Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge Studies in French)

This wide-ranging study explores the ideological framework of genre in Old French and Occitan literature by charting the...

Author: Simon Gaunt

56 downloads 1031 Views 7MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

This wide-ranging study explores the ideological framework of genre in Old French and Occitan literature by charting the relationship between ideology and gender in five key genres: the chansons de geste, courtly romance, the Occitan canso, hagiography and the fabliaux. Simon Gaunt offers new readings of canonical Old French and medieval Occitan texts such as the Chanson de Roland, Chretien de Troyes's Chevalier de la Charrete, and lyrics by Bernart de Ventadorn, and in addition he considers many less wellknown works and less familiar genres such as hagiography and the fabliaux. Drawing on contemporary feminist theory, he examines how masculinity, as well as femininity, is constructed in medieval French and Occitan texts, and he shows that gender is a crucial element in the formation of the ideologies that underpin medieval literary genres.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH 53

GENDER AND GENRE IN MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH General editor: Malcolm Bowie (All Souls College, Oxford) Editorial Board: R. Howard Bloch (University of California, Berkeley), Terence Cave (St John's College, Oxford), Ross Chambers (University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon (Columbia University), Peter France (University of Edinburgh), Christie McDonald (Harvard University), Toril Moi (Duke University), Naomi Schor (Harvard University), Michael Sheringham (University of Kent)

Recent titles in the series include 43 ROBERTA L. KRUEGER

Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance 44 JAMES H. REID Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting 45 EUGENE W. HOLLAND

Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Socio-poetics of Modernism 46 HUGH M. DAVIDSON Pascal and the Arts of the Mind 47 DAVID J. DENBY Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1J60-1820: Politics of Tears 48 CLAIRE ADDISON

Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History 49 JOHN GLAIBORNE ISBELL

The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Sta'eTs lDe VAllemagne' 50 MICHAEL SPRINKER

History and Ideology in Proust: (A la recherche du temps perdu' and the Third French Republic 51 DEE REYNOLDS

Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space 52 DAVID B. ALLISON, MARK S. ROBERTS AND ALLEN S. WEISS Sade and the Narrative of Transgression A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume

GENDER AND GENRE IN MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE SIMON GAUNT University of Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY IOOI 1-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1995 First published 1995 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Gaunt, Simon. Gender and genre / Simon Gaunt, p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in France; 53) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o 521 46494 3 hardback 1. French literature-to 1500-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 2. Provencal literature-History and criticism-Theory, etc. 3. Feminism and literature-France-History. 4. Man-woman relationships in literature. 5. Sex (Psychology) in literature. 6. Sex role in literature. 7. Rhetoric, Medieval. 8. Literary form. I. Title. II. Series. PQJ51.G38 1995 84o.9 / ooi-dc2o 94-20627 CIP ISBN o 521 46494 3 hardback Transferred to digital printing 2004

Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

1

page viii x

Introduction

i

Monologic masculinity: the chanson de geste

22

2 The knight meets his match: romance

71

3

Troubadours, ladies and language: the canso

122

4

Saints, sex and community: hagiography

180

5

Genitals, gender and mobility: the fabliaux

234

Conclusion

286

Notes Bibliography Index

290 336 365

vn

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank the University of Cambridge and St Catharine's College for granting me the sabbatical leave that allowed me to write this book. The anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press offered incisive criticism which proved very helpful during the final stages of the project. I should also like to express my gratitude to Kate Brett and Malcolm Bowie at the Press for their encouragement throughout. A small section of chapter 2 is reprinted in a revised form by permission from the Romanic Review vol. 83 (1992). Copyright by the Trustees Columbia University in the City of New York. I am also grateful to the editors of the Modern Language Review for permission to use, in a revised form, material previously published in this journal in chapter 3. In chapter 3 the texts of Moshe Lazar's edition of Bernart de Ventadorn's 'Tant ai mo cor' and of Angelica Rieger's editions of 'No puesc mudar',' Ar em' and ' Fin ioi' are reproduced by kind permission of Librairie C. Klincksieck and of Max Niemeyer Verlag. I would also like to thank Professor William Paden J r for permission to reproduce his edition of Castelloza's 'Amies'. While I have been working on this book I have been fortunate to belong to a number of communities that have sustained and stimulated me. In St Catharine's College Chris Clark, Nick Harrison, Paul Hartle, Geoffrey Kantaris, Helen Small, Andrew Webber and Susan Wright have been friends as well as colleagues; I have learnt a good deal from working with them. Since 1987 members of the 'alternative' Cambridge medieval seminar have dazzled me with their brilliance and delighted me viii

Acknowledgements

ix

with their humour: I should like to thank Elizabeth Archibald, Ruth Bagnall, Ardis Butterfield, Mark Chinca, Chris Cannon, Elizabeth Edwards, Jane Gilbert, Tony Hasler, Gabby Lyons, Ad Putter, Jim Simpson and Nicky Zeeman, several of whom have been kind enough to comment on drafts of sections of this book. Similarly, in the UK fellow medievalists Ruth Harvey, Karen Pratt, Linda Paterson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, and in the US Peter Allen, E.Jane Burns, Joan Haahr, Roberta Krueger and Peggy McCracken have been generous with advice, support and friendship. Outside these various communities, I have valued intellectual exchanges with Alison Finch, Joel Gouget, Liz Guild, Leslie Hill, Phil Levy, Andrew Powell, John Roberts, and Betty Talks, who have had the grace to show an interest in my interest in medieval literature despite its distance from their own work. Two people deserve special thanks for they have been closely involved with the writing of this book. Mark Treharne has lived with the project as long as I have. He has offered patient support and encouragement when it was needed and commented incisively on numerous drafts. My colleague and friend Sarah Kay's energy, learning, and intelligence have been a constant source of inspiration and instruction. My debts to her published work are evident in the bibliography, but she has also been an engaging, if inimitable, interlocutor at every stage. My love for medieval literature has been repeatedly rekindled by contact with students, by their enthusiasm and by their willingness to be persuaded of the pertinence of medieval texts to their lives. Unwise as it may be to single out former students, I should none the less like to mention a few whose insights have been particularly helpful and whose company I have particularly enjoyed: Nick Corbyn, Jo Frost, Catherine Keen, Tristan Langlois, Catherine Leglu, Nick Longhurst, Charlie Louth, Kate McGeever, Emmanuel Power, Peregrine Rand, Lucy Richardson and Maria Tang-Campon. They are familiar with many of the ideas in this book and it is dedicated to them.

Abbreviations

Godefroy MR NRCF TL

ABBREVIATIONS Godefroy, Frederic, Dictionnaire de Vancienne langue frangaise et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XIV siecles, iovols. (Paris, 1881-1902) Recueil general et complet des fabliaux, see bibliography for full details Nouveau Recueil Complet des Fabliaux, see bibliography for full details Tobler, Adolf and Lommatzsch, Erhard, Altfranzosisches Worterbuch, 10. vols. to date (Berlin, 1925-)

A B B R E V I A T I O N S USED IN B I B L I O G R A P H Y CCM CN FMLS LMA MA MH MLR MR JVM RLLO RMS RN RP RR

Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale Cultura Neolatina Forum for Modern Language Studies Le Moyen Age Medium Aevum Medievalia et Humanistica, new series Modern Language Review Medioevo Romanzo Neuphilologische Mitteilungen Revue de Langue et de Litterature di0c Reading Medieval Studies Romance Notes Romance Philology Romanic Review

Introduction

GENDER [ O F R . gendre... see GENUS] f i . Kind, sort (SOED, i, 840) GENRE [FR., = KIND; SEE GENDER] 1. Kind; sort; style {SOED, 1, 842) GENUS [L. genus birth, race, stock] 1. A class of things {SOED, 1, 844) My working hypothesis in this book is that in medieval French and Occitan literature gender and genre are inextricably linked. My intention in seeking to combine the study of gender and genre is not simply to map a trendy critical term onto one with a more venerable pedigree. I shall argue that genres in medieval French and Occitan literature inscribe competing ideologies, that the construction of gender is a crucial element in any ideology, and that the distinct ideologies of medieval genres are predicated in part at least upon distinct constructions of gender. This hypothesis regarding gender and genre is based upon two premises: firstly, that every genre is an ideological formation; secondly, that a crucial component of every ideology is its engagement with the sex/gender system of the society in which it is produced. By ideology I mean a discourse which is used (not necessarily consciously) by a society, culture or section of a society or culture to naturalize or undermine, for itself and/or others, power structures and inequalities within it; by sex/ gender system I mean the way in which power and authority are distributed according to 'genderic' criteria in any given historical context. 1 The first premise rests upon Marxist genre theory, the second upon feminist theory which suggests that of

2

Gender and genre in medieval French literature

all the hierarchies that operate within hierarchical cultures, gender is the most fundamental and affects not only relations between men and women, but relations between men and between women. I shall seek in this introduction to defend and elaborate the hypothesis I have just outlined. As my work is theoretically eclectic, and as I write for an undergraduate as well as a more specialized readership, some of the theoretical writing upon which I draw will inevitably be unfamiliar to some readers. I will consequently begin with fairly basic formulations of what I mean by terms like 'genre' and 'gender' before I go on to explore how I think they interact. The impetus for this study comes largely from the vibrant body of feminist scholarship on medieval French literature, of which there are perhaps a number of main trends. One strand seeks either to discern (and condemn) misogyny and patriarchal structures within medieval texts or to detect (and congratulate) writers who were critical of the oppression of women. 2 Secondly, various critics have written what they themselves call' images of women' criticism, which describes how women are portrayed (usually by men) in medieval texts, seeks to explain the different images and to evaluate the disparity between such images and what we know of the experience of medieval women. 3 Thirdly, medieval women writers have attracted a good deal of attention.4 Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, counter-readings of texts have been offered by positing the response of women readers - medieval and modern - to male-authored texts. 5 These different trends all focus on the experience of women and strive to counteract traditional criticism, which has been largely concerned with the experience of men (as characters, writers and as readers). 6 My approach in this book differs from the feminist criticism of medieval literature just outlined. I shall not focus exclusively on the experience of women, but on gender as a construct. Although feminist critics have written about femininity as a construct in male-authored medieval texts, attention has only recently been devoted explicitly to masculinity as a construct: innumerable studies of, for example, 'the hero', 'the indi-

Introduction

3

vidual', 'the knight', or 'kingship' in medieval texts, have treated these as universal and obvious entities rather than as gendered categories, produced by and in a specific discourse.7 Nor has the relationship between genders been adequately scrutinized. My purpose is not to shift attention away from women to men, but rather to show how masculinity and femininity in texts, or even different varieties of masculinity and femininity, must be seen in relation to each other, as discursively produced constructs, if they are to be properly understood. My position as a male critic with a feminist agenda requires comment. I cannot read ' as a woman' and I do not attempt to read 'like a woman'. 8 But gender is as much a concern of men as of women. Men have different (and in most cases, including my own, altogether more comfortable) experiences of sex/ gender systems, but their sexualities, their private and professional lives, their relations with other people, their subjectivities are as much shaped by gender as are those of women. My commitment to feminism is political, using political in its broadest sense to describe power relations and hierarchies of all kinds; I believe that gender is a powerful tool with which to analyse political structures and the way in which literary texts mediate and/or promote political structures. If this study dwells sometimes on masculinity, this is partly a reflection of my material: the vast majority of medieval texts were written by men and therefore partake of a ' masculinist' discourse of gender. My attention to constructions of masculinity is also, however, a consequence of my own gender. If at this stage of the feminist project, male academics working with feminist theory should be wary of appropriating authority, and speaking for women, they can perhaps turn their attention critically to men and to masculinity. GENRE,GENDER,IDEOLOGY

Genre is one of the principal critical tools of medieval French literary studies. Though genre was rarely addressed as a theoretical issue, nineteenth-century critics implicitly used formal and thematic criteria to group medieval texts into

4


categories that would make them easier to interpret: it seemed, and still seems, obvious that the Chevalier de la Charrete should be read in one way because it is a romance, and the Chanson de Roland in another because it is a chanson de geste. That genre received little explicit theoretical attention during the early days of the discipline is not a sign that it was not deemed a useful tool, but rather that it was considered so obvious it needed no discussion. Criticism was in practice generically orientated: witness monuments of turn-of-the-century scholarship like Gaston Paris's literary history, Alfred Jeanroy's work on the troubadours or Joseph Bedier's study of the chansons de geste? Like most critics, Paris, Jeanroy and Bedier were using genre to classify texts, to facilitate their own and their readers' responses to them, and to distinguish one type of text from another. It is assumed in their work that medieval writers and readers had an equally keen sense of genre. With the advent of structuralism some medievalists did question the usefulness of genre as a critical tool. Notably Paul Zumthor and Pierre Bee argued that medieval writers had no notion of genre as we would understand it. What modern critics think of as generic terms in early medieval texts, they suggest, are too vague, or used too confusingly, to merit being thought of as genres.10 To the medieval mind the principal categorization of literature would have been a division between Latin and vernacular texts. Zumthor and Bee are interested not in genres, but in a 'typology' of texts, and this they elaborate using methodologies derived from structuralist linguistics. Their aim, in other words, was to classify texts according to objectifiable linguistic structures. Such an approach begs a number of questions. Are generic terms necessary for genres to exist, or can generic filiations be signalled simply by formal and thematic similarities between texts? How do we account for the fact that most vernacular literary manuscripts appear to be organized according to generic criteria? 11 What of classical and medieval genre theory in Latin? 12 Surely this indicates that the medieval mind did have a concept of genre. Does the fact that a text is written in the vernacular mean that it should be denied the basic form of

Introduction

5

critical appreciation implicit in generic designations in Latin, designations which were presumably available to most literate people in the Middle Ages? Should we expect frequent use of generic terms or precision in the use of such terms from writers who were not professional critics? Are generic terms used frequently or precisely in literary texts of any period? Above all Zumthor and Bee's work begs questions in relation to genre theory because their resulting ' typologies', in Zumthor's case of twelfth-century French literature as a whole and in Bee's of the Old French and Occitan lyric, resemble traditional generic classification: witness Zumthor's categories - le grand chant courtois, le romany Vepopee - or Bee's - 1'aube, lapastourelle, la chanson

and so on. Moreover, though both critics stress formal structure, both resort to content in their classification, even though this is often masked by other terms such as registre; they thus stray from their own theoretical frameworks - grounded in linguistic structure - into the realm of more traditional genre criticism, which involves consideration of content as well as form. Subsequent criticism of medieval texts, though greatly enriched by many of their insights, has largely ignored Zumthor's and Bee's views on genre and Zumthor himself would appear to have abandoned his earlier position on genre. 13 Major contributions to French medieval literary studies over the last twenty years have been unable to do without an idea of genre and there seems to be an implicit consensus that it is an essential critical tool. Genre is still, as it always has been, one of the mainstays of criticism of French medieval literature. So what is meant by genre? Why is it important to make a distinction between genres and to classify literary texts in this way? Traditionally Plato and Aristotle are seen as the first theorists of genre in western culture, introducing broad categories for literary texts such as comedy, tragedy and epic. 14 Writers signal an affiliation to a group of earlier and contemporary texts through adopting or adapting generic conventions, but it is also the first basic tool every reader uses to interpret a text. Should the text be taken seriously or not? Is it tragic? Is it heroic? It is through the assignation of a text to a genre that a reader decides

6


how to approach it, even when the text escapes straightforward generic classification. From the outset there seem to have been two criteria for defining genre: form and content. The interplay between them is discussed by Mikhail Bakhtin and Tzvetan Todorov, 15 but it is Fredric Jameson who has treated their relation in greatest detail. In his essay 'Magical narratives' Jameson defines two strands of genre criticism, which he calls the syntactic and semantic, depending on whether genres are defined according to form or content. He sees Northrop Frye as the chief modern proponent of the semantic approach, and Vladimir Propp as the chief proponent of the syntactic approach. 16 In some senses Jameson's account is fair to neither critic, for neither defines genre exclusively in terms of form or content; it would be truer to say that each foregrounds one or the other, the other criterion being secondary, sometimes irrelevant. Jameson, on the other hand, suggests that both syntactic and semantic features serve to constitute a genre: genre is therefore ' that literary discourse which may be examined either in terms of a fixed form or in terms of mode, but which must be susceptible of study from both of these perspectives optionally'. 17 Obviously classifying texts into genres helps critics to deal with, or in Jonathon Culler's words to naturalize, 18 large bodies of texts that have semantic and syntactic similarities, but for Jameson the idea of genre is more purposeful than this. He draws on Claude Levi-Strauss's theories on the symbolic significance of cultural artefacts to elucidate his own view that texts embody ideology. In Jameson's Marxist critique of LeviStrauss art represents a symbolic act wherein contradictions, inequalities and injustices within societies are resolved and justified. Art does not 'represent' social reality by providing a 'realistic' image of it; on the contrary, it distorts it to explain and justify it through symbolic representations. Thus for Jameson ' the aesthetic act is itself ideological, and the production of an aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right, with the function of inventing imaginary or formal "solutions" to unresolvable social contradictions' (Political Unconscious, p. 79). A genre represents one

Introduction

7

way of offering imaginary resolutions to problematic contradictions and tensions. At different moments in history different genres will arise in response to different tensions; synchronically, different genres may operate at the same historical moment to offer different solutions to the same set of tensions or to address different contradictions that are problematic in a society at a given moment. If these contradictions are resolved in real life, the genre will evolve in response to new tensions or disappear. Genres are not stable constructs, but mutate and evolve according to the historical moment. Thus for Todorov a genre is ' not only an intersection of social and formal properties, but also a fragment of collective memory'. 19 In other words, since through genre every text is connected to a body of texts, the point of interest is less the view of the individual writer (though this is not without interest), but a text's participation in a larger discursive formation at a specific point in history. History, according to this view, has to be seen as what Jameson, following Louis Althusser, calls 'an absent cause'. Since all writing (including ' non-literary' writing) is informed by ideology and cannot therefore offer an unmediated representation of reality, history ' is inaccessible to us except in textual form' {Political Unconscious, p. 35), always behind a text, never in it. This does not mean that history is just' another text', but rather that we can only reconstruct it by placing texts in their dialogical relationship with the Real, which is only knowable mediated in textual form. The principal interest of literary texts from the historical viewpoint would thus not be their mimetic qualities, but their status as fragments of collective memory or, to push Todorov's formulation a little further, as fragments of collective fantasy. The question ' was the world really like that?' which medievalists, both historians and literary critics, have frequently asked of the texts they work on is largely redundant, and all too often non-literary evidence suggests that medieval literature does not accurately reflect contemporary social structures or practices. But rather than discard literature as having no historical value, we could perhaps ask more pertinent historicizing questions of texts. Why did writers choose to represent the world in this way? What was

8


the symbolic value of these representations and fantasies to contemporary readers? Putting the syntactic and semantic on an equal footing has important consequences for genre theory, for it shows that all genres inscribe an ideology and therefore that the adoption of a form in itself implies an engagement with ideology. In genre, therefore, content is given form, but more importantly there is a 'content of form', given that form signals an ideological parti pris (Political Unconscious, p. 99). It is the notion of'content of form' which distinguishes Marxist genre theory from general discourse theory, whereas the notion of ' content given form' allows us to distinguish genres which use the same form, for instance in the French Middle Ages romance and much hagiography, chansons de geste and some early hagiography, or fabliaux and other short narratives like lais. Jameson's is an uncompromisingly historical view of genre which exceeds both the formal view of genre as an aesthetic category and the notion that there are universal, ahistorical 'modes' in literary production. However, texts do not simply dialogue with history; they also dialogue with each other and intertextuality is thus crucial to the functioning of genres. The notion of intertextuality rests on the assumption that no writer writes in a vacuum; rather texts imitate, dialogue with, surpass and subsume other texts, which will have informed the writer's choice of form and subject matter, consciously and unconsciously.20 The implicit intertext for any text is therefore other texts of the same genre, since the writer signals a specific relationship to these other texts by adopting the form and engaging with the ideology of the genre, even if this is done parodically or with a view to transforming the genre in some way. A genre will evolve not just in response to historical circumstance, but as writers (albeit themselves conditioned by their historical moment) imitate and transform it syntactically and semantically. Generic boundaries are not defined in influential, but unwritten rule-books; they are constructed and transformed through textual production. The intertext may function across genres as well as within a genre. A writer may use the form of one genre, yet deploy

Introduction

9

themes and motifs which are ' marked' as belonging to another and this may signal the establishment of a conscious or unconscious dialectic between different ideologies. 21 It is axiomatic in an historical view of genre, a view which contends that genres are not ahistorical, universal modes, but rather that they mutate and evolve according to historical circumstance, that genres are not discrete and that there are no easily defined, impenetrable boundaries between them. Old genres give birth to new genres; synchronically as different genres respond to the same historical tensions, it is inevitable that they will dialogue with each other and that texts which appear to be generically hybrid are produced. Yet if intertextuality functions across genres, this does not mean that generic boundaries are thereby destroyed, for any implied dialogue between different generic positions - different ideologies - can only be inferred with reference to 'pure' generic paradigms, which writers expect their readers to recognize. If the creative act is determined by genre, so is the reader's or listener's response. As Hans Robert Jauss argues, a reader approaches every text with a' horizon of expectations... familiar to him from earlier texts, which as such can then be varied, extended, corrected, but also transformed, crossed out, or simply reproduced'. 22 For Jauss variation and correction determine both the boundaries of generic structure and the audience's aesthetic response to any one text. As the author will be influenced both by his or her audience's actual response and by the response he or she expects, the evolution of genres is determined by reception as well as by the writer's conscious and unconscious engagement with genre. An audience uses its sense of genre to situate a text and therefore to judge it. Because of the dialogue he perceives between a text and its public, Jauss too highlights the ideological content of genre, seeing ' the work of art... as a sign and carrier of meaning for a social reality' and suggesting that' the aesthetic is defined as a principal mediation and a mode of organization for extra-aesthetic meanings' (Toward an Aesthetic, p. 108).

A sense of genre then is essential both to literary creation and to the reception of literary texts. Genres are neither stable nor

io


discrete constructs: they evolve in response to historical events, situations, individual writers' texts and to audience reception. Theorists as diverse as Northrop Frye, Hans Robert Jauss, Fredric Jameson, Mikhail Bakhtin and Tzvetan Todorov all agree that genres are inherently ideological literary constructs. Since all but one of these theorists are writing from a perspective that is informed by Marxism, it is not surprising that they see the ideological basis of genres as grounded in class antagonism. Only Jameson mentions gender in his discussion of ideology, and then only to reiterate the tired Marxist truism that sexual oppression in western societies is a relic of a now defunct mode of production and that with the elimination of class, what he calls the 'false problem' of gender will disappear {Political Unconscious, pp. 99-100). But to subsume gender to class in this way is not only profoundly androcentric, it also grossly oversimplifies and misrepresents the problem, as feminist theory demonstrates. For instance, it is well known that men and women have a different relationship to class: whereas a man's class is usually determined by his relationship to an economic means of production, a woman's is usually determined by her relationship to a man, most often her father, husband or brother. 23 This implies that for gender inequalities to disappear, it is not class that needs to be dismantled, but male-dominated kinship structures which, although undoubtedly affected by class, operate at all levels of class hierarchies and within most, if not all, known cultures, whether or not they have class structures. Moreover, if gender hierarchies are a relic of a mode of production that preceded capitalism, it is not clear why they should disappear from subsequent modes of production when they have proved so tenacious within capitalism, nor why they are so common - universal according to some anthropologists in all cultures, capitalist and non-capitalist. I use gender here in a specifically feminist sense: that is I make the distinction between sex, which designates the differences between men and women which are anatomically or biologically determined, and gender which designates the meanings given these differences in culture. 24 Some theorists women working at the interface of feminist and gay theory -

Introduction

11

have recently questioned the simplicity and validity of this sex/gender opposition. Judith Butler, for example, argues convincingly that feminists have been too willing to assume that 'sex' is a prediscursive, 'natural' state upon which cultures construct arbitrary meanings thereby to impart 'gender'. 'Sex' for Butler, is itself inevitably a gendered category: since we talk about sex in language as a notion of what came before gender, it must also be a cultural construct, part of a discursive formation. Feminism, suggests Butler, replaces the 'biology is destiny' aphorism, with the equally oppressive 'culture is destiny'. 25 Approaching the nature/nurture debate from a different angle Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick makes a similar point. Gay-affirmative and feminist writers, she argues, assume that as long as a phenomenon is deemed 'only cultural' it can be manipulated and controlled, yet if the constructionist feminist analysis of the sex/gender opposition is correct, history indicates that culture rather than biology is the oppressor of women and gays: progressive theories of sex/gender systems thus offer no grounds for optimism. 'If I had ever', Sedgwick writes, 'in any medium, seen any researcher or popularizer refer even once to any supposed gay-producing circumstances as the proper hormone balance, or the conducive endocrine environment, for gay generation, I would be less chilled by the breezes of all this technological confidence. ' 26 Although entirely persuaded by these critiques of the premises of gender theory I would contend that they are grounded in a growing unease with the notion of ' sex' rather than that of 'gender' and in a realization that understanding how culture (or biology) shapes lives does not make an agenda for change more realizable. It may be, as Butler argues {Gender Trouble, p. 7), that the continued 'sexing' of bodies into the categories 'male' and 'female' is less a response to 'nature', than to scientific and other cultural discourses which privilege gender and sexuality as hierarchical markers. However, this need not prevent a constructionist approach to gender, by which I mean an approach grounded in an understanding that masculinity and femininity are meanings constructed and attributed within culture, rather than biological givens; nor need one abandon

12


altogether a minimalist use of the category 'sex'. The meanings imparted to ' male' and ' female' bodies are not uniform across cultures, but the ascription of meanings using these categories is universal. 27 ' Sex' could thus simply be understood to mean ' the body'. That we are unable to conceive of a non-gendered or unsexed body just shows to what extent we are unable to think outside of the limitations of culture: we cannot think the unthinkable. One corollary of a constructionist approach to gender is that terms like 'man', 'woman', 'masculine', 'feminine', 'male' and ' female' do not have stable meanings either diachronically or synchronically; as Joan Scott suggests they are ' at once empty and overflowing categories', requiring interpretation. 28 Although many cultures (including that of medieval France) often seek to place gendered terms within rigid binary oppositions, a binary axis like 'masculine' and 'feminine' is, like other binary oppositions, susceptible to deconstruction. Firstly, and most obviously, any simple opposition between masculine and feminine is not symmetrical, but asymmetrical since one pole in the opposition within patriarchy is privileged and given more value. Secondly, a culture can sustain two or more models of the masculine or the feminine concurrently, witness the dominant symbols of Eve and Mary throughout the Middle Ages, or in medieval vernacular texts the competing models of masculinity represented by chevalerie and clergie. Thirdly, some constructions of gender are produced through exclusion rather than opposition; for example in some texts the 'opposite' of the ideal man is not a woman, but another type of man. For the feminist, gender is best not understood as binary, but as multiple.29 To accept gender binarism is to accept the oppressive discourse of culture and we should be seeking to understand that discourse, rather than to perpetuate it. As Joan Scott says ' we need a refusal of the fixed and permanent quality of the binary opposition, a genuine historicization and deconstruction of the terms of sexual difference' (Gender, pp. 41-2). For some feminist theorists all hierarchies are predicated on gender hierarchies and incorporate a sex/gender system inasmuch as the prestige and position of men is determined in

Introduction

13

some way by their relationship to women, and vice versa. Gender would thus have a foundational role in the formation of ideologies. On the basis of empirical archaeological evidence and feminist anthropological theory Gerda Lerner suggests in The Creation of Patriarchy that rather than the subordination of women being a product of private property as Frederick Engels argues in The Origin of the Family', private property and the ensuing stratification of men in human societies were predicated on the control of women.30 Lerner locates the 'creation of patriarchy 5 in the transition from hunter/gatherer to agricultural modes of production, in which the supply of labour to work the fields becomes the prime concern. Archaeological evidence indicates that early agricultural communities began to take women as hostages, but killed conquered males. Treating women as slaves only served to highlight the value they had to agricultural communities: without children there was no labour force; without women there were no children. As Claude Meillassoux shows in relation to modern Africa, in agricultural communities it is more important to control the means of reproduction than the means of production. 31 With the appropriation of the sexuality and reproductive capacities of some women, Lerner argues, women slaves became the first private property, and, she assumes, men became the first proprietors. To 'possess' a woman indicated a man's importance to the community, it conferred status on a man and women were exchanged between men as a gesture of good will, as a means of conferring status. As this implies, Lerner's account of the origin of patriarchy is indebted to Levi-Strauss's work on the importance of the exchange of gifts in primitive societies and to his view that marriage is a form of gift exchange (see Les Structures elementaires). Men bind themselves to each other through bonds of kinship for which women are the conduits and thereby communities are formed. The exchange of women is a system that permeates many human societies in some form, including that of medieval France and, at least until recently, our own. The exchange of women and the concomitant incest taboo (which keeps women circulating) are the very foundation of culture as we know it.

14


This is not to say that without them there could be no culture, but rather that we have yet to discover what such a culture would be like. In her seminal and influential critique of Levi-Strauss's work Gayle Rubin argues that although he is correct to place the oppression of women within social systems he fails to see the consequence of such systems for women, for ' if women are for men to dispose of, they are in no position to give themselves away'. 32 In societies for which the exchange of women is a fundamental basis, men are the givers, women the gifts, men the subjects, women the objects. Rubin further suggests that psychoanalysis offers a different explanation for the same phenomenon: the phallus, taken in the Lacanian sense as a symbol of authority, is exchanged between men, transferred from father to son, from the giver of a woman to the receiver. It is axiomatic in Rubin's argument that gender has an intricate and complex relation with sexuality. In the wake of Rubin's work, feminist and gay theorists are showing with increasing clarity and sophistication how western patriarchy relies on the imposition of a coercive and narrowly defined model of compulsory heterosexuality which oppresses men as well as women: without it kinship systems predicated upon the exchange of women could not function. For some theorists, Judith Butler and Diana Fuss for instance, gender, sexuality and identity in western culture are inextricably entwined: subjects are constituted through repeated 'performance 5 as they imitate (unknowingly) absent models which prescribe behaviour, sexual object choice, modes of desire. 33 Gender and sexuality are not the same thing, but nor can they be theorized separately. Like gender, sexuality is not ahistorical ;34 the value and meaning given to sexual acts and desires evolve according to historical circumstance. Although the primary focus of this book is gender, the role of sexuality in the construction of gender and ideology in various genres will be addressed. The sex/gender systems produced by the exchange of women are not an ahistorical feature of human society; they evolved differently in different societies. Sex/gender systems are cultural constructs and therefore the symbolic value different cultures

Introduction

15

place on gender varies enormously. Furthermore, the representation of gendered individuals within cultural artefacts like texts need not reflect accurately the situation of gendered individuals within historical sex/gender systems; on the contrary such representations may distort social structures to justify and explain differences and hierarchies that are the product of culture rather than of biological differences.35 Like genres, gender distinctions are subject to and produced by discourse; the inscription of gender hierarchies in literary texts is therefore, like genres, a product as much of collective fantasy as of mimesis. Representations of gender may thus vary within the same culture - from genre to genre in literature for instance and this is hardly surprising since like the historical sex/gender systems such representations mediate and distort, they too have symbolic value. We need to ask whom the gendered models and images we contemplate in literary texts were for, what they meant to them as well of course as what they mean to us now. The preceding account prioritizes kinship systems as foundational in the construction of gender. This need not pose theoretical problems for the study of medieval French culture, in which kinship clearly is of paramount importance, but kinship is not the only constituent of gender. As Joan Scott suggests, other factors - education, the labour market, the polity and so on - need consideration in gender theory; but the two richest theoretical domains in modern western culture for theorizing gender - anthropology and psychoanalysis - both assume that for an individual subject to enter social structures like the education system, the labour market, the polity, she or he must already be gendered and that it is kinship which enacts the initial engendering process.36 Moreover if factors other than gender structure hierarchies - most notably today race, caste, education, class, and sexuality - all of these intersect with gender in some way. Why is the reaction to interracial sexual encounters different depending on the sex of the participants? Why are there proportionally fewer women scientists than male scientists and why are women graduates less successful at reaching senior positions than male graduates? Where are class distinctions without economic units (families) which are

16


composed of gendered individuals with gender-specific relations to production, and why do families which do not conform to normative models (because there is only one parent or because the parents are of the same sex) fall outside accepted behaviour patterns in some classes? What is homosexuality without a notion of normative masculinity or femininity? As Scott argues, 'gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power' even in areas where gender does not appear to be at issue [Gender, p. 44).

No ideology, nor its inscription in texts, can be disassociated from the sex/gender system of the culture in which it operates, even if superficially gender does not appear to be at issue. It will now be clear why I think gender is an important factor to bear in mind in genre criticism. It is not simply that different genres offer different representations of masculinity and femininity, as is obvious from even a cursory glance at medieval French and Occitan literature. If genres represent constructed symbolic resolutions to social tensions and contradictions and thereby inscribe ideologies, the construction and representation of gender within those ideologies is crucial to an understanding of how they function. This is not to say that gender is the only factor which will allow an adequate understanding of the differences between genres; other factors - race, class, economics - contribute to the formation of ideologies, while formal and aesthetic considerations also play a role. My point is simply that a genre cannot he fully understood without a consideration of gender. My view of the role of gender in genre theory is thus close to that of Joan Scott's on the role of gender in historical theory: ' I make no claim to total vision, nor to having found the category that will finally explain all inequality... My claim is more modest: that gender offers both a good way of thinking about history, about the ways in which hierarchies of difference - inclusions and exclusions - have been constituted and of theorizing (feminist) politics. ' 37 Gender and genre are likely to interact, both synchronically and diachronically, in a meaningful way.

Introduction

17

THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

My argument then is that the genres of medieval French (including Anglo-Norman) and Occitan literature I will study - the chanson de geste, romance, the canso, hagiography and the fabliaux - are predicated on distinct ideologies and that these ideologies may only be fully elucidated by studying the way in which each genre mediates the sex/gender system of its culture. For some of these genres, particularly those concerned with love, gender is the key to understanding the underlying ideology; for others it is perhaps less obviously central, but none of these genres can be properly understood without taking its representation of gender into account. The scope of this book is wide, and it is consequently selective both in the genres it treats and in the texts it examines within those genres. It would have been impossible to cover all literary texts written in the vernacular in France, Anglo-Norman England and Occitania during the Middle Ages; it is equally impossible to give a comprehensive account of the genres I have chosen. I have selected these five genres because of their importance, but also because they are representative of different aspects of vernacular literary culture. The chanson de geste exemplifies a literary tradition born of feudal society in crisis before the impact of'courtly culture', but which then has to deal with this impact and its own imploding ideology; romance and the canso are the two main genres of 'courtly' culture; vernacular hagiography provides a space in which secular cultures (including the 'courtly') meet a sacred, Latin tradition ; in thefabliaux' courtly' culture encounters a less ethically charged view of the world. Within a genre I have often selected a particular intertextual strand in order to highlight a particular diachronic development and, as with all processes of selection, exclusions are no doubt as significant as inclusions. Amongst genres I will not be examining, but which would have lent themselves to the same style of analysis are beast epic, estates satire, allegorical romance (like the Rose), non-courtly lyric genres and lais. The inclusion of Occitan material - particularly the Occitan canso - is intended to reflect the fact that despite

18


clear political and social differences between northern and southern France, there was constant contact and cultural exchange throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 38 Literary texts and genres certainly crossed the linguistic boundaries between Occitania, Northern France and AngloNorman England. Many studies of Old French literature suffer, in my view, from a neglect of Occitan material. I have confined my study primarily to the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, with just the occasional foray into earlier and later periods, because to extend the historical scope of the book would make it difficult to historicize the development of genres. This is a literary study, but I hope to set my readings of literary texts in an historical context, even though I will only be able to offer a sketchy presentation of this context within the confines of this book. I will suggest that the representation of gender and its symbolic value within a variety of genres evolves in relation to important socio-historic tensions: the changing position of the knight within feudal hierarchies and the increasing power of the monarchy; the conflict between church and secular models of marriage; the tension between the clerk and the court to which he both did and did not belong; the rise of a monetary economy and the impact of this on the ' high culture' of the aristocracy. That the chapters of this book are structured according to generic criteria is hardly surprising, but it should not be inferred from this that I am suggesting these genres to be discrete. Indeed I will frequently contend that texts invite comparison with other genres, to bring competing ideologies and gender systems into play. Many, though possibly not all, of the texts studied in this book were intended for readers of the same social world: the aristocracy of France, Occitania, and England and its entourage, that is to say the mixture of noble men, women and clerks who met at the courts of the feudal aristocracy and royal houses of France and England. Often different genres offer different responses to the same historical tensions for the same readers. It would therefore be absurd to disregard the thematic unity of much medieval literature, and not to read one genre against another. Genre is a powerful device for writers

Introduction

19

and readers to indicate an interpretative framework for a text, but the ideological and formal barriers it erects are fluid and permeable. If many medievalists have embraced the structuralist and post-structuralist critical revolution as liberating and empowering, others have rejected recent trends, clinging to methods of empirical scholarship and textual criticism established in the nineteenth century. No medievalist can be indifferent to the historical problems posed by examining texts from the distant past, and for some the application of modern critical theory to medieval texts is anachronistic. 39 It might, for instance, be objected that it is anachronistic to apply a constructionist concept like 'gender', a late twentieth-century theoretical term, to a culture and a period which apparently had an essentialist view of sex and consequently no concept of gender. My own position in the debate concerning the relevance of critical theory to medieval studies will already be clear and I see little point in elaborating in detail a view that must be obvious: each generation of medievalists must ask new questions, the point being not simply to find out about the past, but to dialogue with it. Who can conduct a dialogue with someone else's questions? But I would like to make a specific point about the 'modernity' (indeed the 'post-modernity') of many of the ideas of modern critical theory, of which a constructionist view of gender is just one. The Middle Ages has no metalanguage about vernacular texts which corresponds to the style of writing we call literary criticism and although there were a number of modes of writing (usually in Latin) about writing and texts, there is similarly no precise equivalent to 'literary theory'. It is thus not surprising that an idea like 'gender', produced by and in a variety of modern critical discourses has no exact equivalent in medieval texts. Yet it does not follow that medieval texts are unable to perform the same intellectual operations as modern texts. In her ground-breaking study of Chaucer's 'sexual poetics', Carolyn Dinshaw demonstrates Chaucer's constant exploratory engagement with gender politics in his writing. She comments 'Chaucer's literary concerns may sound quite modern... but I would prefer to say that our present-day critical

20


concerns turn out to be quite medieval 5 {Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, p. 17). Similarly, I have argued elsewhere that a remarkable thirteenth-century romance, known as the Roman de Silence, ' appears to engage deliberately with problems that interest modern theorists' ('Significance of Silence', p. 202): Silence theorizes the relationship between sex and gender, though it uses different terms to do so and seems to disturb deeply its author in the process. My point is that we should not assume all good ideas are the result of modern brain-waves. Modern thinkers, including many medievalists, have tended to invent for themselves a Middle Ages which they invest as the intellectual childhood of modern Europe in order to affirm their own maturity and sophistication. Medieval texts do not theorize gender in the same way as us, but this does not mean they do not theorize gender at all. As will be clear my work draws on a wide range of theoretical writers: marxist, structuralist, post-structuralist, feminist and gay literary theorists; structuralist and feminist anthropological theorists; feminist historical theorists; feminist and gay theorists in general. The use of anthropological theory perhaps requires some brief comment. I would suggest that it is apposite on two accounts. First, although medievalists cannot engage in fieldwork as anthropologists do since they study the past, they do need to cultivate a depaysement similar to that of the anthropologist before her/his object of study because of the chronological distance between medieval culture and our own. 40 Secondly, the nature of literacy and textuality in the Middle Ages means that surviving vernacular literary texts derive from and were addressed to a community. No autograph manuscripts survive from the period studied in this book and texts are thus always the product of at least two pens - the author's and the scribe's - usually many more, and some texts, notably chansons de geste, are clearly the work of more than one author. Furthermore, whatever the genre, reading vernacular texts usually meant reading aloud to a group of listeners, so texts were inviting a communal response in a manner unfamiliar to our post-Romantic, print culture, steeped as it is in an aesthetic of individual response to literary texts. Vernacular medieval texts

Introduction

21

had a symbolic value to the community qualitatively different from that of modern texts to their readership of individuals. Although they are written texts, they construct or contest values in the communal medium of the voice reading aloud, rather than in the more individualistic medium of the privately and silently read book.41 Since much anthropological theory particularly that influenced by Levi-Strauss's work on cultural artefacts upon which Jameson's theory of genre draws explicitly - stresses the importance of the ritual nature of cultural artefacts within a community, it is perhaps particularly pertinent to medieval vernacular texts. Of course, this is a different strand of anthropology from the feminist anthropologies of gender on which I have also drawn, but the two branches of the discipline can be fruitfully merged. What was the symbolic value of the gendered constructs of medieval texts to the communities for which they were destined? Were these constructs accepted and thereby naturalized or were they viewed as problematic and ideologically fraught? The readership and public of medieval vernacular literature certainly included women, but for the most part the texts were written and transmitted by men. To what extent are we dealing with ideologies produced by men for men and imposed upon women? Furthermore can we assume a unitary response from men and women respectively? I hope that this book will contribute towards answering these questions.

CHAPTER I

Monologic masculinity: the chanson de geste

Gender is a crucial element in the ideology of the chansons de geste since its ethical system is so exclusively masculine. This is not to say that there are no important women characters: for every poem in which women play only minor roles, there is another in which they play a significant part. But in the chansons de geste male characters are defined as individuals in relation to other men, whilst women are excluded from the genre's value system even, arguably, in poems where the influence of other genres is tangible. Many modern critics take this exclusion for granted: for instance it is revealing that in the text of an otherwise fascinating plenary address by Francois Suard on ' La chanson de geste comme systeme de representation du monde' delivered to the 1988 international conference of the Societe Rencesvals, I can locate no reference to women, even in the section entitled 'L'Organisation sociale' (pp. 259-68). Yet is not the exclusion of women from the systeme de representation du monde as worthy of

mention as the portrayal of the three (male) orders upon which Suard concentrates? The exclusion of women does not, of course, mean that chanson de geste heroes are somehow ungendered; on the contrary it genders them strongly and it has been suggested recently, notably by Sarah Kay, that women are deliberately excluded from the value system of the genre. 1 This strategy of exclusion invites investigation, particularly given the unrealistic image of society it produces, for as Micheline de Combarieu du Gres points out, in focusing on war, an activity in which only some men engaged for forty days of the year away from their domestic environment, chansons de geste give a curiously unrealistic picture of life in the Middle Ages.2 22

Monologic masculinity

23

It is not coincidental in relation to the exclusion of women from the value system of the chanson de geste that a number of texts derive their impetus from the relationship of a pair of men. The centrality of the idealization, or alternately of the disintegration, of male bonding in four twelfth-century chansons de geste which have clear intertextual connections and which are central to the tradition - the Oxford Roland, the Paris Roland, Ami et Amile, Raoul de Cambrai - will be the main focus of this

chapter. One consequence of the exclusion of women from the ethical system of the genre and of the foregrounding of male bonding (or its disintegration) is that ideals of the masculine gender are not constructed in relation to the feminine, but in relation to other models of masculinity. Yet because the texts also draw on a strong and pervasive myth of brotherhood, of the unity of the masculine, they attempt to produce what I shall call a ' monologic' construction of gender, a model which has difficulty in tolerating difference and which therefore engages in an obsessional, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to repress and marginalize alterity. I shall argue that if the early chanson de geste predicates an ostensibly monologic ideology on this construction of masculinity, the predilection of later poets for exploring the success or failure of male bonding in a clearly signalled process of intertextual dialogue points implicitly to a recognition within the genre that its central ideal - male bonding and solidarity is inherently problematic and consequently open to question. Thus it is the genre's very quest for the monologic which produces dialogism as its ideology is debated and reworked. In conclusion, I shall examine briefly the role of women characters in two texts, the Chanson de Guillaume and Daurel et Beton. I will

suggest that the inclusion of women characters who support the genre's masculine ideology, whose role is to supplement ineffectual or unworthy male characters, and who diagnose what is wrong with the male order also points to an anxiety that the genre's ideology and its monologic construction of masculinity are flawed. This anxiety produces further dialogism. As Kimberlee Anne Campbell argues, the portrayal of women in the chanson de geste exemplifies how the genre succeeds in

24


questioning its values whilst appearing 'ideologically normative'. 3 SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE

Modern evaluations of the chansons de geste have been dominated by one of the earliest texts to have survived, the Oxford Roland. The genre's renown amongst modern readers rests almost exclusively on the spell-binding effect of this one text, which has so dominated critical writing and university curricula that other poems have tended to be ignored, or compared unfavourably with the originary work of genius. This tendency has been exacerbated by the untiring interest of some specialists in the origins of the texts we possess in a necessarily unknowable oral culture; theories about the oral composition and circulation of the chansons have led some scholars to view the surviving texts with the possible sacred exception of the Oxford Roland - as debased reflections of lost, living originals. Yet the chanson de geste as we know it is not an inherently decadent or petrified genre. On the contrary it is highly dynamic with large numbers of texts being produced and written down throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The survival of a hundred or so poems in over three hundred manuscripts is ample testimony to the dynamism of the chanson de geste as a written genre.4 However, quite apart from the necessity to position oneself in the interminable scholarly debate on origins, no consideration of the chansons de geste can afford to ignore the question of the circumstances of their composition and transmission, for much of the genre's dynamism is due to the high degree of intertextuality within the tradition, which derives in part from the circulation of some texts in an oral form before their preservation in manuscripts, and in part from the conditions in which many of the texts are preserved whether or not they circulated orally at an earlier stage. For example, possibly as a result of oral transmission many texts have survived in several distinct versions, which makes it possible to trace the development of a narrative, to discern reworkings of earlier texts (albeit not texts that have survived, but lost common sources) in later texts. Thus, if a few, often early chansons•, like the Oxford Roland or the


25

Chanson de Guillaume, are preserved in so-called manuscrits de

jongleur, we often possess later versions of the same narrative, as we do with the Roland and the Guillaume; some of these may reflect oral traditions, others written remaniements.5 In contrast to poems in ' manuscrits de jongleur \ many others are preserved in cyclical manuscripts which sustain a narrative thread through a number of texts composed by different poets.6 In addition, some texts, possibly the Oxford Roland itself, may not be the work of one poet, but the result of the expansion of an earlier poem by a continuator. 7 The phenomena of remaniements, of cyclical manuscripts, and of continuations make the chanson de geste a highly dialogical genre. Texts dialogue with each other, as remanieurs, the compilers of manuscripts, or continuators seek to resolve, develop and rework problems and themes from earlier poems. One way of gauging the reception of a chanson de geste, of assessing how it redefines or transgresses the boundaries of the genre, is to study the intertext of remaniements, of poems associated with it in the manuscript tradition, or of continuations, which is what I shall do with the Oxford Roland. As I have suggested (p. 8), genres are shaped through textual production, not in rule-books. Should the Oxford Roland be taken, as it frequently has been, as a foundational text for the genre? The Oxford Roland is not a typical chanson de geste either stylistically or in terms of content. Composed around 1100, it is a good fifty years earlier than most of the texts to have survived, even though earlier versions of other texts may have existed. In addition, there is little evidence that the Roland as it survives in the Oxford manuscript was widely known in the Middle Ages. The modern obsession with the Oxford Roland has without doubt produced a misapprehension of the genre. The legend of Roncevaux, however, was immensely popular. Thus the early date of the Oxford Roland and the fact that later French Roland poems derive from a common source invite an approach wherein these are read against it, not as foundational or originary, but rather because it is the earliest inscription of an ideal which is then debated, reworked and transformed. 8 Furthermore, a substantial number of other texts, some outside

26


the Roland tradition, appear to respond to problems which are posed for the first time in the Oxford Roland, so that they can be read if not as direct responses, then certainly as responses to a text like it. A large number of later chansons de geste can be read against the Oxford Roland as attempts to deal with issues which we encounter for the first time in it and which are central to the evolution of the genre. The Oxford Roland is clearly a text which promotes an ideal and it has been used for ideological purposes in modern times as much as in the Middle Ages.9 With compelling lyricism and poetic grandeur it promotes an ideal of a seamless and harmonious community of fighting men, who will stand and fight as a group come what may: 10 no La bataille est merveilluse e pesant: Mult ben i fiert Oliver e Rollant, Li arcevesques plus de mil colps i rent, Li duze per ne s'en targent ni'ent, E li Franceis fierent cumunement.

1415

The battle is extraordinary and intense: Roland and Oliver strike boldly in it, the archbishop renders more than a thousand blows there, the twelve peers are not tardy in the least and all the French strike together. The battlefield is the space in which men are united, fight together and die together. There are no women there; it is a masculine space, in which the knight's duty is clear and apparently unproblematic. This absence and exclusion of women serves to underline the fact that the heroism of these men is heavily gendered and the audience, whether medieval or modern, which responds positively to Roland and Oliver as heroes colludes in the construction of this exclusive model of masculinity. Furthermore, the order in which the knights are mentioned here is important. Oliver and Roland appear, as they often do, as a pair and if Oliver (unusually) is mentioned first in this instance, this places Roland's name in an emphatic position at the end of the line. Perhaps significantly, the only other individual to be separated from the group is Turpin;


27

otherwise the primacy of Roland and Oliver as a couple within the immediate community of the twelve peers and the larger community of li Franceis is evident. Much ink has been spilt over the nature of Roland as archetypal epic hero, usually to attribute to him timeless humanist values such as humility (ultimately), stoicism or bravery. Is he a good guy, worthy of our admiration? (The answer is unsurprisingly nearly always 'yes'.) Is he a Christian martyr or just a tough guy? Is he guilty ofdesmesure and if so does he repent of it? Is he patriotic? The answers to these questions are usually determined by reading Roland's character against Oliver's.11 It is assumed, because the poem's structure and brilliant rhetoric foreground Roland, that Roland is right and consequently that Oliver must be wrong. Oliver's marginalization is reinforced by the fact that Turpin takes his place at Roland's side before the hero's death; as Turpin says to Roland 'Cist camp est nostre, mercit Deu - vostre e mien' (2183: ' this field is ours, thank God, yours and mine'). But reading the positions of Roland and Oliver as mutually exclusive and assuming Oliver's view is simply discarded misrepresents the poem, which goes to some lengths to portray the pair as a couple, as sharing an outlook. Two studies of characterization in the Oxford Roland point to a different way of reading the confrontations between Roland and Oliver. Francois Suard sees the centrality of Roland and Oliver as a couple as paramount to the text's ethos: 'le poete, lui, ne choisit pas, se plaisant plutot a nous montrer qu'Olivier peut devenir Roland et Roland Olivier, tellement riche et complexe est l'ideal vassalique'; this leads him to conclude ' il n'y a pas de personnage epique veritable que celui-la qui, dans une chanson de geste, se situe a l'interieur d'un couple', meaning of course un coupletfhommes.12This would suggest that it is the couple's similarities not their differences which give Roland's heroism its impetus. Patricia Harris Stablein's reading of the character of Roland supports this view: she suggests that Roland and Oliver should be read less as characters than as competing elements of the same heroic force, which disperse but consistently ' reunite in a still denser heroic form \ 1 3 Reading the

28


couple as identical as well as different has interesting consequences for an analysis of Roland and Oliver as competing models of masculinity. The poem may invite us to consider the differences between the two heroes, yet at the same time it suggests they are, indeed must be, identical. Roland, as a gendered individual is not contrasted and compared to someone of the other sex in this text, nor to a man who is significantly different from him (I shall return to the role of Ganelon and to that of the Saracens), but to another man like himself. The significant alternative to Roland's model of masculinity is a man who is a reflection of himself. The 'other' is the 'same' despite any superficial appearance of difference. Masculinity in the Oxford Roland is constructed as monologic inasmuch as it seems to have no significant relational or differential opposite pole. Interpreting the characters of Roland and Oliver as specular will strike a chord with readers of modern feminist theorists like Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler who argue that identity (necessarily masculine within patriarchal discourse) is always constructed within a masculine economy in relation to another model of the masculine. The phallogocentric signifying system would have as its purpose what Butler calls a 'totalizing goal', a demonstration of the supremacy, unity and indestructibility of the masculine, which excludes the feminine. 14 Is this how the Oxford Roland functions and to what extent is it totalizing? Does the model of masculine unity it promotes sustain itself? If the Oxford Roland promotes an ideal, it none the less presents its material in a problematic and paradoxical manner. As Stephen Nichols has argued ' the interest of this work, its freshness, lies in its refusal to reveal its ultimate purpose immediately' and he amply demonstrates how the Oxford Roland may be read as a hermeneutical challenge. 15 To a large extent its ambiguity can be attributed to its unique style, which often makes it hard to deduce a clear view of events. This is probably why it has provoked such diverging interpretations in modern times and why, when other texts are read against it, they seem to answer questions it leaves open. At crucial points the celebrated lyric laisses similaires leave us uncertain as to

Mono logic masculinity

29

whether something happens three times slightly differently, or whether we are given three versions of the same event. In either case, how should we determine which version (or combination of different versions) of the action supplies the 'true 5 meaning? In some instances subsequent laisses blatantly contradict each other. For example when Roland hears Ganelon propose him as leader of the rearguard he has two contradictory responses. In laisse 59 he is frosty, but polite:' Sire parastre mult vos dei aveir cher' (753:'my lord stepfather, I must indeed hold you dear'). There is no hint of the invective to come in laisse 60: ' Ahi! culvert, malvais horn de put aire' (763: 'alas! you villain, you evil son of a bitch'). Roland's vituperative tone in laisse 60 is introduced with a hint of reprise (761), which is often suggestive of simultaneity in the Oxford Roland, but read in sequence laisse 59 only allows us to deduce Roland shows respect to Ganelon. Which laisse should we accept as offering the 'true' meaning? The answer is probably both and neither. Throughout the Oxford poem, Roland is pulled between hostility to Ganelon and a desire not to hear him criticized because of their family ties: laisses 59-60 are emblematic of Roland's equivocal relationship to Ganelon. 16 It is significant that subsequent versions of the Chanson de Roland resolve contradictions such as these. Ganelon becomes a completely despicable traitor (which he certainly is not in the Oxford poem); thus one of the Venice texts concludes its prologue 'Des or comenga li traiment de Gayne' (Venice 4, 6: 'at this point [the tale of] Ganelon's treachery began'), thereby inviting an interpretation of the whole poem as the narrative of Ganelon's treachery rather than of Roland's heroism, and all subsequent versions contain repetitive diatribes against Ganelon which are not in the Oxford text. 17 Tellingly laisse 60 in the Oxford Roland is unique to this version; in other versions Roland's response to Ganelon is entirely respectful at this stage. Where other versions seek to offer univocal interpretations of the narrative, the Oxford poem seeks to suspend judgement, supplying us with two alternative readings. Suspension of judgement is frequent in the Oxford Roland and it is usually generated by the poet's brilliant exploitation of the

30


laisse form, particularly of reprises and laisses similaires. Units of

narrative are juxtaposed which may be simultaneous or sequential; these may ' overlay' each other to produce meaning cumulatively, but they can also contradict each other without resolving contradictions. 18 The most striking instances of this are the two horn scenes in which Roland and Oliver confront each other, and it is this confrontation - and its implications which I believe to be the central 'problem' of the text. Why the confrontation between Roland and Oliver and not, for instance, that of Roland and Ganelon, or Roland and the Saracens? The Oxford Roland derives much of its power from confrontation. The two most important confrontations would initially appear to be between Roland and Ganelon and between Christians and Saracens. Depending on which confrontation is foregrounded one opts for a so-called Germanic or a so-called Catholic interpretation. According to the former the text inscribes an ideology which has its origins in Germanic clan warfare; according to the latter the Oxford Roland is primarily a text about Christian martyrdom. 19 However, though both Ganelon and the Saracens pose a serious threat to Roland's life, neither threatens his status as hero. The Christian/pagan opposition is not problematic: thus we are told in a peremptory yet deservedly famous line ' Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit' (1015: 'pagans are wrong and Christians are right'). Even the Saracens realize they are predestined to be on the losing side; they may harm Roland's body, but they cannot prevent the ultimate victory of Christianity, as is amply demonstrated when Baligant refers to his own army as ' La meie gent averse' (3295: 'my wicked people'). Similarly, Ganelon may get Roland killed, but he cannot undermine his heroic status. The first thing we are told about him in the Oxford text is that he is ' Guenes ...ki la traisun fist' (178: 'Ganelon... who committed the treachery') and his position at the negative pole of an opposition with Roland is as predetermined as that of the Saracens. If a level of ambiguity in the Oxford text is generated by Roland's tendency to defend Ganelon, or at least not to hear him criticized (see 1026-7), this is suppressed in subsequent versions by Roland's repeated criticism of him. It is significant, however,


31

that even in the Oxford text, since Ganelon is deemed to be the actual cause of Roland's death (3751-6), rather than the Saracens, the greatest threat to Roland comes from inside the Christian camp rather than from outside. The apparently seamless community has cracks. But if Ganelon successfully gets Roland killed there is no doubt that he is wrong to betray him: he poses no threat to Roland's value as a hero. The only serious challenge to Roland's heroic status comes from Oliver. That the oppositional voice should be his is significant, for the text privileges male bonding as the supreme emotional experience of the ideal knight: 151

Li quens Rollant, quant veit mort sun ami, Gesir adenz, a la tere sun vis, Mult dulcement a regreter le prist: 6 Sire cumpaign, tant mar fustes hardiz! Ensemble avum estet e anz e dis; Ne m' fesis mal, ne jo ne 1' te forsfis. Quant tu es morz, dulur est que jo vif!'

2025

2030

Count Roland, when he sees his friend is dead, lying facing the ground, starts to lament him softly: 'my lord companion, alas that you were so brave! We have been together many years and days; you never did me any wrong, nor did I act badly towards you. Since you are dead, it is painful for me to be alive!'

Yet the companions, who have lived together ' anz e dis' have a fundamental difference of opinion. As Peter Haidu suggests, the most significant oppositional voice to the ideal knight is his closest companion. 20 Like many others I think that in the two horn scenes from the point of view of a real, rather than a fictional military man, Oliver is right. In the first case he seeks to ensure victory rather than personal glory; in the second he is concerned to safeguard his honour once defeat is inevitable. 21 The gulf between the positions of Roland and Oliver is considerable and not resolved: 83

Dist Oliver: ' Paien unt grant esforz; De noz Franceis m'i semble aveir molt poi.

IO

5O

32

Gender and genre in medieval French literature Gumpaign Rollant, kar sunez vostre corn, Si Porrat Carles, si returnerat Tost.' Respunt Rollant: 'Jo fereie que fols! En dulce France en perdreie mun los. Sempres ferrai de Durendal granz colps; Sanglant en ert li branz entresqu'a Tor. Felun paien mar i vindrent as porz: Jo vos plevis, tuz sunt jugez a mort.' AOI

1055

8

* ' Cumpainz Rollant, l'olifan car sunez, Si l'orrat Carles, ferat Tost returner, Seccurrat nos li reis od sun barnet.' Respont Rollant: ' Ne placet Damnedeu Que mi parent pur mei seient blasmet Ne dulce France ja cheet en viltet! Einz i ferrai de Durendal asez, Ma bone espee que ai ceint al costet; Tut en verrez le brant ensanglentet. Felun paien mar i sunt asemblez: Jo vos plevis, tuz sunt a mort livrez.' 85

1060

1065

AOI

'Cumpainz Rollant, sunez vostre olifan, Si l'orrat Carles ki est as porz passant; Je vos plevis, ja returnerunt Franc.' 'Ne placet Deu', go li respunt Rollant, ' Que 90 seit dit pur nul hume vivant Ne pur paien que ja seie cornant! J a n'en avrunt reproece mi parent. Quant jo serai en la bataille grant E jo ferrai e mil colps e set cenz, De Durendal verrez Pacer sanglent. Franceis sunt bon, si ferrunt vassalment; Ja cil d'Espaigne n'avrunt de mort guarant.'

1070

1075

1080

Oliver says:' The pagans have a mighty army; there seems to me to be very few of us French. Roland, companion, blow your horn now: Charles will hear it and the army will turn back.' Roland replies: ' I would be foolish to do this! In sweet France I would lose face. I will strike great blows with Durendal at once; its blade will be bloody up to the gold [of its hilt]. The wicked pagans will rue the day they came to the mountain passes: I swear this to you, they are all condemned to die.'


33

' Roland, companion, blow your horn now: Charles will hear it and turn the army back; the king will help us with his barons.' Roland replies:' May it not please God that my kin should be blamed because of me! Nor that sweet France should fall into disrepute. Rather I will strike hard with Durendal, my good sword, which I have girded at my side; you will see the blade entirely bloody. The pagans will rue the day they gathered here: I swear this to you, they are all awaiting death.' 'Roland, companion, blow your horn. Charles, who is travelling through the mountain passes, will hear it; I swear to you that the Franks will return.' Roland replies this to him:' May it not please God that it should be said of me that I blew my horn because of any man alive or a pagan. My kin will never be reproached with this. When I am in the thick of the great battle, I will strike one thousand seven hundred blows; you will see Durendal's bloody steel. The French are good and they will strike boldly. The men of Spain will have no protection from death.' As with other instances oflaisses similaires, these hisses 'overlay' three different values: Roland is concerned firstly with his own glory (1055-6), secondly with the possibility that his kin and France will be shamed (1063-4), thirdly with the confrontation between Christians and Saracens (1075). The priority of any one of these is not easy to determine on a local level. Are Roland's heroism and devotion to duke France subordinate to his service to God? Or are patriotism and devotion to Christianity spaces in which he can enact his quest for glory? If laisses such as these appear to suspend judgement, the foregrounding of Roland within the poem, the reckless hero who sacrifices everything for personal glory, who chooses action over words, suggests the primacy of the interests of the individual over that of the group, whether it be the kin-group or the fellowship of knights. Furthermore, given that Roland is virtually canonized, then transported to heaven before our eyes, action and military prowess are invested with quasi-ethical value. 22 It is in this respect that Oliver's opposition to Roland is potentially subversive, for in the first horn scene Oliver implicitly views the survival of the rearguard as more important than Roland's quest for glory (1059-61), and therefore the good of the community as more important than that of the individual.

34


He reiterates this after the second horn scene, when he also suggests that Roland's desire for personal glory, as manifested in his decision not to blow his horn earlier, has shamed France, precisely what Roland ostensibly sought to avoid: Qo dist Rollant: 'Porquei me portez ire?' E il respont: ' Cumpainz, vos forsfeistes, Kar vasselage par sens nen est folie: Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie. Franceis sunt morz par vostre legerie; Jamais Karlon de nus n'avrat servise. Se m' crei'sez, venuz i fust mi sire; Cest bataille oiisum ja fenie, U pris u mort i fust li reis Marsilie. Vostre proecce Rollant, mar la veimes! Karles li magnes de nos n'avrat ai'e N'ert mais tel home entresqu'al Deu jui'se -. Vos i murrez, e France en ert hunie. Oi nus defalt la leial cumpaignie.' 1735 AOI Einz l'avesprer ert gref la departie. Roland says this: 'Why are you angry with me?' And he replies: 'Companion, you have done a terrible thing for bravery combined with wisdom is not folly: restraint is worth more than recklessness. Frenchmen have died because of your fickleness; Charles will no longer be served by us. If you had believed me, my lord would have come; we would already have finished this battle and King Marsilie would be captured or dead. Alas that we ever saw your bravery Roland. Charles the great - there will be no greater man until the last judgement - will no longer be helped by us. You will die here and France will be shamed by this. Today our loyal companionship ends.' Before vespers their separation will be painful. Oliver's objections to Roland blowing the horn in this scene are swept aside by Turpin, but the inclusion and subsequent marginalization of this oppositional voice are significant, as Oliver's position represents a viable - in every sense of the word - alternative to Roland's. The verb defalt in line 1735 is consequently ambivalent in this context. Is Oliver referring to their imminent death, or to the failure of their companionship? Yet the text attempts to suggest that despite any difference between the two heroes their outlooks are compatible in that


35

they share the heroic warrior ethos. There is no suggestion that Oliver is a coward: 87

Rollant est proz e Oliver est sage; Ambedui unt merveillus vasselage: Puis que il sunt as chevals e as armes, Ja pur murir n'eschiverunt bataille. Bon sunt li cunte e lur paroles haltes. Felun paien par grant irur chevalchent.

1095

Roland is worthy and Oliver is wise; both are amazingly brave: since they are mounted and armed, they will never give up the battle through fear of death. The counts are good and their words heady. The wicked pagans ride forward menacingly. Both knights have vasselage, but Roland has worth (proz) in opposition to Oliver's wisdom, which suggests that his course of action is valued more than Oliver's. Impetuosity, combined with bravery, is valued more than reason combined with bravery, even though it leads here inevitably to death. 23 Yet any implied opposition between the companions only functions in language. When not engaged in paroles haltes (1097), both men fight bravely; in action the two are indistinguishable (1096). The text thus neatly sidesteps the problem of difference by subsuming one hero to the other if not in word, certainly in deed, and by killing both off without resolving the difference between their positions. But are Roland and Oliver as complementary to each other as the text would have us believe here? Can their differences be smoothed over as the poet tries to do once they are dead? The problem posed by their confrontation is acute. If Oliver is good, and brave (like Roland), but holds a different position, are not Roland's actions questionable? In this world of competitive fighting men which, at least on the level of fantasy, has a clear idea of right and wrong, and in which therefore moral defeat is inconceivable, it is clear that the real threat to the individual's value (as opposed to his life) comes not from Saracens or traitors, but from the person who is like himself, in other words brave, strong and on the right side, but of a slightly different persuasion.

36


This problem is most eloquently and movingly portrayed in the Oxford Roland when towards the end of the battle a blinded and exhausted Oliver strikes Roland thinking he is a Saracen. Roland can hardly believe that Oliver has struck him deliberately, but the thought obviously crosses his mind :24 Sire cumpain, faites le vos de gred? Ja est 9' Rollant ki tant vos soelt amer! Par nule guise ne m'avez desfiet.

2000

My lord companion, do you do this on purpose? This is Roland, who has always loved you so much! You have in no way challenged me. It is as if in this scene we have a symbolic enactment of the verbal confrontation of the two heroes. Shortly after this Oliver dies and Roland is left with Turpin by his side, a man who has consistently shared his ethical outlook and supported him against Oliver. Significantly, a number of texts circulated in medieval France and Occitania which either locate the origin of Roland and Oliver's friendship in enmity, or which portray animosity between them. For instance Bertran de Bar-sur-Aube's Girart de Vienne, a popular chanson de geste from the late twelfth century, narrates at some length the single combat of Roland and Oliver in the context of a dispute between Girart de Vienne and Charlemagne. The ferocious battle is ended by a personal envoy from God: 25 Es vos un engre qui descent de la nue, qui doucement de par Deu les salue: « Franc chevalier, ennor vos est creiie! Ceste bataille ne soit plus meintenue; gardez que plus ne soit par vos feme, car Damedeu la vos a desfandue. Mes en Espangne, sor la gent mescrelie, soit vostre force provee et conneue; la sera bien vo proece vetie por Pamor Deu conquerre.»

5900

59°5

Behold, coming down from the cloud the angel, who sweetly greets them on God's behalf:' Noble knights, you are greatly honoured! This


37

battle must not be continued; be careful to strike no further blows, for God has forbidden you to do this. Rather let your strength be tested and acknowledged in Spain, against the infidel; there your prowess will be seen to conquer for the love of God.' The aggression Roland and Oliver direct against each other is specifically redirected outside the epic community of Christian knights. In Girart God is the instigator of Roland and Oliver's companionship: this leads them to swear to share all their property and to the exchange of Aude, Oliver's sister, who cements the bond between them, thus anticipating Oliver's use of her when threatening to break the very same bond in the Oxford Roland (1719-21). In the late Occitan text Roland a Saragosse, tension between Roland and Oliver surfaces again when Roland falls in love with a Saracen princess and single combat ensues.26 Both these texts post-date the Oxford Roland, but they show that the Roland tradition after the Oxford manuscript seems to oscillate between portraying the companions as friends, on the one hand, and portraying them as potential enemies, on the other. It is as if Oliver is always a potential enemy to Roland, always a potential threat. Their companionship always contains its own potential disintegration. If the Oxford Roland creates an ideal masculine hero in a community of fighting men, the strength of which depends on similarity and solidarity, difference is a threat: when it emerges it has to be repressed. The other is consequently a mirror image of the hero, whether it be Oliver on the battle field, or - less significantly I would contend - Ganelon whose motivation is not very different from Roland's and who is frequently described in similar terms to Roland (for instance line 219), or even less significantly the Saracens who are admired for their bravery and who have social structures which mirror the Christians'. 27 Women barely feature in this masculine world. Aude and Bramimonde, the only two female characters in the text, mediate male relations: Aude represents the bond between Oliver and Roland and Oliver's threat not to allow Roland to marry her (1719-21) signals the tension between them, whilst the conversion of Bramimonde symbolizes Charlemagne's victory over Marsilie. The ideal is a gendered ideal, but if for the

38


myth of male unity to function all members of the community must be the same, the text seems also to recognize that this is an impossible ideal, containing as it does an oppositional voice in the place where it is least expected. That similarity and difference are central problems in the Oxford Roland is confirmed by the transformations the theme undergoes in the Paris Roland, which dates from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. There are four major differences between the two texts. Firstly, in the Paris text Ganelon's treachery is foregrounded to such an extent that it dominates the end, when he escapes and has to be pursued; secondly, as a result of this and other bungles, Charlemagne is portrayed as a weaker king; thirdly, Aude's death scene, though similar in impact to the brief scene in the Oxford Roland lasts for several hundred lines, which include extraordinary prophetic dreams; finally the differences between Roland and Oliver are systematically suppressed.28 These points of divergence between the Oxford and Paris texts corroborate readings of the narrative which are merely suggested in the earlier text, but the suppression of difference between Roland and Oliver is the most radical transformation. For example, at the point at which in the Oxford Roland the difference between Roland and Oliver is most marked, in the Paris text difference is suppressed and similarity is stressed. Compare: Rollant est proz e Oliver est sage; Ambedui unt merveillus vasselage: Puis que il sunt as chevals e as armes, Ja pur murir n'eschiverunt bataille.

1095 Oxford Roland

Rollans fu preus et Oliviers li bers, 396 Paringal furent et compaignon et per; Puis que ce vient (de lo) a lor armes porter, Mieus aimment mort que bataille eschiever. Paris Roland Roland was worthy and so was baron Oliver, they were both the same, and companions and equal; since they are armed they prefer to die rather than to give up battle.


39

What exactly is the relation between these two texts? Cesare Segre's meticulous stemmatic studies of the Chanson de Roland suggest that all surviving versions of the Roland in French derive from a common source, there being most probably three stages of evolution: an assonanced version (represented by the Oxford and Venice 4 manuscripts); a first rhymed version which transposes fairly closely much of the assonanced text into rhyming laisses, but then expands the ending (represented by the Chateauroux and Venice 7 manuscripts, perhaps executed in the same scriptorium); and a subsequent rhymed version (represented by the Paris, Lyon and Cambridge manuscripts). Furthermore, Segre's analysis of the presence of assonanced laisses in all of the rhymed versions except Venice 7 lends overwhelming support to his hypothesis that two of the remanieurs of the rhymed versions (Chateauroux and Paris) were independently working directly from copies of two versions of their poem (one assonanced and one rhymed) and making conscious decisions to include or exclude certain elements, particular laisses, even lines, and also, of course, to compose their own additions. I am not suggesting that the Paris remanieur had access to the Oxford poem as we know it, but he certainly had access to an assonanced version like it, as well as to the rhymed version he reworked. This would suggest that he deliberately chose to present the confrontations of Roland and Oliver differently from the way they appear in the Oxford Roland and Venice 4, particularly given that difference between Roland and Oliver in the Paris text seems to be consistently suppressed.29 For instance the confrontational aspect of the two horn scenes virtually disappears in the Paris Roland. This is achieved through two differences between the Oxford and Paris texts, whereby the later remanieur introduces elements which are unique to his version. First, the scenes become linear accounts of an argument ; in other words it is made clear through lines like ' Que je vos ai hui autre fois rouvee' (Paris 349: 'for I have already asked you once today') in the first horn scene, that Oliver asks Roland to blow his horn three times in this scene and not to do so three times in the second.30 There is consequently no

40


lyric stasis, no uncertainty as to the status of each laisse within the narrative as part of a sequence or as simultaneous complementary versions of one event, no 'overlay' of information, merely a three-part argument which is rebutted. Secondly, each of the scenes has a conclusion to the exchange for which there is no equivalent in the Oxford Roland. In the first scene a sullen, though submissive Oliver concludes ' En cor corner n'eiist pas grant outraige' (389: 'blowing the horn would not have been wrong'; Chateauroux, 1931 and Venice 7); in the second scene, the two men weep 'par compaignie' over their dispute (1680; Chateauroux, 3015 and Venice 7), then (after Turpin's intervention) Oliver consents to Roland's sounding of the horn in a line for which there is no equivalent in any other manuscript, ' Dist Oliviers: « Bien fait a otroier.»' (1698:' Oliver says: " It is right to agree to this " ' ) . In other words, Oliver concedes that he has lost the argument in the Paris text and the 'problem' of difference as it emerged in the Oxford text is thereby resolved. Comparing the treatment of Oliver and Roland in the Paris and Oxford texts produces two further contrasts, which the Paris remanieur almost certainly introduced deliberately. Firstly, the qualities which at a key point in the narrative the Oxford Roland appears to associate with Roland and Oliver respectively — prouesse and sagesse — often occur together in the Paris text, but they seem to be associated randomly with one or the other of the pair. Thus Oliver is referred to as 'li preus et li senez' (for example 972, 1029 and so on) whilst Roland is 'li senez' when the blinded Oliver has just struck him (2125)! If Oliver is proz in the Oxford Roland, Roland is never sage.31 It is as if the poet responsible for these lines is aware that worth and wisdom are associated with the pair, but wishes to impart no sense that each should be associated with just one of the men. The final references to Roland in the Paris Roland are to ' Rollant le tres sene' (6821 and 6824 : ' Roland the most wise'; no equivalent in Chateauroux or Venice 7). Any distinction between Roland as preu and Oliver as sage is simply not present in the Paris text. Secondly, in the Paris Roland there is a degree of confusion about what happens to the bodies of Roland and Oliver after they die. In the Oxford Roland they are transported and buried


41

with Turpin's body (3689-91), a significant point given that Turpin displaces Oliver at Roland's side before the hero's death. In the Paris Roland, it is made clear during the battle that Oliver is not displaced in the same manner as in the Oxford text: Quant voit Rollans Parcevesques morant 2 545 Lors ot tel duel, onques mais n'ot si grant, Fors d'Olivier que il parama tant. When Roland sees the archbishop dying his grief was so great that he had no greater sorrow, except for Oliver, whom he loved so much. Far more stress is then placed in the Paris text on Roland's insistence that if Oliver dies he will die with him (1297—8, 1601-4, 1622-3 and so on). When Charlemagne arrives at the battlefield in the Paris text, it is said twice that he buries all the dead except Roland and Oliver; no mention is made of Turpin: Quant Karles ot fait enterre son barnaige Fors que Rollant et Olivier le saige: Geuls voloit il porter tresques a Blaives.

3355

When Charles had buried his barons, except for Roland and Oliver the wise; these he wished to take off to Blaye. Les .XII. compaingnons enterrerent le jor. Mais que Rollant, le bon combateor, Et Olivier, le hardi fereor: Mener les volt le rois de grant valor Desci qu'a Blaivies, sa cite, par amor.

4570

They buried the twelve companions that day, except for Roland, the great warrior, and Oliver the bold fighter: the most worthy king wants to take them off to Blaye, his city, because he loved them so much. Lines 3353-5 occur towards the end of a sequence of assonanced laisses which are rhymed in the Chateauroux manuscript. They have no apparent source in the text of either of the assonanced manuscripts and would consequently appear to be an innovation of the Paris remanieur.32 Subsequently Turpin's body is said sometimes to be with Roland's and Oliver's (for example 4025, 4064, 4720, 6106), but elsewhere it is again stressed that Roland and Oliver are buried alone (4752-4, 5868, 5922,

42


6061). This confusion may be the strongest evidence we have that the Paris remanieur was reworking a version of the rhymed Roland, but collating it with an assonanced Roland. In trying to highlight the similarity and inseparability of Roland and Oliver, he changed the detail of Turpin being buried with them but failed to do so consistently.33 If the Oxford Roland implies an irreconcilable difference between Roland and Oliver, which it then proceeds to suppress, the Paris Roland writes difference out altogether. Suard suggests that in the Oxford Roland Roland and Oliver are potentially interchangeable; in the Paris text they appear almost to have become so. Why this progression between 1100 and 1200? The Oxford Roland's paradoxical foregrounding and subsequent suppression of the differences between Oliver and Roland can perhaps be explained by considering the social group to which chansons degeste were addressed. What is the symbolic value of the hero to the poem's audience? Whether the texts have their origin in the oral culture ofjongleurs, or in the learned atmosphere of the cloister, in the twelfth century they appear to valorize the knight and to address the knightly class.34 This produces a highly gendered discourse, for even though women were no doubt present at the recitation or reading of chansons de geste, texts like the Roland narratives promote the interests of a community which is exclusively male, whose values the women in the audience must accept if they are to participate in the aesthetic power of the poems. The poets or jongleurs address a community united by a masculine value system and the specularity of the relation between poet and implied audience thus reflects that of the relation of Roland and Oliver. Drawing on the seminal work of Erich Kohler, many critics explain the impulse to valorize the knight in twelfth-century chansons de geste and romances as a response to the changing social position of the lesser nobility as the power of the monarchy increased.35 As is well known, at the beginning of the twelfth century the French monarchy was weak, the king of France being just one magnate amongst others, with several vassals who were more powerful than him, for example Guilhem IX of


43

Aquitaine or a sequence of Dukes of Normandy. Charlemagne's inability in the Oxford Roland to impose his authority in his own camp, for instance during Ganelon's trial, is consequently in some respects a reflection of historical reality in about 1100. By 1200 the situation was entirely different: the French and English monarchies had both established and consolidated redoubtable power bases, in France mainly under PhilippeAuguste (king 1180-223), m England mainly under Henry II (king 1154-89). The use by these two kings in particular of paid administrators and military retainers eroded the position of knights. But, as kings became stronger in the real world, in literature they became weaker, in some cases simply bad. This is true of both romance and epic, but particularly of chansons de geste, witness the Paris Roland, the Couronnement de Louis, Girart de Roussillon, Raoul de Cambrai or Daurel et Beton. This equivocal

portrayal of the monarchy and the concomitant heroic status of knights in texts would therefore represent an attempt to invest with value a class whose power was declining. The portrayal of knights like Roland in the chanson de geste, or, more problematically of course, Lancelot in romance (see pp. 92-103), who profess undying loyalty to the monarchy suggests that knights and kings have a shared ideology, but in fact the stronger the monarchy, the more disempowered knights became. The chivalric heroism of chansons de geste is thus part of an escapist fantasy in which kings need knights, witness particularly the Couronnement de Louis, But the impossibility of the fantasy is constantly re-enacted in the death of heroes like Roland, or in the disintegration of epic order in texts like Raoul or Daurel (see below pp. 52-62 and 66-9). Such an analysis, grounded entirely in a theory of class, goes some way towards explaining the evolution of epic and romance, but it fails to account for the different, yet crucial, roles gender plays in the ideology of both genres. Whereas in romance - as we will see - women have a high-profile role in determining the value and identity of a knight, in the early chanson de geste the hero lives in a male world and his identity is defined in relation to another man. As the genre evolves women are as much the political unconscious in the chanson de geste as

44


other classes, and whilst the position of a class is at stake, so is gender solidarity. The Paris Roland enhances the value of gender solidarity by playing down and suppressing the difference between Roland and Oliver. Aude's (dis) appearance may be expanded, but her function is the same as in the Oxford Roland. The unity and solidarity of men in the privileged group of knights is paramount, and not only must Roland and Oliver become more like each other than they are in the earlier text, but Ganelon must be more radically excluded. Within the closed circuit of the knightly class as represented in the chansons de geste, the masculine gender becomes more self-reflexive, more specular and more bounded, evincing a blindness to alterity. This is in part a response to a radical political repositioning of knights in the real world, but it is perhaps also in part a response to an equally radical cultural repositioning of knights in relation to women in courtly culture. The Paris Roland, moreover, should not be read in isolation since it is preserved in a manuscript which sets five texts in a narrative sequence. When it is read in conjunction with these other texts, an interpretation which sees it as a response to the threat posed by Oliver and Roland's differences in earlier versions seems all the more plausible. It is preserved in BNfonds frangais 860, which though not the work of a single scribe was probably executed in a single scriptorium. 36 It is a carefully executed manuscript, thought to date from the second half of the thirteenth century and consequently fairly close in date to the five chansons de geste it preserves. These are: Roland (fos. 1-36; the first eight folios are missing) Gaydon (fos. 37-92) Ami et Amile (fos. 93-111) Jourdain de Blaye (fos. 112-33) Auberi le Bourgignon (fos. 134-275)

A great deal of trouble has been taken to organize the texts into a coherent narrative sequence, though they were doubtlessly composed by different poets at different times. A number of details of the Paris Roland are unique to this version and specifically anticipate details of Gaydon.37 Gaydon itself is an


45

attempt to tie up some of the loose ends of the Roland since it deals with a continued dispute between Ganelon's kin and Thierry (given the name Gaydon in the Paris Roland, 6358); in the Paris Roland, but not in other versions, Thierry (aka Gaydon) fights Pinabel with Hauteclere, Oliver's sword (6481), and he continues to use Hauteclere throughout Gaydon. Similarly, the traitor of Ami, who is also one of Ganelon's lignage, is the last of the traitors left alive at the end of Gaydon. Jourdain de Blaye deals with the attempt of yet another of Ganelon's kin to rid the world of Amile's grandson and we learn in Jourdain that Ami was of the lignage of Oliver and Roland (1431). A further thread is provided by Amile's acquisition in Ami of the town of Blaye, where Roland and Oliver are buried at the end of the Roland', the town becomes the seat of Amile's lineage but is disputed in Jourdain. In addition, there is a complex play on doubling in Auberi, providing an obvious thematic link with both the Roland and Ami, and several themes run throughout the manuscript: for example, there are traitors and judicial duels in all the texts.38 BN fonds frangais 860 is a book about male bonding and treachery, about the elevation of male bonding as an absolute ideal on the one hand, and the threat to it on the other. The central ideal of Ami et Amile, the central text in BN 860, is male bonding in the form of companionship. The comparison with Roland and Oliver is self-evident, but the analogy in this instance is particularly striking, given the connection between Ami and the Paris Roland m the manuscript, for if the characters of Ami and Amile have frequently been read intertextually against Roland and Oliver, 39 it seems to have escaped notice that they are far more like the pair as they appear in the Paris text than in the Oxford Roland. Thus Ami and Amile are consistently presented as identical: Li uns de l'autre oi sou vent parler. II s'entresamblent de venir et d'aler Et de la bouche et dou vis et dou nes, Dou chevauchier et des armes porter, Que nus plus biax ne puet on deviser. Dex les fist par miracle.

40

46


One often heard of the other. They looked so alike in every respect their mouths, their faces, their noses, when they rode and bore arms - that no one could describe anyone fairer. God created them miraculously. Roland and Oliver are not, of course, identical, but if, as I have argued, there is a consistent attempt to make them more alike in the Paris text than they were in the Oxford Roland, the positioning of Ami et Amile in the same narrative sequence as the Paris Roland is significant. Ami et Amile represents a fantasy solution to the problem of potential enmity between companions, a solution in which difference is wilfully repressed. The complex plot, during the course of which Ami takes Amile's place in judicial combat, depends upon the identical appearance of the two men and as Sarah Kay has argued the women characters (one good, Belissant, who becomes Amile's wife; one bad, Lubias, who becomes Ami's) are ultimately marginalized so that male bonding can be foregrounded.40 Nothing should come between the two heroes and neither of the men's wives can tell them apart (for example see 3138-42). If, as Jane Gilbert argues, the desire of all the other characters, men and women, is to distinguish the two heroes, often in legal contexts, the text works hard to suppress and break down differences between them. 41 Nothing is allowed to intrude upon the unity of the two men so that if on one level the heroes are distinguished by their actions - they take different wives, through them acquire different properties and one becomes a leper - the text consistently resists their individuation. Thus Ami's sacrifice — perjuring himself and becoming a leper for his friend after taking his place in judicial combat - is mirrored by Amile's - killing his children by divine decree in order to save his companion from leprosy by washing him in their blood - thereby eradicating the leprosy which had distinguished them. This sense of the two as inseparable and indistinct is enhanced by the fact that although the narrator and the reader always know which is which, the other characters frequently confuse them. Ultimately any difference between the two is cast aside as the two ride off together into the sunset to become saints and at the end of the


47

text the fact that the two have become identical again, after the distinguishing features of marriage to different women and leprosy have been suppressed, is stressed repeatedly (3100, 3119-20,3123-5). Above all difference is blurred by the heroes' names. In the crucial scene in which Amile kills his children to cure Ami of leprosy, the two characters enter into a poetic symbiosis whereby one becomes and is the other: Amiles fu et preudom et gentiz. Son compaingnon, qui ot a non Amis, Leve dou sane et la bouche et le vis. Moult puet bien croire que il est ses amis Quant ses douz fiuls a si por lui ocis. Oiez, seignor, com ouvra Jhesucris. Si com il touche le sane el front Amis, Li chiet la roiffe dont il estoit sozprins, Les mains garissent, li ventres et li pis. Quant or le voit Amiles ses amis, Deu en rent graces, le Roi de paradis Et ses sains et ses saintes.

3070

3°75

Amile was a worthy man and noble. He washes his companion, who was called Amis, with the blood on the mouth and face. He can indeed believe that he is his friend when he has thus killed his two sons for him. Listen, lords, to how Jesus Christ worked. As he wipes the blood on Amis's forehead, the scabs which had afflicted him fell from him. His hands are cured, his stomach and his chest. When Amile, his friend, sees this, he thanks God, the lord of Paradise, and all his saints, male and female. The first time the word amis occurs in this passage, it refers to the character called Ami (3069); the second time (3071), it is Amile who is referred to as ses amis. The word is then used as a proper noun again (3074), but the last time it is used in this laisse (3077) it qualifies Amile a second time. It is worth remembering that in this manuscript, as is usual for the period, capital letters are not used to distinguish names from other nouns. Thus both Ami and Amile are amis, an equivocation produced elsewhere in the text (2578 and 2857). On one level this could simply mean that Amile is Ami's true friend; on another it is as if Amile becomes him.

48


One result of the strong impulse in Ami et Amile to make the heroes identical is that the consequences of the actions of both men must be borne by both men. Furthermore, because the bond of companionship transcends all other bonds, whatever they do is right simply because they remain loyal to each other. This means that the ethical framework of the text becomes extremely fluid in order to accommodate their actions. Thus, when Amile has sexual intercourse with Belissant, Charlemagne's daughter, he is aware who she may be: Et dist li cuens: «Qui iez tu, envoisie, Qui a tele hore iez delez moi couchie? 675 Se tu iez fame, espeuse nosoi'e, Ou fille Charle, qui France a en baillie, Je te conjur de Deu le fil Marie, Ma douce amie, retourne t'an arriere. Et se tu iez beasse ou chamberiere 680 De bas paraige, moult t'iez bien avancie: Remain huimais o moi a bele chiere, Demain avras cent sols en t'aumosniere.» And the count says: ' Who are you, wench, to come to me at this hour and lie beside me ? If you are a married woman, or the daughter of Charles who governs France, I beg you in the name of God the son of Mary, my sweet friend, to turn back. And if you are low-born or a chambermaid of poor family, you are being very forward: stay with me now and have a good time, tomorrow you will have a hundred sous in your purse.' Amile asks no further questions, though Belissant does not reply; he thereby acknowledges that he may be sleeping with a woman who is forbidden him, but he proceeds regardless. He then knowingly lies on oath when the traitor Hardre accuses him of dishonouring Charlemagne by sleeping with his daughter. Belissant is horrified by Amile's perjury and does not understand why he does not simply kill Hardre (718-22). Amile himself knows that what he has done is wrong: 'Horn qui tort a combatre ne se doit' (994: ' A man who is in the wrong should not fight'; see also 1016). Yet Ami is not perturbed by Amile's guilt. His response to Amile's plight is to condemn Hardre and reassure him that their identical appearance and companionship can save them:

Monologic masculinity « Sire compains, ne soiez esperdus, Ostez vos dras, aiez les miens vestus, Et je panrai eel bon destrier quernu, Toutes ces armes et eel pezant escu, Droit a Paris m'en irai a vertu. Se vient Hardrez li fel qu'il m'en encust, A la bataille serommez moi et lui, Coperai lui le chief desor le bu. Voir n'en estordra mie.» 60 « Sire compains, ce dist Amis li ber, Si m'ait Dex, vos iestez fox prouvez. Moi et voz fumez en une hore engendre Et en un jor et en une nuit ne Et enz un fons baptizie et leve. Et nos parrins, qui ot non Yzorez, (Ses parrinnaiges fait forment a loer) Or et argent noz donna a plente Et a chascun fist un hanap donner. Noz noz samblons de venir et d'aler Et de la bouche et dou vis et dou nes, Dou chevauchier et des armes porter. Dex ne fist home, qui de mere soit nes, Se l'uns de noz a en un lieu este, Se l'autre i vient, que ja soit avisez. Ostez vos dras et les miens vestirez. Droit a Paris m'en irai la cite.»

49 1030

1035

1040

1045

1050

1055

' My lord companion, do not despair; take off your clothes and put mine on, and I will take this fine warhorse, all your arms and your heavy shield; I will hasten straight to Paris. If Hardre - that c u r comes, let him challenge me, we will be there to fight he and I; I will cut his head from his trunk. In truth he will not stop me from doing this.' 'My lord companion', said Ami the brave, 'may God help me you are an undeniable fool. We were begat at the same moment, born on the same day and night, and baptized in and raised from a single font. And our godfather, whose name was Yzore - a model god-father gave us huge quantities of gold and silver and a goblet to each of us. We are so alike in every respect - our mouths, our faces, our noses, when we ride and bear arms. God made no man born of woman who can tell the difference if one of us has been somewhere and the other arrives in his place. Take off your clothes and put mine on. I'll go straight to the city of Paris.'

50


There are specific verbal echoes here of the opening of the text: compare 1040-7 with 19-30, and 1048-50 with 39-41 (quoted above p. 45). The reiteration of the circumstances of Ami and Amile's conception and birth, and of their identical appearance may seem redundant here, disrupting the flow of the narrative. It is not, however, an insignificant deviation, for it serves to underline the fact that their similarity is the cause of their victory, and its moral justification, despite the fact that they are in the wrong. It recalls how divine authority interceded in their simultaneous conception and birth, how they continued under divine protection with the Pope as their godfather, and thus how their companionship is due to God's agency, like the bonding of Roland and Oliver in Girart de Vienne. That Ami and Amile are in the wrong is evident when it is considered that Hardre, the traitor of the text, has told the truth. Indeed, he cannot understand why he does not win at once in judicial combat given that he knows Amile did sleep with Belissant. Justice according to the letter of the law is safeguarded by means of an ambiguous oath. When accusing Amile, just before combat, unaware that the man before him is Ami and not Amile, Hardre specifies that his accusation refers to 'cest vassal, que par la main tieng ci' (1419: 'this vassal, whom I hold by the hand here'). Ami is then able to swear: «Glouz 3 dist li cuens, voz i avez menti. Si m'ai't Dex et li saint qui sont ci, Qu'o Belissant ne couchai ne dormi, Sa blanche char nu a nu ne send, Se Dex me laist de cest champ issir vif Et sain et sauf arriere revertir.»

1425

' Swine', said the count, 'you have lied. So help me God and the saints who are here, I never lay with or slept beside Belissant; I never felt her naked whitefleshnext to mine, so may God let me leave thisfieldalive and return safe and sound.' If the letter of the law is observed, the spirit is not. 42 In a genre which appears to promote a rigid moral code, it would appear that the hero is right because he is the hero and not that he is the hero because he is right. 43 The ethical goalposts of the text move all the time and Hardre, the traitor, is wrong even when he is


51

right. Like Ganelon in the Roland he represents no real threat to the heroes' worth, and in any case, like Ganelon, he is suppressed. The fluidity of the text's attitude towards morality is apparent elsewhere. Ami is punished with leprosy not because he pretends to be Amile, thereby subverting justice, but because he perjures himself after the judicial combat by promising to marry Belissant when he is already married to Lubias. 44 Even this, however, is ultimately condoned, for Ami is cured by divine intervention and a miracle ensues when Amile's slaughtered children are restored to life. He is saved because he is prepared to sacrifice everything for his friend and double (his ami), and Amile in turn sacrifices his children for his friend and double (his Ami). Ami et Amile is often read as a moving illustration of male friendship, which, according to the critic you read, stands for the ' absolute', the love of God, or the path to sanctity. 45 To the feminist critic, such readings smack of insidious sentimentality, yet there is no denying the text's power to glorify the elevation of two identical men to the rank of saints and, like other chansons de geste, for instance the Roland or Girart de Roussillon, Ami et Amile

plays on the generic conventions of hagiography to enhance the status of the hero, only in this case there are two of them. The value of this central bond is so paramount that all other bonds are subordinate to it, including that of father to son, or husband to wife.46 To the modern reader the scene in which Amile's son sweetly encourages his father to murder him in order to safeguard his companion and offers to pray that he can be forgiven this sin, can seem grotesque (3000-23). But there is no hint of irony in this passage. The ideal such an incident is written to promote and protect was obviously thought to be worth a great deal of sacrifice. Ami et Amile is a fantastic narrative. Like many fantasies it attempts to reassure its implied audience, since it suggests that the values it promotes guarantee order and the triumph of right; yet it simultaneously has to turn a blind eye to a good deal of slippery logic and dubious morality. The potential threat of schism within the male community is suppressed, and a model

52


of masculinity is constructed which is entirely unitary, attempting to be entirely monologic, but which is also entirely implausible. In its efforts to minimize the flaws in the ideology it promotes, Ami paradoxically makes them all the more evident. Moreover, it is not typical of all contemporary chansons de geste: in poems like Daurel et Beton and Raoul de Cambrai one companion kills another; in Orson de Beauvais one betrays the other; in Girart de Roussillon two powerful men who are not companions, but who are none the less very similar, feud for decades. If Ami represents the epic dream, an attempt to contain the disintegration of the genre's ideology and its idealized image of masculinity, other texts represent the epic nightmare and indicate that despite the best endeavours of some poets, the genre fails to become monologic. Of the poems mentioned, the scale of destruction is greatest in Raoul, for here it is not simply individuals who are destroyed, but the entire epic community; nothing is salvaged at the end of Raoul since all the male characters are eliminated. In some senses then Raoul narrates the death of the epic ideal, for it systematically unpicks all the male bonds which underpin the ethical system of the chansons de geste: the bonds of king and vassal, of kinsmen and particularly of companions. Furthermore, the king's gift to Raoul early in the text (298) of a helmet which belonged to a Saracen killed by Roland, invests the poem with an ambiguous Roland intertext. 47 The poet seems to be inviting us to read the poem against the central Roland narrative and perhaps therefore as a commentary on the genre as a whole, yet Raoul, his hero, is implicitly aligned with an enemy of the great epic hero. Later this may be attenuated when Raoul's mother compares him to Roland and Oliver: 48 'Signors', dist ele, 'a celer nel vos qier, mon fil maudis par maltalent l'autrier, Mieudres ne fu Rolans ne Oliviers qe fustes, fix, por vos amis aidier! Quant moi remenbre del traitor B[ernier] qi vos a mort, j'en qit vive erragier!'

3370

3375

'Lords', she said, 'I won't conceal from you that the other day my anger made me curse my son; [and yet] Roland and Oliver were no


53

better than you, my son, when it came to helping your friends. When I think of the traitor Bernier who killed you, I could almost die of rage!' But this renewed affirmation of a Roland intertext, which mentions the companions Roland and Oliver in the same breath as the tragic end to Raoul's companionship with Bernier, draws attention to the text's portrayal of enmity between companions and consequently on its departure from the epic ideal. What role do male bonding and companionship play in Raoul? How is masculinity constructed in this text? And how should the poem be read against the overt intertext of the Roland?

The plot is complex. Raoul, whose father is dead, has been disinherited by his uncle, king Louis, who has given the Cambresis to another vassal, Giboin le Mancel. When Raoul comes of age, encouraged by his uncle Guerri le Sor, he demands the restoration of his land, but Louis is reluctant to take the Cambresis away from Giboin, and so promises Raoul the next vacant fief. A year later Herbert de Vermandois dies and Raoul immediately asks for his land. Despite the fact that Herbert has four adult sons, one of whom is the natural father of Bernier, Raoul's boyhood friend and companion, Louis grants Raoul the Vermandois, though in fact he must win it by force. Raoul is jubilant, but Bernier, Raoul's mother Aalais and Guerri are all furious, particularly since Raoul's father and Herbert were on excellent terms; Louis simply washes his hands of the affair. Raoul gathers an army and marches off to seize the Vermandois. He burns a convent at Origni, where Bernier's mother Marsent is abbess and Bernier sees her burn to death before his eyes. Bernier and Raoul quarrel and Bernier joins his father and uncles in the enemy camp. There then follows a terrible war, in which Raoul is killed by Bernier. Gautier, Raoul's nephew then continues the war which is indecisive but waged with a good deal of vigour. After the loss of many lives the two sides decide that Louis is to blame, attack Paris and raze it to the ground. During the ensuing period of peace, Bernier marries Guerri's daughter Beatrix. Later he goes on a pilgrimage which leads to adventures in Saracen lands, including

54


the rediscovery of a long lost son. Eventually, however, Bernier is killed by Guerri, who cannot forget Raoul; Bernier's sons then kill Gautier and drive Guerri into exile. As this plot summary indicates, Raoul is by no means just the story of two companions. Yet whatever other themes and subplots emerge, the relationship of Raoul and his one-time companion Bernier stands at the centre of the narrative as a matrix for the entire poem; their relationship is emblematic of the conflict which motivates the narrative. As it is transmitted in the only complete manuscript, Raoul probably dates from the late twelfth century. 8542 lines long, the poem is composed of a reworked version of an earlier, shorter chanson which ends with RaouPs death at the hands of Bernier {Raoul 1: lines 1-3541), and two continuations, the first ending with the burning of Paris {Gautier: 3542-5374), the second comprising the rest of the text {Raoul 11) .49 The first two parts of the poem are written in rhymed laisses, though there is evidence that Raoul 1 was originally written in assonance and recast into rhyme by the poet of the Gautier section; Raoul 11, unusually for the time at which it was composed, was written in assonanced laisses, though of a highly narrative nature. It has been suggested that the two continuations can be read as responses to and readings of the earlier poem. 50 It is therefore significant that however much the two later sections (particularly Raoul 11 with its tales of Bernier's adventures in Saracen lands) digress from the conflict between Raoul and Bernier, they consistently refocus the poem on this issue. Thus it is Bernier's slaying of Raoul which seems to motivate Gautier's blood feud against him: Gautiers Poi, qi molt fu ai'rez. ' Cuivers bastars, con ies desmesures! Mon oncle as mort qi fu preus et senez, ton droit signor, con traitres provez. Ce est mervelle comment vos le soufrez.'

499°

Gautier heard this and flew into a rage. 'You low-born bastard, you exceed all bounds! You have killed my uncle who was valiant and wise, and your lawful overlord, like a proven traitor. It is a wonder how you can bear it.'


55

Indeed, it is as if Gautier becomes Raoul once he is dead, and so the matrix of Raoul against Bernier is kept alive throughout the Gautier section: Dame A[alais] commence a larmoier 3645 tout por son fil qe ele avoit tant chier: en liu de lui ont restore Gautier. The lady Alice begins to weep in memory of her dearly loved son: they have made up for his loss by putting Gautier in his place. Similarly, in Raoul 11, it is the inability of Raoul's kin to forget Raoul's death at Bernier's hands which leads to the tragic denouement. There are complex subplots in Raoul 11, during the course of which the memory of Raoul seems to fade. Ultimately, however, although Bernier is able to make peace with Guerri le Sor, now his father-in-law, after he has delivered Beatrix Bernier's wife and Guerri's daughter- to another man (661545), conflict between the two resurfaces when they are reminded of Raoul: Si con il vinrent es pres sos Origni, en celle place ou Raous fu ocis, li cuens Bferniers] fist un pesant sospir. 8190 Li sor G[uerris] molt bien garde s'en prist; il li demande por quoi sospira il. 'Ne vos chaut, sire', Bferniers] li respondi, 'que maintenant me tient il au cuer si.' 'Jel vue[l] savoir' - ce dist li sor Gfuerris]. 8195 'Jel vos dirai', Bferniers] li respondi; ' ce poise moi quant il vos plait ainsis. II me remenbre de Raooil le marchis qui desor lui avoit tefl] orguel pris qu'a .mi. contes vaut lor terre tolirr. 8200 Vees ci le leu tot droit ou je l'ocis.' Gfuerris] Pentent, por poi n'anraige vis mais a sa chiere point de sanblant n'an fit et neporquant a Bfernier] respondi, ' Par Dieu, vassal, n'estes pas bien apris, 8205 qui me remenbres la mort de mes amis.' As they reached the meadows below Origny, Bernier heaved a great sigh by the spot where Raoul was killed. Guerri the Red took good note of it and asks him the reason. ' It is no concern of yours, my lord',

56


said Bernier,' [to know] what it is that so oppresses my heart just now'. '1 insist on knowing', came the reply.' I '11 tell you', said Bernier, 'but I am sorry that you should wish it. I am reminded of Marquis Raoul who was consumed with such pride that he resolved to take the land of four counts for himself. This is the very place where I killed him.' Guerri is almost beside himself with rage when he hears this, but his face betrayed nothing of it at all, though he did say to Bernier in reply, ' My God, vassal, you are unwise to remind me of the death of my relatives.' It is immediately after this that Guerri kills Bernier (8227-63). Raoul can seem like a swirling mass of competing narratives. For instance, in the first part of the poem the issue of Louis' abysmally weak and misguided kingship, as well as the feud between the Vermandois and Raoul's faction are at least as important as the more personal conflict between Raoul and Bernier.51 Yet just as the first part of the poem ultimately focuses exclusively on Raoul and Bernier, so the later parts of the poem refocus our attention on this. The continuators read the enmity between the two companions as the central theme of the chanson and, as Sarah Kay argues, the motif of the two companions provides one key to the process of rereading evinced in the continuations (Raoul, p. lxix). For Kay the failure of the ideal of companionship is emblematic of the text's portrayal of the disintegration of epic ideology: 'the relationship between Raoul and Bernier is at once the illustration of the deficiencies of the political order and, as the story advances, a commentary upon them' (Raoul, p.lxx). In Raoul, behind the disintegration of the political order of the chanson de geste lies the disintegration of male bonds and consequently of the genre's construction of masculinity. Moreover, since the text explicitly invites its readers to interpret what it portrays against the immensely popular Roland narratives, it is no accident that a central issue in the text is the similarity and difference of the two companions. From the moment Bernier is introduced, it is predicted that he will kill Raoul (lines 11 and 274) and if the poet stresses the affection between the two men, he nevertheless tells us that Raoul 'en lui ot estrange compaignon' (284). Yet Bernier is no traitor. In fact, it is suggested repeatedly, by the narrator and


57

by other characters, that Raoul is in the wrong: wrong to have burned the monastery at Origni (1278-9, 1293-6), wrong to have accepted Louis's bestowal of the Vermandois (855-6) and wrong to renounce God in his relentless pursuit of the war against Herbert de Vermandois's sons (2836-52). Conversely, Bernier's integrity and virtue are praised by the narrator: ' En B[erne£on] ot molt bon chevalier, / fort et hardi et nobile guerier' (2869-70: 'young Bernier made a very fine knight, strong and fearless, and a noble warrior'). What is so striking about the poem, given Raoul's dubious behaviour, is his retention of heroic status throughout. Despite his wanton violence, Raoul's bravery and fighting skills are consistently admired: biax fu R[aous] et de gente faiture. S'en lui n'eiist un poi de desmesure 320 mieudres vasals ne tint onqes droiture. Raoul... was handsome and nobly built. If he had not had in him an immoderate streak, there could not have been a better vassal occupying his rightful place. The poet's attribution of 'un poi de desmesure' to Raoul is ironic, given Raoul's unbridled behaviour throughout much of the poem. This tongue-in-cheek touch is typical of the poet, who announces in line 1 that he will sing a 'chanson de joie et de baudor'! 52 The implication of his irony here is that all of Raoul's desmesure is as nothing when his heroic qualities are considered and this interpretation is amply borne out by the lengthy laments Aalais, Gautier and others intone over his body (3378-515). When Raoul dies his body is placed beside a giant of a man he had killed earlier. Their hearts are cut out and Raoul's is found to be as large as that of an ox, much larger than the man he has killed (3058-67). This is a clear symbol of his bravery which then becomes the focus of the following laments. In other words, even though Raoul is associated with wrong (like Roland), he is valued and admired as a hero. The value placed upon Raoul's heroism regardless of the fact that he is in the wrong is part of a broader web of moral ambiguity in the poem. Raoul is a rebel baron, but he is clearly right to rebel against the weak and vacillating Louis, who

58


makes no attempt to protect fatherless children. 53 Indeed Louis is repeatedly and explicitly blamed for the chaos the feud between the two factions causes (for example lines 602-5, 648-50, 721-3 and so on). Giboin, who accepts the Cambresis from Louis, is similarly considered reprehensible: Rois Loeys fist le jor grant folaige qe son neveu toli son eritaige; et Giboin refist molt grant outraige qant autrui terre vost avoir par barna[ige].

135

King Louis committed an act of great folly that day, for he deprived his nephew of his inheritance; and Giboin for his part acted outrageously in wanting someone else's land in return for his services as a warrior. To a certain extent then, Raoul's rebellion is legitimized. Yet how can his behaviour be justified when his taking of the Vermandois will disinherit other men in exactly the manner of which he has complained ? Furthermore, Raoul is not the only rebel in the poem: Bernier too is a rebel. Before Raoul burns the monastery at Origni, Bernier, who has declared himself to be Raoul's horn liges (454), is clear that to rebel against one's lord is wrong. He continually reiterates the fact that he is Raoul's vassal (for instance see 1466) and when his mother asks him why he is not fighting for his kin, he protests: ' Par le cors Saint Toumas, je nel feroie por l'onnor de Baudas! R[aous] mesires est plus fel qe Judas; il est mesires, chevals me done et dras, et garnemens et pailes de Baudas. Ne li fauroie por l'onnor de Damas tant qe tuit dient: B[erniers], droit en as!' 'Fix', dist la mere, 'par ma foi, droit en as; ser ton signor, Dieu en gaaingneras'.

1205

1210

' By St Thomas... I would rather not do it for all the wealth of Baghdad. Raoul my overlord is more villainous than Judas: [yet] he is my overlord, he gives me horses and clothing and arms and oriental silks. I wouldn't fail him, not [even] for thefiefof Damascus, until such a time as all can declare: "Bernier, you are in the right!"''Son', said his mother ' by my faith, you are right: serve your overlord, and God be your reward'.


59

Bernier's plight here demonstrates that the different bonding systems of the chansons de geste are not compatible. Should he be loyal to his family or to his lord and companion? Is one's first allegiance to one's feudal overlord or to one's kin-group? The use of the word droit in this passage epitomizes the moral ambiguity of Raoul. Bernier says he will not fight Raoul until everybody says to him 'droit en as' (1208) in other words meaning 'you are right to rebel', yet Marsent, his mother says exactly these words to him in the very next line with the opposite meaning, 'you are right not to rebel'. Droit is perhaps the most semantically charged and ambivalent word of the poem. It is used frequently as a noun and as an adjective with at least four distinct meanings: 'right' (as in this passage), 'compensation' or 'reparation' (as in 1567 when Raoul offers to make reparation to Bernier for killing his mother), ' rightful estates' (as in 5339), and 'rightful' (for instance as when Louis is consistently addressed as drois empereres^ see 178 and so on). It is hard, ultimately, to tell what is droit' right' and what is wrong, as the narrator himself admits (2202). The repetition of drois empereres at moments when Louis is at his most reprehensible and Bernier's claim that he killed Raoul 'a mon droit' (2985), when Gautier insists that he killed 'a tort son signor droiturier' (4898, see also 4989), blur any distinction between right and wrong. Can Raoul be condemned without Bernier and conversely can Bernier be condoned without Raoul also being condoned? Both are victims but both have faults and if Bernier is right, he nevertheless kills his liege lord. It is also paradoxical that although he kills Raoul, his companion and liege lord, in the defence of his family, Bernier is illegitimate, so hardly an unequivocal symbol of the priority of family loyalties over feudal bonds or the bonds of companionship. 54 Raoul is frequently analysed in terms of the conflict between Cambresiens and Vermandois with Cambrai representing aggression and the Vermandois representing appeasement, reason and mesure. Some critics consequently read the text as if it were a kind of allegory.55 However, if the narrative seems on the one hand to signal and invite such a reading, on the other the characters are a lot less clear cut than this might imply. It is

60


not just that there is a level of moral ambiguity about their positions, for the positions the characters occupy are in fact far from stable: at times it is Raoul who seeks to appease Bernier, Raoul who seems a model of mesure, of reasonable behaviour and of tenderness, as if he and Bernier had swapped characteristics : Li q[u]ens R[aous] belement Ten apele; il s'agenoille - vestue ot sa gonnele; par grant amor li a dit raison bele.

^So

Count Raoul speaks him fair. He kneels down, dressed in simple tunic; in great friendship, he made this generous speech. Raous parole par grant humeliance. ' Bernegon, frere, molt ies de grant vaillance pren ceste acorde si lai la malvoillance.'

1602

Raoul speaks with great humility. 'Bernier, my brother, your bravery is outstanding - accept this settlement and put animosity aside.' Throughout this sequence, which follows the burning of the convent at Origni, it is Bernier who is unreasonably truculent, Bernier who is violent: 'Voir', dist B[erniers], 'or oi je plait d'enfance Je nel feroie, por tot Tor d'Aquilance, dusqe li sans dont ci voi la sanblance remontera en mon chief sans doutance; dusq'a cele eure n'en iert fait acordance ou je verrai s'avoir en porrai venjance.'

1605

1610

'Indeed, this is childish talk I hear', said Bernier. 'I wouldn't accept it, not for all the gold of Aquilance, until there is no shadow of a doubt that the blood which I can see here willflowback up into my head; no settlement can be made until such time as I can see my way to getting revenge.' Similarly, when acting as an envoy of peace, Bernier later defies a conciliatory Raoul (2063-4 and 2127-41), and it is Bernier's truculence (not RaouPs) that leads to an escalation in the conflict. Such passages operate a reversal of the positions the two men occupy in earlier scenes where Raoul refuses to compromise and Bernier - like Oliver - represents moderation (751-70). Commenting on the fundamental similarity of Raoul


61

and Bernier, and on the manner in which they apparently exchange roles, Sarah Kay argues that the poet is not interested in characterization, but in the emplotment of confrontation, and consequently that the coherent presentation of character is subordinated to the presentation of conflict.56 Yet the role reversals of Raoul and Bernier may also be read intertextually. Read alongside the presentation of companionship in the near contemporary Paris Roland and Ami, it is striking that Raoul shares their impulse to repress difference, though it does so differently: rather than taking on simultaneously the same characteristics, the two heroes do so alternately. If Raoul and Bernier exchange roles, the symmetry with which this happens and the moral ambivalence of each position, makes them interchangeable. Raoul becomes Bernier, Bernier becomes Raoul. The fundamental difference between Raoul and these other texts is that whereas the Paris Roland and Ami would appear to suppress the threat of difference, in Raoul despite the similarity of Raoul and Bernier the two companions destroy each other. The potential threat of difference as represented by Oliver's opposition to Roland in the Oxford Roland is realized in Raoul. The symmetry of their confrontations has all the poetic grandeur of the verbal confrontations of Roland and Oliver in the Oxford Roland and when Bernier kills Raoul, it is the epic ideal that Roland and Oliver represent which dies, for through this act - perpetrated significantly by a good knight - it is made clear that the fantasy of the seamless male community is destined to fall apart. Furthermore, the inevitability of this disintegration is due to Raoul's (and many other characters') acceptance of the cornerstone of epic values, the investment of action (which always leads to violence) with ethical worth. As a meditation on the consequences of violence Raoul is an impressive and moving poem. The stark horror of the laisse in which the burning of Origni is described is one of the high points of medieval French literature (1299-342) and few could fail to be moved by the poignant spectacle of the nuns burning to death, whilst the appalled Bernier looks on, unable to go to his mother's aid. As an indictment of violence like this, Raoul is also

62


an indictment of the construction of masculinity within the chansons de geste which produces such devastation. It shows that the ideal of masculine unity as inscribed in the Oxford Roland is programmed for its own destruction, for it cannot contain the aggression it glorifies, nor the potential threat of difference. If some poems get round the problem by killing their heroes in the battle against the infidel, Raoul demonstrates that away from the Holy War, the epic heroes themselves will do the Saracen's job for them. Like the Paris Roland and Ami, Raoul can be read as a commentary on earlier texts. It shows not just the impossibility of the epic ideal, the threat inherent in its construction of masculinity, but also that writers within the genre are aware of the limitations and potential dangers of its ideology. The chanson de geste is not a monologic or an unquestioning, static genre as some criticism has implied; on the contrary if some texts (like Ami) attempt to paper over the cracks in its ideology, others (like Raoul) offer a critique from within. However, what both strands of the genre share is a nostalgia for a formerly heroic world and an impulse backwards: a yearning for a lost perfect world is manifested in virtually all chansons de geste.57 This too can be read as an impulse to deny difference and to create a myth of masculine unity, a myth of a past when men were men, unproblematically. However, in locating this perfect world in the past, and in endlessly narrating the demise of its greatest heroes, chansons de geste recognize its impossibility. WOMEN IN THE MEN'S ROOM

The preceding analysis of four chansons de geste suggests not only that what I have called the genre's monologic construction of masculinity is a fragile edifice, but more importantly that some writers within the genre are aware of this. However, perhaps the most powerful signal that all is not well in the epic's all-male club is the inclusion of women characters in many texts as protagonists who partake in and sometimes direct the action, despite the fact that they are excluded from the genre's value system, unable as they are to participate in the privileged male


63

bonds which represent the pinnacle of human emotional and ethical experience. Thus in texts like the Paris Roland or Ami, good women characters like Aude and Belissant may support the heroes' heroic endeavours and endorse their value, but Aude is a mere prop in the glorification of the two heroes, whilst Belissant is left behind by her husband when he goes off with his companion. In many chansons de geste, women are objects of exchange between men, symbolic of pacts or mediating aggression between men.58 As we have seen, in texts like the Roland poems or Girart de Vienne, Aude is a symbol of the bond between Roland and Oliver; in Ami, Lubias is given to Ami by Hardre as a symbol of friendship, and Belissant is bestowed upon Amile as a sign of Charlemagne's favour; in Raoul, when Louis gives the Cambresis to Giboin he would like Aalais (his sister) to be part of the package, and Beatrix is given to Bernier by Guerri as a sign of their peace; in the Prise d'Orange, Guillaume's marriage to Orable is emblematic of his victory over the Saracens and of his conquest of Orange; in Girart de Roussillon, the two main women characters mediate the rivalry between Girart and Charles Martel in a manner which may indicate the influence of the courtly lyric and therefore inscribe competing ideologies in this powerful poem.59 The role of women as objects of exchange is taken for granted in such texts; it is not symbolically central, as it is in many romances, even in texts like the Prise, with its parodic love story, or Girart de Roussillon with its more serious treatment of the hero's romantic involvements. In some chansons de geste, however, women are more than passive vehicles for men to conduct relations with each other. In a series of recent articles Sarah Kay has argued that women characters in texts like Daurel et Beton, the Siege de Barbastre and

Orson de Beauvais, supply a counter-narrative from which a critique of the disfunctional dominant masculine ideology, and therefore of its construction of masculinity, is offered.60 The feminine in these texts would therefore be the source of a fundamental dialogism and thus, potentially at least, constructed as radically other. However, as Kay shows, women characters who highlight the shortcomings of the male order are

64


either ignored, treated with wanton violence, or sometimes suppressed altogether, as if the male characters, and possibly the poets, did not wish to recognize dissenting voices. This treatment of women characters points again to a wilful desire to repress difference, yet at the same time the difference they represent (both sexual and ethical) is paradoxically inscribed in the text. In many chansons de geste, therefore, women play a diagnostic role which underlines the inadequacies of the genre's construction of masculinity. This diagnostic role is not reserved for women who denounce the dominant male ideology when it is disfunctional: some women characters energetically support the hero even when he is hopelessly ineffectual. Possibly the best known example of this is Guibourc in the early twelfth-century Chanson de Guillaume*1 Whenever her husband Guillaume declares himself unwilling or unable to continue the fight against the Saracens, Guibourc supports him, and encourages him to return to battle. The first time this happens we are told that Guillaume merely pretends to be faint hearted in order to test her courage (1011-13). The second time, however, Guillaume seems genuinely to have given up the struggle, berating himself for his cowardice and collapsing in tears (1303-18). Guibourc chastizes him and reminds him of his glorious ancestry: « Marchis Willame, merci, pur amur De; II est grant doel que home deit plorer, E fort damage k'il se deit dementer. II fu custume a tun riche parente, Quant altres terres alerent purchacer, Tuz tens morurent en bataille chanpel. Mielz voil que moergez en Larchamp sur mer Que tun lignage seit per tei avile Ne apres ta mort a tes heirs reprove.» Quant Tot Willame, prist son chef a croller, Plurad dels oilz tendrement e suef.

1320

1325

' Marquis Guillaume, for pity's sake, by God it is a great shame when a man is reduced to tears and a terrible crime that he should break his word. It was the custom of your glorious ancestors when they went off to foreign lands, always to die in pitched battle. I would rather you died at Archamp-by-the-sea, than that your lineage were reviled


65

because of you or your heirs reproached after your death.' When Guillaume heard this his head rolled forwards, he wept tenderly and softly from his eyes. Guibourc-a converted Saracen princess-has to remind Guillaume of the values which he is supposed to represent. The ideology she passionately advocates here is more than a little reminiscent of Roland's position in the first horn scene in the Oxford Roland (1049-81): Guillaume should stand and fight since if he does not, this will shame both his ancestors and his heirs. In the scene immediately following this Guibourc has to gather an army for Guillaume since he is still unwilling to fight; she then propels him back to battle. Guibourc identifies totally with the epic ideal here, particularly when she says she would rather Guillaume were dead than shamed; yet at the same time the very fact that she shows herself to be more catholic than the Pope, as it were, by sustaining the epic ideal more vigorously than Guillaume, points to its inadequacy, for she is, of course, excluded from the battlefield, the space in which the ideal she supports is tested. Guibourc's diagnostic role is reinforced later, when Guillaume returns from the Archamp having again lost all his men. He stands alone at the gates of Orange: Guibourc refuses to recognize him because, she claims, Guillaume would have returned victorious (2207-306). She only accepts that he is who he says he is when some Saracens fortuitously appear and he is able to prove his identity in battle (2307-28). 62 In the Chanson de Guillaume Guibourc is a supplement to the masculinity of the hero. 63 She acts as its guarantor and restores Guillaume to his rightful place on the battlefield with his male companions, yet at the same time the fact that she has to do this highlights the weakness of Guillaume's masculinity and subverts it. On one level, the feminine/masculine opposition implicit in Guibourc and Guillaume's relation to space appears to valorize the masculine; on another level, the opposition collapses as Guibourc emerges as more effective than Guillaume. However, the text does not constitute an overt challenge to the male order. Guibourc meekly defers to masculine ideology and herself affirms the priority of male bonding again and again (for example 1030-2, 1054-8).

66


In other texts the challenge women represent to the male order is more striking. In the Occitan Daurel et Beton, for instance, in which wicked Gui murders his good companion Bovis in order to usurp his wife and his position, Bovis's wife Ermenjart continually warns him of Gui's perfidious intentions:64 «Ay! sire due, aiso vos vuelh mostrier Que lo fel Guis, cui Jhesus desampar, Venc non a gaire, no saup alres trobar, Mes m'a razo, que-m cujet anta far; 265 Mai li respozi, pres mi a menassar C'ausira vos, no*lh podes escapar, La nostr' amor el fara desebrar.» Alas, my lord Duke, I want to prove to you that felonious Gui, may Jesus confound him, came here a short while ago and found nothing better to do than to address me a speech with which he thought to shame me; I rebuffed him and he began to threaten me that he would kill you, that you could not escape, that he would destroy our love. Bovis refuses to believe his wife (269-72). Later when he goes hunting with Gui, he again fails to heed Ermenjart's warning (327—35) and he is duly murdered. However, Ermenjart's diagnostic role is not limited to revealing Gui's murderous intentions. She also criticizes overtly her brother Charlemagne's failure to punish Gui and his complicity in allowing the traitor to marry her: Don' Esmenjart dissen per los degras, Venc al rey Karlo, los uelhs li a baiatz; E-l tracher Guis es apres [desjmontat, Vi lo la dona, .iiii. motz a cridat: «Senher», ditz ela, »bem petit mi amatz, C'aquel trachor e vostra cort menatz C'ausis lo due can fo ab lui cassar, Que son espieut li fiquet pels costat.» «Senher», ditz Guis, «mai no la*n crezatz: Ela es dona e ditz sas volontatz; S'om m'o dises, be • m fora adobatz De l'escondieire cant mi fora armat. Mos companhs era e plevit e juratz, No m'o pessera per .lx. cieutatz.» «Reis emperaire, so que ieu die es vertatz,

595

600

605

Monologic masculinity Que el Fa mort, et er be esproat: La fors el pla sia • 1 fuoc adobatz, leu passar n'ai, veia o tos barnatz; Se ja .i. pels es sobre mi cremat, Qu'eu sia asa, ja merse no*m agatz! Se • m salve Dieus ni la mia verdat, Aquel tracer sia totz rossegatz!» So ditz lo rey: « Cest contendre laissas: Per tot aiso non er lo due cobrat; El loc del due Guis vos sia donat.» Au lo la dona, .iiii. motz a cridatz: «Ai! senher reis, leu vos es acossellatz Que pel ric due .i. trachor mi donatz! Ben grans aver ere que vo-nh sia donatz. Aital ric rey si fo en bon ponh natz. Que per aver de sa sor fai mercatz!»

67

610

615

620

Lady Ermenjart goes down the steps, came towards Charles and kissed him on the eyes; and the traitor Gui dismounted after him. The lady saw him and spoke briefly:' My lord', she said,' you clearly don't love me very much, for in your court you bring this traitor, who killed the Duke when he was hunting with him, for he struck him in the ribs with his spear'. 'My lord', said Gui, 'do not believe her. She is a woman and can say whatever she likes. If a man said this to me, I would take up my weapons and acquit myself once armed. He was my sworn and pledged companion, I would not think of it for fifteen cities.' 'King, lord emperor, what I say is the truth, for he did kill him, and this will be proved: let a fire be prepared out there on the plain, I will pass through it before all of your barons; if just one of my hairs is burnt, may I be consumed by the flames, and may you have no mercy upon me. So help me God and in truth, let this traitor be quartered!' The king said: ' Stop talking like this: none of this will bring the Duke back; instead of the Duke I will give you Gui.' The lady heard this and spoke briefly:' Ah, my lord king, you decide too hastily when you give me a traitor in exchange for the powerful Duke. I think you must have been given a great deal of money. Such a powerful king must have been born on a fateful day when he barters his sister for money.'

Charlemagne is obviously reprehensible here for he aligns himself with the traitor Gui, and in some respects the portrayal of kingship in Daurel is close to that in Raoul. What interests me here, however, is that the source of truth is a woman's voice. Ermenjart twice stresses the truth of what she is saying, vertatz

68


(607) and verdat (613) being in an emphatic position at the rhyme. Gui discounts the veracity of what she says precisely because she is a woman and (he claims) can say what she likes without having to defend herself in combat (601-6). This in itself is paradoxical: her words are disregarded because she is excluded from one form of judicial procedure that determines truth, yet her offer to prove her allegations in another form of judicium dei is ignored.65 The system itself is manifestly corrupt. The text's listeners and readers know full well Ermenjart speaks the truth and it is also striking that she intuits the truth in assuming that Gui has given Charlemagne money to persuade him to consent to the marriage. The result is a crushing indictment of Charlemagne's kingship, exacerbated in the rest of this laisse by the fact that Ermenjart stresses three times that she is being forcibly married (626, 627 and 639) when it is the king's duty to protect women from being married against their wishes. Shortly after this Ermenjart is the victim of a brutal assault from Gui when she defends her son Beton (664—8). Elsewhere in the text violence is inflicted on women: Beton's wetnurse, Aicelina, who shelters him from Gui, has her breasts beaten with brambles so severely that 'sane e lah mescladamen ragar' (922: 'blood and milk run together'). The narrator may implicitly align himself with what women say and do in Daurel, but they are none the less victims of horrific violence which seeks to suppress them. As Sarah Kay has argued, Beton, the hero of this chanson, is repeatedly rescued by a series of characters who are excluded from the genre's ethical system, and who therefore belong to a counter-narrative ('Compagnonnage', pp. 364-6): Daurel, Bovis's faithful jongleur, Saracens, but also a series of women. It is noteworthy then that Daurel's initial rescue of Beton is made possible by his wife Beatrix, who suggests that they give up their son Daurelet to Gui instead of Beton: Gui promptly smashes Daurelet's brains out against a pillar and Beatrix dies of grief whilst Daurel escapes to Saracen lands with Beton (ggS" 1 *^)- 6 6 In some respects the disintegration of companionship in Daurel is comparable to the idealization of male bonding in Ami


69

and to the way in which male characters become interchangeable in Raoul, since Gui's action is motivated by a (mimetic) desire to take Bovis's place, and thereby to be like him: as he says 'serai el loc del due qu'es trespasatz' (577: 'I will take the dead Duke's place'). As in Ami women are viewed as disruptive of the privileged homosocial bond. It is only when Charlemagne gives Bovis Ermenjart in marriage that Gui becomes jealous and decides to murder him (115-55) 5 before this they had lived 'en bon acordamen' for ten years (34), despite Bovis's wealth and property. Women disturb the chanson degeste's male community. In this they play a role similar to that played by land in some poems (for instance Raoul or Girart de Roussillori); like land they affect the male individual's worth in the present, and the integrity of future incarnations of himself. But as Daurel suggests, women constitute a threat which is greater than that posed by other men usurping one's property or simply being richer: the dislocation of male bonding. Consequently they are frequently excluded, assaulted, or suppressed. Yet since they also support and rescue masculinity when it is in crisis, pointing to its flaws, they become surrogate voices for critical impulses within the genre. The paradox of this position is perhaps what leads to the violence which is often perpetrated against them. For many critics chansons de geste in which women play an important role bear the mark of romance. 67 Without doubt women frequently play a more significant part in romance than in epic, but although some women in some romances represent positions which oppose the dominant ideology of the text, the role of women in romance is in fact quite different from their role in the chanson de geste, and in some respects less appealing. The chanson de geste remains a robust genre well into the thirteenth century, indicating it still had an enthusiastic public interested in chivalric warrior bonding well after the emergence of romance. Even texts which critics seem unanimously to think have romance elements (for instance the Prise (T Orange or Girart de Roussillon) are recognizably chansons de geste,

both in form and content, and such texts contest as well as endorse romance values. Whilst the chanson de geste was no doubt

70


influenced by romance, notably in the inclusion of ever more fantastic adventures in foreign lands which resemble quests (for example in the second parts ofRaoul and Daurel), influence may in fact have been stronger in the other direction, in that romance's construction of masculinity is first articulated as a direct response to the chanson degeste's; this will be the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

The knight meets his match: romance

It has been a commonplace in medieval studies since the last century that courtly literature simultaneously 'discovers' the individual, woman and love. These discoveries were viewed as a positive departure in western civilization, particularly for women. To quote Rita Lejeune, one of the foremost medievalists of the post-war period: 'on tombera d'accord, je suppose, pour confirmer le role essentiel de la femme dans le developpement de la litterature franchise des XII e et X I I P siecles'; thus she writes of women 'Pamour courtois, cette grande valeur spirituelle, n'est pas leur creation, mais il a ete conû pour elles'. 1 In this vein of criticism, romance's ostensibly progressive, 'courtly' treatment of women is compared favourably with that of the epic. But is romance good for women? Is 'courtly love' a spiritual value and was it conceived for women as Lejeune suggests? The traditional reading of romance's apparent idealization of women has not gone unchallenged in recent years. Jean-Charles Huchet, for instance, offers a sophisticated re-evaluation of romance: through love and women, he argues, romance articulates a new, more complex model of subjectivity (see Le Roman medieval). Huchet's work situates an engagement with femininity at the core of romance, but in so doing (though he does not make the point himself), it paradoxically focuses attention on masculinity. This is because since all surviving romances from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are as far as we know male authored, 'women', or more accurately femininity in these texts, is a metaphor men use to construct their own subjectivity. Female characters in romance are not real

72


women, but figures within a male discourse. Huchet acknowledges this, but often fails to see the implications. If in romance men evolve and assume new identities through love and their relations with women, it follows that what this engagement with femininity articulates is the construction within a male discourse of masculinity through its relationship with femininity construed as the other. 2 Underpinning the apparent concern of critics like Huchet with women is an androcentric bias which, as Roberta Krueger says, operates a double displacement of women, whose response to the use by men of their gender as metaphor receives no consideration. 3 Krueger's work suggests that 'women' in romance are signs in a male discourse. The notion that romances were written primarily for women proves to be a myth when one considers that there is little evidence for non-fictional female patronage in the texts. But Krueger shows that romance is equivocal about the gender models it constructs and one crucial element in this equivocation is romance's engagement with and anxiety about the responses of female readers. If on the one hand romance offers repressive and misogynistic models of femininity, on the other the equivocation with which these are presented can make reading romance a rewarding experience for the resistant woman reader, whether medieval or modern. On the one hand the texts seem to endorse the sex/gender system they mediate, on the other they appear to deconstruct it. 4 This points to a further objection to Huchet's work: like his less sophisticated predecessors he assumes that central terms in romance criticism such as 'love', 'woman', and the 'individual' are ahistorical, immutable categories waiting to be 'discovered'. But notions such as these are generated within historically specific social practices. Romance does not 'discover' women, or femininity, or the individual, it constructs models of them, which need evaluating in their historical context. The earliest surviving romances date from around 1150. In some respects the notion of a genre called ' romance' may seem like a modern imposition on a group of texts which are heterogeneous. However, a degree of thematic and stylistic unity is supplied by the treatment of love, by a particular model

The knight meets his match

73

of the male individual which is associated with an ethical vision of chivalry, and by a highly stylized form of rhetoric and love casuistry. In addition, clear intertextual connections between the different strands of romance, point to a conscious generic and discursive formation.5 The genre is vast and in some respects less homogeneous than other vernacular genres, but from its earliest manifestations writers of romance are aware of its generic singularity. In this chapter I shall concentrate primarily on relatively early verse romances, which are marked by formal as well as thematic unity and I shall attempt to elucidate the crucial role of romance's construction of gender in the formation of the genre.6 Traditional criticism is right that in relation to the epic, the role of women in romance is striking, but it should be remembered that few chansons de geste survive from before 1150 and that the two genres represent simultaneous not sequential developments after this. Penny Schine Gold makes this point specifically in relation to 'images of women': 'the difference in the expressed attitude towards women in the two genres does not primarily arise from change over time; rather chanson de geste and romance embody two contrasting models or paradigms employed by or for the male nobility of twelfth-century France to resolve in the imagination the conflicts arising from their troublesome social circumstances' (Lady, p. 3). Destined primarily for the same audience, but offering different imaginary resolutions to cultural and social tensions, it is not surprising that early romance and the chansons de geste engage in a dialectic with each other. Gender is a key issue in this dialectic. One important difference between the two genres lies in their treatment of the differentiation of the male individual and the concomitant problem of otherness. As I have argued, the epic hero's identity is constructed - albeit problematically - in relation to other men. Chansons de geste thus do not represent as symbolically central the role of women within the kinship structures and hierarchies around which the society which produced them was organized. Romance, on the other hand, consciously makes the role of the exchange of women in the formation of masculine hierarchies within feudal society a

74


central theme. It thereby offers a new model of masculine identity, constructed in relation to the feminine, but which proves to be no less problematic than the epic model. The emergence of romance is associated with the appearance, initially in Occitania, of a poetics of fin' amor; often termed 'courtly love' by modern critics. I have argued elsewhere that fin'amor in early troubadour poetry should be seen in the context of the Church's concerted attempt in the early twelfth century to gain control of aristocratic marriage practices (Gaunt, 'Marginal men'). Michel Foucault and Gayle Rubin argue that sexuality is a phenomenon which is constantly renegotiated and which must be historicized; Rubin further suggests that at certain historical flashpoints, sexuality undergoes rapid transformation in relation to social upheavals. 7 The twelfth century is just such a flashpoint. The role of women, the individual, and 'love' in courtly literature is part of a renegotiation of sexuality amongst the French aristocracy which may well be related to the impact of the Church's attempt to control the adjudication of marriage. As is well known the three main elements of the ' feudal' model of marriage were: endogamy (allowing marriage within a kin-group), repudiation at will on the part of men, and family control of the choice of marriage partner. The key features of the Church's model were: strict exogamy (forbidding the marriage of people who were related, often to a high degree), indissolubility, and the need for the consent of both partners for the marriage to be valid. The transition between the two models takes centuries to complete, for the Church was willing to turn a blind eye to practices which contravened its rules when it suited, though the key periods are probably the first half of the twelfth century and the pontificate of Alexander III (1159-81). The model of marriage the Church promoted must have appealed to the feudal aristocracy in some ways, since it became so widely accepted, but the transition had profound effects on European politics: it gave the Church power to interfere in procedures that determined the consolidation or disintegration of secular economic and political power bases. In addition, various elements in the Church's theoretical model of marriage may well contribute to the


75

evolution of courtly culture and to the apparent value placed upon women in courtly texts. For instance, in foregrounding the importance of consent on the part of both partners in a marriage, whether consciously or not, the Church promoted the interest of the male individual against that of the group and raised the spectre of women's choice (and thereby desire). Furthermore, the Church's attempts to challenge the rights of secular men to regulate their marital affairs drew attention to the value placed upon women as objects of exchange in the formation of feudal alliances, a value which hitherto had been taken for granted, in that women's desires were not considered problematic. 8 The importance of sexuality ('love'?) in romance has crucial ramifications for gender. In contradistinction to the chansons de geste, romance constructs masculinity in relation to femininity, developing a strong sense of alterity. It is therefore significant that at a formative stage in the genre's development early romances enact the marginalization of what I have called the epic's monologic construction of masculinity. The first section of this chapter will look at this process in two early texts, the Roman d'Eneas and Floire et Blancheflor, to argue that early romances seek to replace the chansons de geste's construction of gender with models grounded in compulsory heterosexuality and homosocial desire. I will then examine the problematic nature of romance's construction of masculine identity in Chretien de Troyes's Le Chevalier de la Charrete and Renaut de Beaujeu's Le Bel Inconnu; and finally how misogyny in romance, apparently directed at women, can also be read as undermining masculine prowess, and how this may reveal an anxiety on the part of male writers about the attribution in romance of power and choice to women.

MARGINALIZING MONOLOGIG MASCULINITY

T h e Roman cTEneas is one of the so-called romans antiques,

adaptations of Latin texts into French octosyllabic rhyming couplets, the standard form of romance throughout the

76


twelfth century. The group formed by the Eneas, the Roman de Troie and the Roman de Thebes was probably composed between 1150 and 1165. They may have been composed for Henry II of England; they certainly circulated in his continental territories under the patronage of someone wishing to promote Plantagenet interests, for with Wace's Roman de Ron and Brut they form a sequence of narratives which shows how the new royal house of England could trace a direct line of descent back to the royal house of Troy, through Arthur and Julius Caesar. Amongst the earliest surviving romances, the romans antiques are precursors both in terms of form and content of Chretien de Troyes and Arthurian romance. Indeed in one manuscript (BN fonds frangais 1450) all of Chretien's Arthurian romances are interpolated into the Brut, which follows the Eneas and the Roman de Troie, suggesting a high degree of continuity and cohesion between the romans antiques and Chretien. The Eneas itself, for which the source is Virgil's Aeneid, was probably composed around 1156.9 In an earlier study, I examined the most significant innovation the Eneas poet makes to Virgil's narrative: the addition of a 2000-line sequence about Eneas falling in love with Lavine. This addition makes up one fifth of the French poem and is one of the key early narrative manifestations of what modern critics call 'courtly love'. The effect of the expansion of Lavine's role in the narrative is to displace Eneas's relationship with Pallas, his male companion, and war, as the central points of interest. I argued that the text is structured around the three main female characters (Dido, Camille the Amazon warrior, and Lavine), the point being to direct Eneas towards the 'correct' sexual object choice, Lavine, and to oppose her to Dido, the evil temptress. I contended that there was a consistent attempt to undermine maternal authority (represented by Venus, who engineers Dido's love for Eneas, and Lavine's mother, who opposes her marriage to Eneas), and to extol the value of paternal authority (particularly that of Anchise, Eneas's father, but also that of Lavine's father, Latin). Furthermore, Eneas's marriage to Lavine (supported by Anchise and Latin) is presented as an exogamous marriage, involving an exchange


77

between men, whereas Lavine's proposed marriage to Turnus (supported by Lavine's mother) is presented as an endogamous marriage. Eneas is primarily therefore an exemplary iuvenis, a landless young knight made good through an advantageous marriage, there being parallels between Eneas and Henry II since both establish kingdoms and dynasties in foreign lands, and since the identity of both is radically altered through a marriage. 10 If the most significant innovation of the Eneas poet is the addition of the Lavine episode, the most striking is the inclusion early in this final section of two homophobic diatribes directed against Eneas. Whilst trying to persuade Lavine not to love Eneas, her mother asserts he is a sodomite: N'as tu oi comfaitemant il mena Dido malement? Unques feme n'ot bien de lui, n'en avras tu, si com ge cui, d'un traitor, d'un sodomite. Toz tens te clamera il quite; se il avoit alcun godel, ce li seroit et bon et bel quel laissasses a ses druz faire; s'il lo pooit par toi atraire, nel troveroit ja si estrange qu'il ne feist asez tel change, que il feist son bon de toi por ce qu'il lo sofrist de soi; bien lo lairoit sor toi monter, s'il repueit sor lui troter; il n'aime pas poil de conin.

8580

8585

8590

8595

Have you not heard how badly he treated Dido? No woman has ever got anything good from him and nor will you as far as I can see from this traitor and sodomite. He will always leave you alone; if he has some fancy man, he will be quite happy for you to let him do it with his companions/lovers;11 if he could procure him through you, he would not find it so strange to do a deal, whereby he [the lover] would have his way with you because he [Eneas] was allowed to have him; he would let him mount you if he could ride behind: he does not like rabbit hair/a bit of pussy.

78


And so on for a further twenty-five lines. Lavine then matches her mother's crudity and virulence, when she thinks that Eneas does not love her: «Ce est», fait ele, «verite, que ma mere m'a de lui dit; de feme lui est molt petit, il voldroit deduit de gargon, n'aime se males putains non. Son Ganimede a avec soi, asez li est or po de moi; il est molt longuement an ruit, a gar$on moine son deduit; quant a mene o als son gait, de nule feme ne li chalt.»

9J35

'So', she said, 'what my mother told me about him is true; he cares little for women and prefers the pleasure of boys; he only loves male whores. He has his Ganymede with him and so cares nothing for me; he is a long time rutting and he has his pleasure with a boy; when he has had his way with them he cares not for a woman.' And so on for forty lines. These speeches are not taken from Virgil, though it has been suggested that what they say is inferred from a few lines in the Aeneid taken out of context.12 Until recently most critics ignored these passages. Those who did comment echoed Edmond Faral's view that they reflect a contemporary concern with homosexuality in monastic and scholastic milieux. Alfred Adler, for instance, comments that the Eneas can inspire us with confidence in the ' healthy' attitudes of the twelfth-century humanists. 13 The assumption underlying this argument is that the homophobic diatribes have no role in the economy of the narrative and that the poet's feelings on this subject were so healthily robust that he produces this crude invective automatically, however incongruous the context, given the right catalyst. Given the careful architecture of the Eneas, these passages need to be examined in the context of the entire romance. Thus, Jean-Charles Huchet argues they reaffirm Eneas's masculinity by highlighting his avoidance ofpassivite and an egarement du cote


79

de lafeminite. He suggests that Eneas, then Lavine, achieve just the right balance of masculinity and femininity in their characters {Roman medieval, pp. 143-4), which leads him to conclude that Lavine ' constitue une indeniable reussite, une creation ou se reflete et se reve une certaine psychologie feminine largement mise a profit par les lecteurs courtois de VEneas' (p. 145). Huchet presumably subsumes lectrices courtoises to lecteurs courtois here. Some women readers may well have internalized the model of femininity the text promotes, but Huchet's view of Lavine as a reussite, as a representation of une certaine psychologie

feminine assumes 'femininity' is what men say it is. It is also hard to reconcile Huchet's explanation of the homophobic diatribe with his subsequent argument that love in the Eneas serves to efface sexual difference (p. 171). If anything, the diatribes reinforce a rigid notion of sexual difference, predicated to a large extent on sexuality. Feminist writers like Gayle Rubin and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argue that homophobia is an integral part of patriarchy. It is in the light of their work that the Eneas has been viewed by recent critics such as William Burgwinkle, Susan Crane and myself.14 For Sedgwick since patriarchy's power structures depend on the exchange of women, homosexuality can subvert patriarchy, which will depend on 'obligatory heterosexuality'. 15 In other words homophobia is a necessary component of patriarchy. Like Sedgwick I am not arguing for a direct and automatic relation between radical gay and feminist theory: gay sub-cultures and relationships can marginalize women, promote misogyny and the interests of men at the expense of women within patriarchy as effectively as what Sedgwick calls homosocial male bonding, and they frequently have done. The point is that homophobia, like misogyny is an inevitable product of patriarchy. Homophobia is thus misogynistic not because it represses the feminine in men, but because it contributes towards the oppression of women. The beauty of Sedgwick's analysis lies in the distinction she makes between the homosocial and the homosexual: the homosocial refers to any male/male bonding and may therefore be non-sexual (for example the homosocial bonding of the chansons de geste); the homosexual to

80


sexual relations between men. Drawing on the work of LeviStrauss, Rene Girard and Gayle Rubin, Sedgwick then uses the term 'homosocial desire', which brings the homosocial into the realm of the erotic, to designate men's use of relationships with women (sexual and emotional), and texts about these relationships, to contract relationships with each other. A few words are necessary about the problems of applying Sedgwick's theories to the Middle Ages, since they were elaborated in relation to nineteenth-century culture and depend upon a homo/hetero opposition. It has been argued that the category 'homosexual' is a modern invention and that pre-modern cultures defined sexual deviants by their acts, not according to what they were. Thus, for some scholars, pre-modern cultures did not accord individuals who engaged in homo-erotic activities ('homosexuals') an identity in the way that modern culture has done, and it has further been suggested that the medieval word 'sodomite' designated indiscriminately a man who committed heterosexual as well as homosexual sodomy. 16 However, numerous homophobic passages in vernacular literature suggest that some medieval writers at least had an essentialist view of homosexuality, for they imply some men were viewed as having an irrevocable and immanent sexual orientation towards their own sex, whether or not they acted on their inclinations, which is the implication of Lavine's mother's taunt. 17 This is not to say that the Middle Ages had a category 'homosexual' which corresponds to ours; nor that 'homosexual ' is a universal category even though the word was coined in the nineteenth century. But as John Boswell has demonstrated a wide variety of theories regarding sexuality - ranging from the essentialist, to the constructionist, to the normative - were current throughout the Middle Ages (as they are today), and people with a sexual orientation towards their own sex were widely held to be identifiable.18 The two most substantial accounts of homosexuality in the Middle Ages, those of John Boswell and David Greenberg, chart the existence of gay sub-cultures in monastic institutions, which implies a gay identity, using 'gay' in Boswell's sense to designate people conscious of their sexual orientation towards


81

their own sex. However, Boswell and Greenberg's work is not feminist and it is in relation to feminist theory that I take issue with them: they fail to comment on the virulent misogyny of medieval gay sub-cultures and the role they surely played in maintaining the status quo in patriarchal and repressive institutions like the Church. Furthermore, they view the bonding between men in many chansons degeste and romances - if only by implication - as indicative of homosexuality in chivalric society, yet they fail to substantiate this with other evidence or to distinguish between the homosocial and homosexual. 19 Boswell and Greenberg take homophobia in vernacular texts as evidence of gay activity and their comments on the Eneas (Boswell, Christianity, p. 228; Greenberg, Construction, p. 268) thus echo (in this respect only) those of scholars like Faral and Adler. But in the light of Sedgwick's fruitful fusion of gay and feminist theory, the homophobia of the Eneas is subject to a different interpretation. A discourse of homophobia is less repressive than it is coercive; for Sedgwick it is ' a mechanism for regulating the behavior of the many by the specific oppression of the few'.20 Homophobia is thus more than an attack on homosexuals; it is a means of regulating male homosocial bonds, of imposing normative models of heterosexuality and gender on all men. Every man will regulate carefully his homosocial bonds if he is concerned they may be perceived as homosexual, and thereby transgressional. Homophobia in the Eneas may reflect anxieties about homosexuality, but its effect is to mark Eneas's conformity to a prescribed norm. It is significant that the homophobic diatribes are put into the mouths of female characters and that they are placed immediately before Eneas and Lavine's love develops. The female characters within this male discourse endorse heterosexuality and are responsible for making sure that the hero stays on the straight and narrow. That women support the structure which oppresses them could either be seen as part of the male fantasy, or as a sign of their enculturation. Within the narrative economy the homophobic diatribes make it necessary for Eneas to fall in love with Lavine, since the best way to refute a charge of homosexuality is to proclaim one's heterosexuality publicly,

82


and so Lavine becomes a necessary adjunct to Eneas's identity. The homophobia thus marks the heterosexuality of Eneas's subjectivity, since his subsequent actions prove so resoundingly that he is not a sodomite (as if the Dido episode had not already sufficed!). But as well as imposing a certain model of sexuality on the hero, the homophobia contributes to the disintegration of a type of male bonding which is closely associated with the chanson degeste. The middle section of the romance ends with the death of Pallas, Eneas's companion, and his place by Eneas's side is then taken by Lavine. Furthermore, the middle of the middle section, indeed the exact centre of the text, is devoted to the death of two men who die together on the battlefield, and who are archetypal chanson de geste companions: Eurialus and Nisus. Eurialus and Nisus are drawn from the Aeneid where they appear together twice: first in book v during the funeral games, then in book ix when they are killed during a sortie they plan and execute; Nisus dies trying to rescue Eurialus, who is slain before his eyes. In the Eneas they appear only once, when they die, and they are treated differently. Virgil's pair are different ages: Eurialus is younger than Nisus and this is an example of transgenerational Greek warrior bonding (which in Greek culture was probably homoerotic). In the French poem, no mention is made of their ages. They are called compaignons (4911, 5053), and are heroes out of the Old French, rather than the classical epic mould. When Eurialus hears Nisus planning a raid on the enemy, he protests: «comant remandrai ge sanz toi, ne tu comant irras sanz moi? Dune n'ies tu gie et ge sui tu? Ge quit tu as lo sens perdu; [une ame somes et un cors; l'une moitie ira la fors;] com puet Tun sanz l'autre remaindre? Des or me puis ge de toi plaindre, tu me boises, ne me tiens mie amor ne droite compaignie, ne tu iras an Tost sanz moi, ne ge ne remandrai sanz toi.»

4945

495°


83

' How will I stay without you and how will you go without me ? Am I not you, and you me ? I think you have lost your mind; we are one soul and one body; only one half will go out there; how can one remain without the other. I think I can now complain about you; you betray me, you do not love me or feel true companionship for me; you will not go to the army without me, nor will I remain without you.' This passage is a mise en abime both of the middle section and of the entire text. The death of Eurialus and Nisus, with their bond of companionship, their lack of differentiation, so reminiscent of the chanson de geste (particularly, of course, Ami et Amile), prefigures the death of Pallas and Eneas's friendship through Pallas's own death, which paves the way for Eneas's relationship with Lavine.21 Read in relation to Eneas's love for Pallas, and the companionship of Eurialus and Nisus, the two homophobic diatribes serve not to imply that Eneas is homosexual — tellingly the accusation has a discredited source, Lavine's mother - nor simply to affirm his heterosexuality, but rather to enhance the repudiation of the type of male bonding exemplified by Pallas and Eneas, and Nisus and Eurialus, who appropriately enough stand at the centre of the text, only to be displaced by Lavine, the real focus of Eneas's quest. It is as if Eneas is initially an epic hero, defined in relation to other men; he then emerges as a romance hero, defined (along with his masculinity) through his relationship with a woman. I would suggest that the homophobia of the Eneas stems from this dialectic between epic and romance ideology. But although women are more important in romance than in epic, romance merely replaces one type of male bonding with another, for Eneas's relationship with Lavine is part of a broader web of homosocial ties, between Eneas and her father, and Eneas and his own father. The difference is that male bonds are now mediated by women. Significantly this early romance seeks to marginalize the close male bonding of the dominant genre of its literary world. In the new genre it helps to establish the close homosocial bonds of epic, which frequently exclude women altogether, are a threat to a new ideology which foregrounds the individual at the expense of the group. In his incisive study of

84


the Eneas, Stephen Nichols argues that Lavine's desire is portrayed as threatening. This is because she first communicates with Eneas by firing an arrow with a letter attached to it into the Trojan camp; the arrow is thought to come from Turnus's army and the final conflict begins ('Amorous imitation', pp. 69-72). I agree with Nichols that Lavine's desire is threatening, but only to a certain type of male bonding. R. Howard Bloch has charted the effect upon literature of the birth in the twelfth century of an ideology which paves the way for the modern state.22 A society structured around feudal clans is displaced by a monarchy which acts as a cohesive symbol for a society of self-governing individuals. This displacement takes centuries to complete, but the foregrounding of the individual in romance, stressed frequently in romance criticism,23 is symptomatic of this transition. The Church's policy on marriage no doubt contributed to the shift since it fostered agnatic lineage (as opposed to the cognatic lineage of feudal society), and consequently the disruption of horizontal male bonds in favour of vertical male bonds. It is here that 'obligatory heterosexuality' has a part to play. The eroticism of romance sets potential heroes against each other as rivals, rather than binding them as companions or implacable enemies as epic does. If romance charts the regulation of heterosexual desire, desire is nevertheless essential to its structures since without it the comradeship of the battlefield might well prevail once again. For desire to be regulated, its object as well as its mode needs to be controlled. Dido is an unacceptable object of desire because she controls her own sexuality, and is not therefore part of an exchange between men; Lavine, the heiress who is given to Eneas by her father, receives the ultimate endorsement of the paternal blessing. Two interesting points in relation to recent gender theory emerge from this account of the Eneas. Firstly, the heterosexual matrix in the poem makes gender and sexuality highly performative for Eneas has to conform to a rigid model of acceptable behaviour in order to become a fully formed (masculine) subject at the end of the text. Heterosexual desire is not in itself sufficient, as the Dido episode shows, but it must be


85

directed towards a specific object to enhance the communal good. Hand in hand with this strict regulation of heterosexual desire comes a good deal of stylized Ovidian love rhetoric, enhancing and naturalizing the performance, producing the subject Eneas becomes. Secondly, it is striking in the Eneas that the heterosexual is produced in opposition to the homosexual. Homosexuality is within culture as well as excluded from it, because it is a crucial element in the definition of the dominant model of sexuality.24 The consequences of romance's privileging of sexuality are enormous: femininity is given enhanced value within romance discourse and gender is constructed dialogically rather than monologically. But this is complicated by the fact that the writers of romance, usually clerks steeped both in the Church Fathers' misogyny and the intense patriarchy of feudalism, do not like women, even if the Church's policy on marriage seems in some respects sympathetic to them. For every Lavine there is a Dido, and the value accorded female characters does not signal a respect for women. The position of women is not at issue, but power within patriarchal structures. Romance's 'obligatory heterosexuality' is thus nearly always inscribed within a structure of homosocial desire, witness the erotic interest in Eneas and Turnus's conflict. The Eneas is not the only early romance which seeks to marginalize an epic model of masculinity. Floire et Blancheflor enacts a similar process though its strategies for doing so are different. Composed around n 50, and therefore also before romance's generic paradigms are clearly established, Floire has many features which seem typical of romance and is preserved in manuscripts which are romance compilations, yet it sends conflicting generic signals, a ploy I will suggest is deliberate. 25 Floire is the story of two children who resemble each other strikingly and who fall in love. They are not related; indeed Floire is the son of a pagan king, Blanchefleur the daughter of a captive Christian woman. They are separated, then reunited; they become the parents of Berthe, Charlemagne's mother, which constitutes a clear invitation to link this narrative to the matiere of the geste du roi. Indeed the text opens with a prologue

86


which in some respects is reminiscent of chanson de geste prologues: Signor, oiies, tot li amant, cil qui d'amors se vont penant, li chevalier et les puceles, li damoisel, les damoiseles! Se mon conte voles entendre, molt i porres d'amors aprendre: 90U est du roi Flore l'enfant et de Blanceflor le vaillant, de cui Berte as grans pies fu nee; puis fu en France mariee. Berte fu mere Charlemaine, qui puis tint France et tot le Maine. Flores ses amis que vos di uns rois paiiens l'engenui, et Blanceflor que tant ama uns cuens crestiiens l'engenra.

5

10

15

My lords, listen, and all those who suffer in love, knights and maidens, young men and damsels! If you want to hear my tale, you will learn a great deal about love: it is about King Floire as a child, and worthy Blanchefleur, who gave birth to Berthe aux grands pieds; afterwards she was married in France. Berthe was mother to Charlemagne, who held France and all the Maine. Her lover Floire, whom I am telling you about, was the son of a pagan king, and Blanchefleur, whom he loved so much was the daughter of a Christian count.

Announcing the subject matter as love, the octosyllabic form and the designation of the text as a conte distinguish the poem from the chanson de geste; yet the epic genealogy and the typically epic technique of pre-empting the story in a prologue simultaneously signal a generic affiliation to the chanson de geste. Further generic confusion may be intended by the reversal of a common epic paradigm: the amorous liaison with a Saracen princess. Here it is the hero who is a pagan and who is converted through his love for a Christian woman. At such an early stage in the development of the genre these conflicting signals might be insignificant, were it not for a second prologue, more typical of romance, which immediately follows. The narrator claims to have heard his tale in a luxurious chamber in which two noble


87

sisters were talking of love: the elder told the tale which she had heard from a boins clers who had read it in a book (32-55). As Roberta Krueger argues the second prologue raises the issue of the female reader [Women Readers, pp. 7—11). The text is represented as something given to two women by a man, and we are told that the text has been transmitted by women. But the two prologues also need considering together. They juxtapose conflicting notions of textual authority: the first (epic) prologue evokes a predetermined, well-known narrative; the second (romance) prologue announces a narrative which will be revealed from a concealed, written source. I would suggest that these conflicting generic signals are part of a concerted attempt to displace an ideology reminiscent of the chansons de geste and to replace it with new generic paradigms. Moreover, as in the Eneas, the ideology of the new genre is predicated on a new construction of gender. Jocelyn Price has argued that a nostalgia for a pre-symbolic, unitary and imaginary order figured by the children pervades Floire. Adult characters seek access to ' that sense of prelapsarian wholeness which Floire and Blanchefleur experience and emblematize and which is registered not only in their indifference to death, but in their androgyny and their constant association with ideal enclaves. They do not know, as adults know, time and mortality, sexual difference or any division of will.?26 At the end of the poem, Price suggests, this wholeness is maintained by the marriage of East and West, of pagan and Christian. For Price, sexual difference is one of the differentiating markers that the pair escapes, but as Jane Gilbert argues, at the end of the poem they are heavily gendered ('Comparing like with like', pp. 70-1). Furthermore, as I will argue, the initial equivocation surrounding sexual difference, and its subsequent demarcation, need to be set against the conflicting generic signals of the opening. Floire and Blanchefleur were conceived and born on the same y' Bautisier se fist en sa vie Flores por Blanceflor s'amie, 20 car en un biau jor furent ne et en une nuit engenre.

88


Floire had himself baptized in his lifetime because of Blanchefleur his lover, for they were born on the same fair day and conceived in the same night. There is an obvious parallel here with Ami et Amile, where similar formulae are used ('en un biau jor', 'en une nuit engenre'). The chanson de geste dates from the end of the twelfth century and is consequently later than Floire, but the idealized presentation of their companionship and similarity is quintessentially epic, and there is evidence that an earlier version of the narrative circulated in the mid-twelfth century.27 Given the epic qualities of the first prologue, there are echoes here of chanson de geste companionship, which has been deliberately transformed by making the pair of opposite sexes. As with Ami and Amile, the names of Floire and Blanchefleur bind them together as similar, and as in Ami the plot hinges on their physical similarity. When Floire is following Blanchefleur after she has been sold into slavery by his parents to keep them apart, he is continually told that he reminds people of Blanchefleur and that they must be brother and sister: - Sire, fait Licoris, par foi, gou m'est avis, quant jou le voi, que gou soit Blanceflor la bele. Jou cuit qu'ele est sa suer jumele: tel vis, tel cors et tel sanlant com ele avoit a cest enfant. Jou cuit qu'il sont progain parant, car a merveille sont sanlant.

1725

1730

'My lord', said Licoris, 'by my faith, it seems to me, when I look at him, that he is Blanchefleur, the fair. I think she must be his twin sister: this child has a face, a body and looks just like she had. I think they must be closely related for they are uncannily similar.' Like Ami and Amile they are not related. However, unlike Ami and Amile, who have a good deal in common apart from their names and appearance, Floire and Blanchefleur represent two of the most profound differences of medieval culture: that of pagan and Christian and that of man and woman. It is


89

extraordinary not so much that Floire and Blanchefleur should be taken for brother and sister, but that one can be mistaken for the other (1726-7). The suppression of difference here is potentially more radical than in the series of chansons de geste examined in the previous chapter. As Price suggests, Floire and Blanchefleur partake in a mythical wholeness. In psychoanalytic terms they appear to belong to a pre-symbolic, imaginary order of mirror images in which there is no sense of self and other, no individuation, and no sense of sexual difference.28 If some chansons de geste suggest men who are like each other can achieve absolute unity, this text calls upon that model to enact a more extreme symbiosis, for here the characters are on one level polar opposites. For Price, it is significant that Floire and Blanchefleur are children, still in a pre-pubescent innocence. However, their sexuality is affirmed early in the text, long before they become distinguishable and emerge from their unitary idyll. Thus at an early age they write each other love letters (259-60). Their similarity is perhaps at its most equivocal when they are discovered in bed together in the Emir's 'tower of maidens', where Blanchefleur is imprisoned, awaiting her turn to be the Emir's bride. The Emir sends a servant to get her: vis li est qu'il i a veii Blanceflor et bele Gloris. Por coi ne li fust il avis? 2 5^5 K'a face n'a menton n'avoit barbe, ne grenons n'i paroit: en la tor n'avoit damoisele qui de visage fust plus bele. He thought he saw Blanchefleur in bed with fair Gloris. Why did he not realize what he in fact saw? Because he [Floire] had no beard on his face or chin, nor was there a moustache there: in the tower there was no damsel with a fairer face. Floire's lack of masculine characteristics is remarked upon at some length by the narrator, who, like the characters in the romance, equates the lack of masculinity with femininity. Because Gloris is with the Emir, he realizes at once when his servant returns that Blanchefleur is in bed with someone else.

90


He is jealous (of a woman?), and he too thinks Floire is a girl when he first sees him (2647-8). It is the revelation that the 'maiden' has no breasts - paradoxically his 'lack'-which 'sexes' Floire. He is then assigned a place in the symbolic order: 'Cil les descoevre, s'aparut / que cil est horn que illuec jut' (2651—2: 'he uncovers them, and it was apparent that the one lying there was a man'). Floire's apparent androgyny is significant. Initially a symbol of a flawed order without differentiation (an androgynous pagan), he becomes the symbol of a sharply defined hierarchy (a Christian king). The text ostensibly posits an idyll in which there is no alienation, no other, proposing an initially attractive fantasy in which difference is suppressed, only to displace it with an order in which sexual difference is heavily marked: Floire is no longer a pagan, but a Christian and a man. The suppression of his femininity leads to his integration into a recognizable and better order (from the dominant culture's point of view, if not from ours). He becomes sharply differentiated from Blanchefleur. Sexuality plays a key role in this since in order to be 'revealed' a man, Floire needs to be apprehended in a sexual relation with a woman. The dangerous hints of lesbianism in the scene, when the Emir and his servant think that Blanchefleur is in bed with Gloris, perhaps serve to underscore the reassuring heterosexuality of the situation. The text has a number of romance qualities, apart from its form, which distinguish it from a chanson de geste: firstly the hero's partner is a woman, not a man; secondly, the characters use engin ('cunning') to achieve their ends, which is a typical, though equivocal, feature of romance; 29 thirdly, as in many romances, desire is presented as a product of language rather than language as a means of expressing desire, since Floire and Blanchefleur's love is specifically attributed to their having read about love.30 Floire seems to evoke epic paradigms, yet at the same time to mark a transition to a new literary order in which masculinity is constructed in relation to the feminine. The establishment in early romances like the Eneas and Floire of a new order in which sexuality, particularly in the guise of compulsory heterosexuality, plays a key role, focuses attention


91

sharply on difference and on the construction of the heterosexual masculine subject through his relation with a woman. Toril Moi has recently read yet another early romance, Thomas's Tristan (c.1160), as largely concerned with the problem of difference. She suggests that Tristan and Iseult try, but inevitably fail to erase the difference between themselves, and between themselves and their doubles (Iseult as Blances Mains and Tristan le Nain). For Moi 'the difference which annihilates the lovers is the enabling condition of narrativity' ('She died...', p. 133). Difference is certainly the enabling condition of romance narrativity, and the genre consequently becomes obsessively preoccupied with the construction of the individual and identity, crucial building blocks in romance ideology, even if texts like Floire evince a vestigial nostalgia for a fictional world without difference. The next section will look more closely at individuality and identity as gendered constructs in romance. IDENTITY ENGENDERED

The role of the individual and identity in romance have received a good deal of critical attention. It is argued that whereas chansons de geste are concerned with group solidarity, romance promotes a new construction of identity and an ideology predicated upon individuation. It is commonplace to set this development, which is coterminous with a new view of love, fine amour or 'courtly love', in the cultural context of the twelfth-century renaissance or in the socio-historic context of the crisis in the feudal nobility as the power of the Plantagenet and Capetian monarchies increased. 31 Class and individuality have thus been key concepts in romance criticism. With the notable exceptions of Roberta Krueger and Sarah Kay, 32 critics have not sought to examine the role of gender in romance ideology: they either accept the idealized image of courtly literature's treatment of women propagated by scholars like Rita Lejeune, which assumes a certain model of relations between the sexes is 'natural'; or they subsume women to men by assuming romance's treatment of the masculine 'individual' will be read in the same way by men and women as emblematic of the

92


experience of 'mankind'. As Susan Crane and Peter Haidu have pointed out, one problem with the concentration on the 'individual' in romance criticism is that he is all too often confused with the post-enlightenment 'self-determining agent'. As Crane suggests, the idea of the subject is more useful.33 The masculine subject in romance - as we have seen - acquires his identity through a relationship with a woman. Furthermore, romance portrays and problematizes constantly the exchange of women between men, which, as Gayle Rubin and others have shown, imposes different models of subjectivity on men and women (see 'Traffic in women'). Gender is as significant an element in the ideology of romance as class; one could go even further and say that both class and individuality in romance are predicated on a certain construction of gender. For romance critics Chretien de Troyes is a central figure. One recent critic virtually attributes the invention of romance's ' horizon of expectations' to him and this is a tacit assumption in much scholarship.34 Chretien is a key figure, as the myriad of intertextual references to his work in contemporary and subsequent romances demonstrate. But, though he reshaped romance profoundly, he did not invent it. Making his work originary or foundational in the romance tradition is as misleading as taking the Oxford Roland to be the archetypal chanson de geste. In many respects his work continues an engagement with issues already of concern in texts like the Eneas and he is just part of a new trend towards Arthurian material, not necessarily its initiator, as the work of Wace and Thomas of Britain indicates. Chretien is part of a process of textual production, not its originator. All of Chretien's romances engage with the issue of masculine identity in some way and three of them (Tvain, the Charrete and Perceval) play specifically on the name of the hero in relation to identity. I have chosen to examine his Charrete as much for its importance in modern reception as for its undoubted influence on the tradition. Since Gaston Paris invented the term amour courtois in an article on the Charrete in 1883, the text has been central to evaluations of romance and 'courtly love'. It has a privileged place in modern criticism as if it provided the key to


93

the meaning of love in French medieval literature. The virulence of recent controversies on the Chartete shows that, as a site of scholarly debate the text is loaded with a significance which far exceeds its dissemination in the Middle Ages.35 Criticism of the Charrete may be divided into two strands. Some scholars interpret the text as a eulogy of chivalry and love. For others the text equivocally promotes an ideal which it simultaneously undermines through an ironic subtext. The epilogue, which indicates that Chretien did not finish the text himself, receives different interpretations according to which view is taken.36 Why has this text received such divergent readings? Norris Lacy and Matilda Bruckner argue that the Charrete deliberately invites contradictory interpretations, but even Bruckner is unwilling to discard entirely a serious reading of the text and ultimately endorses the view that, for Chretien, Lancelot is a positive hero, even though he enjoys mocking him.37 Scholars are reluctant to deny Lancelot's heroic status altogether because without it romance would appear to be empty at its centre. Irony is endemic in courtly culture; indeed it could be argued that the courtly penchant for debate and dialectic means that without irony there is no courtliness.38 One contributing factor to the important role irony plays in romance is the constant tension between chevalerie and clergie: courtly literature may be about the chivalric classes, but the majority of narrative texts at least were written and transmitted by clerks. As Wace writes:' si escripture ne fust feite / e puis par clers litte e retraite, / mult fussent choses ubliees' ('if writing were not done, and then read aloud and copied by clerks, many things would be forgotten') ,39 Much of the irony of romance may be attributed to a tongue-incheek clerical perspective on the chivalric nobility, carefully calculated to amuse rather than offend. However, clerks are not feminists by any stretch of the imagination, and as Krueger has argued, ' if professional differences distance the clerk from the chivalric ideals of male nobles, his gender separates him more acutely from the feminine culture of noblewomen' ('Desire', p. 34). Chevalerie and clergie represent two male positions, but it is perhaps too simple to assume the masculine gender in romance

94


is unitary. I would contend that irony, in a romance like the Charrete, represents the questioning of one construction of masculinity from the viewpoint of a different masculine subject position, the inscription of competing masculine discourses. The treatment of identity in romance is crucial to this clerical problematization of chivalric masculinity and nowhere more so than in the Charrete. As Krueger has shown, a powerful counterreading of the Charrete can be produced by the resistant female reader. For Krueger, Lancelot's encounters with a series of damsels who make unpredictable demands on him and Guenevere's apparent oscillation between haughty indifference and passionate love problematize female desire as erratic (Women Readers, pp. 51-66). Donald Maddox's recent reexamination of the text also makes gender potentially a key issue, though this is not a line of enquiry he himself pursues {Arthurian Romances, pp. 35-53). Maddox foregrounds the importance of customs in Chretien's romances and one of the two key customs described in the Charrete is the custom of Logre, according to which a solitary woman should be protected by knights, whereas a woman accompanied by a knight is fair game and may be taken by force (1302-21; see Maddox, Arthurian Romances, pp. 36-8). As Maddox shows, this is significant given that the text opens with Guenevere's kidnapping by Maleagant, has a contrived rape scene (1058-194), and ends with Guenevere's return to Arthur by Lancelot. Maddox comments on the legalistic frame of the 'custom', but fails to remark on just how bizarre it is, for by implication it defines a good knight in negative terms, as one who does not kidnap or rape unprotected women, and makes the policing of the exchange of women, one of the building blocks of the construction of gender in western culture, the touchstone of chivalric worth and a structuring device of this text. This implies, as Kathryn Gravdal has argued, that courtly romance can be read as a mystification of sexual violence. 40 Gender is on the agenda in this text in a variety of guises, and particularly in relation to Lancelot's identity. The Charrete has two intertwined narrative threads: one chivalric, relating Lancelot's confrontation with Maleagant


95

and his rescue of the people of Logres from the land of Gorre; the other amorous, recounting his affair with Guenevere. Lancelot is not named until a key central episode which brings the two threads together: here he finally fights Maleagant (who has kidnapped Guenevere) at a tournament in Logres, where Guenevere, along with a host of Arthur's subjects, is retained by another custom according to which they must all remain in captivity until one escapes, at which point they can all leave. They all know Lancelot is the man who will save them, but they do not know who he is. He has declined to give his name on several occasions (for example 1922-3) and has been designated simply as li chevaliers or 'the knight of the cart' following his humiliating ride on the cart. (It will be remembered that the dwarf driving the cart, a mobile pillory, offered to help him in his quest to find Guenevere if he would ride on it.) At the tournament a damsel asks Guenevere his name: - Tel chose requise m'avez, dameisele, fet la rei'ne, ou ge n'antant nule hai'ne, ne felenie, se bien non: Lanceloz del Lac a a non 3660 li chevaliers, mien esciant. 'Damsel, you have asked me something', said the queen, 'in which I see no malice or evil, rather only good intentions: I know that the knight's name is Lancelot of the Lake.' The naming of Lancelot occurs at the centre of the romance as it is preserved in the manuscripts. I shall return to the question of the integrity of the text and to the problems raised by the epilogue; here I just wish to make the point that the text divides into two halves, one in which the hero is li chevaliers or li chevaliers de la charrete, and another in which he is Lancelot. Once Lancelot has been named by the queen, he is named repeatedly by the narrator and by other characters. The naming of Lancelot is structurally placed for maximum effect,41 and within the economy of the romance Lancelot therefore acquires the signifier which produces his identity from a woman. Femininity is the source of the hero's identity, and a relationship with a woman thereby becomes a prerequisite of masculine

96


individuation. Lancelot's initial anonymity is all the more startling given that he is a knight of Arthur's court. Why does no one recognize him (particularly Gauvain) until Guenevere has named him? Lancelot is already in love with Guenevere when the text opens: he is already searching for her when Gauvain first meets him and the fact that she knows his name indicates their love predates the text, even if it is not consummated until the famous love scene in Logres. According to some readings of the Charrete, and of courtly literature generally, fine amour is ennobling. Lancelot's ride on the cart is taken as an act of abasement, which makes him more worthy, and the characters who mock him for it thus fail to understand the spiritual values of the text.42 But paradoxically Lancelot's love for Guenevere repeatedly makes him appear comic. For instance, at an early point in the narrative he almost falls out of a window when he sees her in the distance: he leans forward for a better view and is only saved by Gauvain (560-73). Similarly, when he finds Guenevere's comb with several of her hairs entwined in it, he worships it in ecstasy, touching it 100,000 times (1460-5). This scene recalls the episode in Clige's in which Alexandre writhes around in rapture when he realizes the shirt he has been given has one of his beloved Soredamor's hairs woven into it. To an initiated reader, the scene with the comb in the Charrete is overdetermined by the narrator's comment on the incident in Clige's: 'Bien fet Amors d'un sage fol, / Quant cil fet joie d'un chevol' (1621-2: 'Love indeed makes the wise man foolish when he is so enraptured by a hair'). 43 Lancelot's worship of the comb also anticipates the love scene later in the Charrete: An son lit trueve Kex dormant 4650 et puis vint au lit la reine, si l'aore et se li ancline, car an nul cors saint ne croit tant. HefindsKay asleep in his bed, and then he came to the queen's bed, where he worships and bows down before her, for he does not believe in any holy body/relic as much. The intensity of Lancelot's ecstasy is emphasized by religious overtones, yet at the same time the Cliges intertext and the hints


97

of blasphemy produce a profoundly equivocal portrayal of Lancelot's fine amour.** How fine ('pure', 'refined') is it? If Lancelot is ridiculous or immoral to what extent is the construction of his identity through and by his relation with a woman endorsed? The burlesque window and comb scenes contribute to a broader web of equivocation about the hero's ethical position. For instance, immediately after the love scene, Maleagant accuses Guenevere of adultery with Kay because he finds blood in her bed; Lancelot's wounded hands have stained the sheet, but Kay, whose bed is nearby, has also been bleeding in the night (4748-74). She swears her innocence, as does Kay whose escondit (4859: 'si m'escondirai') is defended by Lancelot with an oath which is a prelude to judicial combat (4901-86). A number of elements create an ambiguous Tristan intertext. The blood on the sheet is referred to by Maleagant as 'ansaignes bien veraies' (4774); in Beroul's Tristan (which is later than the Charrete), the blood Frocin finds on Yseult's sheets and on the flour he has spread between Tristan and Yseult's beds is referred to as a ' veraie enseigne' (778).45 The similarity between the two situations and the 'true signs' formulations is striking: either Chretien is alluding to an earlier version of the Tristan story similar to Beroul's (he himself tells us he wrote a Tristan, see Clige's, 5), or Beroul is playing on knowledge of the Charrete or a text like it. Either way a strong Tristan parallel is suggested, particularly since an escondit follows, which recalls of course the various occasions when Yseult 'proves' her innocence. If Chretien transforms the scenario, since the escondit here is Kay's, not Guenevere's, the oath which Lancelot takes after Kay's escondit is equivocal and recalls Yseult's famous escondit: he swears specifically that Guenevere never slept with Kay, but not that she has never committed adultery (4971-84). The ethical problem here is that Lancelot, who has been Guenevere's partner in adultery, defends her against the charge of adultery. If the 'true signs' are true in that Guenevere did commit adultery, technically Maleagant's accusation is incorrect since he names the wrong man. But what is 'truth' in such circumstances?

98


The dialogue leading up to the Maleagant and Lancelot's formal oaths merits close scrutiny. Kay, presented elsewhere by Chretien as a sharp-tongued and unpleasant courtier, is the object of a surprising eulogy from Guenevere: 46 Je cuit que Kex li seneschax est si cortois et si leax qu'il n'an fet mie a mescroire; et je ne regiet mie an foire mon cors, ne n'an faz livreison. Certes Kex n'est mie tex horn qu'il me requeist tel outrage, ne je n'en oi onques corage del faire, ne ja ne l'avrai.

4840

4845

I believe Kay the seneschal is so courtly and loyal that there are no grounds to mistrust him; and I don't put my body up for sale or give it to just anyone. Indeed Kay is not the kind of man to ask me such an outrageous thing, nor have I desired or will I ever desire such a thing. This praise of Kay jars with Guenevere's obvious discontent when 'given' to him at the beginning of the text (209-11). But the most telling irony here is that Guenevere describes adultery as an outrage (4845). This is reinforced immediately afterwards by Maleagant and then by Kay himself: Le roi Artus a Kex trai son seignor, qui tant le creoit que comandee li avoit la rien que plus ainme an cest monde. - Sire, or sofrez que je responde, fet Kex, et si m'escondirai. Ja Dex, quant de cest siegle irai, ne me face pardon a l'ame, se onques jui avoec ma dame. Certes mialz voldroie estre morz que tex leidure ne tiex torz fist par moi quis vers mon seignor; et ja mes Dex sante graignor que j'ai or androit ne me doint, enz me praigne morz an cest point, se je onques le me pansai.

4855

4860

4865


99

'Kay has betrayed King Arthur, his lord, who believed in him and entrusted to him the thing he most loves in this world.' 'Sire', said Kay, 'let me reply and I will exonerate myself. Never, when I leave this world, may God pardon my soul if I have lain with my lady. Indeed I would rather be dead than perpetrate such vileness or wrong against my lord; and may God never let me enjoy the good health I have now, rather may he strike me dead at once, if I ever even thought of it.' This exchange has interesting implications for Lancelot. Firstly, the control of women as a commodity - Guenevere is referred to as the rien Arthur most loves (4857) - is recognized as central to the negotiation of male honour. Lancelot's love for Guenevere thereby has important social consequences; it is a clear instance of homosocial desire. Secondly, sleeping with Guenevere is such a heinous crime that even Kay, not the most exemplary of Arthurian heroes, is outraged by the suggestion he might have even considered it. Typically, a different perspective on the hero is supplied here not by the narrator, but by other characters and then only by implication.47 As is stressed twice here, adultery with Guenevere constitutes a profound betrayal of Arthur. Just before this passage Chretien makes a specific allusion to hidden meanings in the Charrete: mes toz jorz iert par moi tetie, qu'an conte ne doit estre dite. Des joies fu la plus eslite et la plus delitable cele que li contes nos test et cele. Molt ot de joie et de deduit Lanceloz tote cele nuit.

4680

4685

But I will always keep quiet about what ought not to be said in a tale. Of all joys, the one the tale is silent about and conceals is the most refined and delectable. Lancelot had intense joy and pleasure all that night. These celebrated lines, which refer to Lancelot and Guenevere's night of passion, initially seem merely to be a humorous gesture to the proprieties of courtly literature, but they are more complex than this. Taire (4680 and 4684) may indicate

i oo


suppression ('to silence'), but can also mean to mute', 'to make less noise about'; celer (4684) means' to conceal'. Chretien may not be saying that some matters ought to be excluded from narrative; on the contrary he may be implying they are present in a muted form if you know how to detect them. Further ambiguity is generated by delitable: delit means 'pleasure', but also 'crime' (see TL, 2, 1333). Chretien seems to suggest here that language both reveals and conceals different meanings simultaneously. Lancelot is presented simultaneously as a hero and as a traitor to his lord: his crime is both revealed and concealed by the occultatio (saying what you are not going to say) which actually draws attention to this process. Passages such as these reveal the real (concealed) hero of Chretien's romances: the clerical narrator. It is he who is in control of the knight's destiny and of the reader's perception of the ostensible hero. In the Charrete, of course, narrative point of view is a particularly vexed question, since there are two narrators. Having been told in the prologue that Chretien's subject matter was determined by his patroness, Marie de Champagne, we are told in the epilogue that the text was left unfinished by Chretien, and completed, with his consent, by a clerk called Godefroy de Lagny: Seignor, se j'avant an disoie, ce seroit oltre la matire, por ce au definer m'atire: ci faut li romanz an travers. Godefroiz de Leigni li clers,

7100

a parfinee LA CHARRETE ;

mes nus horn blasme ne Tan mete se sor Crestien a ovre, car 9'a il fet par le boen gre Cresti'en, qui le comanâ: tant en a fet des lors an 9a ou Lanceloz fu anmurez, tant con li contes est durez.

7105

7110

My lord, if I said any more, I would be exceeding the subject matter, and so I draw to a close: the romance finishes here unresolved. Godefroy de Lagny, a clerk, finished/perfected the Charrete; but let no


101

man blame him if he worked after Chretien, for he did this with the consent of Chretien, who started it: he [Godefroy] wrote it from the point when Lancelot was imprisoned, through to the end of the tale. Scholars are divided in their assessment of the epilogue's implications. It has generally been assumed that the Charrete is the work of two authors. Some critics argue that Godefroy finished the romance in accordance with Chretien's instructions and that the whole text can therefore be read as if it were by Chretien; others that Chretien gave up writing because he felt uncomfortable with the subject matter that his patroness had imposed upon him. For critics in the latter camp, Chretien's romances taken as a whole imply a disapproval of adultery and a belief in love in marriage. 48 David Hult has recently offered a different interpretation. Since the information regarding the switch in authors is derived from inside the text, he suggests it should be treated with a degree of scepticism; since the Charrete has such a high degree of thematic and stylistic uniformity, he argues it should be treated as a text with its own integrity and unity. It is therefore possible that both 'Chretien' and 'Godefroy' are competing narrative voices within the work of a single author. 49 There are a number of features of the text which indicate that the work as we know it, if not the work of a single writer, has been fashioned into a unified text by a single writer. There are several instances in parts of the text everyone agrees are by ' Chretien' which prefigure explicitly a part of the text everyone agrees is in the 'Godefroy' section (for example 2934-5). As Hult points out ('Author', pp. 89-92) certain key words of the prologue are echoed in the epilogue and it cannot be coincidental that the naming of Lancelot is so close to the centre of the text as it survives in the manuscripts. If the Charrete is the work of two writers, either 'Godefroy' did indeed finish it according to 'Chretien"s model, or 'Godefroy' (or 'Godefroy' and 'Chretien' together?) revised the whole text to make it consistent with his conclusion. Like Roberta Krueger, I am inclined to agree with Hult that 'Godefroy' is a fiction of 'Chretien', the author of the other romances attributed to Chretien de Troyes, and that 'Chretien' and 'Godefroy' are

102


competing narrative voices within this one text. Whether this text is the work of one writer or two, as Krueger argues {Women Readers, p. 53), a narrative which has as its starting point a contract between a patroness and a clerk, concludes with the evocation of a bond between two clerks. It has been suggested that Chretien's deferential tone to Marie in the prologue invites parallels between their relationship and that of Lancelot and Guenevere; 50 if this is so it is striking that just as Marie disappears, Guenevere fades from the end as the text concentrates on single combat between two men. Krueger suggests this enacts within the narrative the marginalization of women, whose desire has been so troublesome and problematic, as if 'Chretien' were disassociating himself from Marie {Women Readers, p. 65). But if the absence of both Marie and Guenevere from the epilogue is striking, it is also noteworthy that Lancelot is pushed aside and displaced by two clerks, who seem to want to leave his tale in suspension, without closure, 'an travers' (7101). A man whose identity is guaranteed by a woman is pushed aside by a man whose identity is guaranteed by another man, the 'author' or 'authority' behind the narrative. The epilogue concludes the text, which is ostensibly about love, with a prime example of male bonding, apparently reversing the movement of the Eneas which marginalizes male bonding in favour of love. But the male-male bond inscribed is different from that of epic companions. The end of the Charrete does not celebrate a bond between knights, but a bond between two clerks, and their ability to determine the fate of fictional knights. The epilogue is suggestive of choice, control, design and craft: clergie in fact. Given the significance of naming in this text, the naming of Chretien by himself in the prologue and then (ostensibly) by Godefroy in the epilogue is striking. Chretien's identity is affirmed at the end of the text not by a woman as it was in the prologue, or as Lancelot's is in the text, but by another clerk. The equivocation surrounding Lancelot in the text has to be set alongside a conclusion which allows another man (Chretien) to survive the text with an unsullied reputation. Unlike Lancelot this man has renounced his connection with a woman and distanced himself from adulterous^/m* amour. He has


103

chosen a different model of masculinity, marked by reason, learning and writerly skill rather than by an ethical model of chivalric prowess and love service. He has shown that the chivalric enterprise and construction of masculine identity exemplified by Lancelot is flawed and in the process he implicitly endorses a different, clerical model of masculinity. As I have said, the Charreteh lack of closure and its ambiguous treatment of Lancelot are attributed to Chretien's distaste for adultery; it has further been suggested (see Noble, Love) that Chretien's Arthurian romances reflect a belief in marital love. However, although the Charrete is the most ambiguous of Chretien's surviving romances, Erec, Cliges and Tvain, which seem to depict happy marriages, have been shown to be as ironic and ambivalent as the Charrete.51 Irony at the expense of the chivalric hero (whatever his marital status) is a constant feature of Chretien's writing, and one which was to be taken up by later writers. Chretien's attitude to adultery does not supply the key to reading his heroes. Masculinity in romance is problematic from the outset because it is constructed in relation to femininity, an unpredictable, unreliable ingredient from the clerical writer's point of view; it remains problematic because clerical writers systematically undermine chivalric heroic models within the genre. One text which echoes Chretien's corpus, particularly in its treatment of identity and gender is Le Bel Inconnu, a late twelfthcentury romance signed by one Renaut de Beaujeu. The Chretien intertext in Le Bel Inconnu is very marked: 52 like Perceval in Chretien's Le Conte du Graal the hero does not initially know his name, there is a sparrowhawk contest as in Erec and an enchanted castle as in Tvain. Structurally, however, Le Bel Inconnu is most like the Charrete: in both texts the hero is named at the exact middle of the romance and both texts lack closure. Le Bel Inconnu is an intriguing text in its own right, but it is a particularly appropriate text for any consideration of generic norms since it is an exemplary romance in terms of structure and content. When the hero arrives at Arthur's court he does not know his name and Arthur names him li Biaus Descouneus (the Fair

104


Unknown). A damsel arrives seeking help for her mistress in the adventure of the Fier Baiser and the young hero secures the task by dint of a don contraignant Arthur has just granted him. The damsel, Helie, is none too pleased with her inexperienced knight in shining armour, but on the way to help her mistress he proves his worth in a series of encounters with wicked knights, giants and bandit barons. In between adventures he falls in love with a fee, the Pucele as Blances Mains, but he continues his quest to help Helie's mistress. He arrives at the Gaste Cite, the site of the adventure, fights two supernatural opponents, encounters ghostly jongleurs, and finally comes upon a terrifying serpent, which snatches the Fier Baiser from him. A mysterious voice then announces his identity as Guinglain, son of Gauvain. A rich queen, Blonde Esmeree appears: she had had a spell cast upon her, was in fact the serpent and has been released by Guinglain's kiss. She is now intent on marrying him. He suggests he must seek Arthur's advice and returns alone to the Pucele, leaving Blonde Esmeree to go to Arthur's court. It now transpires that it was the Pucele's voice that announced his name in the Gaste Cite. Guinglain is happy with the Pucele, but he is deliberately lured back to court (by Arthur and Blonde Esmeree) when a tournament is announced. The Pucele asks him not to go, but he insists he will. When he wakes the next day the Pucele's realm - the He d'Or - has magically disappeared. Guinglain wins the tournament and marries Blonde Esmeree, but he is now separated from his true love. The narrator, who names himself as Renaut de Beaujeu, promises to return Guinglain to the Pucele if his lady will just give him a kindly glance. Le Bel Inconnu is an exemplary romance inasmuch as it plots the self-discovery of an individual. The hero discovers his identity at the text's mid-point: the first part of the text thus relates his quest for self-knowledge, the second his integration into society, culminating in his return to Arthur's court. The poem's structure and the text's rubric in the manuscript {Bel Descouneu) indicate naming is crucial to this process, and, as in the Charrete, the hero is named by a woman. But Guinglain's discovery of his identity is not unproblematic: he begins to make errors of judgement once he knows who he is and the romance


105

ends with him married to the wrong woman. He has been integrated into the Arthurian social order, acquiring the identity he lacks at the beginning of the text, but he is alienated from his own private desires. In the Charrete, Lancelot's heroism is called into question, and along with it the way in which his identity is constructed in relation to a woman; here the value of identity itself is questionable. The conflict between public identity and private desire is emblematized by two women, the Pucele and Blonde Esmeree. Once again identity, chivalric heroism and gender are closely enmeshed. When the Bel Inconnu arrives at Arthur's court he wanders into a world where all men have a name: Li rois Aguillars i estoit, Cui li rois Artus molt amoit, Ses freres Los et Urfens, Li rois Horels et Floriens, Bries de Gonefort et Tristrans, 35 Gerins de Gartre et Eriaans. King Aguillar was there, whom King Arthur held so dear, his brother Los and Urien, King Horel and Florien, Bries de Gonefort and Tristan, Gerin de Cartre and Eriaan. And so on for another twenty-two names. Significantly, the narrator says he does not know the names of the women present: 'Tant en i ot nes puis conter, / Ne les dames ne puis nommer' (55-6: 'there were so many [men] there I cannot (re)count them, nor can I name the ladies'). Names are essential markers of identity for men, but women are not worthy of similar individuation. 53 Strictly speaking the hero is not exactly nameless when he arrives at court. When Arthur sends Beduier to ask his name he says his mother called him Biel Fil, 'Fair Son', but this is deemed an unacceptable name by Arthur, who decides he will be called ' Li Biaus Descounetis' (131). This passage recalls the scene at the beginning of Chretien's Graal when Perceval does not know his name and also says his mother called him Fair Son; he is duly mocked by the knights he has encountered (344-8). Perceval and Guinglain have one thing in common: they have both been brought up by their mothers away from

106


civilization. Paradoxically, in the same breath Beduier says the newly arrived knight has no name, but that his mother called him Bel Fil (121-4). Arthur concurs with Beduier that this is an unacceptable name, but it is no less ridiculous than the name he gives him, or one in the list of knights' names which has just preceded: Biaus Coars (48:' Fair Coward'). The name given by the mother is rejected and maternal authority is thereby challenged (as in the Eneas). It is striking here that neither Arthur nor Beduier shows any surprise at the knight's lack of a name, as if it were quite normal for a knight not to know his name, to be, as it were, without an identity. Furthermore the name Arthur gives the knight is a non-name in that it signifies the lack of a name. When the hero sets forth he is thus as much in quest of an identity as anything else. Since the name used by his mother is rejected here, he is also in quest of a father. 54 When the hero is told his name in the Gaste Cite several features of the passage specifically recall the scene where Arthur names him Fair Unknown: A tant a une vois oie Qui bien li dist apertement Dont il estoit et de quel gent. En haut crie, non pas en vain: « Li fius a mon signor Gavain, Tres bien le savoie de voir Que chevalier n'aroit pooir; Nus ne peiist pas delivrer; Nus ne peust tant endurer Ne le baisier, ne Paventure Qui tant est perilleuse et dure; El monde n'a un chevalier Tant preu, ne tant fort ne tant fier, Qui osast enprendre sor soi, Fors ton pere Gavain et toi. Autres nel pooit delivrer Ne de son grant peril jeter. Estorsse as, par grant vaselage, La dame qui preus est et sage. Li rois Artus mal te nonma: Bel Descouneii t'apiela, Guinglains as non en batestire.»

32I5

3220

3225

3230


107

Then he heard a voice which told him openly where he came from and about his family. It cries aloud, but not in vain: 'I indeed knew well that the son of my lord Gauvain would not be afraid as a knight. No man could deliver, no man could endure so much, either the kiss or the adventure which is so perilous and dangerous; in all the world there is not a single knight so worthy, so strong, so bold, that he would take all this on, except for your father Gauvain and yourself. No one else could deliver or release her from the great danger. You have rescued, through your great courage, the lady who is so worthy and wise. King Arthur misnamed you: he called you the Fair Unknown, but you were baptized Guinglain.' Guinglain learns his father's name before he learns his own. As Kate Westoby argues ('Naming the father'), the voice, which we later learn belongs to the Pucele as Blances Mains, gives him a place in society by revealing his father's identity first. It also tells him his mother's name (3236-7: Blancemal lefe'e), but the narrator indicates the father's is the more crucial. Indeed it is not clear whose name is the more important, Gauvain's or Guinglain's: 55 Bien li a dit en sa raisson Qui ses peres est et le non. D'ore en avant vos vel traitier De Guinglain le bon chevalier L'istoire, qui mais ne faurra Tant con li siecles duerra.

325°

[The voice] told him in its speech who his father is and the name. From now on I want to tell you the story of Guinglain the good knight, which will never end as long as the world lasts. In line 3248 le non is indeterminate and could refer to Guinglain's father's name or his own. The naming scene in Le Bel Inconnu stresses the importance of lineage and displaces identity grounded in maternal authority with identity grounded in paternal authority, yet it does not instate masculine authority unequivocally. In fact, the voice articulates a challenge to another kind of masculine authority, Arthur's (3231). If Guinglain's new name gives him a legitimate place in the Arthurian social order, the desirability of this order is undermined by the fact that Arthur, its symbol and guarantor,

108


misnamed him. The social order is unable to give Guinglain his correct identity. On the contrary, his name is revealed to him by the woman he loves. In Le Bel Inconnu masculine identity derives from the feminine, and this invites comparison with the Charrete, but there are differences between the two texts. In the Charrete, the hero's identity is revealed to the reader by Guenevere, but Lancelot presumably knows what he is called. When asked his name, he never says he does not know it, merely that he does not wish to disclose it. Lancelot thus chooses to place knowledge of his identity in Guenevere's power. Guinglain, on the other hand, does not know who he is before the Pucele reveals his name. Knowledge of his identity is dependent entirely upon a woman who is particularly other, a fee like his mother.56 The Pucele allows Guinglain to discover himself and through her, in the lie d'Or, he becomes fulfilled: 'Or a Guinglains 50 que il volt5 (4821: 'Now Guinglain has what he wants'). Male subjectivity is constructed through a relationship with a woman, but Guinglain's relationship with the Pucele is incompatible with the social role his new-found identity requires of him. As the son of Gauvain, the successful knight of the adventure of the Fier Baiser, and as Blonde Esmeree's chosen consort, Guinglain is expected to return to court, but the Pucele makes it clear she does not want him to go: she belongs in a different world and she thinks (rightly) that Arthur will marry him to another (5344-51). The supernatural//^ figures here a world outside the social, or from Guinglain's point of view what the social fails to accommodate: his private desire. In yet another formulation one might say that the supernatural and private are coterminous with the feminine, which is excluded from the masculine social.57 Blonde Esmeree is of course integrated into the social, but she integrates herself as an object of exchange between men by securing Arthur as a donor for herself to Guinglain. Arthur not only gives Blonde Esmeree to Guinglain, he legitimates his conquest of her (6168-90). But this too points to flaws in the social order. Arthur is no good at giving names, why should he be any better at giving wives? The schism between the public and private is absolute by the end of


109

the romance. 58 In the first half, the hero sends his vanquished foes to Arthur's court to announce his progress: he wants recognition from Arthur's court (for example 481-5). His conquests help construct his identity and it is in Arthur's court that he wishes to have his identity affirmed. In the second half of the romance Arthur's court is the place where his happiness is destroyed, where he is alienated from the women he loves. The masculine individual in romance is necessarily alienated. The feminine is the agent of his self-discovery, but also potentially the cause of his alienation. Many texts read as warnings against the dangers of uxoriousness, for instance the knightly prowess of both Erec and Yvain is threatened by their liking their wives too much; alternatively the two most famous romance narratives (Lancelot's and Tristan's) tell of an impossible love story where the hero's desire is antisocial. Sexuality is a powerful regulating force in romance, but it has the potential to destroy social cohesion. The paradox of romance is that if heroes frequently opt for social integration, more often than not - like Guinglain, Lancelot, or Tristan (in Beroul and Thomas) - they cannot suppress antisocial private desires. The hero of romance is a divided self, split between an impulse towards social integration and a counter-impulse towards socially alienating, but privately fulfilling desires. The concomitant ambivalence surrounding the male individual's construction of his identity is frequently reflected in equivocal public perception of his worth. Thus Guinglain, who in the first half of the romance appears to do no wrong, is mocked for his youth and inexperience (for example 290-300) up until the central Fier Baiser episode; whereas he is then treated as a hero wherever he goes even though he begins to commit errors of judgement and to appear a fool in several comic episodes (for example 4537-690). 59 A countertext is suggested in which the structure of the romance is the reverse of that suggested superficially by the narrative: the hero loses more than he gains in his successful quest for identity; he starts off worthy, but nameless; he ends up slightly ridiculous and alienated. Le Bel Inconnu, like many romances, balances two alternative narratives, one in which the hero is heroic, another in which the

11 o


ideal the text ostensibly promotes is undermined through irony. It is no accident that the narrative is left unresolved, but Renaut de Beaujeu adds a further twist to this lack of closure. He opens the romance claiming the text has been inspired by a woman: Cele qui m'a en sa baillie, Cui ja d'amors sans trecerie M'a done sens de cannon faire, Por li veul roumant estraire D'un molt biel conte d'aventure.

5

For the one who has me in her power, who once moved me to compose songs of true love, I wish to write a romance about a charming tale of adventure. Renaut's prologue, like Chretien's in the Charrete, subordinates the narrator to a woman. However, the woman here is not a patroness, but the poet's lady. Renaut thus evokes generic paradigms of the courtly lyric in that as a first person subject he addresses a woman he desires directly, and he claims to have composed chansons for his lady in the past.60 Periodically the narrative is interrupted by fulsome digressions addressed to the poet's lady which are also reminiscent of the lyric. In such passages, misogyny is frequently evoked and rebutted: Et eels qui sont maldisseor Des dames et de fine amor Maudie Dius et sa vertus Et de parler les face mus! Car a cele ouvre que il font Demostrent bien de coi il sont, Qui tant se painnent de mentir. Ha! Dius, arai ja mon plaissir De celi que je ainme tant?

4855

4860

And may God, and all his power, cast down those who malign ladies and jine amour and make them keep silent. For through this work they show what kind of people they are since they put so much effort into lying. Ah, God, will I have pleasure of the one I love so much? This passage posits a dialectic between misogynistic writers (commonplace in romance as in other genres, as will be clear from the next section) and writers who praise women. Renaut's


111

praise of women knows no bounds. Men were created to honour them and he attributes supreme powers to them (4835-41). There are obvious parallels here between the narrator and Guinglain, whose destiny is also ostensibly in the hands of a woman. This implicit comparison is reinforced in the epilogue which, taken in conjuction with the prologue, sets the whole romance within a lyric frame, containing it within an act of supplication: Ci faut li roumans et define. Bele, vers cui mes cuers s'acline, RENALS DE BIAUJU m o l t VOS prie

Por Diu que ne Poblies mie. De cuer vos veut tos jors amer, Ce ne li poes vos veer. Quant vos plaira, dira avant, U il se taira ore a tant. Mais por un biau sanblant mostrer Vos feroit Guinglain retrover S'amie, que il a perdue, Qu'entre ses bras le tenroit nue. Se de 90U li faites delai, Si ert Guinglains en tel esmai Que ja mais n'avera s'amie. D'autre vengeance n'a il mie, Mais por la soie grant grevance Ert sor Guinglain ceste vengance, Que ja mais jor n'en parlerai Tant que le bel sanblant avrai.

6250

6255

6260

6265

Here the romance ends and concludes. Fair one, before whom my heart bows, Renaut de Beaujeu begs you not to forget him. He wants always to love you sincerely. Can you not see this? When it pleases you, say so, or he will ever more be silent. But if you give him a fair glance, for you he will reunite Guinglain with his lady-love, whom he has lost, so that he can hold her naked in his arms. If you delay, Guinglain will be so unhappy for he will never see his lady again. He [Renaut] has no other revenge except that for his great grievance this vengeance be wreaked on Guinglain, so I will speak no more of this until I have the fair glance. The narrator likens himself to Guinglain here and in two ways. Firstly, like Guinglain's his love is not requited; secondly,

112


through a series of pronominal shifts, from first, to third, then back to first person, he mimics the alienation from which Guinglain suffers, naming himself (for the first and only time in the text) as a grammatically third-person subject, as if a name, and the social identity which goes with it inevitably involved a degree of alienation. 61 But the deliberate parallels between Guinglain and the narrator also make the differences between them more obvious. As in earlier digressions about ladies, his lady and love, the narrator attributes power to his beloved in the epilogue. However, he then reappropriates control by blaming his lady (and thereby all women) for the unsatisfactory ending of the romance and by implying he would change it if his lady were kinder to him. If the narrator's powerlessness in the face of his lady is asserted at several stages during the romance, his power is asserted here. The value of woman as a sign in romance has the dangerous potential consequence of giving women power. The narrator of Le Bel Inconnu shows the disastrous outcome of allowing women (in the form of Blonde Esmeree) power in fiction, whilst asserting his control over language and indirectly, therefore, over real women readers. The two narratives of Le Bel Inconnu (that of Guinglain and that of the narrator) are none the less left in suspension. It is interesting, in relation to the text's lack of closure, to consider the narrator's statement in the epilogue that' Ci faut li roumans et define' (6247) alongside his conclusion to the naming episode in the middle of the romance: ' D'ore en avant vos vel traitier / De Guinglain le bon chevalier / L'istoire, qui mais ne faurra / Tant con li siecles duerra' (3249-52). This text {li roumans) may be over, but Guinglain's story, ristoire, can never end. 62 His problematic existence and paradoxical identity are too riven with contradictions to lead to a resolution. As with the epilogue to the Charrete, the epilogue of Le Bel Inconnu creates a distance between the narrator and a hero with whom the reader had been invited to compare him. But the effect in the two romances is quite different. We do not know if we are dealing with a clerical narrator in Le Bel Inconnu: Renaut de Beaujeu has been identified by one scholar as a high-ranking noble (Guerreau, 'Renaud', pp. 30-4). However, this identifi-


113

cation depends on reading the name Biauju in the manuscript as a scribal error or graphy for Bage, which is somewhat implausible if a relatively well-known noble family were in question. Perhaps the name is a pseudonym: 'beaujeu' is, after all, an accurate description of this text. But whether a noble or a clerk, Renaud does not differentiate himself from his hero by opposing his clergie to the latter's chevalerie, by displacing one model of masculinity with another. Rather he inscribes himself within the same model of masculinity by portraying himself with a lady, but shows himself in control, by punishing and blackmailing his lady in order to get what he wants. He attributes power to women, but blames them for abuse of power. He constructs his identity as one who loves, and therefore as one whose identity depends upon women, but he does not allow women any control over his identity, over the language in which it is expressed. The end of Le Bel Inconnu is emblematic both of the profound ambivalence of identity as a masculine gendered construct in romance, and of the equally profound ambivalence romanciers have towards women. The two go hand in hand. Romances often appear to exalt women, to assert that a relationship with a woman is a necessary component in masculinity, and yet they are also profoundly misogynistic. The last section of this chapter will briefly examine misogyny and the treatment of female power in romance more closely. MISOGYNISTIC MODELS OF THE FEMININE AND MASCULINITY

Romance elevates women as signs of value within a masculine exchange economy, but this poses problems for writers of romance. It is not simply that many writers of romance are misogynistic: women are not ordinary signs in that they are producers of signs themselves and decoders of signs both as readers and as characters within texts. If the possession of a woman is a sign of male prestige and status, women should be drawn inexorably towards the right man, the hero. The heroine must read the signs he produces correctly so that she can

114


become one of them. But if women are fickle, voraciously sensual and lacking in judgement, as the misogynistic tradition of the Church fathers suggests, or passive objects of exchange, as in the feudal model of marriage, how can they be relied upon to behave properly? The ideal woman is an uneasy fiction in romance. Lavine, in the Eneas, is a well behaved sign, but Dido shows that women are not to be relied upon. Guenevere and Iseult are drawn to the hero, but only to the detriment of the social order and each is portrayed as haughty, fickle, at times cruel. Amongst Chretien's heroines, Enide is punished gratuitously for trying to help her husband and in effect blamed by him for his own faults, Fenice (in Clige's) replicates the very adulterous scenario she tries to avoid, and Laudine (in Yvain) has to be coerced twice into marriage with the hero while the narrator maintains a fiction that she has some choice in the matter. 63 In Le Bel Inconnu Blonde Esmeree appears well behaved, but is the cause of alienation between the hero's private and public self and the ideal woman is clearly the unreal, ultimately unobtainable and otherworldly Pucele as Blances Mains. The attitude of romanciers to women is a perfect example of aporia. Women are made into signs of such immense value that masculine identity is defined through women and this leads to apparently fulsome praise of them; yet at the same time romanciers do not like women. The ideal woman is represented as a fiction, and this fiction is underscored by a misogynistic model of femininity, according to which women are bad readers and consequently unworthy signs in a masculine discourse. The fiction of the ideal woman is underscored by the notion that real women cannot live up to the ideal. Romances can be profoundly misogynistic, but, as with homophobia, I would contend that misogynistic discourse tells us far less about its object than about the men that produce it. Misogyny reveals far more about masculinity and male views of the feminine than about real women. This would appear to be the case in a number of other romances, for instance Hue de Rotelande's Ipomedon and Le Chevalier a Vepee, thought by some to be by Chretien de Troyes.64


115

Roberta Krueger has offered an extensive reading oflpomedon as a satire of female pride (Women Readers, pp. 73-82). Women fall in love with the hero in a variety of disguises, some of which are less than glamorous or heroic. They are shown to be fickle, undiscerning and unreliable. They are relentlessly mocked and punished for this, sometimes deftly, sometimes in a more heavyhanded manner, as for instance when Ipomedon bites Ismene, the heroine's maid when she tries to seduce him when he is disguised as an idiot (8841-55). 65 It would be superfluous to reiterate in detail Krueger's interpretation, but I should like to make the point that the romance's length (over 10,000 lines) and its repetitive structure, which endlessly re-enacts the heroine's humiliation at the hands of the hero, are symptomatic of obsession and of Hue's compulsion to denigrate women. Why does he need to humiliate women so obsessively? Is his fear justified, or is it a symptom of his own inadequacy? Misogyny undermines masculinity and the author of Le Chevalier a Vepe'e seems uneasily aware of this. He narrates an episode in the peregrinations of Gauvain, always an equivocal hero with the reputation of a philanderer. 66 Gauvain meets a knight who offers him hospitality. This includes a bed which contains his daughter, but over which hangs a magic sword which has already disposed of some twenty knights when they tried to touch the maiden. Gauvain's desire is understandably tempered, but not for long and he spends the night dodging the sword whilst trying to have sex (unsuccessfully) with the girl. In the morning Gauvain is a little the worse for wear, but his wounds are superficial and his host, in recognition of his prowess, offers him his daughter's hand in marriage. After the wedding night, Gauvain decides to take his bride to Arthur's court, but on the way he is challenged by a knight for custody of his wife (evoking the custom of Logres). Insufficiently armed for combat, Gauvain says it is up to her; if she wants to go with the knight she can. She hesitates, but chooses the assailant. Before long she remembers her dogs, which have stayed with Gauvain, and sends her new partner back for them. Gauvain proposes the same deal: the dogs should choose. They prove more discerning than the woman. Gauvain then kills the

116


assailant for trying to take them, abandoning his wife when she asks if she can stay with him. This text is eloquent about three romance paradigms. Firstly, the girl is an object of exchange between men, not once but twice. Secondly, because possession of the girl is a sign of prestige, failure to possess her is a catastrophic blow to a knight's reputation. Consequently Gauvain is terrified of failure in the sword-bed when the maiden explains to him how it works: Or ne set Gauvains que il face. 575 Onques mais de si grant manace N'oi parler jor de sa vie, Et si dote qu'ele lou die Por sei meismes garantir, Qu'il n'en face son plaisir. 580 D'autre part si s'est porpensez Qu'il n'en porroit estre celez, Que il ne fust partot seii, Que il avroit o li geii Tot sol, nu a nu, en son lit, 585 Et si avoit por sol son dit Laissie a faire son pleisir. Miaus vient il a anor morir Qu'a honte vivre longuement. Now Gauvain doesn't know what to do. He has never heard of such a danger before and he fears she will tell people, to protect her reputation, that he is not having his way with her. On the other hand, he realized that it could not be concealed, that everyone could not be prevented from knowing, that he would have lain with her, all alone and naked in her bed, and had refrained from taking his pleasure just because of what she said. He would rather die in honour than live a long time in shame. Initially the manace (576) would seem to be the sword, but it soon transpires that Gauvain is more frightened of being shamed — the public disgrace of his virility being mocked — than of being killed.67 There is an hilarious reversal here of the meanings of honour and shame within Christian discourse. Gauvain will be shamed if he refrains from sex, not for fornicating. Moreover anor (588) is doubly ambiguous. Since onor can mean both 'honour' and 'fief in Old French (TL, 6, 1128-35; Burgess, Contribution, pp. 68—90), it can have material as well as spiritual


117

overtones; here sex constitutes 'anor', both spiritual and material advancement, since Gauvain's reputation is ensured and he marries an heiress. The third romance paradigm Le Chevalier a Ve'pe'e exemplifies is misogyny.68 The girl is revealed to be an unworthy sign of Gauvain's honour. After the night in the bed of the sword, it is her father who recognizes Gauvain's worth and gives her to him (746-73). The father bestows the sign of Gauvain's prowess and the woman as a sign is therefore simply transmitted between two men. When Gauvain offers his new wife a free choice between his assailant and himself, she ponders the relative merits of the two: Mes la pucele, qui bien sot Conment Gauvains se puet aidier, 985 Revialt savoir do chevalier Conment il est preu et vaillant. Sachiez trestuit, petit et grant, Qui qu'en rie ne qui qu'en gronde, N'a gaires nule feme o monde, 990 S'ele estoit drue et moillier A tot lo mellor chevalier Qui soit jusqu'en Inde Major, Ja par lui n'avroit tele amor Que, s'il n'estoit preuz en Postel, 995 Qu'el lou prisast un dor de sel Vos savez bien de quel proece. Or oez de si grant laidece Que cele damoisele fist. But the maiden, who knew how well Gauvain could perform, wanted to know how worthy and valiant the knight is. Know this, all of you, great and small, whether you laugh or cry about it, there is hardly a single woman in the world, be she lover and wife to the best knight in the world from here to India, who would not love him so much as a grain of salt if he could not prove his prowess indoors - and you know what kind of prowess I mean. Now hear about the damsel's great iniquity. The damsel initially appears to examine the assailant knight to check his chivalric credentials: she wants to see if he is preu and vaillant (987), how he measures up in this respect to Gauvain. A few lines later however {995),preuz is used with an overtly sexual

118


sense, a point hammered home by the ironic interjection of line 997. 69 The damsel is not, after all, interested in the knight's chivalric prowess, only in his sexual prowess. This, together with the dogs' decision to stay with Gauvain, leads to virulent misogyny from Gauvain: ' Une chose sachiez de voir, Et sel poez par moi veoir: Se vos volez tot son plaisir A cele pucele aconplir, Vos avroiz de li corte joie Je voil mout bien que ele m'oie! Que sachiez, tant el fu moie, Que ses bons li aconplisoie. Or voiez con el m'a servi! II ne va pas de chien issi Con de feme, ce sachiez bien. Une chose sachiez de chien: Ja son mestre qui norri Pa Por estrange ne changera. Feme a mout tost guerpi lo suen S'i[l] ne li conplist tot son buen; Si est mervelle de tel change Qui lou suen laisse por estrange. Li levrier ne m'ont pas gerpi, Dont puis je bien prover issi Ja n'en sere desdiz de rien Que nature et amor de chien Valt miauz que de feme ne fait.'

1090

1095

1100

1105

Know one thing truthfully, and you can see this through me: if you want to give this maiden pleasure, you will have but brief joy of her - and I want her to hear this. And know that when she was with me I did what she wanted. Now see how she treats me. A dog is not like a woman, mark my words. Let me tell you this about a dog: he will never change the master who has fed him for a stranger. A woman quickly abandons hers if she does not get everything she wants. It is incredible that a woman should give up her man for a stranger. The dogs did not leave me, so I can thus prove - and I cannot be contradicted in any way in this - that the nature and love of a dog is worth more than a woman's. Gauvain's denunciation oi nature defeme is both misogynistic and deeply essentialist, but he shoots himself (and masculinity) in


119

the foot. When the girl is deciding whether or not to go with the assailant knight, it is implied she wants to leave Gauvain because he failed to satisfy her sexually. He claims to have satisfied her in his misogynistic tirade, but clearly he has not (1102): maybe the corte joie he refers to (1091) designates the satisfaction he is capable of supplying, rather than the joy he received. In the prologue Gauvain is introduced as an exemplary knight (1-11), yet he ends up losing the principal sign of his prestige to another knight and is revealed to be a bad lover.70 Once it becomes clear that the assailant knight cannot protect her and that the dogs are staying with Gauvain, the girl asks if she can stay with him, pleading that she abandoned him because she thought the other knight was stronger. This produces further misogyny from Gauvain: 'Bele', fet il, 'ce est neiant. Pou vos vaut vostre covrement; Rien ne valt ceste coverture. Tel foi, tel amor, tel nature Puet Ten sovent trover en feme: Qui autre blef que il n'i same Voudroit recoillir en sa terre Et cil qui en feme vialt querre Fors sa nature n'est pas sage Toz jorz Font eii en usage Puis que Dieus fist la premerainne.'

1165

1170

1175

'Fair one', he said, 'nothing you say can help. Your deceit is worth nothing; it is useless to lie. One can always find such faith, such love, such nature in a woman: the man who wants to harvest from his land a crop he has not sown, or who seeks in a woman something which is contrary to her nature, is a fool - they have always been the same since God created the first one.' Le Chevalier a Vepee, like many romances seems to invite two interpretations. There is a strong misogynistic seam, according to which women's nature makes them less trustworthy than dogs. On the other hand, it is implied that Gauvain's new wife leaves him because he is no good in bed. The image of the hero flouncing off at the end with his dogs is frankly comic and his dignity is further undermined by the narrator's gleeful epilogue,

120


which tells us that Gauvain's less than flattering aventure was told and listened to mout volentiers once he returned to court (1198-206). Gauvain is often a comic figure in Arthurian romances, a side-kick to the hero, but humour at his expense is nearly always expressed in an ironic subtext and romance narrators never tire of telling us what a great knight and lover he was. Le Chevalier a Vepee is typical of the Gauvain tradition, but it also points to problems inherent in the presence of figures like Gauvain at the round table. The ideal knight is mocked. Love and sexuality are presented as central to his chivalric identity, yet he fails to make the grade and his misogyny blames women for his own shortcomings. The conclusion of Le Chevalier a Pepee, indicating that dogs are more trustworthy than women, is staggering in its misogyny, but it also backfires on the hero's masculinity. The twist of Le Chevalier a Vepee depends on the power of women to choose and therefore on their capacity as readers of signs. But as a reader of signs the damsel is in a no-win situation. She is blamed for choosing Gauvain's challenger - even the dogs know better than that! Yet who can blame her for leaving Gauvain? It is significant, however, that she is given the choice. The importance of women's consent in romance is probably related indirectly to the Church's insistence after the Gregorian reforms that both partners in a marriage consent freely to the transaction. In practice the Church turned a blind eye to a good deal of coercion, but the disparity between theory and practice opens up fertile territory for literary debate. Either directly or indirectly many romances focus on the issue of women's choice (or their coercion) and their consent (or opposition) to marriage, love affairs, and so on. For instance, it is made clear in Flamenca that the heroine realizes she has no say in her marriage and that she is being coerced into consenting to it.71 The text imparts a great sense of delight at the games she subsequently plays when she takes a lover and one possible implication is that one should expect no less if a marriage is a result of coercion. Similar equivocation regarding the coercion of women is to be found in Chretien's Tvain. It is possible to give the account of the hero's two marriages to Laudine two


121

diametrically opposed readings. According to one she twice falls in love with him, and therefore consents to marry him each time; according to the other reading which is produced by an ironic subtext she is coerced on each occasion and her consent is forced.72 I suggested at the end of the last chapter that in some respects the role of women in the chansons de geste is more appealing than in romance. This is because there is less attempt in the epic to mystify attitudes towards women. Romance ostensibly elevates the feminine whilst underscoring its courtoisie with profound misogyny and a pervasive concern with masculinity. If one cause of misogyny in romance is fear of female power, this points to common ground between romance and the courtly lyric. The interaction between the two genres is in many respects evident and the influence of the love casuistry of the troubadour and trouvere lyric on romance is well documented.73 But the treatment of female power in Le Bel Inconnu for instance, which deliberately juxtaposes romance and lyric paradigms, none the less points to tension between the two genres. The lyric insistently reiterates male subordination to women, even if, as I will argue in the next chapter, this is double-edged; in romance female power is subverted more openly. It is as if the transposition of certain metaphors, images and topoi from lyric to narrative poses problems which can be kept under wraps in the lyric, but not in romance. The stasis of the lyric means lyric poetry can fantasize about specific moments, whereas romance needs to sustain sequential action. Lyric poetry elevates women within discourse and turns a blind eye to the consequences; romance has to portray the reactions of women to courtly rhetoric. The next chapter will look more closely at the construction of gender inscribed in the rhetoric of the courtly lyric, initially through the lens of romances which interact openly with the lyric. It will also assess the reactions to courtly discourse of some real women, the trobairitz, as opposed to the fictional women of romance.

CHAPTER 3

Troubadours, ladies and language: the canso

Critics agree that' courtly love' has its origin in the troubadour canso. Yet the traditional literary historical narrative according to which romanciers like Chretien de Troyes draw on an earlier Occitan lyric tradition is dubious. We know of few troubadours active before 1150 and it is unwise to generalize on the basis of the small number of songs by Guilhem IX and Jaufre Rudel or the large, but idiosyncratic corpus of the satirist Marcabru. If a new style of love poetry was emerging in some Occitan courts between 1100 and 1150, recent research suggests these courts were few and far between: in all likelihood few songs from the period survive because there were few poets. 1 Bernart de Ventadorn, the first troubadour in whose work the conventions of the courtly canso seem fully formed, was a contemporary of early romance writers. He worked in France and England, as well as Occitania, and he probably knew Chretien. 2 The classic period of troubadour poetry (c.i 160-C.1210), from which the majority of surviving songs date, is the same as the period in which the first important spate of romances was produced. Modern criticism has been so obsessed with origins that it has been more than a little blind to the contemporaneity of the Northern French romance and Occitan lyric traditions. If early romance draws on the embryonic canso for its portrayal of love, it is at least as much indebted to Ovid and, as I suggested in the last chapter, the genre with which it has an actively dialogic relationship is the chanson de geste.3 I have chosen to examine the canso after romance because I find the traditional view that love in early romance derives from the troubadour lyric unhelpful. If Chretien, for instance in the scene 122

Troubadours, ladies and language

123

in which Yvain first sees Laudine or in his treatment of Lancelot's abasement before Guenevere, is indebted to the rhetoric of the troubadours, his debt is to contemporary poets like Bernart de Ventadorn, not to earlier figures like Guilhem IX or Jaufre Rudel: to all intents and purposes the canso and romance are simultaneous developments in the courts of Northern France and Occitania, even if there are a few early courtly poets in the South. Moreover, Chretien's ironic treatment of Yvain's falling in love with Laudine, or of Lancelot's love for Guenevere, indicates he is not drawing unquestioningly on the courtly canso, but that he is bringing lyric and romance discourses into conflict with each other. In slightly later romances, for instance Le Bel Inconnu, Guillaume de Dole, Le Chastelain de Coucy and later still Le Roman de la Rose and Flamenca,

the dialectic between lyric and romance discourses is yet more marked. There is a continuum, but also a dissonance between the two genres. The myth of the love-sick troubadour wandering from castle to castle singing, with his hand on his heart, of his unrequited love for his haughty, but irresistible lady has little currency now in scholarly circles.4 Criticism over the last thirty years or so has examined the formal dexterity, the textuality and intertextuality, the eroticism, the theatricality and the humour of the canso.5 A further strand of criticism has followed in the wake of Erich Kohler's influential work: according to his socio-historic reading, the troubadour's love of a high-ranking lady sublimates the frustration of the lesser nobility or the landless iuvenes, whilst binding them to the more successful higher nobility through a shared ideology. For Kohler and his disciples the troubadourlover is primarily a spokesman for his class.6 Kohler's work effectively politicized criticism of troubadour poetry, but three recent books, by Jean-Charles Huchet, Rouben Cholakian and Sarah Kay, break new ground in this respect by examining the construction of gender in the canso.7 Huchet's LAmour discourtois is a Lacanian reading of the troubadour lyric: he focuses on desire in language, arguing that the troubadours inaugurate a cult of femininity and a new way of talking about love. For Huchet, femininity in the troubadour

124


lyric is a figure within a masculine discourse, the troubadour's domna being a masculine projection, and in this respect his work on the troubadours pre-empts the criticism I levelled in the last chapter at his earlier work on romance (see above p. 72). Huchet suggests that profound anxiety is provoked by the disparity between the domna and real women as the troubadours see them, and by the impossibility of the love of which they sing. Cholakian's The Troubadour Lyric: a Psychocritical Reading is also

anchored in psychoanalytic theory, though unlike Huchet, he takes on board feminist criticism of Freud and Lacan: for Cholakian troubadour poetry plays upon erotic triangles and is profoundly androcentric, foregrounding relations between men and displacing masculine anxieties onto women. Kay's work draws on more politically orientated feminist theory: her chapter 'Gender and Status' in Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (pp. 84-131) offers an extended critique of Kohler's work on the troubadours and argues that subjectivity in the lyric is constructed as masculine, that status too is a masculine preserve, and that the rhetoric of the canso, imbued as it is with feudal and other socially loaded metaphors from the masculine symbolic, is a medium in which men negotiate status. This brief account of the treatment of gender in these three books is schematic in that none of the three critics limits her or his analysis to the points I have highlighted, and all three touch in some way on each of the issues I have associated with just one of them. For instance Kay and Huchet are perfectly aware of the economy of the love triangle in the troubadour lyric; Huchet and Cholakian acknowledge the implications of hierarchically marked feudal metaphors; and Kay and Cholakian stress the relationship between desire and language. But it is fair to say that each privileges a certain mode of analysis. I shall use the issues foregrounded by these three books to structure the first three sections of this chapter. I shall begin by examining the relationship between desire and language in the troubadour lyric as masculine discourse and the construction of femininity within this discourse; secondly, I shall look at the mechanisms of homosocial desire in the tradition and particularly at how this inscribes masculine competition and excludes women;


125

thirdly, I shall address the role of rhetoric and linguistic dexterity in the troubadour's negotiation of his status. I shall draw on the work of Huchet, Cholakian and Kay in each of the sections, but I shall also suggest how I think their views could be revised. I shall focus mainly on the work of just a few courtly troubadours whose work is contemporary to twelfth-century romance writers.8 In each section, the canso will be approached initially through the lens of romances which respond to lyric paradigms because it may thereby be possible to assess contemporary responses to these texts and to examine the dialectic between romance and lyric discourses. The last section of this chapter will be devoted to the trobairitz: I shall suggest that their poetry offers a fascinating insight into how the canso was viewed by some women and points to ways in which the modern reader can deconstruct the gender system of the maleauthored tradition. DESIRE IN LANGUAGE

The witty pun in the title of Huchet's UAmour discourtois encapsulates his argument that in the canso language and desire are indistinguishable, that the troubadours' Jin'amor is a discursive formation rather than a ' real-life' practice, and that it is 'discourteous' in the sense that the 'discursive' worship of women in some lyrics does not represent respect or consideration for real women. He makes the distinction early in his book between real women and the ' ladies' about whom the troubadours sing: 'II n'est pas inexact de dire, meme si la formule demeure un truisme, qu'avec les troubadours l'Occident decouvre la femme. Plus juste serait de dire que la femme devint alors un objet litteraire, l'occasion d'un discours masculin porte par le desir se sou tenant de l'enigme de la feminite' {L Amour discourtois, p. 13). By glossing the truism that troubadour poetry ' discovers' women with the more nuanced view that women are the object which occasions a masculine discourse, Huchet opens up a new and fruitful way of thinking about the courtly canso. In Huchet's critical vocabulary the 'enigma of femininity' figures the Other in the Lacanian sense: ' au titre de 1'Autre, la

126


dame est avant tout un lieu vers lequel tend le desir et le chant qui le supporte' (LAmour discourtois, p. 35). Discours becomes synonymous with desire and always inscribes lack: 'L' «ecriture» des troubadours... nait de l'impasse sexuelle et son deploiement superbe et sophistique en constitue un magistral desaveu' [UAmour discourtois, p. 103). My own use of the term discourse is grounded in a more politically orientated theory of linguistic production and of how subjects are constituted in it (see above pp. 1-16). If femininity is a figure within a masculine symbolic, Huchet makes no attempt to assess where female subjects stand in relation to this symbolic. Indeed it is not clear that he views the ' enigma of femininity' as a construction; rather the Lacanian model of the psyche and language is presented in his work as a universal feature of human experience and he fails to address the historical specificity of psychoanalytic thinking or of the troubadour canso. Huchet's consistent elision of 'femininity' with la Femme or la Dame throughout UAmour discourtois suggests that despite his initial theoretical distinction between the feminine and real women he then conflates the two, for women, in his account of the canso, do not exist otherwise. However, Huchet's work is a useful corrective to the traditional view of the canso as a reflection of a real love story between a man and a woman: L'oeuvre de Bernard de Ventadorn est plus un affrontement sans cesse reitere avec la feminite que le chant de la rencontre de femmes reelles dont les identites viendraient rassurer en enfermant toutes questions dans une biographie singuliere ou un «roman familial». Le secret de la reussite et du succes de Bernard de Ventadorn reside sans doute dans la reprise incessante de la question de «La Femme », au-dela de femmes singulieres. VAmour discourtois, p . 182 Huchet passes no comment on the androcentric mechanism whereby the only place for la Femme within courtly linguistic structures is as a cypher to the masculine subject whilst real femmes singulieres fall out of the frame. But filtered through a feminist critique his work helps focus attention sharply on the masculine nature of the canso's discourse and on the relationship between language and desire in the genre. In some romances which play on the conventions of the canso,


127

language precedes desire and is far more than simply a means of expressing it. In Flamenca (c. 1270) and Guillaume de Dole (c. 1228) Guilhem and Conrad fall in love with Flamenca and Lienor respectively without seeing them, on the basis of descriptions. Desire is produced in and by language and in Guillaume de Dole the flames of desire are fanned by a single signifier, Lienor's name: 9 Fet l'empereres: «Ce fet mon. Et sa suer, coment a a on, qui si a bel et gent le cors? 790 - Sire, el a non Lienors, ce dit li nons de la pucele.» Amors l'a cuit d'une estencele de eel biau non mout pres del cuer. The emperor said: 'This is true. And his sister, she of the fair and comely body, what is she called ?'' Sire, her name is Lienor; thus is the maiden's name.' Love kindled a spark with this fair name near his heart. This romance inaugurates the fashion for interpolated lyrics in romance. It quotes well-known songs by trouveres and troubadours throughout, often integrating them as direct speech or as performances in court scenes. It can thus be read as a contemporary gloss to lyric discourse. There are no lyric quotations in the passage in which Conrad learns Lienor's name, but the scenario of a man falling in love with the description of a woman without having seen her is a marked lyric paradigm. I think less ofJaufre Rudel's famous amor de lonh poems themselves (one of which is sung by Guillaume in Guillaume de Dole, see 1301—7) as of the thirteenth-century reading of them in the famous vida :10 'Jaufres Rudels de Blaia si fo mout gentils horn, princes de Blaia. Et enamoret se de la comtessa de Tripol, ses vezer, per lo ben qu'el n'auzi dire als pelerins que venguen d'Antiocha. Et fez de leis mains vers ab bons sons, ab paubres motz.' ('Jaufre Rudel of Blaye was a very noble man and Prince of Blaye. And he fell in love with the Countess of Tripoli, without seeing her, because of the good things he heard the pilgrims who came from Antioch say of her. And he composed many poems about her, with good tunes and poor words.') This vida draws upon Jaufre's cansos, not an

128


account of a real incident. It indicates that in the thirteenth century a compelling way of reading Jaufre's songs was as the expression of love for a woman the poet had never seen, but had heard described. The phenomenon of the amor de lonh and the concomitant 'desire in language' produces a dislocation between the object of the poet's love (a linguistic figure) and real women. In Guillaume de Dole, Lienor is doubly displaced as an object of Conrad's desire for the description he falls in love with is not in fact of her, but of a fictional woman in a story, whom he is subsequently told Lienor resembles. This play in Guillaume de Dole is indicative of a questioning attitude in romance towards this lyric paradigm. How is it treated in the lyric itself? Some lyrics make it clear the domna of whom the troubadour sings is an image distinct from any real woman: 11 Anc non agui de me poder ni no fui meus de Tor' en sai que • m laisset en sos olhs vezer en un miralh que mout me plai. 20 Miralhs, pus me mirei en te, m'an mort li sospir de preon, c'aissi • m perdei com perdet se lo bels Narcisus en la fon. Bernart de Ventadorn, 31 I never had control over myself, nor was I mine own from the moment she let me see into her eyes, into a mirror which pleases me greatly. Mirror, since I gazed intently upon you, deep sighs have killed me, for I lost myself just as fair Narcissus lost himself in the fountain. In this central stanza from perhaps the most famous canso of all, Bernart de Ventadorn's 'Can vei la lauzeta' (also cited in Guillaume de Dole, 5212-27), the image upon which the firstperson subject gazes is not a lady, since her eyes are the mirror in which he sees it. Despite the Narcissus simile and the reflexive me mirei in line 21, he is not necessarily looking at himself, for in the Middle Ages Narcissus was an exemplum of unrequited love because he fell in love with an image (rather than with himself), whilst the reflexive may simply intensify the force of the verb, giving the sense 'gaze intently'. Moreover, in medieval poetry, the mirror often shows an image of perfection or some revelation of truth, not necessarily the reflection of the person gazing upon

Troubadours•, ladies and language

129

it.12 Bernart is rendered powerless by what he sees in the mirror, losing himself like Narcissus loses himself in the fountain, falling like the lark of the opening stanza, but the lady of whom he sings is not a real woman; rather she is his own creation within the poem, a sign within his discourse. Yet this stanza does imply the involvement of a real woman (or at least of a part of her, her eyes). The ambivalent attitude of many troubadours to women, alternating between worship and misogyny, is due to the disparity between the image of the ideal domna the troubadour creates and real women as he sees them. As in romance the attribution of value to women in texts is problematic. But troubadours frequently go further than romanciers and imply that domnas, 'ladies' andfemnas, 'women' are two different categories.13 This is the case in 'Can vei': D'aisso's fa be femna parer ma domna, per qu'e • lh o retrai, car no vol so c'om deu voler, e so c'om li deveda fai.

35

In this my lady seems just like a woman, which is why I speak of it, for she does not want what a man must want, and she does what a man forbids her.

The real woman Bernart implies he uses as the embodiment of his aspirations and desires can never be a domna and is doomed to be eternally scapegoated for this. The poem ends with a powerful image of alienation and self-imposed silence which is blamed on the lady: Pus ab midons no • m pot valer precs ni merces ni*l dreihz qu'eu ai, ni a leis no ven a plazer qu'eu l'am, ja mais no*lh o dirai. Aissi • m part de leis e • m recre; mort m'a, et per mort li respon, e vau m'en, pus ilh no • m rete, chaitius, en issilh, no sai on. Tristan, ges no • n auretz de me, qu'eu m'en vau, chaitius, no sai on. De chantar me gic e • m recre, e de joi e d'amor m'escon.

50

55

60

130


Since pleading nor mercy nor my being in the right are of no use to me with my lady, and since it does not please her that I love her, I will not say this to her any more. So I leave her and give up knightly pursuits; she has killed me, and I reply to her as if dead, and I go away, since she does not retain me, wretched, in exile, I know not where. Tristan, you will have nothing from me, for I go away, wretched, I know not where. I abandon singing and knightly service and remove myself from joy and love. Huchet is right to see this poem as an inscription of the troubadour'sperte, his delicieuse defaillance and la blessure du manque

(L Amour discourtois, p. 209) and he is also surely right that the object of Bernart's love eludes him, just as the lark in the opening metaphor is unable to reach the sun. In relation to this impasse it is striking that the poem insistently reiterates the centrality of desire to Bernart's poetic enterprise: ai! tan grans enveya m'en ve de cui qu'eu veya jauzion, meravilhas ai, car desse lo cor de dezirer no • m fon.

5

Ah, I so envy anyone I see rejoicing that I am amazed that my heart does not at once melt from desire. Tout m'a mo cor, e tout m'a me, e se mezeis e tot lo mon; e can se • m tolc, no • m laisset re mas dezirer e cor volon.

15

She has taken my heart from me and taken myself from me, and herself and every one; and when she took herself from me, she left me nothing but desire and a longing heart. Yet, if Bernart sings of desire, at the end of the song he removes himself both from the object of his desire and language (the realm of desire) altogether. Declaring his intention to fall silent at the end of the poem is a rhetorical strategy, since in performance the singer of every canso falls silent at the end of the text. But Bernart's articulation of his effacement from the discourse which embodies his desire is a powerful emblem of the poem's success at making desire and language coterminous.


131

Once the song is over, desire is no longer audible. Bernart's exile is total since the end of the poem enacts his removal from the symbolic order. Silence is equivalent to death; desire and language are essential to Bernart's continued existence. This is a moving poem about alienation and the need to speak in order to register subjectivity. Paradoxically Bernart speaks in 'Can vei' in order to declare his intention to fall silent. His eloquence in doing so has ensured the continued survival of his trace in discourse. The song, though a love song, is less about a relationship between a man and a woman than a man's attempt to elaborate his own subjectivity through his relation to a construction of femininity within a fiction of his own creation. The central problem for Bernart de Ventadorn, and many other troubadours, is their association of their image of the domna with real women, femnas. The contempt in which troubadours hold women means the distinction between the domna and femnas must be kept clear. This is apparent in the concluding stanzas of'Us jois d'amor', by Arnaut de Maruelh (late twelfth century) :14 Domna genser que anz al mon nasques, tant m'es de vos l'aspre doutz e suaus, per qu'ieu no puesc mon cor virar alhor; a! s'er ja temps qu'a dreit vos apelh domna, qu'icus sia horns, mans juntas lialmen, 40 e atressi cum bons senher acuelh son lige ser, mi denhetz aculhir ...! Domna, Amors m'a dat tan d'ardimen, quar sap qu'ieu fis vos sui e no • m destuelh, qu'el cor m'a fag miral ab que-us remir. 45 Domna, de Pretz sui en l'aussor capduelh, mas per semblan mon cor no vos aus dir. Domn', el semblan podetz mon cor chauzir. Arnaut de Maruelh, 4 Lady, sweetest creature ever born, the bitterness you make me feel is so sweet and smooth that I cannot turn my heart elsewhere; ah! if only a time comes when I can rightfully call you my lady, and be your vassal, with my hands joined together loyally, and you might then greet me as a good lord greets his liege servant.

132


Lady, Love has made me so bold, for it knows that I am true to you and not inconstant in this, that in my heart it has made me a mirror with which I can gaze upon you. Lady I am at the highest pinnacle of Worth, but I dare not reveal my heart to you^ther than through my facial expression. Lady, in my expression you can see my heart. Arnaut's lady undergoes a metamorphosis, like so many domnas, into a senher in line 41. To a certain extent the domna represents an attempt to fantasize a woman with masculine qualities who can be relied upon to defend masculine values. The image of the poet standing before her with his hands joined together plays upon this posture in feudal homage ceremonies and further serves to assimilate the domna into the masculine symbolic.15 This metaphor is common (for instance in the cansos of Bernart de Ventadorn, Arnaut de Maruelh, Raimon Jordan) and I shall return to it in the next section. What interests me here is the curiously opaque image of the mirror in the three tornadas. Arnaut announces that he keeps an image of his lady in his heart and then states that he cannot reveal his heart to her, she must guess what it conceals from his expression. Within the fiction of the song, the lady thus finds herself appropriated by her admirer, yet confronted by a far from transparent barrier through which she must see if she is to understand how he perceives her. Arnaut is not concerned at all with any real women here, but only with an image he has created for himself and which he guards jealously. The moment Arnaut privileges above all others in his songs is the moment when the lover's desire is at its most intense, but as yet unrequited. Rarely does he envisage shared love or allude to amorous encounters which are not fantasized. Poignant as this representation of desire may be, it is striking that this love poetry concentrates on the moment that precedes any possible union, the moment when the male lover is turned inwards, yet must articulate his desire. Arnaut's poetry, and the canso generally, is primarily concerned with its own utterance: 16 Era t'envei, franc messagier, si • 1 plai que • m prend' en chausimen, e parla bels ditz a sobrier,

45


133

e si t'acuoill, torna coren, c'ab te pois meillz chai devesir so qu'eu non pose lai ademplir tro per altrui ne sapcha * 1 ver. E si • 1 plai que • m deign' acoillir, 50 chai torna • 1 joi qu'eu tant desir tost ab que • m get de nocaler. Mas s'ilh no • m deigna acuillir, lo desconort no tornetz dir, 55 qu'eu no • 1 voill audir ni saber. Arnaut de Maruelh, 14 Now I send you forth, fair messenger, if it pleases her to have mercy upon me, and speak manyfinewords, and if she welcomes you, hurry back, for I am better able to explain to you here what I cannot accomplish there until I know the truth from someone else. And if it pleases her to deign to welcome me, bring back at once the joy that I desire most ardently to release me from indolence. But if she does not deign to welcome me, do not come back to tell me the bad news, for I wish neither to hear it nor to know it. Arnaut's song leaves no room for negotiation; either the lady replies positively or she should not reply at all. In some respects the poem invites no reply and posits no exchange. What matters to Arnaut is the articulation of his own desire, his bels ditz a so brier (45).

Often Arnaut seems more interested in fantasies, and talking about them, than in real life (see 9, 29-35 an I 5~ 2 1 )- I n m s fantasies Arnaut's lady is everything he wants her to be. His preference for fantasy over reality is paralleled by his preference for talking about love rather than acting: Dompna, si • us plagues sofrir, per vostre chausimen, c'ab doutz precs cars, humilmen, merceian cum fis amaire, vos auses mon cor retraire, 15 en luoc d'autre gauzir, vos non costera re e mi feira gran be; que • 1 malautes, quan si plaing, Arnaut de Maruelh, 25 si no * il val, si s'en refraing.

134


Lady, if it pleased you to allow, through your mercy, that with sweet rich pleas, begging mercy like a true lover, I should dare to tell you my heart, instead of any other pleasure, this would cost you nothing, and it would do me a lot of good; for the sick man, when he groans, gains some relief from it even though it does not make him feel better. As Arnaut implies here, talking about love only coincidentally has anything to do with women. Indeed it is not of any concern to anyone but himself, since it is something he does to make himself feel better. The dislocation between the troubadour's lady and real women enables much of the misogyny to which the canso is so prone, for example: Una fausa deschauzida 25 trairitz de mal linhatge m'a trait e es traida, e colh lo ram ab que*s fer; e can autre l'arazona, d'eus lo seu tort m'ochaizona; 30 et an ne mais li derrer qu'eu, qui n'ai faih lone badatge. Bernart de Ventadorn, 34 A false, vulgar, treacherous, common woman has betrayed me and is herself betrayed, and she gathers the rod with which she beats herself; and when another addresses her she accuses me of her own wrong, and the last to arrive have more than I who have waited a long time in vain. This stanza, reminiscent of the style of the satirist Marcabru, 17 displays standard misogynistic tropes not normally associated with courtliness, but examples of misogynistic diatribes in apparently ' courtly' troubadours are too numerous and tedious to list exhaustively. It is not simply that misogyny and worship of women are a binary opposition which structures the lyric and that one is the inevitable consequence and reversal of the other, as R. Howard Bloch suggests when he concludes his reading of Bernart de Ventadorn's 'Can vei' with the assertion that 'the deprecation of the feminine lurks just below the surface of the courtly idealization of women' (Misogyny, p. 148). Bloch's view of' the feminine' in the canso as unitary is perhaps misguided


135

and the troubadours' idealization of domnas should not be opposed to misogyny: it is misogynistic in itself since it is part of a process of exclusion of real women from the elevated domna category, and of their relegation to the category offemnas. I have argued in this section that the canso is a masculine discourse, concerned with the articulation of masculine desire and that troubadours construct two models of femininity, represented by domnas and femnas. In the next section I shall explore the construct of masculinity this discourse produces by taking a closer look at the ideology upon which the canso is predicated. HOMOSOGIAL DESIRE

Throughout his psychocritical reading of the troubadour lyric Rouben Cholakian stresses there are always three actants in the canso: c an enunciating lover', 'an unnamed woman' and 'a third male party who is by turns a slandering eavesdropper (lausengier), a jealous rival (gilos) or a neutral companion' (Troubadour Lyric, p. 1). He highlights how troubadours, though they appear to address women, in fact address other men: for instance Guilhem IX ' communicates about the desired women to men, who can participate vicariously in his amorous enterprise' (Troubadour Lyric, p. 18). As Cholakian shows, in many songs the third point of the amorous triangle, the woman, is marginalized as the relation between two men is privileged. Whilst fully agreeing with Cholakian's placing of Jin'amor within an economy of homosocial desire, I cannot accept his assertion that 'the psychoanalytic reading of the courtly discourse provides explanations which supersede its sociohistorical framework' (Troubadour Lyric, p. 188). Like Huchet, Cholakian apparently considers psychoanalytical paradigms to be ahistorical givens: ' Every man is born of some woman. That is a biological given and therefore a socio-psychic one as well. The father of modern psychoanalysis simply gave "scientific" attention to a biological fact. Freud did not write the Oedipal drama; he simply used it to corroborate his assumptions' (Troubadour Lyric, p. 183). Cholakian attributes the troubadours' equivocal attitude towards women to their unconscious view of

136


the mother as 'not only the source of pleasure, but the cause of displeasure' (p. 183). But if every man is born of some woman, what 'man' and 'woman' mean is different in different historical and social circumstances. Freud may not have written the Oedipal drama, but he interpreted it in a certain way, quite differently from Ancient Greek or medieval writers. Unlike Huchet, Cholakian is well aware of the phallocentric nature of Lacanian theory and the thrust of his argument is that the troubadours' fin'amor is as androcentric and antifeminist as Lacan's psychoanalytic paradigms. However, although he nods occasionally in the direction of historical or sociological context, he assumes the troubadour lyric is a record of the attempts of a group of individuals to negotiate their way through a universal human experience provoked by the universal 'family romance', as elaborated by Freud whom Cholakian aptly calls the 'father' of modern psychoanalysis. In seeing poetic discourse as ' the translatable sign' of ' a psychological reality' (Troubadour Lyric, p. 29), Cholakian's belief in the universal subject, and in literature's power to express it, becomes apparent. The last sentence of the book alludes to ' the broader subtext which finally governs all gender relations' (p. 188) and on the back cover this becomes 'the universal subtext'. Did medieval culture have the same notion as us of the subject, or of the 'family romance' so crucial to Cholakian's analysis? One striking difference between modern and medieval discourses of the family is that whereas we privilege the subject position of the child and seek to understand how the subject emerges from her or his relations to her or his parents, medieval texts pay more attention to the parents' position, and to the value the child has to the parents, particularly to the father and to his kin-group. Cholakian's psycho-critical reading posits the centrality of the male subject's relationship with his mother [Troubadour Lyric, p. 183). In medieval narratives — chansons de geste, romances, saints lives — a son's relationship with his father is more important than any he may have with his mother, whilst maternal feelings and bonding with girls are ignored or marginalized (see Paterson, World, pp. 293-5). Furthermore, other ties often take precedence over filial affection, for women


137

as well as men. Linda Paterson identifies vasselage, the Church, male companionship and marriage as structures and institutions that might affect parent/children relations {World, p. 289). Thus in Daurel et Beton and Jourdain de Blaye a woman sacrifices her son to save her husband's overlord; in Ami Amile kills his children to save his companion; in one version of the Guillaume d'Orange cycle Orable (soon to become Guibourc) kills her children by her first (Saracen) husband before marrying the hero (see ed. Regnier, Prise d'Orange, p. 88); in countless saints' lives - as we will see - men and women eschew family ties for God; and in Floire the hero leaves his family for love. There is no shortage of examples in medieval literature of parents showing affection for children, or vice versa: in Raoul de Cambrai Aalais weeps over her son's body and Bernier weeps over his mother's; in Ami Amile laments the necessity to kill his children, and they pity him. Yet what Linda Paterson has shown of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Occitan literature is true generally of the literature of the period: 'children take their place in the interplay of hierarchies' {World, p. 295). A child in many medieval texts is frequently a future incarnation of his father and a prime concern is therefore legitimacy, which guarantees the integrity of the kin-group, lineage and the family estates. In the troubadour lyric this concern with legitimacy and integrity is best reflected in the songs of the satirist Marcabru, who repeatedly warns against the dire consequences of the unlawful unions of courtly domnas with men of lesser rank. Significantly, the offspring of a courtly domna's illicit liaison is for Marcabru primarily a reflection on her husband's worth, a sign of his betrayal and loss of value.18 Not only is the parent—child matrix of medieval culture different from that produced in and by psychoanalytic discourse, but the conditions under which children interacted with their parents were different. Even in noble households privacy for individuals or for families was rare, while noble boys may not have been brought up by their mothers, but rather initially by wet nurses and subsequently at the courts of overlords.19 In medieval narratives individuals are rarely situated in anything that resembles a modern nuclear family, but rather within a broader

138


kin-group, dominated by men. I am not suggesting that some of the premises of psychoanalysis are not pertinent to the study of medieval literature; on the contrary I have used them in my analyses of both chansons de geste and romance (see above pp. 28 and 89-90). But the family (and the gendered subject as constituted within the family) is an historically unstable, discursively produced phenomenon. No ahistorical 'sociopsychic given' can rest upon an ahistoric view of the family. Despite my critique of the premises of Cholakian's methodology, his central point about the androcentric nature of the canso is compelling. 'Love', in his account is negotiated as much between men as between a man and a woman, whilst the inadequacies of the masculine are displaced onto women. However, rather than placing the homosocial desire of the canso within an Oedipal frame, I would prefer to set it in a feudal context. This is not to say that the Oedipal father figure and the overlord, or the mother and the domna are not analogous. But whereas Cholakian subsumes the feudal to family structures to produce a ' universal' psychology, I would prefer to foreground feudal structures, since they are the discursive framework in and by which the subject in the canso is constituted, not the 'family romance'. The domna is less a mother figure through whom the poet negotiates his position with a father figure within an Oedipal narrative, than a feminine figure whose value is determined by her association with a man within a feudal hierarchy. Romances which draw on lyric paradigms indicate the homosocial nature of the canso was recognized in the thirteenth century. In Guillaume de Dole, for instance, Lienor is introduced by Conrad's jongleur Jouglet as Guillaume's sister. Ostensibly Conrad summons his vassal Guillaume to his court as a means of getting to know her (817-36), but the romance is dominated by Conrad and Guillaume's friendship. Over 2000 lines are devoted to the narration of their becoming acquainted during glamorous court festivals and tournaments. Conrad sings love songs (as do Guillaume and Jouglet), but Lienor, the ostensible object of Conrad's love, has yet to appear. When Conrad finally speaks openly of Lienor, it is made clear once again that the


139

catalyst to his passionate love is her name (2994—3005) and he declares his intention to marry her (3010-19). For Conrad this marriage is an a/ere, a 'deal' (3015), negotiated with Guillaume. One possible reading would be that Conrad needs to secure Guillaume's goodwill if he is to procure Lienor for himself. Another, made more likely by subsequent developments in the plot, is that Lienor is a sign of Guillaume's worth and that the relationship between Conrad and Guillaume is more important than that between Conrad and Lienor. Immediately after Guillaume has agreed to let Conrad marry Lienor (still absent from the narrative), Conrad's seneschal conceives a violent hatred of Guillaume because he has been displaced in his master's affections; he is jealous then not of Conrad's love of a woman, but of his bond with another man. He overhears Conrad singing a chanson while he is with Guillaume (a fine image of the canso as homosocial discourse) and significantly the song is about lauzengiers (3180-95), which is what the seneschal is on the point of becoming, a point to which the narrator draws our attention (3196—9). The seneschal goes to Lienor's house and obtains (from her mother) the compromising information that she has a rose coloured birthmark on her thigh. He returns to court and his knowledge convinces both Conrad and Guillaume that he has slept with Lienor. They believe what the man says about Lienor without asking her whether what he says is true and her alleged misconduct is presented primarily as shaming for Guillaume (37J5> 3 8io > 3837> 3855> 3959 a n d so on), so much so that he leaves Conrad's court. Fortunately Lienor makes a happy ending possible with a cunning ruse, motivated largely by a desire to avenge Guillaume's honour. After planting some jewels on the seneschal (who like Conrad has never seen her), she arrives at court, artfully dishevelled, and accuses him of rape and robbery. As he has the jewels on him, things look bleak for the seneschal, but he proves his innocence in a judicial ordeal. Lienor now reveals her identity: since the seneschal has just proved that he has never seen her before, she is innocent of his earlier charges. This enables the union of Lienor and Conrad, but also the reunion of Conrad and Guillaume who is ' mout

140


amez et mout segnoriz5 by his friend (5637), a formulation which articulates a feudal bond between them. Such a schematic account cannot do justice to this witty text. As Michel Zink has shown, there is complex and sophisticated play on the meaning of the rose on Li'enor's thigh, which seems to oscillate between a metaphorical and a metonymical function throughout the text. Sarah Kay and Roberta Krueger have shown how deftly the text portrays a female character coming to the rescue of the malfunctioning male order, re-inscribing herself within it as a sign of masculine prestige after she has been ejected from it as valueless.20 The interpolated lyrics and the series of scenarios which are associated with the canso make Guillaume de Dole a transposition of lyric models into narrative, but as I have suggested this is by no means unquestioning and the narrative sections gloss and demystify the lyric interpolations. In Sarah Kay's words ' the lyric subject can get what he desires, because it is what women want. The lyric object is returned to the lyric subject, after a tour deforce of demystification' (Subjectivity, pp. 197-8). In her reading of the text Kay concentrates on the demystification of lyric models of subjectivity and femininity, but the manner in which Conrad falls in love with Lienor from a description, and the text's concentration on the relationship of Conrad and Guillaume, indicate that it demystifies lyric paradigms of desire in language and homosocial desire thoroughly as well.21 In even the most courtly and moving love poetry it is not always clear whether the poet is talking about his relations with his lady or other men. Consider, for example, another lyric by Bernart de Ventadorn: Non es meravelha s'eu chan melhs de nul autre chantador, que plus me tra • 1 cors vas amor e melhs sui faihz a so coman. Cor e cors e saber e sen e fors' e poder i ai mes. Si * m tira vas amor lo fres que vas autra part no • m aten.

5

Bernart de Ventadorn, 1


141

It is not surprising that I sing better than any other singer, for my heart draws me more towards love and I am better fashioned to do its bidding. Heart and body, knowledge and wisdom, strength and ability have I put into it. The rein so draws me towards love that I pay attention to nothing else. The lady is absent. Bernart's feelings are portrayed as a matter concerning himself and love; the only third person mentioned at this stage is the nul autre chantador (2) in other words, another man. The equation love = singing is ubiquitous in the troubadour lyric, but Bernart's singing is not explicitly directed at his lady. It is compared instead to the singing of other men, as a means of proving his own superiority. 22 Centring on what Toril Moi calls the lover's ' own discursive performance' ('Desire', pp. 24—5), Bernart's opening stanza compares his singing to that of his rivals, but his self display is not narcissistic. He is concerned with his own feelings (which so far do not include a woman), but he wants the articulation of his desire to be compared to similar articulations by other men. In Bernart's 'Non es meravelha' the lady is not mentioned until the third stanza, and even then she is referred to in the third person. She is, however, at once marginalized as in the fourth line of the stanza Bernart returns to his relationship with the abstract Amors. She reappears in the fifth stanza, not as a lover, but as a supreme judge of Bernart and his rivals: Ai Dieus! car se fosson trian d'entrels faus li fin amador, e • lh lauzengier e • lh trichador portesson corns el fron denan! Tot l'aur del mon e tot l'argen i volg' aver dat, s'eu l'agues, sol que ma domna conogues aissi com eu l'am finamen.

35

40

Ah, God! If only it were possible to distinguish the false and true lovers and if only the slanderers and the cheaters had horns on their foreheads! If I had it I would like to have given all the gold and silver in the world, if only my lady knew how I loved her truly. Bernart is asking his lady to recognize that he is better than the men with whom he is competing, the lauzengier and the trichador.

142


When he finally does address his lady directly, in the last stanza, their relationship is conveyed in feudal terms which are so masculine that as in Arnaut de Maruelh's 'Us jois d'amor', the lady ceases to be a domna and becomes a senhor: Bona domna, re no • us deman 50 mas que • m prendatz per servidor, qu'e • us servirai com bo senhor, cossi que del gazardo m'an. Good lady, I ask nothing from you except that you accept me as your servant, for I will serve you as I would a good lord, whatever my reward. Bernart, generally considered one of the greatest love poets of all time, seems then in this song to be initially interested more in himself and his relationship with other men than in his domna. When he does turn to his lady, he can conceive of their relationship only as a simulacrum of a male one. Bernart's transformation of his lady into a lord here may be usefully considered in the light of Kohler's view of the canso as a sublimation of the frustration of subordinates within the feudal nobility. Bernart's desire is directed less at his domna, than at a position she represents, that of a senhor, to whose position the poet aspires. The vassal's subordinate position within a masculine hierarchy is valorized (by his loyalty and 'sincerity') and the lady is elevated because she is thought of in masculine terms. Bernart's desire is homosocial in that he is using his putative relationship with a woman to negotiate his position in relation to a masculine hierarchy. 23 His poetry may appear to be addressed to his domna, but just as Conrad in Guillaume de Dole sings love songs when he is with his male companions and does not address any songs personally to Lienor, so Bernart's singing is primarily intended for the ears of other men. Although in tensos and partimens (dialogue poems) male and female voices dialogue about courtly matters, in the canso dialogue with the lady is rarely envisaged and the text is (inevitably) a monologue.24 This points to an important generic difference between lyric and romance. As I suggested at the end of the last chapter, by adopting the temporal plane of narrative, romance has to deal with the consequences of amorous


143

utterances and so has to posit dialogue between lover and lady; lyric does not. The absence of dialogue between poet and lady underscores the phallocentric nature of the masculine discourse of the lyric. Moreover, some cansos specifically rule out dialogue between poet and lady. This is the case in Arnaut de Maruelh's ' La grans beutatz': Qu'ieu vos am tan, domna, celadamens que res no*l sap mas quant ieu et Amors 10 ni vos eyssa, tan grans sobretemors m'o tol ades que no-us aus far parvens; tal paor ai qu'ira e malsabensa m'aiatz, domna, quar vos port benvolensa 15 e pus no • us aus ren dire a rescos, dirai vos o sevals e ma chansos. Arnaut de Maruelh, 1 For I love you, lady, so secretly, that nobody knows about it except myself and love, not even you, so great is the fear which stops me from being open with you; I am so afraid, lady, that you might be angry and annoyed with me because I wish you well, and since I dare not say anything privately, at least I will tell you about it in my songs. Arnaut's use of the love = poetry / desire = language metaphor here is absolute: only in his song can his love have any kind of expression at all, but as he himself says, his love is so secret that only he and love know about it. He explicitly excludes his lady from being an intimate party to this knowledge. As Frederick Goldin says of Arnaut and his lady: 'His real object in speaking of his love, even in addressing her directly, is... to make visible to the audience the presence of his desire' {Mirror, p. 83). The next stanza of 'La grans beutatz' is composed of hyperbolic praise of the lady and (ostensibly) a request for some token of kindness. Yet if we take the song at face value, how can the domna show kindness if she has been denied knowledge of her suitor's love and does not know who he is? How is the lady to know the poem is about her and not about some other woman in the audience? Significantly Arnaut concludes praising not just his lady, but also his own song: Mon Bel Esgart, saber e conoissensa 41 e totz bos ayps vos fan aver valensa, per qu'ieu retrac vostre pretz cabalos al mielhs qu'ieu sai en mas humils chansos.

144


My Bel Esgart, knowledge and discernment and all your good qualities make you worthy, wherefore 1 speak of your perfect reputation as best I can in my humble song. On one level, the quality of Arnaut's poetry is presented as a reflection of the lady's worth; on another the exclusion of the lady earlier in the song indicates she is but a pretext here for Arnaut's singing, and possibly even that there is no specific referent. Love is so completely internalized, that Arnaut's feelings concern only himself, an abstraction he calls Amors, and his song, which he presents to a broader public than his lady. If she has a role at the end of the poem, it is as a judge of Arnaut's qualities, for her worth stems above all from her discernment (line 41). The final insistence on the relationship between the quality of the lady and Arnaut's song, reinforced by the rhyming of the lady's pretz cabalos with his humils chansos, almost reverses the metaphorical relationship it appears to propose: perhaps the lady is only worthy because she has good songs composed about her, or perhaps the function of the canso is to create a better image of a perfect domna than the poet's rivals. The domna is produced in the text so that she can function as a reflection of the poet's worth for other men outside it. Real women are excluded. The canso is a vehicle for masculine competition within a feudal hierarchy, yet Kohler's view of the troubadour tradition as inscribing class conflict offers only a partial account of the dynamics at work in the genre. A number of critiques of Kohler's thesis have drawn attention to the gender-blindness of his approach. 25 Most notably Sarah Kay has suggested that his account ignores the distinction between rank and status: c rank is (for the most part) mechanically conferred by heredity or marriage whereas status is a cultural construct which admits of negotiation' [Subjectivity, p. 112). An individual of high rank may have high status, but so may an individual of low rank. It is status, not rank which is at issue in the canso. If the canso mediates tensions between different strata of the feudal nobility, their rank remains unchanged, but the troubadours can use love and poetry to negotiate their status in relation to each other. For Kohler courtly poetry offers all members of the feudal aristocracy (of higher and lower rank) a shared ideology which


145

dissipates tension between them. As Kay argues 'Kohler's theorization is political, but remains entirely in the domain of the masculine, looking exclusively to class dynamics for its diagnosis and explanation' (Subjectivity, p. 130). Kohler therefore replicates the troubadours' own assumptions that the social and the masculine are coterminous and that women play no part in the social. But the exclusion of women - and of the feminine - contributes heavily to the construction of gender and subjectivity in the troubadour canso and requires close scrutiny. The exclusion of women is nowhere more evident than in the use of the feudal metaphor. Consider the opening to this canso by the Monk of Montaudon: 26 Aissi cum eel q'a estat ses seignor en son alo, francament et en patz, c'anc ren non det ni*n mes mas per amor ni fo destregs mas per sas voluntatz, et eras es par mal seignor forssatz 5 atressi • m fui mieus mezeis longamen: qu'anc re no fi per autrui mandamen ar ai senhor ab cui no • m val merces: Amor — que a mon cor en tal luoc mes on non aus dir ni mostrar mon talen 10 ni per nuill plag, partir no m'en puesc ges. Monk, 1 Like the man who has been alone in his allod without a lord, free and in peace, who has neither given nor pledged anything other than through affection, who has never been forced to act against his will, and who then is constrained by an evil overlord, so have I been for a long time: for never did I do anything at anyone else's behest - but now I have a lord with whom mercy is worth nothing for me: Love for it has placed my heart in such a place where I do not dare to either show or speak of my desire, and I am not able to leave this place in exchange for any pledge. Once again a love song opens with the lady absent, even excluded, and the Monk's metaphors locate his feelings entirely in relation to a feudal hierarchy. Furthermore, the feudal metaphor does not subjugate him to his lady (who is not mentioned until the end of stanza 11), but to Amor (9), which has been used in line 3 at the rhyme to designate affection between

146


men. The Monk initially evokes a condition without feudal ties, in which he is free, holding land without feudal obligation (alo). Love draws the poet into the world of feudal bonds. The world without feudal bonds is presented in positive terms - the poet lived ' francament et en patz' — but entry into the feudal hierarchy is none the less presented as desirable. The poet is torn between the 'peace' of living outside the world of feudal bonds (and the canso), and the desire to prove himself and be recognized within it. Composing and performing cansos takes place within the hierarchical social world of the court, a space riven with rivalries between men and governed by rituals designed to differentiate men within a carefully gradated hierarchy. 27 If the canso enhances a man's status within this environment, the feudal metaphor may be read on more than one level.28 On the one hand it appears to mediate the poet's feelings towards his lady; on the other it gives the subject a place within a system which is predominantly (if not exclusively) masculine. Thus in the Monk's 'Aissi cum eel' the feudal metaphor is used in a love poem, but not in relation to a woman. In many poems the feudal metaphor is of course used for relations between a man and a woman, but the overtones may well be humorous. There is evidence that Occitan nobles disliked paying feudal homage, preferring pacts of nonagression, while homage to women in the real world was exceptional, if not unknown. 29 Was it considered unmanly to pay homage to a woman? Fulsome declarations of feudal subservience to domnas may not have been taken entirely seriously. For example, the feudal metaphor is often deployed to reinforce erotic overtones: 30 Domna, • 1 genzer c'anc nasques e la melher qu'eu anc vis, mas jonchas estau aclis, a genolhos et en pes, 40 el vostre franc senhoratge; encar me detz per prezen franchamen un cortes gatge - mas no • us aus dire cal fo c'adoutz me vostra preizo. 45 Bernart de Ventadorn, 37


147

Lady, noblest ever to be born, and the best I have ever seen, I bow down humbly in your service, kneeling or standing up, with my hands together; may you generously bestow upon me a courtly token - but I dare not say what - that would sweeten your prison for me. The homage ceremony evoked here culminated with the lord kissing his vassal, surely the point of Bernart's coyness in line 44. As Linda Paterson comments ' metaphorical homage... is a strategy for claiming as a right the object of desire' (World, p. 36). Within the fiction of the canso, the poet is forcing an erotic response from his lady, who must kiss him if she is a ' good lord'. Feudal metaphors like this cannot be emptied of their social value, which brings me back to my main objection to Cholakian's psychocritical reading of the lyric. In positing the universal human subject, he also posits a private world for the psyche which is abstracted from the social. The male bonding and homosocial desire of the lyric are not simply part of the private world of a 'family romance', but elaborated in relation to a broader web of hierarchical masculine structures. The troubadour lyric was originally performed at court in public and it uses a discourse which partakes of the political, the public and the social. The construction of the masculine subject within the canso belongs as much in this world, as in the domain of the psychological. The fiction of a man addressing a woman in the troubadour lyric is frequently belied by signs that the real destinataires of the songs were other men: for example Bernart de Ventadorn's 'Can vei' is addressed to his friend 'Tristan'. Masculinity is constructed in relation to metaphors of power, and to a large extent the masculine subject seeks to position himself within a hierarchy in relation to other men. But no man acquires power simply by affirming his status in textual form, and it is important to remember that feudal metaphors are metaphors. The next section will seek to determine exactly what kind of masculine status is being negotiated in the canso.

148

Gender and genre in medieval French literature DESIRE FOR LANGUAGE

At the end of the last chapter I suggested that romance and lyric dealt differently with the attribution of power to women in literary texts. One of the chief mechanisms for expressing male subordination to women within courtly discourse is the feudal metaphor I have just briefly examined. Its frequency in the canso, together with the 'lyric' qualities of the passages in which it occurs in romance, indicate it is marked, like the amor de lonh, as a generic paradigm of the canso. If the reading I have proposed of the feudal metaphor as inscribing the lyric in the realm of masculine hierarchy is accepted, on one level it would seem that a romance like Le Bel Inconnu takes the metaphor too literally since the narrator portrays himself as completely in thrall to his lady. On another level, however, the end of the Le Bel Inconnu turns the tables on its ostensible addressee (the narrator's lady) by showing the narrator to be in control of the text and by blaming her for its unsatisfactory ending. Le Bel Inconnu ends with a fiction of moral blackmail which is comparable to the use to which the feudal metaphor is often put in the lyric. If the lady in the romance is kind, the story can have a happy ending; if the lady in the canso is a ' good lord' she will reward her vassal. The attribution of an empowered position to a woman serves to make her subject to a masculine value system, which dictates how she should behave. The homosocial economy ofcansos and their inscription in the masculine hierarchy of feudalism indicate they do not empower women as much as their speakers, just as it is not the narrator's lady who is empowered at the end of Le Bel Inconnu, but the narrator himself. But if the canso empowers its singer, this does not mean he acquires material power (remuneration, higher rank) through it, but rather that his prestige and sense of control (over other men and over women) are enhanced. The canso is above all a competitive linguistic performance. The troubadour demonstrates his control over language and thereby his superiority over other poets. Formalist critics of troubadour poetry have highlighted this, but as Kay points out (in my view correctly), they underplay the importance of subjectivity by


149

considering meaning to be overdetermined entirely by the tradition in which the poet places his song. {Subjectivity, pp. 4-6). For Zumthor, the first-person pronoun of the medieval lyric has no referent other than the song itself. In his view the medieval courtly chanson has no specific first-person subject, since its subject position may be occupied by anyone who performs the song. The poem derives its meaning then not from any relation to its author, but from its relation to other texts, that is to say convention (Essai, pp. 189—243). This may be true when lyrics circulate and become detached from their authors, but troubadours strove continually to distinguish themselves and their texts from each other. We no longer know how troubadours made their performances distinct, though we have strong evidence they did so. We can, on the other hand, still see how they sought to differentiate their texts through distinctive style, tone, themes, motifs, intertextual dialogue, signature and so on.31 The masculine subject in the troubadour lyric is first and foremost a linguistic performer whose subjectivity is produced through his use of rhetoric and who seeks to individuate his own linguistic production. That the troubadours were successful in their attempts to individuate their production is attested by the author-centred organization of the chansonniers, regardless of whether their attributions are correct. Kay suggests that the troubadours' 'courtliness' in their cansos veils competition between individuals (Subjectivity, p. 131). One could perhaps go even further: the troubadours use their poems as signs of their status and masculinity so that the songs are brandished at other men much as chanson de geste heroes brandish swords. Linguistic performance, skill in rhetoric and dexterity within the formal constraints of the canso are signs of masculine prowess. Troubadours seek to demonstrate control in language, just as the narrator in Le Bel Inconnu wants to make it clear he keeps control over the narrative. The poem is a symbol of virility which enables the poet to assert his masculinity. That linguistic performance was deemed a desirable masculine quality in courtly culture is evident in a number of romances and it would also appear that linguistic prowess as a

150


sign of masculinity is associated particularly with the lyric. In Flamenca (c.1270), for instance, Guilhem's knowledge of poetry is stressed from the start when he is described in hyperbolic terms which make him desirable (1706—1 o). The central sections of Flamenca are dominated by one of the most elaborate chat-up strategies in courtly literature. Flamenca is kept under guard by her jealous husband Archimbaut. Guilhem (who has never seen her) decides that his only opportunity to talk to her will be when she takes communion in church, so he bribes the priest of the church she attends to allow him to become his clerk. But the time she spends at the altar only allows him to utter two syllables during each service. His first words are Hai las, to which Flamenca, the following week, replies Que plans? ('What is wrong?'). Week by week, helped along by religious festivals, they build up a dialogue and eventually use this tortuous (but delightfully funny) method to agree a plan to meet. It is well known that the dialogue they produce resembles a dialogue poem by the twelfth-century troubadour Peire Rogier.32 The episode is thus underscored by a lyric intertext and each new contribution is carefully considered and weighed, as if the two protagonists were aware that they are not simply talking to each other, but producing a text (for example 4562-77). It is therefore not surprising that one of the qualities Flamenca admires in Guilhem is his dexterity with language. Thus, he is 'miels legens e meilz cantans' (4210: 'the best at reading and singing') which is ambiguous, since he is at this point playing the part of a priest, who reads and sings the mass. However, given the courtly context of their falling in love and given that Guilhem and Flamenca are in the process of rewriting a wellknown canso, this ambiguity further points to the fact that Guilhem's desirability stems from his linguistic dexterity, and particularly from his ability to perform within the realm of the courtly lyric. Linguistic performance in the canso is what makes a masculine subject desirable and it is frequently made clear by the troubadours that they regard their poetic activities as competitive whether they are vaunting its superior embellishment, simplicity or sincerity. In one of the cleverest attempts to


151

undermine the competition Arnaut de Maruelh adopts a modest stance to deflate the performance of his rivals: D'aisso sai grat als autres trobadors, 15 qu'en sas chansos pliu chascus et afia que sa domna es la genser que sia, si tot s'es fals, lor digz lau e mercei, qu'entre lurs gaps passa segurs mos vers, qu'uns non conois ni no so ten a mal 20 c'atressi ere chascus, sia plazers. Arnaut de Maruelh, 12 For this I thank the other troubadours: in his songs each one swears and affirms that his lady is the most gracious there is; even if it is false I praise and thank their words, for my truth finds a safe passage between their boasting, for not one of them realizes this or thinks anything of it, for in this fashion each one thinks it a pleasing trifle.

This stanza is a sardonic comment on unbridled use of hyperbole. Arnaut claims his poetry is superior precisely because it lacks the embellishments other troubadours lavish on their work. He makes the performance of other men's masculinity enhance his own and he situates his poetry not in relation to a lady, but in relation to the language of other troubadours, that is to say other men. Singing is part of a masculine competition and it is perhaps this competitive nature of the canso which explains much of the formal experimentation and preciosity in the tradition. 33 But it is not redundant and futile (dis)play. It is a crucial element in the poet's negotiation of his status and masculinity. He must be different and superior to distinguish himself from others, to foreground himself not as a man, but as the man who stands out as exercising greatest control over language. It would be easy to demonstrate the competitive nature of poetic virtuosity in troubadour poetry in relation to masters of formal experimentation like Arnaut Daniel or Giraut de Borneil. I prefer, however, to examine a poem by Bernart de Ventadorn because of the apparent ' artlessness' of his poetry, because of his reputation as a ' sincere' love poet, and because his poetry is thought to exemplify the trobar leu, the 'easy' style of poetry.34 I want to show that the importance of control in language to the poet's status is not simply a feature of the more

152


obviously showy poets. The question I want to ask of this poem is: what is the relation in it between poetic artifice and the poet's construction of his gender? I

II

in

iv

Tant ai mo cor pie de joy a, tot me desnatura. Flor blancha, vermelh' e groya me par la frejura, c'ab lo ven et ab la ploya me creis l'aventura, per que mos charts mont' e poya e mos pretz melhura. Tan ai al cor d'amor, de joi e de doussor, per que • 1 gels me sembla flor e la neus verdura. Anar pose ses vestidura, nutz en ma chamiza car fin' amors m'asegura de la freja biza. Mas es fols qui • s desmezura, e no • s te de guiza Per qu'eu ai pres de me cura deis c'agui enquiza la plus bela d'amor don aten tan d'onor, car en loc de sa ricor no volh aver Piza. De s'amistat me reciza! Mas be n'ai fiansa, que sivals eu n'ai conquiza la bela semblansa. Et ai ne a ma deviza tan de benanansa, que ja*l jorn que l'aurai viza, non aurai pezansa. Mo cor ai pres d'Amor que l'esperitz lai cor, mas lo cors es sai alhor, lonh de leis, en Fransa. Eu n'ai la bon' esperansa. Mas petit m'aonda,

5

10

15

20

25

30

35


v

vi

VII

153

c'atressrm ten en balansa com la naus en Fonda. 40 Del mal pes que • m desenansa, no sai on m'esconda. Tota noih me vir' e • m lansa desobre Pesponda. Plus trac pena d'amor 45 de Tristan l'amador, que • n sofri manhta dolor per Izeut la blonda. Ai! Deus! car no sui ironda, que voles per Paire 50 e vengues de noih prionda lai dins so repaire? Bona domna jauzionda, mor se • 1 vostr' amaire! Paor ai que • 1 cors me fonda, 55 s'aissi-m dura gaire. Domna, per vostre' amor jonh las mas et ador! Gens cors ab frescha color, gran mal me faitz traire! 60 Qu'el mon non a nul afaire don eu tan cossire, can de leis au re retraire, que mo cor no i vire e mo semblan no*m n'esclaire. 65 Que que-m n'aujatz dire, si c'ades vos er veyaire c'ai talan de rire. Tan l'am de bon' amor que manhtas vetz en plor 70 per o que melhor sabor m'en an li sospire. Messatgers, vai e cor, e di • m a la gensor la pena e la dolor 75 que • n trac, e • 1 martire. Bernart de Ventadorn, 4

My heart is so full of joy that everything is made unnatural for me. Cold weather seems like a white, red and yellow flower to me for with the wind and rain my good fortune increases, wherefore

154

Gender and genre in medieval French literature my song rises and soars and my worth improves. I have so much love in my heart, so much joy and sweetness, that frost seems like a flower to me and the snow like greenery.

II

I can go around naked under my shirt for JirCamor protects me from the cold wind. But the one who lacks restraint and behaves in an unseemly manner, is foolish. Wherefore I have watched myself since I started courting the most beautiful woman, from whom I expect great honour, for in place of her riches I would not wish to have Pisa.

in

Let her send me away from her love! But I am indeed sure of it, for I have nevertheless conquered a fair glance. And I have from my separation so much happiness, that the day when I see her again, I will not be unhappy. I have my heart close to love, so that my spirit runs there, even though my body is elsewhere, far from her, here in France.

iv

I am very hopeful, but this helps me little, for it rocks me back and forth like a ship on the wave. I do not know where to hide from the dark thoughts that drive me mad. Every night I toss and turn on my bed. I have more pain in love than Tristan the lover, who suffered greatly for Iseult la Blonde.

v

Oh God, why am I not a swallow so that I might fly through the air and land in the deep night in her house? Oh joyful, good lady, your lover is dying! I am afraid my heart will break if this goes on much longer. Lady, for your love I join my hands and worship. Oh sweet, fair person, you make me suffer greatly.

vi

For in the world there is no matter that preoccupies me so much that when I hear her spoken of, my heart does not go there and my face light up. Whatever you hear me saying, it will look to you at once as if I want to laugh. I love her so much with good love that I weep often because sighs seem to have such savour to me.

VII

Messenger, run and tell the sweetest one from me about the pain and anguish and martyrdom which I suffer because of her.

The formal structure of this poem is complex, however ' artless' and 'sincere' it may appear. The song is structured around a series of antitheses. In the first stanza Bernart makes an opposition between the coldness of winter and the springlike


155

warmth love engenders in his heart. In stanza 11 this opposition is continued and madness is contrasted to restraint. Stanza in evokes the perennial troubadour spatial opposition between sai (where the lover-poet is) and lai (where the lady is). The fourth stanza contains a simile which produces a metaphor of antithesis: the poet is rocked back and forth (ten en balansa, 39) like a ship on the waves. Throughout the rest of the poem love is either contrasted to, or associated with, pain or sorrow. The poem thus revolves around a central image or metaphor (the ship on the waves) which is emblematic of the content of the poem. This central image/metaphor offers the key to understanding the poem in that the back and forth movement of the ship figures the antitheses used throughout. It also marks a shift in the poem from an accumulation of different antitheses to the predominance of one opposition, so that the structure of the poem may be schematized as follows: different antitheses —• metaphor of antithesis —• one central antithesis.35 The central image/metaphor is locked firmly into place since the coblas capcaudadas form prohibits any other stanza order and binds the poem tightly together.36 In coblas capcaudadas the last rhyme-sound of one stanza becomes the first of the next. Thus in the poem's rhyme-scheme (ababababcccb) b becomes a in sequential stanzas and each new b introduces a new rhymesound ; c is a constant rhyme-sound with ci as a constant rhymeword, a type of refrain, amor. This elaborate and sophisticated rhyme-scheme weaves antithesis into the form of the poem in two ways. First, although there is no simple semantic opposition between a and b rhymes, the insistent and repetitive oscillation between a and b rhyme-sounds, both of which are stressed by virtue of being feminine rhymes, is suggestive of a binary pattern so that the sounds become embroiled as a differentiated pair, as if they were in opposition to each other. Secondly, the oscillation between a and b rhymes draws attention all the more sharply to the constant c rhyme, and perhaps above all to the refrain word amor, which plays an important role in the antitheses which structure the poems. The clusters of c rhymesounds give: amor, doussor,flor / amor, onor, ricor / Amor, cor, alhor I amor, amador, dolor / amor, ador, color / amor, plor, sabor and in

156


the tornada, where the refrain word is dropped, cor, gensor, dolor. Roman Jakobson suggests that contiguous rhymes, or words associated through rhyme-sound, may signify by virtue of their association in a manner which exceeds semantics, grammar or syntax.37 Linked by the form of a poem, rhyme-words with the same rhyme-sound may qualify each other, modify or complement each other's meaning. Here we see a sequence of associations with the word amor, but if the use of amor as a constant rhyme suggests amor is a constant concept in the poem, its association with words of different value as the poem progresses implies a shift in its meaning. In the first two stanzas amor rhymes only with words which have positive connotations (doussor,flor, onor, ricor); stanza m suggests a shift by associating Amor with alhor (implying love is absent) and this is further reinforced in stanza iv where amor and amador rhyme with dolor. The c rhymes in stanza v initially appear to revert to the positive connotations of earlier stanzas, but the negative content of line 60 ('gran mal me faitz traire') underscores the previous three lines and color in troubadour poetry is often suggestive of ambiguous meaning. Stanza vi and the tornada again offer an antithesis (though also, of course, a connection) between amor and negative words: plor (70) and dolor (75). The evolution of the signification produced by the constant c rhymes and the refrain word suggest that an unproblematic, positive view of love is gradually displaced by a highly anguished account and that the meaning of amor, initially simple and unitary, becomes increasingly complex and fragmented. Bernart's formal virtuosity in this song is a peacock-like display of poetic skill that succeeds in destabilizing the meaning of amor, which is not just the bedrock of this canso, but of the whole tradition. Equivocal presentations offin'amor as alternately divine or diabolical are, of course, conventional, but Bernart seems here to be more interested in demonstrating his power to undermine stable meaning than in simply reiterating the bitter/sweet love topos. This is certainly the implication of the first stanza if we choose to read it metalinguistically as about the poem, a strategy which is justified given that Bernart vaunts the quality of his song (7-8).


157

What does the opening stanza tell us about the poem? Firstly, that Bernart thinks his poem is good (' mos chans mont' e poya', 7); secondly that the quality of his poetry is associated with the enhancement of his own value ('e mos pretz melhura', 8); thirdly it is implicit in the last lines of the stanza that both the quality of his poetry and his increased worth are associated with his love which has given him the ability to destabilize binary oppositions, to make things seem what they are not. The rhyme word of line 2, desnatura, indicates Bernart is aware of the artificiality of poetic language.38 On one level, this figures the turmoil to which love has reduced him; on another it signals that within his poem ' unnatural' or artificial things will occur. But it is not the world which is made unnatural, nor Bernart himself: we do not really believe in a miraculous inversion of the seasons nor that he can run around half-naked because love keeps him warm. It is language which Bernart makes 'unnatural': in his poem the cold becomes a flower, the snow greenery and he collapses conventional opposites. The opening stanza uses the tried and trusted sincerity topos ('I sing well because I love well'), but read metalinguistically it is a powerful assertion of Bernart's control over language, which is then confirmed by his masterful command of rhetoric and form throughout the poem. As with so many of Bernart's songs 'Tant ai mo cor' invites the audience to make a comparison between Bernart and other men, present here in the form of'Tristan Pamador' (46). The metaphoric thread linking love to poetry is once again twitched here. If the quality of Bernart's pain in love reflects the quality of his poetry and vice versa, and if his love is like Tristan's, then his poem must be extraordinarily good. Bernart's worth, the pretz he vaunts in line 8, is not represented by his lady, but by the poem. The quality of the poem is the outward sign of his status and the means he uses to demonstrate his superiority to other men. The troubadours use their songs to negotiate their masculinity in as much as they construct and perform a gender system in it, articulate homosocial desire through it, and determine their status in relation to other men by it. Cansos were performed within the intensely political environment of the

158


court, where men of lower rank jostled for positions, whilst men of higher rank sought admiration and loyalty. It is no wonder they are a currency in the process whereby men form hierarchies.39 But women too lived at court and the canso is unusual in the corpus of texts studied in this book in that the genre offers the opportunity for comparing male-authored texts with texts written by women. The last section of this chapter will assess the response of the trobairitz to the paradigms of the male-authored canso. Do they react critically to the masculine discourse of the canso ? Or do the songs of the trobairitz indicate that women internalized male views of their gender? WOMEN'S VOICES

Reading the trobairitz poses the modern reader a series of problems which have been attenuated, but not obviated by the appearance recently of a new critical edition. The most salient of these are perhaps: the definition of the corpus; its relationship to the dominant discourse (which necessarily raises the question of authorship); finally reception. According to one survey, we know of 16 named trobairitz and 324 named troubadours. 40 Named trobairitz consequently make up just five per cent of named poets. This meagre proportion is not surprising: substantially fewer women could read and write than men; the canso is a genre in which usually a man addresses a woman; and it may have been indecorous for women to compose and perform songs. However, the existence of some trobairitz texts makes it probable more were composed, but have not survived. Obviously some texts will have been lost accidentally as manuscripts disintegrated, were destroyed or neglected, but female-authored texts have more to contend with than the vagaries of history. Feminist scholarship on the formation of literary canons charts the strategies men use to suppress women's writing.41 The first, and most obvious strategy, is to argue that texts were not written by women, but by men: this is a strategy which has been applied to the trobairitz^ both in medieval times and still today with some vigour.42 Furthermore, the small number of chansonniers which


159

transmit trobairitz songs may suggest they were deliberately excluded from some collections: without the one manuscript which seems to have been particularly interested in them (//), the corpus would comprise just a handful of poems. When authorship is not disputed other strategies may be used for marginalizing women in the canon: for example what they wrote is explicitly down-graded. Thus Alfred Jeanroy considered the poetry of the trobairitz to be 'des exercices litteraires' and commented: ' il me parait... naturel de preter a ces femmes ...une certaine paresse d'esprit, une evidente faute de gout' (Poesie lyrique, 1, p. 317). No doubt some trobairitz poetry is disappointing, but Jeanroy's criticism seems to derive entirely from his unease that these women dared to speak of love at all. The implication of Jeanroy's view of the trobairitz is that the only fitting position for women within literary discourse is silence and thus he is in many respects, rather like a troubadour. Jeanroy asserts that the trobairitz's songs manifest a 'choquant oubli de toute pudeur et de toute convenance' (Poesie lyrique, 1, p. 317). This raises (no doubt unwittingly) the question of the relationship of poetry by women to the dominant (maleauthored) canon and of the relationship between women and language more generally. Determining the extent to which a female writer is (or is not) constrained by literary convention into suppressing or denying her feminine subjectivity, assessing the extent to which her subjectivity may (or may not) be annexed by the dominant masculine discourse, are not easy.43 During the period when most of the trobairitz we know were active, the canso is formally elaborate and the conventions governing content were firmly fixed. If a poet departed too markedly from the norm in terms of form or content, the lyric would no longer be a canso. Because the trobairitz adopted the form and lexis of the courtly canso, some critics have argued they merely supply a feminine voice to the troubadours' domna, and thus that they play a role written for them by men. Jean-Charles Huchet, for instance, suggests that the trobairitz are a fiction litteraire, while Pierre Bee parallels this by insisting that we are dealing less with authentic women poets than with what he calls textualite feminine}* Huchet and Bee's articles on the trobairitz

160


highlight a serious theoretical problem for the reader of the corpus, but in some ways (unintentionally one must assume) they offer a more sophisticated basis for denying that the songs attributed to the trobairitz were written by women. The implication of their approach is that it is irrelevant whether the songs were written by women or not because the first-person position the female voices occupy is constructed by the dominant discourse. Thus, for a genuine 'woman's view' you would need to look outside the tradition, outside the chansonniers in which troubadour poetry is preserved, possibly outside literary texts altogether, since female subjectivity within the tradition is always subject to the dominant masculine literary discourse. A genuine feminine voice, following this line of argument, would by definition be inaudible in the canso. The two critics have different theoretical frameworks: for Huchet feminite is once again the Lacanian Other; Bee is aware of a more politically orientated theory of sexual difference. Yet in Bee's article on the trobairitz they are doubly criticized: their poetry is conventional which for Bee makes it like that of the troubadours, part of a single systeme socio-poetique ('«Trobairitz »', p. 239); at the same time he comments that they do not attack the patriarchal structures of the canso as if it were incumbent upon them to do so. Recently Huchet and Bee's views have been challenged by scholars working from a feminist perspective. Matilda Bruckner and Kathryn Gravdal, for instance, have argued that the trobairitz challenge the gender system of the troubadours as they inscribe themselves in it, enacting a subversion from within, but both none the less agree that it is in relation to the dominant tradition of the male-authored canso that the trobairitz canso functions.45 The third major problem confronting the modern reader of the trobairitz is the question of the reception of their poetry. Whether or not the songs of the trobairitz are by women, a question to which I will return, it is clear that the first-person subject is feminine. Who would have performed these songs? Were they performed by women? If noble women lived at their husbands', fathers' and brothers' courts, occasionally even presided over their own courts, was it permissible for them to


161

participate in public entertainment? If so, did they perform in private or in public? I have argued that cansos are frequently part of a homosocial exchange, that even the songs of highly ' courtly' poets represent men talking to each other, and that it is an implicit prerequisite of the genre that dialogue with the lady is not envisaged. A woman singing within this tradition disrupts the homosocial discourse of the canso: giving women a voice, even as fictional domnas, constitutes a major intrusion. If the form and lexis of the love songs of the trobairitz make them recognizably cansos, the gender of the speaker constitutes a radical transformation of the genre. It has been suggested that particular historical circumstances in twelfth-century Occitania created an environment which made the songs of the trobairitz possible. Although the legal rights of women (for instance in relation to property) underwent a steady decline from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, it is thought that between 1180 and 1230 there was a brief'golden age' during which the condition of women improved. However, any improvement was relative and slight. If a minority of noble women exercised real power in Occitania during this period, they were the exceptions.46 Literary sources indicate women were expected to engage in witty dialogue at court (Paterson, World, p. 260). But they did so within an environment devoted primarily to the regulation of a male hierarchy and to the distribution of power within a man's world. Just as we need to ask how women might have responded to male-authored literary texts, so the songs of the trobairitzforceus to ask how men responded to the spectacle of women speaking within the genre of the canso. In some respects the marginal position of the trobairitz in the tradition may supply us with an answer. I would like to look at one song to illustrate the problems I have raised. It is a sirventes rather than a canso, but as a commentary on the discourse of the canso it is appropriate to look at in this context:47 1

No puesc mudar no digua mon vejaire d'aisso dont ai al cor molt gran error et er me molt mal e greu a retraire, quar aquist antic trobador

162

Gender and genre in medieval French literature que • n son passat, die que son fort peccaire, qu'ilh an mes lo segP en error que an dig mal de domnas a prezen e trastug cilh qu'o auzon crezo • Is en et autreyon tug que ben es semblansa, et aissi an mes lo segP en erransa. 11

in

iv

1

E tug aquist que eron bon trobaire, tug se fenhon per leal amador, mas ieu sai be que non es fis amaire nuls horn que digua mal d'amor; enans vos die qu'es ves amor bauzaire e fai uzatge al traitor aicel que de so, on plus fort s'aten, plus en ditz mal aissi tot a prezen, quar negus horn, s'avia tota Fransa, no pot ses don' aver gran benestansa. E ja nuls horn que sia de bon aire no sufrira qu'om en digua folhor, mas silh que son vas amor trie e vaire ho auzon (?) e s'en tenon ab lor; qu'en Marcabrus, a ley de predicaire quant es en glezia ho orador que di gran mal de la gen mescrezen, et el ditz mal de donas eyssamen; e die vos be que non Fes gran honransa eel que ditz mal d'aisso don nays enfansa. la no sia negus meraveillaire s'ieu aisso die ni vuelh mostrar alhor que quascus horn deu razonar son fraire e queia domna sa seror, quar Adams fo lo nostre premier paire e avem Damnidieu ad auctor; e s'ieu per so velh far razonamen a las domnas, no m'o reptes nien, quar dona deu az autra far orcransa e per aisso ai • n ieu dig ma semblansa.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40 Rieger, 45

I cannot stop myself giving my opinion on what grieves me in my heart, and it will be very painful for me to talk about it, for I say that the troubadours of former times, who are now dead, are absolutely in the wrong, for they have created turmoil in the


163

world by openly slandering ladies, and everyone who hears them believes them and agrees with them, and thus have they deceived the world. 11 And all those who were good troubadours feign to be loyal lovers, but I know full well that no man who slanders love can be a true lover, rather I say to you that he cheats love and that the one who speaks ill of it openly when one expects better of him, behaves like a traitor, for no man, even if he owned all of France can be good without a lady. in And let no noble man permit anyone to speak ill of them, rather let those who cheat and are fickle in love listen to this and join them: for sir Marcabru, behaving like a preacher when he is in a church or an oratory, attacked infidels and women alike; and I say to you that it is no honour to speak ill of the creature that gives birth to children. iv Let no one be surprised if I say this and want to speak thus elsewhere, for every man should talk about this to his brother, and every lady to her sister. For Adam was thefirstfather to us all, and we have God as our creator, and if I for this reason wish to speak to ladies, do not reproach me. For a lady must honour another and because of this I say my piece. The only manuscript to preserve this poem (C) attributes it to Raimon Jordan, author of a small but relatively well-known corpus of cansos, whose attested poetic career spans the period 1178-95. The standard edition of Raimon's songs for many years included the poem; in de Riquer's seminal anthology of troubadour poetry, the song is attributed to him even though de Riquer acknowledges in a note that the poem is probably the work of a trobairitz. Stefano Asperti's 1990 edition of Raimon Jordan does not include the song, whilst Angelica Rieger edits the poem as a trobairitz song.48 Line 39 makes it clear that the first-person subject of this poem is a woman. Yet until very recently modern scholarship has colluded with the medieval scribe in attributing the song to a man. If the first-person subject is feminine, does this mean the poem is by a woman? Are we dealing with a fiction litteraire or with textualite feminine? And does it matter?

164


If the poem is by a man, it would initially seem to be a riposte to misogynistic satirists like Marcabru, named here (25). The poem would then be aligning itself with a poet like Cercamon who attacks troubadours who speak ill of love and women. 49 But this does not account for stanza 11, which attacks courtly troubadours as well. The rhymes establish a chain of association which berates all antic trobador (4) who style themselves courtly: trobaire / amaire / bauzaire

and

amador / amor / traitor.

The

author of the song is attacking two branches of the male tradition: the 'courtly' (in stanza 11) and the satirical (in stanza in). The precise nature of the accusation against courtly troubadours is that they assume they are loyal lovers because they are good poets (11-12). This reads like a direct attack on poets like Bernart de Ventadorn, who constantly equates the quality of poetry with the quality of love. But as the poet says, courtly posturing jars with the misogyny of many cansos (14-20), unless, of course, courtliness and misogyny are understood to be similar. The poem mounts a scathing attack on the two main strands of the male tradition from a proto-feminist position and makes a strong case in the last stanza for female solidarity and equality. It does matter whether this poem is by a man or a woman. If it is by a man it attacks one male discourse (Marcabru's), while showing an uneasy awareness that his misogyny was not unusual. If the song is by a woman, then she is attempting to show that two different masculine discourses are in fact similar in their misogyny. Why was this song preserved under Raimon Jordan's name? The only manuscript in which it survives contains a large number of satiric poems and has an extensive Marcabru corpus, so it may be that the compiler included the poem because the subject matter interested him. 50 If the song was not already attributed to Raimon in his source, perhaps he misread the poem as simply an attack on Marcabru; failing to see the implications of stanza 11, perhaps he attributed it to a 'courtly' poet at random. Whatever the reason for the attribution, the woman who composed this song has her voice ascribed to a man. Perhaps this is not surprising given the audacity of her utterance, for she is not simply asserting the right of women to

Troubadours', ladies and language

165

speak and to gloss masculine poetry, thereby disrupting the male homosocial, she also posits a female exchange in which women speak directly to each other (39). This poem is typical of many trobairitz poems in that it makes a conscious attempt to comment on masculine discourse: both stanzas 11 and m are about decoding male language from a woman's point of view. It is also typical in that it acknowledges that speaking about this is difficult (3). It is the preoccupation of many of the trobairitz with their difficult relationship to language, and above all to the language of the dominant tradition, which I think offers the most compelling reason for accepting these poems are by women. The trobairitz constantly express anxiety about the language of men and about their own language, aware that they are intruders. I am going to assume that the cansos attributed to trobairitz are by women. Even if there can be no absolute proof of female authorship, such an assumption is a useful corrective to years of uncritical marginalization of women within the tradition. I wish to argue that the cansos of the trobairitz enable the modern reader to deconstruct the gender-based ideology of male-authored troubadour poetry and that this suggests that modern feminist readings of the troubadours and of their construction of gender are supported by contemporary reception amongst some women. I shall also attempt to account for the view of female subjectivity which emerges from the poems and argue that we are dealing with something more than textualite feminine or &fictionlitteraire here. As with the male poets I shall concentrate on one lyric genre: the canso.51

In her study of the trobairitz (which forms part of her chapter on 'Gender and Status' in troubadour poetry), Sarah Kay argues that in the cansos of the trobairitz ' their subjectivity when it is not annexed, is silenced or oppressed' (Subjectivity, p. i n ) ; she sees this as a result of women's negative experience of the repressive gender system of the male-authored canso. My own view is different on one crucial point. I do not think women's subjectivity is silenced or repressed in the poetry of the trobairitz; rather I think that they deliberately represent it as inexpressible.52

166


As Kay argues (Subjectivity, pp. 103-11), the trobairitz frequently express anxiety about the domna position to which male troubadours ostensibly assign women. This anxiety often focuses on the power that the canso (largely through the feudal metaphor) apparently bestows upon them. Consider the first five stanzas of the only surviving canso by Azalais de Porcairagues: I

II

in

iv

v

Ar em al freg terns vengut que • 1 gels e • 1 neus e la faingna e • 1 aufellet estan mut c'us de chantar non s'afraingna; e son sec li ram pels plais que flors ni foilla no • i nais ni rossignols non i crida, que am j'en mai me reissida. Tant ai lo cor deseubut per qu'eu soi a toz estraingna, e sai que Tom a perdut molt plus tost que non gasaingna; e s'ieu faill ab motz verais: d'Aurenga me moc l'esglais per qu'eu m'estauc esbazda e • n pert solatz en partida. Dompna met mot mal s'amor qu£ ab ric ome plaideia, ab plus aut de vavasor, E s'il/o fai il(/) folleia; car so diz om en Veillai que ges per ricor non vai, e dompna que n'es chauîda en tenc per envilanida. Amic ai de gran valor que sobre toz seignoreia, e non a cor trichador vas me, que s'amor m'autreia. Exa die que m'amors l'eschai, e eel que dis que non fai Dieus li don mal' escarida qu'eu m'en teing fort per guerida. Bels amics de bon talan son be vos toz iorz en gatge

5

10

15

20

25

30


167

cortez' e de bel semblan, 35 sol no • m demandes outratge; tost en vez'rem a Passai qu'en vostra merce-m metrai; vos m'avej la fe plevida que no • m demandes faillida. 40 Rieger, 27 {CDIKd version) I

Now we have come to the cold season and the frost and the snow and the mud, and the little birds are mute, for not one of them tries to sing; and the branches are dry along the hedgerow, for no flower or leaf buds there, nor does the nightingale, whom I love if he awakens me in May, sing there.

II

My heart is so deceived, wherefore I am estranged from everyone and I know that a man loses much more frequently than he wins; and if I fail with true words, my trouble stems from Orange, wherefore I am saddened, and lose part of my comfort.

in

A lady places her love badly when she deals with too rich a man, too powerful a knight, and if she does this she is mad; for this reason they say in Vellay that one should not go there because of riches; and I consider vile a lady who follows this path.

iv

I have a very worthy lover who lords it over all the others, and he does not have a fickle heart towards me, for he grants me his love. I say that my love falls to him and may God confound anyone who says it does not, for I consider myself cured.

v

Fair friend, with true desire I am eternally pledged to you, in a courtly and worthy manner, only do not ask me to behave indecently; we will soon come to the test, when I will place myself at your mercy; you have pledged me faith, so do not demand a fault of me.

Azalais has been identified as the woman Raimbaut d'Aurenga addresses as Joglar and her own poetic activities may explain the senhal}* Line 14 may be a direct reference to Raimbaut, and if so, the poem was probably composed in his lifetime, before 1173. This song is consequently early in the trobairitz corpus, though a second version (in JV) implies Raimbaut is dead and may well be a later reworking. This is an accomplished poem,

168


and it is therefore unlikely that it was the only one Azalais wrote, though it is the only one to have survived. The poem opens with an image of silence. The silence of winter is a common topos in the troubadour lyric, but is it more charged in a poem by a woman, particularly here where her song is positioned over the silence of the nightingale, which often symbolizes courtly song?54 It is as if Azalais can only make herself heard when other courtly singers are muted. The evocation of the silent birds in stanza i introduces language as a theme. It is taken up in the second stanza where anxiety about language is linked to anxiety about power. Stanzas m-v evoke insistently the feudal metaphor of the masculine lyric. Azalais talks of loving a ric ome, who is an aut vavasor (18—19); she uses the verb seignoreiar (26) and evokes feudal loyalty {en gatge, 34). She operates an inversion of the conventions of the male-authored canso in that here it is a woman who is in love with a man of high social rank and singing about it, not vice versa. She is disempowered not just by the rank of her lover and the position she attributes to him in the metaphor, but also by her gender (see Gravdal, 'Metaphor', p. 415). She uses the feudal metaphor as if she were a man, putting herself in the subordinate position, but she none the less questions its value in stanza v by suggesting she does not trust the man she addresses not to take advantage of her (33-40) .Just as the feudal metaphor can lead a troubadour to ask his domna to behave like a' good lord', so here Azalais evokes the metaphor to say she expects trustworthiness from someone so high in the feudal hierarchy. This in effect points to anxiety about the value of the feudal language she is using, which makes her explicit comments on language in stanza 11 all the more interesting. Azalais implies in the second stanza that she is alienated and deceived by her lover. She contrasts her motz verais, which fail her, to the esglais ('trouble') which comes from Orange. By this she presumably implies a direct reference to Raimbaut d'Aurenga, who was indeed a ric ome (see Kay, Subjectivity, pp. 104—6). But ric is ambivalent here. It could mean 'rich' or 'powerful', but it can also have the sense of'exaggerated', even


169

'funny' (close to the Modern English 'that's rich'). Raimbaut was a powerful man, but also a composer of hysterical gap (boasting) poems, rics gaps in fact.55 This makes two interpretations of stanza 11 possible: first, do not trust a rich man because a powerful man will not abide by the rules implicit in the rhetoric of love;56 secondly, do not trust a man's language since he will always counter your motz verais with esglais. Azalais seems to imply that men cannot be trusted to use language honestly or that the language they use is not meaningful; she further implies that a woman's language will not help her to express her position.57 The same bewilderment about the failure of male language to deliver is present throughout the corpus of the Comtessa de Dia: 1

v

vi

A chantar m'er de so q'ieu no volria, tant me rancur de lui cui sui amia car eu Tain mais que nuilla ren que sia; vas lui no * m val merces ni cortesia, ni ma beltatz ni mos pretz ni mos sens, c'atressi • m sui enganad' e trahia cum degr' esser, s'ieu fos desavinens. Valer mi deu mos pretz e mos paratges e ma beutatz e plus mos fis coratges, per q'ieu vos mand lai on es vostr' estatges esta chansson que me sia messatges; e vwoill saber, lo mieus bels amics gens, per que vos m'etz tant fers ni tant salvatges, non sai si s'es orguoills o mals talens.

5

30

35

Mas aitan plus vuoill li digas, messatges, q'en trop d'orguoill ant gran dan maintas gens. Rieger, 35

I will have to sing about what I did not wish to sing of, so annoyed am I with the man whose lady friend I am, for I love him more than anything; my mercy and courtliness are worth nothing with him, nor my beauty, worth or wisdom, so I am thus deceived and betrayed, as I ought to be if I were unseemly.

170

v


My worth and rank, my beauty and my noble heart ought to help me, wherefore I send this song to you as a message for me. And I want to know, my fair, noble friend, why you are so cruel and unkind to me, [as] I do not know whether it is pride or bad faith.

vi And I want you to tell him this as well, messenger, that pride has harmed many people. The Comtessa does not adopt the role of the haughty and imperious domna as prescribed by male troubadours here. On the contrary she claims dissatisfaction and frustration in love, as many troubadours do. But the feminine voice gives the plaint different value, particularly given that she cites the virtues many male troubadours attribute to or require of their domnas. When, in lines 4-5, she affirms her merces, cortesia, beltatz, pretz and sens, it is as if she is saying she has attempted to conform to the model of the ideal domna, but that it has not done her any good. Put more abstractly, she implies she has attempted to construct herself according to the requirements of the rhetoric of the canso, subsumed her subjectivity to its masculine discourse, and now she cannot understand why she is enganad! e trahia, why the discourse fails to deliver what it promises, in terms of loyalty and feudal submission. She thereby highlights a gap between the symbolic and real value of troubadour rhetoric. As she says in the last stanza of the poem her pretz and paratges ought to make her bels amics gens loyal and loving, but they do not. The Comtessa's song is an effective demystification of the canso. She evokes the qualities the genre ostensibly requires of the domna, but shows that when a woman has them, she is not necessarily treated with respect. In the light of her criticism of her lover, one wonders if her description of him as bel and gens is ironic. 'A chantar' clearly engages in a dialectic with the maleauthored canso. The Comtessa's use of the lexis of the canso and her dissatisfaction at the untrustworthiness of its rhetoric signal an anxiety about language, but whereas Azalais de Porcairagues explicitly compares her 'true' words to the treacherous language of her male lover, the Comtessa does so implicitly by calling male rhetoric to account obliquely. The comparison with Azalais also works on another level, for like Azalais the


171

Comtessa's anxiety about language is bound up with anxiety about power, as is clear in another of her songs. The first two stanzas of 'Estat ai' (Rieger 36) make it clear that the Comtessa's lover demands sex and that she is happy to give it to him: it is perhaps this manque de pudeur which so offended Jeanroy. After the erotic tone of the first two stanzas, the eruption of the word poder in the third startles: Bels amics, avinens e bos, cora • us tenrai en mon poder e que iagues ab vos un ser, e qe • us des un bais amoros? Sapchatz, gran talan n'auria qe • us tengues en luoc del marit, ab so que m'aguessetz plevit de far tot so qu'eu volria.

20

Fair, comely and good friend, when can I hold you in my power and lie with you a whole night and give you a sweet kiss ? Let me tell you I would really like to hold you instead of my husband as long as you swore to do everything I wanted. The effect of the word poder is reinforced by the judicial overtones of plevit (23) and by the last line. The Comtessa seeks to control her lover. The last line echoes the first line of 'A chantar' (or vice versa) suggesting the two songs gloss each other. The last line also draws attention to a disparity between male and female positions. The male poet subordinating himself to his domna appeals to her sense of decency and assumes she will reward his loyal service if she is a ' good lord'; the masculine value system of the masculine hierarchy in which the poet inscribes his domna is presumed to function. The Comtessa, on the other hand, articulates a deep mistrust of her lover and seeks to bind him to the letter of his rhetoric in as many ways as possible. This suggests that the poetry of the trobairitz is more than a fiction litteraire or an example of textualite feminine. The trobairitz do not simply internalize male views of their gender; they do not simply adopt the role of the domna. It is interesting in relation to the Comtessa's challenging attitude towards masculine rhetoric that in one poem, which

172


admittedly may be a fragment, she seeks to enact her removal as an object from male discourse: I

II

in

Fin ioi me don' alegransa per qu'eu chan plus gaiamen, e no m'o teing a pensanssa ni a negun penssamen car sai que son a mon dan li fals lausengier truan e lor mals diz no m'esglaia anz en son dos tanz plus gaia. En mi non an ges fianssa li lauzengier mal dizen c'om non pot aver honranssa qu'a ab els acordamen qu'ist son d'altrestal semblan com la nivo/ que s'espan qe • 1 solels en pert sa raia per qu'eu non am gent savaia. E vos, gelos mal parlan, no*s cuges quVw m'an tartan que iois e iovenz no • m plaia, per tal que dols vos deschaia.

5

10

15

20 Rieger, 37

1

Pure joy makes me happy, and so I sing more gaily, and this does not worry or bother me for I know false treacherous slanderers are working to harm me, and their evil words do not scare me, rather I am twice as joyful.

n

The ill-spoken slanderers have no faith in me, for no man has honour who has truck with them, for they are just like the cloud which spreads so that the sun's ray is lost, wherefore I do not like wicked people.

in

And you, false tongued jealous men, do not think that I am put off, for I do not like joy and youth in order to induce pain in you.

The Comtessa makes no mention of her amic. The only men mentioned are the lauzengiers addressed in lines 6 and 10, who are stock characters in the canso. Their identity has been debated by sociohistoric critics, but it is not clear that the term


173

lauzengiers designates a well-defined group; rather it is more likely that lauzengiers are simply other men whom troubadours wish to denigrate in order to enhance their own worth. They may well be other poets, given that lauzengiers are criticized for their indiscreet use of language. From the male troubadour's point of view, lauzengier is a term of abuse for his rivals.58 From the trobairitz's point of view, the lauzengiers are men who talk about her, who use her as a sign within their discourse. In the last lines the Comtessa effectively withdraws herself as a sign from their discourse by announcing that her actions are not motivated by a desire to please or displease them. In each stanza she stresses the lauzengiers' bad use of language: lor mals diz (7), mal dizen (10), mal parlan (17). The metaphor of lines 14-15 suggests that the lauzengiers' words obscure true joy and the final lines that the Comtessa's iois and iovenz cannot be reflected in the discourse used by the slanderous men. The poem may be a fragment, but it is also possible that it breaks off deliberately. The Comtessa falls silent rather than speak further. She is not frightened of the lauzengiers (7) because her fulfilment lies outside the boundaries of their language, even though she recognizes its power (19-20). The fragmentary state of this poem in effect represents the Comtessa's fin ioi as having no space within the language of men, and one might go a step further and say within the generic frame of the canso. If women as speaking subjects (as opposed to the domnas and femnas the male discourse constructs) are placed outside the linguistic frame of the canso, this raises the problem of their access to language within the genre. Can they express themselves in cansos and if they do will anyone listen? Access to language is a constant preoccupation of by far the most interesting trobairitz, Castelloza. She is frequently portrayed by critics as a masochist; alternatively it has been argued that she deliberately seeks to adopt the role of the domna.59 However, as Sarah Kay has pointed out (Subjectivity, p. 108), she does not express pleasure at the pain she feels in love, whilst she expresses a good deal of anxiety about the domna role. Castelloza's small corpus of four songs indicates she was a sophisticated and gifted poet, who sought to express all the complexity of the first-

174


person, female, subject position within a poetic discourse shaped by men. For example: 60 i

Amies s'ie • us trobes avinen, Humil e franc e de bona merce, Be • us amera — cant era m'en sove Qu'ie • us trob ves mi mal e sebenc e ric, E • n fatz chansons per tal que fass' ausir Vostre bon prez; don eu nom puesc sofrir Qu'eu no • us fasa lausar a tota gen, On plus mi faitz mal ez asiramen.

11 Ja mais no • us tenrai per valen, Ni • us amarai de bon cor ni per fe: Per ver veirei si ja • m valria re, S'ie • us mostrava cor felon ni enic. - Non farei ja, qu'eu non vueill puscaz dir Qu'eu anc vas vos agues cor de faillir: C'auriaz i qualque razonamen, S'ieu avia ves vos fait faillimen. in Eu sai ben qu'a mi esta gen, Si ben dison tuig que mout descove Que dompna prec ja cavalier de se, Ni que • 1 tenga totz temps tarn lone pressic; Mas cil c'o diz non sap gez ben chausir Qu'ieu vueil preiar ennanz que • m lais morir, Qu'el preiar ai maing douz revenimen, Can prec sellui don ai gran pessamen. iv Asatz es fols qui m'en repren De vos amar, pos tan gen me conve: E eel c'o diz no sap co s'es de me, Ni no • us vi ges a • Is uels ab qu'ieu vos vie Quan me dissez que non agues consir, Que calc' ora poir' endevenir Que n'auria enquera jausimen, De sol lo dig n'ai eu lo cor jausen. v Tot' autr' amor teing a ni'en E sapchaz ben que mais jois no • m soste Mas lo vostre que m'alegr' e*m reve, On mais m'en ven d'afan e de destric, E • m cug ades per plain e lais jausir De vos, amics, qu'eu no*m puesc convertir: Ni joi non ai, ni socors non aten,

5

10

15

20

25

30

35


175

Mas sol aitan can n'aurai en durmen. 40 Oimais non sai qe • us me presen Que saiat ai ez a mal ez a be Vostre dur cor-don lo mieus no • s recre, E no • us o man, qu'eu meseisa • us o die: 45 E morai me si no • m volez jausir De qualque joi: e si*m laissatz morir Farez pecat, e serez n'en turmen E serai mos quesid'a-1 jutjamen. Paden et al. 1 Friend, if I found you charming, humble, open and compassionate, I would love you indeed - since I now realize that I find you wicked, despicable and haughty towards me, yet I compose songs to enhance your reputation; which is why I cannot keep from making everyone praise you when most you cause me harm and anger. vi

I

II

in

iv

Never shall I consider you worthy, nor shall I love you from the heart or with trust; indeed I'll see if ever it would do me any good to show you a cruel and hateful heart. I will never do it, for I do not want you to be able to say that I had the heart to harm you; for you would be in the right if I had ever been negligent towards you. I know well that it pleases me, even though everyone says it's very improper for a lady to plead her own cause with a knight, and make him so long a sermon all the time. But whoever says this is not discerning, for I want to plead my cause before I let myself die, since in beseeching I find such sweet succour when I beseech the man who causes me such anguish.

He who reproaches me for loving you is quite a fool, since I find it so fitting, and he who says this does not know how it is with me, nor has he seen you as I saw you when you told me not to worry, for at any time I could have joy again: from just saying this I have a rejoicing heart. v I consider all other love to be nothing, and let me tell you that no joy sustains me any more, except for yours, which delights me and heals me even though it gives me so much pain and distress. By my lamentation and lays I always hope to enjoy you, friend, because I cannot change; I have no joy, nor do I expect help, except only as much as I'll get when sleeping. vi I no longer know why I present myself to you, for I've tested with evil and good your hard heart, which mine does not renounce. And I do not send you this, since I say it to you myself; I shall die

176


if you don't want to give me pleasure with a little joy; and if you let me die you will sin, and you'll be in hell for it, and I'll be more sought after on Judgement day. The opening stanza appears to operate a reversal of the conventional positions of the lover and his lady in the maleauthored canso. The man is portrayed as haughty and cruel (4), thereby cast in the role of the conventional domna, and Castelloza sings about him (5) to enhance his worth (6). The stanza has the effect of making her amic into a literary construct, into the object of a literary discourse, rather like the domna in the maleauthored canso. In stanza 11 Castelloza steps back from this bold subject position and flirts with the idea of adopting the conventional domna role herself (11—12), only to distance herself from this and recognize it as a potentially flawed and untenable position, since she could be accused of unkind behaviour. It is as if she recognizes the trap male troubadours set for their domnas when they describe them as haughty and imperious, only then to reproach them with this. It is not clear whether the first line of stanza m refers to the previous stanza or to what follows and the ambiguity is important. Is Castelloza saying that she would like to be imperious and haughty? Or is it something else she wants? What follows is a passionate defence of a woman's right to speak within the love-plot of the canso. Language is tellingly designated with the verbpreiar, 'to beg', 'to beseech', indicating that the speaker is always to a certain extent in a supplicatory position as one who articulates desire. Castelloza implies speaking is literally vital (22), in the sense that it is necessary to live, echoing Bernart de Ventadorn's association of language with existence at the end of'Can vei'. It is significant, in relation to this vital role she attributes to speech, that a shift from an object to a subject position underscores stanzas m and iv. This is apparent in the stressed rhyme-words of the second and third line of each stanza: descove / me conve and de se / de me. Castelloza moves the argument from a consideration of the constricting nature of male convention (18-19) in which the domna is referred to in the third person, to an affirmation of what she wants and of her own private desires (26-7). She is separating


177

her own subjectivity from the construct of the domna which men generally (csi ben dison tuig', 18) would impose upon her. She associates the adoption of her subject position with speech. Indeed she reiterates that only through speech is satisfaction possible. Through speech she will attain maing douz revenimen (23) and jausimen (31), whilst the last line of stanza iv may be ambivalent. Does Castelloza say that only in speech can she attain joy, or that she attains joy from speaking of her desire now, without precluding other forms of satisfaction? The ambiguity is surely intentional, and serves to highlight the importance of speaking to the female subject position and to female desire. Castelloza highlights the centrality of access to language and speech to her subjectivity, but her affirmation of her right (and need) to speak is undercut by her awareness that according to male convention she should be silent: ' mout descove / Que dompna prec ja cavalier de se' (18-19). 61 The verbpreiar is of course associated with the activity of male troubadours, who constantly beseech their domnas in the canso, and Castelloza's poem may be read to a large extent as a comment on the genre from the point of view of the female poet. How is a woman to write cansos when the conventions of the genre require that she be silent? But how can she affirm her subjectivity without speaking? Are the conventions of the canso as set out by Castelloza so rigidly androcentric that women cannot express themselves within the genre? Castelloza both affirms and denies the possibility of female subjectivity within the canso. She denies it by showing that her act of singing runs counter to convention and also by setting her own desires outside the sphere of male speech and understanding (27); on the other hand her poem itself affirms the possibility of a female subject position. She ends the poem by presenting us with bewilderment at her own dislocated subject: ' non sai qe * us me presen' (41). This is not normally a reflexive or pronominal verb; on the contrary it is usually used transitively. Castelloza presents herself as both subject and object of a transitive verb, as ieu and me, and she thereby inscribes the paradox of her position within the canso genre. She

178


also shares a strategy with the Comtessa de Dia, which is that she tries to shortcircuit the homosocial exchange of the lyric by addressing her amic directly (44).62 'Amies s'ie-us trobes avinen' constitutes a wise en cause of the female subject position within the canso. By occupying and then vacating the domna position within a canso, Castelloza constructs and then deconstructs herself as within masculine discourse, claiming a space within it at the same time as she shows herself to be outside it (or perhaps one should say above it). 63 By defending her right to language, she defends her right to desire (jausimen). She shows herself to be aware of the inextricable relationship the troubadours predicate between desire and language and she seeks to affirm her right of access to the same empowering speaking position as men occupy in poetry. Access to language and the need to articulate desire are constant preoccupations within Castelloza's corpus.64 She and other trobairitz are perfectly aware of what the male-authored canso attempts to do to them as women. They are critical of the canso's construction of their gender, of the male monopoly on desire and language and they are aware of the importance of language to subjectivity and to empowerment. In a sense they anticipate the readings of troubadour poems offered in the first three sections of this chapter, which suggests not all women were uncritical victims of patriarchy in the Middle Ages. The trobairitz seek empowerment through language and yet their constant anxiety about the right to speak means the female subject position they attempt to occupy is always uneasy, as if feminine subjectivity were inexpressible within the generic framework in which the trobairitz have chosen to express themselves. This is certainly the implication of the conclusion of the only surviving canso by Clara d'Anduza: Amicx, tan ai d'ira e de feunia 25 quar no vos vey, que quant yeu cug chantar planh e sospir, per qu'ieu no puesc so far a mas coblas que • 1 cors complir volria. Rieger, 33 My friend, I have so much anger and resentment because I do not see you that when I think I sing, I lament and sigh, wherefore I cannot make my verses do what I would like them to do.


179

Clara, like the other trobairitz I have examined, highlights the difficulty facing women if they choose to write in a maledominated genre. Yet in drawing attention to this, trobairitz like the Comtessa de Dia, Castelloza and Clara d'Anduza do assert themselves. They show that women cannot be contained by masculine structures and when they paradoxically assert the difficulty women have in expressing themselves in the canso, they draw attention to its inadequacies and demystify its strategies of containment. They draw our gaze outside the frame of the male-authored canso and yet help us to apprehend its ideology and its construction of gender more clearly. The trobairitz^ corpus is small, yet it is a haunting and moving record of how trapped and constrained some women felt when faced with the rhetoric of the canso. In some senses the slightness of the corpus is eloquent: women were silenced by the canso or rendered virtually inaudible in the androcentric space of the chansonniers. But the surviving cansos of the trobairitz are testimony to the fact that if more women's voices from the Middle Ages have not survived, this does not mean women did not articulate their desires. The veneration of the domna in troubadour poetry is a cultural phenomenon which is contemporary to an upsurge in Mariology and an increase in the proportion of female saints and texts composed about female saints. Although much sacred material devoted to women was written in Latin, vernacular hagiography offers a privileged space in which sacred and secular cultures may meet. What is the relation between the ostensible veneration of women in vernacular traditions like the canso and romance, and the veneration of women in sacred contexts? To what extent is vernacular hagiography influenced by the 'courtly' culture examined in the last two chapters? These questions will be addressed in the next chapter with a view to moving into a completely different realm of medieval French and Occitan culture.

CHAPTER 4

Saints, sex and community: hagiography

Hagiography is good for medievalists. I do not thereby mean that the texts are necessarily good for their souls (though they may be), but rather that saints' lives offer a useful corrective to the reading experience of most modern readers of vernacular medieval literature, which is often grounded almost entirely in profane texts. The understandable preference of modern readers for genres which their own aesthetic and ideological predilections render accessible distorts their view of medieval culture. As every art historian, historian or medieval Latinist knows, the Middle Ages were deeply Christian, yet all too often students and critics of vernacular literature focus on the chivalric and courtly margins, thereby failing to appreciate the centrality of the dominant Catholic culture. The profane texts students of Old French and Occitan mostly read represent a tiny proportion of the texts produced in medieval France and Occitania. Even in the vernacular the quantity of religious texts which has survived is far greater than their availability in modern editions suggests and vernacular hagiography was at least as popular as other literary genres, if not more so. Modern views of medieval vernacular writing are skewed by the marginalization of hagiography. Saints' lives are frequently presented as tedious and repetitive, as unsophisticated as they are heavy-handed in their ideology. Hagiography may indeed be an acquired taste for the modern reader, but the genre offers some fine, uncannily moving texts. It also offers students of vernacular literature a privileged space in which to observe the interface between the profane culture in which they are primarily interested and the dominant culture which tolerated and enjoyed it on the margins. 180

Saints, sex and community

181

Latin hagiography (produced over a period of over iooo years) offers unprecedented generic continuity, but the construction of sanctity in texts changes over time according to historic and cultural context. Given the generic continuity between the early, high and late Middle Ages, hagiography constitutes an ideal body of material for monitoring the evolution of certain ideological and literary constructs. But, it should not be assumed that Latin and vernacular hagiography can be treated as the same phenomenon. Scholars working on the Latin tradition have argued that much early hagiography articulates popular religious values and sensibilities. It is suggested that because saints' lives were often based on local legends and sometimes produced as propaganda in favour of a local figure's canonization, the hagiographer could not depart from popular belief if her or his (usually his) text was to have any currency. In the late eleventh century, in the wake of the Gregorian reforms, the Church began to adopt a stricter view of what did or did not constitute sainthood and it is thought that the control of hagiographical texts by the papacy was consolidated during the pontificate of Alexander III (i 159-81). It is thus common to view hagiography produced before this period as a privileged expression of popular consciousness and hagiography produced subsequently as an articulation of orthodox Church views.1 However, this account of Latin hagiography is questionable. If Latin hagiographers drew upon oral legends, were they then bound by the views of the tellers of' popular' stories about saints? Such stories would have been transmitted orally in the vernacular by people who were unlikely to have been able to read, let alone understand Latin. Latin hagiography was written by the clergy for the clergy and may therefore tell us a great deal about the culture of religious communities, but its view of popular religious beliefs is filtered through the consciousness of clerical writers. On the other hand, vernacular hagiography is likely to reflect a mixture of clerical and popular values, since the texts were written by clerks in a language everyone understood, and since they were obviously intended for dissemination to a public which did not necessarily know Latin. Some vernacular texts seem to have been intended

182


for monks and nuns, but some were clearly intended for a lay public. Vernacular hagiography, unlike Latin hagiography, is not exclusive to the clerisy. Vernacular hagiographical texts are not, however, simply the expression of popular culture. Individual writers working within a generic framework grounded in traditional legends can have an influence on the way their particular version of the story evolves, so that each new version represents a new, 'individual' reading of it. The narrator's role as an individual is sometimes crucial in vernacular hagiography, but this is not to say that vernacular hagiographers have a licence to make free with their religious subject matter: they were clerks, men of the church, and saints' lives need to be set in their spiritual and social contexts as well as being viewed as autonomous literary texts. Religious symbols are complex. As Clifford Geertz argues they simultaneously offer models of and models for ideal behaviour.2 In vernacular hagiography this tension between the prescriptive and symbolic functions of the texts is complicated by a further tension between the clerical narrator's didactic framework (whether it be his own or derived from Church teaching) and his need to have his text endorsed by his audience. Many writers of vernacular hagiography used Latin sources as well as popular legends: this makes it likely that they were clergy of some kind and therefore that the texts they wrote attempted to blend orthodox Church views with popular legends. It is consequently no accident that vernacular hagiographical texts work hard to create an apparently united 'textual community'. 3 Old French and Occitan saints' lives are frequently punctuated by first-person plural addresses to God or to the saint (usually to ask him or her to intercede with God). Defining the subject alternately as the character whose desires are considered paramount or as the character to whom all the other potential subjects are subjected, Evelyn Birge Vitz identifies four potential subjects in hagiography: God, the saint, the narrator, and the audience (Medieval Narrative, pp. 132-44). These four subjects represent a chain of connection crucial to the way vernacular saints' lives function as an aesthetic


183

experience: the narrator gives the audience access to the saint, who in turn gives the narrator and the audience access to God. The frequent use of the first-person plural creates the illusion that the writer/narrator and the audience can on one level not be differentiated or at the very least that they belong to the same community and share the same values. But this is an illusion in that the narrative functions of the narrator and the audience are quite different, quite apart from the fact that the position of the clergy within society is different from that of the nobility or the peasantry. I am suggesting that hagiography, perhaps more so than any other vernacular genre, inscribes a particularly complex configuration of communal (genuinely popular), institutional (Church) and individual positions. Within this configuration gender plays an important role. It goes without saying that Church models of ideal behaviour for men and women, heavily grounded as they are in patristic writing and the contemporary ' masculinist' orthodoxy of the Church, are patriarchal, but consideration needs to be given to how models of ideal behaviour for men and women differ and evolve as well as to how contemporary lay men and women in the audience may have responded to these models. Hagiography creates the illusion of a united textual community, unchanging over time, for whom differences of gender (or class for that matter) are entirely naturalized, but the reader's or listener's response is bound to be affected by her or his position within contemporary social structures. Religious texts cannot be abstracted from the social context in which they were produced and the apparent continuity of Christian symbols should not blind us to historical shifts in emphasis and reception. Gender cannot be ignored in this process. Consider a common symbol within Christian discourses like ' God the father'. For a male believer this symbol subordinates him to the deity within a hierarchical structure, yet since he can become a father he can also identify with the deity as a figure of authority in a way that no female believer can, unless she denies her own subjectivity as constructed in and by contemporary social and psychological structures. But the idea of'God the father' is also subject to historic shifts. It surely

184


takes on different meanings when deployed, for example, in a society predicated upon feudal families, or in a late nineteenthcentury bourgeois Europe with its nuclear families, or in contemporary Britain where the nuclear family is breaking down, where absent fathers are pursued by government agencies and where a father's authority may be viewed as potentially abusive. As this implies, religious texts, particularly those in the vernacular, mediate social structures and tensions as much as other literary genres. This is hardly surprising and, given the adoption of the vernacular, it is also only to be expected that Old French and Occitan saints' lives dialogue with other literary genres, often to contest their secular values. Many vernacular saints' lives were probably intended for the same audiences as texts belonging to other vernacular genres: the chanson de geste, courtly romance, the canso, even the fabliaux.* The subject matter and themes of saints' lives need to be viewed in their doctrinal context, but it is striking that an increase in the number of hagiographical texts devoted to female saints, and a preoccupation in saints' lives with matters of concern in other vernacular genres, are roughly coterminous with the emergence of courtly culture. Furthermore, when compared to other vernacular narrative genres, saints' lives emerge as the most consistently obsessed with sexuality: thus sexuality is taken for granted in many romances or chansons de geste, but in vernacular hagiography it emerges as a central problem. The first two sections of this chapter will examine two important sexual themes in vernacular hagiography: virginity and kinship. I will attempt to outline their role in the construction of gender in saints' lives, but I shall also argue that although anchored in orthodox church positions, the importance of the themes of virginity and kinship in the genre needs to be seen in relation to other vernacular genres and in relation to contemporary social structures. The last section of this chapter will return to the complex problem of the relation between the implied textual community of hagiographical texts and the texts' mediation of contemporary sex/gender systems.


185

VIRGINITY OVERDETERMINED

Critics have commented on the increase in the number of texts devoted to female saints from the twelfth century on, but statistics should be treated with caution. It has been estimated that 9.8 per cent of new saints in the eleventh century were women; this rises to 14.6 per cent in the twelfth century and 29 per cent in the fifteenth. In Old French only five of the twentyfour surviving twelfth-century saints' lives are about women. 5 Critics have been concerned to demonstrate an increase in the veneration of female saints and to link this to other cultural trends like courtliness and Mariology, but there were more male saints and more texts devoted to male saints throughout the medieval period. Thus we need to remember that hagiography is an androcentric genre, but there is none the less a perceptible increase in the number of saints' lives devoted to women and it is coterminous both with the emergence of courtly culture and with a marked escalation in Mariology. 6 A vital ingredient of female sanctity is chastity and the majority of women saints emulate Mary and are virgins. Sexuality is thus a crucial element in the construction of female sainthood and medieval depictions of female saints indicate that medieval culture was obsessed with virginity. It is impossible to over-emphasize the symbolic value of female virginity in Christian discourses and consequently in medieval hagiography. I shall return to male virgins later in this section, but some female virgin martyrs in hagiographical texts die to protect their virginity, while other women live as saints simply because they are virgins. In medieval theology virginity is as much a state of mind, or more accurately a state of grace, as a state of the body. Though grounded in the body, virginity is also a moral attribute. 7 Significantly, the earliest literary text in French to have survived is the story of a virgin saint: the Sequence of Saint Eulalia. Brief though it may be this text shows a woman submitting to torture and willing to die for her virginity. 8 In patristic writing, women were associated with the flesh, men with the spirit. Women had to transcend the body in a way men did not. Reproduction was often viewed as the only

186


justification for sex and virginity was seen as the highest ideal for women.9 To obtain spiritual perfection women had to deny their flesh, abstain from sex, better still never have sex, best of all never even think about it. Some modern commentators on medieval views of virginity suggest that the cult of virginity indicates women were encouraged to renounce or disavow their sexuality,10 but such formulations mask an important feature of the phenomenon. Virginity is a form of sexuality as much as monogamy or promiscuity. Classifying a woman as a virgin constructs her primarily in relation to her sexuality as much as classifying her as a married woman or a whore. Medieval narratives of virgin saints do not deny the female saint's sexuality; on the contrary they define her exclusively in relation to it, which, I shall argue, is not the case for male saints. The difference between virgin martyrs and women saints who live as virgins corresponds roughly to that between the two 'deep structures' some critics discern in hagiography: Xhtpassio and the vita}1 Thtpassio recounts the martyrdom of a saint and the narrative's dynamic is produced by a binary opposition between good and evil, between martyr and tyrant. The subject of a vita, on the other hand, simply lives differently from other members of society, often as a hermit or in a religious order, and vitae consequently privilege difference and gradation rather than opposition. For some critics this distinction between the vita and the passio parallels that between epic and romance. However, this fails to account for the obvious generic unity in hagiography. It is also misleading to label saints' lives as 'epic' or 'romance' for despite parallels, saints' lives contest rather than emulate the values of the profane genres they recall.12 Thus if a martyr confronts a tyrant, this may recall Roland's confrontation with the Saracens, but whereas the saint confronts non-Christians with passive inaction, Roland confronts them with violent action. Similarly, the saint is transported to heaven for submitting to the pagan tyrant, whereas Roland is transported to heaven for his resistance. Roland may appear to be elevated as a quasi-saint, but the values he represents are secular. Scholars rightly discern stylistic and ideological similarities between early chansons de geste and early vernacular


187

hagiography,13 but the concentration on parallels has the effect of masking what distinguishes the two genres, and even more importantly the manner in which the two genres engage in a contestation of each other's values. Certain features of chansons de geste, like the Oxford Roland or the Chanson de Guillaume, may

recall hagiography, but these texts offer a secular path to sainthood which involves being a warrior. The path to sainthood taken by contemporary male saints is quite different: they turn the other cheek in a manner no self-respecting epic hero would contemplate. Similarly heroes and heroines of vernacular vitae may invite parallels with romance characters, but differences are as marked as similarities. One obvious difference between hagiography and epic or romance is that saints' lives can be devoted to women as subjects (using the term in Vitz's sense as a character whose desires are paramount), which is true of neither epic nor romance, both of which require a hero. A typical example of a vernacular passio with a female subject is the early Occitan Chanson de Sainte Foi cFAgen (c. 1070), in which Foi is martyred by the tyrant Dacien. 14 Binary oppositions abound. Foi comes from a rich family, but gives up her wealth to help the poor (92-100). It is consequently a young woman with none of the material trappings of power who confronts the Roman empire in all its might, represented by a man. This confrontation is portrayed as a confrontation between God and the devil (89-91). Just over a hundred lines in the middle of this short text are devoted to a dialogue between Foi and Dacien. Alison Goddard Elliot likens these exchanges to confrontational verbal exchanges in chansons de geste.15 Foi's gender and her submission to torture and execution mark an important difference between her confrontation with Dacien and epic confrontations between hero and Saracen, but as Elliot suggests the confrontation between Foi and Dacien does inscribe an irreducible binary opposition reminiscent of such encounters in chansons de geste. Thus Foi does not seek to convert her opponent and their positions are not reconcilable: Now pregarei vostra Diana, Ja now o facza rwmtiana, Qe czo • s per ver, traciuns plana!

275

188


Unqeg dia de la setmana Diables manbes la • us apana. Si • 1 proferz quegs una rana E • 1 faiz encens de fum de lana, Mostrar vos a enfern; czcrs vana.

280

I will not pray to your Diana. Let no Christian woman do this for in truth it is pure treason. The devil nourishes you every day of the week. If you each sacrifice a toad to him and burn incense wicks of wool for him, he will show you hell: this is patently true. However, if discourse like this resembles the insults heroes and Saracens trade in chansons de geste, Foi's words do not lead to extended physical confrontation, nor to any modification of the tyrant's attitudes. Her discourse is pure ideology and the confrontation to which it contributes is iconic in that it is potentially static, ended only by Foi's death. Foi's gender is an important element in the representation of the confrontation which structures the narrative of her death, for it underscores the rigidity of the opposition which separates her from Dacien. Her femaleness assigns her to the weaker sex and her femininity has metaphorical as well as political value. Matthew's Gospel tells us that the meek will inherit the earth (v.5) and who could be more meek than a young woman? Foi's femininity and her willingness to take on Dacien demonstrate God's power. The Chanson imparts no sense of a political agenda in which the poet seeks to depict the overthrow of masculine hegemony by a feminine figure; the poet uses femininity, rather, as a means of figuring physical and political frailty. What role does Foi's virginity play in the structuring opposition of this text? Most saints' lives were written by men and although in twelfth-century England some texts were composed and gathered into compilations for and by women, most hagiography seems to have been written primarily for men.16 How did female virgin saints function as signs within masculine discourse? A further matter for investigation is martyrdom. By the twelfth century the historical circumstances which produced martyrs were long gone. Martyrdom, once so central to Christian identity, had become part of Christian


189

mythology rather than of Christian life. Yet the continued production of narratives about martyred saints indicates martyrdom still had powerful symbolic value. Saints' lives about martyrs were not offering models that medieval men and women could easily imitate, so what did they mean for contemporary audiences? 17 Possibly the meaning was different for men and women, but the virginity of female martyrs was evidently central to their value for both sexes. When the poet of the Chanson de Sainte Foi first evokes her virginity, it is in the context of his presentation of her father: Lo seinner d'aqesta ciutad Ag granz honors ab ampledad. Parti • ss qant pog, d'aquel peccad Et amed Deu fort, a celad. Audirez qo • 11 a Deus honrad E quan car aver l'a donad: Filla • 1 doned de tan bon grad, FIDES a nom per Deu mandad. E fo nuirid' ab castitad E teg salva virginitad. Fort d'elP a Deus est segP onrad.

65

70

75

The lord of this town was immensely wealthy. He did his best to avoid this sin and loved God a good deal in secret. Just listen to how God honoured him and to what great wealth He gave him: He gave him a most comely daughter who was called FIDES at God's command. And she was brought up in chastity and safeguarded her virginity. God greatly honoured this earth with her. Foi is assimilated to her father's wealth here: God's gift of a daughter is denoted by the noun aver (70) and described with the verb honrar (69), which recalls the use of the noun honor (66) to denote his wealth. In this context Foi's virginity enhances her value within a masculine prestige system. She is the sign that God has honoured her father, a mediator between a male relation and a male deity, just as later when the narrator addresses her (453) she is a mediator between a male narrator and his male God. Foi's virginity makes her a sign of great value which males transmit between each other and in this respect her role for the narrator and for men in the audience parallels the

190


way in which women are exchanged between men in contemporary kinship structures and in other contemporary vernacular narrative genres.18 In other passiones devoted to women the importance of virginity is even more marked. For instance, in the Occitan Vida de Sancta Margarida (early thirteenth century) the saint dies explicitly to safeguard her virginity: 19 Mas, seyner Deus, com o po$ far, Per ta merce vien m'ajudar: Gardam dels cans e dels leons Conforta me com seyner bons; Tramet me quim faga guardar Ma virginitat sens peccar.

225

230

But, my lord God, since you are able to do this, come to help me in your mercy: save me from the dogs and the lions, comfort me like a good lord; send me something to safeguard my virginity without sin. Margarita is repeatedly referred to simply as 'the virgin 5 throughout this text and both the narrator and the saint recognize that the most valuable thing about her is her virginity. This is also true of the mid-twelfth-century Vie de Sainte Marguerite by Wace.20 In this text we are told that 'Dex ama sa castee' (79: 'God loved her chastity') and in Marguerite's confrontation with the devil it is her virginity that he comes to steal from her (370). When asked to account for the miracles which surround her she attributes her powers to the fact that 'virge sui et monde et pure' (623: 'I am a pure and unsullied virgin'). Comparisons between the virginity of male and female saints are instructive and throw light on the symbolic value of female virginity in hagiography. Most male saints are chaste, but this attracts little comment. In the Occitan Vida de Sant Honorat (thirteenth century), for example, Honorat rejects marriage, but the narrator says nothing about his chastity. 21 The rejection of marriage is paradigmatic for male and female saints, a betterknown male example being the Vie de Saint Alexis.22 Alexis abandons his wife on their wedding night, encouraging her to take Jesus as her spouse (66-7). He serves God by living as a


191

pauper for seventeen years and then, at God's command, returns to his father's house. He is not recognized and lives as an ascetic recluse under the stairs for thirty-four years. His identity is not discovered until after his death: on realizing Alexis was a saint his parents and bride finish their days in pious devotion. As far as we can tell Alexis is a virgin when he leaves his bride on their wedding night for higher pursuits, but this is not symbolically central: his humility and piety make him a saint. 23 This is in marked contrast to the importance put upon female virginity in so many texts. Alexis's father regrets his son's neglect of family obligations (396-405), but he does not challenge his right to do as he pleases. This points obliquely to the difference between male and female virginity: men are conceded the right to dispose of their own bodies as they see fit; women are not. For a woman to remain a virgin represents an implicit challenge to contemporary social structures in which a woman's sexuality was at the disposition of her male kin. In some texts, virginity is explicitly portrayed as a challenge to the authority of a woman's family and to her father's right to dispose of her in marriage. In the thirteenth-century Occitan text La Vie de Sainte Enimie by Bertran de Marseille, for instance, Enimie, daughter of King Clovis of France, sets out on her road to sainthood when she confronts her father with her refusal to marry and her desire to remain a virgin: 24 « Payre senhor, per re del mon non auray marit ni espos, mas Jhesu Crist lo glorios, al cal ay promes castetat tener e ma virginitat.»

150

Lord, my father, for nothing in this world will I take a husband or spouse, except for Jesus Christ the glorious, to whom I have promised my chastity and virginity. Knowing that her father will insist upon her marriage, Enimie begs her 'spouse who created her' (174) to save her virginity. He obliges and she becomes a leper so that no man will want her. After a period of suffering, an angel announces in a vision that she must go to a fountain in the Gevaudan, the water of

192


which can cure her. She goes to bathe and is duly cured. She is as joyful as her entourage and thanks Jesus 'her spouse' (512). When she tries to return to her father, her leprosy returns, only to be cured when she bathes again. Enimie understands God's will and founds a convent on the edge of the Tarn. The text recounts at length the miracles which then surround her life: she confronts the devil in person and from beyond the grave prevents her brother Dagobert from removing her remains and taking them to Paris. In many respects Sainte Enimie is typical of hagiographical narratives. It invests a place with holy significance and guarantees the authenticity of the relics to be found there. It presents a female saint as the Bride of Christ, a theme to which I will return shortly, and uses a common hagiographical motif: rebellion against the family. In his study of kinship in Occitan saints' lives Gerard Gouiran shows how all the saints to whom texts are devoted reject their family in some form, lending truth to Jesus' claim to have come to cause strife between son and father, between daughter and mother (Matthew X. 35); Nancy Vine Durling makes a similar point about Alexis in the Vie de Saint Alexis.25 Enimie's defiance of her family comes in two waves: she resists her father's wish to marry her; then she confounds her brother's attempt to take her holy remains back to Paris. Enimie's virginity is repeatedly stressed (see 1-2, 77-9, 173-6, 237-40 and so on). Indeed, given that she suffers no martyrdom and becomes a saint simply because she announces her intention to remain a virgin, virginity is the main, possibly the only ingredient of her sainthood. It is, of course, possible to be a saint without being a virgin, but in narratives like those devoted to Foi, Marguerite and Enimie, virginity is symbolically central in the construction of female saints' femininity. However, it is overdetermined by having social as well as spiritual connotations. The Gregorian reforms mark not simply the Church's attempt to put its own house in order, but also a concerted effort to extend influence on lay society. As already indicated, an important feature of this process was the Church's legislation on


193

marriage and its interference from the beginning of the twelfth century in the regulation of aristocratic marriage. The effect in hagiography of the Church's assault on one of the cornerstones of lay marriage practice and aristocratic society generally kinship — will be examined in the next section. But another key feature of the Church's view of marriage was that marriage required the consent of both partners, whereas in lay practice a woman had to marry whomsoever her male kin chose for her. In fact the Church had always in theory insisted on the necessity of consent and it continued to ignore coercion when it suited, but from the mid-twelfth century onwards there is evidence of a growing awareness of the theoretical importance of consent. 26 La Vie de Sainte Enimie, like many saints' lives, portrays a woman exercising her right to choose whether to marry, and her right to regulate her own sexuality. It constitutes a challenge to social discourses from the position of the Church as it undermines the family's right to dispose of women as it chooses. Virginity obviously has spiritual value in vernacular saints' lives, but various elements indicate that the writers of these texts were engaging with social as much as spiritual concerns and that their spiritual view of virginity is bounded by contemporary social and cultural structures. For instance, one striking feature of the texts is the eroticism with which the sponsa Christi metaphor is presented. This motif serves to define the female protagonist in relation to her marital status and has an ancient pedigree in commentaries on the Song of Songs}1 However, when transposed into the vernacular the lexis through which it is expressed makes it resonate with erotic courtly overtones: Dieus no volia que s'en anes, ni que la soa amor perdes, ni per las honors terrenals perdes los gauchs celestials.

560

Enimie

God did not want her to leave, nor did he want to lose her love, nor for earthly concerns did he want her to lose celestial joy. Of course the Latin cognates of amor and gauch would not be out of place in a Latin religious text, but in a vernacular saint's life

194


in which the central figure is referred to as midons (19), or dompna (331, 637, 864 and so on), key terms for the lady within the courtly lyric, they contribute towards an appropriation of the object of veneration of courtly poets, or more precisely towards her removal from their sphere of influence. The appropriation of secular discourse is evident elsewhere. Enimie wants to meet her maker intact, just as a bride wants to be a virgin on her wedding night: « Senher Dieus, plen de gran dolsor, garda mon cors de dissonor, que no • m puescha penre talen d'aquest deliech lait e puden, per so que tu • m pueschas aver casta, munda al tieu plazer.»

180

185

Lord God, full of sweetness, protect my body from dishonour, so that I do not take a liking for that vile and stinking pleasure, and so that you can have me as you want me, chaste and pure. In another context the collocation aver al tieu plazer would have strong erotic overtones. If it is important for aristocratic families to be able to dispose of their daughters in the marriage market - we should remember that Enimie is a king's daughter - many saints' lives challenge this practice and they do so in terms that recall the language of lay eroticism. There is a dialectic here between religious and secular discourses, and it seeks to undermine lay discourses of sexuality. If texts like the Vie de Sainte Enimie appear to endorse a woman's right to choose, to what extent are they good for women? From the late twelfth century onwards there is evidence of an increase in female monasticism:28 more and more women preferred religious orders to marriage or remarriage. This could be seen as part of the same phenomenon as the kind of discourse apparent in saints' lives. In hagiography women's preference for virginity and their resistance to their families' attempts to marry them off are presented as legitimate and admirable on a symbolic level, even if they are coupled with physical punishment and mutilation. In real life women may have felt their lives were less constrained and less subject to the control of men


195

if they entered religious communities and lived chastely, than if they remained in lay society. Women who entered religious communities - whether as unmarried women, or as widows were refusing to be objects of exchange between men, were avoiding the dangers of childbirth, and escaping from subjection to the sexual demands of men. Of course, some women were no doubt forced to enter religious communities either literally or by circumstance, but for others it was arguably an empowering decision and hagiography provided symbolic models in the form of virgin saints who devoted their sexuality to God which such women could use to justify and naturalize their chosen way of life.29 That virginity and chastity were seen as having social as well as spiritual benefits is evident from a number of texts. For instance a useful point of comparison to French and Occitan saints' lives is the contemporary Middle English Hali Meibhad (1180-1220), which is addressed to young women.30 It exalts at length the spiritual merits of virginity and the advantages of becoming the Bride of Christ, but it also engages with more earthly matters. The addressees are explicitly told that for a young woman the alternative to virginity is the prospect of being ' a serf to a man and his slave, to do and suffer all that he pleases, however little she likes it' (p. 5). The unremitting sexual demands of men are portrayed as singularly unattractive, but the text also works hard to allay the fears young women may have about renouncing marriage and childbearing. Virgins are reassured that they do not need a man to provide for their maintenance and food and they are told that the joys of spiritual parenting far outweigh those of physical parenthood. Hali Meibhad is highly suggestive of what the symbolic value of virginity might have been to real women and helps to explain why some women enjoyed hagiography. However, any benefits for women the Church's post-Gregorian policies and doctrines may have produced, were probably not an intentional effect of Church actions. If, from the late twelfth century, increasing numbers of women were flocking to religious communities, so were increasing numbers of men and there is some evidence of hostility from the Church hierarchy to

196


the establishment of new foundations for women. This suggests that the enthusiasm for female monasticism came from the women themselves, not from the men who ran the Church. 31 The stress in some texts on the spiritual advantages which freedom from the sexual demands of men brought women is probably not a consequence of proto-feminist tendencies within the Church, but rather an obvious strategy for writers who wished to undermine the interests of lay men. If some women profited from the Church's view of virginity and chastity, this is because of the way they used religious symbols and read the texts and images which contained them, not because the Church was actively trying to help them. The stress the Church placed upon consent was not a policy designed to liberate women, but a strategy for undermining the authority of lay men, hence the blind eye which the Church turned in practice to forced marriages. It has been argued that the view of virginity which emerges from hagiography is subversive of the norms of medieval society, but no aspect of official Church policy in the Middle Ages can really be considered subversive and such a contention betrays a misapprehension of the Church's power and position in medieval society and culture.32 If the treatment of virginity in hagiography subverts lay social structures, this is done from the position of an alternative, but equally powerful and patriarchal establishment. Hagiography which elevates virginity inscribes competing masculine discourses, not the contestation of patriarchy by women, even though some women may have been able to use the texts to their own ends. That hagiographical texts about female virgins were written primarily in the interests of men, and not of women, is also evident from the overt denigration of female sexuality and femininity inherent in the view of virginity they perpetrate and from the rampant violence and brutality inflicted on women's bodies in so many saints' lives. Virginity is elevated precisely because it represents a negation of what the clerical writers think women are: sexual objects with uncontrollable libidos which make them unworthy and dangerous subjects. The female body is viewed as a source of sin for men as well as women and the virgin is elevated precisely because she denies the innate


197

vileness of her body. Women who used saints' lives as a source of empowering models in their own lives surely also had to internalize an extremely negative view of women's bodies, which may help to explain the mortification of the flesh some devout medieval women inflicted on themselves. Women may have been liberated from the sexual demands of men by entering religious communities, but they were also implicitly accepting a doctrine that encouraged them to think of their own bodies with disgust and horror. Caroline Walker Bynum is surely right to argue that some women in the late Middle Ages even managed to use this extremely negative view of the female body as an empowering discourse, revelling in the potential it afforded for the atonement which would bring them close to Christ (see for a brief summary the epilogue to Holy Feast, pp. 297-302), but at what cost to themselves? There is a further aspect to the denigration and brutalization of the female body in hagiography. As Jocelyn Wogan-Browne remarks 'Though the virgin may desire and choose her preferred bridegroom, Christ, she is shown stripped, whipped, beaten and dismembered for maintaining her choice.' 33 Kathryn Gravdal makes the same point, but takes the argument a step further. Noting that hagiographical texts frequently portray and to a large extent legitimate violence against women she speculates that ' part of the attraction of these stories lay in the contemplation of violence against the female body' {Ravishing Maidens, pp. 24-5). As Gravdal argues this violence is often of a sexual nature, whether explicitly (the removal of breasts) or obliquely (the penetration of the female body with spears or other sharp objects). The universal subtext of saints' lives about women is forced sex, in other words rape, as is evident when virgin martyrs like Foi or Marguerite, or more fortunate virgins like Enimie, pray to God to save their virginity. Hagiographical texts about women are deeply voyeuristic, dressing up in a pious framework the most horrific attacks on women, which the women in question are portrayed as welcoming. Certain scenes, when abstracted from their context, have much in common with modern pornography depicting bondage and mutilation. The value of martyrdom as a sign

198


of faith and self-sacrifice was no doubt clear to medieval audiences, but is there not also an element of pleasure implicit in the numerous descriptions of the violation of nubile female bodies? The centrality of female virginity is just one manifestation of hagiography's obsession with sex and its engagement with social as well as spiritual matters. The next section will broaden the exploration of some of the issues raised in relation to virginity by investigating further the importance of kinship in vernacular saints' lives and by setting the genre's treatment of this theme in relation to other vernacular literary genres. KINSHIP: SAINTS, SIN AND ROMANCE

The theoretical importance of consent in the Church model of marriage may have had an important influence on the portrayal of female saints as virgins; I suggested earlier in this book that it may have also affected the treatment of women in courtly texts. However, consent is just one aspect of the doctrine on marriage which the Church was striving to impose on lay society in the twelfth century. Another important, though not unrelated, feature of the Church's policy on marriage, was its attack on lay kinship structures, which encouraged endogamy. 34 Throughout the twelfth century the Church sought to impose ever more stringent rules regarding prohibited degrees of consanguinity. It is no coincidence that kinship is an important theme in twelfth-century hagiography. How do treatments of kinship and virginity interact in the genre? As I have suggested, a saint's decision to remain a virgin represents a challenge to the authority of her or his father and therefore to the authority of the entire kin-group, who in medieval French aristocratic society would expect to be able to dispose of young men and all women in marriage as they saw fit. That this challenge is a deliberate strategy is evident from other elements of hagiography, such as the metaphoric use of words designating kinship to denote the saint's religion. For example, Dacien asks Foi about her faith in the terms:' Ara donzella, voill audir/dequalparatgevolsservir' (228-9: 'nowdamsel, I want to hear which lineage you will serve'). Similarly, in the Vida

Saints', sex and community

199

de Sant Honorat, the hero's initial encounter with Christianity is formulated in terms of kinship: Jesus is a ' rey que es de gran paraie' (223: 'a king of very noble lineage'). Later Honorat's conversion is deemed by his father to be a betrayal of his lineage (797-800). The notion that the saint betrays his family for God is also an important theme in the Vie de Saint Alexis: 'plus aimet Deu que [tresjtut sun linage' (250: 'he loved God more than all his lineage'). But as the lines just quoted from the Chanson de Sainte Foi suggest, hagiography does not undermine or discard kinship; it subordinates physical, afinal kinship to the spiritual kinship of which all people may partake through God. 35 The virgin's metaphorical marriage to Jesus is more worthy than any earthly marriage she can make; the bonds individuals form with their brothers and sisters in Christ are richer than their biological bonds with real brothers and sisters. Similarly, the spiritual paternity of an abbot or bishop, the spiritual maternity of an abbess, provide more succour than real parents. Once again, the Church's discourse is bounded by the social structures of the culture in which it operates. 36 Hagiography does not reject kinship as valueless, it supplies an alternative model of kinship which displaces the deeply rooted model propagated by lay practices, one which may have been more attractive to individuals who did not want their lives regulated by their earthly families. Georges Duby's seminal work on the two medieval models of marriage and the Church's success in imposing its views on lay society is clearly influenced by the work of Claude Levi-Strauss on kinship, even though he rarely cites him directly. I have argued elsewhere that the distinction Duby draws between the lay model of kinship which encourages endogamy and the Church's which seeks to impose exogamy corresponds to LeviStrauss's distinction between elementary and complex structures of kinship (Gaunt, 'Si les anges', pp. 901-2). Aristocrats often preferred to keep marriage in the family if possible because this avoided the fragmentation of estates and power bases. If the Church's insistence on exogamy was probably not conceived as a deliberate strategy for undermining secular power bases, the effect benefited the Church. The power which complex rules

200


on consanguinity gave the Church to interfere in lay marriages was frequently exploited, particularly once the Church's authority to adjudicate and legislate on marriage was recognized. And a discourse which encourages individuals to renounce ties of kinship, possibly to give their wealth to the Church, obviously has a material basis.37 For Levi-Strauss a key element in all kinship structures, whether elementary or complex, is the prohibition of incest. Kinship structures depend upon the exchange of women between men, which means that for order to be maintained women must circulate between men in an orderly and regulated fashion. When a man sleeps with a woman to whom he is related and whom he ought to be putting into circulation, he contravenes what Levi-Strauss calls ' la regie de la reciprocity' {Structures, pp. 72-3). In blocking the circulation of women, incest leads to anarchy. The inference of the Church's constant insistence on the importance of observing prohibited degrees of consanguinity is that without the watchful eye of the Church on them, lay marriages are always potentially incestuous. Considered in relation to ' la regie de la reciprocity' virginity has two meanings, one of which makes it comparable to incest as an obstacle to the correct functioning of kinship structures. When she marries, a woman's virginity is a guarantee of the value of the sign which is transmitted between two men, or two kin-groups: in other words when a virgin marries, her virginity carries meaning for the men who exchange her as well as for her. On the other hand, a woman who chooses to remain a virgin causes the system to malfunction as dramatically as the incestuous man: both withdraw the prestigious sign from circulation. Virginity when guaranteed by a man determines the value of a woman; when chosen by a woman it constitutes a threat to social order. The Church's elevation of female virginity and its attack on lay kinship structures represent a dual-pronged assault on lay social structures. It comes therefore as no surprise that one of the most explicit medieval texts about incest is a popular saint's life, La Vie de Saint Gregoire, which may be read as an attempt to portray lay marriage practices as potentially incestuous and lay notions of kinship as trans-


201

gressive. This text also seems to imply that the shadow of incest underscores the portrayal of chivalric marriage in romance and once again shows how hagiography contests the values of other vernacular genres. La Vie de Saint Gregoire relates the legend of Pope Gregory ' le bon pecheur'. The child of an incestuous union between a brother and a sister whose parents have died, Gregory is abandoned as a baby and is brought up by a kindly abbot who finds him together with some money and some tablets which tell the shameful secret of his birth. As an adolescent Gregory discovers first that he is a foundling, then that his parents were brother and sister. His foster-father wants him to become a monk, but Gregory insists he must leave to become a knight. Covered in shame he departs to discover who his parents were, taking with him the tablets upon which his guilty secret is written. Meanwhile his father has died and his mother is left alone to defend her realm, besieged by men who want to marry her and take control of her land. Not knowing who she is, Gregory fetches up in her land, comes to her rescue and marries her. After the marriage Gregory takes to retiring to a chamber every night to read repeatedly and weep over the tablets which contain the secret of his birth. Eventually the truth comes out and Gregory departs to live as a penitent recluse, chained to a rock by the sea. Some years pass and when the incumbent Pope dies divine revelation indicates to the legates that they should elect a penitent who has been sitting on a rock for seventeen years. Being the obvious candidate, Gregory duly becomes Pope and in some versions his mother, ignorant once again of his identity, comes to Rome to confess her sins to the new Pope and is briefly reunited with her son before taking the veil. This was a popular narrative in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are numerous manuscripts of the Old French poem and well-known Middle English and Middle High German versions.38 Anita Guerreau-Jalabert rightly sees the Old French poem as a mise en scene, written from the Church's point of view, of tensions regarding marriage practices and she attributes the text's wide dissemination to its attention to matters which preoccupied contemporary thinkers as well as

202


the contemporary popular imagination ('Inceste', p. 1307). As she suggests, seeking to place the story in a continuous or ahistorical mythology of incest, in a tradition going back to classical narratives such as the Oedipus story, will only mask the extent to which the success of this story is due to and overdetermined by its historical context. My argument regarding the historical framework in which I think La Vie de Saint Gregoire should be read is similar to Guerreau-Jalabert's, but I shall also try to put the text in a literary framework with a view to showing how it contests the values of other vernacular literary genres. I shall argue that the text's treatment of kinship and the intergeneric dialogic process that this inscribes contribute towards a specific construction of masculinity within hagiography. It is made apparent in the prologue that the narrator will speak of an horrific sin and that his tale should be an example to us all (1—16). He does not initially say what the sin is, only that it is terrible to speak of it. This has the effect of increasing the horror of the sin whilst whetting our appetite to find out more. The narrator's insistence that this is an exemplary text about a sin we should all avoid implies that we may all be susceptible to it. After an exaltation of the merits of penitence, the revelation of the identity of the sinner and of his sin has considerable impact not just because the sin is so terrible, but because the sinner turns out to be a pope: Grans fu la colpe del crestien; Mais de ce li avint molt bien Que ne cheit en desesperance, Ains s'amenda par penitence, Ci que puis fu sains apostoiles: Ce fu mi sires saint Gregoires. Tant fu mesfait icist bons sire Dont je vos vueil la vie dire Que un suens uncles Pengendra, Une soe ante le porta. Encore fist li enemis Icel saint ome faire pis, Quar serorges devint son pere, E maris fu sa charnel mere!

45

50


203

The guilt of the Christian was great, but great good came of it, for he did not despair, rather his atonement through penitence was such that he became Pope: he was my lord Saint Gregory. This good lord, whose life I wish to tell you, sinned to such an extent that he was fathered by his uncle and born by his aunt. The devil made this holy man do even worse, for he became his father's brother-in-law and his mother's husband. The poet has used suspense to good effect here. Gregory's 'sin' is spectacularly horrific in the eyes of the implied audience, but it is also very rare, so the strategy of implying anyone in the audience may be guilty of it is a clever ploy to involve the listeners. If brother-sister incest is not unknown, how many children of such unions marry one of their parents? That Gregory becomes Pope is, of course, a measure of the power of repentance, atonement and of God's mercy. No sin is so great that God will not forgive it. But however important the themes of repentance and of God's mercy are in this narrative, the text is not simply an exemplary tale of a penitent sinner. To what extent has Gregory actually sinned? Can he be held accountable for his parents' incest? His own sin of incest is attributed to the devil's influence (51) and it will become clear later in the narrative that he does not know who his mother is when he marries her. Is he responsible then for his own incest? The text is not explicit about what constitutes sin from a doctrinal point of view, but it may be significant that in the twelfth century, influential, if controversial, thinkers began to argue that for an action to constitute a sin it must entail intent.39 I would suggest that the obfuscation of the notion of sin in Gregoire - the implication that one can sin without intent - is a deliberate strategy. As the narrator's revelations in the prologue make clear Gregory is held accountable for the sins of his fathers and for' sins' he did not intend to commit, even though this runs counter to contemporary ideas on the role of intention in sin. Perhaps anyone in the audience may after all be guilty of the dreadful sin which is the subject of the text. Since no one remembers his or her own birth, or more importantly his or her conception, how can anyone be sure who his or her parents are? The implications of the prologue become even more loaded as

204


the narrative advances, for it gradually emerges that Gregory's predicament is the result less of an unfortunate configuration of events, than of the shortcomings of society's marriage practices, kinship structures and customs. Gregory's penitence does not atone for his own sins, but for the sins of the world in which he lives. His reward for this is the papacy, but his penitence also entails his rejection of lay social structures and of the lay aristocratic model of masculinity. The roots of the brother-sister incest which leads to Gregory's conception are specifically located in a failure of feudal marriage practices. Gregory's grandfather (being a child of brother-sister incest his maternal and paternal grandfathers are one and the same person) dies without having arranged his daughter's marriage. This is dwelt upon by the narrator and seen as a fault. On his deathbed, Gregory's grandfather laments that he has been negligent in leaving his daughter defenceless and he consigns her to her brother (81-98). His dying moments are completely taken up with thoughts for his daughter and he asks Gregory's father to look after her ' en tel enor / Com freres deit faire seror' (127-8: 'in an honourable manner, as a brother does a sister'). The subsequent incest is certainly not what their father had in mind and as Guerreau-Jalabert also suggests ('Inceste', p. 1300) the implication of his last words and gestures is that he is responsible for what happens, that if he had properly discharged his duties as a father and arranged his daughter's marriage she would have been protected from the abuse which follows. The legend of Saint Gregory explores the consequences of a father failing to fulfil his duty to marry his daughter, and his responsibilities then passing to someone unworthy. The implications are that the system is liable to abuse and this is presented specifically as an indictment of masculinity rather than femininity for Gregory's mother is explicitly exonerated from any blame regarding the incest. As with Gregory's own incest in the prologue, Gregory's father's desire for his mother is attributed to the devil working in and through him (159). But whereas Gregory is unaware that he is committing incest, his father is conscious of what he does. Gregory's conception is the result of a rape, and this serves to


205

exculpate his mother. In many medieval texts, as in many modern rape trials, rape victims are implicitly or overtly held responsible for the crime perpetrated against them, 40 but here the blame is laid fairly and squarely at the man's door. Whereas Gregory's father is presented as possessed by the devil and dies atoning for his sin, Gregory's mother is a virtuous maiden who falls victim to her brother's sexual violence. She also shows touching (and in the narrator's eyes) exemplary loyalty to her rapist: La pucele est forment hontose, E trespencive e angoicose. Car s'ele concent le peche, 195 En fin sont dampne e juge; Se ele fet noise ne cri, De tot a son frere honi. Ne dist one mot, anceis se tot: Ge fu del pis que faire pot. 200 Car, vueile ou non, l'a violee41 Sis freres, e despucelee. The maiden is extremely ashamed, struck with horror and anxiety. For if she consents to the sin they will both be damned and judged in the end; if she cries out and screams, she brings dreadful shame upon her brother. She says nothing, rather she keeps quiet: this was the worst thing she could do. For, whether she likes it or not, her brother has raped her and taken her virginity. Gregory's mother's response seems to anticipate the way in which some modern-day victims of child abuse, domestic violence or marital rape are known to protect their abusers or rapists. Here her reaction enhances the sympathy with which she is treated by the narrator, for unlike her brother she protects and loves her kin. When it becomes clear she is pregnant, her brother's first reaction is to suggest they have the child killed, but she vociferously rejects this (276-300). In one way or another, the men in Gregory's family are presented as at fault, and the only woman as a paragon of virtue and loyalty. The incest at the origin of Gregory's life represents an attack on the abuse of lay marriage practices by men. Given men control the system, the inference is that the system is unable to prevent such abuses. But the text's position on what would now

206


be termed child abuse is not proto-feminist in that the point is not a denunciation of the power of men within patriarchal kinship structures. The incest story interlocks with the rest of the narrative which portrays Gregory, before he embarks on this life of atonement, as torn between a chivalric and a clerical model of masculinity and presents his own incest as the result of his behaving like a romance hero. The text may lend itself to a proto-feminist reading for the modern reader, but considered in its literary context, it seems likely that its contemporary impact was quite different. When Gregory learns he is a foundling, his decision to leave the abbot who has become his adoptive father is a bid to avoid public disgrace: ' Sire, fait il, por amor De, Dones me conge de bon gre: En autre pai's vueil aler 1045 Ou ge puisse ma honte celer, Ou Ton ne sache qui ge sui; Quar grant duel ai e grant ennui Que Ton m'apele ici trove, E ge ne sai dont ge fu ne, 1050 Si vodrei en fin miaus morir Que itiel reproche sofrir.' ' Sire', he says, 'for the love of God, give me leave to depart: I want to go to another land where I can conceal my shame, where no one will know who I am; for I am greatly pained and deeply upset to be called a foundling here, and I do not know who my parents are and would rather die than be faced with such taunts.' Public disgrace (honte) is a central theme of a number of romances, for example the Charrete and Ipomedon, but the richest resonance of marked romance paradigms here is in the issue of Gregory's identity. His initial impulse to depart is motivated by a desire to conceal his identity, but paradoxically, Gregory's departure is quickly transformed into a quest to discover his lineage: ' Por eel Seignor qui fist le mont, Ja mais nul jor joie n'avrai Deci a tant que je savrai De quel lignage fu mis pere 1155 E quel feme fu ma mere.'


207

By the Lord who created the world, I will never be happy again until I know what lineage my father belonged to and who my mother was. The abbot shows Gregory the tablets on which are written the story of his conception, birth and abandonment, urging him not to depart, but Gregory insists that he must set out in search of his identity (1211-13). The voyage Gregory undertakes becomes a quest for his identity, a quest to discover his lineage, a quest for his father. The ' quest for the father' is, of course, at the core of a number of romance plots, notably Le Bel Inconnu and the Conte du Graal. When Gregory arrives in the land where he was born his profile as a romance hero and as an archetypal landless iuvenis is further enhanced by his coming to the rescue of a helpless woman, who is unable to defend her land from a predatory male who is seeking to marry her and thereby to seize her land. It is ironic that in this text a ' romance' hero's quest for his father leads him to marry his mother! From the outset, Gregory's abortive career as a romance hero is underscored by an opposition between chevalerie and clergie. But this is not simply the opposition between clerical learning and chivalric prowess which supplies an ironic counterpoint in many romances (see pp. 93-4). Here the opposition is overtly presented as an opposition between the attractions of being a man of the cloth or a knight. When begging him not to leave, Gregory's adopted father condemns knighthood out of hand not just as unworthy of a man with Gregory's learning (his clergie in this sense has been vaunted earlier, see 955-60), but as sinful in itself: Li abes dist: 'Je te dirai. Si tu maintiens chevalerie, L'arme sera en fin perie. Mais remain ci, en cest mostier, Et si ser Deu de ton mestier.' 1210 The abbot says: ' I will tell you. If you become a knight, your soul will ultimately perish. Stay here, rather, in this church and serve God with your learning.' The abbot is not opposing Gregory's desire to become a knight because of his particular circumstances; his condemnation of chevalerie is a blanket condemnation of the ethics of being a

208


knight. This has been made clear earlier in the discussion, when the abbot has praised the life of the monk: ' - Amis, dist il, gramaire ses E des letres es doctrines. Si te lou je en verite Que tu guerpisses cest pense, Moines seies a cest mostier; Se ne te chaut a foleier, Ne prendre or chevalerie, Que molt est mauvaise lor vie.'

1125

'My friend', he says, 'you know grammar and are well educated. I beg you in truth to give up this idea and to be a monk in this church. It is not fitting for you to be foolish and to be a knight now, for they lead most evil lives.' There are no good and bad knights here, as there are in profane texts. Chevalerie itself is presented as evil. Just as the implication of the episode at Gregory's grandfather's deathbed is that his failure to arrange a marriage for his daughter is responsible for the ensuing incest, so the implication here is that Gregory's own incest is a consequence of his decision to become a knight. It is thus intimated that the romance hero who sets out in search of his identity, on the quest for his father, and who seeks love in unknown lands runs the risk of incest in that without being sure of his own parentage, he cannot be sure that any match he makes is legitimate. Gregory's incestuous marriage to his mother proves the abbot, his adoptive and spiritual father, right. The risk of adopting chevalerie rather than clergie as a way of life was enormous. As Guerreau-Jalabert argues ('Inceste', p. 1311), the narrative seeks to prove that lay people must obey the Church's precepts on marriage and it is noteworthy in this respect that the incestuous marriage is portrayed as an entirely secular affair with no clergy present (1607-22). In some versions (for example all the texts in the B family of manuscripts) the composition of the council is listed specifically as comprising ladies, knights, bourgeois, villains and courtiers (see Bi 1261-3, B2 1459-61 and B on which see p. 271. 28 See particularly Irigaray's essay 'Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un', Ce Sexe, pp. 21-32; Burns draws upon Irigaray's theory of women's bodies in her reading of Berengier in Bodytalk. The extent to which Irigaray does (or does not) ground her theory of sexual difference in the body, and consequently the extent to which she is (or is not) essentialist, is of course contested. I myself am persuaded by Patricia Elliot's critique of Irigaray (see From Mastery to Analysis, pp. 147-89, particularly pp. 175-89). Elliot suggests that attempts to read Irigaray's account of the female body metaphorically are recuperative, and that her work should be read, rather, a la lettre, with all the problems this entails, ' not as oppressive or as a theory of oppression, but as a discourse of the oppressed' (p. 184). See also Fuss, Essentially Speaking, pp. 55-72, who argues that responses to Irigaray's work are conditioned by a fear of her essentialism and a failure to realize its political usefulness.

332

Notes to pages 263-jo

29 On the economic metaphor here see White, 'Sexual language', pp. 195-6. 30 On the value of the sum see NRCF, vi, p. 355. Of course, the penis is not the phallus, though patriarchal and heterosexist discourses elide the two; see Rubin, 'Traffic in women5, pp. 190-2. Rubin shows that if men ' have' the phallus, women ' are' the phallus, since the phallus is exchanged through them. The question of who ' has' the phallus in the fabliaux is interesting. As Butler has shown in her essay 'The lesbian phallus' {Bodies that Matter, pp. 57-91): 'if the phallus is an imaginary effect (which is reified as the privileged signifier in the structural order), then its structural place is no longer determined by the logical relation of mutual exclusion entailed by a heterosexist version of sexual difference in which men are said to "have" the phallus and women to " b e " the phallus' (p. 88). In a number of fabliaux women 'have', rather than ' are' the phallus. 31 There is a 'sister' fabliau in which a man fantasizes a market in which vaginas are for sale: Le Moigne, NCRF, 125; see Langfors's edition. 32 Compare the episode in branche ib of the Roman de Renart in which Hersent rejects Isengrin as completely worthless because he has been emasculated. See ed. Dufournet, branche ib, 2702-22. 33 Compare Burns's reading, Bodytalk, p. 57; on gender in this text see also Bloch, Scandal, pp. 75-6; Leupin, Barbarolexis, pp. 100-1; and White, 'Sexual language', pp. 205-6. On the woman's ingenuity see Lyons, 'Avoir', pp. 110-13. 34 On vaginas as mouths in the fabliaux see Burns, ibid., pp. 54-8; she argues throughout her book (rightly in my view) that when women's mouths are silenced in Old French literature, they find ways of communicating with their bodies. However, although I agree with Burns that it is significant that vaginas are frequently figured as mouths in the fabliaux, I find no evidence for her contention that women's mouths become vaginas (p. 55). 35 Lyons, 'Avoir', pp. 41-52, Muscatine, Fabliaux, pp. 101-4 and Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 102-3. For Nykrog this is becausefableors are unskilled. 36 Despite their preoccupation with sex, the fabliaux invariably portray straight sex, usually in the missionary position. Contrary to Bloch's assertion that part of the ' scandal' of the fabliaux is a grounding in sodomy (Scandal, p. 50), the texts restrict themselves to orthodox heterosexual practices. (The only text which even hints at sodomy is Le Sot Chevalier, although Trubert gets an eyeful of the Duke's anus and penetrates it with a pair of tweezers.) As Bloch in a later essay writes ('Postface', p. 536): 'il n'y a dans les

Notes to pages 2J0-8

333

fabliaux aucune trace d'homosexualite, de sodomie, de sadisme, de masochisme, de fellation, d'inceste ou de travestisme'. Nykrog reveals more about his own ideas on sex than those of the fableors when he writes 'les indecences que le conteur sait vraiment dangereuses sont absentes de ses contes; il n'aborde ni perversites heterosexuelles, ni homosexuality, ni aucune autre deviation erotique contre nature' (ibid., p. 215), but it is striking that the fabliaux's view of what constitutes acceptable sexual practices seems to coincide with that of penitential literature. 37 This calls to mind Le Chevalier a Vepee, on which see above, pp. 114-20. The fabliaux-like qualities of this text have been noted by a number of critics, for example Nykrog, ibid., pp. 96-7. 38 It is generally accepted that the most likely explanation of the presence of the morals is a parodic generic affiliation with the fable or exemplum, see Nykrog, ibid., p. 102. However, Nykrog's view that this makes the morals redundant or insipid is reductive and disregards the games many poets play by deploying a moral which is inappropriate to the narrative; see Lyons, 'Avoir', pp. 41-52 and Pearcey, 'Sentence'. 39 On discourse as the object, rather than the medium of representation, and the ironic distance this enables see Bakhtin, Esthetique, pp. 99-151. 40 On specific textual similarities between Cele qui sefistfoutre and Tvain, suggestive of direct parody, see NRCF, in, pp. 467-8. 41 See 'Avant propos', NRCF, pp. ix-xiv. For a very few texts the NRCF produces more than one texte critique, for example La Damoisele qui ne pooit oir parler defoutre, see pp. 280-4. Lyons briefly

considers the fabliaux^ textual mobility in relation to their interest in mutability, but she does not develop the argument and offers no sustained comparative readings of different versions of fabliaux, 'Avoir', pp. 24-6. 42 Rychner, Contribution. Volume 1 is a study; volume 11 contains editions of all the texts studied in volume 1 in all their different versions. 43 See pp. 24-5 for my view of Rychner's work on the chanson de geste. Although Rychner has different views of the textuality of chansons de geste and fabliaux, he appears to believe that most manuscript redactions of texts in both genres are corrupt and degradations. 44 Remaniements, p. 39. This is an excellent study of mouvance in one fabliau. 45 Compare particularly the troubadour Marcabru's insistent use of the theme, on which see Gaunt, 'Marginal men', pp. 63-4. 46 Pearcey has argued that Berengier is a parody of the chanson de geste

334

Notes to pages 278-85

rather than courtly romance, see: 'Chansons de geste' and 'An instance of heroic parody'. However, the daily excursions into the forest are strongly reminiscent of romance. In 'Relations between the D and the A versions of Berenger au long cuV, Pearcey offers a critique of Rychner's account of the relations between the manuscript redactions of Berengier, arguing (rightly in my view) that both are remaniements, rather than one representing a version closer to the original than the other. 47 I quote from the NRCF's diplomatic text, adding minimal punctuation; a more critical edition of A is in Rychner, Contribution, 11, pp. 100-9.

48 See Sedgwick, Epistemology, pp. 32-4 on the importance of understanding how different modes of oppression may overlay or counteract each other. The woman is subordinate to her husband until she undermines his position as a man within a certain ethical framework; she then asserts her position as a noble dealing with a vilain. 49 Textual mobility might have been less apparent to the medieval reader since s/he may only have had access to one version of the text, even though s/he would have realized other versions were permissible. 50 Knights in romance seek avantures, even if they do not always find them; for example see Chretien's Tvain, 177. 51 See NRCF, iv, pp. 59-60 and Rychner, Contribution, 1, pp. 84-91; Rychner's edition of D can be found in Contribution, 11, pp. 120-35. For a stimulating reading of La Damoisele, see Lyons, Avoir', pp. 74-752 As Bloch argues {Scandal, p. 90) fabliau characters seem to find it arousing when sex is transformed into a metaphorical narrative. He therefore concludes that narrative itself is the object of desire. 53 Lyons, 'Avoir', pp. 250-1 and 254-5. See also Muscatine, Fabliaux, pp. 35-6, Schenck, Fabliaux, pp. 119-20 and White, 'Sexual language', pp. 185-8. On the rise of a monetary economy, see Murray, Reason, pp. 26-58 on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Le Goff, La Civilisation, pp. 222-33. 54 See Murray, ibid., pp. 81-109. Murray illustrates the trajectories of 'social climbers'. He suggests that the growing theoretical rigidity of the Three Orders was in fact a reaction to the way in which class boundaries were being penetrated; the feudal nobility felt threatened by the growth in wealth and power of towns, by the mercantile classes, and by their ennoblement. On the tension between the feudal nobility and towns, see Le Goff, ibid., pp. 269-74.

Note to page 289

335

CONCLUSION

1 The Lais attributed to Marie de France are perhaps the most significant gap in the tour through the canon of Old French and Occitan literature I have undertaken in this book. They raise an array of problems on which modern scholars have been surprisingly reticent, given the daunting body of criticism devoted to them. What is a lai? Are all the lais attributed to 'Marie' in the Harley manuscript, which is used as the basis for modern editions, by the same person? On what grounds is it assumed that the 'Marie' mentioned in the prologue to Guigemar in the Harley manuscript (but in no other Old French source) is the same Marie to whom two other works, the Fables and the Espurgatoire Saint Patrice, are attributed? The Lais appear together in the form modern readers know (that of the Harley manuscript) and with the attribution to 'Marie' in no other Old French source and they are remarkably diverse in structure, style and ethos. Some modern scholars have contested 'Marie de France"s authorship of the Harley Lais; they have shown that the manuscript evidence for such an author is tenuous, arguing that 'Marie de France' is largely a nineteenth-century construct (one scholar calls her a fantome) and that the Lais are better viewed as a scribal compilation. (See Baum, Recherches and Masters, Esthetique, pp. 99-113 and 141-56.) Critics on the whole have preferred to ignore problems of attribution and authorship, and who can blame them ? Why question the existence of one of the very few vernacular women writers we have from the period? But the question of attribution is perhaps less fraught than the question of authorship, and I hope to return in a later study to the significance of the attribution of the Harley Lais to a woman writer and to the treatment of gender in the Lais as a collection.

Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Where more than one edition of a text is cited, the edition usually referred to is marked with an asterisk. Abelard: Peter AbelarcTs Ethics, ed. D. E. Luscombe (Oxford, 1971) Alan of Lille: The Plaint of Mature, trans. James J. Sheridan (Toronto, 1980) Aliscans, ed. Claude Regnier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1990) Ami et Amile: Chanson de geste, ed. Peter F. Dembowski (Paris, 1969) Arnaut de M a r u e l h : Les Poesies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil,

ed. Ronald G.Johnston (Paris, 1935)

Bernart de V e n t a d o r n : Bernard de Ventadour: Troubadour du XIIe siecle,

ed. Moshe Lazar (Paris, 1966) Beroul: The Romance of Tristran, ed. Alfred Ewert (Oxford, 1939) Bertran de Marseille: La Vie de Sainte Enimie, ed. Clovis Brunei (Paris, 1916) Castelloza: William D. Paden J r et al., 'The poems of the trobairitz Na Castelloza', RP, 35 (1981-2), 158-82 Cercamon: // trovatore Cercamon, ed. Valeria Tortoreto (Modena, 1981) La Chanson de Guillaume, ed. Francois Suard (Paris, 1991) La Chanson de Roland: Les Textes de la 'Chanson de Roland3, ed. Raoul

Mortier, 10 vols. (Paris, 1940-4): in particular 11 (1941: Venice 4); iv (1943: Ghateauroux); v (1942: Venice 7); vi (1942: Paris) La Chanson de Roland, ed. Gesare Segre, trans. Madeleine Tyssens, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1989) La Chanson de Roland, ed. Ian Short (Paris, 1990)* La Chanson de Sainte Fqy, ed. Ernest Heopffner and P. Alfaric, 2 vols. (Strasbourg, 1926) Chevalier a Ve'pee: in Two Old French Gawain Romances, ed. D. D. Roy

Owen and Ronald C.Johnston (Edinburgh and London, 1972) 336

Bibliography

337

Chretien de Troyes: Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1970) Clige's, ed. Alexandre Micha (Paris, 1957) Tvain (Le Chevalier au Lion), ed. T. B. W. Reid (Manchester, 1942) Le Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1963) Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), ed. Felix Lecoy, 2 vols. (Paris, 1975) Clemence of Barking: The Life of St. Catherine, ed. William Macbain

(Oxford, 1964) Couronnement de Louis: Les Redactions en vers du Couronnement de Louis, ed.

Yvan G. Lepage (Paris and Geneva, 1978) Daurel et Beton, ed. Charmaine Lee (Parma, 1991)* Daurel et Beton, ed. Arthur S. Kimmel (Chapel Hill, 1971) Eneas: Roman du XIF siecle, ed. J. J. Salverda de Grave, 2 vols. (Paris, 1929) Fabliaux: Nouveau Recueil Complet des Fabliaux, ed. Willem Noomen and

Nico van den Boogaard, 1 (Assen, 1983), 11 (Assen, 1984), m (Assen and Maastricht, 1986), iv (Assen and Maastricht, 1988), v (Assen and Maastricht, 1990); ed. Willem Noomen, vi (Assen and Maastricht, 1991); vn (Assen and Maastricht, 1993)*

Recueil general et complet des fabliaux des XHF et XIVe siecles, ed.

Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, 6 vols. (Paris, 1872-90) Flamenca: Roman occitan du XIIF, ed. Jean-Charles Huchet (Paris, 1988) Floire et Blancheflor, ed. Jean-Luc Leclanche (Paris, 1983) Girart de Roussillon, ed. W. Mary Hackett, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953-5) Girart de Vienne par Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, ed. Wolfgang van Emden

(Paris, 1977) Giraut de Borneil: The Cansos and Sirventes of the Troubadour Giraut de

Borneil, ed. Ruth V. Sharman (Cambridge, 1989) Guilhem de Bergueda: Edicidn critica, ed. Martin de Riquer, 2 vols. (Abadia de Poblet, 1971) Hali Meidhad: in Medieval English Prose for Women from the Katherine

Group and Ancrene Wisse, ed. Bella Millet and Jocelyn WoganBrowne (Oxford, 1990), pp. 2-43 Heloise: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice

(Harmondsworth, 1974) Hue de Rotelande: Ipomedon, ed. Anthony J. Holden (Paris, 1979) Jaufre Rudel: // canzoniere dijaufre Rudel, ed. Giorgo Chiarini (Rome, 1985) Jean Renart: Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, ed. Felix Lecoy

(Paris, 1962) Jourdain de Blaye, ed. Peter F. Dembowski (Paris, 1991)

338

Bibliography

Le Moigne: Langfors Arthur, 'Le fabliau du Moine', Romania, 44 (I9I5- 1 ?), 559-63

Marcabru: Les Poesies completes du troubadour Marcabru, ed. Jean-Marie-

Lucien Dejeanne (Toulouse, 1909) Marie de France: Lais, ed. Alfred Ewert (Oxford, 1944) Monk of Montaudon: Les Poesies du Moine de Montaudon, ed. Michael J.

Routledge (Montpellier, 1977) Mystere tfAdam, ed. Paul Studer (Manchester, 1918) Orson de Beauvais, ed. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1899) Peire d'Alvernhe: Peire dfAlvernha: Liriche, ed. Alberto del Monte (Turin, 1955) Peire Rogier: The Poems of the Troubadour Peire Rogier, ed. Derek E. T.

Nicholson (Manchester, 1976) Peter Damian: The Book of Gommorah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices, trans. Pierre J. Payer (Water-

loo, Ontario, 1982) Piramus et Tisbe: Poeme du XIP siecle, ed. C. de Boer (Paris, 1921) Prise a"Orange: Les Redactions en vers de la Prise a"Orange, ed. Claude

Regnier (Paris, 1966) Raimbaut d'Aurenga: The Life and Works of the Troubadour Raimbaut

a"Orange, ed. Walter T. Pattison (Minneapolis, 1952) Raimon Jordan: Le Troubadour Raimon-Jordan, ed. Hilding Kjellman (Paris and Uppsala, 1922) // trovatore Raimon Jordan, ed. Stefano Asperti (Modena, 1990) Raoul de Cambrai, ed. Sarah Kay (Oxford, 1992) Renaut de Beaujeu: Le Bel Inconnu, ed. G. Perrie Williams (Paris, 1926) Roland a Saragosse: in Le Roland Occitan, ed. Gerard Gouiran and

Robert Lafont (Paris, 1991), pp. 33-127 Roman de la Rose, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris, 1974) Roman de Renart, ed. Jean Dufournet, 2 vols. (Paris, 1985) Roman de Silence: A Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Verse-Romance by Heldris

de Cornudlle, ed. Lewis Thorpe (Cambridge, 1972) Rutebeuf: Oeuvres completes, ed. Michel Zink, 2 vols. (Paris, 1989-90)* Oeuvres completes, ed. Edmond Faral and Julia Bastin, 2 vols. (Paris, i960) Sequence of St Eulalia: in Historical French Reader: Medieval Period, ed.

Paul Studer and E. G. R. Waters (Oxford, 1924), pp. 26-7 Thomas: Les Fragments en vers du Tristan de Thomas, ed. Bartina H. Wind

(Geneva, i960) Trobairitz: der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen hqfischen Lyrik. Edition

des Gesamtkorpus, ed. Angelica Rieger (Tubingen, 1991) Trubert: in Fabliaux erotiques, ed. Luciano Rossi and Richard Straub,

Bibliography

339

with an afterword by R. Howard Bloch (Paris, 1992), pp. 345-529 Vida de Sant Honorat, ed. Ingegard Suwe (Uppsala, 1943) Vida de Sancta Marguarida: Alfred Jeanroy, 'La Vie proven9ale de Sainte Marguerite', Annales du Midi, 11 (1899), 5-55 Vie de Saint Alexis, ed. Christopher Storey (Oxford, 1946) Vie de Sainte Euphrosine: Raymond T. Hill, 'La Vie de Sainte Euphrosine', RR, 10 (1919), 159-69 and 191-232 Vie de Sainte Marie UEgyptienne: Versions en ancien et en moyenfrangais, ed. Peter F. Dembowski (Geneva, 1977) Vie du Pape Saint Gregoire: Huit versionsfrangaises medievales de la legende du bonpecheur, ed. Hendrik B. Sol (Amsterdam, 1977) Virgil: P. Vergeli Maronis: Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969) Wace: Le Roman de Rou de Wace, ed. Anthony J. Holden, 3 vols. (Paris, I97O-3) La Vie de Sainte Marguerite, ed. Elizabeth A. Francis (Paris, 1932) CRITICISM, HISTORY, THEORY

Adams, Alison, 'Godefroy de Leigni's continuation of the Lancelot', FMLS, 9 (i974)5 295-9 Adler, Alfred, 'Eneas and Lavine: puer et puella senes\ Romanische Forschungen, 71 (1959), 73-91 ' Auberi le Bourgignon: Schema formel et destinee', Romania, 90 (1969), 455-72 Aebischer, Paul, Rolandiana et Oliveriana, recueil d* etudes sur la chanson de geste (Geneva, 1967) Allen, Peter L., The Art of Love: Amatory Fiction from Ovid to the Romance of the Rose (Philadelphia, 1992) Altman, Charles F., 'Two types of opposition and the structure of Latin saints' lives', MH, 6 (1975), 1-11 Archibald, Elizabeth, 'Incest in medieval literature and society', FMLS, 25(1989), 1-15 Aston, Stanley C , ' The saint in medieval literature', MLR, 65 (1970), xxv-xlii Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953) Aurell I Cardona, Marti, 'La Deterioration du statut de la femme aristocratique en Provence (X e -XII e siecles)', LMA, 91 (1985), 5-32 Bakhtin, Mikhail/P. N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore and London, 1978)

340

Bibliography

Bakhtin, Mikhail, Esthetique et theorie du roman, trans. Daria Olivier with a preface by Michel Aucouturier (Paris, 1978) The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, 1981) Baldwin, John W., 'Five discourses of desire: sexuality and gender in Northern France around 1200', Speculum, 66 (1991), 797-819 Battaglia, Salvatore, 'II " compagnonaggio" di Orlando e Olivieri', Filologia Romanza, 5 (1958), 113-42 Baum, Richard, Recherches sur les cewores attributes a Marie de France

(Heidelberg, 1968) Baumgartner, Emmanuele,' Les Citations lyriques dans Le Roman de la Rose de Jean Renart', RP, 35 (1981-2), 260-6 ' Quelques remarques sur l'espace et le temps dans Raoul de CambraV, in La Chanson de geste et le my the carolingien: Melanges Rene Louis, 2

vols. (Mayenne, 1982), 11, pp. 1010-19 'Trouveres et losengiers\ CCM, 25 (1982), 171-8 Chretien de Troyes: Tvain, Lancelot, la charrette et le lion (Paris, 1992)

Beauvoir, Simone de, Le Deuxieme Sexe, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949) Bee, Pierre, 'L'Antithese poetique chez Bernard de Ventadour', in Melanges Boutiere (Liege, 1971), pp. 107-37

La Lyrique frangaise au moyen age (XIIe-XIIIe): Contribution a une typologie des genres poetiques medievaux. Etudes et textes, 2 vols. (Paris,

1977-8) '« Trobairitz» et chansons de femme: contribution a la connaissance du lyrisme feminin au moyen age', CCM, 22 (1979), 235-62 'Le Probleme des genres chez les premiers troubadours', CCM, 25 (1982), 31-47 Bedier, Joseph, Les Fabliaux: Etudes de litterature et d'histoire litteraire du

moyen age, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1895) Les Legendes epiques: Recherches sur la formation des chansons de geste, 4

vols. (Paris, 1914-21) Benton, John F., 'The court of Champagne as a literary center', Speculum, 36 (1961), 551-91 'Clio and Venus: an historical view of medieval love', in The Meaning of Courtly Love, ed. F. X. Newman (Albany, 1968), pp. 19-42 ' " Nostre Franceis n'unt talent de fui'r ": the Song of Roland and the enculturation of a warrior class', Olifant, 6 (1979), 237-58 Berg, R. J . , ' Les Deux Scenes du cor dans la Chanson de Roland", RN, 30 (1989-90), 115-23 Biddick, Kathleen, 'Genders, bodies, borders: technologies of the visible', Speculum, 66 (1993), 389-418

Bibliography

341

Blakeslee, Merritt R., 'Apostrophe, dialogue and the generic conventions of the troubadour canso\ in The Spirit of the Court, ed. Glyn S. Burgess and Robert A. Taylor (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 41-51 Bloch, R. Howard, Medieval French Literature and Law (Berkeley, 1977) Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle

Ages (Chicago and London, 1983) The Scandal of the Fabliaux (Chicago and London, 1986) Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago

and London, 1991) 'Postface', in Fabliaux erotiques, ed. Luciano Rossi and Richard Straub (Paris, 1992), pp. 531-45 Bogdanow, Fanni,' The love theme in Chretien de Troves' " Chevalier de la Charrette'", MLR, 67 (1972), 50-61 Boiron, Franchise and Payen, Jean-Charles, ' Structure et sens du Bel Inconnu", LMA, 76 (1970), 15-26 Boswell, John, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the

Fourteenth Century (Chicago and London, 1980) The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europefrom Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York and London,

1988) 'Revolutions, universals and sexual categories', in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml

Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey J r (London, 1991), pp. 17-36 Boutet, Dominique, 'Les Chansons de geste et Paffermissement du pouvoir royal (1100-1250)', Annales, 37 (1982), 3-14 Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1985) Bowie, Malcolm, Lacan (London, 1991) Brahney, Kathleen J., 'When Silence was golden: female personae in the Roman de Silence', in The Spirit of the Court, ed. Glyn S. Burgess

and Robert A. Taylor (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 52-61

Brault, Gerald J., 'Sapientia dans la Chanson de Roland9, in Societe Rencesvals: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference, ed.

Geoffrey Robertson-Mellor (Salford, 1977), pp. 85-104 'The Song of Roland 778-1978', Olifant, 6 (1978), 201-12 Brook, Leslie C , 'Ganelon's path to treachery in the rhymed versions of the Chanson de Roland', in The Troubadours and the Epic: Essays in

Memory of W. Mary Hackett, ed. Simon Gaunt and Linda M. Paterson (University of Warwick, 1987), pp. 169-89 ' La Traitrise et la vengeance: Ganelon dans les versions rimees de la « Chanson de Roland»', in Actes du XF congres international de

la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1990), 1, pp. 87-101

342

Bibliography

'The concluding laisses of the post-Oxford Roland manuscripts', Olifant, 14 (1989), 19-29 ' The Alexandrine sequence in the post-Oxford Roland manuscripts', Olifant, 15 (1990), 13-32 Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation

in Early Christianity (London and Boston, 1989) Brownlee, Kevin, 'Transformations of the Charrete: Godefroi de Leigni rewrites Chretien de Troves', Stanford French Review, 14 (1990), 161-78 Bruckner, Mathilda Tomaryn, 'Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot)', in The Romances of Chretien de Troyes: A Symposium, ed. Douglas

Kelly (Lexington, KY, 1985), pp. 132-81 'Na Gastelloza, trobairitz, and the troubadour lyric', RN, 25 (1985), 239-53 ' An interpreter's dilemma: why are there so many interpretations of Chretien's Chevalier de la Charrette?', RP, 40 (1986), 159-80

'Intertextuality', in The Legacy of Chretien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1987-8), 1, pp. 224-65 4 Fictions of the female voice: the women troubadours', Speculum, 67 (1992), 865-91 Brundage, James A., Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe

(Chicago and London, 1987) Buckbee, Edward J., ' Erec et Enide\ in The Romances of Chretien de

Troyes: A Symposium, ed. Douglas Kelly (Lexington, KY, 1985), pp. 48-88 Burgess, Glyn S., Contribution a Vetude du vocabulaire pre-courtois (Geneva,

1970) Burgwinkle, William, 'Knighting the classical hero: homo/hetero affectivity in Eneas', Exemplaria, 5 (1993), 1-43 Burns, E.Jane, 'The man behind the lady in troubadour lyric', RN, 25 (1985). 254-70

Body talk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia,

1993)

Busby, Keith,

The Character of Gauvain in Old French Literature

(Amsterdam, 'The characters ed. Norris J. (Amsterdam,

1980) and the setting', in The Legacy of Chretien de Troyes, Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, 2 vols. 1987-8), 1, pp. 57-89

Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

(New York and London, 1990) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (London and New

York, 1993)

Bibliography

343

Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982) ' The complexity of symbols', in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrel and Paula Richman (Boston, 1986), pp. 1-20 Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and London, 1987) '"...And woman his humanity": female imagery in the religious writing of the later Middle Ages', in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, ^ i ^ P P - 151-79 Cadden, Joan, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge, 1993) Calin, William C , The Old French Epic of Revolt: Raoul de Cambrai, Renaudde Montauban, Gormont et Isembard (Geneva and Paris, 1962) The Epic Quest: Studies in Four Old French Chansons de Geste (Baltimore, 1966) 'Un univers en decomposition: Raoul de Cambrai\ in Actes du VF congres de la Societe Rencesvals (Aix-en-Provence, 1974), pp. 427-38 'The exaltation and undermining of romance: Ipomedon\ in The Legacy of Chretien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1987-8), 11, pp. 111-24 'Women and their sexuality in Ami et Amile: an occasion to deconstruct?', Olifant, 16 (1991), 77-89 Caluwe, Jacques de,' Les Liens feodaux dans Daurel et Beton\ in Etudes dephilologie romane et ihistoire litteraire offertes a Jules Horrent (Liege, 1980), pp. 105-14 Camille, Michael, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989) Campbell, Kimberlee Anne, ' Fighting back: a survey of patterns of female aggressiveness in the Old French chanson de geste \ in Charlemagne in the North: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Societe Rencesvals, ed. Philip E. Bennett, Ann E. Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 241-51 Cazelles, Brigitte, 'Modele ou mirage: Marie l'Egyptienne', French Review, 53 (1979), 13-22 The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1991) Cazelles, Brigitte and Johnson, Phyllis A., Le Vain Siecle Guerpir: A Literary Approach to Sainthood through Old French Hagiography of the Twelfth Century (Chapel Hill, 1979) Certeau, Michel de, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Cowley (New York, 1988)

344

Bibliography

Chambers, Frank M., 'Las trobairitz soiseubudas\ in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden Jr (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 45-60 Ghinca, Mark, 'Introduction', Paragraph, 13 (1990), 103-4 Cholakian, Rouben C , The Troubadour Lyric: a Psychocritical Reading (Manchester and New York, 1990) Gingolani, Stefano Maria, 'Agiografia, epica, romanzo. Tradizioni narrative nella Francia del XII secolo', in Raccolte di vite di santi dal XIII al XVIII secolo: Strutture, messaggi fruizioni, ed. S. Boesh Gajano (Rome, 1990), pp. 65-89 ' Wace agiografo: considerazioni sulle tecniche poetiche delle origini (X-XII sec.)', Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 42 (1991), 121-35 ' The sirventes-ensenhamen of Guerau de Cabrera: a proposal for a new interpretation', Journal of Hispanic Research, 1 (1992-3), 191-200 Cocco, M., Lauzengier: Semantica e storia di un termini basilare nella lirica dei trovatori (Cagliari, 1980) Colby Hall, Alice M., 'Frustration and fulfilment: the double ending of Le Bel Inconnu\ Tale French Studies, 67 (1984), 120-34 Combarieu du Gres, Micheline de, VIdeal humain et Vexperience morale chez les hews des chansons de geste des origines a 1250, 2 vols. (Aix-enProvence, 1979) ' Une extreme ami tie', in Ami et Amile: Une chanson de geste de Vamitie, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 1987), pp. 15-38 Cook, Robert F., The Sense of the Song of Roland (Ithaca, 1987) Cooke, Thomas D., The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of the Comic Climax (Columbia and London, 1978) Cornell, Drucilla, Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law (New York and London, 1991) Crane, Susan, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in AngloNorman and Middle English Romance (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1986) Gender and Romance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, (Princeton, 1994) Crist, Larry S., 'A propos de la desmesure dans la Chanson de Roland: quelques propos (demesures?)', Olifant, 1.4 (1974), 10-20 Cropp, Glynnis M., Le Vocabulaire courtois des troubadours de Ve'poque classique (Geneva, 1975) 'Les Expressions mans j onehas et a (de) genolhos dans la poesie des troubadours', in // Miglior fabbro: Melanges Pierre Bee (Poitiers, 1991), pp. 103-12 Culler, Jonathon, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London, 1975) On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London, 1983)

Bibliography

345

Daniel, Norman A., Heroes and Saracens: A Re-Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste (Edinburgh, 1984) Delbouille, Maurice, 'Les Chansons de geste et le livre', in La Technique litteraire des chansons de geste (Liege and Paris, 1959), pp. 295-407 Dembowski, Peter F., 'Literary problems of hagiography in Old French', MH, 7 (1976), 117-30 Denis, Franchise, Barons et chevaliers dans Raoul de Cambrai: Autopsie d'un phenomene de glissement (New York, 1989) Dinshaw, Carolyn, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Madison and London, 1989) Diverres, A. H., 'Some thoughts on the sens of the Chevalier de la Charrette', FMLS, 6 (1970), 24-36 Dragonetti, Roger, La Technique poetique des trouveres dans la chanson courtoise (Bruges, i960) Dronke, Peter,' The rise of the medieval fabliau: Latin and vernacular evidence', in The Medieval Poet and his World (Rome, 1984), pp. 1 45-65 'The Provencal trobairitz Castelloza', in Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens, 1984), pp. 131-52 Dubrow, Heather, Genre (London and New York, 1982) Duby, Georges, 'Dans la France du Nord au XII e siecle: les "jeunes" dans la societe aristocratique', Annales, 19 (1964), 835-64 Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore and London, 1978) The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London, 1980) Le Chevalier, lafemme et le pretre (Paris, 1981) Male Moyen Age: De I'amour et autres essais (Paris, 1988) 'Communal living', in A History of Private Life II: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge MA and London, 1988), pp. 35-65 Duggan, Joseph J., The Song of Roland: Formulaic Style and Poetic Craft (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1973) 'L'Episode d'Aude dans la tradition en rime de la Chanson de Roland', in Charlemagne in the North: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Societe Rencesvals, ed. Philip E. Bennett, Ann E. Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 273-9 Durling, Nancy Vine, ' Hagiography and lineage: the example of the Old French Vie de Saint Alexis', RP, 40 (1986-7), 451-69 Earnshaw, Doris, The Female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric (New York, Bern, Frankfurt and Paris, 1988)

346

Bibliography

Elliot, Alison Goddard,' The power of discourse: martyr's passion and Old French epic', MH, 11 (1982), 39-60 Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (Hanover and London, 1987) Elliot, Patricia, From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytic Feminism (Ithaca and London, 1991) Enders, Jody, 'The logic of the debates in the Chanson de Roland\ Olifant, 14 (1989), 83-100 Faral, Edmond, Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et romans courtois du moyen age (Paris, 1913) Ferrante, Joan M., Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York, 1975) ' The conflict of lyric conventions and romance form', in The Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature, ed. George D. Economou and Joan M. Ferrante (Port Washington NY and London, 1975), pp. i35~77 'Notes towards the study of a female rhetoric in the trobairitz', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden Jr (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 63-72 Fleischman, Suzanne,' A linguistic perspective on the laisses similaires: orality and the pragmatics of narrative discourse', RP, 43 (1989-90), 70-89 Foucault, Michel, L Ordre du discours (Paris, 1971) Histoire de la sexualite I: La Volonte de savoir (Paris, 1976) Foulet, Alfred, 'Is Roland guilty of desmesure?', RP, 10 (1956-7), 145-8 Fowler, Alistair, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genre and Modes (Oxford, 1982) Frappier, Jean, Chretien de Troyes: UHomme et Voeuvre (Paris, 1957) Frappier, Jean and Grimm, R. R. (eds.), Le Romanjusqu'a lafindu XIIP siecle (Heidelberg, 1978) Freeman, Michelle A., lCliges\ in The Romances of Chretien de Troyes: A Symposium, ed. Douglas Kelly (Lexington KY, 1985), pp. 89-131 Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, 1957) Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (New York and London, 1989) Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and London, 1991) Gaunt, Simon, 'Sexual difference and the metaphor of language in a troubadour poem', MLR, 83 (1988), 297-313 Troubadours and Irony (Cambridge, 1989) 'Poetry of exclusion: a feminist reading of some troubadour lyrics', MLR, 85 (1990), 310-29

Bibliography

347

'The significance of Silence', Paragraph, 13 (1990), 202-16 'Le Pouvoir d'achat des femmes dans Girart de Roussillon\ CCM, 33 i^0), 305-l6 ' Marginal men, Marcabru and orthodoxy: the early troubadours and adultery', MA, 59 (1990), 55-72 'Gay studies and feminism: a medievalist's perspective', Medieval Feminist Newsletter, 13 (1992), 2-8 ' From epic to romance: gender and sexuality in the Roman d? Eneas', RR,8$ (1992), 1-27 ' Si les anges avaient un sexe: l'hagiographie occitane et son rapport avec la poesie des troubadours', in Actes du IIP congres international de VAssociation Internationale d'Etudes Occitanes, ed. Gerard Gouiran 3 vols. (Montpellier, 1993), in, pp. 895-906 ' Straight minds/queer wishes in Old French hagiography: La Vie de Saint Euphrosine', GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1 (1994) 69-87. Geertz, Clifford, 'Religion as a cultural system', in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Ban ton (London, 1966), pp. 1-42 Gerard, Albert, 'L'Axe Roland-Ganelon: valeurs en conflit dans la Chanson de Roland'', LMA, 75 (1969), 445-66 Gilbert, Jane, ' Comparing like with like: identity, identicalness and difference in selected medieval French and English narratives', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Cambridge, 1993) Girolamo, Costanzo di, / trovatori (Turin, 1989) Glasser, Marc, 'Marriage in medieval hagiography', Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, NS 4 (1981), 3-34 Gold, Penny Schine, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago and London, 1985) Goldin, Frederick, The Mirror of Narcissus in the Courtly Love Lyric (Ithaca, 1967) Goodich, Michael, Vita perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Stuttgart, 1982) Goody, Jack, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983) Gouiran, Gerard, ' Les Saints et leurs families dans les vies de saints occitanes', Senefiance, 26 (1989), 469-86 Gowans, Linda, Cei and the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge and Woodbridge, 1988) Gravdal, Kathryn, Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody in French Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Lincoln, NB and London, 1989) Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia, 1991)

348

Bibliography

' Metaphor, metonymy and the medieval women trobairitz', RR, 83 (1992), 411-26 Green, Dennis H., Irony in the Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 1979) Greenberg, David F., The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago and

London, 1988) Gruber, Jorn, Die Dialektik des Trobar (Tubingen, 1983) Grunmann-Gaudet, Minette,' From epic to romance: the paralysis of the hero in the Prise d'Orange', Olifant, 7 (1979), 22-38 Guerreau, Alain, 'Renaud de Bage: Le Bel Inconnu, structure symbolique et signification sociale', Romania, 103 (1982), 28-82 Guerreau-Jalabert, Anita,' Sur les structures de la parente de l'Europe medievale', Annales, 36 (1981), 1028-49 ' Inceste et saintete: la Vie de Saint Gregoire en franc,ais (XII 6 Siecle)', Annales, 43 (1988), 1291-319 Guiette, Robert, 'D'une poesie formelle en France au moyen age', Revue des Sciences Humaines, 54 (1949), 61-8

GuthrieJeriS., 'The JE (U) in Le Bel Inconnu', RR, 75 (1984), 147-61 Haidu, Peter, Aesthetic Distance in Chretien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Cliges and Perceval (Geneva, 1968)

'Realism, convention, fictionality and the theory of genres in Le Bel Inconnu', Esprit Createur, 12 (1972), 37-60

'Romance: idealistic genre or historical text?', in The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon (Roch-

ester MI, 1984), pp. 1-46 The Subject of Violence: the Song of Roland and the Birth of the State

(Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1993) Hall, Robert A., 'Ganelon and Roland', Modern Language Quarterly, 6 (1945), 263-9 Halperin, David M., 'Sex before sexuality: pederasty, politics and power in classical Athens', in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the

Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chaunceyjr (London, 1991), pp. 37—53 Hanning, Robert W., The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance (New

Haven and London, 1977) Harman, Gerald, 'Why does Oliver die before the Archbishop Turpin?', RN, 14 (1972-3), 376-86 Harvey, Ruth E., 'The troubadour Marcabru and his public', RMS, 14 (1988), 47-76 The Troubadour Marcabru and Love (London, 1989) Heffernan, Thomas J., Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the

Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988) Herlihy, David, 'Did women have a renaissance?' MH, 13 (1985), 1-22

Medieval Households (Cambridge MA and London, 1985)

Bibliography

349

Herman, Gerald, 'The "Sin against Nature" and its echoes in medieval French literature', Annuale Mediaevale, 17 (1976), 70-87 Horrent, Jules, La Chanson de Roland dans Us litteratures frangaise et espagnole au moyen age (Liege and Paris, 1951) Huchet, Jean-Charles, 'Les Femmes troubadours et la voix critique', Litterature, 51 (1983), 59-90 Le Roman medieval (Paris, 1984) 6 U Eneas: un roman speculaire', in Retire le Roman d* Eneas, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 1985), pp. 63-81 UAmour discourtois: La "Fin'Amors"

chez les premiers troubadours

(Toulouse, 1987) Hult, David, 'Lancelot's two steps: a problem of textual criticism', Speculum, 61 (1986), 836-58 'Lancelot's shame', RP, 42 (1988), 30-50 'Reading it right: the ideology of text editing', RR, 79 (1988), 74-88 'Steps forward and steps backwards: more on Chretien's Lancelot', Speculum, 64 (1989), 307-16 'Author/narrator/speaker: the voice of authority in Chretien's Charrete\ in Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance

Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover and London, 1989), pp. 76-96 Hunt, Tony, 'Abelardian ethics and Beroul's Tristan', Romania, 98 (I977)» 5OJ-4O 'The tragedy of Roland: an Aristotelian view', MLR, 74 (1979), 791-805 'The emergence of the knight in France and England 1000-1200', in Knighthood in Medieval Literature, ed. W. H.Jackson (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 1-22 'Irony and the rise of courtly romance', German Life and Letters, 35 (1981-2), 98-104 Chretien de Troyes: Tvain (London, 1986) Huot, Sylvia, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca and London, 1987) Hurley, Anthony E., 'Justifying the male: the function of the poem in Bernart de Ventadorn and Na Castelloza', Tenso, 8 (1992), 26-41 Hurley, Margaret,' Saints' legends and romance again: secularization of structure and motif, Genre, 8 (1975), 60-73 Irigaray, Luce, Ce Sexe qui n'en estpas un (Paris, 1977) Jakobson, Roman, 'Linguistics and poetics', in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London and New York, 1988), pp. 32-57 Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London, 1981)

350

Bibliography

Jauss, Hans Robert, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis, 1982) Jeanroy, Alfred, La Poe'sie lyrique des troubadours, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1934) Johnson, Lesley, 'Women on top: antifeminism in the fabliaux?', MLR,7S (1983), 298-307 Jones, George F., The Ethos of the Song of Roland (Baltimore, 1963) Jones, Rosemary, The Theme of Love in the Roman diAntiquite (London, 1972) Kaehne, Michael, Studien zur Dichtung Bernarts von Ventadom, 2 vols. (Munich, 1983) Karras, Ruth Mazo, 'Holy harlots: prostitute saints in medieval legend', Journal of the History of Sexuality, 1 (1990), 3-32 Kasprzyk, Krystyna, 'Pour la sociologie du fabliau: convention, tactique et engagement', Kwartalnik Neofilogiczny, 23 (1976), 153-61 Kasten, Ingrid, Frauendienst bei Trobadors und Minnesdngern im 12. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1986) Kay, Sarah,' Ethics and heroics in the Song ofRoland*, Neophilologus, 62 (1978), 480-91 'Love in a mirror: an aspect of the imagery of Bernart de Ventadorn', MA, 52 (1982), 272-85 'La Composition de Raoul de CambraV, Revue Beige de Philologie et cTHistoire, 62 (1984), 474-92 'The character of character in the chansons de geste\ in The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon (Rochester MI, 1984), pp. 475-98 'Derivation, derived rhyme and the trobairitz', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden Jr (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 157-82 Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge, 1990) 'Seduction and suppression in "Ami et Amile'", French Studies, 44 (1990), 129-42 'Investing the wild: women's beliefs in the chansons de geste\ Paragraph, 13 (1990), 147-63 ' Compagnonnage, desordre social et heterotextualite dans " Daurel et Beton "', in Actes du XF congres international de la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1990), 1, pp. 352-67 'La Representation de la feminite dans les chansons de geste', in Charlemagne in the North: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Societe Rencesvals, ed. Philip E. Bennett, Ann E. Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 223-40 Keller, Hans-Erich, 'The Song of Roland: a mid-twelfth century song of propaganda for the Capetian kingdom', Olifant, 3 (1976), 242-58

Bibliography

351

'Roland a Saragosse ou la vengeance d'Olivier', in Atti del secondo congresso internazionale della Association Internationale d?Etudes Occi-

tanes, ed. Giuliano Gasca Queirazza, 2 vols. (Turin, 1993), i, pp. 221-9

Kellogg, J u d i t h , Medieval Artistry and Exchange: Economic Institutions and Literary Form in Old French Narrative (New York, 1989) Kelly, Douglas, Sens and Conjointure in the Chevalier de la Charrette (The

Hague and Paris, 1966) Kendrick, Laura, The Game of Love: Troubadour Wordplay (Berkeley,

1988) Kennedy, Elspeth, 'The quest for identity and the importance of lineage in thirteenth-century French prose romance', in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood II: Papers from the Third

Strawberry Hill Conference, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 70-86 Kibler, William W., 'The Roland after Oxford: the French tradition', Olifant, 6 (1979), 275-92 Kliippelholz, Heinz, 'The continuation within the model: Godefroi de Lagny's "solution" to Chretien de Troyes' Chevalier de la Charrete\ Neophilologus, 75 (1991), 637-40 Kohler, Erich, Trobadorlyrik und hofischer Roman (Berlin, 1962)

'Quelques observations d'ordre historico-sociologique sur les rapports entre la chanson de geste et le roman courtois', in Chanson de Geste und hofischer Roman: Heidelberger Kolloquium 30. Januar ig6i

(Heidelberg, 1963), pp. 21-30 ' Observations historiques et sociologiques sur la poesie des troubadours', CCM, 7 (1964), 27-51 'Sens et fonction du terme "jeunesse" dans la poesie des troubadours', in Melanges Crozet, 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), 1, pp. 569-83 UAventure chevaleresque: Ideal et realite dans le roman courtois, trans.

Eliane Kaufholz (Paris, 1974) Sociologia della Fin' Amor: saggi trobadorici, trans. Mario Mancini

(Padua, 1976) Koss, Ronald K., ' Raoul de Cambrai and inheritance disputes in feudal society', Olifant, 13 (1988), 97-110 Kristeva, Julia, La Revolution du langage poetique (Paris, 1974)

Krueger, Roberta L., 'Floire et Blanchefior's literary subtext: the 'version aristocratique'", RN, 24 (1983-4), 65-70 ' Desire, meaning and the female reader in Le Chevalier de la Charrete\ in The Passing of Arthur: New Essays on Arthurian Literature, ed.

Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe (New York, 1988), pp. 3i-5i 'Double jeopardy: the appropriation of the heroine in four Old French romances of the Cycle de la Gageure\ in Seeking the Woman in

352

Bibliography

Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism, ed. Sheila Fisher and Janet E. Halley (Knoxville, Tennessee, 1989), pp. 21-50 Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance (Cambridge, 1993) Kuster, Harry J., and Raymond J. Cormier, 'Old views and new trends: observations on the problem of homosexuality in the Middle Ages', Studi Medievali (series m), 25 (1984), 587-610 Lachet, Claude, La Prise cT Orange ou la parodie courtoise iune epopee (Paris, 1986) Lacy, Norris J., The Craft of Chretien de Trqyes: An Essay in Narrative Art (Leiden, 1980) 'Fabliau women', RN, 25 (1985), 318-27 Lasry, Anita Benaim, 'The ideal heroine in medieval romances: a quest for a paradigm', Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 32 (1985), 227-43 Lauretis, Teresa de, 'Upping the anti (sic) in feminist theory', in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (New York and London, 1990), pp. 255-70 Lazar, Moshe, Amour courtois etfin*amors dans la litterature du XIP siecle (Paris, 1964) Leclercq, Jean, Women and St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. MarieBernard Said OSB (Kalamazoo, 1989) Lee, Charmaine, 'I fabliaux e le convenzioni della parodia', in Prospettive sui fabliaux: Contesto, sistema, realizzazioni, ed. Alberto Limentani (Padua, 1976), pp. 3-41 Les Remaniements (TAuberee: Etude et textes (Naples, 1983) Le Gentil, Pierre, 'Reflexions sur la creation litteraire au moyen age', in Chanson de Geste und hofischer Roman: Heidelberger Kolloquium 30. Januar ig6i (Heidelberg, 1963), pp. 9-20 La Litterature frangaise au moyen age, 4th edn. (Paris, 1968) 'A propos de la demesure de Roland', CCM, 11 (1968), 203-9 The Chanson de Roland, trans. Frances F. Beer (Cambridge MA, 1969) Legge, M. Dominica, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters: The Influence of the Orders upon Anglo-Norman Literature (Edinburgh, 1950) Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963) Le Goff, Jacques, La Civilisation de VOccident medieval, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1982) Lejeune, Rita, 'La Naissance du couple litteraire «Roland et Olivier»', in Melanges Henri Gregoire, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1950), 11, pp. 371-401 'La Femme dans les litteratures franchise et occitane du XI e au X I P siecles', CCM, 20 (1977), 201-17 Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York and Oxford, 1986)

Bibliography

353

Leupin, Alexandre,'Raoul de Cambrai: La batardise de l'ecriture', RR, 79 (1988), 89-104 Barbarolexis: Medieval Writing and Sexuality', trans. Kate M. Cooper (Cambridge MA, 1989) Levi-Strauss, Claude, Les Structures elementaires de la parente, 2nd edn. (The Hague, 1967) Levy, Raphael, 'L'Allusion a la sodomie dans Eneas', Philological Quarterly, 27 (1948), 372-6 L'Hermite-Leclerq, Paulette, 'L'Ordre feodal (XI e -XII e siecles)', in Histoire des femmes en Occident 2: Le Moyen Age, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Paris, 1990), pp. 217-60 Liebertz-Griin, Ursula, Zur Soziologie des ' amour courtois' (Heidelberg, 1977) Limentani, Alberto, ' I fabliaux di Rutebeuf, in Prospettive suifabliaux: Contesto, sistema, realizzazioni, ed. Alberto Limentani (Padua, 1976), pp. 83-98 Ueccezione narrativa: La Provenza medievale e Varte del racconto (Turin, 1977) Lorcin, Marie-Therese, Fagons de sentir et de penser: Les Fabliaux frangais (Paris, 1979) Lyons, Gabrielle, 'Avoir and savoir: a strategic approach to the Old French fabliaux' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1992) Maclnnes, John W., 'Gloriette: the function of the tower and the name in the Prise a"Orange', Olifant, 10 (1982-3), 24-40 Maddox, Donald, The Arthurian Romances of Chretien de Troyes: Once and Future Fictions (Cambridge, 1991) 'Specular stories, family romance and the fictions of courtly culture', Exemplaria, 3 (1991), 299-326 Madika, Genevieve, 'La Religion dans Ami et Amile\ in Ami et Amile: Une chanson de geste de Famitie, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 1987), PP- 39-50 Marchello-Nizia, Christiane, 'Amour courtois, societe masculine et figures du pouvoir', Annales, 36 (1981), 962-82 Marechal, Chantal A. (ed.), In Quest of Marie de France, a TwelfthCentury Poet (Leweston NY, 1992) Marshall, John H., 'Le Vers au XII e siecle: genre poetique?', RLLO, 12-13 (1962-3), 55-63 Masters, Bernadette A., 'The distribution, destruction and dislocation of authority in medieval literature and its modern derivatives', RR, 82 (1991), 270-85 Esthetique et manuscripture: Le «Moulin a paroles» au moyen age (Heidelberg, 1992)

354

Bibliography

Matarasso, Pauline, Recherches historiques et litteraires sur «Raoul de Cambrai» (Paris, 1962) Matter, E. Ann, The Voice of my Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, 1990) McCracken, Peggy, 'The body politic and the queen's adulterous body in French romance', in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 38-64 Meillassoux, Claude, Maidens, Meals and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community (Cambridge, 1981) Meneghetti, Maria Luisa, 'Una vida pericolosa: la "mediazione" biografica e l'interpretazione della poesia di Jaufre Rudel', CN, 40 (1980), 145-63 II pubblico dei trovatori: ricezione e riuso dei testi lirici cortesijino al XIV

secolo (Modena, 1984) Menendez Pidal, Raimon, La Chanson de Roland et la tradition epique des Francs, 2nd edn., trans. I.-M. Cluzel (Paris, i960) Mickel, Emmanuel J., 'The question of guilt in Ami et Amile\ Romania, 106 (1985), 19-35 'Ganelon after Oxford', Olifant, 13 (1988), 73-82 Ganelon, Treason and the 'Chanson de Roland' (University Park and London, 1989) Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics (London, 1985) 'Desire in language: Andreas Cappelanus and the controversy of courtly love', in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History, ed. David Aers (New York, 1986), pp. 11-33 '"She died because she came too late...": knowledge, doubles and death in Thomas's Tristan', Exemplaria, 4 (1992), 105-33 Monson, Don A.,' L'Amour pur d'Andre le Chapelain et la poesie des troubadours', in Chretien de Troyes and the Troubadours: Essays in Memory of the Late Leslie Topsfield, ed. Peter S. Noble and Linda M. Paterson (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 78-89 'Jaufre Rudel et l'amour lointain: les origines d'une legende', Romania, 106 (1985), 36-56 ' Lyrisme et sincerite: sur une chanson de Bernart de Ventadorn', in Studia occitanica: In Memoriam Paul Remy, ed. Hans-Erich Keller, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo, 1986-7), 1, pp. 143-59 'Bernart de Ventadorn et Tristan', in // Miglior fabbro: Melanges Pierre Bee (Poitiers, 1991), pp. 385-400 Moore, Henrietta L., Feminism and Anthropology (Cambridge, 1988) Murray, Alexander, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978) Muscatine, Charles, The Old French Fabliaux (New Haven and London, 1986)

Bibliography

355

Nappholz, Carol,' (Re)locating lost trobairitz: the anonymous female voice in Provencal debate poems', Tenso, 7 (1992), 125-41 Nash, Suzanne, 'Rutebeuf's contribution to the Saint Mary the Egyptian legend', French Review, 44 (1971), 695-705 Nelli, Rene, UErotique des troubadours (Paris, 1963) Nichols, Stephen G. Jr, 'The spirit of truth: epic modes in medieval literature', New Literary History, 1 (1969-70), 365-86 Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New 4

Haven and London, 1983) Amorous imitation: Bakhtin, Augustin and the Roman a"Eneas', in Romance: Generic Transformation from Chre'tien de Troyes to Cervantes,

ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee (Hanover and London, 1985), pp. 47-73 Noble, Peter S., 'Kay the seneschal in Chretien de Troyes and his predecessors', RMS, 1 (1975), 55-70 Love and Marriage in Chretien de Troyes (Cardiff, 1982)

Norris, Christopher, Derrida (London, 1987) Nykrog, Per, Les Fabliaux, 2nd edn. (Geneva, 1973) Oilier, Marie-Louise,' Demande sociale et constitution d'un " genre ": la situation dans la France du X I P siecle', Mosaic, 8 (1975), 207-16 Ortner, Sherry B. and Harriet Whitehead, 'Accounting for sexual meaning', in Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender

and Sexuality, ed. Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1-27 Owen, D. D. Roy, 'The secular inspiration of the Chanson de Roland', Speculum, 37 (1962), 390-400 ' Profanity and its purpose in Chretien's Cliges and Lancelot', FMLS, 6 (i97)> 37-48 'Two more romances by Chretien de Troyes?', Romania, 92 (1971), 246-60 'Theme and variations: sexual agression in Chretien de Troyes', FMLS, 21 (1985), 376-86 ' Aspects of desmesure: Chanson de Roland, Raoul de Cambrai and Girart de Roussillon', in The Troubadours and the Epic: Essays in Memory of

W. Mary Hackett, ed. Simon Gaunt and Linda M. Paterson (University of Warwick, 1987), pp. 143-68 Paden, William D. Jr, 'Introduction', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden J r

(Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 1-27 'Checklist of poems by the trobairitz', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden J r

(Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 227-37

356

Bib liography

'Bernart de Ventadour le troubadour devint-il abbe de Tulle?', in // Miglior fabbro: Melanges Pierre Bee (Poitier, 1991), pp. 401-13 Padgug, Robert, 'Sexual matters: rethinking sexuality in history', in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey J r (London, 1991), pp. 54-64 Paquette, Jean-Marcel, 'Le Texte en metamorphe: contribution a une poetique des laisses similaires d'apres six versions de la "scene du cor" de la Chanson de Roland', in The Nature of Medieval Narrative, ed. Minette Grunmann-Gaudet and Robin F.Jones (Lexington KY, 1980), pp. 99-122 Paris, Gaston,' Etudes sur les romans de la table ronde: Lancelot du Lac. II. Le Conte de la Charrette", Romania, 12 (1883), 459-534 La Litterature frangaise au moyen age, 5th edn. (Paris, 1913) Parkes, M. B., 'The date of the Oxford manuscript of La Chanson de Roland (Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS. Dibgy 23)', MR, 10 (1985), 161-75 Paterson, Linda M., Troubadours and Eloquence (Oxford, 1975) The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c. 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1993) Patterson, Lee, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, 1987) Payen, Jean-Charles, Le Motif du repentir dans la litterature frangaise medievale (Geneva, 1968) 'Les Valeurs humaines chez Chretien de Troyes', in Melanges Rita Lejeune, 2 vols. (Gembloux, 1969), 11, pp. 1087-101 Pearcey, Roy J., 'Relations between the D and the A versions of Berenger au long cuV, RJV, 14 (1972), 173-8 'An instance of heroic parody in the fabliaux', Romania, 98 (1977), 105-8 '"Chansons de geste" and "fabliaux": "La Gageure" and "Berenger au long cul'", JVM, 79 (1978), 76-83 ' The source of Rutebeuf's "FrereDenise 5 ", JVM, 83 (1982), 118-26 'Sentence and solas in the Old French fabliaux', in The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, ed. Leigh A. Arathoon (Rochester MI, 1984), pp. 231-80 Petit, Aime, 'La Reine Camille dans le Roman cTEneas', Les Lettres Romanes, 36 (1982), 5-40 Picchio Simonelli, Maria, Lirica moralistica neW Occitania del XII secolo: Bernart de Venzac (Modena, 1974) Pichon, Genevieve, 'La Lepre dans Ami et Amile\ in Ami et Amile: une chanson de geste de Vamitie, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 1987), pp. 51-66

Bibliography

357

Pickens, Rupert T., 'Jaufre Rudel et la poetique de la mouvance', CCM, 20 (1977), 323-37 Pirot, Francois, Recherches sur les connaissances litteraires des troubadours occitans et Catalans des XIF et XIIF siecles (Barcelona, 1972) Poe, Elizabeth Wilson, 'A dispassionate look at the trobairitz', Tenso, 7 (1992), 142-64 Poirion, Daniel, 'De l'«Eneide» a l'«Eneas»: mythologie et moralisation', CCM, 19 (1976), 213-29 Polak, Lucie, Chretien de Troyes: Cliges (London, 1982) Prey, Brigitte, 'L'Archetype de la Vie du Pape Saint Gregoire\ Romania, 108 (1987), 461-83 Price, Jocelyn (see also Jocelyn Wogan-Browne), ' Floire et Blancheflor: the magic and mechanics of love', RMS, 8 (1982), 12-33 Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin, 1968) Regalado, Nancy Freeman, Poetic Patterns in Rutebeuf: A Study in Noncourtly Poetic Modes of the Thirteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1970) Renoir, Alain, 'Roland's lament: its meaning and function in the Chanson de Roland', Speculum, 35 (i960), 572-83 Ribard, Jacques, ' "Ami et Amile": une ceuvre carrefour', in Actes du XF congres international de la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1990), 11, pp. 155-70 Rich, Adrienne, 'Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence', Signs, 5 (1980), 631-60 Rieger, Dietmar, ' Le Motif du viol dans la litterature de la France medievale: entre norme courtoise et realite courtoise', CCM, 31 (1988), 241-67 Riquer, Martin de, 'Epopee jongleresque a ecouter et epopee romanesque a lire', in La Technique litteraire des chansons de geste, (Liege and Paris, 1959), pp. 75~84 Los trovadores, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1975) Robertson, Duncan, 'Poem and spirit: the twelfth-century French «life» of Saint Mary the Egyptian', MR, 7 (1980), 305-27 Robertson, Elizabeth, 'The corporeality of female sanctity in The Life of Saint Margaret', in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca and London, 1991), pp. 268-87 Roncaglia, Aurelio, 'Carestia', CN, 18 (1958), 121-37 ' Trobar clus: discussione aperta', CN, 29 (1969), 5-55 'Riflessi de posizioni cistercensi nella poesia del XII secolo: discussione sui fontamenti religiosi del "trobar naturau" di Marcabruno', in // cistercensi e il lazio (Rome, 1978), pp. 11-22

358

Bibliography

Rosenberg, Samuel N., 'Lire "Ami et Amile": le regard sur les personnages feminins', in Ami et Amile: une chanson de geste de

Famitie, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris, 1987), pp. 67-78 Rossi, Marguerite, 'Le Duel judiciaire dans les chansons du cycle carolingien: structure et fonction', in La Chanson de geste et le my the carolingien: Melanges Rene Louis', 2 vols. (Mayenne, 1982), 11, pp.

945-60 Rubin, Gayle, 'The traffic in women: notes on the "political economy" of sex', in Towards an Anthropology of Women, ed.

Rayner R. Reiter (New York and London, 1975), pp. 157-210 ' Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality', in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S.

Vance (Boston and London, 1984), pp. 267-319 Russ, J o a n n a , How to Suppress Women's Writing (London, 1983) Rychner, J e a n , La Chanson de geste: Essai sur Vart epique des jongleurs

(Geneva, 1955) Contribution a r etude desfabliaux: Variantes, remaniements, degradations, 2

vols. (Neuchatel and Geneva, i960) Sakari, Aimo, 'Azalais de Porcairagues: le joglar de Raimbaut d'Orange', NM, 50 (1949), 22-43, 56~87> 117-98 'Azalais de Porcairagues: interlocutrice de Raimbaut d'Orange dans la tenson Amies en gran cossirier?', Neophilogica Fennica, 45

(1987), 429-40 Sankovitch, Tilde, 'Lombarda's reluctant mirror: speculum of another poet', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women

Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden Jr (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 183-93 Schenck, Mary Jane Stearns, The Fabliaux: Tales of Wit and Deception (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1987) Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate, Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart: Zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Tubingen, 1980)

Schulenberg, Jane Tibbetts, 'Sexism and the celestial gynaeceum from 500-1200', journal of Medieval History, 4 (1978), 117-33 'The heroics of virginity: Brides of Christ and sacrificial mutilation ', in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and

Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse, 1986), pp. 29-72 'Female sanctity: public and private roles ca. 500-1100', in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens GA, 1988), pp. 102-25 'Saints' lives as a source for the history of women, 500-1100', in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T.

Rosenthal (Athens GA and London, 1990), pp. 285-320

Bibliography

359

Scott, Joan W., Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988) ' Deconstructing equality - versus - difference; on the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism', in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (New York and London, !99°)> PP- J 34748 '"Experience"', in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York and London, 1992), pp. 22-40 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, 1985) Epistemology of the Closet (New York and London, 1991) Segre, Cesare, 'La Premiere «scene du cor» dans la Chanson de Roland et la methode du travail des copistes', in Melanges Rita Lejeune, 2 vols. (Gembloux, 1969), 11, pp. 871-89 La tradizione della « Chanson de Roland» (Milan and Naples, 1974) Shahar, Shulamith, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, trans. Chaya Galai (London and New York, 1983) Shapiro, Marianne, 'The Provencal trobairitz and the limits of courtly love', Signs, 3 (1978), 560-71 Sheehan, Michael M., 'Choice of marriage partner in the Middle Ages: development and mode of application of a theory', Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 1 (1978), 1-33 Shirt, David J . , ' Chretien and the cart', in Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. W. Roth well, W. R. J. Barron, David Blamires and Lewis Thorpe (Manchester and New York, 1973), pp. 279-301 ' Godefroy de Lagny et la composition de la " Charrete"', Romania, 96 (1975), 27-52 ' The Dido episode in the Eneas: the reshaping of tragedy and its stylistic consequences', MA, 51 (1982), 3-17 'Metaphor as a structuring device in the Roman d*Eneas', RMS, 10 (1984), 91-108 Short, Ian, 'An early French epic manuscript: Oxford Bodleian Library, French e. 32', in The Medieval Alexander Legend and Romance Epic: Essays in Honour of David J. Ross, ed. Claire Izoz, Peter Noble and Lucie Polak (New York and London, 1982), pp. I73-9I Showalter, Elaine, 'Critical cross-dressing: male feminists and the woman of the year', in Men in Feminism, ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith (New York and London, 1987), pp. 116-36 Siciliano, Italo, Les Chansons de geste et Vepopee: Mythes, histoires, poemes (Turin, 1968) Siskin, H. Jay and Storme, Julie A., 'Suffering love: the reversed order in the poetry of Na Castelloza', in The Voice of the Trobairitz:

360

Bibliography

Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden J r (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 113-27 Smith, Jacqueline, 'Robert of Abrissel', in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 175-84 Solterer, Helen, 'At the bottom of mirage, a woman's body: Le Roman de la Rose of Jean Renart', in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 213-33 Spearing, A. C , The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge, 1993) Speer, Mary, ' Editing Old French texts in the eighties: theory and practice', RP, 45 (1991), 7~43 Stablein, Patricia Harris, 'The structure of the hero in the Chanson de Roland: being and becoming', Olifant, 5 (1977), 105-19 ' Catastrophe theory in reading narratives: a way to figure out Raoul de Cambrai and its role in the lyrics of Bertrand de Born', Olifant, 8 (1980), 3-28 Stevens, John, Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches (London, Still, Judith and Michael Worton, 'Introduction', in Intertextuality: Theories and Practice, ed. Michael Worton and Judith Still (Manchester and New York, 1990), pp. 1-44 Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983) Sturm, Sara, 'The "Bel Inconnu'"s enchantress and the intent of Renaut de Beaujeu', French Review, 44 (1971), 862-9 'The love interest in Le Bel Inconnu\ FMLS, 7 (1971), 241-8 'Magic in Le Bel Inconnu\ Esprit Createur, 12 (1972), 19-25 Suard, Francois, 'Le Personnage epique', in Societe Rencesvals: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference, ed. Geoffrey Robertson-Mellor (Salford, 1977), pp. 167-76 ' La Chanson de geste comme systeme de representation du monde', in Actes du XF congres international de la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1990), 11, pp. 241-68 Subrenat, Jean, Etudes sur Gaydon (Aix-en-Provence, 1974) 'Un duel judiciaire paradoxal entre deux serments ambigus dans "Ami et Amile"', in Actes du XIe congres international de la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1990), 11, pp. 269-84 Sutherland, D. R., 'L'Element theatral dans la canso chez les troubadours de Pepoque classique', RLLO, 12-13 (1962-3), 95 101 ~ Swanberg, Ellen,' Oraisons and liaisons: romanesque didacticism in La Vie de Sainte Marie VEgyptienne\ RN, 23 (1982), 65-71

Bibliography

361

Taylor, Andrew, 'The myth of the minstrel manuscript', Speculum, 66 (1991), 43-73 Thiolier-Mejean, Suzanne, Les Poesies satiriques et morales des troubadours du XIF siecle a la fin du XIIF siecle (Paris, 1978) Thompson, Richard H., 'The prison of the senses:fin*amor as a confining force in the Arthurian romances of Chretien de Troyes', FMLS, 15 (1979), 249-54 Todorov, Tzvetan, 'The origin of genre', New Literary History, 8 (1976), 159-70 Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, trans. Wlad Godzich (Manchester, 1984) Topsfield, Leslie T., Troubadours and Love (Cambridge, 1975) Chretien de Troyes: A Study of the Arthurian Romances (Cambridge, 1980 Tyssens, Madeleine, La Geste de Guillaume d9 Orange dans les manuscrits cycliques (Paris, 1967) 'Typologie de la tradition des textes epiques: les poemes frangais', in Actes du XF congres international de la Societe Rencesvals, 2 vols.

(Barcelona, 1990), 11, pp. 433-46 Uitti, Karl D., Story, Myth and Celebration in Old French Narrative Poetry 1050-1200 (Princeton, 1973) 'The clerkly narrator figure in Old French hagiography and romance', MR, 2 (1975), 394~4°8 'Women saints, the vernacular and history in early medieval France', in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca and London, 1991), pp. 247-67 Uitti, Karl D., and Foulet, Alfred (f), 'On editing Chretien de Troyes: Lancelot's two steps and their context', Speculum, 63 (1988), 271-92 van Emden, Wolfgang G., 'Rolandiana et Oliveriana: faits et hypotheses', Romania, 92 (1971), 507-31 ' Argumentum ex Silentio: an aspect of dramatic technique in the Chanson de Roland', RP, 43 (1989-90), 181-96 ' Some remarks on the Cambridge manuscript of the Rhymed Roland', in The Editor and the Text: In Honour of Anthony J. Holden, ed. Philip E. Bennett and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 58-69 Van Vleck, Amelia E., '"Tost me trobaretz fenida": reciprocating composition in the songs of Castelloza', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Padenjr (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 95-111 Memory and Re-creation in Troubadour Lyric (Berkeley, 1991)

362

Bibliography

Vauchez, Andre, La Saintete en Occident aux derniers siecles du moyen age

(Rome, 1981) 'Le Saint', in LHomme medieval, ed. Jacques le Goff (Paris, 1989), pp.345-80 Vinaver, Eugene, 'La Mort de Roland', CCM, 7 (1964), 133-43 Vitz, Evelyn Birge, Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology: Subjects

and Objects of Desire (New York and London, 1989) 'Chretien de Troyes: clerc ou menestrel? Problemes des traditions orale et litteraire dans les cours de France au XI I e siecle', Poetique, 81 (1990), 21-42 'From the oral to the written in medieval and renaissance saints' lives', in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate

Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca and London, i990> PP- 9 7 - " 4

W a r d S. L. G., Benedicta, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo, 1987)

Westoby, Kathryn S., 'Naming the father, naming the bride: woman as object in the Bel Inconnu of Renaut de Beaujeu', unpublished paper 'A new look at the fee in Arthurian romance', in The Spirit of the Court, ed. Glyn S. Burgess and Robert A. Taylor (Cambridge and Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 373-85 White, Sarah Melhado, ' Sexual language and human conflict in Old French Fabliaux', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24

(1982), 185-210 Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn (olim Jocelyn Price), 'Saints' lives and the female reader', FMLS, 27 (1991), 314-32 ' Queens, virgins and mothers: hagiographic representations of the abbess and her powers in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain', in Women and Sovereignty, ed. Louise Fradenburg (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 14-35 '"Clerc u lai, muine u dame": women and Anglo-Norman hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries', in Women and Literature in Britain 1150-1500, ed. Carol M . Meale (Cam-

bridge, 1993), pp. 61-85 ' T h e virgin's tale', in Femininst Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and all her Sect, ed. R u t h Evans and Lesley

Johnson, (London and New York, 1994), pp. 165-94 Work, Elizabeth P., 'The eleventh-century Song of Saint Fides: an experiment in vernacular eloquence', RP, 36 (1982-3), 366-85 Zaal, J . B. W., A leifrancesca: Etude sur les chansons de saint gallo-romanes du XIe siecle (Leiden, 1962) Zaddy, Zara P . , ' L e Chevalier de la Charrete and the De Amore\ in Studies

Bibliography

363

in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead,

ed. W. Rothwell, W. R. J. Barron, David Blamires and Lewis Thorpe (Manchester and New York, 1973), pp. 363-99 Chretien Studies: Problems of Form and Meaning (Glasgow, 1973) Zink, Michel, Roman rose et rose rouge: Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole de Jean Renart (Paris, 1979)

' Lubias et Belissent dans la chanson d'"Ami et Amile\ in VIIICongresso de la Societe Rencesvals (Pamplona, 1981), pp. 567-74 La Subjectivite litteraire: Autour du siecle de saint Louis (Paris, 1985)

'Chre'tien et ses contemporains', in The Legacy of Chretien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1987-8), 1, pp. 5-32 Zufferey, Francois,' Towards a delimitation of the trobairitz corpus', in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed.

William D. Paden J r (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 31-43 Zumthor, Paul, Essai depoetique medievale (Paris, 1972) Parler du Moyen Age (Paris, 1980) La Lettre et la voix: De la (litterature3 medievale (Paris, 1987)

Index

Abelard, Peter 321 n. 9, 324 n. 39 Alan of Lille 305 n. 17 Alexander III, pope 74, 181 Alfonso II of Aragon 318-19 n. 56 Aliscans 294 n. 5, 302 n. 62 Ami et Amile 44-52, 61-2, 63, 68—9, 83, 88, 137, 286, 306 n. 27 Arnaut Daniel 151 Arnaut de Maruelh 131-4, 143-5, I 5 I Auberi le Bourgignon 44-5 Azalais de Porcairagues 166—9, I7°~I>

Cest de la Dame qui aveine demandoit pour Morel 275 Chanson de Guillaume 25, 64-5, 187, 295 n. 7, 302 n. 61 Chanson de Roland (Chateauroux) 39-40, 299 n. 29 Chanson de Roland (Oxford) 4, 24-38, 51, 61-2, 186-7, 2 86, 295 n. 8, 298 n. 27, 299 n. 29, 305-6 n. 21 Chanson de Roland (Paris) 38-42, 44-5, 61-2, 63, 299 n. 29, 300 n. 32, 305—6 n. 21 Chanson de Roland (Venice 4) 29, 39 Bel Inconnu 103-13, 114, 121, 123, 148—9, Chanson de Sainte Foi ctAgen 187-90, 198, 207, 287, 314 n. 19 325 n. 47 Berengier au lone cul 253-6, 277—80, 333 n. chansons de geste 4, 8, 17, 22-70, 75, 82-3, 46

Bernart Arnaut d'Armagnac 318 n. 51 Bernart de Ventadorn 122-3, I 2 6 , 128—31, 132, 134, 140-2, 146-7, 151-7, 164, 176, 287, 311-12 n. 2, 318 n. 54, 319 n. 61 Beroul, see Tristan Bertran de Bar-sur-Aube, see Girart de Vienne Bertran de Marseille, see Vie de Sainte Enimie Borgoise d'Orliens, De la 255 canso 17, n o , 121, 122-79, *84, J94> 287, 289, 311-12 n. 2, 313 n. 8, 316 n. 39, 320 n. 4 Castelloza 173-9, 319 n. 60 Cele quifufoutue et desfoutue 258 Cele qui sefistfoutre sur la fosse de son mari 2 I

7 » 273-4, 333 n - 4° Cercamon 164, 317-18 n. 49

85-8, 136-7, 149, 184, 186-8, 276, 287, 320 n. 4, 321—2 n. 12, 322 n. 13, 330 n. 19, 333 n. 43, 333-4 n. 46

Chastelain de Coucy 123 Chaucer, Geoffrey 19—20 chevalerie 12, 93—4, 113, 207-12, 237, 278-9, 287, 325 n. 45 Chevalier a Vepee 115-20, 286, 333 n. 37 Chevalier de la Charrete 4, 92-103, 105, 108, 110, 123, 206, 310 n. 59 Chevalier quifistparler les cons, Le 256-7 Chretien de Troyes 76, 92-103, 114, 122, 309 n. 48, 311-12 n. 2 see also Erec et Enide; Clige's; Yvain; Chevalier de la Charrete; Conte du Graal (Perceval) Church, see gender and the Church Clara d'Anduza 178-9 class 10, 15-16, 42-3, 91, 123, i44~5> 237-9. 277-84, 328 n. 5

365

366

Index

Clemence of Barking, see Vie de Sainte Catherine clergie 12, 18, 93-4, 102-3, IJ3> 207-12, 213, 227, 228-32, 236, 237, 287, 325 n. 45 Clige's 96-7, 103, 114, 209-10, 330 n. 19 Comtessa de Dia 169-73, J7^5 J 79 consent (to marriage) 68, 74-5, 120, 193-7 Conte du Graal (Perceval) 92, 103, 105, 207, 314 n. 19 continuation 25, 54-6, 100-103, 302 n. 61, 309 n. 48 Couronnement de Louis 43, 301 n. 53 Dame escoliee, De la 251-3, 275, 330-1 n. 22 Damoisele qui ne pooit oi'r parler defoutre, La

257, 280-4 Damoisele qui sonjoit, La 269—71

Daurel et Beton 43, 52, 63, 66—9, 137 De'bat du C. et du C, Le 256-7 Des .Hi. dames 265-6 Eneas, see Roman d'Eneas Enfant quifu remis an soleil, V 331 n. 25 Erec et Enide 103, 109, 114 Esquiriel, V 271, 331 n. 27 Estula 331 n. 25 fabliaux 8, 17, 184, 234-85, 287-8 femininity 63-9, 71-2, 78-9, 89-90, 95, 103, 108-9, 113-21, 123-4, I2 5~6, 128-32, 134-5, J 59-6o, 170, 188, 196-7, 228-32, 233, 239-42, 273-4, 287-9 feudalism 18, 58-9, 84, 85, 91, 124, 132, 138, 142-7, 168-9, 170 Flamenca 120, 123, 127, 150, 306 n. 30, 311 n. 71, 325 n. 44 Floire et Blancheflor 85-90, 137, 251, 287 Frere Denise 242-8 Gaydon 44-5 Gender, theory of 1-2, 10-16, 28, 79—81, 84-5, 236, 240-1, 251, 252—3, 267, 287-8, 292-3 n. 29, 331 n. 28 Gender and the Church 74-5, 84, 120, 180-233 Gender and the community 42-4, 212-32 Genre, theory of 1-2, 3-10, 16

Girart de Roussillon 43, 51, 52, 63, 69, 295 n.7, 303 n. 67 Girart de Vienne 36-7, 50, 63 Giraut de Borneil 151, 318-19 n. 56 Godefroy de Lagny 100-2, 309 n. 48 Guerau de Cabrera 293 n. 38 Guilhem IX 42, 122-3, J 35 Guilhem de Bergueda 305 n. 17 Guillaume de Dole 123, 127-8, 138-40, 142, 287, 306 n. 30 hagiography 8, 17, 51, 136, 137, 180-233, 243, 287, 288, 330 n. 19 Hali Meidhad 195 Heldris de Cornualle, see Roman de Silence

Heloise 324-5 n. 39 Henry II of England 43, 76-7 heterosexuality 14, 79—85, 90-1, 332-3 n. 36 homophobia 77-85, 305 n. 17 homosexuality 16, 78—81, 90-1, 305 n. !9> 3 H - 5 n - 23> 332-3 n - 3 6 homosocial desire 80, 83-4, 85, 99, 135, 138-47 Hue de Rotelande, see Ipomedon identity 14, 28, 43-4, 47, 61, 73-4, 91-113, 206-7 ideology 1-2, 6-8, 10, 16, 17, 22-3, 26-7, 42-4, 50-2, 62, 65, 83-4, 102-3, 123, 135, 144-5, 179, 184, 188, 194-6, 199-201, 234-5, 273> 285, 287, 290 n.i incest 13, 200-12, 325 n. 39 intertextuality 8-9, 23, 24-5, 38-9, 45-6, 52-3, 61, 82-3, 86-90, 96-7, 103, 123, 149, 168—9, I7°? J ^4J 186-7, 193-4, 202, 206-12, 218-19, 235, 243, 249, 254, 274, 286-7 Ipomedon 114-15, 206, 305 n. 17 Isabella (trobairitz) 318 n. 51 iuvenes 77, 123, 207, 209 Jaufre 309 n. 46 Jaufre Rudel 122—3, 127—8 Jean Renart, see Guillaume de Dole

Jourdain de Blaye 44-5, 137, 303 n. 66 Jugement des cons, Le 239—42, 275

kinship 13-15, 136-8, 189-90, 191-4, 198-212, 324 n. 37

Index Lombarda 318 n. 51 Maignien quifoti la dame, Le 257 manuscript compilations 25, 44-5, 76, 85, 149, 291 n. 11, 309 n. 49 Marcabru 134, 137, 164, 314 n. 17 and n. 18, 317 n. 44, 318 n. 55, 333 n. 45 Maria de Ventadorn 318 n. 51 Marie de France 305 n. 17, 335 n. 1 marriage 13, 18, 63, 74-5, 76-7, 84, 120, 192—6, 199-200, 204-6, 208-9, 303-4 n. 8, 322-3 n. 23 masculinity 2-3, 23-62, 71-2, 78-9, 90, 93~4> 95> 102-3, 108-9, IJ3> 114-20, 123-4, J49~58, 190-1, 202-12, 227, 232-3, 259, 265, 270-4, 287, 288, 313 n. 13 misogyny 2, 79, 85, 110-11, 113-21, 129, 134, 164, 236, 241-2, 268-75, 283—4, 290—1 n. 2, 318 n. 51 Moigne, Le 332 n. 31 Monk of Montaudon 145-6 Mystere d'Adam 329 n. 8 Orson de Beauvais 52, 63, 303 n. 66 Ovid 122, 306 n. 24, 312 n. 3 Peire d'Alvernhe 315 n. 31, 318 n. 54, 319-20 n. 61 Peire Rogier 150 Perceval, see Conte du Graal Perdris, Les 331 n. 25 performance, gender as 14, 84-5, 247-8, 3*3 n - *3 Pescheor de Pont seur Saine, Le 266, 268 Pet au vilain, Le 238—9 Peter Damian 305 n. 17 Philippe-Auguste 43 Piramus et Tisbe 306 n. 28 Porcelet 275 Prise d?Orange 63, 69, 137, 303 n. 67 property 13, 69, 116-17, ^ i , 189, 200, 317 n. 46, 324 n. 37 Putains et les lecheors, Les 237—8, 329 n. 9 Quatre Sohais Saint Martin, Les 259—64, 268, 271 Raimbaut d'Aurenga 167-9, 311-12 n. 2, 319 n. 57 Raimbaut de Vaqueiras 318 n. 51

367

Raimon Jordan 132, 163-4 Raoul de Cambrai 43, 52-62, 63, 69, 137, 286, 294-5 n. 7, 314 n. 19 rape 94, 197, 204-5, 308 n. 40, 325 n. 40 and n. 41 remaniement 25, 38-42, 54, 213-28, 275-845 3°2 n. 62, 333-4 n. 46 Renaut de Beaujeu, see Bel Inconnu Roland a Saragosse 37 Roman £ Eneas 75-85, 92, 114, 287 Roman de la Rose 123, 305 n. 17 Roman de Renart 325 n. 40, 332 n. 32 Roman de Silence 20, 251, 305 n. 17, 313 n. 13, 330 n, 17 romance 8, 17, 71-121, 122-3, I27> J 3^J 138-40, 142-3, 148, 150, 184, 186, 206-12, 235, 278, 287, 320 n. 4, 321—2 n. 12, 330 n. 19 romans antiques 75—6 Rutebeuf 221-7, 238-9, 242-8, 326 n. 59 and n. 60, 329 n. 10, 330 n. 13; see also Frere Denise; Pet au vilain; Vie de Sainte Marie VEgyptienne Sequence of Saint Eulalia 185 sexuality 14, 74-5, 77-85, 90, 109, 185-98, 219, 267,321 n. 10, 332-3 n.36 sexual violence 94, 196-7, 205, 216, 275, 288 Siege de Barbastre 63 Sohait des vez, Le 264-5, 271 Sorisete des Estopes, La 266-7, 268 Sot Chevalier, Le 256-7, 331 n. 26, 332—3 n. 36 subjectivity 14, 71-2, 90-1, 92, 108, 124, 131, 136-8, 148-9, 159-60, 165, I 7°» J 73~9J 182-3, J87> 213, 223, 226, 288-9, 295 n. 8 Thomas of Britain, see Tristan Tresces, Les 255 Tristan (Beroul) 97, 109, 324-5 n. 39, 330 n. 19 Tristan (Thomas) 91, 92, 109 trobairitz 125, 158-79, 287, 289, 317 n. 44, 327 n. 65 Trois Bofus, Les 255 Trubert 248-51, 253, 258, 331 n. 25 Vallet aus douze fames, Le 271— 3 Vida de Sancta Margarida, La 190

368

Index

Vida de Sant Honorat, La 190, 198-9 Vie de Saint Alexis, La 190-1, 192, 199, 212—13, 322-3 n. 23, 326 n. 56 Vie de Saint Gre'goire, La 200-12, 216, 287 Vie de Sainte Catherine, La 213, 228—32, 289 Vie de Sainte Enimie, La 191—4 Vie de Sainte Euphrosine, La 243, 322 n.

Vie de Sainte Marie VEgyptienne, La (T)

214-21, 33011. 13 Vilain Mire, Le 236 Virgil 76, 78, 82 virginity 185—98, 200, 215—16, 243, 321 n. 7

Wace 76, 92, 93, 190, 216, 309 n. 49 see also Vie de Sainte Marguerite 13, 325 n. 41, 330 n. 13 and n. 17 Vie de Sainte Marguerite, La 190, 216, 322 women readers 2, 72, 87, 94, 112, 165, n. 20 213, 227-32, 288-9 Vie de Sainte Marie VEgyptienne, La (0)

220-1 Vie de Sainte Marie VEgyptienne, La

(Rutebeuf) 221-7

Yvain 92, 103, 109, 114, 120-1, 123, 254, 273, 311 n. 66, 333 n. 40, 334 n. 50

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH

General editor Malcolm Bowie (All Souls College, Oxford)

Editorial board

R. Howard Bloch (University of California, Berkeley) Terence Cave (St John's College, Oxford) Ross Chambers (University of Michigan) Antoine Compagnon (Columbia University) Peter France (University of Edinburgh) Christie McDonald (Harvard University) Toril Moi (Duke University) Naomi Schor (Harvard University) Also in the series (* denotes titles now out of print) I J. M. COCKING

Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and his Art *2 LEO BERSANI

The Death of Stephane Mallarme *3 MARIAN HOBSON

The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France *4 LEO SPITZER, TRANSLATED & EDITED BY DAVID BELLOS

Essays on Seventeenth-Century French Literature 5 NORMAN BRYSON

Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix *6 ANN MOSS

Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in SixteenthCentury France *7 RHIANNON GOLDTHORPE

Sartre: Literature and Theory *8 DIANA KNIGHT

Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion *9 ANDREW MARTIN

The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne 10 GEOFFREY BENNINGTON

Sententiousness and the Novel: Laying Down the Law in EighteenthCentury French Fiction 369

370 *II

PENNY FLORENCE

Mallarme, Manet and Redon: Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of Meaning 12 CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST

The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, and Flaubert * I 3 NAOMI SEGAL

The Unintended Reader: Feminism and Manon Lescaut 14 CLIVE SCOTT

A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse * I 5 STIRLING HAIG

Flaubert and the Gift of Speech: Dialogue and Discourse in Four 'Modern3 Novels * l 6 NATHANIEL WING

The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarme * I 7 MITCHELL GREENBERG

Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry * l 8 HOWARD DAVIES

Sartre and ' Les Temps Modernes' * i g ROBERT GREER COHN

Mallarme3s Prose Poems: A Critical Study

*20 CELIA BRITTON

Claude Simon: Writing the Visible 21 DAVID SCOTT

Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France *22 ANN JEFFERSON

Reading Realism in Stendhal *23 DALIA JUDOVITZ

Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins of Modernity *24 RICHARD D. E. BURTON

Baudelaire in 1859 25 MICHAEL MORIARTY

Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France

26 JOHN FORRESTER

The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida 27 JEROME SCHWARTZ

Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion 28 DAVID BAGULEY

Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision 29 LESLIE HILL

Beckett's Fiction: In Different Words 30 F. W. LEAKEY

Baudelaire: Collected Essays,

igjj-ig88

31 SARAH KAY

Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry 32 GILLIAN JONDORF

French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word 33 LAWRENCE D. KRITZMAN

The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance 34 JERRY C. NASH

The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Sceve: Poetry and Struggle 35 PETER FRANCE

Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture 36 MITCHELL GREENBERG

Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose : The Family Romance of French Classicism 37 TOM CONLEY

The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern Writing 38 MARGERY EVANS

Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads 39 JUDITH STILL

Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau: bienfaisance and

pudeur

40 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON

System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida 41 CAROL A. MOSSMAN

Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonization from Rousseau to Zola

372 42 DANIEL BREWER

The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the art of philosophizing 43 ROBERTA L. KRUEGER

Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance 44 JAMES H. REID Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The temporality of lying and forgetting 45 EUGENE W. HOLLAND

Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The sociopoetics of modernism 46 HUGH M. DAVIDSON

Pascal and the Arts of the Mind 47 DAVID J. DENBY Sentimental Narrative and the social order in France, 1760-1820: A politics of tears 48 CLAIRE ADDISON

Where Flaubert Lies: Chronologyi, Mythology and History 49 JOHN CLAIBORNE ISBELL

The Birth of European Romanticism: StaeTs De l'Allemagne 50 MICHAEL SPRINKER

History and Ideology in Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu and the Third French Republic 51 DEE REYNOLDS

Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of imaginary space 52 DAVID B. ALLISON, MARK S. ROBERTS AND ALLEN S. WEISS

Sade and the Narrative of Transgression

Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge Studies in French)

Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (No. 84))

The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature

Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature

Translation in French and Francophone Literature and Film. (French Literature)

Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing (Cambridge Studies in French)

Studies in French Cinema

Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: From Loti to Genet (Cambridge Studies in French)

Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: From Loti to Genet (Cambridge Studies in French)

Gender and French Cinema

Romantic Women Poets: Genre and Gender. (Dqr Studies in Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Studies in French-classical tragedy

Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture (Cambridge Studies in French)

Medieval Texts in Context (Context and Genre in English Literature)

Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture (Cambridge Studies in French)

Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge Studies in French)

Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge Studies in French)

London Literature, 1300-1380 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

The Medieval French Alexander

Sade and the Narrative of Transgression (Cambridge Studies in French)

Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

The Cambridge History of French Literature

A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse (Cambridge Studies in French)

Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France (Cambridge Studies in French)

A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse (Cambridge Studies in French)

Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge Studies in French)

Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (No. 84))

The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature

Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature

Translation in French and Francophone Literature and Film. (French Literature)

Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing (Cambridge Studies in French)

Studies in French Cinema

Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: From Loti to Genet (Cambridge Studies in French)

Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: From Loti to Genet (Cambridge Studies in French)

Gender and French Cinema

Romantic Women Poets: Genre and Gender. (Dqr Studies in Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Studies in French-classical tragedy

Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture (Cambridge Studies in French)

Medieval Texts in Context (Context and Genre in English Literature)

Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture (Cambridge Studies in French)

Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge Studies in French)

Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge Studies in French)

London Literature, 1300-1380 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

The Medieval French Alexander

Sade and the Narrative of Transgression (Cambridge Studies in French)

Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

The Cambridge History of French Literature

A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse (Cambridge Studies in French)

Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France (Cambridge Studies in French)

A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse (Cambridge Studies in French)

Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

Recommend Documents