we acknowledge here in this collection of essays. The 5th International Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, which Erik co-organized with one of this volume’s editors in the summer of 1986, has become legendary in the annals of the Society. Erik’s domestic announcements during dinner, the swans of bucolic Dalfsen, the late-night bar, not to mention the weddingcake with which he surprised his co-organizer and the latter’s wife, are all still topics of reminiscence whenever attendees meet. The three international gatherings of the Chronicle Conferences, organised by Erik in Driebergen and Doorn (both near Utrecht) in 1996, 1999 and 2002 have similarly acquired legendary status for their innovative content and comradely atmosphere. These conferences saw the appearance of many scholars from Eastern Europe for whom Erik had managed to find subsidies that enabled them to attend a conference in Western Europe. For many this was a new experience, especially in 1996. Major problems with visa and funding had to be

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overcome, but that never deterred Erik. His contacts with Bulgaria have since taken him to Sofia on numerous occasions. As the bibliography shows, Erik’s research interests range widely and include romances, saints’ lives, genealogical rolls, heraldry, and chronicles. His editions of English-language volumes on Dutch literature helped to make medieval Dutch literature better known outside the Low Countries. His text editions for TEAMS will also serve many scholars and students well in the future. However, a substratum of one particular area of interest may be discerned: relationships, not only between texts, but also between people, including matters such as love and marriage (the topic of his doctoral dissertation), friendship, conceptions and pregnancies, incest and bastardy. It is for this reason that we have chosen the theme of relationships as the leitmotiv for this volume. The editors have incurred a number of debts. They should like to thank Geert van Iersel for help in compiling the bibliography, Marieke Schilling at the Rodopi offices for assistance in getting the book through the press, Dick Summerfield for help with word processing problems, and Wil Kooper-Stoel for making available a photograph of her painting of Erik in repose, and of Erik in front of that painting. November 2006.

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THE HUMAN CONDITION, FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE: THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH AND MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN ROMANCE BART BESAMUSCA Introduction More than two millennia separate the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Arthurian romances from “He who saw the Deep”, the Standard Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, supposedly edited by a certain Sînliqe-unninni – which means “O Moon God, Accept my Prayer”– around 1100 BC. It will not come as a surprise, therefore, that an Arthurian scholar who reads the Babylonian verse text, albeit in modern translations, is struck by its strangeness. However, I do not consider the epic just strange. In a number of ways “He who saw the Deep” – a title taken from the text’s first line – is also curiously familiar to a reader of medieval stories. For me the epic displays, in fact, an intriguing mixture of unknown and well-known literary characteristics. Consequently, what I intend to present in this essay is a reflection on “He who saw the Deep”, henceforth referred to as Gilgamesh, from the perspective of my own field: medieval (in particular: Middle Dutch) Arthurian literature.1 Gilgamesh has come down to us in more than seventy cuneiform tablets, copied by (apprentice) scribes in the service of Babylonian rulers.2 Whereas the oldest date from the seventh century BC, the last 1

This essay is the revised version of a paper presented at the workshop “A Confrontation with Gilgamesh”, Groningen, November 5-7, 2003. I would like to thank Frank Brandsma for his comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2 Translations used are The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian, trans. and introd. Andrew George, London, 1999 and Het epos van Gilgameš, zoals het rond 2000 v.C. ontstond als cyclus van afzonderlijke verhalen in het Sumerisch, vanaf 1800 v.C. samengevoegd werd tot een eenheidswerk in het Akkadisch, vanaf 1500 v.C. tot ver buiten Mesopotamië bekend werd, en ten slotte rond 1100 v.C. zijn laatste vorm vond als het eerste grote meesterwerk uit de wereldliteratuur, trans. Herman Vanstiphout, 2nd ed., Nijmegen, 2002. All quotations in this article are taken from George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and

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tablet discovered to date was written around 130 BC. The surviving tablets make it possible to reconstruct the epic to a large extent; however, about 575 lines of the total of c. 3000 lines are still completely missing. In accordance with Babylonian tradition the text is divided into sections, called tablets, since each section contains the lines which were written down on a single clay tablet. Gilgamesh consists of eleven sections. In Tablet I, the gods create the wild man Enkidu, in order to challenge King Gilgamesh, who is tyrannizing the people of Uruk. The prostitute Shamhat uses her skills to lure Enkidu away from his animal companions and proposes to take him to Uruk. In Tablet II, Enkidu enters the city and fights with Gilgamesh. They become friends after Enkidu’s recognition of Gilgamesh’s superiority. Then, searching for fame, Gilgamesh expresses the wish to travel to the Forest of Cedar, in spite of Enkidu’s warnings. In Tablet III, the heroes prepare for their great journey, which takes place in Tablet IV. Along the way, Gilgamesh is haunted by nightmares, which are explained favourably by Enkidu. In Tablet V, the heroes, assisted by the Sun God Shamash, kill the ogre Humbaba, the guardian of the Forest of Cedar, and cut down cedar in the sacred groves. In Tablet VI, the pair have returned to Uruk, where Gilgamesh’s beauty arouses the desire of the goddess Ishtar. When the king scornfully rejects her, the enraged goddess tries to kill him by sending the terrifying Bull of Heaven to Uruk. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu discover the beast’s weak spot and slay it. In Tablet VII, Enkidu has a dream in which the gods decide he has to die because he and Gilgamesh killed Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Enkidu laments his fate, describes his dream to Gilgamesh, falls ill and dies. In Tablet VIII, Gilgamesh arranges Enkidu’s splendid funeral. In Tablet IX, Gilgamesh, mourning for Enkidu, refuses to accept his own mortality. He leaves his town in search of the immortal Uta-napishti and reaches the mountains at the end of the world, where he finds the Path of the Sun. Racing against time, the hero takes the path under the mountains. In Tablet X, Gilgamesh meets Uti-napishti’s ferryman, Ur-shanabi. With his aid the hero crosses the Waters of Death and makes himself known to Uti-napishti, were checked against Vanstiphout, Het epos van Gilgameš. Words in square brackets have been restored in passages where a tablet is broken. Italics indicate restorations that are uncertain. References are by tablet and line-number.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

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who stresses the inevitability of death. In Tablet XI, Gilgamesh learns from Uti-napishti that he survived the Deluge and was granted immortality by the gods as a result. When Gilgamesh fails to pass Utinaptishti’s test to go without sleep for a week, he realizes that he has no chance of beating death. Following Uti-napishti’s instructions, the hero dives to the sea-bed where he retrieves a plant that can rejuvenate human beings. Escorted by the ferryman, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk. Along the way a snake steals the plant. Gilgamesh, realizing that he will not be able to rediscover the spot where he dived, finally accepts his mortality. Arriving in Uruk, he proudly shows Ur-shanabi the city walls. One of Gilgamesh’s many attractions is the variety of its themes.3 The epic deals, above all, with a man’s fear of death. It shows in a most impressive way a hero who grows wise. Moreover, the text examines the duties of kingship, a man’s desire for fame, his responsibility to his family, the tension between nurture and nature, the demands of love, and, finally, the beauty of friendship. It is this theme in particular that inspired me to contribute an essay on Gilgamesh to Erik Kooper’s festschrift, as I greatly admire his ability to form close friendships with colleagues from all over the world. In the comparison of Gilgamesh with medieval Arthurian romances, I will frequently distinguish verse texts from prose works. It is useful to realize that we are dealing with two distinct (although not mutually exclusive) traditions. As Norris Lacy has noted, “verse compositions, which tend to be shorter, are generally episodic texts that deal with a limited time span and concentrate on the adventures of a single knight or of two, the second one often Gawain, a popular figure who may be the hero or a foil for another character. Prose romances, on the other hand, tend to treat an extended period, often a full lifetime, multiple generations, or even, as parts of cycles, universal history.”4

3

Cf. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, xiii. Norris J. Lacy, “The Evolution and Legacy of French Prose Romance”, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger, Cambridge, 2000, 167-82, here 168.

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Narrative voice In the Arthurian verse romances the story is generally told by a very obtrusive authorial first-person narrator, who, for instance, addresses his audience, announces events, comments on the characters’ actions and stresses the reliability of his narration.5 A fine example of this kind of narratorial intervention is provided by the Middle Dutch romance Wrake van Ragisel, written in the first decades of the thirteenth century. With respect to a woman’s beauty, the narrator remarks: Al lagic siec tote op die doet War dat sulke jonvrouwe quame Ende mi in haren arme name Ic worder algader sonder (Even if I was mortally ill, if a damsel like that were to come to me and take me in her arms, I would be instantly restored to health.)6

In the Arthurian prose romances, on the other hand, interventions by the first-person narrator are extremely rare.7 The story is presented by an impersonal narrator, referred to as “li contes” (the tale) in Old French and “daventure” (the tale) in Middle Dutch. In other words, we are to believe that the story tells itself. In the Old French Prose Lancelot, this suggestion results from the claim that the romance is based directly on recorded accounts of eye-witnesses. The oral reports of Arthur’s knights, who have sworn to give a full and true account of their adventures on their return to court, are recorded by the king’s clerks.8 As the romance pretends to be just a faithful French translation of the book once compiled by Arthur’s scribes, the first5

Cf. for instance, Roberta L. Krueger, “The Author’s Voice: Narrators, Audiences and the Problem of Interpretation”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, Keith Busby, 2 Vols, Amsterdam, 1987, Vol. I, 115-40. 6 Die Wrake van Ragisel. Onderzoekingen over de Middelnederlandse bewerkingen van de Vengeance Raguidel, gevolgd door een uitgave van de Wrake-teksten, ed. W.P. Gerritsen, 2 Vols, Assen, 1963, fragment Ab, lines 584-87. 7 Cf. Emmanuèle Baumgartner, “Les techniques narratives dans le roman en prose”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Lacy et al., Vol. I, 167-90. 8 Cf. Frank Brandsma, “The Eyewitness Narrator in Vernacular Prose Chronicles and Prose Romances”, in Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Norris J. Lacy, New York, 1996, 57-69, esp. 64-66.

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person narrator is necessarily absent from the text. Otherwise, readers might suspect him of manipulating the reports delivered by the knights. In Gilgamesh the events are also presented by a narrator who hides behind the story. There are no instances of authorial commentary, like interpretations, judgements or generalizations. We are dealing with an omniscient narration, characterized by dialogues and descriptions. This way of telling the story suits the prologue, probably added to the Babylonian epic by Sîn-liqe-unninni.9 Surprisingly, it is stated there that we are reading what the hero himself has written down. According to Tablet I, 10, Gilgamesh “set all his labours on a tablet of stone”. The prologue concludes with an invitation to read this tablet: [See] the tablet-box of cedar, [release] its clasp of bronze! [Lift] the lid of its secret, [pick] up the tablet of lapis lazuli and read out the travails of Gilgamesh, all that he went through. (I, 24-8)

It is fascinating to observe that long before Arthurian romances were written the eyewitness claim (in Sîn-liqe-unninni’s prologue) and a detached authorial voice (in the narration) were combined already. Chronology The fragmentary state of Gilgamesh is an obvious impediment to the study of the story’s chronology. Enough lines survive, however, to conclude that it is impossible to project the epic’s events on to an exact timetable. There are, of course, indications of time. In Tablet I, we read, for example, that it took the hunter and the prostitute Shamhat three days to find Enkidu (I, 169). When Uta-napishti explains to Gilgamesh how he survived the Deluge, in Tablet XI, he tells the hero that the boat’s hull was set in position by the fifth day (XI, 57), and that the oiling of the vessel was done in one day (XI, 7677). However, these references to time are too sparse to provide Gilgamesh with a well-defined chronological framework. In the Arthurian prose romances, indications of time abound. Moreover, in a text like the Prose Lancelot these references are part of 9

Vanstiphout, Het Epos van Gilgameš, 51.

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a consistent chronology.10 This literary feature contributes, in addition to the suggestion that the romance is based on the oral reports of Arthur’s knights, to the presentation of the text as a reliable chronicle of Arthur’s reign. In Gilgamesh the eyewitness claim is not supported by exact indications of time. Its heroes, like the Arthurian knights in most verse romances, travel and fight in a world which lacks a precise chronology.11 A peculiar feature of Gilgamesh is the verbal repetition of certain indications of time. There is a clear preference, for example, for a fixed expression to indicate a long period. When the prostitute seduces the wild man, they make love at great length: “For six days and seven nights / Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat” (I, 193-94). After the Deluge has flattened the land for six days and seven nights (XI, 128), Uta-napishti’s boat is held by Mount Nimush for the same period of time (XI, 141-46). Finally, Gilgamesh has to go without sleep for some time to pass a test: “For six days and seven nights, come, do without slumber!” (XI, 209). Even more remarkable in this regard is the description of the journey to the Forest of Cedar. As indicated by the opening lines of Tablet IV, Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel very fast: [At twenty] leagues they broke bread, [at] thirty leagues they pitched camp: [fifty] leagues they travelled in the course of a day, By the third day [a march] of a month and a half; nearer they drew to Mount Lebanon. (IV, 1-4)

As it takes them only three days to cover a distance for which normally a month and a half is needed, their speed is indeed impressive. Their achievement is stressed by verbal repetition: no less than four times (IV, 34-38, 79-82, 120-123, 163-165) the lines just quoted are repeated. This kind of exuberant repetition is lacking in Arthurian romance. It is tempting to contribute the difference to the original manner of composition, by assuming that Gilgamesh must be firmly rooted in the oral tradition. However, as noted above, the epic 10

Ferdinand Lot, Etude sur le Lancelot en prose, Paris, 1954, 29-62. Marie-Luce Chênerie, Le chevalier errant dans les romans arthuriens en vers des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Genèva, 1986, 243-60.

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is the product of the scribal schools.12 Like the Arthurian romances, Gilgamesh is a written composition. Setting In the Arthurian romances a clear contrast between two (types of) locations is discernible. The Arthurian court serves as the centre of the world of Arthur’s knights, but their adventures take place elsewhere. Whereas Arthurian texts often begin and end with scenes at court, it does not provide the locus of the hero’s action. His development, both as a person and as a knight, must take place in the world outside Arthur’s court.13 This contrast between two settings is distinguishable in Gilgamesh too, where the city of Uruk functions as the centre of the narrative. Tablet I of the Babylonian epic tells us that Gilgamesh tyrannizes Uruk’s inhabitants, for example by exercising the droit de seigneur at weddings. Reacting to the people’s complaints, the gods create the wild man Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s counterpart. The opposition between the two men is reflected in the setting: the city of Uruk as opposed to the wilderness in which Enkidu is brought up. These loci recall the setting at the beginning of Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. The young Perceval lives in the “gaste forest”, the Waste Forest.14 Like Enkidu’s wilderness, Perceval’s forest possesses a positive value (purity), in contrast to Uruk (due to Gilgamesh’s conduct) and Arthur’s court (due to the decline of knighthood). Like the adventures of many knights in Arthurian romances, Gilgamesh’s heroic deeds are often associated with the world outside the narrative’s centre, in particular the forest.15 A fine example of this narrative feature is offered by Gilgamesh’s fight against the ogre Humbaba. This combat takes place in the Forest of Cedar (Tablet V). However, the tale of Tablet VI shows that in Gilgamesh the narrative’s centre, too, may serve as the place of the hero’s adventure. 12

Cf. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, xvi-xxx. Norris J. Lacy, “The Typology of Arthurian Romance”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Lacy et al., Vol. I, 33-56, here 38-42. 14 Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. Keith Busby, Tübingen, 1993, line 75. 15 Cf. Norris J. Lacy, “The Typology of Arthurian Romance”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Lacy et al., Vol. I, 43; Keith Busby, “The Characters and the Setting”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Lacy et al., Vol. I, 57-89, here 8485. 13

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After all, it is at Uruk that Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven when it is about to destroy the city. An intriguing parallel between Gilgamesh and many Arthurian romances with regard to the setting concerns the transition between two places. On his quest, the hero can frequently only enter an other world by an extraordinary and difficult crossing. A famous example is described by Chrétien de Troyes in his Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charrette. In order to reach the nearly inaccessible land of Gorre, the otherworld kingdom where the abducted Queen Guinevere is staying, Lancelot has to cross a bridge made from a sword as long as two lances.16 This type of crossing is found in Gilgamesh too. In Tablet IX, for example, we read that the hero is searching the survivor of the Deluge, Uta-napishti, in order to gain immortality. At the end of the world he finds the Twin Peaks, where scorpion-men guard the sun at sunrise and sunset. He is allowed to follow the extremely dangerous path under the mountains: For twelve double-hours its interior [extends,] the darkness is dense, and [light is] there none. (IX, 82-83)

Just in time he reaches the end of the tunnel, finding himself in the garden of the gods. Gilgamesh’s journey recalls an episode in the Middle Dutch romance Walewein, written around the middle of the thirteenth century by the Flemish poets Penninc and Pieter Vostaert. At the beginning of the romance, the hero leaves Arthur’s court after having promised the king to bring him the chess set that had come floating into the castle only to disappear again shortly after. When an extremely high mountain blocks its way, the magical object flies into an opening which suddenly appears. It closes behind Walewein when the knight has entered. Searching for a way out, he wanders about in the dark tunnel for a long time, and has to fight four baby dragons as

16

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot or The Knight of the Cart (Le Chevalier de la Charrete), ed. and trans. William W. Kibler, New York, 1984, lines 3020-31.

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well as their mother. After terrible battles he kills the beasts, discovers an exit in the mountain and reaches the land of King Wonder.17 The parallels between the two journeys are obvious. Both heroes come across a seemingly insurpassable mountain, have to find their way through a dangerous tunnel and reach a wonderful land. These correspondences point to a strong, longlasting and widespread narrative tradition, which describes the Other World as separated from the ‘real’ world by a terrifying crossing.18 Characters One of the most noticeable features of Arthurian romances concerns the dragons, giants, dwarves and other disfigured creatures the heroes meet on their quests. Usually these characters are a threat to the knights, as is the case with two giants in Ferguut, the thirteenthcentury Middle Dutch adaptation of Guillaume le Clerc’s Old French romance Fergus. The giantess Pantasale is eighteen feet tall and extremely ugly: her body is as black as a jackdaw’s, her eyebrows hang down half a foot below her eyes, she has the ears of a hound and teeth like a bear (3338-55).19 After his victory over this frightful woman and her pet, a dragon (3416-69), Ferguut meets her husband Lokefeer, who is twenty-two feet tall and carries an oak tree by way of weapon (3514-22). The hero kills this giant as well. In Gilgamesh we encounter an ogre resembling both Pantasale and Lokefeer. In Tablet V, Gilgamesh and Enkidu enter the Forest of Cedar, looking for its guardian. Although Humbaba is not described in detail, we may safely assume that his appearance is terrifying. According to Enkidu, in Tablet II, Humbaba’s “voice is the Deluge,/ his speech is fire, and his breath is death!” (II, Y 110-11). Moreover, Gilgamesh’s remark that “Humbaba’s features have changed” (V, 96) seems to refer to the monster’s face as a jumble of twists.20 Another parallel between Humbaba and Ferguut’s giants has to do with their 17 Dutch Romances, Volume I: Roman van Walewein, eds David F. Johnson and Geert H.M. Claassens, Cambridge, 2000, lines 244-635. 18 See, for instance, J.H. Winkelman, “Gecontamineerde vertelstructuren in de Middelnederlandse Roman van Walewein”, Spiegel der Letteren, XXXV (1993), 10928. 19 Dutch Romances, Volume II: Ferguut, eds David F. Johnson and Geert H.M. Claassens, Cambridge, 2000. References are by line number. 20 Vanstiphout, Het Epos van Gilgameš, note to line 96.

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foul language. Like Pantasale, who calls Ferguut “Sir Gallows-bird” (3374), Humbaba welcomes Enkidu with offensive words: Come, Enkidu, you spawn of a fish, who knew no father, hatchling of terrapin and turtle, who sucked no mother’s milk. (V, 87-88)

For an Arthurian reader it is unusual to find that Humbaba has to confront two heroes at the same time. In the medieval texts, and in the verse romances in particular, the main character is in most cases a single knight, whose adventures are related as a sequence of events.21 In this respect, Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality as described in Tablets IX-XI resembles a typical Arthurian story to a much larger extent than Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s journey to the Forest of Cedar (Tablets IV-V) or their joint fight against the Bull of Heaven (Tablet VI). This is not to say that Arthurian romances always centre on a single character. A number of verse romances and all the prose romances offer the adventures of two or more knights.22 However, unlike Gilgamesh and Enkidu, these knights seldom act together, except in times of war. Rather, the stories of these characters are told successively, as we are dealing with parallel quests. This type of narration invites, of course, comparison of the conduct and the chivalrous deeds of the different knights, in particular when one after another is confronted by the same opponent or has to pass the same test. As Gilgamesh and Enkidu nearly always act together, they agree with one another on almost everything. Only in Tablet II may we observe a difference between the two heroes. Whereas Gilgamesh is eager to enter the Forest of Cedar, Enkidu repeatedly warns him against the dangers of the place and of Humbaba. He states: That is a journey [which must not be made,] [that is a man who must not be looked on.] (II, 218-19)

21 Cf. Norris J. Lacy, “The Typology of Arthurian Romance”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Lacy et al., Vol. I, 35. 22 Ibid., Vol. I, 35-36.

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The contrast between Gilgamesh’s readiness for the adventure and Enkidu’s prudent reluctance recalls the relation between two wellknown medieval heroes who do not belong to the Arthurian tradition. After all, it is with good reason that in the famous opening line of laisse 87 of the Chanson the Roland Charlemagne’s nephew Rolant is characterized as “proz”, brave, and his friend Oliver as “sage”, wise.23 The words used to describe the Gilgamesh-Enkidu companionship suggest a great deal of intimacy. In Tablet I, Gilgamesh tells his mother about a dream in which a star fell on the city of Uruk. Whereas the inhabitants of the city kissed it (I, 255), Gilgamesh showed even more affection: “Like a wife [I loved it,] caressed and embraced it” (I, 256). In a second dream the hero treated an axe in the same way (I, 284). According to his mother Ninsun, “well versed in everything” (I, 259), both the star and the axe herald the arrival of a mighty friend. She announces how Gilgamesh will show Enkidu his affection: “Like a wife you’ll love him, caress and embrace him” (I, 271; also I, 289). In Tablet III, the heroes go to Ninsus’s palace, “taking each other hand in hand” (III, 19). Some scholars have suggested that the lines just quoted suggest a homosexual bond between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.24 As a reader of medieval literature, where friends often show a remarkable deal of intimacy, I am not convinced by this claim. At the beginning of Ferguut, for example, Gawein and Ywein behave as follows: Mijn her Gawein nam bider hant Sinen geselle, die hi noit vant, Mijn her Yweine, bloede no loes, Sint dat hine eerstwerf coes. Twee gesellen noit eer Ne minden mallijc andren meer; Elc coes andren van hen beden, Hem .ij. conste niemen versceden.

23

Cf. Hans van Dijk, “De vriendschap van Roelant en Olivier”, in Hoort wonder! Opstellen voor W.P. Gerritsen bij zijn emeritaat, eds Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma, Dieuwke van der Poel, Hilversum, 2000, 51-55. Also, Paul Wackers, “De ideale man: het verschil zit in de details”, in Karolus Rex. Studies over de middeleeuwse verhaaltraditie rond Karel de Grote, eds Bart Besamusca and Jaap Tigelaar, Hilversum, 2000, 51-62. 24 Cf. Vanstiphout, Het Epos van Gilgameš, note to line 256.

12

Bart Besamusca Si saten neder ende spraken Beide gader van menegen saken Die hen beiden sach gescien.25 (Sir Gawein took his companion, Sir Ywein, by the hand, whom he had never found to be cowardly or unfaithful since he took him as his companion. No two companions have ever loved one another more. Each of them had chosen the other; no one could come between them. They sat down and talked together of many things that both of them had witnessed.)

As Roel Zemel has noted, the Middle Dutch poet did not intend to give an ironic description of a homosexual couple here.26 In Ferguut, the companionship of Gawein and Ywein is expressed without an ulterior motive. The Middle Dutch poet evokes intimacy in order to underline that the two knights are sworn friends, like Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Babylonian epic. Narrative structure The largest surprise Gilgamesh has in store for an Arthurian scholar doubtless concerns the general structure of the plot. Readers of the Babylonian epic familiar with Arthurian literature will be forcibly reminded of the two-part structure found, for example, in Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide and Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion. This type of narrative structure has been researched exhaustively in recent years.27 In both verse romances the action begins at Arthur’s court.28 In the first part of the story a knight leaves court in reaction to a shameful deed: Erec wants to take revenge on Yder for a grave offence done to Guinevere and himself, Yvain sets out to avenge the defeat of his 25

Ferguut, eds Johnson and Claassens, 21-31. R. M. Th. Zemel, Op zoek naar Galiene. Over de Oudfranse Fergus en de Middelnederlandse Ferguut, Amsterdam, 1991, 312-14. 27 See, for example, Walter Haug, Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter. Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt, 1985, 91-106; also Elisabeth Schmid, “Weg mit dem Doppelweg. Wider eine Selbstverständlichkeit der germanistischen Artusforschung”, in Erzählstrukturen der Artusliteratur. Forschungsgeschichte und neue Ansätze, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel, unter Mitwirkung von Peter Ihring, Tübingen, 1999, 69-85. 28 Cf. Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes édités d’après la copie de Guiot (Bibl. nat., fr. 794), I, Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques, rpt. Paris, 1990, and ibid., IV, Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), ed. Mario Roques, rpt. Paris, 1975. 26

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nephew Calogrenant at the hands of Esclados, the knight of the spring. During this first quest, both knights are victorious and fall in love with a woman, that is to say, Enide, the daughter of a vavasour (in Erec’s case), and Esclados’s widow Laudine. In both romances a wedding takes place, an event which might be expected to herald the story’s logical conclusion. However, contrary to expectations, there is a resumption of the action in the story, as the hero unexpectedly experiences an existential crisis. Erec is reproached for neglecting his chivalric duties in favour of conjugal felicity. Yvain does the opposite. Due to his total absorption in feats of arms, he loses Laudine’s love as he misses the deadline for his return set by her. In both romances, this crisis provokes a new quest. In the company of Enide, Erec leaves his court to face adventures (involving robber knights, an amorous count, the dwarf king Guivret, two giants, the count of Limors and the strong knight Maboagrain). This second quest provides proof of Erec’s ability to tend to his chivalric duties while remaining Enide’s devoted lover. Yvain’s second quest starts after a period of madness, caused by Laudine’s rejection. His prowess is tested in a number of adventures, all concerning the well-being of others and necessary to correct his failure. His opponents are a ravaging count, a dragon, the giant Harpin de la Montagne, three knights, two demon’s sons, and Gauvain. In both romances the hero’s second quest is much more taxing than the first one. Both works eventually offer a solution for the conflict between love and chivalry. A similar bipartite structure is found in Gilgamesh.29 The action begins in Uruk. In the first part of the epic, the hero meets his counterpart Enkidu and leaves the town for the Forest of Cedar, where Humbaba is killed (Tablets I-V). Gilgamesh’s rejection of the love of the goddess Ishtar provokes the battle against the Bull of Heaven in Uruk (Tablet VI). The story seems to have reached its happy conclusion, but then, in Tablet VII, Enkidu dies, which leads to Gilgamesh’s existential crisis; he is confronted with his own mortality. After Enkidu’s funeral (Tablet VIII), Gilgamesh leaves Uruk for his second quest, which is considerably more demanding than his first one (Tablets IX-XI). In search of the survivor of the Deluge, he reaches the end of the world, where he passes the tunnel under the 29

Vanstiphout, Het Epos van Gilgameš, 21.

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mountains and meets an old goddess, who describes his state of deprivation: [why are your] cheeks [so hollow,] your face so sunken, [your mood so wretched,] your visage [so] wasted? [Why] in your heart [does sorrow reside,] and your face resemble one [come from afar?] [Why are] your features burnt [by frost and by sunshine,] [and why do] you wander the wild [in lion’s garb?] (X, 40-45)

With the help of the ferryman Ur-shanabi Gilgamesh crosses the Waters of Death, meets Uta-napishti and is faced with the inevitability of death. Returning to Uruk, he resigns to this aspect of the human condition. A remarkable difference between Chrétien’s romances and Gilgamesh concerns the cause of the existential crisis. Erec and Yvain have to reconcile love and chivalry as two crucial aspects of the human condition. In Gilgamesh, however, love does not play a prominent role and it is not valued positively. In Tablet II, sex is used by Shamhat to tame the wild man Enkidu. In Tablet VI, love causes the rage of Ishtar, who sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk. In Gilgamesh the hero does not have to cope with love and prowess, he has to learn that death is unavoidable. Conclusion By its very nature, this reflection on Gilgamesh from the perspective of an Arthurian reader is a limited one. I am, after all, not an Assyriologist. I think, nevertheless, that the comparison with medieval Arthurian romances can sharpen our awareness of a number of the epic’s literary features, such as its eyewitness claim and its bipartite structure. Other noteworthy characteristics include the verbal repetitions of indications of time, the different loci of the hero’s actions, the dangerous entrance to another world and the bond between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Most impressive is the epic’s central theme. As Andrew George remarks: “As a poem which explores the truth of the human condition the epic bears a message for future generations, then as now. Maturity is gained as much through failure

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as success. Life, of necessity, is hard, but one is the wiser for it.”30 For the previously uninformed reader, the universal nature of Gilgamesh’s existential crisis thus leads to a surprising observation: the threemillennia old text can still make a remarkably modern impression.

30

George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, xxxv.

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KIN: HECTOR AND LANCELOT IN PART 3 OF THE PROSE LANCELOT FRANK BRANDSMA Introduction The 2003 Coen brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an impressive comedy of the Depression in the Southern states of the USA. Three convicts (Pete, Delmar, and Ulysses Everett McGill) escape from a chain gang and end up at the house of Pete’s cousin, Washington Hogwallop, Wash for short. Deserted by his wife, Wash is reduced to eating his last horse, which he shares with the convicts, since Pete is kin. That night, the police come to the house. Everett realizes that Wash has betrayed them. Evidently kinship does not preclude a relative from turning you in for the bounty money. When the convicts have made a miraculous escape, Everett turns out to have stolen Wash’s gold watch, a wedding gift. Pete protests that it is not done to steal from kin. However, as Everett points out in a slightly absurd dialogue: Pete: […] You stole from my kin! Everett: Who was fixin’ to betray us. Pete: You did not know that at the time. Everett: So I borrowed it till I did know. Pete: That don’t make no sense! Everett: It’s a fool that looks for logic in the human heart.

It would be superfluous to describe the further adventures of the trio, however funny and bizarre, since what counts here is the concept of ‘kin’. Finding kin is an advantage, it changes the relationship between people, even when, as in this episode, the limits of the ties become all too clear. In medieval romance, the concept also plays an important role and has many different aspects. To give one brief example: when in the

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story of Culhwch and Olwen from the Mabinogion, Culhwch asks king Arthur to trim his hair, Arthur detects bonds of kinship between them and says “My heart grows tender towards thee: I know thou art sprung from my blood.”1 When it has become clear that Culhwch is Arthur’s cousin, the king’s attitude changes from cautious (Culhwch had to force Arthur’s doorkeeper more or less to let him in) to warm and generous. Discovering such a relationship is an important initial aspect of the kin motif. So when the film and its title sparked off an exploration of the way kinship is represented and valued in the prose Lancelot, it seemed a good idea to focus on this aspect of discovery. Related issues like the code of honour amongst kin that the film also refers to are also interesting but beyond the scope of this investigation. The final section of the prose Lancelot (Part 3, also known as ‘Suite de la Charrette’ plus ‘Préparation à la Queste’) offers promising terrain for the exploration, since in this part Lancelot discovers he has a half-brother, called Hector) des Mares. When the story begins, Hector has been around for some time in Arthur’s court, but his parentage has never been established. Hector is not known or labelled as ‘the son of … ’, although earlier in the cycle, in the Suite-Vulgate du Merlin, his conception was narrated and his future great deeds were foretold.2 However, this event lies far in the past of the narrative cycle; the reader is not reminded of it when Hector makes his appearance at Arthur’s court. In the first part of the Lancelot, Hector is generally associated and paired with Gauvain, as Elspeth Kennedy has shown.3 His adventures exemplify the struggle between love and chivalry. In the Mort le roi Artu, however, Hector clearly belongs to Lancelot’s clan, and takes sides against Gauvain and his knights in the ensuing conflict. This change of allegiance and Hector’s acceptance into the Lancelot clan are the result of the events in Part 3 of the Lancelot.

1

The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, Everyman Classics, London, 1989, 100. 2 The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances Edited from Manuscripts in the British Museum, H. Oskar Sommer, 7 Vols, Washington, 1908-1916, repr. New York, 1979, II, 401/10-406/32. Cf. also Lodewijk van Velthem’s Middle Dutch translation in Jacob van Maerlant, Merlijn, naar het eenig bekende Steinforter handschrift, ed. J. van Vloten, Leiden, 1880, lines 33167-570. 3 Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail. A Study of the Prose Lancelot, Oxford, 1986, 231-35.

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Status In the third part of the prose Lancelot, a long and twofold quest for Lancelot forms the setting for many adventures of a large number of knights, resulting in the most elaborate interlace structure of the whole prose trilogy.4 Up to twenty narrative threads are interwoven and Hector’s is one of the more important threads. Like his half-cousin Bohort, he experiences an important rise in chivalric status. At the end of the quest, King Baudemagus is asked by King Arthur to make a ranking of the knights. He puts it to the vote, saying to the knights: “Seingnor, je vos conmant sus voz sairemenz que vos nomez celui qui est li millor chevalier de vos toz.” Et il s’acordent a ce que Boorz est li mieldres chevaliers d’aux toz et le prannent por la bonne chevalerie qu’il avoit faite el Tertre Deveé, la ou il outra .XIIII. d’ax par prouesce d’armes. Aprés s’acordent a Hestor et puis a mon signor Gauvain et a Gaheriet et a Lyonnel et au roi Baudemagu. Aprés les noment touz an ordre, si conme il estoient tenuz a millors li uns et li autre. [“My lords, I order you on your oaths to name him who is the best knight of you all.” They agreed that Bors was the best knight of them all, choosing him because of the knightly deeds he had performed at the Forbidden Hill, where he had defeated fourteen of them. Afterwards they agreed on Hector, then Sir Gawain, then Gaheriet, Lionel, and King Bademagu. After that they named them all in order, as some were better than others.]5

Hector’s high status results from the successful encounters with other knights in Part 3. For example, he succeeds in defeating Gauvain

4

Carol Chase, “Multiple Quests and the Art of Interlacing in the 13th-Century Lancelot”, (Kentucky) Romance Quarterly, XXXIII (1986), 407-20; Frank Brandsma, “Hot pursuit? Interlace and the Suggestion of Spatial Proximity in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain and in the Old French Prose Lancelot”, Arthuriana, XIV (2004), 3-14. 5 Lancelot: Roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha, 9 Vols, Geneva, 1978-83, VI, C, 12; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 314/31-35. Cf. also Elizabeth Andersen, “Brothers and cousins in the German Prose Lancelot”, Forum for Modern Language Studies, XXVI (1990), 144-59, here 148. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, gen. ed. Norris J. Lacy, 5 Vols, New York, 1993-96, III, 280.

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incognito at the Sparrowhawk tournament.6 He is also one of the few knights to experience what Rutledge has called a ‘reserved’ adventure, even though this adventure is reserved for another knight (Lancelot).7 Nevertheless, the fact that they encounter this special adventure marks Gauvain and Hector with exceptional distinction. Hector is even considered special by an attacker who defeats him. The ‘bad guy’ Teriquam has already beaten and incarcerated many a Round Table knight, hanging their shields as trophies on a tree afterwards, but Hector really puts up a fight. Teriquam praises him and wants to reward Hector by not putting him behind bars but by keeping him as a captive on his word of honour. Hector refuses, however, preferring to share the dungeon with his companions.8 News for Lancelot Although Hector’s adventures are sometimes associated with Lancelot (as in the case of the ‘reserved’ adventure), the two knights do not meet until quite late in the second section of the Lancelot quest. By that time, Lancelot has become very eager to meet Hector.9 The cause of this eagerness lies in a special encounter during Lancelot’s adventures in the first part of the quest, where Lancelot meets Hector’s relatives. 6

Lancelot, ed. Micha, II, LXV, 17-23; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, IV, 337/41 - 339/17. 7 Amelia Ann Rutledge, Narrative Structures in the Old French Prose “Lancelot”, Diss. Yale, 1974, 131-34, 139-40 and 144-45. For the episode, see Lancelot, ed. Micha, II, LXV, 24-35; The Vulgate version, ed. Sommer, IV, 339/20-341/11. Gauvain and Hector come to a cemetery with a burning tomb. There also are twelve other tombs and over each of these a sword is erected. When they try to enter the churchyard, these swords beat them so severely that they have to flee. As an inscription tells them, only the sad queen’s son (that is, Lancelot) will be able to bring this adventure to a close. 8 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXVII, 2-6; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 89/13-91/20. For the importance of knights like Teriquam for the ranking of the knights, see Bernadette Smelik, “Uncourtly Knights and Humiliated Damsels in the Lancelot Proper”, Queeste, IV (1997), 16-26. 9 Hector’s absence from court at the intermediate stop of the quest at court, for instance, is Lancelot’s main reason for resuming the quest. The king urges the four knights (Lancelot, Gauvain, Gaheriet, Bohort) who have returned to court to go out again and seek the companions who have not come back. They agree to do this, but when Lancelot asks leave of the queen, he specifically mentions his nephew Lionel and Hector as objects of his quest. Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, LXXXV, 6; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 195/33-35.

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Lancelot has been misled and drugged into sleeping with Pelles’s daughter (who will later give birth to Galahad as a result) and has completely lost his senses since he feels he has betrayed his love for queen Guinevere.10 Distraught and lost in thought, Lancelot lets his horse find its own way. On approaching a castle, he fails to hear a knight challenging him and is pushed from his horse, falling into a small stream. The attacker, also known as the Knight of the Ford, makes off with Lancelot’s horse; as a result Lancelot is forced to spend the night under a bush. Here, however, his fate begins to turn again, because his unexpected presence at this location allows him to prevent the rape of a damsel who has earlier cured him and who has dedicated her virgin status to him.11 Encouraged by this turn for the better, Lancelot asks for directions to the castle where he lost his horse and is told that the knight who unhorsed him has held this fort for many years against all comers. Before he leaves to fight this knight, Lancelot is asked a surprising question by the lord of the castle: does he know a young knight of the Round Table called Hector des Mares?12 And is he a good knight? Lancelot answers: “Par Sainte Croiz,” fait Lanceloz, “je ne sai el monde chevalier de son aage que je doutasse tant com je feroie lui, s’il nos couvenoit aler dusqu’a outrance, car il est preuz et vistes et maniers et porroit soffrir merveille de travail, si com je cuit.” [“By the Holy Cross,” replied Lancelot, “I don’t know of any knight in the world his age whom I’d fear as much as him, if we had to fight to the death, because he’s bold, agile, and talented, and can endure a lot of pain.”]13

Lancelot’s host explains that Hector is such a good knight because King Ban of Benoic is his father. Lancelot first says that this information about Ban (Lancelot’s own father!) must be a lie, but the lord is able to back it up with the story of how Ban met the daughter 10 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXVIII, 43-LXXIX, 5; The Vulgate Sommer, V, 105/18-112/32. 11 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 6-14; The Vulgate Version, ed. 112/32-116/27. 12 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 17; The Vulgate Version, ed. 117/9-10. 13 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 17; The Vulgate Version, ed. 117/12-15; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 167.

Version, ed. Sommer, V, Sommer, V, Sommer, V,

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of the Duke of the Fens (‘Mares’) and lay with her, with Hector as the result.14 The Knight of the Ford sent Hector to King Arthur’s court and forbade him to make himself known to Lancelot. Lancelot’s first reaction is telling. The host finishes his ‘flashback’ by remarking that Lancelot has no reason to be ashamed of his brother. Lancelot certainly is not ashamed; on the contrary, he is overjoyed: “Si m’aïst Diex,” fait Lanceloz, “honte n’en ai je mie, ainz an sui liez et joianz, quant il est mes freres.” [“So help me God,” said Lancelot, “I’m not at all ashamed. Rather, I’m happy and delighted that he’s my brother.”]15

Lancelot does not yet dare to believe fully that Hector is his kin and adds that he is determined to find out the truth.16 And indeed, in what follows the information is corroborated by two independent persons: the Knight at the Ford as well as a key witness. When Lancelot encounters the knight at the ford, the latter at first is unwilling to accept that this knight in white armour, whom he had defeated so easily the day before, is really Lancelot; Lancelot has to let his lance convince him.17 The knight turns out to be Hector’s uncle and he immediately takes his guest to his sister, Hector’s mother. Weeping because she sees the image of King Ban in the son, she welcomes Lancelot and, with the same argument used earlier for Hector, tells him that he is, of course, a great knight, “for you’re the son of the best knight I ever saw in all my life, King Ban of Benoic.”18

14

Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 18-19; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 117/21-40. 15 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 19; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 117/40-41; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 168. 16 The word quant in the French text (which may also be translated as ‘if’) represents this uncertainty better than the translation. 17 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 20-22; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 118/3-119/19. 18 Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 168; cf. Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 23; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 119/28-30.

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Her eyewitness account convinces Lancelot that Hector is indeed his brother.19 Once more, he states that this news makes him very happy. As further evidence, she also shows Lancelot a ring that was given to her by King Ban and even tells him that she has encountered his mother, who recognized the ring since she herself wore its twin, and spoke with her about him. There is no sense of remorse or shame in her story. Rather, she expresses pride in the achievements of her son, and urges Lancelot to take good care of Hector. Lancelot declares he hopes to find his brother soon, and leaves.20 News for the Court When reporting his adventures on his return at court, Lancelot also describes how he discovered that Hector is his brother. The king expresses his joy at the news, and is as amazed as Lancelot that Hector has never mentioned this: “par foi vos me faites tout mervillier, qui dites que Hestor des Mares est vostres freres et si nel disoit mie; et neporquant je voldroie moult que ceste chose fust voire, car Hestor est .I. des millors chevaliers del monde: si en voldroit moult mielz la Table Reonde et plus an sera redoutee, quant ele sera garnie des .II. millors chevaliers del monde.” [“upon my word, you cause me to wonder when you say that Hector of the Fens is your brother, and he never told us. Yet I very much hope that this is true, for Hector is one of the best knights in the world: the Round Table would be much enhanced and much more redoubted when it is endowed with the two best knights in the world”].21

Arthur seems to believe that the news of the kinship between Lancelot and Hector reinforces the Round Table. Both were already members of the order, and the only thing that has changed is their relationship. They are no longer just companions, but also brothers. In view of the 19

Cf. Frank Brandsma, “The Eyewitness Narrator in Vernacular Prose Chronicles and Prose Romances”, in Text and Intertext in Arthurian Romance, ed. Norris J. Lacy, New York, 1996, 57-69. 20 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXIX, 23-26; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 119/31-120/34. 21 Lancelot, ed. Micha, IV, LXXXIV, 71; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 191/24-29; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 206.

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events in the Mort Artu, where kinship will prevail over friendship, this is an optimistic view. Yet Arthur’s remark is in line with the appreciation of kinship, which Lancelot also expresses. There is no vicarious shame about Ban’s adulterous affair or the lady’s status as unwed mother, just happiness about the finding of a (half-)brother. However, Arthur’s initial reaction, like Lancelot’s, is one of caution: the king expresses the hope that the news may be true. Meetings The resolution of this question thus becomes one of the suspense elements of the second part of the quest, as Hector has not yet returned from seeking Lancelot. Will Lancelot find his brother and will Hector confirm the kinship? The questions surface in several episodes, among them the episodes of the liberation of Teriquam’s prisoners, of the Tertre Deveé, and of the Tournament at Penigue. Immediately at the beginning of the second instalment of the quest the dungeons of two bad knights are emptied as Bohort defeats the giant Mauduit and Lancelot overcomes Teriquam. In exchange for a promise, a damsel takes Lancelot to Teriquam’s trophy tree.22 Although Hector is Teriquam’s prisoner, his shield is not with those on the tree. Lancelot therefore does not know that Hector is among the captives. Teriquam comes along, carrying a wounded knight on his horse. Putting his victim on the ground, he answers Lancelot’s challenge and is defeated. The meeting of Hector and Lancelot seems imminent now, but at this point the damsel calls upon Lancelot to follow her. His protests that he has to free the prisoners are countered by her remark that this may be done by the wounded knight, who turns out to be Gaheriet. Lancelot leaves and Gaheriet sets the captive knights free. He had been present at court when Lancelot reported his adventures and his discovery of Hector’s identity. When Gaheriet greets the prisoners in Lancelot’s name, he addresses Hector critically: “En non Deu, mes sire Hestor,” fait Gaheriez, “Lanceloz se plaint moult de vos, car vos saviez bien que vos estiez ses freres, ce dist, et repairiez souvant o lui a cort: si vos estez toz jorz einsi celez vers lui com s’il fust vostre anemis morteux. 22

Lancelot, ed. Micha, speaks of a ‘guerredon’ (IV, LXXXV, 35) demanded by the damsel, whereas The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer (V, 204/36-37) explains that she stipulates that he will have to follow her when she asks him to do so.

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Mais conment vos poez vos tant celer vers lui qui est la flor de chevalerie et li plus prodom del monde?” [“By God, Sir Hector,” said Gaheriet, “Lancelot was very upset at you, for you were well aware that you were his brother, he claimed, and often accompanied him to court, yet you always hid your true identity from him as if he were your mortal enemy. How could you keep from revealing your identity to him who is the flower of chivalry and the most worthy knight in the world?”]23

Lancelot had not had time to give Gaheriet any instructions about Hector; the casual remark is made spontaneously. Hector, however, is shocked. He flushes with shame and begins to argue that since Lancelot is so great, he dared not admit to the kinship, for fear that Lancelot might refuse to acknowledge him. Now that someone else has told Lancelot, Hector will inform him as soon as possible that he is indeed his brother. Lionel, Lancelot’s cousin, is very happy about this news, and also takes part in Gaheriet’s jest, stating that Hector has been a ‘mauvés cousin’, a bad cousin, to him as well.24 Hector may now rest assured that Lancelot is pleased with the fact that they are brothers, but it will be another eighteen months before they meet, during which time Lancelot is imprisoned by Morgan le Fay and Hector by Bohort at the Tertre Deveé. Once Lancelot has arrived at the Tertre and is recognized by Bohort, the adventure is over and the prisoners are released. When Lancelot has been disarmed and walks into the room where the other knights are assembled, he first embraces Gauvain and then runs to Hector, saying: “Frere, ne me conoissiez vos pas?” “Ha, sire,” fait Hestor, “vos estes mes sires et mes freres, mais certes je ne vos cuidoie jamais veoir, ainz avoie greingnor esperance de vostre mort que de vostre vie, por ce que si longuement vos avions quis sanz oïr nouveles de vos.” Assez s’antresjoïrent le dui frere…

23

Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, LXXXV, 51; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 209/22-26; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 215. 24 Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, LXXXV, 52-53; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 209/27-39; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 215.

26

Frank Brandsma [“Brother, don’t you recognize me?” “Ah, my lord,” said Hector, “you are my lord and my brother, but truly I never thought to see you; indeed I expected to find you dead rather than alive, because we had sought you so long without hearing any news of you.” The two brothers rejoiced greatly…]25

It is striking to see how quickly Hector now counts himself among Lancelot’s kindred. The two brothers discuss the possibility that the defeated knights might take offence because their cousin Bohort fought so many of his Round Table companions, but see no negative effects. Hector concludes: “nostre lignages en sera plus doutez touz les jors que nos vivrons mes” (because of this our line will be more greatly feared for as long as we live).26 The bond of the family connection and the physical strength of its members combined are greatly appreciated. With Bohort, Lionel and Hector, the Lancelot clan has become by far the strongest. It now consists of the indisputable champion Lancelot and the numbers 1 (Bohort), 2 (Hector) and 5 (Lionel) of Baudemagus’s ranking, mentioned above. And the stars of these knights continue to rise. Although in the Queste del Saint Graal, which is soon to start, Lionel and Hector will find themselves among the worldly knights, together with the members of the Gauvain clan, Hector is given a role as Perceval’s tutor at the end of the Lancelot. When, with Perceval, he is healed by the Grail, Hector explains to his young companion that the Grail is the dish of the Last Supper, brought to Logres by Joseph of Arimathea. It is as if Hector speaks with the narrator’s voice, giving an explanation to both Perceval and the audience.27

25

Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, XCI, 25. The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 242, 2628 has a variant reading here (and gives the same text as Lancelot, ed. Micha, in note 3 on p. 242), in which Hector briefly explains to Lancelot that he dared not inform him of their relationship earlier; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 236. 26 Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, XCI, 26; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 236; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 242, has a variant reading, which does not include the discussion between Lancelot and Hector. 27 For this intermingling of voices, cf. Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, “Between Audience and Source: the First Person Narrator in the Middle Dutch Lanceloet”, in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, eds K. Busby and N.J. Lacy, Amsterdam, 1994, 15-29, here 22-25.

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Only once does Hector have a reason to complain about the way Lancelot expresses his appreciation of their kinship. During the tournament of Penigue, Lancelot and Mordred find themselves in one group, whereas Gauvain, Keu, Lionel, Bohort, and Hector are the champions of the other party. Lancelot’s deeds lead Bohort to the conclusion that their opponent may well be their famous cousin – although he harbours some doubts when the knight is thrown from his horse by three adversaries – and he warns Hector not to engage him. Hector has already felt the force of Lancelot’s blows and exclaims: “Par foi,” fait il, “je cuit que ce soit li meesmes, mais il le me monstre mauveisement as granz cox qu’il m’a donnez que je soie ses freres.” [“Upon my word,” he said, “I believe it may be Lancelot himself, but he has a poor way of showing me I’m his brother, with the great blows he dealt me!”]28

As in the jokingly teasing comments by Gaheriet and Lionel earlier, the irony reinforces the message. Hector’s words express a kind of fond admiration and exaggerated self-pity. Kinship makes even terrible blows bearable …. Lancelot’s recognition of his brother goes so far that he even gives him their father’s ancestral lands in Benoic.29 Lancelot asks Arthur to make Hector king of Benoic, and personally gives it to him: “Biau frere, recevez le reaume de Benoÿc que mes peres et li vostre tint longement.” Et cil le reçoit.

28

Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, XCVI, 38. The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 288/1617 misses the final words of the sentence (“que je soie ses freres”); Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 262. 29 These lands were confiscated by their father’s enemy Claudas at the beginning of the prose Lancelot, but had since then been recovered. The sight of his city Trebes in flames caused Ban’s death. Claudas has kept the lands in his possession for decades, until King Arthur decides that Claudas’s insult to Queen Guinevere and the capture of one of her damsels ought to be revenged. The ensuing campaign in Flanders and France results in the recovery of both Benoic and Gaunes, the latter being the land of the father of Bohort and Lionel, King Bohort. Lancelot, Bohort, and Lionel do not take the crowns that are their birthright, but prefer to remain at Arthur’s court.

28

Frank Brandsma [“Dear brother, receive the kingdom of Benoic, which my father and yours held for a long time.” And he received it.] 30

Hector’s initial fears were unfounded. Not only does Lancelot acknowledge him fully and enthusiastically, he also makes him a full member of the kin group and even gives him his own patrimony. Conclusion The title of the film O brother where art thou? also fits the narrative of Lancelot and Hector. In the prose Lancelot, the finding of a brother is greatly valued. Lancelot treasures the addition to his clan, as do Lionel and Bohort. King Arthur values the stronger bond between two prominent members of the Round Table, and Hector finds himself a full member of the strongest kin group and his father’s successor as king of Benoic. The prose romance gives careful attention to the Lancelot-Hector relationship and uses it as one of the thematic ‘stringers’ of the long Lancelot quest, since the information is brought forward in small doses and given to a gradually increasing group of characters before the two brothers meet. These long thematic lines enhance the cohesion of the narrative and create suspense. The celebration of family ties is also exemplary, especially for the noble knights of the Lancelot clan. Kinship is quite important in the chivalric world, as it is metaphorically in modern academia, where, for instance, in Utrecht, the English Department and that of Literary Studies have cherished their kinship in medieval studies for many years.

30

Lancelot, ed. Micha, VI, CV, 27; The Vulgate Version, ed. Sommer, V, 377, 1617; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 319.

THE GESTA HEREWARDI: TRANSFORMING AN ANGLO-SAXON INTO AN ENGLISHMAN ROLF H. BREMMER, JR. The heroes of Anglo-Saxon England – heroines are conspicuously absent in the historiographical sources – occupy a space in time and in our knowledge that shades off on either side into misty borderlands. The first, and earliest, of these ‘borderlands’ is the period of the founding fathers of England. They were men like Hengest and Horsa, Æsc son of Hengest, Cerdric, Ælle and his three sons Cymen, Wlencing and Cissa, and more of their kind, all in expectation of finding a new land to live and thrive in. With the exception of Hengest and Horsa, these leaders of the Germanic settlers are afforded the smallest amount of information in the early entries of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [ASC].1 Yet, each of these warlords may have enjoyed the honour of having been praised for their prowess in battle against the Britons whose kings they defeated and whose lands they conquered. Interestingly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not emphasize their being Anglo-Saxons: they are, each in their turn, associated with the nascent kingdoms of Kent, Wessex, or Northumbria. No such individualization is made for their opponents: they are indiscriminately called ‘Britons’. At the other extreme of the Anglo-Saxon period we are faced with a borderland that is ruled by the distant offspring of the Saxon invaders, the established nobility. The tables have turned, however, For various useful suggestions, I would like to thank Tom Shippey, Jan Bremmer, and Bart Veldhoen. 1 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, eds J. Earle and C. Plummer, 2 Vols, Oxford, 1892–99, repr. with additional bibliography by Dorothy Whitelock, 1952. References to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are to this edition. On Anglo-Saxon ‘heroes’, see, for example, my “Old English Heroic Literature”, in Readings in Medieval Texts. Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, eds David Johnson and Elaine Treharne, Oxford, 2005, 75-90.

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and now we see the distant offspring of the Saxon invaders in the role of hopeless defenders, battling against the Normans in the early years after the Conquest. This period, understandably, is far less nebulous. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the D and E versions, s.a. 1068, relates at some length several attempts that were made by men of high noble rank to resist the nouveau régime. Eadric the Wild, for example, with the help of the Welsh, attacked the Norman garrison in Hereford Castle in the winter of 1068 and from there campaigned quite successfully in Devon during the spring of that year. In the summer we find Eadric way up in the north, at the court of King Malcolm of Scotland. Eadric was accompanied by his mother Agatha and his two sisters, Margaret and Christina. King Malcolm, mesmerized by Margaret, asked for her hand. She was not impressed by his advances, however, and sang him ‘no’ in five lines of verse, interrupting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s prose narrative. Nonetheless, Malcolm had his way. Two years later Eadric was reconciled to King William, and soon after is no longer heard of.2 Hereward the Outlaw, the subject of my paper, enjoyed no such fame: two brief mentions in the Chronicle is all he receives in the contemporary sources. However, within two generations after his death no fewer than three different accounts of his life and deeds had been written that survive today: once in Anglo-Norman as an episode in the verse L’Estoire des Engleis by Geffroi Gaimar (written 1136– 37),3 and twice in Latin: the Gesta Herewardi,4 and as a short biography, partly dependent on an early version of the Gesta Herewardi, included in the Liber Eliensis.5 Written long after 2

On Eadric, see Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge, 1995; Susan Reynolds, “Eadric Silvaticus and the English Resistance”, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research LIV (1981), 102-5. 3 Geffroi Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. Alexander Bell, Anglo-Norman Texts XIV–XVI, Oxford, 1960, lines 5457-704. 4 Cambridge University Library, Peterborough, Chapter Library 1, fols 320r–339r, dated mid-thirteenth century. The text itself was written during the time of Ely’s first bishop, Hervey, between 1109 and before 1131; see Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Camden Third Series XCII, London, 1962, xiv–xxxiv. It was printed in Geffroi Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engles, eds T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin, 2 Vols, Rolls Series 91, London, 1888-89, I, 339-404. Translation in Michael Swanton, Three Lives of the Last Englishmen, New York, 1984, 45-88; improved translation by Swanton as “The Deeds of Hereward”, in Medieval Outlaws. Ten Tales in Modern English, ed. Thomas H. Ohlgren, Stroud, 1998, 12-60. My quotations are from this improved translation. 5 Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, Bk II, 173-88.

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Hereward’s death are the Latin Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, written in 1175 and also translated into Anglo-Norman in the fourteenth century, and the Historia by pseudo-Ingulf, abbot of Crowland, who died in 1109. This last account was formerly thought to be authentic, but has now been identified as a late fourteenth-century forgery.6 It is interesting to muse on fate’s uneven distribution of lasting fame: why did not Eadric the Wild receive the same attention from posterity as Hereward enjoyed? Both men made a valiant, if ultimately futile, stand against William the Conqueror. Fate is fickle, we know. But perhaps the reason for their uneven treatment in post-Conquest narrative traditions lies in the fact that Hereward operated in a cultural centre, whereas Eadric happened to organize his resistance on the periphery. For this article I shall concentrate on the Gesta Herewardi, because it presents a well-organized, unified narrative. Having been written such a relatively short time after Hereward’s death, my central question is: what national, or ethnic sentiments did the author entertain in his description of Hereward? I shall argue that the author in his characterization of Hereward consciously attempted to depict him as a latter-day Anglo-Saxon, but also that eventually he realized that in view of the new disposition such a characterization could not be maintained until the end of his narrative. Before continuing, it might be useful to give a short summary of Hereward’s life and deeds. Born of noble ancestry in Bourne, Lincolnshire, Hereward grew up an obnoxious lad, who on account of his continuous quarrels with his father was dispossessed and outlawed with the consent of King Edward the Confessor at the age of 18. Hereward then starts the life of a vagrant, travelling to Northumbria, Cornwall, Ireland, and Flanders. His adventurous exploits bring him fame and martial experience. In Flanders, he marries Turfrida, and shortly afterwards learns of the news that William of Normandy has conquered England. Hereward decides to return home to see what has happened to his paternal manor. Upon his arrival there, he finds that his younger brother has been killed by the Normans, and decides to devote his life to taking revenge. From then on, he grows into a successful leader of regional resistance, attracting a crowd of men who are intent on opposing the nouveau régime. Most notable is his 6

For a discussion of these last two sources, see J. Hayward, “Hereward the Outlaw”, Journal of Medieval History XIV (1988), 293-304.

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role in assisting the monks of the wealthy Benedictine monastery, founded by Queen Æthelthryth in 660, in their defence of the Isle of Ely, a natural elevation surrounded by rivers and marshes. Eventually, the monks treacherously surrender to King William and Hereward is forced to leave the Isle. He carries on his guerilla activities for some time, but the net is drawn around him ever more tightly, and eventually he has to submit to William. He separates from his wife Turfrida, and, as part of his reconciliation with William, marries a rich widow with whom he lives until his death. The author of the Gesta, identified by the Liber Eliensis as “a venerable and very learned man, our brother Richard, of blessed memory”,7 sets the tone quite firmly in the first sentence of his prologue in words that remind us of the opening lines of such epics as Vergil’s Aeneas and Beowulf. He will write about “opera magnifici Anglorum gentis Heruuardi et inclytorum ejus” (the deeds of the great Englishman Hereward and of his famous men). Hereward, in short, is presented as an outstanding member of the gens Anglorum, a term which appeals to ethnic sentiments and excludes the group of the Norman conquerors. The line that is drawn here, at least two generations after Hastings, makes it clear from the start that the story will be about ‘us and them’. Such a division into two groups presupposes the existence of group identities. A sense of unity among the English, following the political unification of England under King Edgar and his successors had gradually established itself in the course of the tenth century. Time and again, the successive scribes of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasize this feeling. For all his merits, for example, King Eadwig’s reputation is said in his obituary to have been blemished by one thing: “he loved evil foreign customs and brought too firmly heathen manners within this land, and attracted hither foreigners and enticed harmful people to this country” (ASC D 959). Foreign, as opposed to English, manners are also the subject of a letter to a certain monk Eadward, presumably written by a clerical superior. The author – no other than than Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham – takes Eadward to task because:

7

Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, xxxiv: “… a venerabili viro ac doctissimo fratre nostro beate memorie Ricardo edito”.

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I also tell you, brother Edward, … that you act unjustly …. in abandoning the English customs which your fathers held and love customs of heathen men who do not grant you life, and in doing so you make clear that you despise your race and your ancestors with those bad customs when you dress in Danish fashion with bared necks and have your hair coming over your eyes. I say no more about this shameful fashion, except that books tell us that he is cursed who cherishes pagan customs in his lifestyle and disgraces his own race with those.8

Such a case of obfuscating the external distinctions between Englishmen and Scandinavians is clearly unacceptable and should be immediately redressed by Eadward on the strength of Ælfric’s pastoral advice (with a none too subtle allusion to canon law). In the Battle of Maldon, the poet makes Byrhtnoth appeal to the unifying role of his lord, King Athelred, whose land he will defend which, in his own words, is simultaneously urne eard, our country (line 57). A similar appeal to national identity is expressed in 1014 by Archbishop Wulfstan in his popular Sermo Lupi.9 The numerous occasions where he uses ‘we’ and ‘us’ to emphasize, and at the same time create, a sense of shared national identity in contrast to the cruel ‘otherness’ of the Danes.10 An important factor in the constitution of Englishness is the language, a factor that also plays a significant role in the prologue of the Latin Gesta Herewardi. In it, mention is made of two different 8

Mary Clayton, “An Edition of Ælfric’s Letter to Brother Edward”, in Early Medieval English Texts and Interpretations. Studies Presented to Donald C. Scragg, eds Elaine Treharne and Susan Rosser, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 252, Tempe, AZ., 2002, 263-81: “Ic secge eac ðe, broðor Eadweard, … þæt ge doð unrihtlice þæt ge ða Engliscan þeawas forlætað þe eowre fæderas heoldon and hæðenra manna þeawas lufiað, þe eow ðæs lifes ne unnon, and mid ðam geswuteliað þæt ge forseoð eower cynn and eowre yldran mid þam unþeawum þonne ge him on teonan tysliað eow on Denisc, ableredum hneccan and ablendum eagum. Ne secge ic na mare embe ða sceandlican tyslunge buton þæt us secgað bec þæt se beo amansumod þe hæðenra manna þeawas hylt on his life and his agen cynn unwurþað mid þam.” 9 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, 3rd edn, London, 1963. 10 Cf. Alfred P. Smyth, “The Emergence of English Identity, 700-1000”, in Medieval Europeans. Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe, ed. Alfred P. Smyth, London, 1998, 24-52; Sarah Foot, “The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 Ser., VI (1996), 25-49.

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accounts of Hereward that are written in English. In his search for information on Hereward, the author tells the unnamed superior to whom he directs his speech, most likely the first bishop of Ely, Hervey (1109-1130), that he had heard “somewhere that a short account had been written about [Hereward] in English”. Bishop Hervey was kind enough to have it translated into Latin and put at the author’s disposal who, in turn, augmented the account with information from oral reports. Further researches led the author to yet another, incomplete document: “only a few loose pages, partly rotten with damp and decayed and partly damaged by tearing”. One is tempted to take the deplorable state of the document as symbolizing the status of English as a written medium at the time. The contents of this delapidated manuscript, now lost, covered Hereward’s origin, his parents and the reputation that he acquired in his early career, as written down in English by Leofric, Hereward’s priest at Bourne. We are also informed about the reason why Leofric had composed a life of Hereward: [I]t was the endeavour of this well-remembered priest to assemble all the doings of giants and warriors he could find in ancient stories as well as true reports for the edification of his audience; and for their remembrance to commit them to writing in English.

Leofric’s policy of writing about heroes of the past some time after the Conquest, not in Latin but in English is itself a proclamation of ethnic self-awareness. The fact that Richard of Ely had difficulty in deciphering the unfamiliar English script of Leofric’s account, on the other hand, reveals a tendency to distance himself from the English language – most likely Richard, as his French name seems to suggest, was not a native speaker of English, but he was certainly acquainted with it, as he repeatedly shows. Moreover, Richard’s account of Hereward’s struggle against the Normans, in fact the second part of the Gesta, is based on the oral reminiscences of two of Hereward’s closest brothers-in-arms. It is almost as if Richard assumes the role of cultural mediator between the conquered and the conquerors. Having ended his prologue, Richard starts with the narrative proper. As he had done with the opening sentence of the prologue, Richard again begins with a statement that lavishes praise on the English (chapter 1):

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Many very mighty men (multi robustissimi) are recorded from among the English people, and the outlaw (exul) Hereward is reckoned the most distinguished of all (præclarissimus) – a notable (insignis) warrior among the most notable.

Hereward, in other words, deserves a prominent position in a wellstocked English hall of fame. A short description of his parentage that follows must underscore this claim. His father was Leofric of Bourne, nephew of Earl Ralph, nicknamed ‘the Staller’; his mother was Eadgyth, the great-great-niece of Earl Oslac. From both parents Hereward could, therefore, boast of a very noble descent. While to his audience these birth papers may have sounded impressive, Richard unknowingly gives us a glimpse of the complicated situation that marked the ethnic identity of the English aristocracy. Earl Ralph was the son of Gode, King Edward the Confessor’s sister, by her first husband Drew (Drogo/Dreux), count of the French Vexin. Ralph, together with Eustace II, count of Boulogne, who became Gode’s second husband, had played an important role in Edward’s antiGodwine policy in 1051. Hereward, then, had a strain of French blood in his veins. Oslac, a Mercian nobleman, had been earl of Northumbria from 966 to 975 when he was exiled by King Edgar. Having thus placed Hereward in the constellation of the English nobility – clearly, his linear descent was less impressive than were his lateral kinsmen – the next thing we read is a description of his appearance: As a boy he was remarkable for his figure and handsome in his features, very fine with his long blond hair, open face and large eyes – the right one slightly different from the left in bluish colour.

In addition, he was formidable in appearance, stout and yet agile. Such a detailed description of a protagonist’s physiognomy is rare for texts of this period. On the surface we might think that his blond (flavus) hair and blue (glaucus) eyes are typical of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon. Yet underneath, there may be a psychological significance. The audience may well have attributed to Hereward’s outward appearance a significance that can only be guessed at, as in classical physiognomy long blond hair and bluish-grey eyes typically mark a hero.

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The next time the author comes to deal with ethnicity is during Hereward’s sojourn in Cornwall (chapter 3). There he runs into a “very wicked and arrogant man”, named Ulcus Ferreus, a bully who was suing for the prince of Cornwall’s daughter. Ulcus Ferreus – in Latin the name means ‘cruel sore’ – was reckoned the strongest warrior among the Picts and the Scots, and one of his pastimes was to entertain the crowd by bragging about his deeds of prowess. On one such occasion, Ulcus was “greatly disparaging the English nation for lacking the virtue of strength and being useless in battle, declaring that once he had killed three out of a number of men with a single stroke”. A Scotsman sneering at the English might find a willing ear from a Cornish audience, but Hereward’s reaction to this taunt is understandably indignant, and he retorts that this deed was a mere figment of Ulcus’s imagination. An exchange of barely covered abuse follows, and not much later Hereward defeats Ulcus in a fight. This was the last thing he should have done, however. Ulcus was already regarded as the Cornish prince’s son-in-law, and “the whole of that troublesome nation” (omnis illa infesta natio) turned as one man against Hereward. The pejorative adjective infesta (aggressive, hostile, troublesome) is clearly used here in an ethnophaulist way and serves to confirm the English ethnocentrism of the author and his audience. On the other hand, the Cornish, as a marginal nation in both the geographical and figurative sense of the word, are by definition unruly and aggressive. Had it not been for the prince’s intervention, the crowd would have killed Hereward. He is told to leave the country, and sets sail for Ireland where he stays for a year, helping the king of Ireland to subject his enemies. The year having passed, Hereward returns to Cornwall in the company of the Irish king’s son in order to sue for the hand of the princess, who – as was the case when Ulcus wanted to marry her – happens to have been betrothed to yet another unwanted candidate (chapter 5). The engagement feast leading up to the wedding is in full swing when Hereward arrives at the court incognito with three comrades. A harp is being passed round, and Hereward boasts that he can play better than the court jester (joculator). Much to the surprise of the guests, Hereward proves an adroit harpist, “singing to the harp in a variety of ways. And he sang in different styles, now by himself now in a trio with his friends in the manner of the Fenland people, whereupon everyone was greatly delighted.” Hereward’s singing and

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playing in Cornwall folksongs from back home will have delighted the Fenland audience of the Gesta, and will have enhanced the bond of identification with the protagonist. After his Cornish adventure, Hereward sails home, but, driven off course by a storm, is shipwrecked on the Flemish coast (chapters 6 – 12). Under the name of Harold as an alias, but still as an Englishman, he enters the service of the Count of Flanders. His success in battle soon reveals that he is no mere English mercenary, and from foreigners and merchants the count hears of Hereward’s exploits in Ireland and forces out the truth, “his name and his country, and how, driven out by his father, he had first gone to Cornwall, then Ireland, and about the reason for his coming to that place” (chapter 7). The count accepts Hereward’s explanation, and gives him a leading position in his military organization. It is in this position that Hereward has to lead a campaign against the people of Scaldamari, a group of islands between the mouths of the Scheldt and the Meuse today comprising the Dutch province of Zeeland, because they had been withholding their taxes from the count of Flanders far too long (chapter 10). Interestingly, the inhabitants are called Frisians (Frisii).11 They had even maimed the count’s messengers by putting out their right eyes and cutting off their left feet. Such uncouth behaviour with respect to the traditional immunity of negotiators is indicative of the Frisians’ state of uncivilization, measured by English standards. Hereward, by contrast, strictly forbids his men to kill a Frisian delegation lest “the rights of intermediaries would seem thus to be broken, and the privilege of an envoy violated” (chapter 11). In other texts written in England at this time and slightly later, we frequently find the idea of the Frisians being a barbarous nation,12 and the Gesta is fully in line with this tradition. The author refers to the Frisians as “that impudent and inexperienced people” (gens illa improvisa et inexperta), and “the whole of that troublesome nation and unacceptable people” (omnis illa infesta natio et gens non 11 The name of “Frisia” at the time still covered the Dutch litoral down to Flanders. For a fine analysis of the historical events underlying Hereward’s expedition to Frisia, see Elisabeth van Houts, “Hereward and Flanders”, Anglo-Saxon England XXVIII (1999), 201-23, at 206-9. Swanton anachronistically exchanged his earlier “Frisians” for “Zeelanders”. 12 See my “Friesland and Its Inhabitants in Middle English Literature”, in Miscellanea Frisica. A New Collection of Frisian Studies, eds Nils R. Århammaer et al., Assen, 1984, 357-70.

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approbanda) – a phrase that was also used by the author to characterize the people of Cornwall. Their battle array is as impressive in the number of combatants as it is disorderly (incompositis). Their armour is outlandish: “coats of felt dipped in pitch, resin and incense, or with leather tunics reinforced with the bark of trees”. The weapons they wield are “spears, nailed and bound for thrusting and slashing, and three or four square-pointed javelins for throwing”. For all their wildness and savage weaponry, and despite their fear of being subjected to foreigners, as the English people were in those days to the French (alienigenis his diebus subacti fierent, sicut gens Anglorum a Francigenis) – an ominous, first reference in the Gesta to the Norman Conquest – the Frisians are defeated thanks to Hereward’s clever strategies and completely subjected. Hereward divides the booty among his soldiers, and with this victory his Flemish episode comes to a close. A few days after his Frisian victory, Hereward decides to go to England to visit his father’s house and his fatherland (paternam domum et patriam), now subject to the authority of foreigners and almost ruined by the exactions of many men (externorum ditioni nunc subjectam et multorum exactionibus pene subversam) (chapter 13). Incognito again, he arrives at Bourne, where he finds his people depressed by their being subjected to foreigners (alienigenarum subjectioni). His father’s thegn (miles), Osred, briefs Hereward – whose true identity remains unrevealed – as regards the situation. Hereward’s younger brother had been decapitated only three days earlier because, while valiantly protecting his mother’s honour, he had slain two Frenchmen (Francigenos). With the brutal mutilation of Hereward’s brother’s corpse, the author starts building up the usurpers’ identity step by step. First they are called externi ‘people from outside one’s own territory’, then they are branded as alienigeni ‘people born elsewhere’, and finally they are identified as Francigeni ‘French-born people’. By way of revenge, Hereward kills thirteen Frenchmen that night, and those who managed to save their lives flee the next morning in terror, together with all the other Frenchmen in the district. As a result of this sudden and unexpected reversal, the inhabitants of the country and his kinsfolk flock to Hereward, and help him set up a defence. But then Hereward realizes that he has never been knighted, and decides to ask Brand, the abbot of Peterborough Abbey, to gird him with the sword and belt of knighthood (chapter

Gesta Herewardi

39

15). For this solemn act, Hereward takes pains to differentiate himself and his men from the French. The ceremony should be conducted in the English fashion (Anglico more) by a cleric, for he had heard that “it had been ruled by the French that if anyone were knighted by a monk, cleric or any ordained minister, it ought not to be reckoned the equal of a true knighthood, but an adulterous and still-born knight” (adulteratus eques et abortivus). By using words from the intimate sphere of wedlock and procreation,13 the author emphasizes the abhorrence of the French of men knighted by clerics. But what is shameful to the French, becomes a token of honour to Hereward. He uses the ceremony to underline his Englishness. The fact that he adduces a religious argument to support his choice – one of the very few occasions in the story in which God is mentioned – is merely a red herring: I know from common experience that if anyone should receive the knightly sword from a servant of God, a knight of the kingdom of heaven, such a man will pursue valour most excellently in every kind of military service.

Clearly, this sentiment belongs to the realm of popular religion: no mention is made of a personal bond with God, but the efficacy of the ceremony is attributed to its being conducted by clerics. Hereward demands that from now on all his men should be knighted in this way, preferably by the abbot of Ely, who willingly complies with his wishes. A good deal of the final part of the Gesta (chapters 18-35) is devoted to the prominent part played by Hereward in the heroic defence by the monks of the Isle of Ely against the attacks of King William. His actions are characteristic of the outlaw genre as we know it from later stories such as that of Robin Hood. For example (chapter 23), he disguises himself as a potter to reconnoitre the camp of King William in a neighbouring village and takes lodgings in the house of a widow, who happens also to be lodging a witch contracted to cast spells on the monks of Ely. Hereward hears the widow, who appears to be involved in the plan, discuss the strategy with the witch in French (Romana lingua). At this point the author adds as an aside: 13

Swanton misses this point by translating adulteratus et abortivus as “invalid and anachronistic”.

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Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr.

“They supposed him to be a peasant and unfamiliar with that language (rusticum illum aestimantes, et inscium locutionis)”. This assumption, by the way, is an interesting sociolinguistic comment on the new, multi-lingual situation in England. It is the only time that language plays a role in the narrative. Never during his travels, whether in Cornwall, Ireland, Flanders or Frisia, is language made an issue for Hereward, who has no problems whatsoever, it would seem, to communicate with anyone, no matter where he is. Language, of course, is an important factor in the constitution of groups, and the anecdote again serves to demarcate Hereward’s Englishness. Throughout, the English are called Angli or gens Anglorum, rather than Saxones. The latter term is used only once, when Hereward, on his way through the forest of Bourne to be reconciled with King William, encounters Letold, a Saxon warrior (quendam Saxonicum militem), “a man of great courage and tall stature, who was wellknown and highly praised in many regions for his skill and valour in war” (chapter 31). Hereward wishes him well and inquires after his name, rank and family. Letold, however, is not much impressed by Hereward’s unkempt appearance, and abuses him for a fool and a peasant (fatuum et rusticum). The exchange of words leads to a long and bitter fight in which Letold is finally overcome by Hereward, who magnanimously spares Letold’s life, saying: “I have never found such a man, nor did I ever meet with his equal in courage! Nor have I ever been in such danger when fighting anybody, nor had so much difficulty in conquering anyone!”. It is as if the author wants to say before he concludes his story: “Only the English nation brings forth true warriors”. The Gesta ends – it has already been hinted at – with Hereward’s reconciliation with King William. In the words of the author (chapter 35): And so Hereward, the famous knight, tried and known in many places, was received into favour by the king. And with his father’s lands and possessions he lived on for many years faithfully serving King William and devotedly reconciled to his compatriots and friends (regi Willelmo fideliter serviens ac devote compatriotis placiens et amicis). And thus in the end he rested in peace, upon whose soul may God have mercy.

From a modern point of view such a conclusion is somewhat unsatisfactory. We would have liked Hereward to emerge victorious or die

Gesta Herewardi

41

heroically. The story, which seems so determinedly to be heading towards a glorious climax, deflates like a balloon. What might be the reason? The Gesta Herewardi has been valued by historians for its wealth of information on the response of the population in the early years of the Norman Conquest. From the nineteenth century onwards, historians were especially concerned to validate the historicity of Hereward’s career and to separate fact from fiction.14 Literary critics, too, have analysed the text, to establish its evasive genre or to trace the origins of ‘the outlaw tale’. As far as I know, no one has approached the Gesta as an early specimen of those narratives that belong to the discourse of the ‘Matter of England’. All such narratives are located in England, deal with English heroes and are concerned with the definition of English nationhood. Well-known representatives of this genre in English are Laʒamon’s Brut, and such romances as King Horn and Havelok, dating from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. These vernacular representatives are preceded in the twelfth century by a veritable wave of Latin historiographical writings by William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry of Huntingdon, Florence of Worcester, Orderic Vitalis, or in AngloNorman by Geffroi Geimar. All these authors, from various points of view, have tried to come to terms with the new political situation that had arisen after the Conquest. A similar attitude can be found, for example, in the thirteenth-century vernacular verse chronicle composed by Robert of Gloucester.15 Diana Speed has argued that the appearance in the last decades of the twentieth century of numerous studies of nationhood and nationalism in a ‘post-colonial’ context finds a parallel in the centuries that immediately followed upon the Conquest.16 Recovered from the shock of having become a colony, the English realized that they could no longer cherish a continuous cultural tradition. The road to Anglo-Saxon literature had been cut off.

14

See, for example, Hayward, “Hereward the Outlaw”. Sarah L. Mitchell, “‘We englisse men’: Construction and Advocacy of an English Cause in the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester”, in The Medieval Chronicle, ed. Erik Kooper, Costerus N.S. 120, Amsterdam, 1999, 191-201. 16 Diana Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance”, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale, Cambridge, 1994, 13557. 15

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In the Gesta, as we have seen, the road to the Anglo-Saxon past is also blocked linguistically. This divide is vividly illustrated and ‘symbolized’ by the deplorable state in which Richard of Ely found Leofric’s Old English account of Hereward, and the difficulty he had in decoding the language. In order, then, to find a new identity, a new literature had to be created, and this search resulted in the discourse of the ‘Matter of England’. I would argue that the Gesta fits this general trend. Whereas most of the twelfth-century chroniclers just mentioned aim at a holistic approach to English history, the Gesta Herewardi presents the new situation by means of a single character, Hereward. The structure of the text into two parts, one preceding the Conquest, and one following it, is revealing in this respect. Significantly, though, Hereward is not in England when the Conquest takes place, which allows the author to have him return as an outsider to Norman England. As might be expected of a man of his mettle, Hereward first violently opposes the new order, but in the end his resignation makes clear that even he has to accept the new reality. Hereward’s final integration into the political, legal and social, multi-ethnic community implies the loss of both the status and honorific name of ‘Outlaw’ – one must remember that he was reinstated in his father’s lands and properties, served the King faithfully and was devoted to his compatriots (the term is ambiguous here, since it can mean both his English compatriots and also the Norman newcomers). With such a conclusion, the author, through Hereward’s example, invites his audience to accept the new order: Anglo-Saxon England is dead, long live the new England!

EREC, LE FIZ LAC (BRITISH LIBRARY, HARLEY 4971) KEITH BUSBY In offering this modest contribution to a dear friend and colleague, I do not mean to invite comparisons between him and his nearnamesake, the eponymous hero of Chrétien de Troyes’ first romance. Indeed, it is as difficult to imagine Erik Kooper being uxorious and recreant as it is to envisage his spouse obeying any injunction to remain silent should her husband ever be unwise enough to impose one. Erik Kooper has spent much of his scholarly career teaching and researching Middle English romance and its relationship with its French counterpart. Two of my earlier articles, which I discussed with him during our days in Utrecht, dealt with the Middle English adaptations of Chrétien’s Yvain and Perceval (and its Continuations).1 The aim of those articles was essentially to demonstrate that the adaptation of French courtly romance for later English audiences of a different social and cultural background entailed a reduction in the detailed examination of amorous and chivalric conflicts and a simplification of narrative structure. My later interest, stimulated in part by Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann’s ground-breaking study, turned more towards the significance of romance in French for audiences in the Plantagenet and Anglo-Angevin courts in England and the role played by them in the transmission of texts.2 It is almost certain that 1

Keith Busby, “Sir Perceval of Galles, Le Conte du Graal and the ContinuationGauvain: the Methods of an English Adaptor”, Etudes Anglaises, XXXI (1978), 198202; ibid., “Chrétien de Troyes English’d”, Neophilologus, LXXI (1987), 596-613. 2 Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart: zur Geschichte einer Gattung, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, CLXXVII, Tübingen, 1980; published in English as The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrestien to Froissart, trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton, with a Foreword by Keith Busby, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 35, Cambridge, 1998.

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Chrétien’s romances circulated in England in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, and knowledge of Yvain and Perceval is assured by their adaptations at a time when French is beginning to decline even among the aristocracy. The continued circulation of Perceval is further attested by the one complete Anglo-Norman manuscript of Chrétien, namely London, College of Arms, Arundel XIV, dating from the midfourteenth century. The text of Perceval in this manuscript was copied directly or indirectly from an exemplar containing the Continuations, although it breaks off at line 9228, six lines before the end of Chrétien’s part.3 While there is no direct evidence for knowledge of Lancelot or Cligés, the passage from Erec et Enide I present here is proof positive, if such were required, of knowledge in England of that romance at approximately the same time that the College of Arms Perceval was copied. Although sometimes described as a “fragment”, the list of knights from Erec et Enide copied on f. 127voc of British Library, Harley 4971, is more properly speaking an excerpt, copied as a ‘filler’ on the final column of the verso of the penultimate folio of the final gathering. It has not, to my knowledge, been edited before and was not used in the preparation of any of the existing editions of the romance.4 The manuscript has been described in detail by Roger Middleton, to whom must go much of the credit for making the manuscript known.5 My observations on it here are based on his description and on a personal examination in London on September 30, 2005. The manuscript is composite, probably assembled in its present state at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century. Of its four principal parts, the last (ff. 93-128), containing the Erec excerpt, is the earliest in date (s. 14med.), and consists mainly of William of 3

Keith Busby, “The Text of Chrétien’s Perceval in MS London, College of Arms, Arundel XIV”, in Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. Ian Short, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Series 3, London, 1993, 75-85. 4 The leaf is reproduced in Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters, eds, Les manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes / The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, Faux Titre 71-72, 2 Vols, Amsterdam, 1993, II, 539 (fig. 432). It will be used (as manuscript m, Middleton zu Ehre) in the new critical edition being prepared by Carleton W. Carroll. 5 See Roger Middleton, “Catalogue of Manuscripts,” no. 44, in Busby et al., Manuscrits, II, 82-84, and “Index of Former Owners”, in ibid., II, 107-08, s.v. “Bury St. Edmunds”.

Erec, Le Fiz Lac

45

Waddington’s Manuel des péchés, followed by some religious material in Latin and our excerpt. On f. 128, there is a grant of land at Aldwinkle (Northants), a Latin text on the Purification of Mary, with fragments of a love-song in Middle English on the verso. A table of contents compiled in the early fifteenth century lists the excerpt as “Sessiones tabule rotunde” (f. 3vo), presumably envisioning the individual seats for the knights at the table; there is no mention of “sieges” in Chrétien’s romance, although knights are said to sit one next to the other. Middleton points out that this earlier part may have circulated independently before the four sections were bound together.6 The provenance of the manuscript is not without interest, for it seems to have been assembled in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. Despite an apparent incongruity between the Erec excerpt and the more edifying pieces in the manuscript, it is clear that English religious foundations of the Middle Ages were repositories of secular literature, much of which would have been in the possession of the monks or clergy when they entered the house.7 The availability of a copy of Erec et Enide in the Abbey is therefore no surprise nor is the interest shown in it by the person who copied the list of knights. Precisely why he would have done so is not obvious, however. Although the contents of the first three sections of the manuscript (s.14ex.-s. 15inc.) were not originally connected with that of the fourth, the presence of texts on French and Latin grammar in the first underscores the continued presence of French in England even at this late date and may even have facilitated the reading of the Manuel and the Erec excerpt. In its own modest way, Harley 4971 raises a number of important issues pertaining to the study of medieval romance in England and its manuscripts, not the least of which is the comparative synchronic study of Old French, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English literature in the fourteenth century. The place of Anglo-Norman texts in a mixedlanguage codex is of inestimable importance when considering manuscripts such as Oxford, Bodl., Digby 86,8 and London, BL, 6

Middleton, “Catalogue”, 84. See Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript, Faux Titre 221-222, 2 Vols, Amsterdam, 2002, II, 747-66. 8 Malcolm B. Parkes and Judith Tschann, Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 86, Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series 16, Oxford 1996. 7

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Harley 2253,9 and the presence of the Erec in the same manuscript as texts on French and Latin grammar raises the question of the degree of French competence among English readers of the time. Most interesting, perhaps, is the apparent presence of a copy of Erec et Enide (from which this excerpt must have been copied) in an English abbey in the later Middle Ages. Forty lines of Anglo-Norman copied as a ‘filler’ on a blank column of an otherwise unremarkable manuscript speak volumes about the secular interests of the inhabitants of monastic institutions of the time.

9

Susanna Fein, ed., Studies in the Harley Manuscript: Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library, MS Harley 2253, Kalamazoo, MI, 2000.

Erec, Le Fiz Lac

47

British Library, Harley 4971 In the edition below, I have indicated expanded abbreviations in italics and have regularized word spacing if it is absent or unclear. Uppercase letters at the beginning of lines represent those present in the manuscript. The small capitals in lines 26, 34, 36, and 39 represent majuscules in the manuscript. I have reproduced the distinction between u and v when it is made by the scribe. Line numbers on the left are of the edition, those in italics on the right are to Foerster’s edition of Erec et Enide.10 f. 127voc

4

8

12

16

10

La Rounde table Deuant tous les bons cheualers

1691

Dey Gaweyn estre ly premers

1692

Le secund erec le fiz lac

1693

Le terce launcelot du lak

1694

Gouernaus de grohors est ly quarsz

1695

le quinte est le beus couharsz

1696

Le syts est ly beus hardiz

1697

Le setym meliaun de lysz

1698

Le vtym maros le sage

1699

Le nefym codynel le sauuage

1700

Gaundelus est le dysme conte

1701

chiualer de meynte bounte

1702

Les autres vous dirray senz numbre

1703

Pur ceo que ke le nomer mencounbre

1704

Elys ert oueque ban

1705

E yven li fyz vrien

1706

Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, in Kristian von Troyes: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wendelin Foerster , Vol. III, Halle, 1890.

Keith Busby

48

20

24

Ywen de lowel syoutre

1707

Que touz apeleyint a voutre

1708

Apres le chiualer du tor

1711

Syst le uallet au secle dor

1712

E tinbaus que vnque ne ryt

1713

De lez bloblecherye syt

1714

Apres syt cradoc brabas

1719

Vn chiualer de graunt solas

1720

E corierar de robedyt

1721

E le fiz au Roy que ren ne dyt

1722

Galaries e quens destras

1725

Que vnque de armes ne fut las 28

32

36

49

Maugys et git ly cafis

1726

Gerin blandoen e carots

1727

Ector le fyz au roy ots

1728

Girflez le fiz doun et caulas

1729

Que vnq[ue]s darmes ne fu las

1730

e vn vallet de graunt vertu

1731

Lohos le fiz au Roy artu

1732

E Sagremos li derrez

1733

Cil Ne deyt estre obbliez

1734

Ne briueynbelz li de irreys

1737

Ne galigauns li galeys

1738

Ne le fiz Kay le seneschal

1739

Gregoys qui mout sont de mal

1740

Erec, Le Fiz Lac

49

Notes Title: the ‘L’ of “La” is capitalized and cross-hatched. 5: the final ‘s’ of the rhyme words in lines 5, 6, and 8 appears to have a ‘z’ appended. This is clearly not part of the brackets linking the lines of the couplets in question. I have therefore printed ‘sz’. 13: the ‘L’ of “Les” is capitalized in similar manner to that in the title, but about one third the size. 14: the two letters of the word “ke” have been expunged by periods underneath each. 27: after line 27, the scribe wrote in error line 1730, which he then crossed through with a single horizontal line before writing line 28, which does not rhyme. Having written “destras” for “destraus,” he is induced into copying line 1730, which rhymes with his error, but neither corrects line 27/1725, nor makes an acceptable rhyme of line 28, which appears garbled. 32: the abbreviation over the ‘q’ is missing. 37: “de” is lined through in the manuscript. The Harley excerpt is missing five couplets from Foerster’s critical text: lines 1709-10, 1715-18, 1723-24, and 1735-36. Although there is no extant manuscript of Erec et Enide which omits these same couplets, all these omissions do occur at places where there are lacunæ in some (or possibly additions in others which make up Foerster’s final text).11 Lines 1707-10 are missing in BnF, fr. 1450 (Foerster’s H) and 1709-12 in BnF, fr. 794 (Guiot, Foerster’s C), while 1715-18 are lacking in fr. 794 and fr. 1420 (Foerster’s E), and 1715-24 in fr. 1450. Lines 1722-28 are wanting in BnF, fr. 375 (Foerster’s P), and 1735-38 in fr. 1450 and fr. 1420. It is difficult to know what to make of this, other than to conclude cautiously that if the Harley scribe copied his model line for line without omissions, then the model must have been the result of some kind of contamination during the transmission. 11

I give here only lines missing which coincide with the omissions in Harley. The relationship between the list in the various manuscripts of Erec et Enide has also been discussed by Carleton W. Carroll in “The Knights of the Round Table in the Manuscripts of Erec et Enide”, in ‘Por le soie amisté’: Essays in Honor of Norris J. Lacy, eds Keith Busby and Catherine M. Jones, Faux Titre 183, Amsterdam, 2000, 117-27, with a convenient table of concordance on pp. 126-27 (line numbers from Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Jean-Marie Fritz, Lettres Gothiques, Paris, 1992). I am indebted to Professor Carroll for his advice during the preparation of this article.

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The supposed vagaries of Anglo-Norman apart, the scribe does appear to have understood the language well enough, although the apparent garbling of names may suggest that he was not entirely familiar with the genre of Arthurian romance and its cast of characters. While some in the list are obscure and caused many scribes of the Erec manuscripts trouble, the Harley scribe fails to reproduce in a recognizably ‘correct’ form a number of relatively well-known characters: line 7 (“Le Laid Hardi”), where he may have written “beus” under the influence of the preceding line (P also reads “biaus” in both lines 6 and 7); line 10 (“Dodinel le Sauvage”), where he has “codynel”; lines 17-18, where he has conflated two Yvains (“Yvain de Loenel” and “Yvain l’Avoutre”); line 21, perhaps the most egregious (“Tristan qui-onques-ne-rit”), where he writes “Tinbaud”; line 27 (“Gaheriés,” Gauvain’s brother), where he writes “Galaries”; line 30 (“Tor li fiz Arés”), who has become “Ector”, son of a King “Ots”; line 31 (“Taulas”), who through the common confusion of ‘t’ and ‘c’ becomes “Caulas”. Foerster’s lines 1739-50 (of which 1741-50 are added by him in square brackets in his critical text), are not found in the notorious Guiot copy; lines 1741-50 are also missing in fr. 1450 and fr. 1420, while lines 1741-48 are wanting in fr. 375. The knights mentioned in these last lines (1741-50) are generally unknown elsewhere and probably constitute an addition of the model which gave rise to BnF, fr. 1376 (B), fr. 24403 (V) and Chantilly, Musée Condé 472 (A).12 Generally speaking, therefore, the Harley excerpt seems to have been copied from a manuscript more akin to CHPE. Common readings do not shed much light on the matter: fr. 1420 has “siecle” at line 1712 (20); Chantilly 472 has “Galeriauls,” and fr. 794 and fr. 1376, “Galeriez” at line 1725 (27); Chantilly 2 and fr. 24403 have “li irois” at line 1737 (37). All of these could be independent readings.

12

But for a contrary view, see Carleton W. Carroll, “The Knights of the Round Table”, 124.

TEXTUAL AND FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS: THE PLACE OF THE MICHIGAN FRAGMENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF SIR EGLAMOUR D. J. CURNOW AND AD PUTTER The romance of Sir Eglamour of Artois appears to have been one of the most popular Middle English romances in the medieval period and beyond, and the reasons for its extraordinary success are not hard to guess. 1 No Middle English romance offers a better ratio of events per line number. First Sir Eglamour, a knight in the service of the earl of Artois, must try to win the earl’s daughter Cristabelle by accomplishing three perilous missions of the earl’s devising. Having triumphed in two of these, the earl grants Eglamour a period of rest before his next adventure, during which Eglamour and Cristabelle become lovers and conceive a child. Eglamour then departs to slay a dragon in Rome. The child is born in his absence, and Cristabelle and her baby son are exiled by the earl and set adrift in a boat; the son is stolen by a griffin and taken to Israel where the king adopts him and names him Degrebelle. Cristabelle’s boat finally comes ashore in Egypt. After many years, the King of Egypt announces a joust: any man who defeats him shall have Cristabelle’s hand in marriage. 1

This essay had its very first beginning in 1992, when as a PhD student I (A.P.) took over some of Erik Kooper’s teaching at the University of Utrecht. His own research interest in Middle English romances and their textual transmission is well known from his publications, but it was through his teaching materials that he first infected me with his interest, for his syllabus included F. C. de Vries’s revealing parallel-text edition of Floris and Blancheflur (Diss. Utrecht, 1966) and Murray McGillivray’s Memorization in the Transmission of the Middle English Romances, New York, 1990. A version of this essay was delivered at the Dublin Medieval Romance in England Conference (April, 2003). We thank the organiser of that conference, Neil Cartlidge, for his comments, and the chair, Derek Pearsall, for pointing us toward the conjectural emendation of Eglamour, 31-36, that we suggest below. All references are to the edition by Frances E. Richardson, Sir Eglamour of Artois, EETS o.s. 265, London, 1965. References to lines in versions unavailable in modern editions are consistent with the numbering of lines in Richardson.

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Degrebelle defeats the king and wins Cristabelle’s hand, but before he consummates his marriage to his mother, she recognises him by the heraldic device on his shield, which depicts a griffin abducting a small child. To complete the family reunions, Eglamour defeats Degrebelle, and is recognised by Cristabelle by his coat of arms (depicting Cristabelle in a rudderless boat). They all return to Artois, where the earl conveniently falls from the tower and breaks his neck, so that Eglamour can take over his lands: he is now the Eglamour of Artois that gives the romance its name. In under 1,400 lines Eglamour manages to combine three of the most popular plot motifs of medieval romance. First, it recycles the story of the possessive father who places forbidding obstacles between his daughter and the man she loves (such, for example, is the story of Marie de France’s Lai des deux amants); then there is the story (as told, for instance, in Sir Degaré) of the son who is separated from his parents and reunited first with his mother (narrowly escaping an incestuous marriage to her) and then with his father; and finally, there is the story of the suffering heroine exiled in her rudderless boat (as in Emaré). The big selling point of Eglamour was that it offered three stories for the price of one. We will not pretend that it is a great work of art, but the poet deserves credit for at least one fine moment of invention. When Sir Eglamour kills a ferocious boar that belongs to a giant, the latter, seeing the boar’s head on a spear, makes this touching lament: The gyaunt loked vpon þe hed: ‘Allas, my bore, art þou ded? My trust was mykyll in þe! Be þe lawe þat I lefe inne, My lytyll spotted hogelynne, Dere bowʒt þy lyfe schall be!’ (544-9)

The sentiments that we expect from a giant – perverted religious belief (547) and vengeful fervour (549) – serve here only as background music to a heartfelt plaint on the death of a beloved pet, the little spotted ‘hogelynne’ to which the giant was so attached. ‘Lytyll’ and the suffix ‘–lin’ are apt both as diminutives (a boar being little more than a hamster to a giant) and as terms of endearment. He loved him,

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and he loves him still; it would be funny if it were not so sad, and sad if it were not so funny. The extraordinary success of Eglamour is reflected in its complicated textual history. Four surviving medieval manuscripts are known to us. The oldest is S (British Library, Egerton 2862), which was copied c. 1400 and contains only the first 160 lines; it was printed in an appendix to Frances Richardson’s EETS edition. L (Lincoln Cathedral Library 91) was written by Robert Thornton, c. 1440. L is one of the two texts edited by Richardson in her parallel-text edition; the other text is C (British Library, Cotton Caligula A II), copied around the middle of the fifteenth century; finally, there is F (Cambridge University Library, Ff.2.38), a paper miscellany from the third quarter of the fifteenth century. But the romance continued to flourish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as appears both from allusions to and adaptations of the romance,2 and from early printed editions and manuscripts. The following versions were known to Richardson: g. Cambridge University Library, Inc. 5. J. 1.2 (London, Wynkyn de Worde, 1500). Short Title Catalogue [STC] 7541.3 e. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Mf.34 (10) (Edinburgh, W. Chepman and A. Myllar, 1508?). STC 7542. b. Cambridge University Library, Syn. 7. 52.12 (London, Richard Bankes, 1528?). STC 7542.5. a. Bodleian Library, S. Selden d. 25 (5) (London, William Copland, c. 1555?). STC 75423. w. British Library, C 21. c.59 (London, John Walley, 1550?). STC 7542.7. d. Bodleian Library, MS Douce 261 (c. 1564). p. Percy Folio, MS Additional 27879 (c. 1650).

2

Helen Cooper mentions, amongst others, Shakespeare’s allusion to the romance in Two Gentlemen of Verona and a lost play entitled “Eglemour and Degrebelle” (acted at St Albans in 1444). See The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, Oxford, 2004, 335, 416-7. 3 A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland 1475-1640, 2nd edn, rev. W. A. Jackson and F. S. Ferguson, completed by Katherine F. Pantzer, London, 1986.

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A careful study of the textual relationships led Richardson to construct the following family tree for Eglamour:

(E) (J) S

(K) L

(M) (N)

C

(Q)

(O) F

e (R) g

(T)

(U) w

(V) a

b

d

(X) p As will be evident from the stemma, all the extant versions are removed from the author’s original, designated (E), by at least one intervening exemplar (J). The manuscripts C and F go back to a common ancestor (M), though the substantial differences between CF on the one hand and S and L suggest there was one further stage of transmission before (M), namely (K). Here, as elsewhere in this stemma, brackets are used for copies that are no longer extant but must be assumed to have existed if we are to explain the relationships between the witnesses that do survive. The post-medieval witnesses are given in lower-case italics. As the stemma shows, all these descend from one common ancestor (N). Closest to (N) are e and g, and furthest removed from the original is the famous Percy Folio, “that great dustbin of medieval romance”, as

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Nicolas Jacobs called it in his study of the ‘textual degeneration’ of Sir Degaré.4 As D. J. Curnow has shown in her Ph.D. dissertation,5 not all medieval romances that ended up in that ‘dustbin’ were victims of poor scribal transmission. In the case of Eger and Grime, Sir Lambewell and Guy and Colbrand, the differences between the Percy versions and the other extant witnesses are such as to suggest that, at some stage in their transmission, these romances had been reproduced from memory rather than by scribal copying. There was, and in some circles still is,6 some resistance to the notion (which once passed for common sense) that some metrical romances were transmitted by professional performers who knew them by heart, but to our minds the evidence for the memorial transmission of some of the Middle English romances is as solid as the evidence for scribal transmission. It has been demonstrated many times that scribes are prone to particular kinds of error (minim confusion, anticipation of copy, homœoteleuton, etc.), while peopl e who reproduce from memory are prone to other kinds.7 For example, memorial transmitters tend to conflate similar episodes in the story and so transfer lines from one episode to another; 4

Nicolas Jacobs, The Later Versions of ‘Sir Degaré’: A Study in Textual Degeneration, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 18, Oxford, 1995, 87. 5 D. J. Curnow, “Five Case Studies on the Transmission of Popular Middle English Verse Romances”, Diss. Bristol, 2002. 6 Note, for example, Joseph Donatelli’s comments on the Percy Folio in “The Percy Folio Manuscript: A Seventeenth-Century Context for Medieval Poetry”, English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, IV (1993), 113-25, here 119-20: “[The compiler’s] sphere of activity must have been the library rather than the nursery, tavern, or street. From there, the compiler of the Percy Folio manuscript was not well placed to hear the dying voice of a minstrel tradition.” 7 On the memorial transmission of popular romances see especially McGillivray, Memorization. Some critics doubt the importance of oral transmission; for assessments of the debate see Nancy Mason Bradbury, “Literacy, Orality, and the Poetics of Middle English Romance”, in Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry, ed. Mark C. Amodio, assisted by Sarah Gray Miller, New York, 1994, 36-96, and Ad Putter, “Historical Introduction”, in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, eds Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, Harlow, 2000, 1-15. The “Historical Introduction” includes a list of memorially transmitted romances; to this list should be added Ipomedon, for, as Erik Kooper has shown, the couplet version of this romance shows signs of having been transmitted from memory: “The Lyfe of Ipomydon: An Appraisal”, in Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami, eds Masahiko Kanno et al., Tokyo, 1997, 109-23. See also Jordi Sánchez-Martí, “Reading Romance in late Medieval England: The Case of the Middle English Ipomedon”, Philological Quarterly, LXXXII (2006), 13-19.

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similarly, a thematic similarity with a scene to come may prompt them to duplicate verbal material, and so on. And it is precisely that typology of error (together with the different scale of variation that goes with transmission from living memory) that we encounter when we compare the texts of Eger and Grime, Sir Lambewell and Guy and Colbrand in the Percy Folio with that in other extant versions. Eglamour, on the other hand, presents us with a straightforward case of scribal transmission, closely comparable with that of Sir Degaré. Its textual history tells the rather depressing tale of ‘textual degeneration’: predictable scribal errors abound in the manuscript versions, and in the age of mechanical reproduction by print the degeneration continues. The handwritten copies (d and p) are no better, though in their attempts to remedy rhymes they at least show some appreciation of the formal requirements of the tail-rhyme stanza. Because the textual variation in the extant witnesses of Eglamour is easily explicable in terms of scribal error, there is no good reason why a future editor of this romance should not attempt a proper critical edition. Obviously, in preparing such an edition, the evidence of the post-medieval witnesses cannot be ignored, for it is from these that we can reconstruct (N), which is one of the four immediate descendants of (J). Although Curnow’s work on the categorisation of the textual variants in the surviving witnesses of Eglamour confirms the basic soundness of the family tree as posited by Richardson, the existence of two further witnesses, both unknown to Richardson, shows that the family must have been even larger than the stemma suggests. One of these newly discovered witnesses, which was included only in the second edition of the STC, is a late print. Around 1565 (according to the tentative dating in the STC), Copland printed Eglamour again. An extant copy of this print is now in San Marino, Huntington Library, 62029 (STC 7544.5); we shall designate it as h. Where exactly h belongs in the stemma is an open question, and we can do no more here than suggest that the question is harder than one might have supposed. Since Copland had already printed a (if STC’s speculative dating is right), it would be natural to assume that Copland would have used a, or possibly a’s exemplar (U) as his copy text, 8 but this 8

According to the STC, both a and h are paginary reprints of w; the versions indeed share the same textual divisions and many of the same omissions but the differences are substantial (and include an omission in w that is not in a (line 620)). We therefore

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does not seem not to have been the case. The text of h is in fact most closely related to w (John Whalley’s print, c. 1550); indeed, w and h share some clumsy errors that are not found in any of the other versions.9 Surprisingly, however, h contains genuine lines and words that were lost in w.10 It thus looks more likely that w descended from h than the other way around11 and this is the tentative assumption on which we have revised the stemma that we shall offer below. The datings and the textual affiliations suggested by the STC are tenable if Copland consulted multiple exemplars, but one is bound to say that in that case he might have produced a better text than he did. Much more tantalising is the discovery of a new handwritten fragment of Sir Eglamour in University of Michigan MS 225 (henceforth y). The fragment, identified and edited by Lister Matheson,12 consists of only the first three stanzas. The lines, written as continuous prose by a sixteenth-century hand, were copied to fill up some empty space at the end of a late-fifteenth-century paper manuscript of the Prose Brut (fol. 136r). Needless to say, the fragment is too short to be of much use to an editor. It does, however, raise some questions that affect our understanding of the textual history of Eglamour. How does the text of this fragment compare with other witnesses? Is it possible to plot the fragment in Richardson’s stemma and, if so, how should the stemma be changed to accommodate it? Matheson offers only a few remarks on this subject, but they do not go very far and some are simply wrong. The witnesses that offer the best basis for textual comparison are S, L, C, F, a , p. Of very limited use are d, w and h, which lack the first two stanzas and most of the third, and thus offer only a couple of lines for comparison. b, e and g are

share Richardson’s view that w and a are related by descent from a common ancestor (see Eglamour, xiii-xiv, xix). 9 For example, in the tail lines of 315 and 582, both w and h spoil the rhyme by adding a word (now and agayn respectively). 10 Examples are line 279 and 360. Both lines, present in other descendants of (R), occur in h but not in w. 11 There is no chronological impediment to this assumption, for the printing careers of Whalley and Copland overlapped, the former being active from 1547 to 1567, the latter from 1542 to 1586. See A. S. G. Edwards, “William Copland and the Identity of Printed Middle English Romance”, in The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. Phillipa Hardman, Woodbridge, 2002, 139-148. 12 Lister M. Matheson, “A Fragment of Sir Eglamour of Artois”, English Language Notes XVII (1980), 165-8.

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useless since the first three stanzas are missing altogether in these versions. Despite the incomplete comparative evidence and the shortness of y, its place in the family tree of Eglamour can nevertheless be determined with reasonable precision, for happily the fragment contains some crucial lines which set apart the earliest surviving witnesses from the later ones. At lines 31-36, the medieval manuscripts broadly agree on the following reading: Sir Eglamour sa hym bare Þat alle þis werlde he loued na mare Þan þat lady so free Sertanly, bothe day and nyght, Sa dose scho þat gentyll knyght – It was þe more pete!

This is also the reading of lines 31-33 given in e: Sir eglemor sa hym bare In all this warlde he luffit nane mare Than that lady fre.

Only F embroiders, creating a hypermetrical second couplet line: Syr Eglamour so hym bare That aboue all erþely þinges sche loued hym mare That lady bryght of blee

In terms of sense, however, F is good: the fact that Cristabelle falls in love with Eglamour flows naturally from line 31 (‘Sir Eglamour acquitted himself in such a way’), while the sense of the other manuscripts is weak (‘Sir Eglamour behaved in such a way that he loved no-one more than her’?). It is likely that the F-scribe rewrote the lines to emend the non-sequitur of his copy-text. In this he was followed by the scribe of (R) or (T), for at this same point the later witnesses have a very different reading, which introduces the motif of incest. While the early witnesses and e refer to the love of Eglamour and Cristabelle, the later ones make mention of the love between the earl and his daughter. Below are the readings of a, p and d (which starts at line 33):

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a Crystabel so wel her bore The Erle looued nothing more Then his daughter free. p Christabell soe well her bore the Erle loued nothing more then his daughter ffree. d

Than hys doughter so free.

The corresponding lines in y read as follows: y Crystabell so wele her bar Her fadde[r] louyed nothing mor Than hys doughter free.

The incest motif is of course well established in other medieval stories that feature ladies in rudderless boats,13 and Richardson concludes from this that the reading given by a, p, d and y was in fact the authorial one. However, the existence of such analogues could equally well be used to argue the opposite case: the scribe of the common ancestor of a, p, d and y may have introduced into the story a motif that was familiar to him from similar stories, particularly since the lines he was copying make poor sense. Whatever the explanation, the stemma surely rules against the notion that the incest motif was archetypal. Since S, L, C, F and e are in agreement that the great love is between Cristabelle and Eglamour, their reading must reflect (J). The incest motif can only have entered the family tree after (R). Admittedly, it is true that S, L, C, and e make poor sense, but it is simpler to remedy that deficiency by conjectural emendation than to suppose with Richardson that a late scribe accidentally reinvented a reading (the incest motif) that was original but of which there is no trace in any of the the earliest witnesses. If (E) did differ from (J) we would venture to suggest it read something like this: Sir Eglamour sa hym bare In all þis worlde [him] loued na[n] mare Þan þat lady so free. 13

On the incest motif, see Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, Oxford, 2001, especially 127-8.

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D.J. Curnow and Ad Putter Sertanly, bothe day and nyght, Sa dyd [her] þat gentyll knyght – It was þe more pete!

The agreement of y with the later versions indicates that y belongs to the same branch of the Eglamour family as (R). It is interesting, however, that y is in other respects closer to the earlier witnesses. An example of that closeness is offered by lines 3436, where the early manuscripts are in broad agreement: Certeynly both day and nyʒt, So dyd sche þat nobyll knyʒt – Hit was þe more pyte!

Again e agrees, though it makes the grammatical subject more explicit: Sertanly bathe day & nyght Sa dois the lady þe nobill knight It was the mare pete.

The readings offered by the (R) group, to which y should be allocated, are strikingly varied: a .... [first couplet line missing] So did that gentle knight It was the more pitie p soe did that gentle knight that was soe full of might it was the more pittye d So dyd she that gentle knight trewelye as I youe hyght Yt was the more pytte w So did she that gentle knyght [first extant line of w] It was the more pytte h So did she that gentle knyght [first extant line of h] It was the more pytte.

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And y reads as follows: Certenlye bothe daye and nyghte So dyd Eglamour .... [text breaks off. Supply that noble knight?]

How are we to account for this variation? Perhaps the simplest theory is that the defective reading of a (which omits one of the couplet lines) goes back to hyparchetype (T), and that the scribes of p and d set out to rescue the situation by inventing a line of their own when they noticed the omission. That would also explain why what was originally the second couplet line has become in p and d the first in a new couplet, and why the second couplet line is predictably bland – ‘that was soe full of myght’ (p) and ‘trewelye as I youe hyght’ (d). It is lines like these that have given tail-rhyme a bad name, but at least the scribes cared enough about the poem’s form to restore the rhyme scheme. Significantly, the couplet line “Certeynlye bothe daye and nyghte” that has been lost in the descendants of (T) is still preserved in y. This suggests that y branches off with (R) after (N) but derives from an exemplar superior to (T). This diagnosis is confirmed when we compare the variant readings of lines 15-17 and 22-24. The early manuscripts and e agree roughly on the following reading: L

Herkyn! I wyl ʒow saye. [CF Lestenyth / Lystenyth] For dedis of armes whare he went Wyth þe erle es he lent, In derenes nyght and daye. (15-18) For þe erl hym had in walde [in walde = under his protection] Of dedis of armes was he balde: Wyth no man sayde he naye. (L 22-24; italics ours)

The precise meaning of 16-17 as printed by Richardson is unclear. Her note reads: “LS seems to mean ‘Because of the valorous deeds which he performed, he lived with the Earl’”, but it is possible to punctuate the line differently and to construe whare not as an adverb (‘wherever’) but as the conjunction (‘where’) dependent on ‘say’. Lines 15-18 then mean: “Listen, and I will tell you (I wyl ʒow saye)

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where Eglamour went to pursue deeds of arms: he went to live with the earl, in friendship night and day.” We have used italics to draw attention to the verbal similarity between the beginning of line 16 and line 23, because it allows us to explain the major change that has taken place in the later versions, best represented here by a: a

Listen I will yow say Sir that he was a man full bolde With the Erle was he holde [e: For the erldome he hade in halde] In howsholde night and day (15-18) And for he was a man verament With the Erle was he lent, To no man would he say nay. (22-24)

The most noticeable alteration is the transposition of the couplets. That this transposition was originally due to homœoarchy is confirmed by the fact that the line order of the second couplet has been reversed. Somewhere in the tradition, a scribe skipped from line 16 (the first line in a couplet) to line 23, the second line in the stanza’s final couplet, and then recovered the error as best he could. We also note the preference for listen over herken in the late versions; the loss of the difficult phrases in walde and in derenes, which have made way for easier readings; and, finally, the disastrous misreading of where he went as verament. If we now turn to y, we are faced with a text that looks to be the missing evolutionary link between the earlier and the later versions: Herkenith and I wyll ywe saye: For he was so manffull, verament, With þe Emperowr þanne was he lent And dwellyd with hym both nyʒth and daye. (15-18) And ther-ffor þe erle haue hym wold For that he was a knyʒth so bold The sothe yff I say. (22-24)

With regard to the order of the two couplets, y follows the earliest versions, but the lexical degeneration (for example, verament) has

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begun to set in. But the degeneration has not reached the advanced stages: herkenith is preserved; so is wold, though it has been misconstrued as a verb. Emperowr for erle is one of a number of errors that are peculiar to y. Others are the substitution of line 24 by the vacuous tag The sothe yff I say and the wholesale omission of line 19. Matheson claims that the simile as whyt as whalys bon at line 26 also is “not found at this point in any other known text”,14 but he obviously did not consult the early prints. The reading of the early manuscripts is as follows: The erle had na child bot ane Þat was a doghetir white als fame (L 25-6)

Although the rhyme is imprecise, assonantal rhyme seems to have been acceptable to the poet and his medieval scribes. In the later versions a different simile has been found, presumably in order to improve the rhyme: y e a p

A doughter as whyt as whalys bon A doghter quhyte as ony bane A maiden as white as whales bone A maiden as white as whalles bone

Since this simile is also in e, this ‘improvement’ must go back to (N). Notice, however, that e and y retain the archetypal reading daughter, replaced by mayden in a and p. In conclusion, y shows many of the same corruptions as a, d, w and p. The most striking of these is the incest motif, which we think was not archetypal but became a family trait of Eglamour after (N). However, both in terms of wording and line order, y is appreciably closer to the earlier version. In addition, y contains some readings unparalleled by any other known text.15 How can we revise Richardson’s stemma to do justice to these facts? One possibility, consistent with the facts as we have observed them, would be to plot y as a direct descendant from (R). In this scenario g, y and (T) would all derive from the same exemplar (R). The hypothesis could only be disproved if g and the descendants of (T) shared significant errors not 14 15

Matheson, “Fragment”, 167. See lines 6, 17, and 24 and the omission of line 19.

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found in y; and since g only consists of lines 241-64 and 266-94 (plus an addition at 243ff.), no hard proof to the contrary can be produced. However, in the lines where we can compare g with the rest of the (R) group, e offers no substantive variants. It is therefore safe to assume that (R) closely resembled (T) in the opening stanzas also. By comparison, y differs so dramatically from the (T)-group that direct descent from (R) seems to us improbable. Deriving y directly from (N) is even more improbable. The shared errors of the (R)-group and y show that the two have a common ancestor, which cannot be (N) since the absence of these same errors in e proves that (N) did not contain them. In short, it is necessary to extend the large family of Eglamour even further, by postulating at least one other intermediary, which we designate as (H). Unless the scribe of y was unusually sloppy, the significant number of readings unique to y would suggest at least one further intermediate version, which we have termed (Z). A revised stemma that accounts for y and h might therefore look as follows:

(E) (J) S

(K) L

(M) (N)

C

(O)

(Q)

F

e

(H) (R) g

(Z) (T)

(U)

y (V)

h

a

w

(X) p

b

d

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Editors must therefore look to y and e as the most reliable witnesses to the beginning of Eglamour in (N). More significantly, the fragment and its complex affiliations with the other witnesses provide further testimony to the long and fruitful history of textual transmission of the romance well into the sixteenth century.

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ROBERT DE SORBON ON MEN, WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. THE TESTIMONY OF HIS DE MATRIMONIO AND OTHER WORKS FRANS N.M. DIEKSTRA In one of his articles, Erik Kooper quotes a passage from Robert de Sorbon’s sermon on marriage, known as the De matrimonio (c. 126070), in which Robert glosses the Genesis account of the creation of Eve.1 In Robert’s view the significance of the fact that God created the first woman “from man’s rib, not from the upper part or from the lower, but from the middle” is “that the woman must be the equal of the man, or his companion, not under him and not above him.”2 Kooper draws attention to this as a “remarkably positive impression of woman, or, more correctly, of woman as wife”, a view which he contrasts with the prevailing ecclesiastical tradition that qualified her as inferior to man. He traces this ‘rib-topos’ from Hugh of St Victor’s De sacramentis (c. 1134) where it is first formulated in a way that suggests influence on Robert, down to the end of the thirteenth century.3 He further raises the question whether the views in Robert’s De matrimonio concerning women’s equality to men are merely juridical terms, or whether they also refer to the emotional relation between husband and wife. The scope of his article prevented him from pursuing this question in any detail. 1 De matrimonio, in Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale, ed. Jean Barthélemy Hauréau, 6 Vols, Paris, 1890, I, 188-203. 2 Erik Kooper, “Loving the Unequal Equal: Medieval Theologians and Marital Affection”, in The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, eds Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, SUNY Series in Medieval Studies, Albany, 1991, 44-56; 260-65. 3 Robert’s familiarity with Hugh of St Victor’s De sacramentis is well attested in his sermons. He refers to the work several times and quotes from it by name. Robert’s use of the rib-topos may also reflect Peter Lombard’s Sententiae, 2.18.2 and 4.28.4, passages which are indebted to Hugh of St Victor.

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In taking up this latter point I do not presume that what follows will supply a satisfactory answer to Erik Kooper’s query either one way or the other. It seems to me, in fact, that there is little chance of finding in Robert any further indication of what may be termed ‘an enlightened humanistic attitude’ towards marriage, though there definitely is further evidence of his high opinion of virtuous women. Robert’s works, for all their ‘bonhomie’, have a markedly austere and moralistic quality. His ideal human being is a chaste virgin and the next best a fallen virgin who is determined henceforth to be chaste. The instances in which Robert dwells on the subject of marital affection strictly concern the shared duty of the marriage partners to live a God-fearing life and help each other to attain heaven. What Robert might have replied to objections that he paid too little attention to ‘the needs of the partners in the present world’ we can only guess. But the odds are that he would have argued that while affection and mutual assistance are necessary conditions for a good marriage, we must get our priorities right: the love of God transcends all other loves and the one thing needful is to pass through this vale of tears without allowing oneself to be sidetracked from the pursuit of heaven. Words to this effect may, in fact, be read in Robert’s sermon for the feast of the Holy Innocents, where he says that “we must love God with all our heart, for God does not care for a divided heart; he wants either your whole heart or none of it.” Robert then takes up the question of a puzzled family man: “But cannot I, then, love my children and my wife?”, to which he replies: “Certainly you can and you must, but you should love them subject to the love of God and because of God”, after which he repeats that “the Lord wants you to give him your heart” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 141r-b).4 Both plan and execution of the De matrimonio strengthen the impression of a strict and disciplinary attitude to marriage. The sermon opens with a scene which reads like the record of an actual occurrence. It is developed in detail in the Vatican version.5 A married man is addressed by a university master with the salutation, “Good day, monk”. At first the man is puzzled and looks about him expecting to see some nearby monk, but the other tells him: “It is you I am 4

The sermon occurs in a collection of Robert’s sermons. There is, however, no definite manuscript attribution. 5 On the text and the different versions of the De matrimonio see below, notes 10 and 11.

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talking to, for you are a monk”. The citizen can hardly believe his ears, assuming that it is a case of mistaken identity, and tells him: “I am not whom you think I am”. But the master remains unperturbed, repeats his address and adds: “You are a monk. Do you wish to deny it?” upon which the citizen, understandably, gets annoyed and indulges in some rude language. The only effect is that the master now evidently feels free to collar him for a disputation on the nature of his status in life. The citizen realizes that he is the victim of a familiar clerical ploy and that he will have to sit through an examination of his moral condition, which he does with proper deference. The master tells him that since he is married, he is a member of an order, namely the sacramental order of matrimony, and proceeds to interrogate him on his knowledge of the rule of this order. The citizen has to confess that after twelve years of marriage he is still ignorant of the existence of any such rule, let alone its finer points. This leads the master to conclude that in addressing him as “monk” he had after all made too high an estimate of his status, assuming him to be of senior rank in his order; he should by now have been a novice-master engaged in instructing the young, but it appears that he does not even come up to the rank of a lay brother. He should have addressed him as “bad monk”. The introduction sets the tone for what follows. The order of matrimony is described in terms analogous to those used of the religious orders; a candidate for matrimony is compared to a novice entering religion. In the actual discussion there is nothing to suggest any departure from the Church’s most severe and conservative attitudes to marriage. In fact, though the De matrimonio pays proper respect to the scriptural and sacramental sanctity of the marriage bond, much of the work reads like a pamphlet on the rigours of wedlock, while propagating the superiority of virginity and chastity in the Pauline tradition. Though evidently motivated by genuine pastoral care, Robert makes getting married sound like entering a minefield while handing out a brochure for an alternative trip to safer resorts. Presenting the ‘order’ of matrimony as analogous to a religious order has an element of wit; it enabled Robert to throw into relief a number of traditional points about matrimony by viewing them from an unexpected angle.6 The effect is that the rigours traditionally 6

On the traditional pattern and clusters of ideas of marriage sermons for the second Sunday after Epiphany, see D.L. d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons

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associated with the religious orders appear mild and humane in comparison with the hardships and restrictions that characterize the rule of the order of matrimony. Robert sees fit to introduce a selection of the severest casus matrimonii as “rules of the order”, impressing upon his audience that if one were caught in any transgression it could make life a hell for all concerned. He lists such things as lifetime abstinence from all sex with one’s rightful spouse, with excommunication as the more attractive alternative in case his wife should object, or burial in the fields outside the village among the dogs, exile beyond the seas, forfeiture of one’s claim to the children, and so on. A further reminder offered to the consideration of those ignorant of the rules of matrimony is the stipulation that if either of the marriage partners should suffer from horrible leprosy – the Vatican text adds: “to such an extent that the wife lacks hand or foot” – the healthy partner is held to pay the marriage debt, if the sick partner desires it. Non-compliance is mortal sin. If a young novice of a religious order is ignorant of any point of the rule he may consult his seniors, but in the order of matrimony the seniors shrug their shoulders and say they do not know either. All members of the order are equally ignorant. The procedure invites comparison with Robert’s De consciencia, which presents the terrors of the Last Judgement as analogous to the final examinations of the University of Paris and explores the parallels and contrasts between the relatively severe Chancellor of the University of Paris and the uncompromisingly severe Judge of the Last Judgement.7 That this type of wit was congenial to university circles at the time is suggested by the kind of ironies developed by Guillaume de Lorris and Robert’s contemporary Jean de Meung in the Roman de la Rose, where an aspiring lover is permitted to enter the Diffused from Paris before 1300, Oxford, 1985, repr. 1988, 249-51; see also D.L. d’Avray and M. Tausche, “Marriage Sermons in Ad status Collections of the Central Middle Ages”, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, XLVII (1980), 71-119. The idea that married people constitute an ‘order’ which defines their position in Christian society is not Robert’s invention, though the detailed use of the motif undoubtedly is. For thirteenth-century parallels in Jacques de Vitry and Peraldus, see Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, IX, 2180-81. Cf. also note 8 below. 7 See F.N.M. Diekstra, “Robert de Sorbon’s ‘De consciencia’: Truncated Text and Full Text”, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, LXX/1 (2003), 22117.

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garden of love, where after a brief spell of elation he is subjected to the severe initiation rites of generalissimo Cupid, the god of love, which soon reduce him to despair. Prospective marriage partners listening to Robert’s view of their future bliss might well react with similar misgivings. Nor are they offered any possibility of release from their bondage, unlike novices entering religion, who have a year of probation after which they are free to reconsider. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that the ironic note is sustained throughout, or that the motif was designed to determine the structure of the entire sermon. Many of Robert’s sermons develop several motifs in juxtaposition, which are occasionally reused in different contexts.8 The De matrimonio is often considered to be a treatise, but we have actually to do with a sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany on the theme Marriage should be honoured by all, and marriages must be kept undefiled (Hebr. 13: 4). The two propositions of the theme are reflected in the bipartite structure of the sermon. The first part enumerates seven reasons why matrimony is honourable, the second part lists point by point the conditions of respectable marriages, and it is here that the motif of the “order” of matrimony properly belongs. Some sort of structural link between the two parts is established by the argumentation that since matrimony was instituted by the Lord himself in paradise, but the orders of religion merely by human beings and on earth, it follows that breaking the marriage pact is a worse offence than the apostasy of a monk who flees the cloister. Robert himself may not be wholly responsible for the caustic effect of some of the views presented in the work.9 Most likely we have here an additional instance of the vicissitudes of the transmission of sermon texts. The actual text we read may be no more than the draft for an oral presentation, or a cribbed version made afterwards by a member 8

In fact, the motif of “the points of the order of matrimony” reappears in similar form – but adapted to a different context as “the points of the order of charity” – as part of his sermon “Si linguis hominum loquar” (BnF, Lat. 15971, ff. 71ra-72vb). Elsewhere Robert uses the motif of “the apostates of the religious order of penance” (BNP Lat. 16507, f. 270ra). 9 A case in point is the phrasing of the argument – traditional in itself – that the miracle at Cana, where water was turned into wine, indicates the superiority of spiritual marriage over carnal marriage. For if wine is sweeter than water, those who opt for the spiritual marriage, which is the union between God and the soul, have more refined joy than pigs that enjoy wallowing in filth.

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of Robert’s audience. This may account for some cryptic short-cuts of the kind that would generally be avoided in a formal discourse. In addition, one might recall that the only printed version of the work, the one edited by Hauréau, is a ‘doctored’ version, that is, a conflation made up selectively from manuscript versions that differ considerably in degree of elaboration and details of phrasing.10 All the same, the eight surviving manuscript versions agree in their general outline and contents and we may be fairly confident that what we read represents Robert’s views, though not necessarily his own authorized text or the verbal details of his oral presentation. Taking up Erik Kooper’s query where he left off, we find that the positive impression of woman as wife in Robert’s treatment of the ribtopos should not be interpreted as a more indulgent attitude towards the affective needs of the marriage partners in any worldly sense. To be sure, Robert provides evidence that in creating human beings God, in fact, favoured women above men. This has much to do with what Robert regarded as their natural predisposition to conform to what he himself valued as essential – women are superior to men in the things that really count. It is thus, doubtless, that we should view the drift of the whole passage. This is how it runs in the Bruges version of the De matrimonio:11 To women greater honour is due than to men, for woman was made in paradise from the bone of man, that is, from Adam’s rib; man, however, was created on earth from the slime of the earth. For as is written in the beginning of Genesis, God took man, and put him into the paradise, and afterwards he made Eve from his rib. It is meaningful that he made Eve from man’s rib, for in this he indicates that the wife must be the equal of her husband, not like a servant or a slave. And by the fact that God says: a help like unto himself – which is a relationship of 10 Eight different versions have been identified. Six are listed in Nicole Bériou, “Robert de Sorbon”, in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, XIII (1987), 818. A seventh is Paris BnF, Lat. 15957, f. 29rb, an eighth Bruges, Bibliotheek Grootseminarie, 447B, f. 64rb. In two manuscripts the text is split up into three successive sermons, which may represent textual records of presentation on different occasions. 11 The following quotations are from two variant redactions of the De matrimonio: Bruges, Bibliotheek Grootseminarie, 447B, ff. 64rb-67vb, and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 1211, ff. 40va-45rb. They present details of the rib-topos which complement the text printed by Hauréau, who had no knowledge of these two versions.

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equivalence – he denotes that woman must not be above man nor under his heel, neither servant nor slave, but there must be companionship between them in lasting equality, respect and honour. This is said against many husbands, who on the slightest ground make rows with their wives and treat them disrespectfully, whereas God appears to love women more than men and to show them greater honour, for he made them in a nobler place, and out of nobler material, than men. For this reason they are held to worship God and to keep themselves chaste and undefiled. And thus they do in many places, for they offer candles before the altar and bear the standard before all in doing good works, by going to sermons and going to confession more frequently than men. Hence they appear in this respect more inclined to good than men. Mullieribus debetur maior honor viris, quia mullier facta in paradisso de osse viri, scilicet de costa Ade; homo vero in terra factus est de limo terre. Vnde in principio Genesis: Tullit enim Deus hominem in paradisum, et postea fecit Evam de costa eius. Signanter fecit Euam de costa viri, quia in hoc dessignat quod mullier debet esse par viro suo, non sicut ancilla uel domina. Et per hoc quod dicit: adiutorium simile sibi – sic enim est rellatiuum equiparancie – designat quod mulier non debet esse supra virum nec subtus pedes eius, nec ancilla uel famula, sed debet esse societas inter eos in paritate cuntinua, reuerencia et honore. Cuntra multos qui propter modicum valde discordant, vxores suas inhonorantes, cum Deus tamen plus videatur dilligere mulieres quam viros et eas honorare, quia fecit eas in loco nobilliori et de nobilliori materia quam viros. Vnde magis tenentur quantum ad hoc Deo reuerentiam exibere et se ipsas mundas et castas seruare, et sic faciunt in multis locis, quia offerunt candellas in altari et ferunt vexillum pre omnibus in bonis operacionibus, eundo ad sermones, ad confessionem frequentius quam viri. Vnde videntur in hoc proniores quam viri ad bonum. (Sermo de nupciis magistri Roberti de Surbonio, Bruges, Bibliotheek Grootseminarie, 447b, ff. 64va-vb).

Robert’s point in saying that “the woman must be the equal of her husband” is not an exhortation for woman to boldly assert her rights and give her partner tit for tat like a Wife of Bath avant la lettre. Nor is it an injunction to “make love, not war”. He means to say that the nobility of their origin presents women not so much with a prerogative

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as with a task; he urges the wife to brace herself and think well of herself; if she tries she can do it; she has the qualifications to be man’s equal, and must be his equal, in view of the hazardous pilgrimage the two of them are about to undertake. Their equality presents them with the shared responsibility to assist each other in their duty to serve God and to attain salvation. In fact, the wife need not even be content with the equality suggested by the rib-topos, namely that she is man’s equal on the ground that she is made from Adam’s rib, his middle part, not from either his top or bottom part. She can even claim superiority to man on the basis of the nobility of her place of origin, since she was created in the splendour of paradise and Adam merely on earth. She need not even stop there, but may claim additional superiority on the ground that nobler material went into the making of her than in the making of man, since God created woman of bone and man out of mud. And finally, she might consider that it was a woman who became the mother of God’s son, not a man his father.12 But why should Robert add these artistic touches to the rib-topos and threaten to overturn his own argumentation by tipping the scales in the opposite direction? Why should he say, as we read in the Vatican version: Women might answer to the men who vilify them: “Man, consider the inferior material of which you are made in comparison with me, for you are made of mud and I of bone; I was fashioned in paradise, you outside paradise.” (Vat. Lat. f. 1211, 41ra).

Robert provides the answer himself: ... and for these reasons women must hold God in great honour. And indeed they do. They light more candles before his altar than do men, and more readily attend Mass and go to sermons. In doing penance they bear the standard before men (ibid.).

Robert’s point, then, is that woman’s superiority imposes on her a corresponding responsibility to pull her weight and perform better than men in their joint venture. This superiority – though, as always, 12 This latter argument is confined to the Vatican manuscript. It is paralleled, however, along with the preceding two, in Jacques de Vitry’s sermon on marriage in BnF, Lat. 17509. See d’Avray and Tausche, “Marriage Sermons”, 107.

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difficult to insulate from the omnipresent context of the rivalry of the sexes – is here primarily related to the gratitude they owe their Maker for the greater favours bestowed on them. For that very reason, that is, as a response to God’s goodness, their partners should honour and love them.13 The obligation for women to surpass their men in chastity and piety, as well as in submitting more to penance, is a matter of ‘noblesse oblige’. Robert is boosting their morale, in fact, he is pumping them up with adrenalin and rounding them up for action. Though to a modern sceptical view this attribution of superiority may sound like inverted discrimination, to Robert it appeared a profound idea and a noble tribute, in perfect accordance with St Paul’s admonition that the wife should be the salvation of the husband just as the husband should be the salvation of the wife (1 Cor. 7:14, 16). As Erik Kooper points out, Hugh of St Victor adds a disclaimer to his discussion of the equality principle of the rib-topos, namely that “in a certain way she was inferior to him, in that she was made from him”. Kooper interprets this as a reluctant bow to the authority of the Genesis account and the letters of St Paul. Robert, on the other hand, appears to have had no qualms whatsoever about ignoring this note of reserve. In fact, he wants none of it and zestfully argues the opposite case of woman’s superiority. In this connection it may be noted that already St Augustine regarded the fact that a woman was made for the first man from his own side as a clear indication, not of woman’s inferiority as Hugh implies, but of how affectionate should be the union of husband and wife (De civitate Dei, 12.28). And in the De bono coniugali on the strength of Eve’s creation from Adam’s side St Augustine argues the equality and harmony of the partners, playfully using the image of husband and wife walking “side by side” and jointly observing where they are heading.14 Robert must have realized, as did others, that the rib-topos had a marked potential for use as a wax nose that might be turned this way or that depending on the exigencies of the argument. He boldly availed himself of the latitude

13

This latter point is made explicitly in BnF, Lat. 15952, f. 110vb. “Prima itaque naturalis humanae societatis copula uir et uxor est. quos nex ipsos singulos condidit deus et tamquam aliegenas iunxit, sed alteram creauit ex altero, signans etiam uim coniunctionis in latere, unde illa detracta formata est. lateribus enim sibi iunguntur, qui pariter ambulant et pariter quo ambulant intuentur.” (De bono coniugali, I, 1, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL, XLI, Prague, 1900, 187. 14

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afforded him and used it, in the true French courtly spirit, for what he considered a good cause. Robert appears to have taken the prerequisite of marital affection and companionship for granted, but, for all his deference to women, he remains entrenched in a strictly moralistic view of the relations between the sexes. Nor is he averse to using the incitement of fear in arguing the dangers of inordinate sex. This is in part bound up with the problems he faced as a professor of theology and founding father of the ‘Sorbonne college’ of the old University of Paris, in particular with his attempts to keep in check the unruly sexual appetites of Parisian students, prospective members of the clergy. Many of them had foreign or rural backgrounds and were presumably disoriented, or simply eager to explore the boundaries of their new-found freedom. Their big-city problems evidently coloured Robert’s attitude to women, that is to say to women of the lascivious type, whom he regarded as so many sirens on his pupils’ route to the heavenly Jerusalem. Most of his tirades against these women end with the scriptural denunciations for a harlot is a deep ditch (Prov. 23:27) and every woman that is a harlot shall be trodden upon as dung in the way (Ecclus. 9:10). From Robert’s Cum repetes, also known as De modo audiendi confessiones et interrogandi, we may gain an impression of the kind of problems Robert as a ‘physician of souls’ had to contend with and of the type of mentality he encountered. In one of Robert’s model dialogues intended for the instruction of the clergy, the confessor warns the penitent that in having dealings with loose women he has run the risk of incurring venereal disease. The penitent replies smugly that this did not worry him in the least since he had taken the precaution of having his friend try the woman in question out first. The confessor tells his penitent that thereby he has tripled his sin, which is worse than the merely physical evils of VD which he has hitherto been fortunate enough to escape. He then proceeds to instruct him in the medical facts, as he knew them, of lepra, or VD, explaining to the penitent that his clever ‘precaution’ was not a precaution at all, since the infection, once it is introduced into the woman, is progressive and may infect the man who was last intimate with her more than the first. The penitent slyly rejoins that if he has been running such a great risk of infection, the woman must have been at even greater risk, which is patently false since it is evident that she is

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up and about and in excellent shape. To this the confessor replies that here he is mistaken again, and that he needs further instruction in the facts of life. He explains that according to the doctors of medicine a woman has inside her womb a pellicle with tiny follicles, in which the infected matter is as it were kept in storage, thus protecting the rest of her body against infection. “Your virile member, however”, he tells the cocky penitent, “is the most sensitive and delicate of all members of your body, and if it comes into contact with this putrid matter, is instantaneously infected, and this infection will spread through your whole body. Even if there were no hell or paradise you ought to steer clear of this.”15 So much for Robert’s concern with pre-marital pastoral – and medical – care. A glimpse of what Robert was up against with married couples is offered us in a passage of the De matrimonio where Robert chastises husbands who assert their right to have sex with their wives in unnatural positions and who claim boldly: “She is mine and therefore I can take her from whichever end I please, like I take my bread.” Robert quotes the condemnation of his teacher, Guiard of Laon, to the effect that by the same token your eye may be said to be yours, but if you abuse it by plucking it out you are guilty of mortal sin. Wives should not allow themselves to be abused by this type of violence. It turns their husbands into murderers of their joint offspring, since, Robert continues, miscarriages are often the result; for if the woman is accessed by the wrong entrance, nature’s programme operates in reverse and the foetus thus disoriented will fail to arrive at the proper exit and die, and sometimes the mother as well (BnF, Lat. 16505, f. 155va; similarly Vat. Lat. 1211, f. 45rb). One of the ‘points’, or articles, of the rule of matrimony similarly contains the threat that the sin of the parents may be visited on their offspring, for this is what may happen if they have intercourse in a state of mortal sin. Just as the priest is bound to cleanse himself of all deadly sins before he takes holy orders and before he celebrates Mass, the marriage partners should cleanse themselves of mortal sin not only 15

See F.N.M. Diekstra, “Robert de Sorbon’s ‘Cum repetes’ (De modo audiendi confessiones et interrogandi)”, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, LXVI (1999), 79-153, esp. 119-120. Fear of the womb and revulsion are of course familiar features of medieval moralistic writings. In one of Robert’s sermons we read that if a dog should eat of what a child is nourished with in its mother’s womb, the dog would become rabid: “Certe dicunt philosophi quod si canis comederet de hoc quo nutritur puer in uentre matris, rabidus efficeretur.” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 115va).

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before the wedding ceremony, but also each time they perform the “office of matrimony”. If they fail to do so, they run the risk of having a misshapen child, as is illustrated by the story of a baby that was born with only one ear because the father was guilty of the unconfessed crime of cutting off the ear of some other child. The De matrimonio also contains passages in a lighter key, where Robert gives evidence of the importance he attached to the mutua conservatio aspect of matrimony. He notes that most married people know only one point of the rule of their order, which is to refrain from fornicating with a third party. Robert regards this as a gross minimization of the duties of the marriage partners. After all, some animals have comparable fidelity without thereby deserving heaven. This introduces a comparison of the marital behaviour of the cock with that of the average husband, a comparison which turns out to be much to the advantage of the cock. The selfishness of the husband who spends his money in the tavern is contrasted with the generosity of the cock who selects the best grains of corn for his beloved spouse, though he needs as much or more for his own sustenance. This image, reminiscent of the farmyard romance of Chauntecleer and Pertelote in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale, is elaborated here in further detail. A cock does not pluck his hen and strip her of her plumage, unlike the tavern-crawling and debts-incurring husband who despoils his wife of all she needs down to the very pillow she sleeps on. A cock, armed with his formidable spurs, jealously defends his hens against rival suitors, but many husbands are not even stirred to action when lascivious men take their wives to dances; in fact they often connive at their own wives’ adultery. The cock sings his ‘hours’ day and night, unlike husbands who do not allow their wives to go to Mass and to sermons. A cock beats his wings before he crows, that is, he ‘disciplines’ himself before he exhorts others. Nor does he feel any false shame in inflicting this penance on himself in his wife’s presence. A special point to be observed by marriage partners is the integrity of the individual partner in upholding virtue against worldly derision and prejudice, in particular if this prejudice should be shared by the other partner. Robert stresses that the pursuit of virtue overrides the duty of the partners to please each other. To objections that such a view is in conflict with the terms of the marriage contract, Robert in the De matrimonio replies with an anecdote that neatly clinches the

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argument. The King of France – the reference is to Louis IX – used to walk around in humble clothes, a habit that he cultivated in accordance with his piety and ascetic leanings, for which he had acquired the reputation of a “beguin”, a term which in those days had the derisive connotations of “vagabond” and “bigot”. His wife, however, who loved ostentatious finery, often showed her annoyance with her husband’s humble apparel. In the anecdote the King, on one of his campaigns ultra mare, met a foreign prince, who was similarly dressed in unfashionable clothes. The King turned the conversation to what he assumed to be their shared problem and asked him what the prince’s wife thought of his humble outfit. The prince answered that she hated it to death, but that he had managed to preserve the peace by proposing to his wife the following arrangement, in a speech that ran something like this: “Since I am bound by conjugal law to please you, I will consent to put on the apparel you wish me to wear, though I much prefer my present humble dress. In return for this, since you are equally bound to please me, I wish you to wear the kind of simple dress that I favour.” Upon which the wife was quick to realize that she had better let the matter rest there and without further ado she allowed him to wear his humble outfit as before. In the De matrimonio Robert’s concern with the world of everyday reality is evident also in a passage that discusses the pros and cons of marrying beautiful and rich partners. Similar passages that address the conflicts and problems of married life abound among his sermons. In one of these Robert shows the extent of his concern for proper childcare as well as his expertise on the subject of breast-feeding. He criticizes as signs of pride the tendency of women to employ wetnurses to suckle their babies. Such women attempt to outshine the Holy Virgin who, though of royal stock, did not require a nurse but suckled Jesus herself. Robert warns women that the practice of using wet-nurses may have bad effects on the children, for their milk is not as good as that of their mistresses, who eat better. By way of illustration Robert narrates the story of a wealthy couple who entrusted their infant child to the care of a wet-nurse, who when her milk ran out put the child with her sow who had just given birth to a litter of piglets. The child, suckled by the sow, developed much fat, a grin on his face, and the kind of rumbustious plumpness that is characteristic of young pigs, which he took to be his siblings. Once weaned he was returned to his parental home, but whenever he went

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out of the house and caught sight of the pigs, he ran up to them and wallowed in the mud as he was wont to do. Though his parents treated him to severe beatings, he persisted in this habit till he was full-grown. Bowed by grief the father sought the advice of a learned master, who first had the mother swear an oath that she in fact had the child from her lawful husband. Further questioning revealed that she had not fed the child with her own milk, upon which the nurse was called to account for her sorry performance. The master confined the boy to isolation and gave orders to subject him to a strict regime until he was all skin and bones and had lost all the flesh he had put on by feeding on sow’s milk. He then was put on a normal diet and was soon cured of his aberration. The moral conclusion is twofold: One, beware of wet-nurses, and two, when a man is fed with sow’s milk, he will wallow in filth with sows, that is, with prostitutes, whom St Peter called “sows” when he said: As soon as the sow has been washed, it wallows in the mud. Let such a man get rid of his surplus fat by fasting and he shall get rid of his sinful habit (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 167va-vb; similarly 16507, f. 257rb-va). In the latter version it is added that wetnurses often act as go-betweens in the clandestine affairs of their mistresses and tend to have loose morals; children fed with their milk will often show the effects of their depravity. In another sermon Robert sketches the meaning of true fidelity in marriage. It is not merely a matter of refraining from adulterous sex, but includes care for the moral well-being of one’s partner. After all what kind of fidelity would it be if the one partner should go to paradise but should allow the other literally to go to hell? What could the one say to the other? Rather the husband should say to his wife: “Sister, we must exert ourselves to go to paradise, I on my part and you on your part. Let us take care that nothing in us is displeasing to God and let us take counsel from some man of virtue.” The wife should not delude herself that by putting on her fine apparel she may keep her husband from his extra-marital escapades or win him back by strategies of this kind. She should shed holy tears, say devout prayers and attempt to correct him through her pious way of life. Robert concludes: “I believe that women are on the whole better at correcting their husbands’ evil ways than vice versa” (BnF, Lat. 16505, ff. 222rarb). However, in a variant version of the same sermon – perhaps reflecting a different audience or a different mood of the preacher –

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the conclusion reads: “But there are many women who sooner draw their men to evil than to virtue” (BnF, Lat. 16507, f. 252rb). The denunciation of what Robert viewed as the extravagances of fashion is a recurring feature in his sermons. He explodes the notion that women put on their seductive apparel solely to keep themselves attractive to their husbands. What they actually do is adopt the methods of the devil, for they appear to be offering themselves for sale to other men (BnF, Lat. 16507, f. 236ra). When women go to church in their provocative dresses they are like werewolves that leave a trail of victims (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 184ra). Mothers who dress up their daughters to go to dances prepare them for the kill (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 79vb). When women deck themselves out with their elaborate headgear and present themselves in public to be desired by men, it makes them look like horses in the marketplace who carry bunches of straw on their heads as signs that they are for sale (BnF, Lat. 16507, f. 236ra). Some women wear shoes so tight that they walk like a lame horse and sometimes they destroy their feet, so that in the end they cannot even stand. Such people should pay more attention to the story of the woman who confessed in public that the weight of her headgear gave her constant headaches, which she relieved at night by hanging her elaborate trappings on a nail beside her bed (ibid., ff. 123vb-124ra). In nature all male animals have larger heads than the females. But nowadays women’s heads are larger than men’s; their hairdoes resemble cemeteries because of all the tails of animals and dead women’s hair piled up on them. But on Judgement Day the Lord shall ask: “Who made this head? I certainly didn’t, for I always made women’s heads more graceful than men’s.” Then the devil shall exclaim: “Lord, I made it.” And the Lord: “Take it, it’s yours” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 107va). The notion that such fashions are an offence to God and nature is expressed also in the satirical description of ageing men and women who “turn sunset into dawn”, desperately trying to look younger by changing their hairstyle, the former by skilfully arranging their sparse strands of hair from back to front, the latter by wearing the hair of dead women (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 177va). Amorous men, moreover, make themselves look silly by wearing tight shoes, high bonnets and by combing their hair in a way that suggests that a cow has slobbered on it (BnF, Lat. 16507, f. 217rb). It was noted above that though Robert pays respect to the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony, it is clear that his heart is with

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virginity and chastity. This picture emerges also from his sermons. Robert’s accounts of conversion scenes, especially of young people of the malleable age, are emotionally charged, as we read in the story of a handsome girl who had decided to forsake the world and its pomp and enter religion and surprised her worldly companions who knew nothing of her decision: A certain girl of noble birth and great beauty went to a certain abbey to attend Mass, and there, without the knights who accompanied her knowing of it, the abbess came up to her and put the religious habit upon her as they had previously arranged, and when she had thus received the habit, the girl, who had a very good singing voice, started to sing: “I renounce the world and all its pomp for the love of Jesus Christ.” And the knights as well as the nuns shed tears when they heard her sing like that” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 73rb).

Less touching but even more determined is the virgin featured in a passage in De matrimonio which illustrates the point that matrimony is honourable because its fruit is virginity (Hauréau’s text is defective here, the manuscript he used omits the word virginitas). The argument includes the story of a virgin whom her parents wanted to give in marriage to some nobleman, but the girl, having heard that the heavenly rewards promised to married people, chaste widows, and virgins, are rated on a scale of thirty, sixty and hundred respectively, indignantly refused to have anything to do with her prospective partner. Exclaiming that she would be mad to trade off for the price of a mere thirty pounds what was worth a hundred, she forthwith entered religion. The emphatic use of the language of the marketplace – the implication is that virgins have a good head for business – is paralleled in many other places in Robert’s work, mostly with pertinent quotes from St Augustine and St Paul, his favourite authorities.16 In one of his sermons he denounces the stupidity of both men and women who through indulgence in lechery sell their wares much below the price:

16

For further instances of market-place vocabulary in thirteenth-century sermons, see d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars, 208-16, 235.

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But men are even greater fools than women; and let everyone of you intelligent people consider this proposition, and let him, if he can, account for this. A woman sells her virginity, which is of paramount value, and gives it away for a coat or a thing of that sort. Surely, that is a bad bargain, and such a woman is a fool. But men are even greater fools, for the woman at least wants to get paid for it, but the men actually spend money to lose their virginity. Out of his mind you would call someone who carries a hundred marks and hires a thief to rob him of his money; but an even greater fool is the man who pays money to lose his virginity. Such a man pays money for a trip to hell. Holy Mary! I would not go to hell for all the world, and you give money to go there? Let each of you consider if he has ever given money to go to hell (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 125va, similarly f. 185vb).

As he continues, Robert resorts to the strategy of inspiring fear, telling his students that all this womanizing has an adverse effect on their studies. By way of corroboration he relates the story of a randy and promiscuous student who complained of difficulties of concentration and serious lapses of memory: It is for this reason, namely because they have lost their virginity and give in to their lustful urges, that they lose the capacity for serious study, as is illustrated by the case of a student who came up to me in Paris and said: “When I arrived in Paris, I made excellent headway in my studies, I could remember all that my teacher told me and I even taught my fellow students. But now I am like a perforated bag, for everything I hear in the lectures immediately slips from my memory, all as a result of my lechery (ibid., ff. 125va-vb).17

Robert’s praise of virginity is not incompatible with respect for fallen virgins. He argues that even though lost virginity cannot be restored, no one need despair. Just as a broken vessel can be repaired and adorned to even greater beauty than before, in the same way fallen virgins after their conversion will often rank higher in heaven than virgins who have never sinned (De consciencia, 92). Robert often cites the case of Mary Magdalene, who after renouncing her dissipated 17

On the notion that excessive sex may cause brain damage, premature aging and general decrepitude, see ‘Cum repetes’, 87-92.

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past became an authoritative preacher.18 He toys with the notion of the preaching of women when he calls her “the apostles’ apostle”. For, Robert says, although St Paul forbade women to preach, it was on the higher authority of an angel of God that Magdalene and her companions were ordered to preach on Easter Sunday, that is, when she announced to the apostles the news of Christ’s resurrection (Matt. 28:7). Robert comments that for this reason a man should not disregard a woman’s words. Nevertheless, lest women and others should get the wrong idea, Robert adds that since women were given licence to preach on Easter Sunday, “much more ought a man to preach on this day, and certainly a man who has the authority to preach.” After which he concludes his protheme with Ideo rogemus and proceeds to deliver the sermon himself. (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 69va, f. 175vb). Robert shows likewise warm approval of beguines who live chaste lives in piety and humility, and of pious mothers who are regular churchgoers and repeat the contents of the sermons they hear to their family and friends. Against those who forbid women to do so Robert cites the authority of St Augustine’s mother, who played an important role in Augustine’s conversion by repeating the sermons of St Ambrose for her son’s benefit, and who was consoled by the assurance she received from St Ambrose: “It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 76ra).19 Robert likewise pays tribute to virtuous women who in their simple wisdom are superior to a whole congregation of learned masters who “put their books too close to their eyes” and waste their time on trivialities (De tribus dietis, BnF, Lat. 3218, ff. 195ra-rb; similarly in a sermon in BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 193ra). In one of his sermons Robert praises the superior piety of a beguine who came to Paris to buy a copy of Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, which she portioned out in quires to the clerks of the diocese of Cambrai to copy in their spare time.20 18

Ibid., cf. Legenda aurea. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W.G. Ryan, 2 Vols, Princeton, 1993, I, 376. 19 Similarly BnF, Lat. 15959, f. 567va; BnF, Lat. 16507, f. 252vb. The attribution of the quote to St Ambrose is poetic licence; cf. St Augustine, Confessiones, 3.12. 20 See Nicole Bériou, L’Avènement des Maîtres de la Parole: La Prédication à Paris au XIIIe Siècle, Collection des Études Augustiniennes, 2 Vols, Série Moyen Âge et Temps Modernes, 31-32, Paris, 1998, I, 189.

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Instances may be multiplied which demonstrate that Robert reserves his warmer feelings for relationships other than matrimony. This is felt in particular when he speaks about the conversion of sinners to God, in which as a curator animarum Robert himself played an important part. Many of his anecdotes extol the courage of young people who brave the derision and cynicism of their worldly companions and decide to lead a more spiritual life, as in the following account of a knight who said farewell to his worldly ways: A very handsome knight wished to enter the “desert of penance”, that is, religion. After his locks had been shaved off he asked for a mirror. The monks raised their eyebrows and told him: “Our rule does not allow that.” At which he said: “If you don’t hand me a mirror, I quit.” He was then offered a mirror, and seeing himself thus tonsured he said: “Lord God, now I know that you never loved me until today. Now I realize that all through my military career I was never accoutred properly. But now I look like a clipped gladiator. From now on I shall wage war on the devil” (BnF, Lat. 15971, f. 73rb).

Robert often emphasizes the special nature of the confidential relationship between confessor and penitent, a view which reflects the zeal with which he acquitted himself of his function as a spiritual counsellor. In the De tribus dietis and De consciencia he explains that this relationship is higher than parental love and higher also than the love between husband and wife, where there is union of bodies, not always of souls. In confession, however, there is loving communion of souls, since the penitent reveals to the confessor the secrets of his heart which nobody else knows except God and himself, secrets which he would never reveal to anyone else, not to his parents, his best friend or his wife. The penitent thus makes of the confessor his heart and as it were his God, and this conjunction is more sacred (De tribus dietis, BnF, Lat. 3218, f. 200rb).21

21

Similarly ‘De consciencia’, 102.

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CAROLINE SPURGEON AND HER RELATIONSHIP TO CHAUCER. THE TEXT OF HER VIVA PRESENTATION AT THE SORBONNE JULIETTE DOR Recently I have been able to work on Caroline Spurgeon’s archives, kept at Royal Holloway College, University of London.1 One of my aims was to explore her reasons for taking a Doctorat d’Université in Paris.2 Her pioneer work Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357-1900 was in fact preceded by a long and lesserknown episode, marked by her doctorate and the publication in Paris of Chaucer devant la critique en Angleterre et en France depuis son 1

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Belgian Research Fund (FNRS). I must also acknowledge my debt to the staff of Royal Holloway College, both for their efficient help and for permission to print and translate here the document recorded under BC PP7/4 /1/2 Archives, Royal Holloway, University of London. Thanks are also due here to the French Archives Nationales. 2 For more information on her life, personality, career and publications, consult Renate Haas, “Caroline F. E. Spurgeon (1869-1942: First Woman Professor of English in England”, Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance, Madison WI, 2005, 99-109; on her international work and the creation of the IFUW, see also Renate Haas, “Caroline Spurgeon – English Studies, the United States, and Internationalism”, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XXXVIII (2002), 215-28; on her role in the development of literary criticism, see Ina Schabert, “A Double-Voiced Discourse: Shakespeare Studies by Women in the Early 20th Century”, Gendered Academia. Wissenschaft und Geschlechterdifferenz 1890-1945, eds Miriam Kauko, Sylvia Mieszkowski and Alexandra Tischel, Munich, 2005, 255-77; I have also contributed a paper on her role in the institutionalisation of English Studies as a scholarly discipline to the Symposium Women Scientists and the Creation of New Disciplines of the International Congress of History of Science in Beijing, 2005, to be published as “Caroline Spurgeon (1869-1942) and the Institutionalization of English Studies as a Scholarly Discipline”, in Eminent Chaucerians: Early Women Scholars and the History of Reading Chaucer, ed. Richard Utz, Philologie im Netz, http://web.fu-berlin.de/phin/, 2007.

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temps jusqu'à nos jours, a much shorter one-volume work based on the material gathered for her subsequent three English volumes.3 A number of questions arise, the first being: why did she publish that first version in Paris? Among the pieces of the file labelled “Notes and transcriptions of allusions to Chaucer,” I have identified two sets of sheets in her handwriting, one numbered from one to four, and the other from one to three. They contain the text of her viva in the Sorbonne: the former is the corrected draft by another hand (probably Miss L. E. Farrer’s, whose help she acknowledges in the foreword to her French book), and the latter must be the actual text of her presentation.4 As Caroline Spurgeon wrote to her aunt (19 May 1906),5 her future at Bedford College, University of London, where she had been appointed assistant lecturer in English in 1901, was doubtful, even if she had “a most excited letter from Dr. F. saying she ought to get the professorship.”6 She was advised by W. P. Ker not to embark on any big administrative post in the University, and reports that he argued: “I could not bear to see you doing it! I want you to go on writing and lecturing … and I myself would be exhausted, unable to do my highest work!”, and she further explains that she turned her back on it (27 March 1907). In June 1907, she was still hesitating on a subject for her doctorate and, as she wrote, she thought of Rousseau or Burns, but would leave it open until she had heard Annie Besant’s lecture. In November 1907, she matriculated at the Sorbonne (12 Nov 1907) and we read: 3

Caroline Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 13571900, 3 Vols, Cambridge, 1925; ibid., Thèse pour le doctorat d’Université (Lettres) présentée à la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Paris par Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Paris, 1911, viii + 398. 4 According to the minutes of her viva (138 – 191, Doctorat d’Université, Mlle Spurgeon), it took place on March 30th 1911, at 9am, and was chaired by Emile Legouis. Title: Chaucer devant la critique en Angleterre et en France depuis son temps jusqu’à nos jours. Her additional ‘questions’ were: I. Le symbolisme de l’ombre et de la lumière dans le Prométhée délivré de Shakespeare, II. Etude de la nature et les effets des impressions ressenties par l’imagination de Ruskin (Documents of the Archives Nationales, Paris: CHAN, 4J/16/4763). 5 All the letters to her aunt mentioned here belong to box BC PP7/1/2, RHUL Archives, “letters from CS to Mrs E. Harvey, 1905-1914.” She was obviously very close to that person, and her easy-going correspondence to her contains a wealth of information on her projects and the difficulties she met with. 6 Dr. F. stands for F. J. Furnivall.

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I have been with M. Legouis, who is most charming. He … begs me to do some study of mysticism for my thesis. I said to him at the end of our talk that I hoped he would undertake the supervision of my thesis, to which he replied: “Mademoiselle, it is my duty to do so, but in this instance it is my pleasure and privilege as well, for I am sure I shall learn a great deal from it.” I am going to have it published simultaneously in France and in England in each language.

By the end of November 1907 (piece 42), she thought she had settled on a subject: It is a study of the early life, surroundings, and influences on George Eliot, and an examination of her philosophy as revealed in her books …. She is specially interesting because she sums up … all the great intellectual forces and movements of her time .... It would be interesting to French people, because it would, I think, draw some comparisons between her and George Sand – who was practically a contemporary. Each of them the greatest woman novelist of their country … each so completely embodying the characteristics of her time and race.

Meanwhile, the list of her distinctions was growing, and she could boast: I have been made a member of the Council of the Philological Sty. You can add this to my list of distinctions! The only woman. Do you remember the fear and trembling with which I first read a paper there 8 years ago!? (9 May 1908).

Even if her decision to take a Doctorate of the University of Paris was probably due to the fact that without a doctorate degree her career was handicapped, her explanations are more complex: ... more because I wish to know something of French literature, and it is an object for doing a piece of original work than for the degree reason! Because I really do not now (being known and established) need the degree and also the likelihood is that in a year or so all Professors of the University of London will get honorary London degrees given to them, so that they may wear London robes and not robes belonging to all kinds of other Universities as is the case at present (piece number 59).

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Unfortunately, I have found no further information on the exact time and the reasons why she eventually decided to devote her dissertation to Chaucer’s reception in France and England, but it is obvious that at some stage she merged her dissertation project and her Chaucer undertaking into one single activity; whether it was directly under Furnivall’s influence is difficult to state, but it is clear that he was eager to see her work progress. In May of the same year [1908] she submitted her first chapter to Legouis and also attended a viva at the Sorbonne. She was definitely rather bewildered and frightened, and sent her aunt a drawing of the room, with the places for the candidate and for the jury. On 27th June 1910 she was admitted to her viva, and in March 1911, she was proud to write: I was told it was the most brilliant thesis and defence which has been presented for the ‘Doctorat’ for the last twenty years and that an English woman would come over and do this is regarded as a miracle! It is an awful ordeal. But after the first half hour I felt I had them with me and was not afraid. There was a large audience … and I was told that I am an honour to my sex and nation. It was a wonderful experience. I know I was good, but I don’t know how I did it, I don’t feel as if I were me.

What follows are my translation and transcription of the original French text of the archival piece,7 a document that had gone unnoticed until now.8 It reveals that some central ideas she expressed in the introduction to her 1925 volumes, in connection with the phenomenon that has been named “Critics of Chaucer Judge Themselves Not Him”9, ought to be antedated by some fifteen years. I hope that my

7

I have expanded all the abbreviations and shortened forms of the text. In addition, since the text of this manuscript was for her own use only, there are a couple of awkward forms or misspellings, which I have corrected. Let me add that the corrected draft of the text (a second document) was very useful in terms of adding words she had forgotten to copy down in the final version. 8 I first drew attention to it during the session Early Women Scholars and the History of Reading Chaucer, organized by Richard Utz, at the 14th International Congress of the New Chaucer Society, Glasgow, 2004. 9 It is the title given to the pages devoted to C. Spurgeon in Derek Brewer, ed., Chaucer: The Critical Heritage, 2 Vols, London, 1978, II (1837-1933), 367.

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discovery will be of interest to the Chaucer scholar and friend we are honouring today. Translation of Caroline’s Spurgeon’s Viva Text The present book’s most obvious idea is that it is conceived as a key to my English book Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357-1900. The book under consideration today would have reached proportions beyond average dissertations if all the documents on which it is based had been included. It has, however, been assumed that it was more relevant to put those documents together into two large volumes, forthcoming soon under the patronage of the Chaucer Society. Hence far more detailed and specialized, the latter work’s concern is to provide a complete catalogue of all the opinions that could be gathered on Chaucer, from the fourteenth century to nowadays. The catalogue is arranged in chronological order and constitutes an impartial collection, from which each will draw what is most suitable to him/her. It was, nevertheless, important to set out the conclusions reached in the course of this research. They are set out in the present dissertation; the latter is incomplete without the material from which it is drawn and it will constantly refer the reader to the other book, the starting point of all our assumptions. The parts of the book, such as chapter 2, which are in themselves the least interesting from the viewpoint of literature, will be of the greatest worth for the student who has the English book close at hand. Chapter two, for instance, is actually a guide, a series of reference points to direct students and to help them in the classification of a huge quantity of documents that might remain unexplored due to lack of time. I thought therefore that it would be useful to mention where genuine literary criticism could be found among all these allusions. I traced back the history of remarks on Chaucer’s language and style, and I assessed the relative frequency of the various poems throughout the various periods. Similarly, the list of passages in which Chaucer is quoted for strictly literary purposes – the list is nothing more than a catalogue – ought to be of great interest and real value when it is used together with the English book. The second target I set myself - and I confess that it is the one about which I feel most strongly – is that the book might perhaps contribute to a chapter in a History of the Evolution of a great nation’s intelligence and soul.

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Generations will go by before such a History can be written, but I believe that the facts collected here will in a certain way contribute to it. It is both strange and suggestive to think that all the various criticisms undergone by Chaucer over the centuries are used today not to judge him, but to judge those who wrote them. Indeed, just as we can appreciate an individual’s mental development by examining his opinions and works in the different periods of his life, in the same way, it seems to me that, throughout this long sequence of criticisms, ever changing and all focussing on the same object, it is possible to make out the development of the nation to which the latter belongs. It is an accepted fact that individual taste changes and varies from youth to maturity. Our youth’s favourite authors are generally not those we enjoy as grown ups, or, if they are, we enjoy them for quite different qualities – they appeal to us differently. In a similar way, we can see here how a nation’s taste changes and varies. Critics like and praise Chaucer, sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another, while at other times they are so busy with different interests and ideals that they think him worth very little. Today, we admire Chaucer mainly as an artist; we enjoy his simplicity, his freshness, his humanity, his inexhaustible ‘humour’, but I do not think that in 200 years, for instance, he will be appreciated for these same reasons, or rather for these reasons only. I believe that in 200 years’ time Chaucer’s admirers will find in him many things that we cannot see now, that they will definitely be able to find even more in his work. Just as today somebody with a plain literary culture can appreciate him more thoroughly than Lydgate, Sidney, or even Dryden, a nation’s public awareness grows richer with time and experience. It is impossible to account for the individuals’ continuous change or the way in which their personality grows richer. The only thing we can say is that such a development belongs to their growth; it is, indeed, the very sign of growth. We see that critics’ opinions on Chaucer seem to follow some curve. At a certain time the opinion trend is wholly different of what we encounter at another time. When we try to account for such continuous variations, we find that none of the different causes that can be put forward can be satisfactory: foreign influences, the changes of rule and ideal in

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criticism, etc. Whether taken in isolation or as a whole, such influences do not explain why taste is submitted to a never-ending flux and changes with each generation. This flux is as mysterious as life itself; it is indeed part of life, or, rather, it is one of the common expressions of a nation’s life. And life’s key feature is precisely its never-ending evolving. I highlight here three directions according to which this growth can be followed. One of them is more directly intellectual, i.e. the development of a conscientious erudition in literary issues, which is striking in the history of Chaucer’s biography; the second is identical to the development of the individual’s conscious personality, i.e. selfknowledge, which is illustrated by the birth and the development of the art of criticism. In its primitive stage, it is almost a childish catalogue of mere external facts, or the moral judgement of a work. That power grows and develops to the extent to which we find it today, i.e. the art of interpretation and assessment, itself a creative art at its highest level. That art is quite modern, because critical power — in the modern sense of the word — developed extremely slowly in England. As far as Chaucer’s critics are concerned, with Dryden’s quite notable exception, nothing of great critical value can be found before the end of the eighteenth century. And it is here that lies the proof of the development of a race’s new sense, equivalent, among individuals, to an enrichment and enlargement of capacity of response. There is no doubt that some senses develop when a race evolves. The development of the refined sense of colour, for instance, is essentially a product of modern times. The colour notion hardly exists in most ancient literatures, in India’s ‘Rig-Vedas’ for example. In Old English literature almost only a single colour is mentioned, green. Blue is recorded only once in the whole extant body of Old English literature, and there is no sense of contrasts. What a long way we have come when we think of Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats! The enjoyment of landscapes and wild sites of which I am talking here was born in the same way. Similarly, we find in Chaucer criticism a salient proof of the development of the sense we call ‘humour’. It seems that Chaucer’s humour - in the modern sense of the word - went unheeded until the middle of the eighteenth century.

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Compared with English criticism, one derives far less from the history of Chaucer criticism in France. Indeed, a nation’s attitude towards a foreign poet hardly reveals anything of the development of that nation’s soul. Or, rather, since the language had been an insurmountable barrier for so long, such a revelation could not be made. It would seem that, until the eighteenth century, the barriers of language and temperament had been so strong that were it not for accidental circumstances, the knowledge of Shakespeare and, later, of Chaucer, could have been postponed for ever. If the Knight de Rohan had not ordered Voltaire to be beaten and if Prévost and some others had not been forced to flee their country, who could say when the knowledge of English literature would have arrived in France? Once the language barriers were broken down the change was very fast, and it is highly interesting to observe the growth of Chaucer criticism in France in the course of these last fifty years, after Taine’s first article on the poet in the Revue de l’Instruction publique (1856). Now we can really wonder what the future holds for Chaucer criticism. It is obvious that the world is getting smaller and, just as travel has become quicker and easier, the thought relationships between nations are becoming more and more general and constant. The result, I argue, will be a greater broad-mindedness and a richer imagination for each nation. It is even possible that our English poets will once be read and known in France not only by the elite, but also by all those delighting in poetry. The present chapter will not therefore have been useless: the future historian will discover in it the genesis of such a fortunate state of mind. Caroline’s Spurgeon’s Viva Text L’idée la plus évidente de ce livre est qu’il doit former une sorte de clef à mon livre anglais Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357-1900. Ce livre que l’on présente aujourd’hui aurait atteint des proportions dépassant la moyenne des thèses, si on y avait joint tous les documents sur lesquels il est basé. Or on a jugé plus convenable de réunir ces documents en deux forts volumes, qui paraîtront bientôt sous les auspices de la Chaucer Society. Ce dernier ouvrage, par conséquent infiniment plus détaillé et plus spécial, ne se préoccupe que de donner un catalogue complet de toutes les opinions

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que l’on a pu réunir sur Chaucer depuis le quatorzième siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Ce catalogue est donné par ordre chronologique, et il forme une collection impartiale, où chacun ira puiser ce qui servira le mieux à ses fins. Mais il importait d’exposer les conclusions qui se sont imposées à notre esprit au cours de ces recherches. On les trouvera exposées dans cette thèse, qui est incomplète sans la matière d’où elle est tirée, et qui devra constamment renvoyer à cet autre livre, le point de départ de toutes nos spéculations. Les parties de ce livre qui en elles-mêmes sont les moins intéressantes du point de vue de la littérature – ainsi, le chapitre 2 – seront de la plus grande valeur pour l’étudiant qui aura le livre anglais sous la main. Le chapitre 2, par exemple, est vraiment un guide – une série de points de repère pour diriger l’étudiant et l’aider dans la classification d’une énorme quantité de documents qui, faute de temps, pourraient rester inexplorés. Ainsi, j’ai cru utile d’indiquer où, parmi toutes ces allusions, on peut trouver la vraie critique littéraire ; j’ai tracé l’histoire des remarques sur la langue et le style de Chaucer, et j’ai évalué la popularité relative des différents poèmes aux différentes époques. De même, la liste des passages où Chaucer est cité à titre purement littéraire – liste qui n’est autre qu’un catalogue – quand elle sera employée avec le livre anglais devrait être d’un grand intérêt et d’une réelle valeur. En deuxième lieu, le but que je me suis proposé, et que j’avoue être celui qui me tient le plus à cœur, est que ce livre pourra peut-être servir à former un chapitre dans l’Histoire de l’Evolution de l’intelligence et de l’âme d’une grande nation. Des générations passeront avant qu’une telle Histoire puisse être écrite, mais je crois que les faits ici réunis pourront y servir dans une certaine mesure. C’est une pensée étrange et suggestive que toutes les critiques variées dont Chaucer a été l’objet au cours des siècles, servent aujourd’hui, non à juger Chaucer, mais à juger ceux-là mêmes qui les ont écrites. Car, de même que nous jugeons du développement de l’esprit d’un individu en étudiant ses opinions et ses œuvres aux différentes périodes de sa vie, de même, il me semble qu’à travers cette longue suite de critiques, toujours changeantes, toutes dirigées vers le même objet, nous pouvons entrevoir le développement de la nation à laquelle elles appartiennent. C’est un fait reconnu que,

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comme individus, notre goût change et varie de la jeunesse à l’âge mûr. Les auteurs favoris de notre jeune âge ne sont pas généralement ceux que nous aimons à l’âge adulte, ou, s’ils le sont, nous les aimons pour des qualités toutes autres – ils nous frappent différemment. De même, nous voyons ici le goût d’une nation changer et varier ; les critiques aiment et louent Chaucer : tantôt pour une raison, tantôt pour une autre ; tandis qu’à certains ils sont si occupés d’intérêts et d’idéaux différents qu’ils ne voient en lui rien qui vaille. Aujourd’hui nous admirons Chaucer, surtout en tant qu’artiste, nous jouissons de sa simplicité, de sa fraîcheur, de son humanité, de son ‘humour’ intarissable, mais je ne pense pas que dans deux cents ans, par exemple, il soit aimé pour ces mêmes raisons, ou plutôt pour ces seules raisons. Je crois que les admirateurs de Chaucer dans deux cents ans trouveront en lui bien des choses que nous n’y voyons pas ; qu’ils seront sûrement capables d’y trouver davantage. De même que l’homme d’une culture littéraire ordinaire aujourd’hui peut l’apprécier plus complètement que Lydgate, Sidney, ou même Dryden, la conscience publique d’un peuple s’enrichit avec le temps et l’expérience. Il est impossible d’expliquer le changement constant de l’individu ou la manière dont sa personnalité s’enrichit ; on ne peut dire qu’une chose, ce développement est une partie de la croissance ; il est, en effet, le signe même de la croissance. Nous voyons que les opinions des critiques à l’égard de Chaucer semblent suivre une certaine courbe. A un moment donné il y a une tendance d’opinion absolument différente de celle que nous rencontrons à une autre époque. Lorsque nous essayons d’expliquer ces variations continuelles, nous trouvons que, parmi les différentes causes que l’on peut invoquer, il n’y en a pas une qui soit suffisante : les influences étrangères, les changements de règle et d’idéal dans la critique, etc. Ces influences, prises isolément ou dans l’ensemble, n’expliquent pas pourquoi le goût est soumis à un flux perpétuel et change à chaque génération. Ce flux est aussi mystérieux que la vie elle-même, il fait en effet partie de la vie, ou, plutôt, il est une des manifestations courantes de la vie d’une nation. Et le caractère fondamental de la vie, c’est son perpétuel devenir. J’indique ici trois directions dans lesquelles nous pouvons suivre cette croissance. L’une d’elles est plus directement intellectuelle : le

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développement de l’érudition consciencieuse dans les questions littéraires, ce qui se voit de manière frappante dans l’histoire de la biographie de Chaucer. La seconde est identique au développement de la personnalité consciente de l’individu - la connaissance de soi-même -, ce qui est illustré par la naissance et le développement de l’art de la critique. Dans son état primitif, elle n’est presque qu’un catalogue enfantin de simples faits extérieurs, ou le jugement d’une œuvre du point de vue moral. Ce pouvoir grandit et se développe jusqu’au point où nous le trouvons aujourd’hui : l’art d’interprétation et d’appréciation, qui est lui-même à son plus haut degré un art créateur. Cet art est tout moderne, car la faculté critique – au sens moderne du mot- a évolué en Angleterre avec une extrême lenteur. Pour ce qui concerne les critiques de Chaucer, à l’exception très remarquable de Dryden, nous ne trouvons rien de grande valeur critique avant la fin du dix-huitième siècle. Et c’est ici que se place la preuve du développement dans la race d’un sens nouveau, équivalent, chez l’individu, à une plus grande faculté de sentir et de comprendre. Il n’y a aucun doute que, à mesure qu’une race évolue, certains sens se développent. Le développement du sens raffiné de la couleur, par exemple, est essentiellement un produit des temps modernes. Dans les plus anciennes littératures, dans les ‘Rig-Vedas’ de l’Inde, par exemple, c’est à peine si la notion de couleur existe. Dans la littérature du vieil anglais, il n’est guère fait mention que d’une couleur, le vert. La couleur bleue n’est mentionnée qu’une seule fois dans toute la vieille littérature anglaise et il n’y a aucune idée des contrastes. Quel chemin parcouru, si nous pensons à Shelley, à Coleridge, et à Keats ! De la même façon est née l’appréciation des paysages et des sites sauvages dont je parle ici. Et de même, dans la critique chaucérienne, nous trouvons une preuve saillante du développement du sens que nous appelons ‘humour’. Il semble que l’humour de Chaucer – dans le sens moderne du mot – soit resté lettre morte jusqu’au milieu du dix-huitième siècle. L’histoire de la critique de Chaucer en France, comparée avec la critique anglaise, est moins riche d’enseignements. Car l’attitude d’une nation envers un poète étranger ne révèle presque rien du développement de l’âme de cette nation. Ou, du moins, la langue ayant été pendant longtemps, une barrière insurmontable, cette révélation n’a pu être faite. Il semblerait que, jusqu’au dix-huitième siècle, les barrières de la langue et du tempérament aient été tellement

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fortes que, si ce n’avait été pour des circonstances accidentelles, la connaissance de Shakespeare et plus tard de Chaucer, en France, aurait pu être indéfiniment retardée. Si le chevalier de Rohan n’avait point fait battre Voltaire, et si Prévost et quelques autres n’avaient pas été chassés de leur pays, qui pourrait dire quand la connaissance de la littérature anglaise aurait pénétré en France ? Etant donné l’état des choses, une fois que les barrières de la langue furent renversées, le changement se produisit très rapidement et il est extrêmement intéressant de noter la croissance de la critique chaucérienne en France pendant ces cinquante dernières années, depuis que Taine a écrit son premier article sur le poète dans la Revue de l’Instruction publique (1856). On se demande vraiment ce que l’avenir nous réserve à ce sujet. Sûrement, le monde se rapetisse, et de même que les transports sont devenus plus rapides et plus faciles, les rapports de pensée entre les nations deviennent de plus en plus généraux et constants. Le résultat, je crois, sera une plus grande largeur d’idées et une plus grande richesse d’imagination pour chaque nation. Il est même possible que nos poètes anglais seront un jour lus et connus en France non seulement par une élite, mais par tous ceux qui se délectent de poésie. Ce chapitre dès lors n’aura pas été inutile : l’historien futur y découvrira la genèse de cet heureux état d’esprit.

WYNNERE AND WASTOURE 407-414 AND LE ROMAN DE LA ROSE

8813-8854

KAREN HODDER AND JOHN SCATTERGOOD Wynnere and Wastoure is preserved only in London, British Library, MS Additional 31042, ff. 176b-181b, one of the two large anthologies copied by Robert Thornton, a country gentleman with literary interests from East Newton (Yorks.), between about 1425 and 1450. From internal evidence the poem is usually dated 1352-53, so the sole surviving manuscript copy could have been made nearly a century later. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the text of the poem has in places become corrupt and that editors have found various passages problematic, so much so that considerable ingenuity has had to be exercised as regards emendation to create any sort of meaning. No lines have proved more intractable than lines 407-14, part of a speech by Wynnere in which he accuses Wastoure, and those like him, of leasing or selling the estates that their ancestors have built up in order to furnish ready money for the short term ends of conspicuous consumption and display, particularly in relation to women’s fashions. On f. 181rb of the manuscript the lines read: Now es it sett & solde my sorowe es þe more Wastes alle wilfully ʒour wyfes to paye That are had lordes in londe & ladyes riche Now are þay nysottis of the new gett so nysely attyred With elde slabbande sleues sleght to þe grounde Ourlede all vmbtourne with ermyn aboute Þat es as harde as j hope to handil in þe derne As a cely symple wenche þat neuer silke wroghte. (407-14)1 1 We transcribe the text from the facsimile of f. 181r in John J. Thompson, Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript British Library, MS Additional 31042, Manuscript Studies 2, Cambridge, 1987, Plate 32b. Both a diplomatic text and

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The text is clearly written without correction or apparent hesitation: to Thornton it evidently made sense, or, at least, it did not cause him disquiet, though Stephanie Trigg argues that “the passage probably represents Thornton’s efforts to correct a corrupt exemplar.”2 This article suggests that the solution to the difficulties that have been experienced in the interpretation of these lines may lie, not in the usual editorial expedient of emendation, but in the less invasive techniques of essaying alternative punctuation and in considering the possible relationship of the Middle English poem to texts which have not previously been invoked.

I Editors have had little general difficulty with the first two lines of this passage which they take to be about the leasing and selling of land to provide money for the pleasure of aristocratic or gentry wives. This is understandable: it is a subject often adverted to in fourteenth-century political satire and sermons. But the words “are had” in line 409 have proved problematical. Gollancz read “are” as the adverb “formerly” and “had” as a verb, rendering the passage “Those who formerly had lords in the land and ladies rich …”, that is, those who were formerly the servants of lords and ladies are now imitating the fashions of their betters.3 He saw it as an attack on fashionable dress because it blurred social distinctions – which was something not only referred to in contemporary satirical literature but in the sumptuary legislation of 1363.4 In his review of Gollancz’s edition, however, J. M. Steadman suggested that “are” was a verb and “had” a participle and translated

an edited text are presented in Karen M. Stern (Hodder), A Critical Edition of Winner and Waster, University of London M. A. Thesis, 1972. 2 See Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Stephanie Trigg, EETS 297, Oxford, 1990, 42. Reference throughout is made to this edition. 3 Israel Gollancz, A Good Short Debate Between Winner and Waster: An Alliterative Poem on Social and Economic Problems in England in the Year 1352, with Modern English Rendering, Select Early English Poems 3, London, 1920, reprinted Cambridge, 1974, 2nd rev. ed. Mabel Day, London, 1930, reprinted New York, 1981. 4 See John Scattergood, “Fashion and Morality in the Late Middle Ages”, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams, Woodbridge, 1987, 255-72.

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the line “who are regarded as lords in the land and ladies rich”5 which is a solution adopted by John Burrow, who translates lines 409-10 as “Those who are considered masters in the land and noble mistresses nowadays are wantons of the latest fashion, attired with foolish refinement.” But he recognises the difficulty: “The text is suspect here and in several places following.”6 And later editors have sought solutions through emendation. For “had” Thorlac Turville-Petre substitutes “were” and translates, “Those who previously were …”7 Stephanie Trigg feels that the manuscript reading is “weak” and reverts to Kölbing’s correction “That are had [ben] lordes …”. She reasons, “Scribal confusion over this difficult passage and the resemblance of are “formerly” to part of the verb “to be” could easily account for the omission.”8 There is no denying that the passage is difficult, but it may be that editors have made it more difficult than it need be by assuming that line 409 belongs with the text which follows it – enforcing a contrast between the “lordes in londe & ladies riche” and contemporary “nysottis”. That contrast is obviously of crucial importance in the passage as a whole, but it seems more likely to us that line 409 belongs syntactically with the two lines which precede it, and that the “That” which begins it refers back to “it” and “alle” of lines 407-8, the land which is leased and sold to please “wyfes”. The three lines 407-9 could then be translated: “Now it [the land] is leased and sold, my sorrow is the greater; you waste whimsically to please your wives all that lords in the land and rich ladies previously possessed”. If this reading were to be accepted “had” would have its normal past tense meaning: there would be no need to stretch the word semantically (as Steadman and Burrow do), or to add “ben” to the line, or to emend it. And “nysottis” of line 410 has to be read not simply as a contrast with the “ladies riche” of earlier times but appositionally in relation to “wyfes” as they are now, for the rest of the passage to achieve its full sense. 5 J.M. Steadman, “Notes on Wynnere and Wastoure”, Modern Language Notes, XXXVIII (1923), 310-11. 6 John Burrow, English Verse 1300-1500, Longman Annotated Anthologies of English Verse, London, 1977, 43. 7 Thorlac Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages: An Anthology, London, 1989, 61. 8 Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Trigg, 42. For Kölbing’s comments see Englische Studien, XXV-XXVI (1998), 273-89.

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II It is in the context of the fashionable dress of wives that the rest of the passage has to be seen. Editors have had difficulty with lines 413-14. Turville-Petre writes: The elaborate clothing is “as difficult, I believe, to handle in the dark ….” But the comparison in the next line makes no sense: “As a poor unsophisticated girl who never worked with silk.” The line may be corrupt or a passage omitted.9

Burrow takes much the same view.10 When the literary relationships of Wynnere and Wastoure are considered it is usually in the context of other English poems in the alliterative tradition, or political prophecies.11 But it may be that the author’s reading took in earlier and contemporary French literature too, for he is fully conversant with French: he uses a chanson d’aventure opening (lines 31 ff.); he translates the French Garter motto into English (line 68); and he is familiar with a statute of 1352 which was recorded in French (lines 317-8); also his use of some French loan words such as “fawked” (98) and “rawnsom” (363) antedates other recorded examples.12 Stephanie Trigg compares Wastoure’s characterization of Wynnere with “Jean de Meun’s … satire on the merchant laden with anxiety” in the speech of Raison in Le Roman de la Rose, lines 4975-5182.13 The present authors believe that the poet of Wynnere and Wastoure, in an even more specific manner than in this last example, may have taken the suggestion for lines 407-14 from Le Roman de la Rose, lines 8813-54, where Ami advises the lover against marriage by recounting the 9

Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages, 61. Burrow, English Verse 1300-1500, 61. 11 See John Scattergood, “Winner and Waster and the Mid-Fourteenth-Century Economy”, in Literary Text and Historical Witness, ed. Tom Dunne, Cork, 1989, 3957, reprinted in John Scattergood, Reading the Past: Essays on Middle English Alliterative Poetry, Dublin, 2000, 69-85. 12 Editors and commentators have noticed close analogies with a variety of other French texts, such as Les Voeux du Héron, Froissart’s Chroniques and Le Tournoiement Antéchrist. See Stern (Hodder), A Critical Edition, 193-96, 521; Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Trigg, 19; T. H. Bestul, Satire and Allegory in Wynnere and Wastoure, Lincoln, NE, 1974, 36-39. 13 See Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Trigg, 33. 10

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experience of a husband with a fashionably elegant wife (cointe fame, line 8811). The husband has many complaints, but in this passage he concentrates on the way in which the fashionable dress of his wife, which has cost him a great deal of money, is not conducive to sexual amenability on her part and, indeed, is an impediment to it (though later, in lines 9074-89, he suspects her of being more amenable to others): “Mes, por le filz seinte Marie, que me vaut ceste cointerie, cele robe couteuse et chiere qui si vos fet haucier la chiere, qui tant me grieve et atahine, tant est longue et tant vos trahine, por quoi tant d’orguell demenez que j’en deviegn tout forsenez? Que me fet ele de profit? Conbien qu’el aus autres profit, a moi ne fet ele for nuire; car quant me veill a vos deduire, je la treuve si encombreuse, si grevaigne et si ennuieuse que je n’en puis a chief venir; ne vos i puis a droit tenir …” (8813-29)14 [But, by St Mary’s son, of what value is this elegance to me, this costly and expensive dress, which makes you hold your head so high, which so much pains and tortures me, which is so long and so trails behind you, so that you behave so proudly that I am driven completely out of my mind? What does it profit me? However much it may profit others, to me it does nothing but harm, for, when I want to enjoy you, I find it so much of an encumbrance, so irritating and annoying that I cannot achieve my object, nor can I hold you properly …]

She twists and turns her body, he says, keeping him at a distance with arms and legs and hips. And when she goes to bed with him at night she takes off all her fine clothes which are hung on a rail (perche, line 14

The text is taken from Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Felix Lecoy, 3 Vols, Paris, 196570.

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8844) outside the bedroom, but he appears not to be much more successful with her sexually in these circumstances than before (see lines 9058-73). So the clothes are of no use to him, he says, and he is of a mind to pawn or sell them: Que me peut lors tout ce valair, fors a vendre ou a engagier? Vif me vaez vos enragier et morir de la male rage, se je ne vent tout et engage! Car puis que par jor si me nuisent et par nuit point ne me deduisent, quel profit i puis autre atendre fors que d’engagier ou de vendre? (8846-54) [So what can this be worth to me except to sell or to pawn? You will see me get angry with you while I am alive, and die of a malevolent madness if I do not sell them all or pawn them. Since they annoy me by day and by night afford me no pleasure, what other profit can I hope from them except by pawning them or selling them?]

Both these passages and that in Wynnere and Wastoure are critical of contemporary women’s fashions but in different ways, reflecting different social situations and circumstances: Ami’s dissatisfied and jealous husband objects to the trailing gowns as well as to the miniver furs (les pennes grises, line 8843), while the poet of Wynnere and Wastoure concentrates on the furred sleeves and the long tappets, which hung from above the elbow and often trailed to the ground. This feature of dress often attracted criticism in fourteenth-century English satire, and Gollancz’s emendation of “elde” to “side” (adopted by Burrow and Stephanie Trigg) is justifiable: el and si are not difficult to confuse in anglicana script, especially if the s is the rounded form and the i is not dotted. The word “side” (meaning “long” or “ample”) is frequently used in fashion satires,15 and its

15

See Middle English Dictionary, ed. H. Kurath, S. M. Kuhn, J. Reidy et al., Ann Arbor, 1954 -2000, sid(e) adj. (a) “Of something hanging down, a garment, hair etc.” and illustrative quotations.

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adoption here makes for better sense and a more regular alliterative line. If it is accepted that the passage from Le Roman de la Rose provided the impetus for the English poet, a number of adjustments to the normal readings of lines 410-14 in Wynnere and Wastoure may be made which help to clarify the passage. John Burrow in his note to line 414 summarises the scholarship and asks the pertinent questions: “The point of this line is not clear. Gollancz takes line 413 as referring to fashionable ‘wantons’; but why should they be called ‘as hard to handle in the dark’, as a simple girl?” Burrow continues, “Should they not be harder? Line 413 seems more naturally to refer to the difficulty of handling the sleeves; but the comparison in line 414 makes equally little sense in that case.”16 One answer may be suggested by the following question: “Is it possible … that the poet may be playing on the two ideas of handling a fabric and fondling a ‘wenche’?”17 Another possibility, plainer and more explicit but not necessarily excluding this suggestion, may be provided by reference to Le Roman de la Rose, where the husband finds it difficult to hold his wife properly (a droit tenir) because her clothes are “so much of an encumbrance, so irritating and annoying” (si encombreuse, / si gravaigne et si ennuieuse (8826-29)). In the parallel passage in Wynnere and Wastoure it is possible to see “handele in þe derne” as meaning “fondle in private” and the rest of the passage as referring to the married “nysottis of þe newe gett” (410), and not to the fashionable clothes – or only to the fashionable clothes by way of those who wear them. If Wynnere is to be believed, Wastoure, like the husband in Ami’s speech, spends his money on clothes of a fashionable sort for his wife, which are of no use to him in regard to her sexual compliance, and are, indeed, a hindrance. In addition, the idea that the clothes should be “pawned or sold” (engagier … vendre) may have provided the suggestion for “sett & solde” in Wynnere and Wastoure in line 408. If this is so, it is interesting to see how the English poet has politicised the issue: the personal gesture of the husband in Le Roman de la Rose, wishing to recoup his costs, becomes in Wynnere and Wastoure the means by which money was raised for the fashionable clothing in the first place. So lines 410-14 can perhaps be translated: “Now they are wantons of the latest 16 17

Burrow, English Verse 1300-1500, 43. See Karen (Stern) Hodder, A Critical Edition, 528.

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fashion, so extravagantly clothed with ample sleeves down to the ground trailing in the mud, who are as difficult to fondle in private as a poor unsophisticated servant girl who never worked with silk.” The complaints of the husband in Le Roman de la Rose are made in the context of love par amour, and it is necessary for the English poet’s word “derne” to have an association with love conducted in private for the contrast in lines 413-14 to work.18 Love par amour was commonly held to be appropriate only for the upper-classes, the wellto-do, who had the leisure to observe its intricate formalities and conventions – and Wastoure has some right to be regarded as a member of the nobility or at least the gentry (see lines 194, 270-74, 332-61, 428-32). What is more, silk was not only an aristocratic material, but a material which well-to-do women were accustomed to work with in embroidery. Langland makes the point precisely: “wyves and widewes” should spin “wolle and flex”, but “lovely ladyes with longe fyngres” should work with “silk and sandel”.19 Both the word “wenche” and the detail about her unfamiliarity with working with silk may establish the girl as lower-class,20 though the word has a broad semantic range and is not always used pejoratively.21 Nor were “wenches” wholly precluded from assuming the latest fashions: the author of ‘The Simonie’, in a passage strongly reminiscent of Wynnere and Wastoure, refers to a wicked priest who Adihteth him a gay wench of the newe get Sanz doute: And there hii clateren cumpelin whan the candle is oute.22

18

See Middle English Dictionary, derne adj. 4(a) “Private, confidential, intimate”. The phrase derne love means “secret love, clandestine or illicit love”: see derne adj. 5. 19 See The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B. 15.17 , ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed., London, 1995, VI, 9-14. 20 See Middle English Dictionary, wench(e) n. (b) “a serving-maid, a bondwoman”, and illustrative quotations. 21 For the semantic range of this word see the sensitive analysis of David Burnley in A Guide to Chaucer’s Language, London, 1983, 196-98. 22 See ‘The Simonie’, lines 119-120 in Thomas Wright, Political Songs of England. From the Reign of John to that of Edward II, London, 1839, 329, repr. with a new introduction by Peter Coss, Cambridge, 1996.

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But lady and wench are memorably first equated and then contrasted by Chaucer’s reductive, but verbally very aware, Manciple in matters of love and sexual activity: Ther nys no difference, trewely, Bitwixe a wyf that is of heigh degree, If of hir body dishonest she bee, And a povre wenche, oother than this – If it so be they werke bothe amys – But that the gentile, in estaat above, She shal be cleped his lady, as in love; And for that oother is a povre womman, She shal be cleped his wenche or his lemman.23

In Wynnere and Wastoure the poet uses the word “wenche” elsewhere to designate the sort of wanton company Wastoure, like the priest in ‘The Simonie’, is accused by Wynnere of consorting with (line 280). It seems probable that somewhere behind the lines from Wynnere and Wastoure lies a class-based comparison of this sort which brings “wyfes”, “ladyes” and “a cely symple wenche” into contrast and juxtaposition. Behind the comparison in lines 413-14 also for the alliterative poet seems to lie the idea, common from Andreas Capellanus’ De Amore, I. xi onwards, that the lower classes were ignorant, unresponsive and reluctant in matters of love par amour.24 What the poet of Wynnere and Wastoure appears to be saying in lines 413-14, remembering Le Roman de la Rose 8813-54, is that upperclass fashionably dressed wives become just about as difficult to approach in love par amour as servant girls. The sneer is, perhaps, particularly effective in the context of a debate between antagonists who sometimes claim to represent the interests of the poor (see lines 255-58, 383-83), but at the beginning of the poem seem to have more affinity with other classes of society.25 As in The Parlement of the Thre Ages some of the tension between Youthe and Middle Elde seems to be generated by a clash in social 23

See The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, Boston, 1987, Canterbury Tales, IX (H) 212-220. Compare also May’s outraged claim in The Merchant’s Tale: “I am a gentil womman and no wenche” (Canterbury Tales, IV [E], 2202). 24 See Andreas Capellanus On Love, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh, London, 1982, I, xi. 25 See Wynnere’s alliance with, among others, the merchants (189-190) and Wastoure’s with “bolde sqwyeres of blode” (194).

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philosophy that is partly the result of different lifestyles, so in Wynnere and Wastoure the unromantic viewpoint of a disillusioned spouse as put forward by Wynnere seems to be concerned with realistic relationships and material considerations. It is countered by Wastoure in lines with a romantic argument which seems to belong rather to the world of “derne love”, where Wastoure justifies the expenditure on his fashionable womenfolk in terms that suggest that he imagines himself as a courtly lover of the kind represented by Richesse as described in the Roman de la Rose, lines 1109-27: It lyes wele for a lede his lemman to fynde, After hir faire chere to forthir hir herte. Then will scho loue hym lelely as hire lyfe one, Make hym bolde and bown with brandes to smytte, To schonn shenchipe and schame þer schalkes ere gadird. (427-32)

This might be translated: “It is a commendable thing for a man to support his lover and to indulge her wishes according to her beautiful appearance. Then she will love him as faithfully as her own life, and make him brave and ready to do feats of arms, to eschew ignominy and dishonour wherever men are gathered together”. The characterization of Wastoure in this mode is synthesized by Guillaume de Lorris in his portrait of Richesse’s lover: C’est uns hom qui en biaus ostiex maintenir mout se delitoit. Il se chauçoit bien et vestoit, si avoit les chevaus de pris, qu’il cuidast bien estre repris ou de murtre ou de larrecin, se en s’estable eűst roncin. Por ce amoit mout l’acointance de Richece et la bienvoillance, qu’il avoit tot jors son espens en demener les granz depens; et el les pooit bien formir et ses despenses maintenir, qu’el li donoit autant deniers con s’el les puisast en greniers. (1110-24)

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[He is a man who took delight in living in fine mansions. He had good shoes and clothes, and had valuable horses. He thought he might as well be accused of murder or theft as have a poor horse in his stable. Therefore, he appreciated greatly his acquaintance with Wealth and her benevolence towards him; for he always thought to live a life of lavish spending, and she could furnish the means to support his expenses, for she gave him coins as if she drew them out of granaries.]

The poet of Wynnere and Wastoure has inverted the genders of the courtly couple: Wastoure is, after all, accused of dissipating the goods accumulated by Wynnere (230-32) rather than receiving munificence from those of an aristocratic heiress; but the ideology of conspicuous consumption expressed in Le Roman de la Rose and in the lines the alliterative poet assigns to Wastoure is the same. Where the jealous husband and Wynnere regard clothes as a tiresome extravagance, for Richesse and her lover and Wastoure and his lover they are the appropriate accessories to love par amour.

III If the arguments above are accepted, it appears that we may have to modify somewhat our views of Middle English alliterative poetry as being generally committed to an essentially self-referential and nationalistic agenda. If Chaucer’s Parson is to be believed,26 there is some evidence that alliterative poetry was, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, coming to be regarded as provincial – though Langland and others27 were writing this kind of verse in London. However, if we are right about the relationships of Wynnere and Wastoure lines 407-14 it means that at least one Middle English alliterative poet, like his more mainstream contemporaries, was in touch with one of the most widely read and influential of European poetical texts. 26

See Canterbury Tales X [I], 4243. See the interesting alliterative fragment, probably of London provenance, studied by Ruth Kennedy, “‘A Bird in Bishopswood’: Some Newly Discovered Lines of Alliterative Verse from the Late Fourteenth Century”, in Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle, eds Myra Stokes and T. L. Burton, Cambridge, 1987, 71-87. 27

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THE TWENTY-FIVE PLOUGHS OF SIR JOHN: THE TALE OF GAMELYN AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF ACREAGE* GEERT VAN IERSEL The Tale of Gamelyn is an anonymous romance, probably composed between c. 1340 and c. 1370.1 It survives in twenty-five manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, in which it features as a complement to the unfinished ‘Cook’s Tale’. Various studies have looked into the legal practices reflected by the narrative, which link it closely to the historical context of later medieval England.2 In this paper, I will set out to demonstrate that the romance’s association with specific sociohistorical circumstances extends to the way in which land ownership is featured in the narrative, and that this has important consequences for the interpretation of the narrative’s moral subtext. I will start with a summary of the plot: Sir John of Boundes, an aged knight, summons a number of neighbouring knights to his deathbed, so that they may aid him

*I would like to thank Professor Peter Hoppenbrouwers, from whose advice this article has greatly benefited 1 Skeat dates the romance c. 1340 (Walter W. Skeat (ed.), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed., 3 Vols, London, 1954, III, 339-400). According to Bennett it was composed “in the mid-fourteenth century” (H.S. Bennett, Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century, London, 1947, 310). A later date (c. 1350-70) was proposed by Charles W. Dunn (in J. Burke Severs, ed., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English: 1050-1500, New Haven, 1967, Vol. I: The Romances, 31). See also Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, “The Tale of Gamelyn”, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, Kalamazoo, 1997, 184-226, here 185. For this article the edition by Knight and Ohlgren has been used. References are by line-number. 2 See esp. Edgar F. Shannon Jr., “Mediaeval Law in the Tale of Gamelyn”, Speculum, XXVI, 1951, 458-64; Richard W. Kaeuper, “An Historian’s Reading of ‘The Tale of Gamelyn’”, Medium Aevum, LII (1983), 51-62; John Scattergood, “‘The Tale of Gamelyn’: The Noble Robber as Provincial Hero”, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale, Cambridge, 1994, 159-94.

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Geert van Iersel in dividing his inheritance. Sir John wishes his lands, mostly gained during his lifetime, to be distributed equally amongst his three sons: John, Ote, and Gamelyn.3 When the assembled knights decide to divide the inheritance evenly between John and Ote – leaving it to them to provide their younger brother with land once he has come of age – Sir John takes matters into his own hands. To John and Ote he gives five ploughs of land each. Gamelyn is to receive the remaining land and tenants, as well as his father’s fine steeds. Immediately after Sir John’s burial, John, the eldest of the three brothers, appropriates Gamelyn’s share of the inheritance. Gamelyn himself is taken into John’s household, where he lives on a scanty allowance of food and clothes. Sixteen years after Sir John’s death an argument starts between the two brothers over the fate of Gamelyn’s inheritance and his position in the household. It is the beginning of a series of violent clashes between the two brothers. Eventually, Gamelyn has to flee to the forest in order to avoid arrest by the sheriff. There he joins, and soon heads, a band of outlaws. John meanwhile becomes sheriff, and has Gamelyn declared an outlaw.4 Gamelyn is arrested when he attends the shire-court to protest against the confiscation of his goods and the maltreatment of his serfs.5 John lets Gamelyn go when Ote stands bail, yet the consequence is that Ote will be punished in his brother’s stead if he fails to turn up for his trial.6 When Gamelyn enters the hall on the day of the trial, he finds that judgement has already been passed: Ote is about to be hung: John has bribed the jurors to condemn Ote to death. Gamelyn takes control of the courtroom, and sentences John, the judge, and the jurors to death. Once the punishments have been carried out, Gamelyn and Ote successfully set about

3

For the ways in which Sir John’s lands were acquired, see esp. lines 56-62. Literally, ‘wolfeshede’ (696). This synonym of ‘outlaw’ dated to the Anglo-Saxon period, and “seems to have been associated with the idea that an outlaw, like a wolf, was a thing to be destroyed”, Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 460. 5 This would not, in itself, have constituted a breach of legal procedure. See Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 460; Scattergood, “Gamelyn”, 166; also Maurice Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, London, 1961, 86. 6 It appears that Gamelyn is to appear before a royal justice. He has been locked up in “the kingges prisoun” (737), where he is to “abide to the justice come” (738). According to Kaeuper, the “royal justice who hears the case” probably acts “under a special commission of gaol delivery or oyer and terminer” (“An Historian’s Reading”, 55; see also Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 461). 4

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making their peace with the king. Gamelyn’s men receive pardons, Ote is made a judge, and Gamelyn is appointed as the chief justice ‘of [the king’s] free forest’ (888). Ote then makes Gamelyn his heir, and Gamelyn is married.

Landed income: introduction The loss and acquisition of land are motifs that play a role in many Middle English romances. Yet few romances are as specific about the areas owned by their characters as The Tale of Gamelyn. Sir John endows his two elder sons with five ploughs of land each, while Gamelyn is to have the remainder of the land. This, according to Gamelyn, was an area of fifteen ploughs of land. Their father’s estate must, therefore, have measured 25 ploughs.7 Recent research into the yield of English acreage in the later Middle Ages allows us to consider the implications of these measurements. In the next section, estimates will be calculated of the landed incomes which Sir John and his sons would have been able to realize if they had been historical figures living around the year 1350, assuming that the size of the ploughs left by Sir John to his sons corresponds to the notional figure of 120 acres that was generally associated with the plough.8 Three modern-day counties are taken into account: Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. These counties roughly correspond to received notions concerning the origins of The Tale of Gamelyn, and have been referred to as possible locations for the composition of the romance.9 The agricultural data 7

In lines 355-60, Gamelyn claims that his eldest brother has been reaping the benefits of fifteen ploughs of land which are rightly his. John appears to acknowledge the veracity of the claim when, instead of contradicting his brother, he tries to settle the dispute by promising to make Gamelyn his heir, even swearing “by Seint John” to do so (361-4). 8 Historically, the plough, or “carucate” was a unit of land measure based on the area that could (hypothetically) be tilled with a single plough, most specifically one that was pulled by the conventional number of eight oxen. Whilst the size of the plough was variable, contemporary sources often put it at 120 acres. For an introduction to the carucate and its role in the Doomsday Book, see F.W. Maitland, “The Hide”, in Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England, Cambridge, 1907, 357-520, here 395-9. 9 Knight and Ohlgren, “Introduction to ‘The Tale of Gamelyn’”, 185; they argue that Lincolnshire and Leicestershire may be better candidates than Nottinghamshire, as was suggested by Dunn, since words of Scandinavian origin, of which a “small but noticeable number” occur in The Tale of Gamelyn, would more likely be used by a

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derive from Campbell’s English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 , a detailed study of the input, output, and management of demesne farms in late medieval England.10 Although the data used relate most specifically to the first half of the fourteenth century, as rough indications of income that might be realized from land, the results are likely to apply to the entire period between c. 1340 and c. 1370. Despite the social and economic upheaval caused by the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348-9,11 the income levels of landlords appear to have remained fairly stable until the mid-1370s, declining “perhaps by 10 per cent at most” during this period.12 Landed income: calculation and discussion In the period between 1300 and 1349, demesne land in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire mostly consisted of arable. Indeed, [e]verywhere [in England] demesne grassland was greatly inferior to the arable in physical extent while the combined value of all sources of pasturage was rarely more than half of

poet from the former two counties (185). Earlier Skeat described the dialect of the romance as “more northern than that of the Canterbury Tales”, resembling “that of Lincolnshire”. He furthermore considers it fair to “connect [the] Tale with the neighbourhood of Sherwood Forest” in view of the similarities between The Tale of Gamelyn and the Robin Hood ballads (Skeat, Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, III, 400). 10 Campbell’s data derive from inquisitiones post mortem which were drafted up between 1300 and 1349. Concerning the choice to focus on demesne farms, Campbell writes that “for demesne farms alone detailed input and output data are available at the level of the individual production unit”; “several different categories of producer – demesne lords, owners of rectorial glebe, franklins and proto-yeomen, substantial customary tenants, lesser customary tenants, and small freeholders – were involved in shaping the course of agricultural development over this eventful period [i.e., 12501450], but it is the activities of the demesne lords that are the most copiously documented” (Bruce M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture: 1250–1450, Cambridge, 2000, 1). 11 See, for example, S.H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class , Status and Gender, Houndmills, 1995, 80-7, and Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community, London, 1987, 113-4. 12 Given-Wilson, English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages, 116.

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that of arable. North, south, east, or west, the typical demesne was an arable concern.13

More specifically, demesne land in Lincolnshire and what used to be Rutland (now the eastern part of Leicestershire) consisted predominantly of “open arable country with limited differentiation of unit land-values”, whilst Nottinghamshire and western Leicestershire were dominated by “inferior arable and pasturage with private hunting grounds.”14 In the greater part of the region studied here, arable had a mean annual value of between 4 and 6 pence per acre.15 There were also considerable areas with values ranging from 2 to 4 or 6 to 8 pence per annum. The highest values could be found in south-east Lincolnshire, where averages between 10 and 12 pence occurred.16 In addition to arable, meadowland – the most highly valued17 as well as the most common type of pasture – was a common form of land-use in the region,18 especially in Lincolnshire, which was one of the country’s two ‘most meadow-rich counties’.19 Areas with mean values lying between 12 and 16 pence, and areas with mean values lying between 16 and 20 pence were both well represented. Although areas with mean values in excess of 28 pence might be found in each of the three counties, their accumulated size was negligible if compared with the accumulated sizes of the areas valued between 12 and 16, and 16 and 20 pence per acre respectively.20 In the table below, these data have been used to calculate landed incomes for four possible configurations of acreage:

13

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture , 100. Ibid., 96-101, esp. fig. 3.14. 15 These and the following valuations inevitably contain some pollution since “most IPMs fail to distinguish between the sown and the unsown arable”. Where “separate values are given for both the sown and the unsown arable” only the former are used (Ibid., 67, 350). 16 Ibid., 351, fig. 7.13. 17 Ibid., 90. 18 Nationwide 61.6 % of the pasture on lay demesnes consisted of “mowable grassland”, Campbell’s definition of ‘meadow’ (72, table 3.03). 19 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 73. The other county was Yorkshire. 20 Ibid., 147, fig. 4.15. 14

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Geert van Iersel * Only arable land of common value; * Only arable land of prime value; * Arable land and meadow of common value, in the proportion of two to one; * Arable land and meadow of prime value, in the proportion of two to one.

In addition, four different scenarios are worked out, referred to by the numbers in the first column: 1) Landed property according to Sir John’s initial plans for the division of his property; 2) Landed property according to the neighbours’ plans for the division of Sir John’s property; 3) Landed property according to the plan that is carried out; 4) Landed property after John’s confiscation of Gamelyn’s lands.

In each case it is assumed that the acreage is used to its full potential.21 The values of the various types of land have been ‘fixed’ at the following sums: * ‘Common’ arable: 5 pence; * ‘Prime’ arable: 11 pence; * ‘Common’ meadow: 16 pence; * ‘Prime’ meadow: 28 pence.

The ‘common’ sums represent values which, on the grounds of the foregoing evidence, can be assumed to have passed as ‘ordinary’ in the region comprised of present-day Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire, while the prime sums represent values which can be 21

A problem with this assumption is that there are indications within the narrative that John does not put the lands which he appropriates to any use. In line 74, Gamelyn’s eldest brother is said to “lete [Gamelyn’s] londes forfare”, in line 83 we learn that Gamelyn considers “his landes that lay unsowe”, and in line 161 Gamelyn’s eldest brother promises the hero that his “londe that lith ley wel it shal be sawe”. Each of these references suggests that the eldest brother has been deriving profits only from the five ploughs which he inherited from his father. Yet the references to arable farming (or rather, the lack thereof) are countered by a passage in which Gamelyn claims that his brother has been reaping the benefits of fifteen ploughs of which he himself is by rights the owner, something that is not contradicted by his brother (35364).

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assumed to have been experienced as exceptionally high.22 Note that while on average 34.2 % of the number of acres in use as either arable or pasturage consisted of the latter,23 it was rare for an area to have a 2:1 ratio of arable and meadow. Areas which did possess such ratios were “many of Lincolnshire fen-edge demesnes”,24 yet for the majority of estates the average value of an acre of pasturage would have lain below that achieved if all the pasturage had been meadow. From a modern perspective, the figures in the table are little more than a confirmation of the overall correspondence between acreage and income in an agricultural society. If the figures are considered from the viewpoint of contemporary socio-economic circumstances, however, they suggest a distinct subtext to the exchanges of land that take place in The Tale of Gamelyn. In the mid- to late fourteenth century, a landed income of forty pounds was widely held to be the minimum for the maintenance of knighthood,25 while a landed income of 250 pounds or more would probably have associated one with the lesser peerage.26 Sir John’s income would not have put him in the same league as the parliamentary elite under any of the four configurations, yet it is con22

Points worth noting here are, first, that, between 1300 and 1349 the average value of an acre of arable in the counties south of the Trent was 4.9 pence and, secondly, that an inquiry into “the changing mean value per acre of sown arable over the eightyyear period 1270-1349” in a fifteen-county area including Lincolnshire reveals what is “essentially a static long-term trend” (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 353, 368-9). 23 This figure applies to the whole of England in the period between 1300 and 1349. See Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 72, table 3.03. 24 Ibid., 73. 25 As Nigel Saul points out, the “level of distraint [of knighthood]” had been “all but fixed at £40” by 1324 – reflecting and codifying a perception of forty pounds in landed revenue as the lowest income level that was fit for a knight which was to remain in place until well after 1370 (Nigel Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century, Oxford, 1981, 11). Telling in this respect is a number of endowments which Richard II made in 1381. The king in that year knighted a number of London aldermen, and provided each of the men with lands worth forty pounds per annum – excepting one alderman, who was endowed with possessions worth £100 per annum (Peter Coss, The Knight in Medieval England 1000-1400, Stroud, 1993; rpt. Conshohocken, 1996, 125). 26 Given-Wilson, English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages, 66: “For lesser peers, about £250 per annum was probably the minimum compatible with parliamentary status [...].”

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Proprietors and the values of their estates in four configurations Please note that outcomes have been rounded off to figures with two decimal places where necessary. Proprietor* Acreage

Value, common arable

Value, prime arable

Sir John

25 ploughs/ 3000 acres

£62.50

John, 1

approx. 8.33 ploughs / 1000 acres 12.5 ploughs / 1500 acres 5 ploughs / 600 acres 20 ploughs / 2400 acres

John, 2 John, 3 John, 4 Ote, 1 Ote, 2 Ote, 3 & 4 Gamelyn, 1 Gamelyn, 2 Gamelyn, 3 Gamelyn, 4

£137.50

Value, common arable & meadow £108.33

Value, prime arable & meadow £208.33

£20.83

£45.83

£36.11

£69.44

£31.25

£68.75

£54.17

£104.17

£12.50

£27.50

£21.67

£41.67

£50.-

£110.00

£86.67

£166.67

approx. 8.33 ploughs / 1000 acres 12.5 ploughs / 1500 acres 5 ploughs / 600 acres

£20.83

£45.83

£36.11

£69.44

£31.25

£68.75

£54.17

£104.17

£12.50

£27.50

£21.67

£41.67

approx. 8.33 ploughs / 1000 acres 0 ploughs/ 0 acres 15 ploughs / 1800 acres 0 ploughs/ 0 acres

£20.83

£45.83

£36.11

£69.44

£0.-

£0.-

£0.-

£0.-

£37.50

£82.50

£65.-

£125.-

£0.-

£0.-

£0.-

£0.-

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sistently commensurate with membership of the knighthood. Under configurations 2, 3, and 4, the yield of Sir John’s possessions is, indeed, so high that the original plan for the division of his land (situation 1) would have provided each of the three brothers with an income close to, or in excess of, the forty-pound mark.27 Such is clearly not the case for the plan which is executed (situation 3). While Gamelyn’s fifteen ploughs yield significantly more than forty pounds a year under configurations 2, 3 and 4, and close to forty pounds under configuration 1, the areas allotted to his two brothers can only produce sufficient income for the maintenance of knighthood under the unlikely fourth configuration, with its extraordinary values for arable as well as meadow. Together, these factors suggest an incentive for John’s appropriation of Gamelyn’s inheritance which is not otherwise apparent from the narrative: without additional land, John cannot retain a position in society which is comparable with that of his father.28 Moral matters This may be a good point to turn to a consideration of the romance’s moral subtext. On a surface level, The Tale of Gamelyn treats the conflict between John and Gamelyn as a simple question of wrong versus right. While John is subjected to repeated expressions of indignation and contempt in the narrative, Gamelyn is referred to in neutral or positive terms.29 Yet the suggestion that John’s appropriation of Gamelyn’s lands may in some part be motivated by his desire to maintain the knightly status undermines a black-andwhite interpretation of the conflict. It invites the audience to 27

Edgar F. Shannon was not far from the mark, therefore, when he asserted that “Sir John’s lands [...] [were] extensive enough for each brother to have at least a knight’s fee” (Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 459). 28 A possible alternative would, of course, be to appropriate Ote’s lands, which would yield an income sufficient for the maintenance of knighthood under scenarios 2, 3, and 4. 29 The narrator mostly refers to Gamelyn by name, as “yonge Gamelyn(e)” (e.g. 113, 769, 869) or “Gamelyn the yonge” (e.g. 170, 305, 340). In line 288, Gamelyn is referred to as “the bolde”. When John is first introduced, he is described as a “moche schrewe” who “sone bygan” (6). Indeed, he “deserved his faders curs” (8), unlike his brothers, who “loved wel her fader and of hym were agast” (7). On other occasions, the narrator refers to John as “the fals knyght” (e.g. 192, 459, 719), or applies to him such phrases as “rape … and rees” (101) and “fikel … and felle” (151).

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empathize with John, discouraging an absolute condemnation of his actions. The Tale of Gamelyn thus appears to contain the foundation for two distinct evaluations of the conflict between the two brothers, at least in so far as it concerns the possession of the fifteen ploughs which were left to Gamelyn. This impression is strengthened by the aspect discussed in the next section: the legal connotations of the way in which Sir John’s lands are divided. Inheritance practices When Sir John decides to leave the largest share of his estate to his youngest son, he creates a situation which would have been incompatible with any of the major inheritance practices of fourteenth-century England. Primogeniture, the bestowal of all of Sir John’s landed possessions upon his eldest son John and the most widespread of these practices, would indeed have had a result comparable with that of John’s appropriation of Gamelyn’s lands.30 This is significant since the narrative suggests that Sir John’s neighbours initially intend to divide the inheritance in accordance with the principle of primogeniture:31 For to delen hem alle to on that was her thought. And for Gamelyn was yongest he shuld have nought. (43-4)

The proposal to divide the estate between John and Ote should perhaps be interpreted as a compromise between the neighbours’ “thought” and Sir John’s wishes, one which historically would have put the two brothers within comfortable reach of the income range associated with knighthood.32 In regions where primogeniture was 30

Common law held that all of the lands that had been held by the deceased should be inherited by the eldest son (primogeniture), or, if no such individual existed, were to be equally divided amongst the daughters (see A.W.B. Simpson, An Introduction to the History of the Land Law, Oxford, 1961, rpt. 1979, 47-8, and Eileen Spring, Law, Land, and Family: aristocratic inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800, Chapel Hill, 1993, 9-10). Under the custom of Borough English, all of the lands would pass to the youngest son, while under gavelkind, a system of land tenure associated mainly with Kent, the deceased individual’s lands were to be equally divided, or otherwise shared, amongst the male heirs (see Simpson, History of the Land Law, 20-1). 31 See also Shannon, “Mediaeval Law”, 458 and Scattergood, “Gamelyn”, 163. 32 See table, situation 2.

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applied, this would strictly have been illegal, as would a decision to pass on most of one’s lands to the youngest of several sons. This is not to say that The Tale of Gamelyn suggests that Sir John violates the law. Before Sir John announces how his possessions will be divided, he emphatically states that “yit is the londe [his]” (54), apparently indicating to his audience that he is transferring the ownership of his lands before his death, rather than after it. The aged knight furthermore specifies that John is to receive the lands which Sir John’s father had inherited. In the absence of any immediate hints as to the motivations for this decision, it appears that Sir John is seeking to meet the requirements of an entail stipulation.33 Together these factors suggest that Sir John uses an ‘inheritance escape route’ which was afforded by fourteenth-century common law. While it did not permit the partition of lands under will, it did allow landowners to alienate lands during their lifetime, provided that these were not subject to entail.34 Yet even though Sir John’s division of his lands can be interpreted as legally valid, the contrast between the division and the principles of primogeniture is so great that for contemporary audiences it may have served as a moral justification for John’s decision to take control of Gamelyn’s lands. Conclusion The Tale of Gamelyn is a romance with uncommonly strong ties to historical circumstances. This has long been recognised for the narrative’s use of legal practices, yet it appears also to extend to the role played by land ownership. A comparison of the acreages mentioned in the narrative with historical data yields a clearly delineated incentive for John’s appropriation of Gamelyn’s lands which is not otherwise apparent from the narrative. This incentive in turn has significant consequences for the interpretation of the narrative’s moral subtext. It undermines the numerous and emphatic 33

See lines 57-8. The remainder of the estate having been acquired during Sir John’s lifetime, it would likely have been held in fee simple. 34 From the thirteenth century onwards, heirs were effectively only entitled to what remained after their fathers’ deaths. See G.D.G Hall, trans. and ed., The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England commonly called Glanvill, Oxford, 1993, 69-74 and 184-5, and Simpson, An Introduction to the History of the Land Law, 48-9. Grantors could still “impose restrictions upon the grantee’s power to alienate” in the thirteenth century (Simpson, An Introduction to the History of the Land Law, 85), yet in the fourteenth century this limitation too largely disappeared.

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suggestions that Gamelyn and John represent opposite sides on a wrong-right scale. If in addition the discrepancy between Sir John’s division of his lands and common fourteenth-century inheritance practice is taken into account, it would almost appear that the author of The Tale of Gamelyn sought to counterbalance the judgemental rhetoric which dominates the superficial treatment of the conflict over Sir John’s lands by providing precise data which a contemporary audience would be able to translate into the realities of income and prestige. Thus an inquiry into land values in fourteenth-century England can lead to doubt concerning the moral implications of a seemingly straightforward narrative.

THE TROJANS IN THE WRITINGS OF WACE AND BENOÎT DE SAINTE-MAURE DOUGLAS KELLY Recent studies of historiographical writing in the twelfth century have emphasized how peoples clash as well as how they communicate, transmit power and culture among themselves, and, sometimes, assimilate.1 They demonstrate how vexed an enterprise the commonplace translatio imperii and/or studii from one people to another can be, or from one branch of a people to another.2 The Trojans play a prominent role in these events, especially as the ancestors of western European peoples.3 This is the case in works by 1

An earlier version of this paper was read at a Wace Colloquium sponsored by the Société Jersiaise and held at St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, and organized by my colleague and friend, Professor Glyn S. Burgess. I wish to thank him for reading earlier versions of this paper and offering useful comments and suggestions, as well as for providing me with a pre-publication copy of the proceedings, to be published as Maistre Wace, A Celebration: Proceedings of the International Colloquium Held in Jersey 10-12 September, eds Glyn Burgess and Judith Weiss, Saint Helier, 2005. On cultural clashes and communication, see esp.: Ian Short, “Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England”, Anglo-Norman Studies, XIV (1992), 229-49; Jean Blacker, The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman ‘Regnum’, Austin, 1994; David Rollo, Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and French Romance in Twelfth-Century England, Edward C. Armstrong Monographs on Medieval Literature 9, Lexington, KY, 1998; Peter Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority, Woodbridge, 1999; Michelle R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain 1100-1300, Medieval Cultures 22, Minneapolis, 2000; Amaury Chauou, L’idéologie Plantagenêt: royauté arthurienne et monarchie politique dans l’espace Plantagenêt (XIIe-XIIIe siècles), Collection ‘Histoire’, Rennes, 2001, with additional bibliography. 2 See especially Chauou, Idéologie, Chapter V. 3 The theory of the Trojan origins of ruling houses and of nations became widespread in the Middle Ages and early modern period; see Adolf Emile Cohen, De visie op Troje van de westerse middeleeuwse geschiedschrijvers tot 1160, diss. Leiden, Assen, 1941; Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France, Bibliothèque des histoires, Paris, 1985, Chapter I; Emmanuèle Baumgartner, “Romans antiques, histoires

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both Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure. My purpose in this article is to explore the art of composition by which these authors, and by implication many of their clerical contemporaries, gave expression to translatio imperii by conquest and in decline and to translatio studii by assimilation and conviction. I shall focus on their adaptations of the Trojan heritage, its origins, assimilation, corruption, and disappearance in the British, English, and Norman histories written by Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Major features in these meetings of peoples are nations, languages, and families; all are represented diachronically and synchronically. But questions naturally arise in scholarship. What language did medieval audiences use to understand and articulate these features of their narratives? What art did authors like Wace and Benoît use in writing those narratives? In seeking answers to these questions, we may start with an article that appeared in 1964. In that year, Eugène Vinaver published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library a highly insightful article on narrative invention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.4 He refers there to a “habit of conception” (493) acquired in good medieval schools and applied to narrative composition. What was this “habit”? What were the skills that became habitual through such an education? Or, more precisely, what skills might young pupils have been taught that were accessible on a classroom level, and that subsequently could have flowered as an artistry used to fashion medieval narratives?5 anciennes et transmission du savoir aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles”, in Mediaeval Antiquity, eds Andries Welkenhuysen, Herman Braet and Werner Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, series I, Studia 24, Leuven, 1995, 219-35; Chauou, Idéologie, especially 46-49, 171-202. 4 “From Epic to Romance”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLVI (1964), 476503. The article was reprinted in part in Vinaver’s The Rise of Romance, Oxford, 1971. However, the article is a more thorough and, therefore, satisfactory treatment of the art of invention in twelfth- and thirteenth-century narratives. On invention in medieval historiography, see Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance, Madison, 1992, Chapter III (with additional bibliography). 5 One is reminded, of course, of Marie de France’s reference to such flowering in the Prologue to her Lais, ed. Jean Rychner, Classiques français du moyen âge 93, Paris 1968, lines 5-8: “Quant uns granz biens est mult oïz, / Dunc a primes est il fluriz, / E quant loëz est de plusurs, / Dunc ad espandues ses flurs” (When a great good is widely heard, then has it produced its first buds; when many have praised it, then have its flowers burst open). Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. On this pedagogical program, see now my “The Medieval Art of Poetry and Prose: The Scope

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The answer, I believe, is the technique of description (mostly decried today as mere stereotyping).6 When properly understood, and this has not always been the case, medieval description is the art of topical invention. It was taught in medieval schools in grammar, rhetoric, and poetics classes and it is evident in narratives written in Latin and the vernaculars.7 Understanding medieval description as the art of topical invention offers an approach to the interpretation of medieval composition that was used to produce the kind of masterpieces Vinaver associates with works by Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Thomas d’Angleterre. I propose here to approach two clerical authors, Wace and, to a lesser, more comparative extent, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, from this perspective. I shall focus on their descriptions of the Trojans, especially after they left Troy. This approach is part work in progress. My conclusions, suggestive rather than conclusive, are intended to throw new light on material that is well known, but not through the prism I am using to examine it. As clerics Wace and Benoît presumably received the kind of instruction in grammar and rhetoric in which topical invention was taught and practiced.8 This also places them in the context Vinaver describes. Wace attended school in Caen and was clerc lisant there.9 of Instruction and the Uses of Models”, in Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook, ed. Scott D. Troyan, Routledge Medieval Casebooks, New York, 2004, 1-24. 6 On the broader sense of description as topical invention, see my The Arts of Poetry and Prose, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 59, Turnhout, 1991, 7178; “The Art of Description”, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, eds Norris J. Lacy, D. Kelly, and Keith Busby, Faux Titre 31, 2 Vols, Amsterdam, 1987, I, Chapter VIII; Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance, 49-61. 7 See my The Conspiracy of Allusion: Description, Rewriting, and Authorship from Macrobius to Medieval Romance, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 97, Leiden, 1999, 93-97. 8 See Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance, Cambridge, 1999, 14, 54-57. 9 On Wace’s career, see most recently Glyn S. Burgess, trans., The History of the Norman People: Wace’s ‘Roman de Rou’, with notes by G. S. Burgess and Elisabeth van Houts, Woodbridge, 2004, especially xi-xx, xxiii-xxvi (with additional bibliography), and Judith Everard, “Wace, the Historical Background: Jersey in the Twelfth Century”, in Maistre Wace, eds Burgess and Weiss, 1-16. On Wace’s references to himself in the Brut and the Rou, see J. Blacker, “Narrative Decisions and Revisions in the Roman de Rou”, in Maistre Wace, eds Burgess and Weiss, 55-72; also J. Blacker, “Wace, Historian and Poet”, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB]. Benoît’s career is less clear; see Damian-Grint, New Historians,

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Therefore, it need not surprise us to find that traditional medieval poetics offers insights into their composition and what their near contemporary, Marie de France, called drawing out a surplus de sen (Lais, Prologue, line 16) implicit in their matière. This too is consistent with the approach suggested by Vinaver.10 Let us first see what these authors tell us about the Trojans and their fate after the Fall of Troy. Benoît de Sainte-Maure has the most to say about the Trojans in the Roman de Troie before their defeat and the departure of some of them, notably Antenor and Aeneas, for other realms. But he says virtually nothing about their voyage or arrival there. In the Chronique des ducs de Normandie attributed to him,11 Benoît reports that the Danes claim Trojan ancestry, which is then shared by the North Men who became the Normans.12 Benoît was also interested in the fate of some Trojan captives after the fall of Troy, although in the Roman de Troie, following Dictys, he emphasizes the Greeks’ return to their homeland and the calamities that befell them there or en route. In fact, as far as the Trojans are concerned, a union of the warring families of Hector and Achilles permitted their respective grandsons, Laudamanta and Achillidés, to restore Troy; this was because Achillidés, Pyrrhus’s son by Andromacha, permitted Hector’s son, Laudamanta, also by Andromacha, to be crowned

58-61. On the meaning of the title clerc lisant, see now Gioia Paradisi, Le passioni della storia: scrittura e memoria nell’opera di Wace, Dipartimento di studi romanzi, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’: testi, studi e manuali 16, Rome, 2002, 83-86; Blacker, “Wace”, ODNB. Cf. E. Baumgartner, “Ecrire, disent-ils: à propos de Wace et de Benoît de Sainte-Maure”, in Figures de l’écrivain au moyen âge: actes du Colloque du Centre d’Etudes Médiévales de l’Université de Picardie, Amiens, 18-20 mars 1988, ed. Danielle Buschinger, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 510, Göppingen, 1991, 37-47; Jean-Guy Gouttebroze, “Entre les historiographes d’expression latine et les jongleurs, le clerc lisant”, in Le Clerc au moyen âge, Senefiance 37, Aix-en-Provence, 1995, 215-30. 10 Vinaver, “From Epic to Romance”, 489-90; cf. Kelly, Art of Medieval French Romance, 110-14. 11 Rightly according to Short, “Patrons and Polyglots”, 238; cf. Udo Schöning, Thebenroman–Eneasroman–Trojaroman: Studien zur Rezeption der Antike in der französischen Literatur des 12. Jahrhunderts, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 235, Tübingen, 1991, 5-6. 12 Benoît [de Sainte-Maure], Chronique des ducs de Normandie, eds Carin Fahlin and Östen Södergård, 3 Vols, Bibliotheca Ekmaniana Universitatis Regiae Upsaliensis 56, 60, 64, Uppsala, 1951-57, 663-72. References are to line numbers throughout.

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king.13 Greco-Trojan unions are not always beneficial in the Troie. For example, Ajax Telamon was the son of Telamon and Hesiona, Laomedon’s sister. Telamon received her as booty and concubine after the first sack of Troy. His refusal to return Hesiona to Priam was one of the causes of the ten-year war between Greece and Troy. By contrast, Achillidés passed to the Trojan side. Will this union of illustrious families and long-standing enemies be peaceful? Of Laudamanta and Achillidés, Benoît continues: … vos porrions mout retraire, Mais dès or voudrai a chief traire De ceste uevre: nos merveilliez, Qu’auques sui las e travailliez.14 [I could tell you a lot. However, I want to bring this work to an end. Don’t be surprised, for I am rather tired and over-worked.]

Because of Benoît’s fatigue, we learn no more about these two young men in the Troie.15 Wace, for his part, deletes Geoffrey of Monmouth’s reference to Hector’s sons, who retook Troy after ousting Antenor’s family.16 13 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans, 6 Vols, SATF, Paris, 1904-12, 29763-814. See Marc-René Jung, La Légende de Troie en France au moyen âge: analyse des versions françaises et bibliographie raisonnée des manuscrits, Romanica Helvetica 114, Basel, 1996, 163-64. 14 Benoît, Le roman de Troie, 29811-14; see Penny Eley, “Author and Audience in the Roman de Troie”, in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 9-16 August, 1986, eds Keith Busby and Erik Kooper, Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 25, Amsterdam, 1990, 182-83. Subsequent additions were made in some prose adaptations; see Jung, Légende de Troie, Chapter III. 15 See Jung, Légende de Troie, 75 et passim; Catherine Croizy-Naquet, “Andromaque et ses fils dans le Roman de Troie”, in Entre fiction et histoire: Troie et Rome au moyen âge, eds E. Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-Lancner, Paris, 1997, 73-96. 16 Perhaps Wace was following the Variant Version of the Historia regum Britanniae, which also leaves this event out. According to the most recent editor of both versions, Wace knew and used both of them, drawing discriminately now on the Vulgate Version, now on the Variant Version; this suggests that his exclusion was deliberate. See Neil Wright, ed., The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth: II. The First Variant Version, Cambridge, 1988, lxxiii-lxxviii, cii-civ. The Vulgate Version will be quoted from The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. I: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. 568, ed. N. Wright, Cambridge, 1984.

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Benoît’s account does not correspond to that in Wace’s Brut, which he must have known.17 Rather, he builds on material Wace uses in the Rou,18 where he evokes the Danes’ Trojan background, but only in what Holden calls the ‘Appendix’, that is, the former Part One (première partie) of the chronicle, which briefly treats of the Danes’ Trojan origins. Wace suppresses this material in the new version that includes, in order, the Chronique ascendante and the Second and Third Parts in, respectively, rhyming alexandrine laisses and octosyllabic couplets in rimes plates. More significant for my purposes is that in the Chronique des ducs de Normandie Antenor left Troy and headed west. In the Brut, Brutus found Antenor’s descendants in Spain.19 On the other hand, the Chronique has them reach modern Denmark after sailing hither and thither (652-54). Benoît is somewhat more circumspect than Wace after the ‘Appendix’ in his references to this Danish-Norman dynasty. He says that the Danes claim they descend from Antenor and his Trojans, although, following his sources, he lays greater emphasis on their descent from the Goths, who also trace their lineage back to an Amazon collateral branch and to Noah’s son Jeptha (353-466).20 After 17

Wace refers to Benoît as the author who replaced him in relating Norman history in Le roman de Rou, ed. A. J. Holden, SATF, 3 Vols, Paris, 1970-73, III, 11419-24. Troy is only a distant memory in the Rou (III, 91); see below (p. 129) the comparison of the Trojan War and Hector with the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror. 18 See A. J. Holden, ed., Rou, Vol. 3. 19 Wace, Le roman de Brut, ed. Ivor Arnold, SATF, 2 Vols, Paris, 1938-40, 772-86. One of the other Trojans there is Corineus, who joins Brutus and eventually gives his name to Cornwall, a region he receives after the Trojan settlement in Albion, renamed Britain in honor of Brutus. Wace does not use Vergil’s references to Antenor, who stops in Padua; see Aeneid I, 242-49, in Virgil, ed. and trans. H. Rushton Fairclaugh, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 1, Cambridge, MA, 1935, and Lorenzo Braccesi, “Antenore” in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, Rome, 1984, I, 191-93.The Troie also establishes Antenor in Italy (27461-547). 20 See Laurence Mathey-Maille, “L’Ecriture des commencements dans le Roman de Rou de Wace et la Chronique des ducs de Normandie de Benoît de Sainte Maure”, in Seuils de l’œuvre dans le texte médiéval, eds E. Baumgartner and L. Harf-Lancner, Paris, 2002, 85-86. On the sources of Benoît’s account, see G. Paradisi, “Etnogenesi e leggenda troiana nei primi storiografi normanni”, in L’Antichità nella cultura europea del Medioevo/L’Antiquité dans la culture européenne du moyen âge: Ergebnisse der internationalen Tagung in Padua, 27.09-01.10.1997, eds Rosanna Brusegan et al., WODAN 75: Greifswalder Beiträge zum Mittelalter 62, Ser. 3: Tagungsbände und Sammelschriften 43, Greifswald, 1998, 59-68; E. Baumgartner, “Les Danois dans l’Histoire des ducs de Normandie de Benoît de Sainte-Maure”, Moyen Age, CVIII (2002), 481-95.

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this account the Trojans disappear from Benoît’s Chronique until the end, where we find two allusions, both in honor of William the Conqueror but not of his putative Trojan ancestry. The first claims that William is as great a warrior as Hector (33580-94).21 Second, as if to drive the point home, further on Benoît compares the siege of Troy, which took ten years to complete successfully, to the conquest of Britain, which required a single day (39873-84). Benoît is obviously not interested in the Normans’ Trojan lineage. By contrast, Wace recalls the survival, as late as Arthur’s time, of the Trojan custom of separating the dining halls of men and women (Brut, 10449-58), a custom he found in the Historia regum Britanniae (§ 157, both Vulgate and Variant versions). Ygerne’s presence in Uterpendragon’s dining hall is therefore a fatal, or fortunate, exception (8555-76). By contrast, the chambre des beautés in the Troie is the scene of many a feast where men and women mingle freely. Benoît mentions no customary separation.22 I will not speculate here on why Benoît diverges from Wace, although the discrepancies might well have struck attentive audiences at the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, these authors’ alleged patrons. Benoît tends to ignore the Trojans in his Chronique. By contrast, in the Brut and the Rou ‘Appendix’ Wace locates them in British genealogy, recalling their place of origin and their native language. In doing so, Wace’s account of Brutus, Antenor, and Corineus mirrors the Aeneid’s account of Aeneas’s wanderings23 (of especial interest to those who knew the Eneas24), thus amplifying on times of cooperation and conflict between the Trojan Britons and the Trojan Romans.

21

He also stands above Arthur and Charlemagne (33595-600). This virtual hierarchy of nations revises implicitly Jean Bodel’s well-known ranking of the French, Roman, and British peoples; see Kelly, Art of Medieval French Romance, 91. 22 This does not mean that women moved about freely in Troy; see C. Croizy-Naquet, Thèbes, Troie et Carthage: poétique de la ville dans le roman antique au XIIe siècle, Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen Âge 30, Paris, 1994, 325-26. On the chambre des beautés, see Croizy-Naquet, Thèbes, Troie et Carthage, 132-36; Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century, Figurae, Stanford, CA, 2001, 111-19. 23 See Paradisi, Passioni, 141-42, who attributes the adaptation of the Aeneid to Geoffrey of Monmouth. 24 On the link between Brut and Eneas, see Paradisi, Passioni, 230-32.

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Before examining further the Trojans in Wace’s writings, let me return to topical invention as description, the art I believe Vinaver had in mind in his 1964 article. Rewriting was a common feature of medieval composition,25 and it is exemplified by both Wace and Benoît. The meaning and quality of such rewriting depends on topical invention. Such invention uses topoi or loci – that is, it uses ‘places’ common to persons and places common to things and actions.26 By extension, it can apply to the usual sense of commonplace (one word) in scholarship since Curtius; the gradus amoris is one such commonplace,27 but it contains distinct places common to most gradus amoris. These ‘places’ can be amplified in accordance with the conception and intention of the author – that is, how the author construes the material he intends to rewrite. For example, the gradus amoris may be one thing for a monk evoking his fin’amor for God and another in a Villon evoking his love for a prostitute. If the ‘love’ leads to rape, we have what one critic has termed the rape script.28 The script for such a gradus amoris may leave out some stages, such as conversation, embracing, and kissing prior to the brutal act: sight leads directly to intercourse. There may be interesting twists in the scheme too, as in Partonopeu de Blois, where love does not begin with sight but rather with intercourse, albeit not as rape; sight is a final step when Partonopeu first actually sees his beloved – an apt illustration of original use of ordo artificialis.29 The night Uterpendragon spends 25

On reconter, cf. E. Baumgartner, “Romans antiques”, 222-23. On the distinction I am making here between common place and commonplace, see my article, “Forlorn Hope: Mutability Topoi in Some Medieval Narratives”, in The World and Its Rival: Essays on Literary Imagination in Honor of Per Nykrog, eds Kathryn Karczewska and Tom Conley, Faux Titre 172, Amsterdam, 1999, 59-77, especially 62-63: commonplace refers to “a conventional image, thought, or action an author repeats or paraphrases”; common place identifies “places in a person, thing, or action common to all persons, things, or actions of the same kind”. 27 On the diverse “places” in this commonplace, see Lionel J. Friedman, “Gradus amoris”, Romance Philology, XIX (1965), 167-77; Alice M. Colby studies the diverse ways the commonplace of stereotypical beauty may be dissected; see The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature: An Example of the Stylistic Originality of Chrétien de Troyes, Histoire des idées et critique littéraire, Geneva, 1965. 28 Diane Wolfthal, “‘Douleur sur toutes autres’: Revisualizing the Rape Script in the Epistre Othea and the Cité des dames”, in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. Marilynn Desmond, Medieval Cultures 14, Minneapolis, 1998, 41-70. 29 D. Kelly, “The Logic of the Imagination in Chrétien de Troyes”, in The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Rupert T. Pickens, French Forum Monographs 44, Lexington, KY, 1983, 20-24. 26

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with Ygerne in both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace is a truncated adaptation of the scheme; in his case the gradus springs from sight in the dining hall to consummation (thanks to a faux semblant) in her chambers in Tintagel. We need not assume that our authors memorized fixed scripts. Once they acquired the habit, in Vinaver’s sense, of viewing persons and actions as an accumulation of places common to persons and actions, the habit controlled their choice of places and, furthermore, their description of each place. The choice of specific places can therefore be as significant as the way they are described. The places, whether or not chosen for emphasis, and the ways they are described are crucial in topical invention. This is apparent in descriptions of the Trojans. How, then, do Wace and Benoît describe the Trojans using such description? How and in what ways did this people become the British and the Normans? Their use of topical invention offers some answers to these questions. This is because we can identify the places common to the Trojans, which each author chooses to describe and which each left out or ignored. I will, as stated, focus on their writings, although reception would have depended on any given audience’s knowledge of earlier and contemporary works in Latin or French. Benoît wrote for those who did not know Latin, but he did not exclude knowledgeable Latin readers from his audience;30 familiarity with the Eneas would also have created more diversified, enlightened vernacular audiences. Moreover, as time passed, new works that emerged and became known might also influence audience reception; for example, those who knew Latin might have read and assimilated Joseph of Exeter’s Ylias, whereas thirteenth-century French audiences might also know the different versions of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César or some of the prose versions of Dares or Benoît himself that rewrite these sources. In the Roman de Troie the Trojans and Greeks are separated by the Aegean Sea, but they speak the same language.31 As David Rollo has 30 For examples of educated aristocrats, see Martin Aurell, “Noblesse et royauté Plantagenêt (1154-1224)”, in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154-1224): Table ronde tenue à Poitiers le 13 mai 2000, ed. M. Aurell, Civilisation Médiévale 11, Poitiers, 2001, 32-34; cf. A. Chauou, “Arturus redivivus: royauté arthurienne et monarchie politique à la cour Plantagenêt (1154-1199)”, in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt, 76-77. 31 Or, at least, no one raises the issue of language difference in the Roman de Troie. The same is true in Eneas. Geoffrey of Monmouth claims that the Trojans spoke

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noted, they have a different patria, but the same natio.32 In Wace the places common to the principal figures and to the peoples named after them are the common places ‘native land’ (patria) and ‘native language’ (natio). Patria and natio are common places in the sense in which I use the term here. Matthew of Vendôme in the Ars versificatoria (written before 1175, but the common places he teaches go back to antiquity33) defines patria and natio as ‘natural’ features or ‘places’ for persons; other ‘natural’ common places are name,34 age, family, and sexual gender. He distinguishes between the two ‘places’ as follows: ‘natio secundum genus sue lingue consideratur, patria vero secundum locum originalem’35 [natio ‘nationality’, refers to language and patria ‘native land’, to place of birth].

“curuum Grecum”, or what Thorpe translates as ‘Crooked Greek’ and E. Baumgartner and I. Short as ‘grec tordu’ – perhaps something like American English – that came to be called British: “loquela… Troiana… dicta fuit Britanni(c)a” by analogy with the new name of the island, Britannia. This name replaced Albion so that Brutus would preserve memory of his name. Wace almost systematically develops Geoffrey’s interpretation of place names in this way; quotes from Vulgate Historia regum Britannie, § 21; Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe, Harmondsworth, 1966, 72; and La Geste du roi Arthur selon le ‘Roman de Brut’ de Wace et l’‘Historia regum Britanniae’ de Geoffroy de Monmouth, trans. E. Baumgartner and I. Short, 10/18: Bibliothèque médiévale, Paris, 1993, 9. The expression ‘curvum grecum’ is not found in the Variant Version. 32 Rollo, Historical Fabrication, 147-54. 33 Edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle: recherches et documents sur la technique littéraire du moyen âge, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes 238, Paris, 75-85; and Munari’s notes to his edition of the Ars versificatoria in Vol. III, Mathei Vindocinensis opera, ed. Franco Munari, Storia e Letteratura 171, Rome, 1988, especially to 1:77 and 1: 93-94 and 95. 34 On interpretatio nominis as well, to which Wace attaches great importance as a topos, see G. Paradisi, Passioni, 34-36, 51-54, and her “Remarques sur l’exégèse onomastique et étymologique chez Wace (expositio, ratio nominis)”, in Maistre Wace, eds. Burgess and Weiss, 149-65. The common place nomen is located under the ‘nature’ topos; see Matthew’s Ars versificatoria, 1.78: “locus a nomine est quando per interpretationem nominis de persona aliquid boni vel mali persuadetur” (a common place drawn from a name is a matter of interpreting a person’s name to suggest something good or bad about the person.) Translations, with some adaptations, from Matthew of Vendôme, The Art of Versification, trans. Aubrey E. Galyon, Ames, 1980. Such interpretation includes medieval etymologies; see G. Paradisi, Passioni, Chapter XII; see also 200. 35 Ars versificatoria 1:82. Cf. Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft, 2 Vols, 2nd ed., Munich, 1973, §376. On the nature topos in general, see Ars versificatoria, 1:79-82.

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In the Brut, Wace uses these two common places to evoke the passage of time and what he might have called the metamorphosis of peoples. From their Trojan patria, which they were driven from or fled, they sailed to Italy with Aeneas.36 After Brutus was exiled, he liberated the Trojans enslaved in Greece, and set out with them for Albion. His Trojans settled there, surviving into Anglo-Saxon times. In the Rou as well, the Trojan inhabitants of Albion ruled until the Anglo-Saxons subjugated them. By that time the Trojans had become the island’s Celtic inhabitants. The Normans under William the Conqueror later conquered this homeland of Celts and Anglo-Saxons. Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Wace’s replacement as chronicler, adopted the same metamorphoses for the Normans, albeit less systematically. In the Troie he relates the Trojan War and its aftermath, but not for the Trojan emigrants (apart from those whom the Greeks enslaved). Following Dictys, Benoît relates the Greeks’ return to their patria, a return fraught with impediments and disasters. Later still, the Greek Achillidés helped to rebuild Troy with his Trojan half-brother Laodamanta. However, in the Chronique des ducs de Normandie, which loosely ties Danish history to the Trojan emigration, Benoît recounts the settlement of the Trojans’ Danish descendants in Normandy and the conquest of Britain, before setting this great work37 aside when Henry II’s patronage came to an end. Returning to Wace, the reader notes that not only does this clerc lisant from Jersey relate the metamorphoses of the Trojan people as they lose and seize a homeland, much as Geoffrey of Monmouth had told the story, but he also relates their linguistic evolution as a natio, an evolution also referred to in his source.38 However, Wace is more circumstantial. He emphasizes etymologies and contaminations, as the Trojan language over time becomes Celtic, then English, and finally

36

See G. Paradisi, Passioni, Chapter XIII; she notes that Dares’s De excidio was frequently copied together with the Variant Version of Geoffrey’s Historia (188, 232). 37 Cf. E. Baumgartner, “Benoît de Sainte-Maure et l’uevre de Troie” 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. D. Kelly, Faux Titre 116, Amsterdam, 1996, 15-28; Kelly, Art of Medieval French Romance, 132. 38 Both also relate the names of the new regions to the Trojans who established their domination over them: Britain from Brutus, Cornwall from Corineus, etc.

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Anglo-Norman.39 The name for London is a well-known example (Brut, 1223-38).40 Brutus’s Nova Troja in Geoffrey of Monmouth evolved into Troie Nove and then to Trinovant. Wace calls such linguistic evolution “corruption”. Then along came Lud, who rejected Trinovant and imposed a new name, Kaerlud.41 Corruption accounts once more for this word’s slippage to Lodoïn, then, under English influence, to Londene, until ‘we’ – that is, French speakers like Wace – settled on Londres. The linguistic nation, or natio, more or less combines with the patria, although the dominant language may be replaced or threatened by another language that, as Kaerlud illustrates, undergoes its own linguistic changes as time passes on. For Wace, places and languages are highly unstable.42 The changes he chronicles are adaptations of Geoffrey’s Historia, §22, in accordance with his habit of rewriting of his sources; that is to say, “conformément à l’esthétique de son temps, il se permet, et même il se croit obligé d’orner et de corser son récit, suivant certaines formules régulièrement appliqués.”43 One such “formula” is the common place. Another is etymology such as that for Troja Nova and Kaerlud. Geoffrey of Monmouth reports a debate between Lud and his brother Nennius as to whether the former should have changed the name Trinovent to Kaerlud. Geoffrey says that Gildas discussed this contentious issue, but Geoffrey himself leaves it out of his account, arguing that the subject is unsuitable for his less lofty prose (§ 22). 39

In Ian Short’s sense of ‘Insular’, such that Anglo-Norman embraces the duchy of Normandy and Britain (“Patrons and Polyglots”, 229 n. 1). 40 See J. Blacker, Faces of Time, 32-34; for recent, more thorough studies of Wace’s use of ‘etymology,’ see L. Mathey-Maille, “La pratique de l’étymologie dans le Roman de Brut de Wace”, in Plaist vos oïr bone cançon vallant? Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à François Suard, eds Dominique Boutet et al., 2 Vols, Lille, 1999, II, 579-86; L. Mathey-Maille, “Ecriture”; G. Paradisi, “‘Par muement de languages’: il tempo, la memoria e il volgare in Wace”, Francofonia, XLV (2003), 27-45; L. Mathey-Maille, “L’Etymologie dans le Roman de Rou de Wace”, in ‘De sens rassis’: Essays in Honor of Rupert T. Pickens, eds Keith Busby, Bernard Guidot and Logan W. Whalen, Faux Titre 259, Amsterdam, 2005, 403-14; G. Paradisi, “Remarques”. 41 The imposition is analogous to that of ‘Engleterre’ on ‘Bretaigne’ (G. Paradisi, Passioni, 198, 214-16), and, earlier, of Britain and Cornwall on Albion. As E. Baumgartner notes, “civiliser, pour le clerc normand, c’est essentiellement nommer” (“Brut et les ancêtres d’Arthur”, PRIS-MA, XI (1995), 141). 42 Blacker, Faces of Time, 32. 43 Holden, ed., Rou, III, 115. He does not name the “formules”, but, since the reference is to description, it is compatible with topical invention as defined here.

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The Variant Version reports none of this, nor does Wace, who rather relates the ongoing evolution of Kaerlud, summarized above, to Londres. Wace also distinguishes between the two kinds of etymological change he describes. Corruption proceeds over time, Troja Nova becoming Trinovent. Renaming – Kaerlud replaces Trinovent – introduces a new word in place of another; the new word then begins its own cycle of corruption. Wace’s etymologies underscore another feature of topical invention found in the Brut: the common place family, or cognatio.44 As is well known, family as familia has a broader semantic range than cognatio. For example, in the Praeexercitamina Priscian includes familia as a topos together with cognatio.45 Benoît makes the distinction in the Troie by designating his male cognatio as amis charnels and his male familia as amis naturels.46 This sense is also apparent in the Brut. Cognatio refers to those related by blood and defines a bloodline. Familia may connote all members of a domestic unit and, by extension, a gens that is part of a larger national group (patria or natio). Such a gens would be the Trojans whom Corineus established as the Cornish nation and named after himself (Brut, 118188). Upon arrival in Greece, Brutus met ‘sun parenté / Dunt en Grece aveit grant plenté’ (157-58) [his ‘family’ of which there was a large number in Greece]. This parenté included numerous lignages, notably Priam’s own in Helenus (149-56). Similarly, Brutus encountered Antenor’s descendants in Spain; Wace refers to them as representing four broad generations: ‘Des Troïens de lur lignage / Quatre granz generaciuns’ (774-75) [four great generations of the Trojans belonging to their lineage]. This sense of lineage is as broad as that used to describe the Trojans in Greece, since Antenor was not a descendant of Priam. By renaming the Trojans as Britons, Wace, following Geoffrey of Monmouth, grounds genealogy in territory.47 In this way the paterfamilias of the nation bestows his name on his land and on his 44

Cf. E. Baumgartner, “Le Brut de Wace: préhistoire arthurienne et écriture de l’histoire”, in Maistre Wace, eds Burgess and Weiss, especially 24-26, and, on the relation between lineage and his etymologies, 28-29. 45 Priscian, Praeexercitamina, in Grammatici latini, ed. Heinrich Keil, Leipzig, 1858, II, 436, lines 15-16; see Lausberg, Handbuch, §376. 46 D. Kelly, “Guerre et parenté dans le Roman de Troie”, in Entre fiction et histoire, eds Baumgartner and Harf-Lancner, 65-66; on the importance of amis naturels in the Plantagenêt army, see Aurell, “Noblesse”, 24-25. 47 Warren, History on the Edge, 55.

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people who become thereby his familia. Patria and natio conjoin in the new land to define the common place familia in the diverse senses of ‘people,’ ‘lineage,’ and ‘parenté,’ which Wace uses to identify the Trojans, their different gentes, and their diverse lines of blood descent. Despite apparent inconsistencies in vocabulary, his usage is consistent, if one attends to context. Before 1175 medieval pupils and authors could not rely on the socalled arts of poetry and prose since none were written until after the time of Wace and Benoît; even after 1175 they may not always have been available. Earlier authors used sources as models, imitating and/or revising the source authors.48 Such changes can be radical and extensive, as, for example, in Benoît’s version of Dares and Dictys, or they can be small and incremental, as in Wace’s rewriting of Geoffrey’s etymologies. The key is to bring out the meanings that are imbedded, or presumed to be imbedded, as Marie de France puts it, in the source and to achieve a new version of the source or sources. In his descriptions of the Trojans and their actions, Wace is consistent in using the common places for persons and things. Another example is his treatment of Geoffrey’s report that Brutus’s three sons, Kamber, Locrin, and Albanactus, divided his realm among themselves and, following a common Trojan practice in Britain, named each part after the name of the son who received it: Kambrie, Logres, and Albaine. Like Trinovent, changed by Lud to Kaerlud, Kambrie was changed to Guales “pur la reïne Galaes” (1278). But Wace notes another explanation for the imposition of the new name: Guales was named for Duke Guales because he was very powerful and much talked about at that time – “de lui grant reparlance”, 1282. Although Geoffrey suggests this etymology at the end of the Historia (§207), he does not give the description of the duke that Wace does;49 he says only that Guales was a barbarian ruler. But, by his time, the former

48

This is imitation in which a new author follows his or her source as a model that he or she rewrites rather than emulation by which the new author seeks to outstrip the predecessor. On these meanings of imitation and emulation, see Alexandru N. Cizek, Imitatio et tractatio: die literarisch-rhetorischen Grundlagen der Nachahmung in Antike und Mittelalter, Rhetorik-Forschungen 7, Tübingen, 1994, especially 18-19 on these definitions. 49 This is the case in both the Vulgate and the Variant Version. All three authors refer to Queen Guales’s exceptional beauty (Historia, §27, in both versions, and Brut, 1560-62).

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Trojans have become ‘corrupt’, having changed over time into something new and unrecognizable: Tuit sunt mué e tuit changié, Tuit sunt divers e forslignié De noblesce, d’onur, de murs E de la vie as anceisurs. (Brut, 14851-54)50 [All have been transformed and changed, they are corrupted,51 having degenerated from their former nobility, honour, and ways, and from the life their ancestors lived.]

They are Britons and no longer Trojans. There are a few such changes in the Rou, although no more than in Benoît’s Chronique.52 This is not surprising, as far less time passed between Hengist or Rollo and the end of these two incomplete histories in the early twelfth century.53 The Brut extends from the fall of Troy to Cadwalladur, and languages and peoples are very much on the move over these millennia. Wace’s etymologies explain how the natio and patria of Brutus’s Trojans changed over time. Wace, following Geoffrey of Monmouth, gradually has the Trojans become Britons as they settled in and established domination over the island. Their new patria required a new name, Albion becoming Britain, just as other places did where the Trojan exiles settled: Romans, Danes, French …. Language also evolved for the Trojan- (or ‘Crooked Greek’-)speaking natio. Wace records such ‘etymologies’ not only to explain, philologically as it were, how ‘Nova Troja’ became ‘Londres’, but also how such corruption and renaming reflected the passage and translatio of dominion, as one people and its language imposed themselves on others, all the while suggesting the corruption of the latter.54 To be sure, some features of the evolving patria/natio topoi were more stable. The ruling family, from Brutus to Cadwalladur, was 50

Similarly, Rou, III, 131-42. Reading divers as ‘ugly’ and ‘unnatural’. 52 See Rou, II, 431-43; III, 11-84 and Appendix, 157-80; and Chronique, 15-18, 485501, 663-72, 903-20. 53 Mathey-Maille, “Etymologie”, 407, 409. 54 Rollo, Historical Fabrication, shows how the evaluation of such changes varied with the audience for which the given work was written. 51

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unbroken, like the French monarchy from Hugh Capet to Louis XVI. But, as with the Capetian line, there were also grafts onto the family tree. This too was commonplace. In the Aeneid, Aeneas weds Lavinia. In the Troie, Hector’s and Achilles’s families are united, albeit forcibly, when Andromacha becomes Pyrrhus’s concubine. Her children, Achillidés by Pyrrhus and Laodomanta by Hector, reconciled as amis charnelz and returned to Troy to rebuild the city. Brutus too married the Greek princess Innogen as part of the surrender of the Greeks and the departure of the freed Trojans from Greece for Albion in order to found Britain. This marriage produced no problems, unlike the troubled circumstances marking the birth of Andromacha’s children. As Wace puts it, evoking a proverb to express the ‘cause’ common place,55 “De vieuz mesfait nuvele plaie” (Brut, 540) [from an old wrong a new wound]. Marriage does not always resolve such enmity.56 For example, Wace’s statement just quoted shows how Brutus avoided a cause of future enmity and justified the Trojan departure from Greece, immediately after Brutus’s defeat of the Greek king and his marriage to the latter’s daughter. Had the liberated Trojans remained in Greece Greco-Trojan animosity would have continued, sparking new and violent conflicts – perhaps a third great war between Greeks and Trojans (527-36). Rather than balkanize avant la lettre Greece in this way, Brutus departed and the longstanding Greco-Trojan enmity evaporated. Other examples of conflicts among peoples are significant in the context of marriage and family. Lombard women refused to marry Trojans (Brut, 1572-82), whereas marriage between the Britons and Romans was acceptable because their common Trojan ancestry made them the same people and, as it were, family.57 These features of the 55 “Causa rationativa perpenditur in adeptione commodorum et in fuga incommodorum” (Ars versificatoria, 1:98; A rational cause is evident when one chooses what is advantageous and shuns what is disadvantageous). See Lausberg, Handbuch, §§ 378-79. Wace’s proverb supports Brutus’s consilium; ‘consilium est compensato iuris libramine excogitata discretio ad fugam vel electionem’ (Ars Versificatoria, 1:88: Judgment is the balanced weighing of an action in the scales of justice; it is a careful sorting out of which alternatives to reject and which to choose). 56 Cf. the long enmity between French and Normans despite intermarriage (Rou, III, 4753-66). 57 On the common Trojan ancestry of Romans and Britons and their vexed family relations, see Mathey-Maille, “Mythe troyen et histoire romaine: de Geoffroy de Monmouth au Brut de Wace”, in Entre fiction et histoire, eds Baumgartner and HarfLancner, 113-25.

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topos ‘family’ as either familia or cognatio join the configuration of natio and patria among the common places that Wace and Benoît amplify. The ‘family’ topos, in both senses of the word I am using here, has important positive and negative implications for the Trojan nation and its history. For example, the union of Brutus and his Greek wife was positive, whereas that between Vortiger and his Saxon wife was not. This difference can be explained in terms of topical invention. Marriage among peoples is fraught with difficulties in both Wace and Benoît. This is because it introduces two ancillary issues that also emerge in their writings and produce diverse topical developments: concubinage (soignontage) and religion, the latter a feature of the convictus, or ‘way of living’ topos as ratio vitae.58 Among peoples there is a marked disinclination to intermarry if the patria or natio of the proposed spouse is different. For example, the Lombard women mentioned above refused to marry Trojan descendants in Italy; as a result, the latters’ relatives in Britain sent their daughters to become wives there. A similar provision of wives was sent to the Britons in Brittany after ethnic cleansing had rid Armorica of its name and its original inhabitants. This transfer of women failed because most of the women died in a violent storm at sea. The survivors who washed up on pagan shores were slain or reduced to sexual slavery. One is reminded of Benoît’s professed objection to the treatment of Hesiona, Priam’s sister, who was given to Telamon after the sack of Laomedon’s Troy. Benoît thinks Telamon should have married Hesiona (Troie, 2801-04).59 Hesiona’s concubinage produced a child, Ajax Telamon. His role on the Greek side in the ten-year siege of Troy illustrates two distinct adaptations of the cognatio variety of the ‘nature’ common place. First, Hector terminated the second battle when he recognized his aunt’s son as ‘family’; yet in the twentieth battle, this same son went mad and, fighting in the nude, killed his uncle Paris with a gruesome blow, before succumbing himself to a horrible death.60 In the Brut, Assaracus, also son of a Trojan concubine, switched sides, opting to 58

Ars versificatoria, 1.83, as “way of life”. The expression is found under the victus / convictus topos in The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne, ed. Wilbur Samuel Howell, New York, 1965, 106, line 617; see Lausberg, Handbuch, § 376. 59 Kelly, Conspiracy, 175-76. 60 Kelly, Conspiracy, 167.

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join the Trojan insurrection led by Brutus because his ‘legitimate’ brother was trying to deprive him of his inheritance (Brut, 186-202). The Greeks and Trojans had no religious differences. The marriage of the Trojan Brutus to the Greek Innogen, followed by separation of the Greeks and Trojans, produced no problems once the separation had occurred, but also because there was no religious impediment. But the advent of Christianity and the conversion of the Trojan descendants in Britain introduced a new element – a new ‘place’ – into the conflicts among peoples. Vortiger’s marriage to Hengist’s daughter, Ronwen, was highly disturbing in Britain; she was a pagan and the marriage was a pagan solemnity. Moreover, her people were invading and settling the island, not leaving it, as Brutus’s Trojans left Greece. As a result, Vortiger lost his people’s support. A new source of enmity between them and the Saxons had emerged: religion. I have tried to show how Wace and Benoît can be understood using the principle of topical invention. Although much of what both authors report is found in their sources, their articulation of the source material and their consistent emphasis on certain common places in relating other events illustrate the principle of rewriting that, I believe, corresponds to what Eugène Vinaver termed a habit of conception that medieval authors acquired through their clerical education and used when they wrote their adult poems. Furthermore, they fit the “formulas” A. J. Holden says that Wace used to write his descriptions. The common places chosen, and the way they are articulated, are clear indications of authorial intention and audience interests. Let me conclude with another scholar’s work. Jean Blacker aptly entitled her study of French and Latin historical narratives The Faces of Time. “Faces” are part of the body and its standard head-to-toe features, features we readily associate with stereotypical beauty in medieval narratives. Such features are natural to all of us, past and present. But they diversify according to distinctions among peoples and individuals such as age, sexual gender, place of birth, language, and family, and they do so over time (another common place61). Such

61

“Est … argumentum a tempore, quando ex opportunitate temporis aliquid coniecturaliter de negotio probatur vel improbatur” (Ars versificatoria, 1:106; a description may be based upon time if one is able to conjecture something either good or bad about the action on the basis of the suitability of the time); cf. Lausberg, Handbuch, §§ 388-89 on tempus speciale. I have discussed this topos in “Le lieu du

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features give insight into authorial intent and interpretation of their writings. Over time, although such common places remain the same, their descriptions vary or metamorphose, as peoples and their faces, language, and mores change: Trojans become Romans, Normans, and Britons.

temps, le temps du lieu”, in Le nombre du temps en hommage à Paul Zumthor, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Paris, 1988, 123-26.

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GAWAIN’S FAMILY AND FRIENDS: SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT AND ITS ALLUSIONS TO FRENCH PROSE ROMANCES EDWARD DONALD KENNEDY The work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realized, and furthermore the realization is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader — though this in turn is acted upon by the different patterns of the text. The convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence, and this convergence can never be precisely pinpointed, but must always remain virtual, as it is not to be identified either with the reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader .... As the reader uses the various perspectives offered him by the text in order to relate the patterns … to one another, he sets the work in motion, and this very process results ultimately in the awakening of responses within himself …. A literary text must therefore be conceived in such a way that it will engage the reader’s imagination in the task of working things out for himself, for reading is only a pleasure when it is active and creative …. [T]he written text imposes certain limits on its unwritten implications in order to prevent these from becoming too blurred and hazy, but at the same time these implications, worked out by the reader’s imagination, set the given situation against a background which endows it with far greater significance than it might have seemed to possess on its own.1

Although Wolfgang Iser refers in the passage above to the way readers respond to a novel, what he says could be applicable to the way a medieval audience would have responded to an Arthurian romance that was read to them. Each member of the audience might 1

Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, Baltimore, 1974, 274-76.

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have been expected to respond differently to the allusions in the text and these would depend upon the familiarity that the individuals in the audience had with other Arthurian romances. In the late fourteenthcentury English metrical romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which focuses upon the adventures of a single knight, brief allusions to other characters from the Arthurian world make its audience aware of the society in which the knight moves and of his relationships with others and reminds them of the blood ties and bonds of fellowship that were important in medieval romances.2 In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, moreover, the pentangle that Gawain wears on his shield, a symbol representing trouth, the Middle English word often translated as “honour”, “fidelity”, or “integrity”, forces us to think of such relationships, as does one of the points of the pentangle, which represents the social virtues fraunchyse (generosity), felaʒschyp (love of fellow men), clannes (purity), cortaysye, and pité (compassion) (SGGK, 651-54). Like Chrétien de Troyes, the Gawain-poet alludes to a number of characters from the Arthurian world outside of this particular romance, characters whose names at least would have been known to an audience that had heard or read other English and French Arthurian romances and that are indicators of Gawain’s social relationships. The reactions of the members of the audience to these names would depend, just as it does to modern readers, upon their familiarity with other Arthurian literature and upon their knowledge of the intertextual relationship of this romance to its predecessors, and it would thus vary among individuals in the audience. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would in all likelihood have been intended for two groups: one would consist of those who, unable to understand French, knew only English Arthurian literature; and the other would consist of those who knew French romances as well. The reactions of the first group would have been quite different from the reactions of listeners who knew French romances, particularly those who knew the prose romances of the Vulgate cycle and the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal. Just as Chrétien lists characters like Dodinal, Tristan, and Girflet without explaining who they were but apparently assuming that the names would recall other tales in oral circulation, or just as the Beowulf-poet similarly alludes briefly to characters from Germanic 2

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd ed. by Norman Davis, Oxford, 1967 (referred to as SGGK, followed by line numbers).

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legends, the Gawain-poet does not identify most of the characters he mentions but assumes that at least some in the audience would have known who they were. In addition to Arthur, Guenevere and Morgan le Fay, the poet briefly mentions several knights in the first two parts of the romance. In Part 1 there are Bishop Baldwin, Gawain’s brother Agravain, and his cousin Ywain, son of Urien, who in the Vulgate Cycle is married to Gawain’s aunt Brimesant and in the Post-Vulgate Roman to another aunt Morgan le Fay. Those mentioned in Part 2 include two more cousins, Sir Dodinel le Sauvage and the Duke of Clarence (otherwise known as Galeschin3), as well as other knights, Eric, Launcelot, Lionel, Lucan, Bors, Bedevere, and Mador de la Port (SGGK, 110-113, 551-55). All these characters, except Mador, appear in Middle English verse romances of the fourteenth century that were written either before Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or were contemporary with it. Bishop Baldwin is, so far as we know, found in no French romances but in four surviving English ones, one of which, Sir Gawene and the Carle of Carlisle, appears to have been written before Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Bedevere, who appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannia and other chronicles derived from it, would also have been known to the English. Six of these characters — Agravain, Dodinel, Launcelot, Lionel, Lucan, Ywain, Morgan le Fay, and the Duke of Clarence — appear in the mid-thirteenth-century English metrical romance Of Arthur and of Merlin, an English adaptation of the French Vulgate Merlin. Agravain, Yvain, and Lancelot are mentioned in Lybeaus Desconus, a romance surviving in fifteenth-century manuscripts but probably written in the fourteenth century, and Yvain and Morgan appear in the fourteenth-century Middle English romance Ywain and Gawain, an adaptation of Chrétien’s Yvain. Erec is mentioned in the late fourteenth-century northern English Awntyrs of Arthur.4 Most also appear in French verse romances, except for Bishop Baldwin and the Duke of Clarence, and a knight named Mador appears in just one of them. All except Bishop

3

See G. D. West, An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Prose Romances, University of Toronto Romance Series 35, Toronto, 1978, 80, 128. 4 Robert W. Ackerman, An Index of the Arthurian Names in Middle English, Stanford University Publications, University Series, Language and Literature 10, Stanford, 1952; repr. New York, 1967.

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Baldwin are found in the French prose romances.5 Of course, all of these characters might also have been known through English and French tales in oral circulation or in written romances that have not survived. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to the Gawain-poet’s familiarity with both English and French Arthurian literature and agree that while producing a romance written in English alliterative verse obviously intended for an English audience, he was strongly influenced by French verse and prose romances for both the structure and content of the romance. Moreover, as his opening and closing references to the fall of Troy indicate, he was familiar with the Arthurian tradition in chronicles begun by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. In both English and Celtic traditions, Gawain is Arthur’s greatest knight, and this tradition carries over to English chronicles and metrical romances. For those who knew the English romances, as Helaine Newstead wrote, the “noble concept of Gawain as the paragon of Arthurian chivalry” predominated and “his glorious reputation remained undiminished”.6 Gawain’s reputation as Arthur’s finest knight goes back to Celtic legends and the chronicles. In the latter he and his brother Modred, sons of the Scottish King Loth and Arthur’s sister Anna, are contrasting good and evil brothers similar to Shakespeare’s Edgar and Edmond in King Lear. Gawain is Arthur’s most valiant and loyal knight, and Modred is the traitor who destroys Arthur’s kingdom.7 The Gawain-poet, in presenting Gawain as Arthur’s finest knight, would appear to be following this tradition, also found in English romances. His allusions, however, to the characters mentioned above indicate that the Gawain-poet also had French traditions about Gawain in mind and perhaps intended to

5

G.D. West, An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Verse Romances 11501300, University of Toronto Romance Series 15, Toronto, 1969 and ibid., Index of Names in French Arthurian Prose Romances. 6 Helaine Newstead, “Arthurian Legends”, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, Vol. 1, gen. ed. J. Burke Severs, New Haven, 1967, 38-79, 22456, here: 53. 7 In several Scottish chronicles Modred and Gawain are both good brothers. Walter Bower, who wrote the Scotichronicon, specifically says that Modred is the older brother and the true heir to the British throne instead of Arthur who was conceived out of wedlock; Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, gen. ed. D. E. R. Watt, 9 Vols, Aberdeen, 1987-98, II, 65.

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suggest to some in his audience that his reputation would not remain so glorious. While the presentation of Gawain as a great knight is found in Continental verse romances like Erec et Enide (where Chrétien ranks him number one)8, in the thirteenth-century French prose romances, as Fanni Bogdanow has shown, Gawain’s status is diminished, and he is often vengeful and treacherous.9 In the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate accounts of the Grail Quest he is a failure; and in both the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Mort Artu he is in large part responsible for the downfall of Arthur’s kingdom because of his desire to get vengeance on Lancelot who accidentally kills his three brothers, Agravain, Gaheriet and Guerrehet when he rescues Guenevere from being burned at the stake. He stubbornly resists Lancelot’s attempts to make peace, and when he and Arthur go abroad to fight Lancelot, Mordred usurps the throne. Although during Arthur’s final battle Gawain dies admitting responsibility for the wrong he had done, he is nevertheless a seriously flawed knight whose desire for vengeance helps bring about the destruction of Arthur’s kingdom. Gawain’s vindictive nature appears in English for the first time in the stanzaic Morte Arthur, a metrical romance written about 1400 and later in Malory’s Morte Darthur, which was completed in 1469/1470.The one early English adaptation of a part of the Vulgate Cycle, the thirteenth-century verse Of Arthour and of Merlin maintained a positive portrait of Gawain, and thus prior to the fifteenth century only the English who were familiar with French prose romances would have been aware of the negative portrayals of Gawain.10 Scholars have shown that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight corresponds in many ways to French verse romances and have 8

Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques, Paris, 1955, line 1672; Arthurian Romances, trans. William W. Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll, London, 1991, 58. 9 Fanni Bogdanow, “The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances”, Medium Aevum, XXVII (1958), 154-61, here 154. Also see Keith Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, Amsterdam, 1980, 315-405, for a discussion of both positive and negative aspects of Gawain’s character in these romances. 10 Le Morte Arthur: A Romance in Stanzas of Eight Lines, ed. J. Douglas Bruce, EETS, ES 88 (1903); Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 3rd ed., rev. ed. P. J. C. Field, 3 Vols, Oxford, 1990; Of Arthur and of Merlin, ed. O.D. MacraeGibson, 2 Vols, EETS 268, 279, 1973-79.

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commented upon the influence of Chrétien and other authors on the romance’s structure such as its opening with a challenge, its having a single knight going on a quest, and its closing with a return to Arthur’s court.11 Others, however, have focused on the poet’s familiarity with the prose romances of the Vulgate Cycle and his drawing upon it for material ranging from the name of the host Bertilac to the revelation that Morgan le Fay is Gawain’s aunt and that she wanted to test Arthur’s court and frighten Guenevere to death.12 As Richard Griffith and Robert Kelly have observed, most of the characters named indicate the poet’s knowledge of the Vulgate romances Merlin, Lancelot, and Mort Artu,13 and G. V. Smithers suggested the influence of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal on the poet’s portrait of the Green Chapel as well as on the emphasis on the “dichotomy of secular and spiritual knighthood”.14 11

See, for example, Ad Putter, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ and French Arthurian Romance, Oxford, 1995; W.R.J. Barron, “French Romance and the Structure of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, eds W. Rothwell, W. R. J. Barron, David Blamires, and Lewis Thorpe, Manchester, 1973, 7-25; D.D.R. Owen, “Parallel Readings with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Two Old French Gauvain Romances, eds R.C. Johnston and D.D.R. Owen, New York, 1973, 157-208; Elisabeth Brewer, “Sources I: The Sources of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, eds Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, Cambridge, 1997, 243-55. 12 See J.R. Hulbert, “The Name of the Green Knight: Bercilak or Bertilak”, in The Manly Anniversary Studies in Language and Literature, Chicago, 1923, 12-19; Davis, ‘Notes’, SGGK, 128; Laura Hibbard Loomis, “Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis, Oxford, 1959, 528-40, here 534-35; Marjory Rigby, “‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ and the Vulgate ‘Lancelot’”, Modern Language Review, LXXVIII (1983), 257-66; Nicolas Jacobs, “‘For to assay þe surquidré ... of þe Rounde Table’: A Possible Echo of La Mort le roi Artu in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami, eds Masahiko Kanno, Hiroshi Yamashita, Masatoshi Kawasaki, Junko Asakawa, Naoko Shirai, Tokyo, 1997, 65-78. 13 Richard R.Griffith, “Bertilak’s Lady: The French Background of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Machaut’s World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, eds Madeleine P. Cosman and Bruce Chandler, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 314, New York, 1978, 249-66; Robert L. Kelly, “Allusions to the Vulgate Cycle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, in Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 1981 SEMA Meeting, eds Patricia W. Cummins, Patrick W. Conner, and Charles W. Connell, Morgantown, 1982, 183-99. 14 G. V. Smithers, “What Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Is About”, Medium Aevum, XXXII (1963), 171-89, here 186.

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To these suggestions of influence I would add that when Gawain discovers that he has been deceived by Morgan and Bertilak’s wife, in an unchivalric and not overly modest speech, he rants against women who overcame men who were absolute in some way (Adam the perfect, Solomon the wisest, Samson the strongest, David the most holy): Bot hit is no ferly þaʒ a fole madde, And þurʒ wyles of wymmen be wonen to sorʒe, For so watz Adam in erde with one bygyled, And Salamon with fele sere, and Samson eftsonez— Dalyda dalt hym hys wyrde—and Dauyth þerafter Watz blended with Barsabe, þat much bale þoled. (2414-19)

Although such lists were common in medieval sermons and other literature, and R. W. King has cited a similar Middle English one from Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (3.1172-1197) and identical ones in Hoccleve’s Letter of Cupid (197-203) and Kyng Alisaunder (77037709),15 Gawain’s lament could have been suggested by such lists in the final romances of the Vulgate Cycle, where Adam, Solomon, Samson, and David are also mentioned: in the Vulgate Queste a priest compares Lancelot to men overcome by women, and, like the Gawain poet, mentions Adam, Solomon, and Samson;16 and in the Vulgate Mort Bors rebukes Guenevere for rebuffing Lancelot by telling of men who were shamed by women, and his list, like the Gawain poet’s, includes David, Solomon, and Samson.17 Moreover, the first temptation scene in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when Gawain, still in bed, crosses himself to be safer when the lady comes into his room (SGGK 1178-1203) might have been suggested by the scene in the Vulgate Queste in which Perceval, tempted to get into bed with a beautiful lady, also makes the sign of 15

R. W. King, “A Note on ‘Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight’, 2414 ff.”, Modern Language Review, XXIX (1934), 435-36, here 435; see also Mary Dove, “Gawain and the Blasme des femmes Tradition”, Medium Aevum, XLI (1972), 20-26. 16 La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet, Paris, 1923, repr. Paris,1972, 125; The Quest of the Holy Grail, trans. P. M. Matarasso, Harmondsworth, 1969, 142. 17 La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Jean Frappier, 3rd ed., Geneva, 1964, 70; The Death of King Arthur, trans. James Cable, Harmondsworth, 1971, 78.

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the cross, and the lady, a devil in disguise, disappears in a blast of foul smoke and fire.18 Some in the Gawain-poet’s audience might have anticipated a similar display of pyrotechnics in this scene. Thus the Gawain-poet in all likelihood had read the French prose romances and was influenced by them as well as by English and French verse romances, and in writing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight he probably expected some in his audience to be familiar with the prose romances and to place his romance in the context of the whole story of Arthur’s kingdom that they presented. *** The extent to which Gawain fails the testing of his courage and integrity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been extensively debated: after resisting temptations to commit the sins of lechery and avarice, he agrees to accept from Bertilak’s wife the girdle that will save his life and thus does not keep his agreement to exchange his winnings with his host. Whatever scholars may think about the seriousness of Gawain’s offence, the Green Knight lets Gawain off lightly by giving him a slight knick on the neck instead of chopping his head off, and he tells him that although he lacked a little in loyalty, when compared with other knights, he is like a pearl among white peas (SGGK 2364). One is left with the impression that Gawain has learned humility and is not worthy of wearing on his shield a symbol of perfection like the pentangle, but that he is still a fine knight. Comments that C.S. Lewis made about Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde are relevant to this romance: Chaucer wrote for an audience who still looked at poetry in the medieval fashion — a fashion for which the real literary units were ‘matters’, ‘stories’, and the like rather than individual authors. For them the book of Troilus was partly ... ‘a new bit of the Troy story’ .... Hence Chaucer expects them to be interested not only in the personal drama between his little group of characters but in that whole world of story which makes this drama’s context: like children looking at a

18

La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Pauphilet, 109-10; The Quest of the Holy Grail, trans. Matarasso, 128-29.

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landscape picture and wanting to know what happens to the road after it disappears into the frame.19

Similarly, the audience of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would understand that this romance was but a piece of the whole story and like the children that Lewis mentions would have wanted “to know what happens to the road after it disappears into the frame.” The names of the relatives and fellow knights that the poet mentions would have offered clues to those familiar with the French prose romances about where that road would lead. Kelly suggests that some of the allusions to characters, such as to Morgan le Fay’s being Igerne’s daughter, refer to events in the Vulgate Cycle that are in the distant past; others, such as references to Ywain, the Duke of Clarence and Lancelot, refer to a recent past that includes the marriage of Arthur and Guenevere when Galeschin becomes Duke of Clarence, Gawain becomes a knight of the Round Table, and Lancelot arrives at court.20 Some refer to the future. Kelly believes that the names of Mador de la Port, Agravain, and Lucan were chosen to foreshadow the distant future, for these characters are involved in important events in the Vulgate Mort Artu.21 While these characters could remind an audience of the past, with the exception of Bishop Baldwin and Bedevere, all of them, not just Mador, Agravain, and Lucan, also point to future events involving the decline of the Round Table, and in doing so, could have been intended to suggest the later degeneration of Gawain’s character from the noble knight of English tradition to the often treacherous and vengeful one of the French prose romances. The portrayal of Morgan le Fay would surely have been intended as a reminder of the French prose romances. Outside of the English metrical romance Of Arthour and of Merlin and the possibility of oral tales, Morgan would have been unknown to those who did not know French except for those perceptive enough to have recognized Layamon’s Argante as Morgan or who knew Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin poem, the Vita Merlini. Her being Gawain’s aunt, Arthur’s half sister and daughter of the Duchess of Tintagel would have come in all 19

C. S. Lewis, “What Chaucer Really did to Il Filostrato”, in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association XVII (1932), 56-75; repr. in Chaucer Criticism, Vol. II: “Troilus and Criseyde” and the Minor Poems, eds Richard J. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor, Notre Dame, 1961, 16-33, here 19-20. 20 Kelly, “Allusions to the Vulgate Cycle in SGGK”, 185-87. 21 Ibid., 185-88

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likelihood through the Vulgate or Post-Vulgate prose romances and her learning her magic from Merlin from the Vulgate Merlin or Lancelot. In these prose romances, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, she is ugly; as Michael Twomey points out, in the Vulgate Lancelot she inherited her ugliness from her father, the Duke of Tyntagel: “Li dux estoit molt lais chevaliers et Morgue retraioit a lui, kar molt estoit laide” (The Duke was an ugly man, and Morgan, who took after him, was also ugly”).22 In the Post-Vulgate cycle, she is ugly because of her having practised black magic: [E]lle fu bele damoisiele jusques a celui terme que elle commencha aprendre des enchantemens et des charroies; mais puis que li anemis fu dedens li mis, et elle fu aspiree et de luxure et de dyable, elle pierdi si otreement sa biauté que trop devint laide, ne puis ne fu nus qui a bele le tenist, s’il ne fu enchantés.23 [She was a beautiful girl up to the time she began to learn enchantments and magic charms; but once the enemy entered her and she was inspired with sensuality and the devil, she lost her beauty so completely that she became very ugly, nor did anyone think her beautiful after that, unless he was under a spell.]

Her role as a troublemaker who attempts to destroy Arthur’s court occurs throughout the Vulgate cycle, including the Vulgate Mort Artu. There Morgan tries to destroy Arthur’s realm, by revealing to Arthur the adultery of Lancelot and Guenevere, a plot element that both the author of the English stanzaic Morte Arthur and Malory omit in their versions. She is also on the boat that takes Arthur to Avalon.24 To an audience familiar with the French romance, the Gawain-poet’s references to Morgan and her hostility to Guenevere could have been 22

Lancelot: Roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha, 9 Vols, Geneva, 1978-83, I, 300; Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, gen. ed. Norris J. Lacy, 5 Vols, New York, 1993-96, II, 311; Michael W. Twomey, “Is Morgne La Faye in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - or Anywhere in Middle English?”, Anglia, CXVII (1999), 542-57, here 556-57. 23 Merlin: Roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, eds Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, 2 Vols, SATF, Paris, 1886, I, 166; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, 1995, IV, 172. 24 La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier, 58-60, 250; The Death of King Arthur, trans. Cable, 68-74, 225.

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a reminder not just of early parts of the Vulgate cycle but to its tragic outcome as well. The reference to Mador de la Porte is a fairly certain indicator that the Gawain poet was thinking of the prose romances. Mador does not appear in English prior to the fifteenth century and appears in just one French verse romance, the relatively obscure Floriant et Florete.25 Mador’s most significant role is in the Vulgate Mort Artu. There a knight who hoped to poison Gawain instead poisons Mador’s brother at a dinner hosted by Guenevere, and Mador accuses the queen of treason. Lancelot proves her innocence in trial by combat, but the trial occurs shortly before Lancelot must rescue her again, and this time accidentally kills three of Gawain’s brothers.26 That event, particularly the killing of Gaheriet, makes Gawain Lancelot’s implacable foe. Kelly sees Mador’s desire to avenge his brother as a parallel to Gawain’s later desire to avenge his brother.27 To this I would add that in Mador’s case loyalty to a brother causes an innocent person to be tried for murder; in Gawain’s case loyalty to a brother causes something even worse, the war that leads to the destruction of a kingdom. Mador also is one of the knights in the Vulgate Mort who urges Arthur to use restraint and not to follow Gawain in fighting against Lancelot.28 Most of the other knights mentioned appear in accounts of the decline of the Round Table. In the Vulgate Mort Artu Agravain helps Mordred trap Lancelot and Guenevere together, and Lancelot kills him and Gawain’s two other brothers when he rescues Guenevere. Bors and Lionel are Lancelot’s kinsmen who support him against Gawain and Arthur. Gawain’s cousins Ywain and Dodinal die in the final battle, and although Lucan survives, Arthur accidentally crushes him to death as he embraces him because Arthur’s armor is so heavy. The Duke of Clarence, although not in the Vulgate Mort Artu, appears frequently in the Vulgate Lancelot with other knights, often with several of those mentioned in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For example, in the final part of the Vulgate Lancelot he is in a group 25

West, Index of Names in Arthurian Verse Romances, 109. La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier, 75-78, 83-107, 107-27; The Death of King Arthur, trans. Cable, 82-84, 88-108, 108-25. 27 Kelly, “Allusions to the Vulgate Cycle in SGGK”, 192. 28 La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier, 35-36; The Death of King Arthur, trans. Cable, 131-32. 26

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of thirteen knights in a hall that includes six of the others mentioned in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Lancelot, Gawain, Yvain, Agravain, Dodinel, and Mador.29 He has some association with the fall of Arthur’s kingdom since toward the end of the Lancelot, he, along with Yvain, Dodinal, and Gawain fight in a tournament30 immediately after Lancelot reads a letter from a wise man whom Mordred had just killed that Mordred is Arthur’s son, that Arthur will kill him, and that the kingdom will be destroyed in the final battle. The wise man had written to Mordred: Et ceste merveille mosterra Diex seulement en toi et lors abaissera li granz orguiex de la chevalerie de la Grant Bretaingne, car après acel jor ne sera nus qui li rois Artus voie se ce n’est en songe. [God will produce this miracle in you alone, and then the pride of Britain’s knighthood will fall, for after that day no one will see King Arthur except in dreams.]31

The Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal has generally been ignored in discussions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Although parts of this cycle survive only in medieval Spanish and Portuguese translations, it was known in England in the Middle Ages. One of the two surviving French manuscripts of the Post-Vulgate Roman’s first two romances, L’Estoire del Saint Graal and Merlin, found in Yorkshire about 1944, had been copied primarily by a fourteenthcentury Anglo-Norman scribe with some missing leaves provided in the fifteenth-century by an English copyist.32 Moreover, Malory, who used the Merlin section of the Post-Vulgate Roman for his opening tale, apparently had access to a manuscript that included the cycle from at least the Merlin through much of its Grail Quest. The explicit to Malory’s first tale reads: “And this booke endyth whereas Sir Launcelot and Sir Trystrams com to courte”.33 Since Malory’s first tale, the “Merlin”, does not end at that point, Malory must have been 29

Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, 96; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 232. Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, 231; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 262. 31 Lancelot, ed. Micha, V, 223; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, III, 261. 32 Malory, Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, III, 1280. The manuscript is now Cambridge University Library MS Additional 7071. 33 Ibid., I,180. 30

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referring to the scene near the beginning of the Grail Quest in the Post Vulgate Roman in which Lancelot greets Tristan when the latter first arrives at Arthur’s court.34 As in the Vulgate Cycle, Lancelot, Guenevere, Lionel, Bors, Lucan, Ywain, and Dodinel are all involved in the Post-Vulgate Roman’s account of the destruction of Arthur’s kingdom. Although Mador’s accusing Guenevere of poisoning his kinsman does not appear in the romance, Mador, as in the Vulgate, warns Arthur against attacking Lancelot.35 As mentioned earlier, the Post-Vulgate Roman also tells of Gawain’s relationship to Morgan and attributes her ugliness to the evil effects of her study of magic. Although she has a lesser role in the Post-Vulgate Mort Artu than in the Vulgate, Bors warns Lancelot that if Arthur knows about the adultery, the one who told him would have been Morgan or Agravain, two of the characters mentioned in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and, as in the Vulgate Mort, Morgan is on the boat that takes Arthur to Avalon.36 As in the Vulgate Mort, and in contrast to Malory, it is not just the death of Gaheriet that causes Gawain to swear to get vengeance on Lancelot, but also the deaths of Agravain and Guerrehet.37 Erec does not appear in the Vulgate Cycle, and the reference to him could have reminded those in the audience of French verse romances, such as Chrétien’s Erec et Enide or the continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval. However, Erec also appears frequently in the French prose Tristan, and some of his adventures there are repeated in the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal.38 Although Erec dies during the account of the Grail Quest before the Post-Vulgate Mort Artu, his death illustrates the difference between English and some French conceptions of Gawain’s character. Getting vengeance for Erec’s killing of Yvain, Gawain treacherously kills him by first killing his 34

La Version Post-Vulgate de “La Queste del Saint Graal” et de “La Mort Artu”, ed. Fanni Bogdanow, SATF, 4 Vols, Paris, 1991-2001, II, 35; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 119. 35 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 431-34; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy,V, 299. 36 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 397; III 471;Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 294; V, 306. 37 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 424-26; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 298. 38 Cedric Pickford edited his adventures in this cycle as Erec: Roman Arthurien en prose, Geneva, 2nd ed., 1968. For the corresponding episodes in the prose Tristan, see E. Løseth, Le Roman en prose de Tristan, le roman de Palamède, et la compilation de Rusticien de Pise. Analyse critique d'après les manuscrits de Paris, Paris, 1890, 210 (sec. 286a) and 369 (sec. 528).

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horse. Otherwise, according to the Post-Vulgate romance, “Et … ja messire Gauvain n’en fust au dessus venus si ne fust son cheval qu’il luy occist desoubz luy” (“And … Gawain would not have defeated him were it not that he killed Erec’s horse”). Erec tells Gawain: “[O]r ay je cy veu ung rain de couardise et de mauvaistié, qui mon cheval m’avés occis” (“Now I see a streak of cowardice and evil in you, since you’ve killed my horse”). Gawain dismounts, kills the fallen Erec and “il en est moult liez, car bien s’en est vengiés” (“was very happy, for ... he was well avenged”).39 This act is mentioned several times later in the Post-Vulgate Roman. Meraugis, in lamenting Erec’s death, denounces Gawain’s treachery: “Ha! Sire Dieux … tant fust ore greigneur bonne aventure et greigneur joye que Gauvain le desloyal eust mort receue en ceste bataille que cest preudom, qui tant pouoit et tant valoit et qui estoit loyal .... Ha! Gauvain, chevalier disloyal et felon…. [“Oh God! How much better it would have been for Gawain the disloyal to receive death in this battle rather than this man, who was so good and able and worthy … Oh, Gawain, disloyal, brutal knight!”]40

Later Hector denounces Gawain for killing Erec: “Vous l’oceistes en traïson” (“[Y]ou killed him by treachery”).41 Gawain later becomes angry because he thinks that knights greet him sadly because of Eric’s death,42 and still later in the Post-Vulgate Queste Hector argues that Gawain should no longer be a member of the Round Table because of his killing Erec.43 Thus while to some in the Gawain-poet’s audience, the allusion to Erec could have suggested simply the valiant knight of Chrétien’s romance, to others it could have suggested his adventures near the end of the Grail Quest in the Post-Vulgate Roman and Gawain’s treachery.

39

Queste, ed. Bogdanow, II, 452-53; Erec ... en prose, ed. Pickford, 207; LancelotGrail, ed. Lacy, V, 210. 40 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, II, 458; Erec ... en prose, ed. Pickford, 211; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 211. 41 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 165; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 253. Pickford’s edition of the prose Erec ends before this. 42 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 252; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 267. 43 Queste, ed. Bogdanow, III, 385; Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, V, 288.

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Of course, if the Gawain-poet wanted his audience to think of the final days of the court, one must ask why he did not mention Mordred. Mordred’s treachery, however, was familiar to both the English, from the chronicle tradition, and to the French, from the chronicles and the romances. Thus a reference to Mordred, to those who knew just the English tradition, would have been meaningless if the poet wanted his audience to think not just of the fall of Arthur’s kingdom but of the corresponding degeneration of Gawain, since in the chronicles, Gawain remains Arthur’s greatest knight. Characters associated with just the French story of Arthur’s fall, however, could have suggested his degeneration. Thus the Gawain-poet appears to have intended his work for two audiences: one would be those English who had no familiarity with the French prose romances, and they, like most readers today, would not have recognized allusions to the fall of the kingdom and the degeneration of Gawain. Those familiar with the French prose romances of either the Vulgate or the Post-Vulgate cycles, however, would have had quite different reactions: references to these characters could have suggested the tragedy of the Round Table and with it Gawain’s failures in the Queste and in the Mort Artu. One of the most striking things about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the poet’s emphasis on the passage of time: the opening and closing references to the distant Trojan ancestry of the British and the destruction of Troy, the change of seasons and the succession of feast days: New Year’s Day, All Saints’ Day, All Soul’s Day, and Christmas, the change from morning to night. Perhaps most important, the poet sets his romance at a particular time in the history of Arthur’s court, when the king is described as “sumquat childgered” (“somewhat boyish”) and those at court “in her first age” (SGGK 86, 54) meaning, as Tolkien, Gordon and Davis suggest, “in the springtime of their lives.” (SGGK 54 n, p. 74). The author of the Vulgate Mort Artu, like the Gawain-poet, was also aware of the passage of time, but while the Gawain-poet presents the springtime of life, the Vulgate Mort Artu presents its winter, even noting the ages of the principal characters: Guenevere is 50 years old, Lancelot, 55; Gawain, 76; and Arthur, 92.44 In a romance where young Gawain fails a little in loyalty but nevertheless saves the reputation of the Round 44

La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier, 4, 204; The Death of King Arthur, trans. Cable, 25, 186.

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Table, we have reminders of romances where he has a far more negative role. Joerg Fichte has suggested that the absolute perfection of the pentangle would have suggested the perfection demanded of knights of the Grail Quest like Galahad or Perceval, but since Gawain belongs to the secular Arthurian court, that might have “left an uneasy impression on the minds of the respective audience”.45 I would add that Gawain’s wearing a symbol of perfection would have been most surprising to an audience familiar with prose romances, such as the Vulgate Queste where Gawain is described by a monk as “serjanz mauves et desloiax” (“a bad and faithless servant”) who has “mauvesement chevalerie employee” (“abused . . . knighthood”) and has “menee la plus orde vie et la plus mauvese que onques chevaliers menast” (lived “the worst and most dissolute life that ever a knight lived”),46 or in the Mort Artu of both cycles where Gawain bears much of the responsibility for the destruction of Arthur’s fellowship. In fact, one might even ask to what extent the Gawain-poet, who presents a knight obligated to save the honor of his host by not making him a cuckold, wanted his readers to think of the scene in the Vulgate Mort Artu in which the 76-year-old Gawain tries to seduce the maid of Escalot and in doing so would have dishonored his host, in this case the maiden’s father. (Admittedly, when Gawain mistakenly thinks the maiden is Lancelot’s love, he apologizes for his behaviour.)47 The change in Gawain’s character over time that is implicit in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has, in fact, a precedent in a French prose romance, the Palamedes, sometimes known as Guiron le Courtois, which was in circulation by 1240. This romance, as Fanni Bogdanow points out, borrows extensively from earlier Arthurian romances, and it attempts to reconcile the conflicting traditions about Gawain’s character by pointing out that Gawain became treacherous as he got older. Although courteous and valorous when young, he exerted himself so much on Arthur’s behalf during Arthur’s early war against Galehaut (narrated in the first part of the Vulgate Lancelot), 45 Joerg Fichte, “Historia and Fabula: Arthurian Traditions and Audience Expectations in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’”, in Festschrift Walter Haug und Burghart Wachinger, eds J. Janata, P. Sappler, F. Schanze, K. Vollman, G. VollmannProp, H-J. Ziegeler, 2 Vols, Tübingen, 1992, II, 589-602, here 596-97. 46 La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Pauphilet, 52, 54; The Quest of the Holy Grail, trans. Matarasso, 77, 79. 47 La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier, 23-27; The Death of King Arthur, trans. Cable, 40-43.

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that he never recovered his former strength, and, Bogdanow writes, “Out of grief and envy he then began to commit treachery”.48 Whether the Gawain-poet had read this romance is not known, but it had circulated fairly widely and survives in at least thirty-three French manuscripts.49 If the author had read it, he would have known a romance that made explicit a change in Gawain’s character that is implicit in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In a romance concerned with game and play, the Gawain-poet would, appropriately enough, have played games with allusions that would have been lost on some but would have been significant to others. Allusions to French romances in a work written in English would have been intended for a group similar to those to whom Gottfried von Strassburg refers in the prologue to his Tristan: Gottfried explains that his work is intended not for hoi poloi but for a select group, the edelen herzen or noble hearts who can understand the sorrows as well as the joys of love.50 I think that the Gawain-poet intended his romance to address both an audience familiar with just English Arthurian literature, for whom the allusions to the prose romances would have been meaningless, and, like Gottfried, a select group who knew the rest of the Arthurian story, who could understand the mutability of the world, the transience of youth and happiness, the effects of time and change on individuals, those who would understand not just the triumphs of youth but the failures of old age, those who knew of the tragedy that lay ahead, not just a tragedy of the Round Table but a tragedy of character, those who knew, to repeat Lewis’s analogy, “what happens to the road after it disappears into the frame.” While the young Gawain failed a little in loyalty but was nevertheless, as the Green Knight describes him, a pearl compared to white peas (SGGK: 2364), those who knew the prose romances would 48

Bogdanow, “The Character of Gauvain”, 159-60; C.E. Pickford, “Introductory Note”, Gyron le Courtoys c. 1501, Facsimile ed., London, 1977, i-iii, here [i]. 49 Brian Woledge, Bibliographie des romans et nouvelles en prose française antérieurs à 1500, Geneva, 1954, 87-88; Ibid., Bibliographie des romans et nouvelles en prose française antérieurs à 1500, Supplement 1954-1973 (with corrections), Geneva, 1975, 67-68; Monica Longobardi, “Due frammenti del Guiron le courtois”, Studi mediolatini e volgari, XXXVIII (1992), 101-8. Since the Palamedes was incorporated into other prose romances, its manuscript tradition is very complex. 50 Gottfried von Strassburg. Tristan, ed. Gottfried Weber, Darmstadt, 1967, 2; Tristan, trans A. T. Hatto, Baltimore, 1960, 42.

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have realized that a symbol of perfection representing integrity and social virtues such as generosity, loving kindness and compassion would not be appropriate for the knight who would treacherously murder Erec and who would risk destroying a kingdom to pursue personal vengeance. At the end of the romance, after the last line in English, the poet concludes with the French motto associated with the Order of the Garter, “Hony soyt qui mal pence” (“Shame to the one who thinks evil”). There is no obvious association between the romance and the Order of the Garter, but the Gawain-poet must, nevertheless, have found the order’s motto relevant to the romance. It is obviously intended for those in the audience who understood French; and the poet may have been making a sly and playful admonition to that select group who, having heard a work in which Gawain fails only slightly, would have known that in later times he would deserve more than just a knick on the neck.

A LANCASHIRE LEASE JANE ROBERTS When first I met Erik Kooper, in Glasgow in the early 1960s, Scotland still had pounds, shillings and pence. It is with some trepidation therefore that I undertake for him a simple task, the examination of a Middle English lease which recently I included among samples of scripts used for writing English.1 So much of what I shall say will seem to him all too obvious. Yet, when I began upon the task I had set myself I realised that even the money agreed as rent, being in a currency now discarded, needs to be explained in relation to today’s money. The sums involved (we then took it for granted that all educated people understood Roman numerals) would have made sense to us forty or so years ago, give or take inflation. The lease, London, British Library, Additional Charter 17692, drawn up in 1420 between John of Langton and Thurstan of Atherton, was published some eighty years ago.2 It seems not to have received much comment since, despite its use as an anchor text for Lancashire in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME I.104 (LP 87)),3 where forms diagnostic for dialect identification are listed (LALME III.204). My main interest here is in the well developed technical vocabulary this document demonstrates, often in advance of usage recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).4 The lease is among the documents sifted 1

Jane Roberts, A Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500, London, 2005, plate 44. 2 Mittelenglische Originalurkunden der Chaucer-Zeit bis zur Mitte des XV. Jahrhunderts, in der grossen Mehrzahl zum Erstenmal veröffentlich von L.M., ed. Lorenz Morsbach, Alt.- u. Mitteleng. Texte 10, Heidelberg, 1923, 6-8 (no. III). 3 A. McIntosh, M.L. Samuels and M. Benskin, with the assistance of Margaret Laing and Keith Williamson, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 Vols, Aberdeen, 1986. 4 James A.H. Murray, Henry Bradley, Sir William A. Craigie and Charles T. Onions, eds, The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, 1884-1933; Robert W. Burchfield, ed., Supplement, 1972-86; John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, eds, The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989; John A. Simpson, Edmund S. C. Weiner and

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for the Middle English Dictionary (MED),5 which supplies further evidence for some of its vocabulary. I shall also look at matters of layout, though with the eye of someone more accustomed to reading literary works than property leases. The document is small, the mere c. 134mm. x 285mm. needed for the information contained and little more. Little room is left for canny alterations or additions within the written space. The seal is still attached. This extant text of the lease is the lower portion of an indenture (see “thes endenturs”, line 4), the zigzag serration at the top splitting records that could be fitted together for validation. It appears therefore that at least two copies were made to record the agreement between John of Langton, from Hindley, and Thurstan of Atherton, near Manchester, both in Lancashire, at a time when the use of writing “for legal and business purposes” was gathering pace outside Chancery.6 The text is short, and in some places where Morsbach may have erred, in need of clarification. A text follows, in which a straight line | marks the ends of lines. The small superscript numbers that follow immediately after every third line-end are to guide the reader to the appropriate line of the charter itself, and all line references in this paper are to the document itself (see Plate 1): Thys endenture berus wyttenes þat Iohn of langton of hyndeley has leton to ferme to Thurstan of Athirton ⁊ to hys | Ayres ⁊ to hys Assignes þe place þat was Adam Atkynson' ⁊ þe Newe Marlet lande in hyndeley Felde in þe towne of | hyndeley to terme of lyf of þe saynt | Michaell þe Archangell next sewing þat ⁊ so paying xij s. ⁊ i d. at foure tymes of þe ʒere qwyl xlviij s. ⁊ iiij d. be |6 payut for all maner sewtus seruis presentus fre rentus Customes falling þerto safing xlviij s. ⁊ iiij d. be ʒere as hit is | beforsayd And all so þe forsayd Iohn of Langton grauntes to þe forsayd

________________________ Michael Proffitt, eds, The Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series, 1993-97; John A. Simpson, ed., 3rd edition, March 2000-- (in progress), Oxford. OED Online, www.oed.com. 5 Hans Kurath, Sherman Kuhn and Robert Lewis, eds, The Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, 1952-2001. 6 Tim Haskett, “County Lawyers? The Composers of English Chancery Bills”, in The Life of the Law: Proceedings of the Tenth British Legal History Conference, Oxford, 1991, ed. Peter Birks, London, 1993, 9-23, here 18.

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Thurstan comyne pasture taurboure with all | maner of essementus þat ane tenaunt or Charterere has within þe towne of hyndeley . And alle so þe forsayd Iohn of [-lan] |9 langton grauntes to þe forsayd Thurstan þat if ane mon distresse þe forsayd Thurstan for ane maner of rych' or | tytull claymyng in þat place safing þe forsayd Iohn of Langton or hys Ayres or hys Assignes for xlviij s. ⁊ iiij d. be | ʒere as hit is beforsayd for alle maner sewtus or seruis faling þerto þen þat þe forsayd Iohn of langton schall Iu þe |12 forsayd Thurstan hys stres agayne or elles þe valewe þerof so þat þe forsayd Thurstan haue noe harme | þerbye And all so þe forsayd Iohn of langton grauntes þe forsayd Thurstan to enture into þe place at Martin|masse next aftur þe day making of þes endenturs In wyutynnysing of þes endenturs we haue sette oure seals |15 wrethun apon þe Monday next befor þe Natiuite of oure lady Anno regni Regis Henricij quinti post conques|tum Anglie octauo My free translation, in departing from the syntax of the lease, incorporates more punctuation than does the original and indeed more than is to be expected in a legal document: This indenture bears witness that John of Langton, of Hindley, has leased at a fixed rent to Thurstan of Atherton and his heirs and assignees the property that was Adam Atkinson’s and the freshly manured land in Hindley Field in the town of Hindley to the end of the life of the aforesaid John of Langton, yielding a yearly rent of 48 shillings and 4 pence, to be paid at four points in the year, that is to say 12 shillings and 1 penny at the festival of Christmas following after the day these indentures were made and 12 shillings and 1 penny at Mid-Lent next following that and 12 shillings and 1 penny at the Midsummer feast-day following after that and 12 shillings and 1 penny at the feast-day of St Michael the Archangel following after that and thus paying 12 shillings and 1 penny at four points of the year until 48 shillings and 4 pence be paid for all kinds of suits, service, renders, free rents, customs that are applicable

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Jane Roberts thereto except for the 48 shillings and 4 pence yearly as it is stated above; and also the aforesaid John of Langton grants to the aforesaid Thurstan common pasture, together with all kinds of privileges that any tenant or freeholder has within the town of Hyndley; and also the aforesaid John of Langton grants to the aforesaid Thurstan that if anyone distrain the aforesaid Thurstan for any kind of right or title making claim on that property except for the aforesaid John of Langton or his heirs or assignees for 48 shillings and 4 pence yearly as it is stated above for all kinds of suits or service applicable thereto, then that the aforesaid John of Langton shall give the aforesaid Thurstan his distraint back or else the value thereof so that the aforesaid Thurstan suffer no damage thereby; and also the aforesaid John of Langton grants the aforesaid Thurstan entrance into the property on St Martin’s day immediately following the day these indentures were made. We have placed our seals in attestation of these indentures written on the Monday immediately before the Nativity of Our Lady after the Conquest of England in the eighth year of King Henry V.

The lease is fluently written, in a practised but untidy hand, with little need for correction apart from the letters “lan” erased from the end of line 9 because repeated at the outset of the following line. The form “wyutynnysing” (line 15), curious by comparison with “wyttenes” (line 1), suggests some hesitation between a rounded sound after wand the more normal spelling with -y-. The letter forms generally are Anglicana, except for Secretary a, which is not always distinct from o: see “lande” (line 2), “faure” (line 3), a form of four recorded in fourteenth-century use, “taurboure” (line 8), “apon” (line 16). Expanded contractions are in italics. The curling stroke is everywhere expanded by e after final -r but disregarded for the most part after -n and -l (in line 2 a straight apostrophe at the end of the name Atkinson indicates that a possessive inflexion may have been omitted). One word left without expansion, “rych'” (line 10), is discussed below. The Anglicana form of a, apparently functioning as a capital, is represented by the capital letter, and the unexpanded letters standing for shillings and pence, abbreviations in Latin for solidi and denarii

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respectively, which are to be understood as standing for shillings and pence, the subdivisions of the pound replaced by decimal currency, are given the following point long accorded them by convention. In English they were well understood symbols, with s. realised in speech by shilling(s) and d. by penny or pennies or pence or just by the spoken consonant d. (Decimal currency was introduced in the United Kingdom only in 1971. Before that, a pound had twenty shillings and each shilling had twelve pence. Thus a pound sterling had 240 pence rather than today’s 100 pence.) One punctuation mark only is used in the body of the lease, at line 9, although the -d of “beforsayd” (line 8) is released with a final stroke, perhaps meant to indicate a point. The tight construction of the piece means that punctuation marks are not needed, and they may indeed have been avoided. Comparable is the lack of punctuation in a currently written Aberdeen bond of 1430, also well in advance of the growing practice of eschewing punctuation to be observed in sixteenth-century legal documents.7 There is no distinction in script for the Latin of the final words of dating to the regnal year. Just as the coinage system once well-known has dropped out of use, so too have customary ways of referring to what used to be called quarter days, four fixed days on which tenancies began or ended, rent was paid and quarterly charges fell due. The reformation hastened the disappearance of naming saints’ days as common reference points within the year. We still know the date of Christmas, “þe fest of Crystonmasse” (line 4), as the 25th December, even if the form customary in northern dialects at least into the nineteenth century is unfamiliar, and we may be subliminally aware that Michaelmas (lines 5-6) falls near the beginning of the university year, without realising that the 29th September was one of the old quarter-days (some universities still have Michaelmas terms). When daily life was governed by the liturgical year, mid-Lent or the fourth or middle Sunday of Lent varied according to the calculation of Easter, and a feast-day that coincided more or less with the solstice, Lady Day or the Annunciation of Mary on the 25th March was often regarded as Mid-Lent (line 5). Similarly, Midsummer (line 5) was celebrated on 7

Grant G. Simpson, Scottish Handwriting 1150-1650. An Introduction to the Reading of Documents, Edinburgh, 1973; Aberdeen 1977, 1983 and with corrections 1986. Here 1983, 46 and plate 9.

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the birthday of St John the Baptist on the 24th June. This lease’s indentures were drawn up on the Monday before the Nativity of Our Lady (line 16), or the 8th September, leaving a little over a couple of months before the day set for Thurstan’s taking possession of the property leased, on St Martin’s day or the 11th November (the feast alerting people to lay down stocks of salted provisions for the winter to come). In the circuit of the church year these were among the major feasts (red-letter days in the church calendar), as was the Nativity of Mary, so all would have been aware when they came around. The dating formula in Latin, “after the conquest of England in the eighth year of King Henry V”, gives the date 1420, for Henry V became king in 1413. Although no punctuation marks are used apart from the haphazardly placed low point in line 9, the spelling in full of And, in each case followed by also, in lines 8, 9 and 14, signals the arrival of major pieces of information. The long i of “In” (line 15) usefully draws attention to the final witnessing of the agreement. Otherwise capitals are used sporadically, usually in naming people, as for the principals “Iohn” and “Thurstan”, but not always for place-names, though “Langton” in lines 8 and 11 has a special form of l. In line 2 the “Newe Marlet lande” (newly manured with marl) may have been dignified with capitals as a particularly attractive feature of the property leased, and the ff- of “Felde” also stands out. Some dates are given capitals, and there are other occasional capitals. Italics are used in the transcription to mark expanded abbreviations. Apart from the frequent flourishes, the abbreviations present few problems. Perhaps, given the -ull of “tytull” (line 11) the slash through ł for an omitted vowel should be unpacked as u in “archangell” (line 6) rather than the e of the transcribed text. In addition to the commonly used Tironian sign for and and the overline for m (“conquest|um”, line 16) or n (as in “Iohn” x 7, “claymyng”, line 11, “quinti”, line 16), the abbreviation signs for er and -ur are clearly differentiated (compare “maner”, lines 7, 9, 10, 11, with “endenturs”, lines 4, 15) and distinct from those for us (see for example “presentus fre rentus”, line 7). Contractions are marked by superscript letters, for example þt for þat, wt for with (lines 8 and 9) and ht for hit (lines 7 and 12) and space is saved by the pseudo-abbreviation þe for þe or the. The expansion to “Angl(ie)” in l. 16 is normal for documents of this sort.

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Some new readings are incorporated into the text given above. Morsbach gives the l of “Marlet” (line 2) as k. The parcel of land in question is not a market plot but land newly treated with marl, i.e., newly fertilized. Although the participial adjective is infrequently recorded (OED shows “Marled grounds” for 1610 and “marled Lands” for 1707), the verb, whether marl or marly, is attested from 1387, and place-name evidence cited in the MED (under marlen (v.(1)) records “Marledelonde” for 1297. For “qwyl” (line 6) Morsbach reads “jwyl”, which he explains in a footnote as “I will”, and further unnecessary complications therefore arise in his text. But “qwyl” is the adverbial while with the meaning “till, until”. In use from the fourteenth century, its later use was in dialects rather than in standard English, and it is still used in northern speech. At line 12 Morsbach correctly records “schall ju”, his j standing for long i, but he is hesitant about the reading. He suggests ‘jin’ should be read, following on from Flasdieck,8 who argues for ‘jn’ as a shortening of jin, comparing han < haven. I prefer to let “Iu” stand, as an unusual realisation of the infinitive form. By this time give forms, with the initial plosive consonant, were normal in the North-West, coexisting with obsolescent forms descended from the Old English palatal sound. The long i was doubtless used to set the first letter apart from the following minims. The MED editors (under yēven (v.) 2a.(b)) suggest that “jiue” should perhaps be read. In line 13 the misreading “hys eyres” for “hys stres” led Morsbach to assume that or should stand before this phrase, but the emendation is not needed. The noun “stres” is easily understood within the context of the earlier verb “distresse” (line 10). Linguistically the lease is a northern text. The single instance of wh- is strongly aspirated, in “qwyl” (line 6), and distinctive also of northern English is the -ch- spelling in right or “rych” (line 10). Here an apostrophe is used to signal a mark of abbreviation, for to supply -e might mislead the reader into identifying the form with rich. The final voiceless plosive is absent, a simplification of the consonant cluster not unusual in speech. This spelling form, not illustrated in the OED, can be found among those listed in the Dictionary of the Older

8

Herman M. Flasdieck, “Forschungen zur Frühzeit der neuenglischen Schriftsprache. Teil II”, Studien zur englischen Philologie, LXVI (1922), 79.

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Scottish Tongue (DOST).9 The spelling “ane” (lines 9 and 10) for “any” is unusual and, according to LALME (II. item map 15 Any (2)), found only in one small area of the northwest. Back vowels predominate in plural nouns (compare “sewtus”, “presentus”, “rentus” (all in line 7), “essementus” (line 9), “sewtus” (line 12), with “tymes” (line 3) and “Ayres” (lines 2 and 11)), even though they are unlikely to have been realised as syllables; “seruis” (line 7) and “seruis” (line 12) are, of course, singular forms. The inflexion -us is found once in the third person singular present indicative of the verb, in “berus” (line 1), although -es is the usual ending, as in “grauntes” (lines 8, 10, 14). The three past participles all have back vowels: two from strong verbs, “leton” (line 1), “wrethun” (line 16); and “payut” (line 7), among the French verbs borrowed early into Middle English, has the weak -ed ending released as voiceless /t/ rather than /d/. The present participle throughout has -ing endings. Although -and(e) might be expected in a text of this period from the north, the formality of legal register might have prompted the selection of the southern form. The forms of have are as to be expected: in lines 1 and 9 “has” is the usual northern form following a noun subject; and in “we haue” (line 15) the zero suffix is normal in northern Middle English where the subject is a personal pronoun immediately beside the verb. Of the documents edited by Morsbach, two others show we haue in the concluding clauses (XV: “we haue sette to oure seales”, 1445, from Cheshire, and XIX: “we haue put to oure sealles”, 1446, from Wolverhampton), whereas has appears in one in which a noun phrase separates the subject from its verb (XII “we ower seales has putte”, 1446, from the West Riding of Yorkshire). The subjunctive of “haue” (line 13) now seems specific to formal registers where once it was more widely used. Inevitably, the lease is legalistic in its vocabulary. This is not just a matter of such long accustomed words and phrases as “forsayd” (lines 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 x 2), “beforsayd” (lines 8 and 12), “to witte” (line 4), “þerto” (lines 7 and 14), “þerbye” (line 14), which have remained in use in formal documentation long after being abandoned in all but the stuffiest prose, but of the concentration of specialized vocabulary. Some of these words and phrases had long been in use. For example, 9

W.A. Craigie, A.J. Aitken, J.A.C. Stevenson, H.D. Watson and M.G. Dareau, eds, Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, 62 fascicles in 12 Vols, 1931-2002. Chicago, 1931-77, Aberdeen, 1983-91, Oxford, 1994-2002. See also Dictionary of the Scots Language at www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/.

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let as used in line 1 goes back to Anglo-Saxon times (see OED under let v. 1, sense 8.a “To grant the temporary possession and use of (land, buildings, rooms, movable property) to another in consideration of rent or hire”), as does the phrase bear witness, also in line 1 (see beran 14 beran (soþe / lease) gewitnesse in Cameron, Amos and Healey 2003).10 So too right (line 10) in the meaning “custom or customary usage” was long established as native term, although it is here linked to the more specific loanword tītle, used both of the legal right to the possession of land or immovable property and of title-deeds, etc. (see OED under tītle n. 7 and MED under tītle (n.) 6(b)). Quite a few of the words new to English in the Middle English period were well established in English by the time this lease was written: place (line 11), used in tenth-century northern glosses of “an open place in a city”, was borrowed again c. 1200; the noun rent (line 7) during the twelfth century and custom (line 7), manner (lines 7, 9, 10, 11), present (line 7), seal (line 15), service (lines 7 and 12), term (line 3) and the verb pay (line 7) by c. 1200; farm (line 1), heir (lines 2 and 11), pasture (line 8), stress (line 13), suit (lines 7 and 12), the adjective common (line 8) and the verbs claim (line 11) and enter (line 14) by 1300; tenant (line 9), and value (line 13) by the middle of the fourteenth century. Yet the lease contains a surprising number of words that seem to have become current in the last decades of the fourteenth century or later, and some of the loan words already long in use occur in technical senses or specific phrases that may not have been widely used in written English c. 1420. It must, of course, be remembered that, because of the intertwining of Latin, French and English in medieval England, such words could well have long been in use in the spoken language:11 custom (line 7). The legal sense “customary rent or service” (see MED under costūm(e and OED sense 2), recorded first in c. 1390) is to be assumed for “Customes”.

10 Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos and Antonette diPaolo Healey, eds, Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A – F, CD-ROM, Toronto, 2003. 11 William Rothwell, “Aspects of Lexical and Morphosyntactical Mixing in the Languages of Medieval England”, in Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. D.A. Trotter, Cambridge, 2000, 213.

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Jane Roberts distress (line 10). The verb is recorded first in English at the end of the fourteenth century in Cleanness line 880. The first OED citation, c1440, for sense 6 “To levy a distress upon, subject to a distress-warrant” is hesitant because possibly more general; next follow citations for 1609, 1707, 1771 and 1823, together with a note that in these the verb seems to be a derivative of the noun. However, for the MED under distressen (v., 2) this 1420 lease supplies the first illustration of the verb’s legal use, with further citations for 1440, c. 1450 and a. 1475, reducing the large gap in recorded usage for this sense. enter (line 14). OED v. sense 2 cites legal contexts for enter upon from 1467 and enter in / into from 1523. MED under entren (v.) sense 3a gives as the first citation for enter in a 1425 document,12 with further citations for 1436, 1439, 1453, 1465. present (line 7). The meaning of “presentus” is unclear, probably “required gift / present” (see MED under prēsent(e (n.(2), sense (a) and compare sense (e); also OED under present n. 2). The OED notes a Scottish legal phrase suit and presence under suit n. 2.a, where the phrase suit and service is explained as “attendance at court and personal service [...] due from a tenant to his lord; hence used as a formula in describing certain forms of tenure”. In this case the form might be related to the MED headword prēsent(e (n.(1), the OED headword present n. 1, and the abstract noun presence, which has as its prototypical meaning “the fact or condition of being present”. stress (line 13). This is a legal usage (see OED n., II. 10) meaning a “distraint; also, the chattel or chattels seized in a distraint”. Further evidence is to be found in the MED under stres(se sense 4, with citations from 1418. service (lines 7 and 12). See OED under service n.1 8.b “A duty (whether a payment in money or kind, a definite amount of forced labour, or some act useful or complimentary) which a tenant is bound to render

12

Morsbach, Mittelenglische Originalurkunden, no. XI.

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periodically to his lord”, a technical meaning recorded from 1338; the MED citations under servīs(e sense 4 gives citations from 1300. suit (lines 7 and 12). See OED under suit 2.a. suit and service: “attendance at court and personal service . . . due from a tenant to his lord; hence used as a formula in describing certain forms of tenure”. The word had slipped into English late in the thirteenth century, developing a wide range of senses. Line 7 of the 1420 lease is cited in MED under sūte sense 6.b(a) “lawsuit; a legal action undertaken to redress a wrong”. Other less specialized words are also first recorded in the latter part of the fourteenth century, a period when English vernacular literature burgeoned, for example the preposition saving (lines 7 and 11), cited first by the OED for c. 1386. Noteworthy is the verbal noun suing (lines 4, 5 (x 2), 6), not recorded in prepositional use in either the OED or the MED, but functioning similarly to “aftur” in line 15. Technical terms new to written English at the end of the fourteenth century or near in time to this lease, although with underlying forms in Latin and French, were: assignee (lines 2 and 11). This three-syllable word appears under two headwords in the OED, under assign n.2 2 “One to whom a property or right is legally transferred”, where its collocation with heir is recorded c. 1450, and under assignee n., where the form is shown in use from 1419. Fourteenth-century use is shown under assignē in the MED. charterer (line 9). Attested as ‘freeholder’ by the OED for 1598-1698, the MED references under chartrer extend the word’s history backwards. There the word is noted first as embedded in records for 1332, and two citations follow: the 1420 Hyndley lease; and a 1453-4 deed, also from Lancashire. According to Löfvenberg, charterer was “peculiar to Cheshire”,13 and in this 13 M.T. Löfvenberg, Contributions to Middle English Lexicography and Etymology, Lunds Universitets Årsskrift, N.F. Avd 1, XLI/8, Lund, 1946, 5-6.

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Jane Roberts meaning it does appear to have been restricted in use to Cheshire and Lancashire. easement (line 9). This word was in use for “relief, alleviation”, etc., from c. 1386 (Chaucer, Reeve’s Tale). The OED more specialized sense 3 (“right or privilege of using something not one's own”) is noted from 1463 onwards, but predated by MED citations for 1405 and 1420 (the latter the Hyndley lease). The noun indenture (lines 1 and 15). This is sense 2 in OED: “A deed between two or more parties with mutual covenants, executed in two or more copies, all having their tops or edges correspondingly indented or serrated for identification and security. Hence, A deed or sealed agreement or contract between two or more parties, without special reference to its form”. Indenture was in use in English contexts from the last decades of the fourteenth century. The earliest OED citations are from Barbour’s Bruce, dated 1375. From much the same time the north-west midlands poem Cleanness (line 313) “alle þe endentur”, the earliest MED citation, dated “c1400(?c1380)”, shows it in use of “[j]ointing by means of notches or indentations” (see OED, under 1.b); both dictionaries note this meaning as without any parallels in English. DOST citations for indentur(e begin from 1391. turbary (line 8). Not identified in an English context earlier than 1363 (Cockersand Cartulary), “taurboure” (a place where turf is dug, a peat bog), looks like the legal sense, “right to cut turf” (OED, sense 2, with its first citation for 1567 (Lancashire Wills)).

Similarly, the adjectives in “fre rentus”, l. 7, and “comyne pasture”, line 8, look back to French (the actual phrase is embedded in French in the parliamentary rolls for 1314-15 (see MED under pastūr(e : “La tourberie denz lour Commune pasture”). The former resembles Latin liber or French frank in application, designating franchises or liberties (see OED under free a. 27). The latter from its adoption into English developed a wide array of senses and appeared in many technical phrases. The phrase “to terme of lyf” (line 3) is found mainly in legal

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texts (see OED under term n. 4.b, with citations from 1340-70 to 1788), and “to ferme” (line 1), meaning “at a fixed rent”, in use from 1297, is last recorded from 1785. The phrase “fal(l)ing þerto” (lines 7 and 11), shows a customary meaning “appertain” for fall, in use from late in the thirteenth century through into the sixteenth century. Overall this northern lease is a free-flowing and assured piece of English, with a well based tradition lying behind it, for indentures are extant in northern English from as early as 1380.14 It is written in a perfectly legible middle-grade hand in the everyday script of its time. Two letter forms only are special to the writing of English; relicts of older conventions, they were to last long. Both are to be found at the beginning of words: ʒ, where eventually y became usual (see “ʒelding” and “ʒere” in line 3); and þ, for the most part a space-saving device and often supporting an abbreviation. Surprisingly few of the words and phrases have fallen out of use, although some are restricted to the legal register. The technical legal vocabulary long used in Latin and French documents had slipped so easily into written English that there is no sign of awkwardness in this lease. Official and legal documents were, after all, the texts that most people encountered in their daily lives.15 It remains only to draw attention to strong pointers to the French underlay within the writing of such documents in the Middle English period: the concision of phrasing in “þe day making of” (lines 4 and 15), hugging the structure jour faisant, where in more colloquial English þe day of making of might have been expected; the prepositional use of sewing, patterned on Anglo-Norman suant; above all the concentration of legal vocabulary long accustomed in AngloNorman as well as Latin. Whoever penned this record of the leasing of land in Hindley made a record that can, almost six centuries later, be easily understood.

14

M. Benskin, M., “Some New Perspectives on the Origins of Standard Written English”, in Dialect and Standard Language in the English, Dutch, German and Norwegian Language Areas, eds J.A. van Leuvensteijn and J.B. Berns, Amsterdam, 1992, 71-105, here 89. 15 Emily Steiner, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge, 2003, 4.

Plate 1

ALL HUMAN LIFE IS HERE: RELATIONSHIPS IN HET SPEL VAN SINNEN VAN LAZARUS DOOT ELSA STRIETMAN Relationships are a prominent theme in Erik Kooper’s research, and it is with delight that I respond to the invitation to contribute to his Festschrift with an article about a play, written and produced by one of the Chambers of Rhetoric in the Netherlands in the first half of the sixteenth century, that features aspects of love, human and divine. The play in question is the Spel van sinnen van Lazarus doot.1 Based on the biblical parable, the narrative content of the play is intertwined with material from those biblical passages which have given rise to the extensive European literary and artistic tradition clustered round the figure of Mary Magdalene. In the corpus of Rhetoricians’ drama this is the only play to feature this controversial and complex female figure in a substantial manner. In what follows, the portrayal, the use and the significance of some relationships in the Spel van sinnen van Lazarus doot ende hoe dat Christus hem opweckte will be scrutinized. My main focus is on a male/female relationship, that between Jesus and Mary Magdalene within the context of the playwright’s intention: to produce a play in which contemporary, controversial religious issues were debated. It has a strong Christological emphasis. Also, as the Magdalene figure is an extremely complex character in European drama, a brief comparison will be made between Mary Magdalene as presented in the Dutch play with the English Mary Magdalene in the

1

Trou Moet Blijcken, Bronnenuitgave van de boeken der Haarlemse Rederijkerskamer ‘De Pellicanisten’, eds W.N.M. Hülsken, B.A.M. Rademakers and F.A.M. Schaars, 8 Vols, Assen 1992, Vol. II, B: Een spel van sinnen van Lazarus’ doot ende hoe dat Christus hem opweckte, fols. 126v-140r. References are by line number. See also W.M.H. Hummelen, Repertorium van het rederijkersdrama, 1500ca. 1620, Assen, 1968, I OB 10.

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Digby manuscript and the Florentine Conversione di Santa Maria Maddalena.2 A Play of Lazarus’ Death and Resurrection, and of Mary The anonymous Play of Lazarus’ death is thought to have been performed by the Amsterdam Chamber of Rhetoric De Eglentier [The Eglantine], where it may even have been written. It dates from the first half of the sixteenth century, a time when conflicts and protests in connection with the religious persecution of dissidents, especially Anabaptists, were rife.3 It differs from other biblical plays of the Rhetoricians in that it does not make use of the so-called sinnekens, the personified and externalised evil tendencies of mankind, nor of other allegorical characters. Another distinguishing element is its clear engagement with the issues of the time, which is an unusual aspect of the biblical plays of the Rhetoricians. As we shall see below, this contemporary focus is expressed, for example, in a Christological emphasis. Another effect of this focus is that the relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalene is somewhat overshadowed by contemporary considerations. It will be seen, however, that the playwright has also incorporated features familiar from other Magdalene plays. The Christological emphasis of the play is apparent in an episode in which Jews function as narrators and expositors. The dialogue foregrounds the preaching and the miracles of Christ (88-276) and the Jews draw particular attention to the healing of the blind man and the conversion of the sinful woman Magdalene. They also mention Lazarus’ illness, thus preparing for the raising of Lazarus. The Jews imply that not everyone is happy with Christ’s influence, especially 2

The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and E Museo160, eds Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy and Louis B. Hall, Jr, EETS 283, London, 1982, 24-95 and David Bevington, ed., “Mary Magdalene from the Digby MS”, in David Bevington, Medieval Drama, Boston,1975, 687-753; Castellano Castellani, “La rapprezentazione della Conversione di Santa Maria Maddalena”, in Sacre Rapprezentazioni del Quattrocento, ed. Luigi Banfi, Turin, 1968, 185-264. 3 An excellent account of the situation in Amsterdam, in which this play is also discussed, is Gary K.Waite, Reformers on Stage. Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515-1556, Toronto, 2000, 79-98, 80, 92-3. For a survey of plays in which Lazarus and/or Mary Magdalene feature, see Lynette R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe, Cambridge, 1995, 116121, 237-243.

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not the Overheijt, the authorities, who are seer over hem claghende, complaining strongly about him (107). They also mention disparagingly that no one had been able to make Magdalene repent of her sins before Christ came, and that the learned prelates had made matters even worse by treating her abominably: Dats waer sij was onder allen staeten Ja, bij gheleerde prelaten, confuijselijck gediffameert Mitten snoden vileinich (249-251) [That’s true, she was in a terrible state; yes, blamed wrongly for villainous evils / by learned prelates…]

These critical observations about ‘clergy’ are strengthened in a later scene where the Jews discuss the likely effect on the Pharisees of the miracle that Christ performed in raising Lazarus (840-886), and their reactions. A third Jew arrives who has also heard this rumour. When it is confirmed, he wishes he had made sure that an old aunt of his could be brought to life again. When the others are not very sympathetic, he storms off, vowing to inform the pharisees of Jesus’ ketters dingen, heretical doings. More musings on the fierce reaction of all those who hate Jesus prepare the audience for a scene in which Caiaphas the Bishop and Ananias the Jewish Pharisee plan a campaign against Jesus’ influence. Their fury increases when the third Jew comes and tells them about Lazarus: their domination is threatened (1018). They then plan to crucify Christ and persecute his followers: he and his disciples are nothing more than een hoop beroijde cattijven, a rabble of miserable wretches. They decide to issue a mandate: all those who hold with Jesus Christ will have to pay for that involvement with their death. Waite has pointed out that the text of the mandate in the play is very similar to the mandates against heresy issued by the administration of Charles V.4 The playwright strengthens the ‘reality’ of the play by finishing this passage like a real edict and injecting it with considerable dramatic irony:

4

Waite, Reformers on Stage, 92-93.

178

Elsa Strietman gegeven in onsen stede van Jerusalem vol vreden daer alle Justicije hout plaets en regele den thienden in martij onder gehangen ons segele geteijckent aldus met sijn eedele hant Episcopus noster… (1113-17) [given in our city of Jerusalem, full of peace, / where all Justice takes its place and follows the rule / the tenth of March we appended our seal, / signed thus with his noble hand, / Episcopus noster…]

The emphasis on the conflict between those in authority in the Church and those who are simple and wish nothing better than to follow Christ is prominent. At any time, from the early 1530s to the end of Charles V’s reign, an audience in Amsterdam as well as in other parts of the Low Countries would have heard ominous echoes in such lines. The focus on the contemporary reverberations of the Christological aspects partly explains why the Magdalene elements seem curiously sidelined. The relationship of Mary Magdalene with Christ is well represented in European drama as it is in the visual arts, but the Dutch play does not utilize this fully because its focus is only partly on this relationship. It conventionally conflates the story of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha with that of the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet at the feast of Simon the Pharisee,5 but the contrast between the two sisters, itself often used as a parable, that of the busy domesticity of Martha and the spirituality of Mary of Bethany who, as Jesus says, “chooses the good part” is absent.6 Instead Mary and Martha are presented as united in their grief for their brother. Another aspect frequently portrayed, that of Martha as the good sister and Mary Magdalene as the vain, sinful woman who lives only for the pleasures of the flesh, is also absent from the Dutch play.7 There is, however, a significant reference to the potential of the Magdalene-as-sinner figure. When the sisters lament the death of their brother, Martha bitterly complains of this sudden death that has 5

John 11 and 12; Matt. 26:6-13. Luke 10:38-42. 7 For the sake of clarity the English forms Mary and Mary Magdalene are used also when discussing the Dutch and Italian plays, in which slightly different forms of the names are found. 6

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snatched their brother away. Mary Magdalene, however, addresses the fondateur der hemelen en planeten, the creator of heaven and the planets, and indicates that Lazarus’ death might be a consequence of her sobere deucht, small virtue, and het pack mijner sonden, the burden of my sins (367-89).8 A reference to the potential of the Magdalene figure as a sensual and emotional woman is seen in the episode where a Jew and Simon the Pharisee try to console her and reconcile her to God’s will. They chide her for her sinnelijckheyt… ongerieflijck, her useless display of emotion. Mary Magdalene is not to be consoled and blames her expression of grief on the natural disposition which causes such heavy sorrow. There is, she says, an eternal battle between reason and emotion: tnathuerlijck bloet maeckt inder herten eenpaerlijck ende doet dat wij dus bedroeft sijn swaerlijck want tis claerlijck datter een euwich gevecht is tussen reden ende sinnelijckheijt. (474-7) [natural blood causes in our hearts the tendency that we can be lastingly saddened so heavily for it is clear that there is an eternal battle between reason and emotion.]

The passage starts with an emotional appeal to the Lord: Oh gebenedijde…. Confortawighe conforteringhe…. Verlicht doch o heere ons druckige ijmagineringe In abbuseringhe/ twelck Lieffde doet.(469-72) [Oh blessed one…. Consoling comfort… Lighten, please, o Lord, our oppressed imagination In the sorrowing which Love causes.]

In what follows the lyrical qualities and the emotional tone of Mary Magdalene’s speech intensify and seem to combine an appeal to Christ the Lord as well as to Jesus the Man in a way reminiscent of the 8

This may refer to Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9 where she is described as the woman from whom Christ had driven out seven devils.

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Song of Songs (492-504). This has the effect of foregrounding Mary Magdalene not as Lazarus’ sister, but as the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, who was present at his Crucifixion and Burial,9 who wept at his grave,10 and to whom he first appeared in the garden.11 Martha, pouring out her grief about her brother’s death, is aware of Jesus’ potential as the Saviour. Her belief in this leads her to think that Lazarus would not have died if Jesus had been with them (485; 56970) and, when he assures her that u broeder sal waerachtich verrijsen (your brother will truly arise), she misinterprets this and says: Vercoren meester dat weet ick wel Dat hij ten jongsten daege verrijsen sal (586-587) [Beloved master, I know that well, That he will rise on the youngest day.]

Jesus counters this with an assurance that it is possible to achieve God’s peace here on earth and that Lazarus will therefore live: Neen, Martha, ick bent verrijsen ende tleven. Die aen mijn sijn gelooff can geven, Al waer hij doot, die sulcke oock leven sal. Tgeloof doet Leven; wie dat can beseven En derff niemmermeer voor sterven beven. Gelooff dij dit, Martha, hier int aertschen dal, Ghij verlost u ziele uuijt allen misval. (594-600) [No, Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who can give his faith to me, If he were dead, he will yet live. Faith bestows Life; he who realises that Will nevermore tremble at the thought of death. If you have faith, Martha, in this earthly vale You can free your soul from all travail.]

9

Matt. 27:56, 61; Mark 15:40,47; John 19:25. John 20:1, 11-18. 11 John 20:11-18; Mark 16:9; Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1. 10

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Mary Magdalene’s grief comes from a different cause: O hooge geminde … Niet een deert mijn de doot ons broederen so seere Alst derven van Jesus onsen geminden heere, Wiens Jonste mijn siele ende mijn lijff doorknaecht. O schoonste die den dach bedaecht, Puer gotlijck blinckende duerluchtich engien, Ghij sijt mijn Leven, ghij sijt bij wien Alle solaesheijt mijn moet in vloeijende sijn. O compt Lieff ende vertroost die deerne dijn, Die duijsentich dooden door Lieffden sterfft, totdat se u liefflijck aenschijn verwerft, daer alle engelen in moeten verblijden. (491-504) [Oh most beloved … it is not even my brother’s death which hurts me so much but the lack of Jesus our beloved master, my love for him pierces my body and my soul. Oh most beautiful who illuminates the day, Pure and divine, noble and shining creature, You are my life, you are the one from whom All consolation will be flowing into me. Oh come love and comfort your handmaiden Who dies a thousand deaths from love Until she will behold again your lovely face, In which all the angels must rejoice.]

Both Martha and Mary Magdalene repeatedly address or refer to Jesus as ‘their master’. A master-pupil relationship is not per definition devoid of sexual aspects, but in this play the relationship between Martha and Jesus is presented as that between the believer and Christ. The presentation of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, however, evokes aspects of the Magdalene as a sexual being, to whom Jesus is the beloved. In these passages at least we encounter some features which have traditionally been associated with the Magdalene in literature and the visual arts, but they are mere instances and do not dominate the substance or the message of the play. Notably, the Magdalene is not portrayed as a prostitute and that makes sense: the focus is on Lazarus’ sister, not on a sinner who is converted. She is not explicitly identified as the woman from whom were cast out seven devils, or as

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the sinful woman who came to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee.12 It will be seen, then, that the Dutch play is distinct in its presentation of the Magdalene figure and that its main focus is not on Mary Magdalene but on the story of Lazarus and his sisters. The play only uses elements based on the Bible and not on the patristic concept or the legendary aspects of the Magdalene character. The play advocates a particular mode of belief, one in which the Christological aspects are prominent. It takes issue, implicitly, with the authority of the Catholic Church and with the Imperial authorities, and rejects vehemently their attitude to the followers of Christ, that is to say, those who do not adhere to Catholic orthodoxy. In the Amsterdam of the first half of the sixteenth century such dissidence might be found in the circles of the Anabaptists or the Lutherans. The Magdalene is not portrayed as complex, but there is some ambivalence in the presentation which foregrounds aspects of the Magdalene as a saint and as a woman. The play also lacks cohesion. As shown above, the episodes in which the Magdalene is portrayed in her emotional connection with Jesus are oddly embedded in the story of Lazarus and his sisters. In that part the play focuses on the ministry of Christ and on aspects which foreshadow the Passion. Its aim is to claim the high moral and theological ground for those who follow Christ, as opposed to those who, in the name of authority, persecute Him and his followers. In content, cast and aspects of performance, the Dutch play is relatively simple. In this it differs markedly from the play of Mary Magdalene in the so-called Digby manuscript, which was probably written in the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century and is thought to have originated in East Anglia. Although it is concerned with the figure of the Magdalene in all its complexity and focuses on her transition from sinner to saint, the scope of the play encompasses also many aspects of the Life of Christ such as are familiar from the Corpus Christi cycles. It uses the biblical material and many of the patristic and legendary aspects of the life of Mary Magdalene as well. Moreover, it contains a number of elements which are usually in the domain of the morality play: the World, the Flesh, the Devil and the 12

Mark 16:9; Luke 7:36-50.

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Seven Deadly Sins all conspire together to prevent the sinner from becoming a saint. In addition, there are many elements familiar from romances and from travel stories, and miraculous events often found in saint’s lives in the Legenda Aurea. The cast is enormous: there are the biblical characters from the various accounts about, or associated with, Mary Magdalene and with Lazarus, Mary of Bethany and Martha, as well as figures associated with the Life of Christ, a group of ‘morality’ characters and a group of imaginary figures which had become part of the patristic and legendary ‘biography’ of the Magdalene. The emphasis throughout is on an imagined struggle between the good and the evil forces for the soul of mankind, which is dramatically constructed and interpreted as a battle and a siege of a castle or stronghold. Compared to the Dutch play and its specific focus, the Digby text is a richer concoction. It combines elements from various dramatic genres with the Mary Magdalene stories presented as important and significant in their own right and equally valid as illustrations of the possibilities that sinners may be saved and heathens may be converted.13 The episodic structure of the Digby play echoes the episodic structure of the cycle plays. The Florentine Conversione, written in the same period as the Digby text, the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century, and printed for the first time in 1554, combines biblical material with later interpretations of the Magdalene.14 It shows some similarities with the Dutch play. None of the legendary material is included, nor is the Magdalene figure presented as a common prostitute but the play does contain references to contemporary issues. These are associated with certain forms of piety, such as those of the Franciscans but even more prominently with the devotional thought and practices of the Dominicans who were extremely influential in Tuscany and in particular in Florence in the second half of the fifteenth century. This focus brings about an emphasis on the transition, the conversion, from sinner, not to a saint, but to an ardent follower of Christ. Having been persuaded, much against her own wishes, to come and hear Jesus preaching in the temple, Mary 13

Bevington, Medieval Drama, 687-9. For this, and the information given below, see Michael O’Connell, “Magdalen in love: social representation in sacra rapprezentazione”, paper given at the 11th Colloquium of the Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, in Elx (Spain), August 2004. 14

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Magdalene is enraptured by his appearance and his words and the process of conversion is presented as a falling in love. In the Dutch play, as we saw, there are passages which echo this, although the emphasis is different. There Mary Magdalene is not portrayed as a sinner but as the woman who recognises that even the grief for her brother must give way to the grief of lacking Jesus, that the joy of her brother’s resurrection is as nothing compared to the joy of Christ’s resurrection. It is also striking that the Florentine play shows instances of comic realism in the portrayal of Mary Magdalene’s frivolousness and in the scene where three doctors come to tend Lazarus, an episode reminiscent of the ubiquitous quack scenes in medieval drama. The Dutch play, though fragmented by the combination of the Lazarus story with the story of Mary Magdalene as the follower of Christ, maintains a serious tone.15 Changes of register are inserted by means of the sarcastic tone of the comments of the Jews on all the prelates and clergy who persecute Christ and his adherents, and by the lyrical passages in which Mary Magdalene professes her longing and love for Jesus. Conclusion Much of the drama of the Rhetoricians is concerned with the many temptations faced by mankind, temptations which are often portrayed as inherent to the world in which its audience lived and worked. Outright condemnation of the world as such was not a feature of their worldview: mystic turning away from society is not advocated in their plays. On the contrary, it is the way in which one lived in the world that is presented as important. This meant that their educational thrust was often geared towards warning mankind against excess, against a lack of balance and harmony, against the fatal lure of wealth for its own sake or against the use of riches in a wrong way. The presentation of individual sinning and salvation is always, explicitly or implicitly, embedded in a concern for the commonalty. Where the fate of the individual is charted in the relationships with divine, human or allegorical friends or foes, the fate of mankind as part of a community is always part of the message of a play. 15

Broken only, briefly, in the scene mentioned earlier, where the third Jew offers a dead aunt for resurrection (lines 908-9).

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If an individual gives in to dangerously attractive temptations, be it in the form of a human, but unsuitable, love, or in the form of an abstract, allegorical concept such as ‘luxury’, or in a mistaken interpretation of the will of God, Rhetoricians playwrights always present this as a matter of general importance. Biblical material, such as the parables, lends itself well to their didactic intentions but naturally confines them too: blatant deviation from Scripture would not be accepted or acceptable. Thus they have to work with the transmitted texts and make use of such interpretative leeway as these allow and of the greater freedom which later apocryphal or legendary material offers. The story of Lazarus and his sisters has, relatively unusual for the Rhetoricians, a direct bearing on a time, a place and a situation, that of Amsterdam in the first half of the sixteenth century, in the conflict between orthodox ecclesiastical and secular authority and personal emotive piety. The figure of the Magdalene in the play is thus used in two, rather uneven, ways. In her ‘role’ as Lazarus’ sister she helps to shape the idea of absolute trust in Christ, his ministry and his miraculous power, and by implication to identify and condemn those who persecute him and his followers. A smaller aspect of her part in the play is the profiling of the bond between Christ and the individual. In that role aspects of the Magdalene figure as a sexual female icon are brought into play. Her relationship with Christ the Son of God is portrayed through the medium of her relationship with Jesus the Son of Man. The intense emotionality which she displays is shown as a force for good. She accuses herself of – unspecified - sinfulness but this is undone by her unqualified surrender to Christ. The intensity of this female emotion is also present in the figure of Martha whose trust in Christ is absolute. But Martha’s adherence to Christ remains, in a sense, impersonal, whereas in the Magdalene figure the playwright activated an emotional and sexual vehemence which serves, not as a dangerous liaison, but as a lasting connection which brings together life on earth and life in heaven. And with that the Magdalene too is given a general validity which serves as support for the defiant followers of Christ in Amsterdam in the first half of the sixteenth century but also for others fighting for their concept of the forces of good, anywhere, anytime.

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TEACHING A YOUNG KING ABOUT HISTORY. WILLIAM STEWART’S METRICAL CHRONICLE AND KING JAMES V OF SCOTLAND THEA SUMMERFIELD As every teacher knows, getting knowledge to stick in the minds of a possibly reluctant recipient or audience is not always easy. Through the ages teachers have taken recourse to visual aids, corporal punishment, compliments and rewards. Good teachers, however, have always known that nothing is more effective than suitable adaptation to the interests and intellect of the person or persons involved, and this also applies to teachers and tutors of the past. This article for a gifted and experienced teacher will focus on the way William Stewart, tutor to King James V of Scotland (1512-1542), reshaped his source text on the history of Scotland. First, however, I will sketch a brief outline of James’ life and educational background, and the textual background of Stewart’s metrical chronicle. James V’s life was troubled from the start.1 Born in 1512 (10 April), James lost his father when he was only seventeen months old. From then on he became a pawn in internecine struggles for power within Scotland: between his English mother Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, and French born and bred John Stewart, fourth Duke of Albany, heir presumptive after James’ brother, and between the Douglases, the Queen and other factions. The perennial problems of Scotland’s political alliance with either England, where King Henry VIII, James’ uncle, ruled or with France, Scotland’s old ally, played important parts in all these feuds. The various plans to provide James with an English or, at other times, with a French wife, illustrate the uncertain situation, 1

Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII, Edinburgh, 1965, 19-49. Unless otherwise stated, information on James V is based on Andrea Thomas, “James V (1512-1542)”, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Oxford, 2004-2006.

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as do the various temporary installations of the teenage boy as king: to serve the interests of his mother (in July 1524), or of the Douglases (in June 1526). As a teenager he was even held captive in Edinburgh Castle by the Douglas faction for three years (1525-28). In the early summer of 1528, James managed to escape from Edinburgh to Stirling Castle, held by his mother, and assumed sovereignty in his own right. The king, Gordon Donaldson concludes, “now in his seventeenth year, had emerged from tutelage”.2 In spite of all the political upheaval, there were always tutors to teach the young king, among them Gavin Dunbar, the Archbishop of Glasgow, from 1517 to 1525, and William Stewart, who is thought to have entered royal service as James’ tutor in 1525 or 1526.3 However, James appears to have been not much of a scholar, although he is reported to have been a gifted and accomplished musician. As an adult he had no knowledge of Latin, spoke little French, and could not read letters in English that his uncle Henry VIII sent him. Reading, and writing, was done for him by his councillors.4 James was more interested in physical activities like riding and shooting, swordplay and jousting. He also had an eye for the ladies: although he had only one legitimate surviving child (a girl, the Mary who came to be known as Mary, Queen of Scots), he also had nine known illegitimate children, all born to different mothers, by the time of his death at the age of thirty.5 Surprisingly, perhaps, James turned out to be something of a patron of literature. Occasional poems were written for him, histories of Scotland dedicated to him, and translations commissioned by him. We are concerned here with the translations of a recent historical work that were made at his request. In the 1520s two new histories of Scotland were published, each of them in Latin: John Major’s Historia Maioris Britanniae (Paris, 1521) and Hector Boece’s Scotorum Historiae (Paris, 1527). Major’s history is famous nowadays for the author’s rejection of origin myths, “that misconceived byway to be followed only by the lunatic fringe”, as 2

Donaldson, Scotland, 41. A.A. MacDonald, “William Stewart and the Court Poetry of the Reign of James V”, in Stewart Style 1513-1542: Essays on the Court of James V, ed. Janet Hadley Williams, East Linton, 1996, 187. 4 David Edward Easson, Gavin Dunbar, Edinburgh, 1947, 29-31. 5 Peter Anderson, “James V, mistresses and children of”, ODNB, 2004-2006. 3

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Bruce Webster has called them.6 Yet, however odd from a modern perspective, this was a byway that many would continue to follow full of conviction in the decades to come. Hector Boece was one of them. Major’s history had been commissioned by Margaret Tudor, the Queen Mother, and argues in favour of a united Britain. In such a programme, origin myths, designed as they are to bolster territorial and dynastic claims, are hurdles that are best cleared out of the way. Boece’s history presented a different argument, arguing for the moral as well as the territorial independence of the Scots. It aimed at creating a sense of patriotism by its use of stories describing how the Scots had always successfully defended their liberty and by the exploitation of origin myths, as its very title indicates (Scotorum Historiae a prima gentis origine) as well as doubtful, ancient sources. In this way the work also served as an alternative to the widespread English Galfredian legend of Brutus as the founding-father of Britain, and subsequent, related, legends in which Scotland was presented as subjugated to the rulers of England. The work was dedicated to the king, but not commissioned by him.7 Throughout the sixteenth century, it remained a popular and influential work.8 Its continental place of publication, the fact that the work was written in Latin prose, bristles with allusions to the classics and is explicitly presented as “eloquent” are indications that it was aimed at an international, scholarly audience trained in reading the often highly rhetorical Latin then in fashion among humanists.9 A translation was made within 6

Bruce Webster, Scotland from the Eleventh Century to 1603, London, 1975, 19. Boece presented a copy to the king, and received “an annual pension of ₤50 Scots, which was afterwards doubled” (Nicola Royan, “Boece [Boethius], Hector”, ODNB, 2004-2006). 8 The text was translated into Scots (three times) as well as French, was widely distributed, reprinted (in 1574 and 1575, by Ferrerri), borrowed from and continued. See John and Winifred MacQueen, “Latin Prose Literature” in The History of Scottish Literature, Vol. I: Origins to 1660 (Mediaeval and Renaissance), ed. R.D.S. Jack, Aberdeen, 1988, 237; Nicola Royan, “The Relationship between the Scotorum Historia of Hector Boece and John Bellenden’s Chronicles of Scotland”, in The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, eds Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood, East Linton, 1998, 138; Royan, ODNB, 20046. On the work’s influence as providing precedent for the deposition of Mary Stewart in 1567 through Boece’s follower George Buchanan, see Roger A. Mason, “Scotching the Brut: Politics, History and National Myth in Sixteenth-Century Britain”, in Scotland and England 1286-1815, ed. Roger A. Mason, Edinburgh, 1987, 65. 9 P.O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays, Princeton N.J., 1980, 10, 28. 7

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three years of publication at the king’s request. At some time in the year 1530, John Bellenden, at the time a Clerk of Accounts in the king’s service, was charged with the task. The work was completed at the end of August 1531 and the king received it in the autumn: possibly some of the decorations in what was a luxurious folio-sized codex of 312 leaves (now in the Pierpont Morgan Library ) still had to be made.10 One printed edition and eleven manuscripts, some of them copies of the printed edition, survive. Apart from the Pierpont Morgan Library manuscript there is only one other extant manuscript that may have been known to William Stewart when he embarked on his translation – the manuscript previously in the Auchinleck library, now University College London, MS Angl. 1, which is also dedicated to James V. This is a much plainer manuscript. It has not been printed and only a few extracts are available for comparison, and these do not show any major textual deviations.11 As all other manuscripts of Bellenden’s translation and the printed edition that was published at some time between 1536 and 1540 postdate William Stewart’s metrical translation, textual variations in them will not be discussed here.12 10

It is the sole basis for the edition published by the Scottish Text Society: The Chronicles of Scotland Compiled by Hector Boece. Translated into Scots by John Bellenden (in continuation of the work of the late Walter Seton, Vol I, eds R.W. Chambers and Edith C. Batho, Edinburgh, 1938; Vol. II, eds Edith Batho and Winifred Husbands, Edinburgh, 1941. All references are to this edition by volume and page-number. 11 Comparison of the three passages from the UCL MS (R.W. Chambers and Walter Seton, “Bellenden’s Translation of the History of Hector Boece”, Scottish Historical Review, XII/65 (1919), 5-13) with the edition of Bellendon’s translation (II, 251-52; 256-58) of the Pierpont Morgan MS [PPM] yields the following lexical variants (my italics): slayn lyke schepe (PPM)/ slane lik miserable creaturis (UCL); invaid … with batall, bot als to eik his iniure (PPM)/ Invaid … with battell, to eik his Iniuris .. (UCL); for þou sall nocht faill ane myschevous end be puninioun of God (PPM)/ for thou sall nought faill be pvinioun of God ane mischevis deid (UCL); nothir nychtis nor dayis (PPM)/ neuer (UCL); I compt na payne nor deth (PPM)/ certifeing the that I compt na paine nor displesir that may efter follow (UCL). 12 Another, anonymous, translation exists, the so-called Mar Lodge translation: The Mar Lodge Translation of the History of Scotland by Hector Boece, ed. George Watson, 2 Vols, Edinburgh, 1946. Its relationship to Bellenden’s translation requires further investigation. As the author has copied Bellenden’s “Proheme apon the Cosmographe” and the “Proheme of the History: The Translatour sayis to his Buke” verbatim from the printed edition of Bellenden’s translation, it must be dated after 1536/40. See also R.J. Lyall, “Vernacular Prose before the Reformation”, in The

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In his translation, Bellenden stayed as close to the Latin text as possible. Occasional omissions and additions have been noted by Nicola Royan, but she concludes that in general these do not affect the sense of the text.13 Some of the omissions suggest that Bellenden took the interests of his Scottish readership into account: what appealed to Boece’s humanist readers of the Latin original, such as information on classical authors, was not necessarily to the taste of the less classically educated readers of the vernacular. Such details were, therefore, excised. Errors are few, which, as Nicola Royan concedes, is remarkable in such a vast work.14 A major difference is the organisation of the work by chapters, each preceded by a chapterheading giving an indication what the reader may expect. This makes the contents of the book much easier of access and enables users to select particular episodes, as in a reference book. Bellenden also added an index (“The Tabill of this Buke”), a Preface, and, to conclude, a versified envoy entitled “The Translator sayis to his buke as followis” that emphasizes the educational value of the work for kings and princes. In this way Bellenden succeeded in leaving his own stamp on an otherwise faithful translation, which does not, however “quite succeed in getting rid of the idiom of the original. Tell-tale absolute constructions, historic presents, and excessive linking of sentences abound.”15 However, its message is Boece’s: as the Preface states explicitly, the translation, like the original, provides examples that tyrants may be overthrown (“dantit”) and good men given authority. To conclude Bellenden expresses the wish that the book inspire in the king the wish to govern with so much felicity that his subjects will be sufficiently motivated to wish the king a long life. A strong “or else” subtext imbues both original and translation.16 The long sentences, intricate and unnatural grammar and the profusion of hard, Latinate words may well have proved major History of Scottish Literature. Vol. I: Origins to 1660, ed. Jack, 174 who calls it “certainly quite independent” of Bellenden’s translation. 13 Royan, “The Relationship between the Scotorum Historia of Hector Boece and John Bellenden’s Chronicles of Scotland”, 140. 14 Ibid., 142-43. 15 C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, Oxford, 1954, 116. 16 Cf. the paraphrase of Boece’s prefatory epistle to King James V in J.B. Black, “Boece’s Scotorum Historiae”, in Quartercentenary of the Death of Hector Boece, First Principal of the University, Aberdeen, 1938, 33.

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stumbling blocks in capturing the young and badly educated king’s attention; certainly his preference for activities suggest a limited attention span. And it may well be the fact that the message was not coming across that led to the request for another translation, this time in rhyme, to be written by William Stewart. In fact it appears that Stewart received his commission for a metrical translation a few months before Bellenden’s prose translation was properly finished; the prose translation was made by John Bellenden in 1530-1531, while the translation into verse was written between 1531 and 1535 by William Stewart. William Stewart is thought to have belonged to a group of men with “a professional interest in the moral and political education of the king”.17 Stewart also wrote poetry; “some dozen short poems” survive in addition to the chronicle. The chronicle, however, is anything but short; the last line before the concluding prayer reads “Adew, fairwell, I haif no moir to sa”. This is line number 61,277.18 It survives in a single, poor, manuscript (Cambridge, UL, K.k.11.16). Critical opinion of the verse chronicle has been low.19 Whether James V liked it has unfortunately not been recorded. Whether Stewart exclusively used as his source Boece’s Latin text, the only author mentioned in the Preface (73), one of the two manuscripts of Bellenden’s translation that are known to have been around when he started, or a combination of Latin and vernacular texts cannot be deduced from his very free, versified rendition. Stewart used four-stress lines rhyming in couplets with occasional alliteration for emotional highlighting, especially in battle-scenes, and some rhetorical flourishes. Much is conventional, formulaic and even

17

MacDonald, “William Stewart and the Court Poetry of the Reign of James V”, 187. All references are by line number to The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland; or A Metrical Version of the History of Hector Boece by William Stewart, ed. William B. Turnbull, 3 Vols, London, 1858. 19 Stewart’s editor Turnbull apologized for the mythical sections by pointing out, full of Victorian confidence, that these men “lived in an age when legend was received as fact, and men had not begun to apply critical sagacity to the investigation of longcurrent and obscure traditions” (The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland, xxvii); MacDiarmid condemns Stewart’s “very Latinate vocabulary” (which is erroneous) and considers Stewart “entirely tedious”, except in those places where he rhymes independently of Boece about his life and experiences (M.P. McDiarmid, “The Metrical Chronicles and Non-alliterative Romances”, in The History of Scottish Literature. Vol. I: Origins to 1660, ed. Jack, 36-37). 18

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repetitive, and the vocabulary is simple. Here anything Latinate has been avoided. The difference in register and intellectual level between the two translations is obvious at once from their prologues. Bellenden’s Preface refers to Erasmus, Cicero, Aristotle, Seneca, to his own inability to fashion a translation other than one “nakit of perfeccioun and rhetory”, and to the need of princes to learn from the past – a glorious past, in which Scotland was “nevir subdewitt to vncouth empire” (16); while Stewart has a rather homely “she” who charges the poet with the translation. The manuscript is defective here; the “she” is usually thought to be the Queen Mother, but she may also be a more abstract being instructing the poet. The Preface takes the form of a dialogue. The unnamed “she” makes the request for a translation of a work in Latin by “Hector Boyis of nobill fame” (73) for the king, who is “nocht perfite / in Latyn toung” (112-13). Not just the king, she states, but every man would be grateful for a memorable rendering of the stories of old, as these have all been destroyed by the English during Wallace’s rebellion (79-81). The translator comments that his language is “both gros and rude” (125) (compare Bellenden’s phrasing of this topos: “nakit of perfeccioun and rhetory”), after which the lady peremptorily tells the poet to stop “thi dirdum and thi din” (133) and to get on with the job. Here there are no allusions to the classics, while the emphasis is on the re-creation of memorable, narrative history as a collection of good stories as much as on the original argumentative function of providing examples of good and bad kingship and legitimate reasons for overthrowing rulers. Stewart, like Bellenden, introduces divisions, but these occur with much greater frequency: Stewart’s rubrics, summarizing the contents of what is to follow, mostly herald episodes of some few dozen lines only. It gives a halting feel to the work that probably was functional: whenever the audience or auditor was becoming restless, there is a convenient gap at hand to stop and continue later. The narrative outline developed by Boece and followed by Bellenden is adhered to closely, but additions and excisions are frequent. A few examples will illustrate Stewart’s narrative strategies. Each could be multiplied many times. Authorial, interpolated, comments are often extensive, yet commonplace in content and sentiment. For example, following a remark that, as Bellenden, writes, “how vnsikker bene the chance of

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fortoun” (I, 181), Stewart holds forth for forty-four lines about Fortune in a separate little chapter headed “Off the instabilitie and Fickilnes of Fortoun, as ye sall efter heir in this present chaptoure”, the conclusion of which is little more than “up one day, down the next”. After the words “No moir of this; heir will I hald me still, / And to my purpois pas agane I will” (12,947-992) Stewart then continues his tale of Galdus’ successful rebuff of the Romans with the heading “How Galdus King of Scottis, with the Lordis, hes reformit all faltis within his Kinrik”. Omissions generally concern matters of statecraft, battle strategies, and references to classical, biblical or otherwise famous men contemporary with a particular episode: in short, factual material. It may concern sizeable chunks of texts, as, for example, the passage on the Emperor Justinian (I, 374-75; cf. 27,549 ff.). However, it is not all simplification; Stewart also imposes his own judgements on the text by cutting accounts of the supernatural in his original, or by adding negative comments on that subject. He leaves out Merlin’s prophecies, for example (26,736-746; cf. Bellenden, I, 357), and hides behind his source (“as that my author sais”) for his explanation of Merlin’s nature as an incubus, a being with knowledge of peace and war peculiar to euill angellis (26,737-746). Elsewhere he declares that such things as portents and prophecies are fit for “folk of infedilitie” (the Romans), but not for “gude Cristin men” (10,255-260). The major change that Stewart makes in his reworking of his source text is his consistent amplication and highlighting of all anecdotal matter and matters of human interest, without deviating from the narrative line of his source. For example, at the beginning of Book Nine, Boece and Bellenden tell in considerable detail how Conrannus travelled around the country to punish, either in person or by delegates, all who were involved in criminal activities or who injured the common people. This example of good kingship, taking up twenty lines in the edition of Bellenden’s translation is rendered by Stewart as follows in six lines:

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This Conranus, of quhome befoir I spak, Greit travel dalie did vpoun him tak To keip his kinrik into rest and piece, That do no nycht wald nocht sojorne nor ceis For no travel, sa lang as he micht lest, Quhill he put all into gude piece and rest. (25,875-880)

The superficial essence (good king, travelled round to ensure peace) of his source text has been preserved, difficult Latinate words such as are found in Bellenden’s translation in this episode (“preceptouris”, “execucioun of iustice”, “indigent pepill”, “extorsionis”, etc.) have been avoided. In the same way Stewart refers to Conranus’ love of hunting without stating the underlying reason for this king’s protracted absences: according to Boece and Bellenden Conranus thought that his absence from councils would make his “officiaris” assume authority more readily. However, when the source text refers briefly to a legend of a hart shot during one of these hunting parties by the king which is found to be full of serpents inside, for which Pliny is cited, Stewart extends what is barely six lines in the edition into a separate little chapter of twenty-four lines plus a rubric: “Off Ane Mervelous Monstoure Sene At The Huntis”, omitting the reference to Pliny. Here it is the sensational story that is given precedence over examples of statesmanship. Often, however, it is the personal, human aspect that is brought to the fore in a very visual manner. An example is the passage describing the agreement between Vortigern and the Saxons. Bellenden uses twenty-one words (I, 322), whereas Stewart’s rendition takes up twenty-six lines, focusing not only on the agreement, but also on such details as that the Saxons left in thirty ships, wore shining armour, enjoyed good weather and sailed all the way before the wind. Thus facts are fleshed out by the addition of visual detail, and politics are subordinated to human experience (24,104-24,129). Finally, like his source, but much more emphatically through frequent repetition, Stewart considers the election of Arthur as King of Britain a mistake, as Arthur was of illegitimate birth. His interpolated explanation of how this could happen shows again his very human side and his tendency to empathise rather than judge or condemn: King Uther was so fond of the child, his only son, Stewart

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says, that he would not listen to reason: “For love of him richt far he brak the law” (26,241-251). Throughout Stewart shows a preference for direct speech, which again adds an emphasis on people rather than argument. His notable predilection for descriptions of festivities, and especially of the music and instruments played at festivities may perhaps be interpreted as a wish to strike a responsive note in the musical king’s mind (see for example, 12,407-438; 13,006-032). And when Boece and Bellenden condemn at length the riotous Christmas celebrations, which, according to them, were wickedly introduced by the degenerate English in King Arthur’s time, and resemble pagan celebrations of Bacchus, Flora and Priapus, Stewart not only excises the classical deities, but also expatiates so much on the fun and games that the condemnation is rather lost. Nevertheless, the lesson that too much good living makes men unsuitable for war and hardship is retained (26,937-958, cf. I 369). Stewart’s knowledge of romances is evident from his condemnation of tales about Robin Hood (27,961), a Scottish as much as an English hero,20 the Celtic hero Finn Mac Cool, here a giant (23,101-112, 27,961), and references to Arthurian “fables” (27,957960).21 They are condemned as being unhistorical, untrustworthy, and lies, unlike the account of a Scottish hero who is greatly admired by Stewart: Hary’s Wallace. Stewart deplores the fact that his source (“my author”, 47,776) has so little information on the youth and early history of Wallace, and adds a physical description of William Wallace as a young man: he had a pleasant and fair body, and was “large and rycht weill maid,” with long arms and broad shoulders (47,746-748). Exceptionally, Stewart compares Wallace to Mars, Hector and Achilles, all of whom he is said to equal or exceed in strength. Stewart clearly bases himself here on Hary’s more detailed description of Wallace that also includes a comparison with Alexander and Hector.22 However, although eager to digress further on Wallace, Stewart concedes that he must return to his source, because, as he 20

Keely Fisher, “The Crying of ane Playe: Robin Hood and Maying in SixteenthCentury Scotland”, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, XII (1999), 19-58. 21 By contrast legends which have left physical remains, such as the foundations of the castle where Guinevere was kept and her grave, are credited by Stewart, who presents himself as an eye-witness: “Be the scriptour weill knawin is the graif” (27,942). 22 The Wallace: Selections, ed. Anne McKim, Kalamazoo, 2003, 10.1221-44.

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explains, he cannot guarantee the truth – suith fastnes, veritie (47,481) – of “blind Hareis buke” (47.778). It would seem that for Stewart the truth only came in Latin. The attraction of Hary’s Wallace for Stewart is understandable if we compare Wallace to Stewart’s Latin source on the one hand and to his own verse translation on the other. All three works are intensely patriotic, but with Hary Stewart shares a preference for anecdotal history, centred on persons, rather than on ideas and arguments concerning politics and statecraft. It is not accidental, perhaps, that Stewart uses the same metrical pattern as Hary: four-stressed rhyming couplets, clearly considered suitable for a work that had to be pleasant and comforting “for to heir” (67), and language which is emphatically stated as not being “ouir eloquent” (63), unlike Bellenden’s translation which prides itself on being “full of eloquence” (150), a suitable style for an international audience of learned humanists. Stewart, by contrast, consciously links his work with an older, vernacular, and oral medieval tradition. Stewart’s history may perhaps be dubbed “A Young Person’s Guide to Scottish History”, offering a lively account of all important events described in visual, empathetic detail, and in verse, an implicit requisite for making it memorable history. It is to be hoped that there were sections in this long, rambling collection of tales that the king found amusing when it was too wet to ride or when stories of the kings of the past were read after dinner, as Christine de Pizan recommends.23 His changes to the content of his source text, aimed as they are at the anecdotal, provided the young and restless king with a history that would contain “what you can remember”, stories whose object it was “to console the reader”, for – and Stewart would probably agree – “All other history defeats itself”. Such are the tongue-in-cheek but true words of Sellar and Yeatman in the “Compulsory Preface” to their 1066 and All That,24 and, combined with pervasive ideas of the truth of his Latin original and the necessity of verse for making history memorable, such were the notions that 23

Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, or The Book of the Three Virtues, trans. Sarah Lawson, Harmondsworth, 1985, 61; also Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court. Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, Oxford, 2001, 57. 24 W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That, London, 1930.

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governed the pen of William Stewart when faced with the task of teaching a young king about history.

Select Bibliography of Writings by Erik Kooper 1981 “Art and Signature and the Art of Signature”, in Glyn S. Burgess, A.D. Deyermond, W.H. Jackson, A.D. Mills and P.T. Ricketts (eds), Court and Poet: Selected Proceedings of the 3rd Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Liverpool 1980). Liverpool, 223-232. 1982 “The Case of the Encoded Author: John Massey in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 83.2 (1982), 158-168. 1984 “‘Grace’: the Healing Herb in ‘William of Palerne’”. Leeds Studies in English 15 (1984), 83-93. “Inverted Images in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Sir Thopas’”. Studia Neophilologica 56 (1984), 147-154. 1985 “De vrouw als echtgenote”, in Middeleeuwers over vrouwen. Utrechtse Bijdragen tot de Mediëvistiek, eds R.E.V Stuip and C. Vellekoop, Utrecht, 1985. Love, marriage and salvation in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and Parlement of Foules, Diss. Universiteit Utrecht. “Love and Marriage in the Middle English Romances”, in Companion to Middle English Romance, eds Henk Aertsen and Alasdair A. Macdonald, Amsterdam, 1990, 171-187.

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1987 One Hundred Years of English Studies in Dutch Universities. Seventeen Papers read at the Centenary Conference, Groningen, 15-16 January 1986, eds G.H.V. Bunt, Erik Kooper, J.L. Mackenzie and D.R.M. Wilkinson, Amsterdam, 1987. “Slack Water Poetry: An Edition of the Craft of Lovers”. English Studies 68 (1987) 473-89. “Medieval English Studies in the Netherlands and Belgium”, Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter 16 (1987) 4-6. 1989 “Of English Kings and Arms”, with Annelies Kruijshoop, in J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Richard Todd (eds), in In Other Words. Transcultural Studies in Philology, Translation, and Lexicology Presented to Hans Heinrich Meier on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Dordrecht, 45-56. 1990 Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennal Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, the Netherlands, 9-16 August, 1986, Utrecht publications in general and comparative literature 25, eds Erik Kooper and Keith Busby, Amsterdam. 1991 This Noble Craft ...: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht 19-20 January 1989, Amsterdam, 1991. “Political Theory and Pastoral Care in the Second Shepherds’ Play”, in This Noble Craft ...: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old

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and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht 19-20 January 1989, Amsterdam, 1991, 142-151. “Loving the Unequal: Medieval Theologians and Marital Affection,” in Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds, The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex and Marriage in the Medieval World, Albany, N.Y., 44-56. “Comments on Arthur Versluis, ‘Piers Plowman, Numerical Composition, and the Prophecies’”. Connotations I/3 (1991) 283-85. 1992 “The Extremities of Faith: Section VIII of the Canterbury Tales,” in Juliette Dor, ed., A wyf ther was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck. Liège, 209-18. 1994 Medieval Dutch literature in its European context, Cambridge, 1994 (including the translation into English of a number of articles). “Appendix A: bibliography of translations”, A.M.J. van Buuren and Erik Kooper, in Medieval Dutch literature in its European Context, ed. Erik Kooper, Cambridge, 1994, 297-304. “Multiple Birth and Multiple Disaster: Twins in Medieval Literature”, in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, eds Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy, Amsterdam, 1994, 253-70. “Layamon and the Development of Early Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” in L.A.J.R. Houwen and A.A. Macdonald, Loyal Letters: Studies on Mediaeval Alliterative Poetry and Prose. Groningen, 113-29.

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