Visual Power and Fame in Rene d'Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince (The New Middle Ages)

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Visual Power and Fame in René d’Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince by SunHee Kim Gertz

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VISUAL POWER AND FAME IN RENÉ D’ANJOU, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, AND THE BLACK PRINCE

SunHee Kim Gertz

VISUAL POWER AND FAME IN RENÉ D’ANJOU, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, AND THE BLACK PRINCE

Copyright © SunHee Kim Gertz, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–4039–7053–4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gertz, Sunhee Kim, 1951– Visual power and fame in René d’Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince / SunHee Kim Gertz. p. cm. — (The new Middle Ages) ISBN 978–1–4039–7053–4 1. Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. 2. Visual perception in literature. 3. Fame in literature. 4. René I, King of Naples and Jerusalem, 1409–1480. 5. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. House of fame. 6. Edward, Prince of Wales, 1330–1376. 7. Civilization, Medieval, in literature. I. Title. PN682.V59G47 2009 820.9⬘353—dc22

2009035732

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

We Remember Dr. Changsoon Kim and Bok Duk Ryu, M.A. Reinhard Kreiselmaier Maria and August Ziebarth Heinz Ziebarth Gerda and Erich Gertz

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

xi

Preface

xiii

Acknowledgments

xix

Introduction

1

1

Fame and Fürstenspiegel

13

2

René d’Anjou’s Negotiations with Fame: Creating for a Future Past

33

3

Chaucer’s House of Fame: The Quasi-Iconoclastic Present

69

4

Edward the Black Prince, the Future King

105

Conclusion

141

Notes

145

Works Cited

199

Previous Publications by SunHee Kim Gertz

223

Index

225

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ILLUSTRATIONS

I.1

Modified Sketch of Jakobson’s Communication Model

3 0

I.2

St. Simeon per the Frontispiece of Trier Stadtarchiv MS 1384/54 8

4.1

Detail of the South Side of the Tester above the Black Prince’s Tomb

7 138

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PREFACE

P

olitics can seem superficial when directed at appealing to the lowest common denominator and popular opinions shift from moment to moment even on profoundly critical issues. From the phrase “politics as usual,” to the iconic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, political ideas are communicated simply, although the complexities of governance must surely be recognized by almost everyone. From mixed voting constituencies to complicated international relationships, from leaders whose multiple facets and personal habits do not always “fit the mold” to dissension among a leader’s own allies, complex societal interplay is bridled by the will to act in concert, to translate theory and ideals into practice. In The Republic, Plato seems to recognize this imperative when he points to the importance of myths for directing the multifarious elements of even an ideal society into effectively orchestrated actions by means of the enigmatic but comprehensible narratives promoting the welfare of the state that myths can instantaneously convey.1 Indeed, myths seem to go a long way to enchanting individuals to assent to a simplistic pro-con dialectic that subsequently absorbs them into a seemingly univocal crowd. One such myth important to this study is that of the vir bonus, the good man, as related in Cicero’s De inventione, and faithfully transmitted by Alcuin for the emperor Charlemagne:2 Nam fuit, ut fertur, quoddam tempus, cum in agris homines passim bestiarum more vagabantur, nec ratione animi quicquam, sed pleraque viribus corporis administrabant [. . .] Quo tempore quidam, magnus videlicet vir et sapiens, cognovit quae materia et quanta ad maximas res oportunitas animis inesset hominum, si quis eam posset elicere et praecipiendo eam meliorem reddere: qui dispersos homines in agris et in tectis silvestribus abditos ratione quadam conpulit in unum locum et congregavit et eos in unam quamque rem inducens utilem atque honestam primo propter insolentiam reclamantes, deinde propter rationem atque orationem studiosius audientes ex feris et inmanibus mites reddidit ac mansuetos. [Howell’s translation, my italics: For there was once a time, as it is said, when mankind wandered here and there over the plains very much as do wild beasts, and men did nothing through the reasoning power of the mind, but everything by sheer brute strength . . . At that time a man undeniably great and wise indeed discovered what latent genius—how great a capacity for the highest things—was in the human soul if only some one could draw it forth, and by nurturing perfect it; and by force of reason he collected men into one place from being scattered as they were over the plains, and hidden in dwellings in the forests; and he assembled them together, and led them into each useful and honorable pursuit; they, at first protesting against the strangeness of it, yet

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finally with eagerness listening because of his reason and eloquence, were made gentle and mild from being savage and brutal.]

Starkly reducing all the complexities fueling the inception of governance into a simply told tale, Alcuin’s Ciceronian narrative propagates the idea of a leader who rules for the good of all, who can persuade with tremendous effect, and who has the vision and ability to create a good society in part because of his unimpeachable ethos. Cicero thereby created what might be called an “iconic myth.” That is, communicating the enigmatic in clear, readily envisioned scenes, a mythic narrative such as this produces the effect of an icon in Charles Sanders Peirce’s sense: just as a crown does, the narrative instantly communicates by virtue of its visual and comprehensible representation.3 In other words, the tale visually articulates the barely intelligible, a coupling of lucid form and content that when actually parsed would prove far more intricate than the depicted actions suggest, and all this in the simple time frame that signals a mythic narrative.4 More specifically, this Ciceronian tale streamlines the process of how societies crystallize despite all the obstacles working against a configuration that demands individuals to surrender rights in order to emerge all the stronger for the sacrifice. Simply, an iconic myth has visual power. Not quite allegorical, but also not quite verisimilar, iconic myths persuade in large part through their framing in the conventional. Thus, Cicero’s iconic myth streamlines complexities by means of traditional beliefs and standards of good governance. In extolling the formation of governance, for example, this iconic myth concomitantly celebrates the ethical leadership of the “magnus videlicet vir et sapiens” [clearly great and wise man], the vir bonus, a standard political figure in western European traditions since at least Plato’s Republic. In using the conventional as a framework, importantly, other insights may also be articulated. In this manner, for example, Cicero subtly establishes reputation—public opinion—as quintessentially political. That is, depicting people moved by the “rationem atque orationem” [reason and eloquence] of the vir bonus, he suggests the inevitability of being persuaded by one videlicet [clearly] great and wise, suggesting further that the people’s delight in his speech enthymematically—suggestively and rhetorically, videlicet—functions as a proof of his ethos.5 Put another way, ratio atque oratio not only describes the leader’s reason and eloquence, the phrase also economically suggests the audience’s positive assessment of the leader’s performance. Speech, actions, visual narration—these are also all what actual citizens have to judge a leader by, when outside the world of the iconically mythical, since they have no unmediated access to his or her motivations or thinking processes. Given these conditions, how citizens interpret a leader’s actions and words, coupled with how a leader narrates them, the ratio atque oratio, is likely to become the meeting place that Cicero posits as the point at which ethical governance can begin to emerge, essentially establishing the basis of consensus, and concomitantly, of a leader’s good fame. Given what Plato describes as the tremendous power of myths and what Cicero via Alcuin proffers as the effect of ethical governance, leaders with PR-savvy understand that they are dependent on how well their own narratives “take” and, not surprisingly, tend to arrange their stories around traditionally effective

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touchstones, as provided, for example, by diverse versions of the vir bonus. That is, the stories that leaders perform and gloss are those that, ideally, capture a web of complexities in striking visual narratives that instantly, enthymematically, evoke images of the vir bonus at work. The ability to effect such visually conveyed, and hence easily remembered, narratives does not, of course, guarantee long-term success. Thus, Barack Obama’s much celebrated race speech attempting to bring the dissonant Reverend Jeremiah Wright back into the fold by evoking a variety of scenes featuring individuals in action, from the founding fathers to one of his own campaign committees,6 while in and of itself eloquent and thoughtful, proved less effective when the Reverend refused to play his part. Nonetheless, at any given moment and regardless of outcome, a leader is well advised to communicate visionary confidence in the future of his or her present path and display that confidence in the authoritative and traditional role of the vir bonus. With the vir bonus, then, Cicero simplifies an otherwise complex and partly abstract set of ideas into a narrative that audiences can visually stage in their imaginations, and consequently, citizens can further become convinced that the acceptance of good governance is a virtue. In the Middle Ages, this iconic myth is additionally fi ltered through a Christian lens shaped by Augustine, who conceptually translates the vir bonus in the fourth book of his De doctrina Christiana [On Christian Teaching] into a more widely applicable exhortation, by proposing that the most effective sermon a Christian orator can deliver is living an exemplary life. Shifting from a leader performing solo on center stage, so to speak, Augustine provides ethical governance with a broader platform that not only makes space for all those who “speak for” God through their lives, but that also makes daily life—not occasional performances—the sign of a true leader; in this case, of a true Christian orator (punning, perhaps, on ora, “to pray”), a citizen of the heavenly kingdom. Importantly here, both Cicero’s vir bonus and Augustine’s Christian orator are modulated into the widely popular late medieval genre of the Fürstenspiegel, the mirrors of princes, which advise regents on how to rule well.7 Although Fürstenspiegel appear in a variety of forms, their promotion of the Ciceronian vir bonus acting for the good of society as framed in the Augustinian penchant for transforming the world into God’s stage insistently informs the advice given to regents, advice that time and time again exhortatively moralizes by pointing to the good or bad fame a king will inevitably reap as a result of his actions, his performance. In thus teleologically emphasizing the endpoint of fame, the fundamental linkage between Ciceronian ethos and Augustinian devotion underpinning Fürstenspiegel generates an additional transformation, as “long-term effects” are foregrounded. That is, the Fürstenspiegel regent’s actions are narrated for their exemplary value. Incorporating Cicero’s etiological link to the past and Augustine’s insistence on living in the present, Fürstenspiegel admonish with a view to future behavior, as is the nature of giving advice. Likewise, the aligning of civic and Christian ethos in exempla associates fame (the leader’s actions and words as interpreted by citizens, the ratio atque oratio that signals a magnus videlicet vir et sapiens) with exhortative narratives that not only advise leaders how they should act, but that also teach readers how to recognize a good leader. As one consequence, a sharper focus on the individual pursuing fame as a sign of virtue clearly emerges at this late medieval intersection of governance, fame, and the iconically mythic.

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In exploring the visual power of narratives, this study treats late medieval struggles with fame by examining how three individuals who had already acquired fame ruminate on prominence and its inability to convey certain kinds of complexities,8 an examination that I will explore by means of semiotic theories, as outlined in the Introduction, and focus through Fürstenspiegel themes, as articulated in chapter 1. Then, in chapter 2, I begin looking at the three examples by reviewing the battles that René d’Anjou ( January 9, 1409–July 10, 1480) waged for political power and his literary reflections on the fame that may result from an individual’s exertions. In chapter 3, I examine Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame (ca. 1375–1380) for its perspectives on the elusive and enigmatic goddess and for the readerly poet’s role in flattening complexities into iconic myths. Finally, in chapter 4, I explore how Edward the Black Prince ( June 15, 1330–June 8, 1376) used his virtually readymade fame to equate himself with the nation. Viewing from the vantage point of the Ciceronian vir bonus, Augustine’s Christian orator, and the Fürstenspiegel’s exempla, René, Chaucer, and Prince Edward link visual power and fame in a literarily complex and philosophically vibrant context. Interestingly, for example, the complexities of their projecting and maintaining reputation occupy, conceptually, something of a midpoint between Cicero’s iconic myth and our own contemporary leaders’ tendency to rely on slogans evoking or aggressively vituperating their opponents as embodiments of the vir malus (although, of course, both periods provide examples of both these approaches, along with others).9 That is, on the simplest level, René, Chaucer, and Edward conceive of virtuous leadership neither as being embodied in a single individual (as in Cicero or Augustine) nor as being defi ned against evil counterparts (as in today’s campaign ads). In his Livre du coeur d’amour épris [Book of the Heart Seized by Love], for example, René portrays leaders, such as the god of love, in consultation with advisors before any action is undertaken, thus not striking out on his own but rather acting in concert with others. Similarly nuanced, Edward the Black Prince is portrayed as recognizing the vir bonus in others, such as in his opponent, the King of France, whom he graciously serves and entertains, thereby ignoring simplistic approaches to enmity by performing chivalry and acknowledging God as the author of his victory over the King. In apparent contrast, Chaucer seems to have been intrigued by both the vir bonus and the vir malus in the House of Fame, for, at the end of his poem, the man of great authority attracts all the chaotic individuals to listen to him just as magnetically as does Cicero’s vir bonus, while in the second book, the Eagle puffs himself up by displaying his knowledge, but also by critiquing and belittling Geff rey, the narrator. Nonetheless, Chaucer’s narrator occupies the middle ground, apparently not wishing to emulate either stance. In this and other ways, René, Chaucer, and Edward probe the complexities smoothed over by fame’s narratives, rather than accepting the iconically mythic lesson of Fürstenspiegel suggesting that whatever fame a king reaps, he deserves. Playing against a rich philosophical and literary context, René, Chaucer, and Edward reflect upon power and fame at a time when stories and analyses of governance, as found in the Fürstenspiegel, were amply distributed, suggesting that the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries in and of themselves demonstrated an active concern with governance. While aiming, as Plato’s Republic and Cicero’s De inventione exhort, to achieve an ideal state, late medieval writings express the

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importance of listening to wise advisors and of recognizing that doing everything possible to acquire a good reputation, whether actually securing it or not, effectuates God’s kingdom on earth. This difficult relationship between governance and reputation—whereby fame serves as both the carrot and the stick that entices men to do good and keeps them from straying from the tried and true—occupies René, Chaucer, and Edward in a variety of ways. They recognize, for example, the seemingly modern need to act in order to ensure good fame rather than to wait until it is bestowed upon them, in part because they understand that the vox populi [voice of the people] determines fame. Concomitantly, they seem to be highly aware of the stage upon which they perform. Finally, and more intricately, as the Obama example illustrates, they understand that not all attempts to win the vox populi will succeed. From another perspective, while they seem to understand the power of the vir bonus story, they seem just as aware of what the story ignores. Indeed, for them, power and fame can well operate as it does in the myth of Arachne. As related by Ovid, Arachne acquires such fame for her skill at weaving that, “ . . . ut adspicerent opus admirabile, saepe/ deseruere sui nymphae vineta Timoli,/ deseruere suas nymphae Pactolides undas” [Metamorphoses 6. 14–17, Miller’s translation: Often, to watch her wondrous skill, the nymphs would leave their own vineyards on Timolus’ slopes, and the water-nymphs of Pactolus would leave their waters]. Her reputation and her pride in her skill eventually reach Minerva’s ears, leading to a contest, whereby each depicts the gods in her tapestry. Arachne’s seemingly irreverent tapestry of, necessarily, iconic myths enrages Minerva, who punishes and transforms the maiden, “ . . . et antiquas exercet aranea telas” [Metamorphoses 6. 145, Miller’s translation: and now, as a spider, she exercises her old-time weaverart]. Able to enchant through excellence, Arachne’s ability as well as her creations nonetheless do not please the goddess, and subsequently her platform as well as her audiences—the guarantors of fame—diminish with her size. As suggested by Ovid’s tale on a variety of levels, the relations between governance and fame entail power of two kinds—that of one individual over another and that of the ability to enchant. While the former clearly plays a role in this study, it is the latter that I examine here as semiotically rhetorical, with an emphasis on the semiotic. Thus, on the simplest level, the way to win approbation (a primarily rhetorical proposition) is through demonstrating authority (a chiefly semiotic solution), and the simplest way to demonstrate authority is to communicate the fact or the impression of having already acquired or proven worthy of good fame, a semiotically conveyed enthymeme that telegraphically suggests acceptance. In other words, good fame implies, rightly or wrongly, that an individual’s excellence has already been assessed and confi rmed by pertinent audiences, a suggestion that further contributes to the sense that the leader is a known quantity. Without resorting to analysis or logically articulating a set of measures, a leader seeking approval can uphold and perhaps enhance his or her good fame by portraying him- or herself as a citizen unassailably prepared to lead a nation, a person “you know” to be a “good guy.” At the same time, doing so without considering the audience, as Arachne illustrates, can have unforeseen consequences. My treatment of these three individuals is organized in reverse chronological order out of a variety of reasons, three of which seem the most compelling. First, of

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the three individuals examined here, it is simplest to see how René, both a leader and a poet, attended to his fame. Moving then from what seems to be René’s obsession with his good name to Chaucer proves useful, since the English poet offers a view that is not quite contrary—he depicts his narrator not actively engaged in pursuing fame, but nonetheless quite curious about how fame works. Finally, rather than worrying about what kind of fame he will acquire or whether or not fame is something desirable, the Black Prince understands how fame can work and serves as his father’s emblem of the English nation, who in the end magisterially creates his own narrative to propose that how he performed when he was at his best, his best fame, is how the nation should enact its destiny. Second, exploring René, Chaucer, and Edward in this order captures how they also occupy different Fürstenspiegel-related temporalities. That is, René seems ever caught in the past, in the dynamics, advantages, and dangers of being remembered as an exemplum. In contrast, Chaucer characterizes his narrator, Geff rey, as concerned with the immediate present, not only in his reading the past for how it can “advise” individuals to act in the present moment, but also in his focus on fame at the moment it is created. Marginalizing both past and present temporalities, the Black Prince aims to lead his people to a future time when former English territories in France will again belong to England. Finally, conceptually, this order of presentation moves from the less to the more complex semiotic structuring of the theatrical elements generating and maintaining fame. Thus, René enthymematically arranges for magnificence to signify good fame, while registering the nagging fear that later generations may not understand the equivalence. Chaucer, on the other hand, seems fascinated by how a complex story can, and perhaps must, be flattened into an iconic myth if it is to live on authoritatively, in good fame. Finally, Edward seems to understand the need to create iconic myths for different kinds of audiences as well as to enact Fürstenspiegel roles for future audiences.

*

*

*

René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince modulate perspectives on fame and their own relationships to it in a variety of ways that at the same time reflect upon performance, the stage that allows the shaping of iconic myths to meet the judgments of audiences. Performance, they reveal, may establish good fame, but not as a fi xed sign, for, as Arachne learned, fame too is subject to the powers of both the divine and the mortal.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

n the research and writing of this book, I have found myself grateful on more occasions than I ever had the right to hope for—for the opportunities to research, to ref lect, and to write upon the issues presented in it and for the generosity of time and expertise that were afforded me. I thank many gentle souls, along with exemplary scholarly institutions, for their advice, support, and willingness to help create contemplative oases. The library staff at Clark University always greeted my esoteric requests with friendly aplomb and even evinced additional consideration and interest when alerting me to their discoveries of potential sources or Internet bibliographical aids that piqued my interest and greatly aided my research efforts. Thank you, Mary Hartman, Holly Howes, Ed McDermott, and Irene Walch. I thank too the Director of manuscript collections at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, Ernst Gamillscheg, for allowing me to study the Library’s stunning manuscript 2597 containing René d’Anjou’s Livre du coeur d’amour épris. Franz Ronig, an expert on St. Simeon, kindly shared his expertise with me when I was in Trier. The time, knowledge, and expertise Marie Louise Sauerberg, Conservator of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge, shared with me regarding the tester over the Black Prince’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral will ever remain a signal memory for me, one of those magic moments when two scholars discourse about their subject right at the relevant ca. 600-year old site. Especially profound thanks go to Reiner Nolden, the Archives Director at the Stadtarchiv Trier, who not only allowed me liberal access to a rich repository of materials and manuscripts concerning St. Simeon of Trier, but whose generosity with materials and manuscripts extended to photographing the library’s treasures and to his providing me with the benefit of his paleographical expertise. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedules. I am deeply grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Clark University’s Cotton Fund, and Clark University’s Higgins School of the Humanities for providing the fi nancial support enabling me to research and write in England, Austria, and Germany and to meet with many of these scholars. Through their support, I was not only able to research, benefit from the wisdom of other medievalists, and write, but was also able to test out ideas with scholars outside my field. Sabine Sielke of the University of Bonn, for example, allowed me to try out my theoretical approach on her American Studies colleagues and graduate students. At Bonn, as well, I was able to confer with Hans-H. Langguth, the

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author of political studies, one of which treats another fascinating leader, Angela Merkel. These institutions’ support and the DAAD’s letter of introduction not only provided these opportunities, they also engendered other debts of gratitude: to Gretlies Haungs, Director of the Office of International Scholars, and to Wolfgang Klooss, Vice President of the University of Trier, for allowing me to benefit from the resources at the University of Trier. Thank you. I have deeply appreciated the matchless luxury of unfettered time to test out ideas and write in peace. Testing my ideas was taken to a more formal level through a workshop convened in Luxembourg by my Clark colleague, Virginia Vaughan, and generously funded by the Henry J. Leir Luxembourg Program-Clark University. This proved to be a highly valuable forum that enabled me to articulate my concerns more sharply, concerns that resulted in a related essay, for the anthology Speaking Pictures, to be published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Thank you for this highly worthwhile opportunity. I received significantly helpful suggestions and support toward polishing and producing this book from Palgrave Macmillan’s anonymous readers as well as from the Press’s extremely competent staff members, Lee Norton and Brigitte Shull. My greatest debt with respect to polishing this study is owed to two medievalist colleagues. Both Douglas J. Kelly and Jeff Rider read and provided extensive comments, which led me to rethink, reconfigure, and, hopefully, improve this book. I cannot thank you enough. I continue to pinch myself at the uncommonly good fortune I’ve had to be able to work with such considerate, intelligent, and humane editors, Bonnie Wheeler and Farideh Koohi-Kamali. Thank you, Farideh. Thank you, Bonnie. Mostly, thank you, Uwe.

INTRODUCTION

I

n perhaps the first English poem depicting the goddess Fame at length, Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame (discussed in chapter 3) conveys a decidedly different quality than what classical depictions of the diva impart. While, for example, lines 39–63 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses 12 describe Fame’s dwelling at a location similar to that of Chaucer’s—in the classical depiction, the point at which the earth, sea, and heavens meet—the final lines of the Metamorphoses record the narrator’s joyous celebration of his own fame to come. Mainly with respect to this second passage, Chaucer’s perspective seems to have little in common with Ovid’s, in which the narrator is depicted as anticipating, but waiting, for the bestowal of fame. Indeed, Chaucer’s poem seems somewhat more contemporary because of its emphasis on agency; his characters actively pursue the goddess’s favor. Moreover, unlike Vergil’s swift monstrum horrendum (Aeneid 4. 181: terrible monster; cf. 173–190),1 whose speed is her major attribute, Chaucer’s imperial Fame is portrayed regally, and statically, ensconced on her throne, with all the accoutrements and mannerisms associated with power. Importantly here, Chaucer’s emphasis on agency and power is ref lected in medieval writings on governance as well, as treated in chapter 1.

Semiotic Theory and Visual Power To explore how Chaucer, as well as René and the Black Prince probe the visual power of fame, although other precepts and theorists will appear in these pages,2 three semiotic concepts prove fundamental to this study’s approach. First, Maria Corti’s description of the literary system provides the underlying framework. Essentially, Corti argues that literature belongs to a communication system comprising not only the authoritative texts of a period, but also all the other, less prominent literature that enables readers to understand these canonical texts. 3 I extend her defi nition to include nonliterary media that also “narrate,” like stained glass windows, tournaments, and processions.4 Such media most clearly belong to the literary system when they are linked to well-known literary narratives, such as those found in the Bible, so I will confi ne my use of narratives outside of literature proper to “canonically bound” media. Finally, I will often allude to a particular subset of the literary system—narratives of relevance to leadership—which, for clarity’s sake, I will underscore now and again by using the phrase, “literary system of governance.”

2

V I S UA L P OW E R A N D FA M E

The second semiotic principle important here stems from Umberto Eco, who glosses Charles S. Peirce’s assertion that a sign’s interpretant, read against a ground, or conceptual context, possesses an infi nite regression of interpretants. In Peirce’s words (his italics):5 A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.

Eco argues that Peirce does not mean that signs have an infi nite number of possible interpretations.6 Rather, their ground delimits these interpretants, and in so doing it elicits established or conventional sets of meanings. My working assumption deriving from Eco’s observation is that readers generally designate as creative or praiseworthy those narratives that play against or with the conventional. Put another way, while interpretants may not actually stretch out into infinitude, by playing with or against conventions that tend to corral interpretations into established significations, authors can tap into an infinite potential to tease out other meanings, such as occurs when Chaucer transforms Fame’s swift speed into regal motionlessness. Finally, in his linguistic study of poetic language, Roman Jakobson examines how an emphasis on any one of the six components of literary communication can stimulate effects that evoke a literary genre or a particular set of characteristics. While Jakobson specifically analyzes modern poetry, his model proves heuristically valuable for examining literary narratives per se. Importantly here, it can also be used with narratives readers ordinarily do not perceive as literary, thereby demonstrating that such narratives nonetheless evince literary “reflexes.” Below, I have modified Jakobson’s illustration to gather key terms he associates with each function of the communicative act.7 In Jakobson’s words:8 The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to . . . graspable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee . . . and finally, a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication.

In more detail: by emphasizing one or more points of this communication model, a message may also be associated with literary genres or characteristics. Thus, a message that focuses on the addresser is emotive and can be associated with the lyric genre, as exemplified by the statement, “I am proud of this country.” Likewise, when attention is directed to the addressee, it is conative in its exhortative or supplicative emphasis, as is the case with, “Vote for me” or “Pass this bill.” Since the addresser-addressee axis is almost always tilted toward the addressee in the literary system of governance, the four remaining components are of most

3

I N T RO DU C T ION Context/Referential (epic) Message/Poetic Addresser/Emotive (lyric)

Addressee/Conative (supplicative, exhortative) Contact/Phatic (metaliterary) Code/Metalingual

Figure I.1 Modified Sketch of Jakobson’s Communication Model.

interest here. Thus, a predominately referential message, emphasizing context, evokes the epic mode, while it concomitantly generates a third-person perspective and portrays events panoramically, such as is caught in the statement, “He fought for his country.” When communicating with particular metalingual emphasis on the code, a message will draw attention to meaning, as illustrated by, “How do you interpret the law, Mr. President?” or “This is not what the law means.” If, however, a message emphasizes the contact, it phatically communicates in metaliterary mode, exemplified in instances drawing attention to communication, as in, “Please explain your position” or “No comment,” or by explicitly referring to the vehicle of communication, as found in the statement, “This campaign ad is not working.” Finally, as most expansively covered by Jakobson, emphasizing the message itself is poetic, when arranging by means of selection and combination creates a message through the principle of equivalence. Thus, instead of something on the order of, “The Civil Rights movement will achieve its goals,” Martin Luther King, Jr. sonorously punctuated his famous speech in poetic mode with the phrase, “I have a dream.” Perhaps, it may prove useful at this point to walk briefly through two examples. First, I present a relatively straightforward instance, the stained glass window of the Tree of Jesse in the Canterbury Cathedral,9 in order to illustrate these three semiotic concepts. Then, since Jakobson’s poetic mode is widely present in the narratives of René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince, I focus on it here rather than continually underscoring its presence in their work by discussing the example of St. Simeon of Trier. Just as potentially useful, the example of St. Simeon illustrates how the religious decidedly belongs to the medieval literary system of governance, a rich and ubiquitous perspective that cannot be justly treated here.

Semiotically Reading Canterbury Cathedral’s Tree of Jesse Although intricate and complex in and of itself, Canterbury Cathedral’s stained glass window depicting the Tree of Jesse serves here as a relatively clear example because of its specific affirming narrative (from the point of view of the medieval Church) of the Old Testament text found in Isaiah 11.1, as looking forward genealogically to the New Testament coming of Christ, thereby containing at least two narratives in its two-dimensional space.10

4

V I S UA L P OW E R A N D FA M E

Thus, to begin with Corti’s work, this stained glass window demonstrates the flexibility of the literary system. That is, while the canonical text, the Bible, is clearly part of the medieval literary system, so too are derivative narratives, as exemplified by the “transplanting” of the tree to Jesse’s stomach. In the medieval literary system, moreover, a reading of the Old Testament as a prefiguration of the New Testament represents a common kind of interpretation,11 which not only generates additional narratives, but also allows those involved in the fashioning of the window to communicate the otherwise complex ideas contained in prefiguration without recourse to detailed pictorial or verbal explanations.12 Secondly, although the stained glass window’s interpretant could, theoretically, evoke any number of further associations or narratives to an individual viewer (for example, Jesse— depicted reclining at the bottom of the window with the tree emerging from his body—had an unusually exotic dinner, or he was visited by otherworldly creatures who planted a bizarre tree in his stomach), the commonly known narrative would anchor musings for a late medieval audience in the Bible, thereby illustrating the interpretive limit that Eco postulates. Finally, turning to Jakobson’s model, given the genre of stained glass windows, their location in a cathedral or affluent church, and the central characteristic of stained glass reading—the immediate comprehension of central elements—the Tree of Jesse window focuses on the addressee, conatively, to exhort and to remind that Christ was born to save humanity. Combining all three theorists’ insights, the potential to tease out, to create, additional narratives reflects Corti’s description of the literary system as flexible, especially since, as Eco avers, the ground of a narrative provides multiple ways as well as limits for interpreting signs and, as Jakobson argues, no single message is likely to exist solely in one particular mode. Indeed, an additional narrative might well be shaped from within the literary system of governance. Thus, a prominent medieval leader could have approached Canterbury’s Tree of Jesse after having been struck by the Cathedral’s elaborately fashioned and dynastically assertive tomb of Edward the Black Prince (discussed in chapter 4), thereby inspecting the window from expanded ground. He might then muse on how the more or less obvious meaning, as coded by conventional typological interpretation, could be reenvisioned, poetically, by means of selection and combination. By selecting the window’s elaborate and triumphant tenor and combining this tenor with the verses following the tree metaphor, Isaiah 11. 2–16—verses that depict Jesse’s descendant (Christ) as a wise, powerful, and righteous ruler, who will ensure that all nations submit to him in his reign of peace—for this prominent leader touring the Cathedral, the window might phatically elicit metaliterary attention to the patronage that allowed for the creation of a narrative focusing on leadership, as well as to a referential, epic, narrative confi rming the divine right of kings, a story easily enough imagined, since regents are literally presented as central, in the window’s middle column.13

The Poetic Mode, St. Simeon of Trier, and Managing Fame As illustrated by Canterbury’s Tree of Jesse, a fundamental principle fueling the literary system is the possibility of using a conventional or well-known story to create a variety of narratives. In reshaping the Old Testament story of Jesse, the

I N T RO DU C T ION

5

stained glass window provides a relatively accessible interpretation that focuses, exhortatively, on the present. Similarly, narratives of leadership also reenvision familiar touchstones, as they gain much of their power from their subjugation of all to the present moment conveyed as a sign of things to come. That is, although all three temporal modes inform any narrative, the literary system of governance emblazons the present as an unprecedented crux, or selects and opens up a key past moment to bear upon the present, at times generating the intoxicating implication that the importance of the present moment were without precedent—as suggested, for example, by the “Uncle Sam wants YOU” posters—and further frames these present moments as harbingers of glory or ignominy to come, as exemplified by reports of the Black Prince’s unparalleled victory at Poitiers (treated in chapter 4). Such highlighting of the present can indeed anchor an event as decisive and thereby concomitantly embody an attempt to memorialize, to impress an event on audiences’ memories as a defi ning moment. Of relevance here, in part because of this attempt to memorialize, many narratives in the literary system of governance emerge as more literary than may at fi rst be assumed, since memorializing requires the figurative expression of an entire narrative in instantaneously comprehensible images, not unlike how iconic myths communicate. As the last three chapters of this study suggest, René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince all recognize that the act of memorializing is the starting point for enhancing good fame. In addition to memorializing, René, Chaucer, and Edward all subscribe to a concept that approximates an eternal present insofar as it makes of the secular a mirror of the ideal, specifically, the concept inherent to any politically informed precept: a community operates for the common good. In discussing the idea’s wide dissemination in the late medieval period, Antony Black writes,14 Such purposes were stated in order to emphasise the duties of rulers and subjects, to proclaim the virtues of a ruler, or to provide a means of distinguishing between tyranny and good government. They stemmed partly from the church’s view of government as installed by God for specific purposes, regarding which rulers could be held to account (rationem reddere). It rendered European notions of government, in Weber’s terms, distinctively “rational”: government was a means to achieve definable goals and its validity could be assessed in the light of its achievement.

Informing both secular and religious institutions in the late Middle Ages, the idea of community appears on the surface to be relatively straightforward. As “distinctively ‘rational’ ” as the idea seems to be, however, the tensions between mortal and immortal communities, and, consequently, between the temporally bound and the eternal, nonetheless generate ambiguities. This becomes clear through the example of St. Simeon of Trier (ca. 990–1035), as presented by Trier’s Archbishop Poppo. While illustrating Jakobson’s poetic mode, St. Simeon’s vita attempts to equate the struggle of rejecting this world as seeking citizenship in the heavenly kingdom. At the same time, occurring during a transitional phase in the not yet codified process for canonizing saints, Simeon’s canonization also points to the kind of political staging required for any leader to effect his or her vision. Simeon’s vita and canonization process are expressed primarily through a poetic elaboration of a fundamental message, that of the difficulty of living in two worlds, the mutable and the eternal. Actually, in some sense, all saints’ lives are generated

6

V I S UA L P OW E R A N D FA M E

in the poetic mode, since they depend upon paradox, the metaphorical, and the figurative to convey a saint’s special status. Moreover, more closely Jakobsonian, saints’ lives select and combine religious touchstones to equate each saint with the same message, the glory of God’s ineluctable, heavenly kingdom, and in so doing, they perform what Jakobson describes as “a total reevaluation of the discourse.”15 Underscoring the religious and neoplatonic impulse to redefi ne the phenomenal by articulating the intangible, Simeon’s vita, as medieval hagiography prefers, depicts the saint as a type rather than as an individual, as a denizen of God’s kingdom.16 Contributing to this impression, Simeon is known only indirectly, through others’ narratives. Although the author of his vita does present Simeon in direct discourse at various times, we have no known extant writings attributed to the saint, which seems curious, since he was famed for his bookishness and command of languages. Indeed, as shown below, Simeon is depicted in the frontispiece of MS. 1384/54 8 0 of the Trier Stadtarchiv [Trier City Archives] carrying a long palm and a book, as he is also displayed on a seal of the St. Simeon collegiate church.17 Instead, our knowledge regarding the saint stems from correspondence between Archbishop Poppo of Trier (1016–1047) and Pope Benedict IX (+ ca. 1055); a vita and miracles written by the saint’s friend, Abbot Eberwin (+ ca. 1040); and later miracles recorded by Warnerus, a schoolmaster of the St. Simeon collegiate chapter in Trier, elements available in various places, but all of which is also gathered into one manuscript, MS. 1385/102 40, located in the Trier Stadtarchiv as well. Further, Simeon is attested to in the Gesta Treverorum, as well as in other sources, such as the November 1031 protocol of the Council of Limoges, another vita written by Eberwin (that of the Abbot of Tholey and St. Martin), and the S. Catharinae translatio.18 Although these written sources attest to the fact that Simeon existed, at the same time, through their hagiographical framing, they contribute to the sense that Simeon belonged to those legendary few who had become emblems of Christianity, and within this framing, he seems figurative rather than real. The emblematic quality of Simeon’s portrait is amplified by nonwritten sources as well. For example, Archbishop Poppo of Trier approved significant building projects to honor the saint, actions that seem to confi rm Simeon’s status as an exemplum. Thus, upon Simeon’s decision to cloister himself, Poppo had a cell built for him six meters up from the ground in the Porta Nigra, an impressively large gate surviving from the Roman empire and originally built to guard Trier from barbarian invasions. Likewise, Poppo honored Simeon’s wish to be buried in the Porta Nigra, rather than in the city’s cathedral.19 Shortly thereafter, the cell was modified to accommodate the curiosity of the many pilgrims who came to visit his site. Poppo even had a collegiate church with substantial grounds constructed and named after the saint.20 In addition to building projects, Simeon’s relics were preserved and venerated as synecdoches of the saint’s mortal existence and as symbols of citizenship in another world. Thus, a wool cap, shoe, hair shirt, pieces of a stola and of a scarf, a drinking vessel, the Greek lectionary said to have been brought by him to Trier, and a lead coffi n now in Trier’s St. Simeon Church still remain for pilgrims who seek community with God’s kingdom. Indeed, the persuasion of these written and nonwritten sources remains effective today: various diocese-affi liated journals, tourist publications, and a children’s guide to the chapter’s museum feature the saint and demonstrate that St. Simeon has

I N T RO DU C T ION

Figure I.2

7

St. Simeon per the Frontispiece of Trier Stadtarchiv MS 1384/54 80.

Source: Photograph by SunHee Kim Gertz.

clearly been established as an emblem,21 poetic not only because of his belonging to God’s saints, but also because Eberwin, the vita’s author, suggests that Trier, as Simeon’s worldly endpoint, serves as a secular equivalent of the kingdom of heaven.22 Born in Syracuse, at the age of seven, Eberwin briefly reports, Simeon’s parents sent him to Constantinople for schooling. At some point thereafter, he moved

8

V I S UA L P OW E R A N D FA M E

to Jerusalem, where he spent seven years as a tourist guide for pilgrims, before becoming a monk and a deacon in two different monasteries, St. Maria and a monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. On one day rhetorically presented as critical, the Abbot of Mt. Sinai sent Simeon to Normandy to collect a gift promised by Count Richard, even though Simeon had been troubled by a vision that prophesied this journey would prove fruitless. On the Nile, pirates attacked his ship, but he was able to swim to shore. Eberwin mentions Simeon’s expertise in languages at this juncture: even though he knew Egyptian, Syrian, Arabic, Greek, and Roman, he could not speak the language of those where he landed, and thus he had to endure yet more hardships (p. 89.A.12). Undeterred, Simeon continued his journey, and on the way, he joined Richard of St. Vanne and Eberwin of St. Martin (the author of his vita), who were returning from Jerusalem. After further obstacles, Simeon arrived in Rouen, probably in 1027, but the Count had indeed already died. Rather than returning to his cloister, Simeon traveled to Trier to fi nd Eberwin, who introduced him to Archbishop Poppo, a meeting that led to Simeon’s accompanying the Archbishop on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back. Upon his return to Trier, probably in 1030, Simeon was celebrated in a procession that recognized him as a stylite, a pillar saint, and that escorted him to the Porta Nigra, where he was immured for the remaining five years of his life. During that time, he was plagued by nocturnal visions of temptations and devils. At one point, the townspeople attempted to stone him to death because of the flooding of the Moselle River, a disaster they attributed to him. About five months before he died, he let Eberwin know that he wished to be buried in the Porta Nigra. He died on June 1, 1035. As recorded by both Eberwin and Warnerus, miracles were experienced and witnessed at his gravesite in the Porta Nigra. Although he lived alone in the Porta Nigra, Simeon was also situated literally on the edge of a bustling and prosperous city, which he could see and hear from his cell, underscoring the central tension in Simeon’s life as presented by Eberwin: to give himself up to spiritual solitude while still living in the world. Thus, while guiding pilgrims, he is nonetheless described as, “pro nomine Christi solitarius” [p. 87.A.3: solitary in the name of Christ]. Still working as a tour guide, he heard of a virtuous hermit who lived in a tower on the shore of the Jordan River, and he knew that he wanted to live a similar life, but he knew as well from having studied the lives of the saints that the way to become a hermit involves living fi rst in a monastery. Although he, “eremiticam et solitariam vitam concupierat; sed quomodo inciperet fas non erat” [p. 87.C.5: had longed for the life of a solitary hermit, divine will was not such that he should begin (yet)]. After living at the Mt. Sinai monastery for a while, he is allowed to live as a hermit in a cave overlooking the Red Sea shore (p. 87.D.5). Realizing, however, how difficult it is for his fellow monks to keep providing him with sustenance and, furthermore, disturbed by the raucous sailors and oil collectors, he returned to monastic life at Mt. Sinai. Similarly, at the beginning of the second chapter, right before he began his journey to Normandy, readers are reminded that he was “amore solitudinis interius ardens” [p. 88.C.9: burning with the love of interior solitude]. Indeed, once, he spent many days by himself in a deserted cloister, until his Abbot sent monks to fi nd him. In this manner, Eberwin emphasizes Simeon’s desire for solitude even while living in the world by tracing his movements rather than dwelling on his adventures.

I N T RO DU C T ION

9

That is, Eberwin could have elaborated on Simeon’s possibly very interesting trip to Jerusalem and back with the Archbishop as well as on their friendship, but instead, similar to how he presents the other exciting exploits in the saint’s life, he reduces this journey to a cursory reference (in this case, at the beginning of Chapter 3), choosing to emphasize instead Poppo’s procession leading Simeon to the little room in the Porta Nigra “ubi Domnus Praesul Poppo, praesente Clero et populo, in festivitate S. Andreae; illum reclusit; et quasi mortuum, ut vere erat seculo, devotissime sepelivit” [p. 89.F.15: where the Lord Bishop Poppo, in the presence of the clergy and the people, on the feast of St. Andreas, immured him and most devotedly interred him, as if he were dead, as truly he was to the world]. Juxtaposed with his desire for solitude, the saint’s apparent restlessness moves him from one place to another. As a tour guide, a hermit’s servant, a monk, a deacon, and a failed recluse, Simeon travels to Antioch, Turkey, Belgium, Belgrade, Angoulême, Rouen, and Trier. In elaborating this juxtaposition, Eberwin echoes stories populating the medieval literary ground, to appropriate Peirce’s term, in its evocation of the struggle each saint undergoes: which kingdom will claim the saint’s citizenship? Eberwin’s juxtaposition thereby highlights the double sense of pilgrim, as not only one who visits holy sites, which Simeon clearly does, but also figuratively, as one who travels from the worldly to the spiritual realm. Indeed, Eberwin frames this poetic double sense early on when he describes Simeon in his youth, as one who, “desiderabat et ipse pro nomine Christi peregrinari . . . parentesque relinquens, pauper pauperem Christum sequi cupiens, sanctorum gratia visitandorum locorum, Hierosolymam venit . . . ” [p. 87.A.2: himself desired in the name of Christ to journey . . . and leaving behind his parents, a pauper longing to follow Christ the pauper, he comes to Jerusalem by the grace of the holy sites to be seen]. Further nuancing this double sense of pilgrimage, Eberwin also subtly traces what might be called a figurative translatio studii et imperii [transferal of culture and empire]. 23 Rather than depicting the movement of power and culture from one secular kingdom to another, that is, Eberwin depicts the movement from secular to spiritual kingdoms. Thus, Simeon travels from one site of power to another, until he reaches the then eminent municipality of Trier, which had been designated a civitas sancta, a holy city, due to its possession of numerous holy relics. Interestingly, digs had been conducted in Trier from about 980 on, and by Simeon’s time, remains of Petrus, Eucharius, Valerius, Maternus, Agritius Maximinus, Paulinus, and Nicetius had already been excavated.24 Simeon’s translatio studii et imperii, then, moves the saint in an increasingly spiritual journey that ultimately transfers him from the bustling and incomplete worlds of tourists, pirates, and monks, to the civitas sancta, and fi nally, to the heavenly kingdom. As a pilgrim of God, Simeon illustrates the principle explicated in Augustine’s fourth book of De doctrina Christiana mentioned above in the preface: the good Christian orator is a living sermon inspired by God. Indeed, whatever situation he encounters, Eberwin insists, God is Simeon’s guide to the heavenly kingdom. Thus, Eberwin writes that after Simeon jumped into the water to escape the pirates, “Multa post illum jacula jaciuntur: sed non potest perire, quem Christus vult salvare” [p. 88.F.11: many spears are thrown at him, but he cannot perish, he whom Christ wished to spare]. Likewise, when his sole traveling companion, Cosmas, died after their leaving Belgrade, Simeon, now even more aware of the

10

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perils that continuing his journey could entail, nonetheless, “totam spem suam ponens in Domino, solus venit Rothomagum . . . ” [p. 89.B.14: placing all his hope in God, alone he travels to Rouen]. When he suffered from nightly visitations in the Porta Nigra, Simeon persisted, and, Eberwin writes, “ . . . fideli mente conversus ad Dominum, oravit . . . ” [p. 90.A.16: . . . turned toward God, he prayed in faithful frame of mind]. Finally, when the townspeople’s stones shattered his windows, “athleta Christi Symeon, fundatus supra fi rmam petram, immobilis persistebat; atque Deo gratias reddens pro persecutoribus gaudens orabat.” [p. 90.C.18: Simeon, the athlete of Christ, unyielding on the firm rock, remained still; and giving thanks to God, joyfully he prayed for his attackers]. Notably, Trier’s Porta Nigra, his last “station” in the world, literally and figuratively demonstrates that, ironically, a pilgrimage can occur in the confi nes of a cell, that Simeon is most moving for and most moved by God when he does not move. A wayfarer and a hermit, Simeon lived in a manner that poetically elaborates the need for a citizen of God’s kingdom to slough off the temptations of the secular kingdom. This is the traditional message that saints’ lives convey. Complicating the message here is the Archbishop’s use of it, revealing yet another paradox while demonstrating how the vita and Simeon’s canonization partake of the literary system of governance. Simply put, the vita is one of several poetic messages used to communicate the importance of Trier as a holy city. In other words, Poppo’s management of communication concerning Simeon (among other saints) exemplifies an attempt to generate a strong addresser-addressee relationship, one that sought to attract pilgrims to Trier and to enhance the city’s status as a civitas sancta, to allow citizens heading for the kingdom of heaven to visit its figurative manifestation on earth.25 As Black characterizes a fundamental Church perspective on governance,26 . . . the human being’s true kingdom or polis is the universal church. It is the church which is societas perfecta, the “highest and most inclusive” human society . . . And human and Christian society must be arranged according to the cosmic principle that all multiplicity and diversity are “reduced to singularity.” In this way the constitution of human society on earth faithfully mirrors the order of the universe which is governed by a hierarchy under God . . . [in which] the inferior powers are always mediated by the superior.

Whether able to mirror faithfully the order of the universe on earth or not, Poppo’s efforts were successful in a more limited sense, for soon after Simeon’s death, a popular cult emerged, its popularity measured in part by the large number of extant manuscripts associated with the saint, with fi fty-three conveying his vita.27 Undoubtedly, the Archbishop of Trier did effectively assess and manage the canonization process, for which conditions were favorable but competitive. In his attempt to enhance the addresser-addressee relationship, for example, the Archbishop must have known that although papal approval was not required in the canonization process, it certainly enhanced the fame of an individual to receive it. Indeed, it is during this period of transition that bishops began to appeal to the Pope to sanction local individuals as saints of the Church, and Simeon’s canonization was one of the very early ones to receive such authorization. The canonization process was, in other words, becoming standardized, and vitae along with miracle

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narratives were becoming the standard case evidence for sainthood.28 Even given these circumstances, the speed with which Simeon’s canonization transpired, so soon after he died on June 1, 1035, is remarkable. In brief, shortly after Simeon died, Archbishop Poppo sent a letter to the Pope, soliciting help in a political matter and further requesting that Simeon be canonized on the basis of the vita and miracles he had enclosed. The Pope replied positively to both requests and reported that the decision to canonize St. Simeon had been made on Christmas Eve. Simeon was canonized early in 1036. Various administrative factors seem to have contributed to the alacrity with which Simeon was canonized. For example, during the eleventh century, the administrative actions of bishops tended to be perceived in a positive light, allowing the churchmen considerable latitude in the local naming of patrons. Moreover, the Church was expanding its practice of canonizing martyrs to celebrate as well those individuals who demonstrated great faith, especially hermits such as Simeon.29 In addition, it seems that Archbishop Poppo may have known that Pope Benedict IX, the last of the powerful Tusculani family (and a pope notorious for selling the papacy and reclaiming the office twice) favored ascetic hermits’ lives, especially if the hermits came from the east. Perhaps most importantly, Poppo, who was known as an effective civic leader,30 began the canonization process immediately. Thus, authenticated hagiographical and liturgical texts were quickly composed, texts that also less formally functioned as influential instruments to attract pilgrims, for whom communities regularly competed. 31 All-in-all, these administrative factors comprised the Archbishop’s “workshop,” out of which he was able to enhance the fame of the saint as well as of the oldest bishopric in Germany, so much so that Trier’s fame, authority, and popularity reached a high point during his term in office.32 All these factors further reveal the staging involved in canonizing a saint as they also illustrate Poppo’s ability to govern and authorize suitable narratives. As such, they underscore the need to “campaign” for spiritual status, a need that was fueled in part by the monetary benefits that stemmed from the pilgrimage “constituency”: since pilgrims brought donations with them, cloisters grew to become dependent upon cults. In other words, Archbishop Poppo found in Simeon one of his “civic projects,” one that coalesced agreeably with Simeon’s decision to become a hermit on his pilgrimage to God and thereby one that provided for both cities, the secular and the spiritual.33 This is how Poppo solved the tensions informing the idea that God’s kingdom should be mirrored on earth, tensions that inform secular governance as well, and which the popular Fürstenspiegel treat (discussed in chapter 1), by similarly trying to provide guides on how to reduce, as Black puts it, “all multiplicity and diversity . . . ‘to singularity.’ ” Simeon’s canonization thus points to Poppo’s effective management of the evidence and to his understanding of what would likely appeal to his audiences. Semiotically, as with any saint, St. Simeon came to stand for the virtuous who enter the kingdom of God, and in this Augustinian sense, he too functioned as a leader, as one who must stand for a kingdom. Moreover, localizing his vita in Trier not only drew pilgrims to the site. It also created an emblem that poetically imparts the tensions of living in the world while yearning for the spiritual. Dwelling in the Porta Nigra, St. Simeon literally and metaphorically lived on the edge, occupying

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a role both in and outside the worldly, cloistered but present enough to cause concern when things went awry, an object of public veneration kept from the public. These paradoxes transplant and reconfigure the hermit of the desert that the younger Simeon yearned to become into an urban landscape and thus further exemplify the poetic mode, as Simeon’s attempt to navigate his own dual citizenships appear in different but equivalent articulations of a familiar religious story.

*

*

*

As mentioned above, the poetic mode is present in the narratives authored by René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince as well, a mode that I will point to only intermittently during the remainder of this study. As these three prominent men convey, leadership requires a good reputation, ratio atque oratio in the Ciceronian sense, as well as the ability to perform as an authoritative persona in the Augustinian sense. Each of these “authors” understands too that a reputation must appeal to audiences through common topoi or narratives as established in the literary system by, for example, the Fürstenspiegel. Importantly, René, Chaucer, and Edward seem to share the view that although fame is a future-oriented by-product the bestowal of which is beyond their control, its present-situated prerequisite is not solely good deeds, but, perhaps just as importantly, the creation of narratives aimed at particular audiences.

CHAPTER 1 FAME AND FÜRSTENSPIEGEL

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s described in the Introduction, Ovid’s Metamorphoses presents fame, whether good or bad, as bestowed or imposed on an individual. Even the narrator’s joy at his poetic accomplishment does not emphasize the effort or creativity put into his poetry, in spite of the fact that it is the poet’s work that is being celebrated. Instead, the Metamorphoses’ last lines highlight his reward: quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam. [15. 877–879, Miller’s translation: Wherever Rome’s power extends over the conquered world, I shall have mention on men’s lips, and, if the prophecies of bards have any truth, through all the ages shall I live in fame.]

As suggested by these lines, then, while classical depictions of fame do not eliminate the role of agency, on the surface, they marginalize the factor and thereby suggest that fame is beyond an individual’s control. Dovetailing with Ovid’s culminating lines, this study’s late medieval presentations also capture a point in time before “everlasting” fame is bestowed, while, however, foregrounding agency—that is, the stories that René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince generate, whether written or performed, display the complexities and uncertainties in acquiring fame, as they also convey the difficulties encountered in comprehending the phenomenon.

Fame’s Narrative Potential What makes comprehending fame so difficult is precisely that which concomitantly allows classical poets like Ovid to marginalize agency: fame is both insubstantial, insofar as it has no consistent corporeal form, and powerful, in that it can shape lives. Moreover, it is impossible to generate a formula for achieving good fame. Since fame cannot be seen, touched, nor ruled, except in some of its consequences, and since these consequences can be substantial, it proves simpler, perhaps, to assign agency to a superior realm, to some enigmatic goddess reigning in her own iconic myth, and thereby smooth over intricate complexities.

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What is particularly intriguing in late medieval treatments is the “slippage” that classical depictions of fame undergo—no longer straightforwardly residing in the domain of the gods, fame enters the secular realm, but with idealistic texturing that intimates the divine, as is evident in the apparently little challenged, widely accepted, Arthurian quest for glory, discussed below. As such, fame occupies variable, complex fields of tensions (not unlike those that preoccupied Archbishop Poppo or St. Simeon, which were generated from the interplay of the mortal with the divine), tensions that approximate the platonic, “approximate” because while fame has multiple earthly forms that seem to point to an ideal, nonetheless, the ideal that fame seems to point to is not always, among other attributes, eternal or just.1 As Winthrop Wetherbee defi nes fundamental platonic assumptions in the twelfth century:2 Three of these [assumptions] were fundamental: that the visible universe is a unified whole, a “cosmos”; that it is the copy of an ideal exemplar; and that its creation was the expression of the goodness of its creator. . . . What the Timaeus gave to the Chartrians, then, and what they in turn transmitted to poets of the later twelfth century, was a structure, a model of reality which could be “read” allegorically as a means to philosophical understanding.

Besides not always articulating “the goodness of its creator,” fame proves problematic, because although it seems to function as “a copy of an ideal exemplar,” it actually functions as an interpretation of an ideal exemplar—unlike the neoplatonists’ models of reality, fame exists because people interpret allegorically, not because their allegorical understanding “correctly” replicates truths. Herein lies fame’s narrative potential: as soon as “data points” are distributed in a conventional pattern, the literary system’s storytelling energy emerges to suggest familiar tales, tales that “must” have underlying meaning; it cannot be, for example, that St. Simeon’s inkling foreshadowing the futility of trying to collect funds from Count Richard does not point to a more profound allegorically conveyed truth. Fueling fame’s narrative potential, allegorical interpretations of the transitory inform the medieval literary system’s tensions between the real and the ideal. As Douglas Kelly argues, medieval literati theorize about archetypal forms and their importance in imaginative creation, which in a figurative sense mirrors the one true creation of God. Kelly writes, “Medieval imagination looks for forms inbedded in things and seeks out the rationale for marvels in the shapes possible in matter.”3 As I hope to show, René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince rely upon conventions found in the literary system of governance to negotiate between tensions, like those between the mortal and the immortal, as they query the ready acceptance of fame as an authoritative ideal. In philosophical terms, they suggest that fame belongs to what I call the “quasi-platonic” (since its forms do not necessarily represent the eternal and just), not to what scholars have termed the “neo-platonic”; in other words, reading fame’s largesse allegorically reveals mortal, not divine, approbation (although, at times, the two forms of praise seem equivalent). In this framework, focusing on agency in the pursuit of fame creates another emphasis not ostensibly revealed in classical depictions, that of the active, conative

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consideration of audiences, who are solicited to approve the actions or vision that leaders wish to realize, the perspective that Arachne, focused on her famed talent, failed to take into account. Both during the Middle Ages and our own times, for example, leaders relying on the authority of their reputations invite audiences to judge in a moment of time before a conclusion has been reached and to ignore, essentially, all but a single solution. Even when a narrative so clearly points to an ending, however, its ground nonetheless proffers a variety of implied narratives and other potential endings, as the contest between Arachne and Minerva also illustrates. How potential stories may populate narratives may be illustrated here by means of two dissonant instances, since dissonance can point to when and what conventions or underlying assumptions are missed or altered, as registered in audiences’ reactions.4 Thus, during the 2008 U.S. campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama showed up now and again without a flag pin on his lapel, which eventually drew intense commentary.5 In terms of this study, Obama’s attempt to communicate his larger story was temporarily aborted by the absence of a seemingly insignificant prop that, however, not only occupied a part of the campaign ground, but also synecdochally evoked narratives that audiences associated with, among other things, sacrifices made by citizens. Consequently, for some audiences, and reminiscent of Arachne’s fate, this dissonance cast doubt upon Obama’s ratio atque oratio, upon his good fame. The same potentially explosive revelation of marginalized but nonetheless concurrently existing stories holds true in literary narrations as well. For example, when in the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, Unferth casts aspersions on the eponymous hero’s bravery by means of a tale focused on Beowulf ’s failure to win a swimming contest, his narration, while aimed at engendering doubts in his audience, actually provides the platform for Beowulf ’s counter-narrative, not only because he ignored Beowulf ’s being momentarily detained by sea-monsters in that episode, but also because he did not take into consideration the rich narrative ground that defines bravery in terms of battles rather than swimming contests.6 In Eco’s terms, the ground may provide limitless material, but effective choices, limits, are nonetheless suggested by conventions. Thus, Unferth’s attempt to puncture Beowulf ’s fame proves ineffective; the audience accepts Beowulf as their champion. Intentionally or not, then, the absence of the fl ag pin and the absence of heroic bravery in Unferth’s tale evoke other stories for their audiences. These stories lurking in the ground of any narrative prove critical, requiring that a successful quest for the “right” ratio atque oratio depends, in part, upon how effectively an individual can author a narrative that takes into account how related conventional elements affect particular audiences. In illustrating the kinds of cautions that should be heeded in addressing audiences, these two examples underscore as well the decidedly public nature of leaders’ narratives, the very visible conditions of which further suggest that staging too can play with what Eco defi nes as the limits of interpretation. Thus, to construct a “stage” that does not ignore the concurrent stories found in rich narrative contexts, leaders’ narratives frequently gather and communicate stories in juxtaposed diachronic and synchronic temporalities; that is, respectively, in how a sweep of time is delineated and in how a moment of time is dilated. Before a candidate wins

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a party’s nomination, for example, the range of diachronically framed narratives she can use to stake claim to an office can be succinctly intimated to feed into a synchronically informed aura of rich potential—her (diachronically presented) vast experience and many years of service to the country prove why she is the candidate who deserves your vote (synchronically put) now. Likewise, knowing that an epic hero will die “before his time” can make his diachronically presented story all the more poignant, as his upcoming valiant death is made to invest, synchronically, every prior, publicly witnessed, detail with intense significance, significance that stems from stories conveying traditionally shared values such as a just cause, loyalty, and prowess. In addition to foregrounding agency, modulating quasi-platonic assumptions, paying attention to conventional expectations, and staging public narratives that claim audiences’ attention through temporally underscored reminders of rich contexts or shared values, narratives in the literary system of governance can also evoke key qualities of dreams. That is, narratives in the literary system of governance possess the structure and traits of a dream insofar as events or conditions are connected and others eliminated regardless of actual circumstances or causal linkages, in order to project a picture of a desired state of aff airs that may be counterfactual to the moment, but that seems fully realizable in the course of the narrative, no matter how unlikely that state of aff airs may seem in the cold light of day. As such, a dreamlike narrative shares much with iconic myths, except, perhaps, for their sense of scale and their evocation of a timeless space. For example, a U.S. leader may propose that every citizen be allowed qualitatively superior medical coverage, thereby linking U.S. excellence in medical progress with ideals of democratic governance, while eliminating complicating factors such as pertinent economic conditions or powerful lobbies contending such a proposal. These same dreamlike traits and structure also inform epic narratives, insofar as the genre essentially connects an individual’s deeds of heroism with a kingdom’s interests while eliminating mention of larger, or simply other, historical consequences as well as the impact of the deaths of all those slaughtered on the battlefield. To be sure, dreamlike narratives can impart actual possibilities, but, like iconic myths, they do so by streamlining away hindrances, which, at the same time, can be the source of their power. In the chapters that follow, I suggest that all three authors play against this streamlining energy to explore the conventional, dreamlike narratives conveying fame’s reign.7 When the dreamlike or iconically mythic quality of narratives made by, or for, leaders is thus probed, René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince suggest, resulting narratives can not only intimate dialogues with audiences, they can also foreground agency and play with shared expectations.8

Fame, Audiences, and the Literary System of Governance As suggested in the Introduction, classical poets such as Ovid and Vergil allegorically depict Fame as an enigmatic, rapacious figure responsible for rumors and subject to no rational cause-and-effect considerations. What gives Fame power is intimated by Ovid’s narrator, when he closes the Metamorphoses with a burst of pride in the fame he will enjoy, thereby evoking the tradition of fame as glory.

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Enunciating an array of attitudes from eschewing repugnant fame to embracing her rewards, classical poets emphasize that fame, good or bad, is bestowed regardless of an individual’s desire or worth.9 Consequently, an individual cannot count on acquiring fame, regardless of his or her actions. Contributing to this iconically mythic depiction of fame, the writer who records deeds of valor or ignominy usually receives scant attention, and, ironically, when viewed from a rhetorically situated perspective, the audience’s part in supporting fame is also as good as absent from overt consideration. In other words, while classical depictions posit fame as a result—it is a gift or a curse—it is not presented as itself having substance, and thus, in part because its bestowal is not predictable in any readily apparent fashion, fame only emerges as a by-product of primary actions and hence not subject to audience approval. Perhaps earlier, but certainly by the late Middle Ages, this epic—to use Jakobson’s understanding of the term—and diachronic mode of depicting fame was transformed by suggesting that, perhaps, fame did have some substance. In examining Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Christian sources as they were assimilated into the literary system of the late Middle Ages, Piero Boitani argues that the central distinction arising in the medieval period is the increasingly personal relationship writers have to fame,10 a relationship that is, in other words, more or less synchronic and emotive. Indeed, although varied depictions of fame are expressed in any era, a discernible shift moves depictions in late medieval writings from the emphasis on fame as an enigma, representing a readerly perspective, to fame as something that can be shaped, a writerly perspective. Thus, in the fourteenth-century Fürstenspiegel, De casibus virorum illustrium [The stories of illustrious men], Boccaccio allows Petrarca to glorify fame, when he appears before the narrator to encourage him in his project, since for writers, readers, and those who achieve fame, fame is not only a good, it is a guarantor of virtue; fame “non nisi per Virtutem adquiritur” [Book 8, p. 186: can never be acquired except by virtue], a viewpoint, as seen below, that Boccaccio problematizes as well.11 In addition, then, to foregrounding the literary creation of fame, Boccaccio’s Petrarca underscores that Augustinian, ethical value is granted fame’s stories. Similarly asserted in John Trevisa’s fi fteenth-century English translation of the Fürstenspiegel by Giles of Rome, The Governance of Kings and Princes, fame and glory occur only through praise and worship—thereby signaling the importance of the addresser-addressee axis—“worschep” and “gloria” that, Trevisa avers, Aristotle interprets as a sure sign of a good prince.12 In the late Middle Ages, a plethora of conditions contributes to emphasizing the importance of the addresser-addressee axis in the literary system of governance. The Black Death decimating one-third of western Europe’s population, the constant challenges to the Church to refocus its spiritual mission, the decisions to engage in warfare to establish supremacy in religious as well as secular spheres, the increasing importance of the vernacular in authoritative venues, the flourishing of guilds, and the emergence of increasingly vocal demands to govern less autocratically, just to generalize a few important developments, mark the western European late Middle Ages as a period of transition during which the hierarchical forms of governance and fi xed perceptions of society undergo significant transformation.13 To be more specific with just a few examples: having examined 1,112 revolts in

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Italy, France, and Flanders, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. writes regarding instances from the fourteenth century in Flanders and the Jacquerie that,14 . . . politics, betrayal, and abuse were the sparks of rebellion, not conditions of misery or increased feudal exactions. It was the nobles’ political failures that led to the Jacquerie: their failure to protect their villagers from assaults by the English or by the regent of France and their collusion with the enemy in warlike pillaging of peasant property . . . The sources . . . show peasants engaging in politics, forming assemblies and village alliances, electing their own leaders, and defending their rights by attacking their class superiors who had betrayed them.

Similarly taking the individual into account, at the same time René d’Anjou seems intent on preserving older ways, he also institutes tax reforms apparently intended to alleviate the plight of his subjects. Likewise, in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer allows colorful prominence to the secular concerns, attitudes, and lives of pilgrims from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, even though they are en route to a religious shrine. Finally, the Black Prince takes the unusual step of addressing his archers in addition to his knights right before they engage in the Battle of Poitiers. Shifts in forms of governance and perceptions of society accompany shifts in political leadership that all together feed into the political necessity of gaining widely spread consensus.15 As Peter Riesenberg writes with respect to late medieval developments in political theory on the inalienability of sovereignty:16 The nexus between ruler and ruled is no longer a personal and elaborate relationship of mutual dependency and respect. Rather it has become formally and legally an undeniable tie between the individual and the state, one end of which coheres to the individual despite his any action.

Indeed, one of the resulting consequences of all these shifts in perspective is the attention given to audiences who cocreate fame (the basic perspective informing political campaigns today). Thus, Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail write that the range of medieval fama, from rumor to honor,17 . . . can be conceived of as a general impression that is inseparable from its embodiment in talk . . . fama is the public talk that continually adjusts honor and assigns rank or standing . . . [an honor] that could be bestowed only by other people, one that had to be plainly visible. It could be made so through material signs . . . and through the performance of acts agreed upon as honorable.

The concerns of leaders today certainly do not mesh completely with those in the late Middle Ages. Nonetheless, they converge in the rhetorically lodged recognition that consensus must be won. In the late Middle Ages, that consensus could, at least theoretically, be gathered around traits defi ning the vir bonus. In this vein, Trevisa offers three ways in which kings and princes may be loved by the people: they need to demonstrate largesse, they should show themselves as stalwart and courageously ready to sacrifice themselves for the people, and they must be just.18 Kings and princes, that is, must take the populace into account.

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Late Medieval Fürstenspiegel Dependent upon the rich possibilities accompanying a narrative before it reaches its conclusion, as suggested above, dreamlike narratives generated from within the literary system of governance can create counterfactual or streamlined worlds, which offer fertile settings for the quasi-platonic ideals that contribute to informing the late medieval literary system. Such ideal, quasi-platonic worlds are made comprehensible to their readers by means of familiar touchstones, as provided in the late Middle Ages through the Fürstenspiegel. Especially in the case of the Fürstenspiegel that collect exemplary tales of good and bad leaders (leaders who have thus acquired fame), the purpose of the genre, so their narrators traditionally proclaim, is to advise and admonish leaders to do their best. Further, Fürstenspiegel can extend this exhortative function, L. O. Aranye Fradenburg demonstrates, as witnessed in how they helped shape chivalry in a manner that contributed to a sense of nationalism.19 Underlying this exhortative proclivity is the fundamental implication that leaders’ lives are actually stories that mirror God’s will, not unlike saints’ lives, and concomitantly, that such stories can influence future leaders’ lives, their yet incomplete “narratives,” as well as contribute to other narratives too.20 The Fürstenspiegel I most rely on in this study is Giovanni Boccaccio’s De casibus, mentioned above, in large part because while clearly exhibiting basic traits of Fürstenspiegel, such as providing advice, its collection of tales also dissonantly raises questions about the genre.21 Framed in a dream vision, moreover, the collection’s narrator assumes the position of an audience member viewing history’s prominent leaders, who appear before him to tell him their stories, visualized as if on a stage, after which he moralizes from their examples. Thus, the metaliterary question of who comprises a Fürstenspiegel’s audience is also raised to include individuals beyond a ruler—not only the depicted narrator or recipient, but also other literati as suggested by Petrarca’s phatic appearance. Dedicated to a knight, Mainardo dei Cavalcanti, Boccaccio’s De casibus, probably completed between 1356 and 1360, seems an appropriate choice as well because of its popularity; eighty-three manuscripts survive, along with over a hundred manuscripts of Laurent de Premierfait’s fi fteenth-century French translation of Boccaccio’s collection, as well as translations into English by John Lydgate, into Italian by Giuseppe Betussi, into Spanish by Lopez d’Ayala, and into German by Jacob Ziegler, not to mention Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, which seems to have been influenced by the De casibus too.22 In The Fall of Prynces (ca. 1430–1438), John Lydgate describes Boccaccio’s project this way:23 Off the most noble he ne spareth noon, But settith hem in ordre ceriously, Gynnyth at Adam & endith at kyng Iohn, Ther auentures rehersyng by and by . . . Bochas thouhte it was but veyn, To his name noon encres off glorie, To remembre no cronycle nor historie, But tho that wern for ther merit notable, Auctorised, famous and comendable.

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[Book 1, ll. 134–154, pp. 4–5: Of the most noble, he spared none, but set them in order with dignity, beginning at Adam and ending with King John, narrating their adventures one by one . . . Boccaccio thought it was pointless, and it would give no glory to his name, to remember a chronicle or history unless it was noteworthy, authoritative, famous, and commendable.]

The exhortative, dreamlike stories that populate the De casibus thus provide some insight into the late medieval literary system of governance while also, judging from the collection’s popularity, demonstrating that they were appreciated by, or at least familiar to, late medieval literati, who, Boccaccio posits, prove critical to the creation of fame. Since Boccaccio’s De casibus does at times contest the genre, perhaps it may prove useful as well to describe Fürstenspiegel here generally. Probably best known to contemporary readers through Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe [The Prince], the genre of Fürstenspiegel makes its fi rst known, western European, Latin, appearance after the classical period in the ninth century, with Smaragdus de St. Mihiel’s Via regia (ca. 810), which, according to Otto Eberhardt, also revamped the genre into something new. Eberhardt defi nes the transformed genre thus:24 Ein Fürstenspiegel ist ein geschlossenes Werk, das mit dem Zweck der grundsätzlichen Wissensvermittlung oder Ermahnung möglichst vollständig das rechte Verhalten des Herrschers im Blick auf seine besondere Stellung erörtert; dabei liegt meist eine persönliche Beziehung zum Herrscher zugrunde. [A mirror of princes is a work complete in and of itself, that with its goal of communicating the basic knowledge or exhortation as fully as possible, discusses the proper behavior of a ruler while taking into account his special position; usually it is also based in a personal relationship to the ruler.]

As a genre, the Fürstenspiegel proved quite popular, as may be gauged not only by the De casibus, but also by the Secretum secretorum, a mirror offering advice on how a regent might maintain his health and formulating other restrictions to guide him in living a good life and in adhering to sound advice. Originally written in Arabic, it has survived in about 500 Latin manuscripts from approximately the twelfth century on and was further translated into French and English.25 The popularity of this and other Fürstenspiegel serves as a clear indicator that their audiences were not actually limited to regents. Charles F. Briggs makes essentially the same point regarding Giles of Rome’s also immensely popular, late thirteenth-century De regimine principum; not only was this mirror of princes translated into many languages, as with Trevisa’s version mentioned above, it was used by scholars at universities as well.26 As popular treatises, importantly, Fürstenspiegel apparently served as a mirror of actual governance. “When the European monarchies flowered, the genre flowered . . . ,” writes Frank Tang, before pointing out that Fürstenspiegel flourished in the Carolingian period, the twelfth century, the late Middle Ages, and the Early Modern period.27 Critically, medieval Fürstenspiegel advise leaders that since they rule as God’s vice-regents on earth, they should excel in political and military venues in Christian

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manner (thereby evoking Augustine’s Christian orator).28 Regarding Vincent de Beauvais’ thirteenth-century Fürstenspiegel, for example, Robert J. Schneider writes that:29 Four conditions are necessary for a legitimate reign: (1) divine dispensation, (2) the election or consent of the governed, (3) the approbation of the Church, and (4) a long period of rule in good faith. . . . it is necessary that the prince be a model in exercising the highest virtues. Vincent’s ideal prince is to be a mirror, bearing the image of the Trinity, and is to excel all others in power, wisdom, and goodness . . .

In admonishing regents to rule ethically and to serve as models for the people, Fürstenspiegel emphasize the importance of grooming just relationships between those who govern and those who are governed. As Jean Reviron argues, for example, Jonas d’Orléans’ De institutione regia, written in 831, admonishes Pippin to use his power wisely, administer justice equitably, defend and take care of the powerless, punish criminals, act with dignity, defend the church and the country, and take heed of wise counsel.30 At the heart of the genre, rulers are indeed warned to take wise counsel, for if a regent should prove irresponsible, then he or she would be acting contrarily to God’s wishes. This basic, seemingly clear tenet fuels one of the recurring, ambiguous themes of Fürstenspiegel: tyranny (the refusal to take wise counsel) and the problem of whether or when a ruler anointed by God can be overthrown, as explicated in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (1159). The ambiguity stems not only from opposing positions on the issue, but also in the application; appropriately or not, for example, Boccaccio’s De casibus was quoted in the defense of the Duke of Burgundy’s murder of the Duke of Orléans on November 23, 1407, an event that fueled dynastic strife for the family of René d’Anjou.31 Indeed, Boccaccio does forcefully argue that just regicide can serve God’s purpose.32 The problem of tyranny was a thorny one and was joined by another knotty problem from the thirteenth century on, concerning the inalienability of sovereignty alluded to earlier, a principle that political theorists debated in attempting to defi ne the relationship between the crown and public welfare, in part as a response to growing Church influence in the royal sphere. 33 The penchant to exhort a leader to consider wise counsel is probably as ancient as governance itself and certainly a part of the literary system of governance since at least Plato’s Republic. Unlike Plato’s philosophically expansive and didactic map of what an utopic state could resemble, however, Fürstenspiegel resembling Boccaccio’s codify the exhortative penchant in short tales, encouraging readers to move from the readerly position of absorbing material to the writerly position of enacting “tales” that themselves could become part of future Fürstenspiegel. In encouraging leaders to rule wisely, the tale collections per se manifest the rhetorical principle of docere et delectare, to teach while pleasing.34 More relevant here, the brevity of the exempla is an important structural feature, because it argues that the lives presented are subordinated to the genre’s exhortative imperative. Perhaps most importantly, the idea that an actual leader can be perceived, and shaped, in light of other, prior, leaders is a highly literary and semiotic mode of perception attempting to reduce multiplicity to singularity, a mode of perception that Boccaccio underscores in the

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closing section to his nine-book, prose De casibus, “Et ex alienis casibus quam in lubrico positi sitis advertite” [Book 9, p. 240: From other cases, turn your attention to what a slippery position you are in].

Fürstenspiegel Elements Outside the Genre and the Arthurian Challenge Wise counsel, it seems, proves difficult to discern, a state of affairs also recognized by René, Chaucer, and Prince Edward. By the late Middle Ages, Fürstenspiegel exempla had become touchstones within the literary system of governance, so well known that regents, writers, and readers could rely upon them to interpret a leader’s actions—the exempla had come, in other words, to articulate an influential code, in the sense articulated by Jakobson. As such, Fürstenspiegel values and topoi were easily imported into narratives outside the genre itself.35 To exemplify how the genre’s elements may populate narratives, I describe here a vignette provided by M. le Comte de Quatrebarbes, a scholar who edited the works of René d’Anjou in the nineteenth century and who, in providing an interpretation of the Angevin king’s life and qualities, highlights Fürstenspiegel elements prominent in the late Middle Ages and beyond.36 Because this vignette simplifies more than do the late medieval examples explored here, I can extract Fürstenspiegel elements from it with relative ease before anchoring them in the late medieval literary system of governance through comparison with Boccaccio’s De casibus and Trevisa’s Governance of Kings and Princes. By the very difficult winter of 1440, René’s battle to claim his recently bequeathed inheritance of Naples seemed to take an upward turn, for he had successfully survived the siege engineered by his counter-claimant, Alphonse V of Aragon. Nonetheless, his attempts to do so had been plagued by intrigues, and so René embarked on a journey to bolster the morale of his people and thereby discourage treason. Before leaving Naples in the hands of his wife, he rallied the Neapolitans at the grand market, near the church of Saint-Sauveur.37 There, he acknowledged his aunt, the late Queen Jeanne of Naples, before continuing to narrate the events that led him to fight for his inheritance and announcing he was ready to release his subjects from their oath of loyalty, since he had not been able to bring them peace. The crowd interrupted him, jubilantly reaffi rming their allegiance and carrying him on their shoulders to his palace. René was, “ému de tant d’amour, renouvelât le serment de ne jamais se séparer de son peuple” [vol. 1, p. lv: moved by so much love, that he wished to renew his oath never to be separated from his people]. Later, René left Naples in darkness with a small group of knights, and they made the difficult passage through enemy territory, persisting in spite of freezing torrents, pursuit by enemies, two difficult nights in the Apennines, and attacks from mountaineers, all of which, Quatrebarbes emphasizes, René endured with his men, eating and drinking with them and thereby serving as an exemplum of how to persist. Along the way, René had also placed his trust in a poor monk, Antonello, to guide them through much of this journey, which proved, in the end, to be gratifying, as the towns of Hauteville and the monk’s own Bénévent demonstrated their support. René had shared

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his followers’ tribulations during this journey, but more telling than the shared hardships, . . . il aime au milieu de serviteurs dévoués et de simples villageois à oublier sa royauté sous un toit de chaume . . . il sut connaître les hommes; jamais ingrat, souvent trompé, s’il ne laissa aucun service sans récompense, il pardonna trop facilement au repentir apparent, qui voilait une trahison. Ce fut à tous les âges la grande faute de sa vie. [vol. 1, p. lvi: he prefers in the midst of devoted servants and simple villagers to forget his royalty under a thatched roof . . . he knew how to get to know the men; never ungrateful, often wronged; if he left no service unrewarded, he also too easily pardoned the overtly remorseful, who hid their treachery. This was always his great failing throughout his life.]

Quatrebarbes continues by describing René’s attempts to lift levies, pay mercenaries, and provide supplies for his people, and remarks, “[s]on nom était devenut populaire dans les moindres hameaux” [vol.1, p. lvi; cf. pp. xcv–xcvi: his name had become popular in the least of hamlets]. Although not a late medieval account, this vignette does crystallize five tightly interrelated elements informing late medieval Fürstenspiegel. First, even though a historical rendering, Quatrebarbes enhances literary qualities in its unequivocal celebration of René, thereby illustrating how a historical account of leadership may be shaped for the literary system of governance by means of streamlining, by generating a dreamlike narrative evoking the epic mode, while eliminating some elements that would detract from the hero’s stature. Indeed, ensconced in this same perspective, Trevisa argues that it is rhetorically important to praise and to structure clearly (pp. 9, l. 34–10, l. 7), “ . . . by li3t esy maner tretyng of this worke we maketh the kyng wel willed . . . And fore the ende is most principal cause of dedes . . . the resoun schal bygynne tretyng of the end and of felicite” [p. 12, ll.2–8: composing this work in a light and easy manner, we make the king well-willed . . . And since the end is the most important (determining) source of deeds . . . the reason shall begin by treating (pointing to) the end and happiness].38 Second, Quatrebarbes characterizes René as loved by his people for his valor, for the discomfort he suffered on their behalf, and for his sustained concern for them. By thus extolling René’s popularity, he develops a portrait of the ideal regent, echoing desiderata found in medieval Fürstenspiegel, such as René’s just treatment of his people, a fundamental virtue of good kings that Boccaccio’s narrator pointedly evokes, when he warns against pride in the second book of De casibus:39 Non ergo vis inpendendi sunt populi, non calcandi, non exenterandi. Meminisse quippe presides debent, non esse populos seruos. Sed conseruos. Nam vti ex sudore populorum regius fulget honos. Sic et vigilantia regia populorum salus et reges percuranda est. Qualiter hoc faciant principes hodie? viderit deus. In tyrannidem mores regii versi sunt. [Book 2, p. 52: Thus, people are not to be threatened with force, trampled under foot, nor disemboweled. Leaders should indeed remember that people are not slaves. Rather they are fellow servants. For royal dignity (pun on “office”) gleams from the sweat of the people. Thus, through royal vigilance, the health of the people and of

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kings is completely cured. In what manner do princes do this today? God has seen it. Royal ways are turned into tyranny.]

Indeed, knowing that René’s efforts will end in defeat, Quatrebarbes nonetheless portrays him heroically. Trevisa conveys the effectiveness of such a teleological approach, for knowing that one can end well makes each prior act more meaningful, “for man worcheth neuer ari3t as it nedeth for to come to pe ende bote a knowe the ende” [p. 14, ll. 4–5: for a man never works well enough to arrive at an ending unless he knows the ending]. Importantly for this study, the effect of such an approach is to diminish the magnitude of any particular act in favor of inner nobility, which Boccaccio describes in the sixth book of his De casibus, drawing from the example of Gaius Marius, as follows:40 Quippe nil aliud Nobilitatem esse quam quoddam splendidum decus . . . Quod non aliter posteris haereditario vel legatorio seu quo maius (?) iure alio linqui potest quam scientia aut ingenium relinquatur. Nec ob praeteritorum famosas imagines lares incolit successorum. Sola quidem mentis puritate laetatur in quocumque vel vbicumque sit. [Book 6, p. 146: Indeed, nobility is nothing other than a certain splendid glory . . . It cannot in any way be left to those coming afterwards by means of an inheritance or a will or all the more (?) by law any more than could knowledge or genius be bequeathed. Not because of famous images (statues) of ancestors does it dwell in a home of their successors. Indeed, only in the purity of a mind does it find joy, in whatever place or wherever it may be.]

Informing such purity of mind, Quatrebarbes’ vignette, thirdly, crowns René’s virtue with Christian approbation, as figuratively embodied in the poor monk, who proves to be a loyal guide.41 Religious elements patently serve as authoritative markers of a late medieval leader’s virtue, since they point to the invisible kingdom.42 Thus, recalling saints’ lives like those of St. Simeon, Trevisa admonishes that kings and princes shun the worldly for God’s will (e.g., p. 35, ll. 12–23). Like René, moreover, a Christian leader evokes the saintly when he withstands the vicissitudes of fortune, a sentiment also suggested in the closing words to Boccaccio’s De casibus: “Et si contingat deiici: non vestro crimine factum adpareat: set proteruia potius Fortunae cuncta vertentis” [Book 9, p. 241: And if it were to happen that you were overthrown, not by your sin it would appear to have been done, but rather all of the transformation (would appear to have been effected) by the wantonness of Fortune]. Fourth, and less obviously, while Quatrebarbes’ René appears to be instantly and enthusiastically recognized as a genuinely good ruler who elicited loyalty from his people, a positive Fürstenspiegel exemplum, he nonetheless feels the urge to explain to his subjects why and how they came to war. His concern for their opinion, Trevisa might point out, reveals that his sense of the commonwealth is one worthy of a king or prince, for “3if oo lord desireth comyn profit and profite of sogettes, panne pat lordshipe is icleped monarchia and a regne: for a kyng scholde desire comyn profite” [p. 325, ll. 12–14: If one lord desires the common good and the good of his subjects, then that rule is called a monarchy and a kingdom: for a

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king should desire the common good]. That the Neapolitan crowd is depicted as not requiring an explanation from the good king is interesting, but René’s perceived need to offer one is more relevant here, as it underscores the same impulse that impelled René on his journey, the need to strive for and communicate with his people, as additionally witnessed in his sharing of hardships and a hearth with his subjects. In thus emphasizing the King’s need to communicate with his subjects about their common cause, Quatrebarbes’ portrait actually articulates the raison d’être of any Fürstenspiegel: to establish interdependent relationships between those governing with those governed. The fi nal, fi fth element comprises the chivalric echoes sounded in the vignette, that, although not explicit, nonetheless evoke the Arthurian shading found in René’s own life and writings (discussed in the next chapter). While difficult to separate, the late medieval interrelationship between Arthurian coloring and actual chivalric demeanor has nonetheless been treated by many scholars.43 Writing, for example, from the point of view of the late medieval orders of chivalry and with respect to Geoff rey of Monmouth, Wace, Chrétien de Troyes, and a series of continuators and imitators, D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton writes:44 . . . the ideas about knighthood and knightliness they developed and promoted quickly assumed a central place in the ideology of the emerging knightly class, and their heroes came to be regarded as historical personages and treated as models by knights of all ranks. Such was the appeal of the “matter of Britain” that new works about Arthur and the knights of his court continued to be written until the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the romances of the Arthurian cycle remained the most popular form of literature in the knightly class until the very end of our period. It is almost impossible to overestimate the inf luence of these works on the chivalrous culture of the later medieval court, and it is not at all surprising that they provided the most important models for the knightly orders . . .

More narrowly, Trevisa sees chivalry as belonging to the defense of the common good and hence emphasizes its martial aspects (e.g., pp. 396–397), as does Geoff rey of Monmouth in his portrait of Arthur. In Quatrebarbes’ account, the Arthurian principle of primus inter pares, fi rst among equals, is intimated, a principle conveyed with more emphasis in Chrétien de Troyes than in Geoff rey of Monmouth. Thus, René upholds hierarchy in his claim to Naples (primus) but joins his knights under difficult conditions (a qualified pares). Likewise, although René’s unwise readiness to believe those who express remorse leads to his downfall, this fault is nonetheless situated in a virtue, one that could have been unequivocally claimed as a virtue had those around him proved trustworthy. More importantly here, René’s weakness is Arthur’s dilemma in a nutshell, as evidenced in his troubled willingness to believe in Lancelot’s loyalty and Guinevere’s constancy, his struggle to believe in the good in others in spite of advice to the contrary. This Arthurian dilemma—how to interpret the counsel provided by motivated advisors—is clearly fundamental to Fürstenspiegel;45 indeed, providing advice for leaders who must learn how to decipher ambiguities defi nes the genre, as Boccaccio suggests in the Introduction to the fi rst book of De casibus,46 “Quid enim hac charitate auiditati mortalium et saluti perpetuae vtilius: quam ob errantes si possis, in rectus tramitem revocare?”

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[Book 1, p. 25: What then could be more useful to the aid of mortals and to eternal salvation by this charity, than for the sake of those who go astray, if you could, call them back to the right path?]. Significantly, Boccaccio does not simply accept Arthurian chivalry as he phatically underscores the problems of competing stories. That is, in its eighth book, the De casibus devotes a section to King Arthur’s reign (pp. 205–207), highlighting elements that are obviously well enough known to convey in abbreviated manner. Thus, he sketches Arthur’s military conquests in order to introduce familiar elements of the literary system, like Arthur’s request that Merlin create a round table and the establishment of an order with laws and regulations. Then, Boccaccio’s narrator uneasily ruminates on the popular tales about the King to observe that since Arthur’s sepulcher could not be found, the belief that he will return proliferates. About this, Boccaccio writes further: Quid ergo? Vnius nefarii hominis ausu, breuissimi ipsis tractu, ampliatum Arthuri regnum diminutum est . . . Tabula rotunda tot probis splendida viris caelis omnibus deserta fractaque. Et in vulgi fabulam versa est. Gloria ingens regis et claritas desolatione in ignominiam et obscuritatem redacta est; adeo vt possint, si velint, mortales aduertere. Nil in orbe praeter humilia posse consistere. [Book 8, p. 206, my italics: What then? By the daring of one wicked man, in the shortest space of time, he destroyed Arthur’s extensive kingdom . . . The splendid round table for so many good courageous men in all the heavens was deserted and crushed. And it was turned into a tale of the people. The enormous glory and fame of the king was reduced through desolation to disgrace and obscurity; truly, mortals could, if they wish, pay attention to this. Nothing in the world except the humble can endure.]

With these lines, Boccaccio conveys another key tension facing any leader, political or literary, the enigmatic relationship linking deeds with glory. That is, in light of Arthur’s disastrous ending and, in some circles, loss of good fame, Boccaccio depicts his narrator as troubled by all the celebrated secular deeds the English king accomplished and inspired. He is further intrigued by the stories that live on through the vulgi, the common people communicating in their own native language. Subsequently, his conclusion is not a conclusion, since he leaves it up to the readers, si velint, if they wish, to turn their attention to the perturbing lesson. Of course, Boccaccio’s narration of this exemplum in Latin, not in the vox populi, itself multiplies ironies and tensions by wedging a socioeconomic division into the narrative’s telling and defi nition of the audience. Nonetheless, by thus portraying the audience, Boccaccio underscores that a leader, or author, cannot control the results of fame. As suggested by Quatrebarbes’ vignette, then, one basic assumption of Fürstenspiegel is that a good regent is one who is loved by his people. In highlighting how subjects feel toward a ruler, in realizing the vox populi as essential to a leader’s rise or fall, the rhetorical addresser-addressee axis is put fi rmly in place, clearly exhorting the ruler to take heed of his or her subjects. Ironically, when bringing the populace into the foreground, a Fürstenspiegel narrator also supports the established hierarchy of power by confi rming the roles of ruler and ruled. At times, however, emphasizing subjects’ rights can also open up the established hierarchy to

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leveling, especially when authoritative judgments shaped by writers could provide reasons for deposing a king. Indeed, although equivocal, the narrator’s slightly exasperated insistence on assessing Arthur dissonantly evokes the Fürstenspiegel’s ever-present lesson: the ruler will be judged. Boccaccio thereby concomitantly underscores the importance of authoritatively communicating a Fürstenspiegel’s tales, as most effectively achieved through the narrator who assumes the role of Wise Advisor.47 With each additional tale narrated along the chronological span stretching from the Bible to Greek, Roman, and medieval European kingdoms, from creation to his present day, Boccaccio’s narrator rhetorically establishes more and more authority, while underscoring the role of the author in creating fame.

Fürstenspiegel Elements and Chivalry in the Literary System of Governance Quatrebarbes’ vignette thus conveys how a narrative may appropriate Fürstenspiegel elements and themes, material that is also absorbed in late medieval narratives. Important to such appropriations, as suggested above, while Plato anchored universals in the eternal, beautiful, just, and true (and medieval philosophers clearly understood this), as with any thought that is part of a literary system, shifts in perspectives and slippages (intended or not) in the understanding of even central elements such as the Platonic ideals generate new ideas and narratives. Thus, fame’s tendency to attach values to the material and to perceive these values as fi rmly linked to the ideal creates complex relationships that ultimately work to glorify the mutable, as conveyed, for example, by Boccaccio’s narrator, when perplexed about the enduring fame of Arthur’s quintessentially worldly court. Indeed, Arthur’s chivalric excellence is often semiotically conveyed through extravagant material luxury; it is in this perspective, for example, that Chrétien de Troyes describes King Arthur’s court in the twelfth-century romance of Erec et Enide:48 a Quaradigan, son chastel, ot li rois Artus cort tenue. Einz si riche ne fu veüe, que molt i ot boens chevaliers, hardiz et conbatanz et fiers, et riches dames et puceles, filles de rois, gentes et beles . . . [ll. 28–34, Carroll’s translation: at Cardigan, his castle,/ King Arthur held court./ So rich a one was never seen,/ for there were many good knights,/ brave and combative and fierce,/ and rich ladies and maidens,/ daughters of kings, noble and beautiful.]

As such, Arthurian elements can provide a deeply resonant sounding board for such ruminations on glory: they are not only so well known that they can function as a touchstone against which unconventional messages may be sounded, they also embody all the tensions and contradictions conveyed in chivalric ideology. The tensions informing chivalric beliefs stem from a knight’s desire to be superior in both mortal and spiritual worlds and concomitantly to represent his court by means of his own life—a secular translation, in a sense, of Augustine’s

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Christian orator or of Archbishop Poppo’s “Simeon project.” In this vein, Peter F. Dembowski reads Jean Froissart against late medieval ideals of chivalry and explains that the, “fundamental aspect of chivalric culture . . . is . . . the inseparability of individual and public virtues.”49 Translating these virtues into serving a kingdom, chivalry expresses how an ideal society could function, but in doing so, as Trevisa argues, material wants and needs can unfortunately receive more attention than the spiritual (e.g., pp. 336–337). Thus, a court has good fame insofar as it is able to attract the best and to articulate its excellence in all of life’s luxuries, thereby ostensibly verifying chivalric excellence. But when the spiritual is automatically associated with the material and honor is semiotically expressed through pomp and fi nery, inevitably, chivalric tensions mount, as, for example, argued by Geoff roi de Charny (d. 1356), whom Froissart praised as the fi nest exemplar of chivalry among the French. Charny was one of the original members of the French Order of the Star; the bearer of the sacred banner of the Kings of France, the Oriflamme; and the owner of the Shroud of Turin. He not only tried to practice chivalry, he wrote three short books on the subject: Demandes pour la joute, les tournois et la guerre [Questions on jousts, tournaments, and war], Livre Charny [Book of Charny] regarding chivalric demands on knights, and the book cited here, the Livre de chevalrie [Book of Chivalry], which, according to Richard W. Kaeuper, was aimed at reforming chivalric practice, thereby supporting French King Jean II’s designs for the Order of the Star, founded, apparently, in order to eclipse the English Order of the Garter. Had he been a regent, Charny himself would have been a likely Fürstenspiegel candidate: although he rose from obscure origins and married into property, he also became renowned, and sought after, for his military as well as strategic prowess. Chivalric and proven in arms, he even died as a good king might: in battle at Poitiers on September 19, 1356, while fighting against the Black Prince, with, according to Froissart, the Oriflamme in his hands. Charny was buried fi rst in Poitiers and then later in Paris, at the church of the Celestines, where royal servants were honorably interred.50 Eminently a vir bonus of chivalric ilk, then, Charny has full authority to express concern over the tensions informing chivalry, as suggested by what he writes about otherwise valiant knights: Mais quant il vient en meilleur point et saison d’attendre et de trouver les faiz d’armes, dont avient il moult de foiz que il convient qu’il s’en partent pour le grant estat dont ilz se chargent et les grans missions qu’il veulent faire, dont il ne peuent demorer ne attendre le temps . . . si s’en vont a grant mesaise de cuer . . . Dont est ce grant dommage quant il convient que bon corps sejourne pour outrageuse mise; car miex vaut raconer et dire que l’en ait esté aux journees d’armes tous seulx avecques les autres et raconter son bienfait, quant Dieu li en a donné grace, que dire que l’en maine si grant estat et que l’en ait itrop despendu et que l’en n’ait peu attendre jusques au temps. [Kennedy’s translation, 13.8–21, pp. 96–97, my italics: But when it comes to waiting for the best time and season to find occasions for deeds of arms, then it often happens that they have to depart, because of the great state and outward show with which they burden them and the great expenditure to which they choose to commit themselves; hence they cannot stay and wait for the due time . . . and they go away, sad at heart . . . It is then a great shame when a good career is held back by excessive

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spending, for it is better to give an account of how one has been on one’s own without a retinue, to take part in armed combats along with other people, and to tell of one’s exploits, when God has by his grace granted them, than to say that one lives in such great state and that one has spent too much and has not been able to stay until the right moment.]

This passage captures the critical tensions that complicate a chivalric knight’s life, since he must continually negotiate between appearing and acting nobly at great expense on the one hand and being inwardly noble, as measured by deeds-in-arms, on the other. Both measurements, notably, are located in the mutable world; they are quasi-platonic. Indeed, Charny’s recognition of the contradictions in chivalry rests upon another: he not only conveys the Arthurian understanding of fame, which, as Boccaccio states, comprises the reports of virtuous knightly deeds, he wholeheartedly subscribes to it. Thus, a little later in his treatise, Charny admonishes, “Et pour ce doit l’en mettre en ce mestier plus son cuer et s’entente a l’onnour, qui tous temps dure, que a proffit et gaing que l’en peut perdre en une seule heure” [Kennedy’s translation, 15, 22–24, pp. 98–99: In this vocation one should therefore set one’s heart and mind on winning honor, which endures for ever, rather than on winning profit and booty, which one can lose within one single hour]. In such Fürstenspiegel-like exaltation of worthy fame, everything about which Charny writes exalts the exemplary. Toward the end, he even includes a section in which he discusses why kings and princes were created: to love God; to take care of the people; to show pity and mercy; to live in a moderate way; and to live virtuous, brave lives (24, 78–115-25, 1–85, pp. 138–145). Likewise, after listing virtues of great men who owe their qualities to God, he continues to evoke Fürstenspiegel by providing exempla of great men who nonetheless failed—Samson, Absalom, Solomon, St. Peter, Julius Caesar (whom he treats at length)—before displaying the good exemplum “du tres bon chevalier Judas Maccabeus” [Kennedy’s translation: 35, 69–176, pp. 158–163: of the excellent knight Judas Maccabeus]. With his exhortative, Fürstenspiegel-like ruminations on chivalry, Charny never, notably, challenges chivalric glory as a value. Importantly for this study, the tensions characterizing chivalry such as conveyed by Charny inform the ground of the literary system of governance, thereby allowing the five tightly interrelated elements associated with Fürstenspiegel and the genre’s tales themselves to migrate easily into other narratives. Consequently, even when loosened from the genre, Fürstenspiegel elements retain much of the genre’s traits. For example, although significantly shorter than the already spare Fürstenspiegel tales found in Boccaccio and additionally lacking the commentary between tales, Chaucer’s Monk nonetheless authoritatively announces that although he will be presenting his material from memory and consequently err chronologically, he will tell his fellow pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, “of popes, emperours, or kynges.”51 Similar to the De casibus, he begins with Lucifer and Adam, before sketchily recalling Old Testament and Greek mythological figures and others. For near contemporary exempla, one of his choices is King Pedro of Spain, who received Edward the Black Prince’s support to oust Enrique (Pedro’s bastard brother and fellow claimant to the Spanish throne).52 Interestingly, in this particular exemplum, the Monk focuses his sixteen lines on how Enrique and

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Bertrand du Guesclin betrayed and murdered Pedro, while evoking the treachery Ganelon committed that led to the deaths of Roland, Olivier, and their worthy knights, treachery that brought “this worthy kyng in swich a bryke” [7. 2390: this worthy king in such a plight]. In addition to alluding to the Black Prince, this example is noteworthy, then, because Chaucer relies upon Fürstenspiegel authority as he conveys a few salient points regarding the reception of Fürstenspiegel tales outside the genre. First, regardless of how an audience might receive them (the Monk’s fellow pilgrims, as conveyed by the Knight and their host Harry Bailey, fi nd his presentation less than palatable, 7. 2789), these sparsely told tales are readily identifi able as belonging to the Fürstenspiegel genre, allowing them, then, to function as synecdoches for Fürstenspiegel and their lessons. In this sense, they function semiotically and in expectation that audiences would comprehend the nod to a fuller narrative. Second, Chaucer’s inclusion of these truncated narratives in his Canterbury Tales without the moral warnings to rulers characterizing Fürstenspiegel suggests that the tales can also function as narratives for a variety of audiences, who may interpret them from perspectives other than the exhortative. Like the imaginary leader who fi rst ruminates on the Black Prince’s tomb before contemplating Canterbury Cathedral’s stained glass window of the Tree of Jesse, readers may enjoy these tales without the standard moral prompts and against an expanded ground. Indeed, there is a pointedly metaliterary signal sent by the Monk’s reference to the Chanson de Roland (7. 2387, 2389), a signal that essentially reads the epic as another cautionary tale for leaders. In other words, the French epic poem could well be interpreted from a Fürstenspiegel perspective to be about when to act and whose advice to take. Consequently, Fürstenspiegel can be understood as abstractions of epics, or put another way, epics can be thought of as full-length versions of Fürstenspiegel narratives, an equation supported not only by their comparable subject matter, but also by the iconically mythic streamlining found in both epics and Fürstenspiegel. This equation proves particularly noteworthy in reading the Black Prince’s narratives, as I suggest in chapter 4, which shape Fürstenspiegel elements in the epic register.

Fürstenspiegel Elements in Literature As suggested by the Monk’s Tale, then, the Chanson de Roland serves to establish the familiar theme found in the literary system of governance, the Fürstenspiegel lesson of how virtuous leaders must act when interpretation proves a murky aff air.53 As Trevisa points out, understanding the immutable does not require advice—it is the mutable world that demands skilled interpretation (e.g., pp. 352–353). In articulating this theme, the epic poem also displays the five tightly interrelated traits of Fürstenspiegel; that is, the literary depiction of the virtuous and religious Charlemagne captures the Emperor’s concern for his subjects as well as how he feels bound to uphold chivalric values, even if it means putting his beloved Roland in harm’s way. Combining historical and literary traits, as epics do, the Chanson de Roland very early on depicts Charlemagne as a good ruler, a portrait that resonates throughout the poem as articulated in the emperor’s devout allegiance to God (e.g., 181. 2479– 2481; 267. 3666).54 But in spite of his virtue and religious devotion, Charlemagne

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is affl icted by the paralysis created when attempting to interpret intent correctly. Thus, we are introduced to the emperor after we learn of the Saracens’ deceitful plan: by conceding to Charlemagne, offering wondrous gifts and hostages, and converting, ostensibly, to Christianity, Marsilion and his advisor Blancandrin plot to persuade the Franks to depart their territory, for once they leave, the Saracens can reconquer their land. In response to Blancandrin’s promises, Charlemagne demonstrates his adherence to the Fürstenspiegel lesson of listening well, “Li empereres en tint sun chef enclin,/ De sa parole ne fut mie hastifs” [10.139–140: The emperor bowed his head, he was by no means in a hurry with his speech]. This is not a hasty king; his desire to weigh issues is exemplary. Likewise, the De casibus portrays this same desideratum early on, in the fi rst book’s gloss on Theseus’ gullibility (a lesson that could very well negatively apply to Quatrebarbes’ René), when warning against the polished speech that lures leaders to believe that hearing only one side suffices (Book 1, pp. 38–39). In addition to reflecting upon the Saracens’ offer, Charlemagne asks advice of his nobles, the Fürstenspiegel’s gold standard for what makes a good ruler, as emphasized in Boccaccio’s fi nal words: “VOS Autem qui celsa tenetis Imperia aperite oculos . . . humana non obstare consilia . . . Prudent[i]um consilia sumite. Et benignos vos minoribus exhibere” [Book 9, pp. 240–241: You, however, who possess great authority, open your eyes . . . do not oppose human advice. Take advice of those who are wise. And show yourself favorable to those who are subordinate to you]. Unfortunately, Charlemagne’s advisors are confl icted about whether or not to trust the Saracens, and since multiple stories populate the ground at each step along the way, at this moment of ambiguity, various possibilities toward vastly different endings do indeed emerge. Thus, Roland maneuvers the situation so that Ganelon must serve as Charlemagne’s messenger to the Saracens. More insidiously, from the perspective of the narrator, in addition to deceiving both the Saracen and Frankish regents, Ganelon returns the favor by manipulating Roland into leading the rear guard: “Seignurs barons, dist li emperere Carles, Veez les porz e les destreiz passages: Kar me jugez, ki ert en la rereguarde.” Guenes respunt: “Rollant cist miens fillastre: N’avez baron de si grant vasselage.” [58. 740–744: “Lord barons,” said the emperor Charles, “See the pass and the tight passages: judge for me now—who will be in the rearguard.” Ganelon responded, “Roland is my stepson; you do not have a baron of so great loyalty.”]

In spite of Charlemagne’s resulting indecision and troubled dreams impeding his ability to act more wisely, strikingly, he is not directly critiqued, except by the Saracens, demonstrating a further Fürstenspiegel proof of exemplarity, the love and loyalty a leader inspires in his subjects. Indeed, even when Olivier is mortally wounded and readers learn that the pagans fully, sinisterly, blame Charlemagne for the tragic outcome (145. 1940–1951), Olivier nonetheless fiercely defends his emperor (146. 1958–1963).55 The closest that any of his loyal followers comes to critiquing him occurs when Charlemagne is deeply grieving for Roland

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(205. 2870–210. 2944), and Geoff rey d’Anjou (one of René’s ancestors) reminds him, ‘Ceste dolor ne demenez tant fort!’ [211. 2946: “Do not show distress so strongly!”].56 That is, in spite of his failure to decide correctly, Charlemagne is celebrated by reference to Fürstenspiegel desiderata—his actions are less critical than his virtuous ratio atque oratio, and thus, he is remembered in good fame as a worthy leader.

*

*

*

As discussed in the remaining chapters, René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince convey that leadership requires good fame as well as the ability to perform an authoritative persona in a variety of venues. Each of these authors understands too that a reputation must appeal to audiences through common topoi or narratives about good leadership as established in the literary system by, for example, the Fürstenspiegel. Moreover, René, Chaucer, and Edward seem to share the view that although fame is a future-oriented by-product the bestowal of which is beyond their absolute control, its present-situated prerequisite is not solely good deeds, but, perhaps just as importantly, the creation of narratives aimed at particular audiences. Finally, in their ruminations on fame, they take into cognizance the importance of staging and of recognizing their addressees as cocreators of their authority. Their perspectives thus differ notably from those expressed by classical poets writing about fame, while concomitantly looking forward to those of today’s leaders.

CHAPTER 2 RENÉ D’ANJOU’S NEGOTIATIONS WITH FAME: CREATING FOR A FUTURE PAST

R

ené d’Anjou’s loyal subjects, as depicted in Quatrebarbe’s vignette, express appreciation for their good king, thereby implying the etiology of the sobriquet, le bon roi René, which Provençal historians started using in the seventeenth century.1 In the end, however, René was not able to fulfill his oath to the Neapolitans: Alphonse entered Naples triumphantly in 1442, a fact likely to be known by Quatrebarbes’ nineteenth-century Angevin audience, 2 for Naples had long been a contested object of desire for the royal family of Anjou. The vignette’s René is depicted in a moment when he sat high on Fortune’s wheel and in the epic characterization of an ideal leader with traits familiar from Fürstenspiegel, complete with Ciceronian and Christian approbation framed in intimations of Arthurian ideals, thereby also crystallizing some traits that René himself seems to have deemed important. Whether overtly acknowledging Arthurian influence, as in his Livre du coeur d’amour épris [Book of the Heart Seized by Love], or presenting himself in an Arthurian setting, René’s Arthurian depictions were deeply embedded in the literary system of his time as well as in the more narrow literary system of governance. While emphasizing Jakobson’s metaliterary mode that phatically draws attention to the contact, this chapter will explore a few depictions of and by René, including his testament’s implied self-portrait, to discuss what seems to be his desire to achieve good fame and to examine the critical role of visualized performance in his articulation of leadership. In order to do so, I will fi rst spend some time sketching recurring themes in René’s life to provide a sense of the context from which his narratives emerge, before consulting a letter authored by Doge Tommaso Fregoso in addition to other sources that underscore René’s investment in Fürstenspiegel and Arthurian ideals. Finally, I will turn to the metaliterary, phatic themes of reading, performance, and fame in René’s Livre du coeur d’amour épris. I hope to demonstrate René’s awareness of the importance of the staging involved in leadership, staging that recognizes the relationship between ruler and ruled, between author and audience, as essential to memorializing, to achieving lasting good fame.

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René d’Anjou’s Dynastic Stage According to a variety of sources, not Quatrebarbes alone, René d’Anjou participated valorously in warfare; his subjects loved him; his two marriages brought him honor, wealth, and territory; and he was a patron of various arts, who himself displayed talent in writing and painting. 3 In this laudatory vein, Michael T. Reynolds characterizes René as, “a remarkable ruler whose territorial ambitions spanned fi fteenth-century Europe.”4 The long span of his life, seventy-one years ( January 9, 1409–July 10, 1480), seems to have allowed him the space to cultivate his proclivities and preoccupations, not least of which was how he might be remembered. In spite of the wide range of his activities over a stately lifetime and his actual importance to the royal family, René’s positive reputation has, ironically, been tainted from the damning of faint praise and from elaborate excuses and qualifications, the perceived necessity of which itself implies his not having quite achieved the fame of great kings. In his own times and into our own, that is, René’s misfortunes have been juxtaposed to glowing reports of his prowess, and his losses were more or less attributed to bad luck.5 In somewhat less expansive exculpatory prose than that of Quatrebarbes, for example, Florence Bouchet writes that René’s setbacks are greater in number than his successes, due to the difficult times for the aristocracy, who were witnessing the decline of political, military, and economic power.6 For Noël Coulet, Alice Planche, and Françoise Robin, René is, “un bon témoin de son temps. Il n’est pas pour autant, dans l’histoire politique du XVe siècle, un personnage politique de premier plan qui appelle ferveur et exaltation” [a good witness of his times. He is nonetheless not, in the political history of the fi fteenth century, a political person of the fi rst rank who excites passion and exaltation].7 On the more critical side, William Shakespeare delivers an example of the kind of subtly contested fame that plagues René’s reputation. In Henry VI, Part I, René appears valiant enough in battle, but when Suffolk requests that René’s daughter, Margaret, marry Henry VI, a hint of René’s purportedly shrewd financial sense creeps in to taint the portrait: René would allow the marriage if Henry returns Maine and Anjou to him. Exeter comments, “Besides, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower,/Where Reignier [René] sooner will receive than give” (5. 5. 46–47).8 René is thereby depicted as self-interested and crafty, since it is Margaret who should have brought a dowry into the marriage with her. Bringing it to a point, Michel Zink opens his essay on René’s Livre du coeur d’amour épris with these remarks,9 Qui prendrait au sérieux René d’Anjou? Roi de deux royaumes . . . mais roi in partibus, puisqu’il ne régna sur aucun. Prince dépouillé peu à peu, mais sans l’élégance de la bonne grâce ni la grandeur d’un excès d’infortune . . . Esprit entiché de gloire chevalersque, mais qui n’a eu le force ni de mener à terme ses vastes entreprises ni de s’abstenir des petitesses de la politique . . . Ecrivain choisissant avec sûreté des sujets et des formes destinés à sombrer dans l’oubli . . . [Who would take René d’Anjou seriously? King of two kingdoms, but king only in part since he reigned over neither. Prince despoiled little by little, but without the elegance of good grace or the grandeur of an excess of bad fortune . . . A spirit infatuated with chivalric glory, but who did not have the power either to bring to fruition his vast enterprises nor to abstain from petty politics . . . A writer choosing without fail subjects and forms destined to sink into oblivion . . .]

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Fueled by such equivocal assessments, René d’Anjou, member of the third Angevin dynasty, survives to us, in spite of Quatrebarbes’ encomiastic efforts, as someone who “should have” won the kind of accolades that would make him a Fürstenspiegel entry, but who just could not achieve the crowning laurels or the sympathetic perspective that would make him simply exemplary.10 This is part of what makes him an ideal illustration with which to begin this examination: his lack of complete, conventional, good fame exposes his efforts to secure fame as well as some of his doubts about fame’s authority. Of significance here, the hesitant qualifications and criticisms aimed at René seem to emerge in part from his status; after all, René’s wealth and political capital provided him with the “stage” on which to perform a memorable narrative. He does indeed fail in this respect, seemingly from the unfortunate decisions he made, as can be briefly illustrated by sketching the critical ties his family had with Joan of Arc. Indeed, the Maid of Orléans rose to prominence in part because she was sponsored by René’s mother, Yolande, who convinced the Dauphin to give her an audience. Subsequently, Joan chose René to accompany her in her quest to crown the Dauphin as King of France, an act that could have catapulted René into fame as her steadfast champion. This role, however, offered him no culminating glory. At least in part due to his obligatory allegiances and his concern to protect his territories, René left Joan’s side after her fi rst major setback.11 Of course, René could not have predicted that Joan would suffer such an ignominious but celebrated death; nonetheless, questions stemming from the potential stories that inhabit the ground remain: should he have left her? what drew his attention to his obligations just then? could he have fulfi lled his duties as a leader leaving his territories undefended? Suggesting, rightly or wrongly, that to some degree René was at least partly responsible for his inability to acquire unapologetic, brilliant fame, Joan of Arc also serves as an index of how deeply embedded René was in the French power structure of the times. Indeed, René’s father, Louis II d’Anjou (1377–1417), ruled over Anjou, Provence, Maine, Toulouse, Pouilles, Montpellier, Languedoc, Guyenne, Naples, Sicily, Piedmont, Folcalquier, Calabria, Capua, Poland, Hungary, MoldoValachia, the Dalmatian provinces, and Jerusalem. In addition to these territories, René’s mother, Yolande d’Aragon (1379–1442) possessed Aragon, Castile, Valencia, and Bar.12 René’s accession to power was thus more or less guaranteed and certainly began early. On April 29, 1417, Louis died when René was eight years old, and as his second son, René inherited the counties of Guise, Chailly, and Longjumeau in the Île de France. Moreover, after fi rst sending René to be raised by his great-uncle, the cardinal Duke of Bar, Yolande successfully convinced the Duke that his granddaughter, Isabelle de Lorraine, would be an excellent match for her son. Later, on June 23, 1430, with the death of his great-uncle, the adolescent René inherited his titles and lands.13 In addition to positioning her son as the Duke of Bar’s favorite, Yolande saw to it that René was raised with the Dauphin on his way to becoming King Charles VII in 1422. As a young adult, René further inherited lands from Charles le Hardi, the Duke of Lorraine, when he died on January 25, 1431, territory for which René had to wage war, only to be defeated and subsequently imprisoned by the Duke of Burgundy. With all that could have been comfortably his, René instead found himself mired in costly power plays for

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territory; indeed, his military and diplomatic battles for ownership proved to be, perhaps, the dominant leitmotif in his life. Serving to exculpate or not, the context in which René battled for his rights did prove to be complex as well as fractious. Angevin involvement in this period’s violent Anglo-French political scenario was central, and Yolande seems to have been a pretty capable player in the turmoil, as she effectively secured power for her family.14 During René’s lifetime, that is, the English dominated the Hundred Years War (until ca. 1435), allegiances within each side proved volatile, the lower classes more frequently engaged in rebellious demonstrations, and the Great Schism’s aftermath continued to rumble in political and religious skepticism at least until Basel’s reduced council was dissolved in 1449. In this explosive context, the marriage of René’s daughter, Margaret, to England’s Henry VI promised hope, hope that was unfortunately misplaced as Anglo-French relations were not much improved by the union. Moreover, the Armagnacs and their allies waged battles against the English-Burgundian alliance largely because the Burgundian Duke, Jean sans Peur, had Louis, the Duke of Orléans brutally assassinated in 1407, the act for which the Duke of Burgundy drew upon Boccaccio’s De casibus for its defense of murdering tyrants, the act that fi restormed into battles and political intrigues that would beleaguer René throughout much of his life. Moreover, after his childhood companion, close ally, and brother-in-law King Charles VII died in 1461, Charles’s son and successor, Louis XI, redefi ned the nature of René’s relation to the King of France. Their less than close affi liation became boldly obvious in the spring of 1476, when, before parlement, Louis accused René of treason. René was found guilty, but he refused to concede wholly a number of properties (one of the fairly obvious reasons for the charges), and, fi nally, the two warily agreed to a variety of conditions, demonstrating that even in the face of royal charges of treason, René still had enough sway to negotiate, even if he could not completely ward off Louis’ attempts to obtain his lands.15 For René, then, inheriting and acquiring territories proved to be punctuated by battles,16 intrigue, and the unrelenting erosion of his wealth. Throughout these years and with all that plagued his kingdoms, disastrously, René was apparently most obsessed by his Italian inheritance. In November 1434, while René was still in prison, his brother died, followed shortly by the death of Jeanne of Sicily (whom, as conveyed in Quatrebarbe’s vignette, he had attempted to eulogize), leaving Anjou and Provence as well as her Italian kingdom to him. Protracted negotiations involving a huge fi nancial settlement fi nally led to René’s release from prison in 1437. Almost immediately thereafter, he began his attempts to claim his inheritance against Alphonse V, leading him to wage war for Naples from 1438 to 1442, interspersed with trips to France to replenish supplies.17 René’s battles in Italy, however, disappointed his ambitions, further decimated his treasury, and exposed him to treacherous allies.18 In the end, he had to concede to Alphonse and thereby, for all intents and purposes, forfeit the Angevin rule over Naples that had been established by Charles I (1226–1285), founder of the fi rst house of Anjou.19 Even in defeat, however, René had not unequivocally given up on his Italian quest; his hopes were rekindled when Alphonse died on June 27, 1458. René tried to retake southern Italy in 1460, but returned, again defeated, in 1464.

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In addition to his obsession for his Italian inheritance, René seemed fiercely determined to retain or regain all properties arguably belonging to the house of Anjou, even if in name only. As suggested earlier, for example, to marry René’s daughter, Henry VI was to return Maine and Anjou. Similarly, upon his daughter Yolande’s marriage to Ferry de Vaudémont just a few days earlier, the question of who possessed Lorraine was no longer disputed. René’s negotiations for the return of properties in “reverse dowries” suggests how great a weight he placed on possessing these lands, a goal also made manifest in his compromises.20 Thus, even after he was defeated in Italy, he continued to fashion himself the King of Sicily and Naples.21 In similar, apparently superficial vein, as a result of his bout with Louis IX over treason, on May 25, 1476, it was agreed that René would receive a lifelong pension, but also that he could keep the titles, without actual control, of Anjou, Provence, Bar, and Lorraine. Certainly, there were economic reasons for René to battle for his inheritances, and given his family’s dynastic status and influence, perhaps he thought that owning the titles—even in name alone—would eventually allow his family to lay claim to formerly Angevin territories at some future time. Whatever his reasons, René’s insistence on possessing titles, if not the actual territory, was bolstered by his pronounced taste for the overt signs and courtly splendor of a king. René’s tendency to equate opulence with greatness is evident, for example, in his testament (discussed below), in which he made provisions for a funeral that loudly trumpeted his status as royal. Just as visually obvious, he displayed the trappings of royalty in his various luxurious domiciles, for which he had more than 200 servants (nonetheless, substantially less than those of the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy). Except for his simpler rustically appointed habitats, that is, he maintained luxurious lodgings, such as those in the papal village, a palace in Aix, and a fortified castle on the Durance, as well as in a house in the port of Marseille. Moreover, his dwellings in Anjou and Provence (Saumur and Tarascon) were built in the latest military style. In keeping with royal privilege, the refi ned luxury he displayed in his dwellings provided an elegant backdrop for the French, Angevin, Lorraine, Provençal, Italian, Catalonian, and Muslim members who populated his court. Indeed, René’s sophisticated and elegant hôtel [palatial residence], along with his penchant for made-to-order objects, further enabled him to attract renowned painters, illuminators, sculptors, and artisans who worked in gold, as well as to encourage young talent. Although few of them received titles—generally, valet de chambre [valet], valet tranchant [carver], écuyer de cuisine [kitchen steward] and chapelain [chaplain]—becoming a member of his hôtel was in and of itself a privilege as well as of material advantage and, not surprisingly, an honor much sought after.22 And to provide an appropriate context for his splendidly furnished court, René tended to the landscaping of gardens, providing them at times with exotic animals like the lions brought to Angers and the elephants transported to Provence, along with various exotic birds. While Trevisa praises the appropriate spending of lavish amounts (e.g., pp. 79–82), the symbolic effect of magnificence, simply by merit of its visual power, he recognizes, can easily consume any underlying meaning associated with the virtue of liberality (cf. pp. 18–19). Nonetheless, René took care that his residences left nothing to doubt with respect to magnificence, perhaps in the hopes of semiotically

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asserting the excellence of his court and, hence, enthymematically suggesting his own superior reputation as a generous, Arthurian, king. This seems to be a likely possibility, as discussed below, since he was also a learned individual familiar with an entire array of writings including Arthurian narratives, which he seemed to respond to as providing exemplary models. In addition to Arthurian narratives, René was acquainted with church writings and classical literature; he also spoke Latin, Catalan, Italian, French, and Provençal, apparently with equal facility; and he read in these languages as well as in German, Greek, and Occitan. René’s penchant for literature is evidenced too by his commissioning of manuscripts, such as the memoirs of Joinville and the monk Hugues de Saint-Césary’s transcription of Provençal troubadour poetry, published by Martial d’Auvergne (1430–1508) in Arrêts des cours d’amour [Decrees of the Courts of Love]. Interestingly, René possessed as well a volume of Boccaccio’s writings and John of Salisbury’s treatise on governance, the Policraticus.23 René’s literary and aesthetic proclivities were cultivated, it seems, by his parents as well as by the Cardinal of Bar, who raised him from the age of eleven. Among other things, both families possessed beautiful tapestries, gold and silver items, and books (René’s library would contain more than 200 volumes); elements of a lifestyle that not only allowed him to experience courtly life at Paris and Bourges, but that also suggested a belief in an inherent value to the arts and literature.24 Even while a prisoner in Dijon, chronicles report, René painted coats of arms on various objects.25 Perhaps, in addition to fi nding comfort in them, the arts and literature could give more palatable, quasi-platonic expression to his leadership than his military deeds could do. In any case, as his prison activity might suggest, René was not only a patron of the arts, he wrote and painted himself.26 Around 1452, for example, he wrote a manual on tournaments. Upon the death of his first wife, Isabelle, on February 28, 1453, he multiplied emblems of his mourning in paintings for all the Angevin places he apparently cherished most.27 Not long after marrying his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, he wrote Regnault et Jehanneton in 1454, to commemorate the twenty-one-year-old Jeanne in pastoral fashion. Around 1455, he wrote Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance [The Mortification of Vain Pleasure], a complexly allegorical work treating the love of God through a series of dialogues and monologues involving the Soul.28 René also wrote some rondeaux on love, which he sent to Charles d’Orléans probably between 1450 and 1460. His best-known narrative, the Livre du coeur d’amour épris, probably begun in 1457, survives to us in stunning manuscripts, whose illuminations, it seems, he himself supervised.29 Thus, René directed artisans to produce objects, tapestries, and paintings for his various residences.30 In addition, as an artist and author himself, he demonstrated interest in both courtly and spiritual life. Moreover, René seemed to know how to create a “buzz” about his person, as illustrated by the way he furnished and populated his court. René’s patronage of and participation in the arts, that is, not only revealed his aesthetic and perhaps philosophical proclivities, it also demonstrated his desire for good fame, as seems apparent from his attempts to associate himself with King Arthur, a desire that often lodged his efforts in what Jakobson terms the metaliterary, the phatic.

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Fürstenspiegel Elements and the Arthurian Ideal, Los et Fame, in René’s Life In spite of the difficulties he experienced, René’s actions and manner did, apparently, inspire the kind of loyalty that Fürstenspiegel interpret as a sign of a good leader. The Doge Tommaso Fregoso, for example, exhibited devotion to René, won back a few allies for him, and wrote to him, celebrating his virtues and encouraging him to continue in spite of defeat. 31 Indeed, in one of his letters to the Angevin King, Fregoso too evokes the Arthurian ideal of largesse and quest for glory, 32 while incorporating additional Fürstenspiegel elements, thereby concomitantly implying that in at least his judgment, René would respond well to spurs framed in the literary system of governance. Thus, in his letter, Fregoso underscores the support provided René by his people; he advises that his subjects be rewarded; he exhorts René to steadfast behavior even in adversity; and he insists that René not squander Fortune’s gifts, before listing various exempla of other leaders who prevailed in adversity. The following excerpt, italicizing patently Fürstenspiegel elements, begins with the letter’s fourth paragraph:33 Quand on pense à vos efforts généreux, je trouve que le motif le plus propre à soutenir ce courage, dont vous avez donné tant de preuves dans la bonne et la mauvaise fortune, est le zèle avec lequel, malgré votre éloignement, vos fidèles sujets ont maintenu Naples et plusieurs autres villes du royaume sous votre obéissance. Je les félicite de ce qu’ils vont recevoir de vous des traitements proportionnés à leur conduite, et dignes d’un aussi noble prince. L’amour de la gloire, ce sentiment si naturel aux grandes âmes, vous y invite. Sur le trône où vous êtes élevé, vous foulez aux pieds les amusements frivoles et les plaisirs de votre âge. La gloire est la seule passion qui fasse battre votre coeur. Mais vous le savez, elle ne s’acquiert que par une fermeté inébranlable dans les périls et les grandes entreprises. La fortune vous à donné des richesses, un grand pouvoir, des états considérables. Elle vous a mis l’égal par la naissance de tout ce qu’il y a de plus élevé sur la terre, et si nous voulons calculer les avantages dont elle vous a comblé, nous verrons qu’il reste peu de chose à ajouter à l’éclat qui vous environne, et que c’est seulement de vous-même que vous devez tirer un nouveau lustre. Ainsi ne vous affligez point, si elle change de face; regardez ses rigueurs comme des occasions préparées par elle de faire briller votre vertu. C’est à travers les obstacles et les hasards qu’Hercule, Annibal, Fabius et plusieurs de vos ancêtres ont acquis leur immortalité. Si jamais vous avez comme eux des revers à souffrir, des périls à braver, bénissez votre sort; estimez-vous heureux d’avoir avec une naissance illustre, un grand pouvoir, de vastes états, une occasion nouvelle d’ajouter à ces avantages l’éclat de la vertu. [my italics: When one thinks of your generous efforts, I find that the most appropriate motif to underscore this courage, of which you have given many proofs in good and bad fortune, is the zeal with which, in spite of your (geographical) distance, your faithful subjects held Naples and many other towns of the kingdom under your power. I congratulate them in that they will receive treatment from you appropriate to their conduct and in a manner worthy also of so noble a prince. The love of glory, this sentiment so natural to great souls invites you to do this. On the throne to which you are raised, you trample beneath your feet the frivolous amusements and pleasures of your age. Glory is the only passion which beats in your heart. But as you know, (glory) is only acquired by an unmovable firmness in perils and in great undertakings.

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Fortune has given you riches, great power, considerable estates. She has made you equal in birth to the greatest on earth, and if we wish to count the advantages which she has granted you, we will see that there is little left to add to the brilliance which surrounds you, and that the only place from which you can draw a new luster is from yourself alone. Thus do not torture yourself, if Fortune changes; look at her rigors as opportunities she has prepared to display your virtue. It was through overcoming obstacles and chance that Hercules, Hannibal, Fabius and many others of your ancestors acquired immortality. If you ever, as they did, have reversals to suffer, perils to brave, bless your fortune; esteem yourself happy to have an illustrious birth, great power, vast estates, a new occasion to add luminous virtue to these advantages.]

With these lines, Fregoso suggests that the stage is ready and all conditions are met for René to triumph: he has wealth, noble birth, and people willing to support him. Evoking the genre of the Fürstenspiegel in his role as advisor, Fregoso provides a perspective that future, positively inclined writers like Quatrebarbes could easily adopt, as he too incorporates the five Fürstenspiegel elements outlined in the last chapter. Indeed, Fregoso places René into a dreamlike, iconically mythic, epic narrative that proffers an ideal future, streamlining away the fact that for this perfect future to be realized, everyone must act in concert and additionally ignore the devastation, both militarily and fi nancially, that René must have faced. Likewise, while not overtly praising René’s Christian virtue, the letter requests that the great Angevin king persist in his cause in a manner reminiscent of Quatrebarbes’ vignette as well as of Boccaccio’s closing exhortation to leaders to stay the course in spite of whatever Fortune hurls at them (Book 9, p. 240; cited in the last chapter). 34 Moreover, Fregoso underscores the loyalty that his people felt for their ruler, a loyalty, Fregoso admonishes, that should not be disappointed. Finally, in attempting to rekindle René’s sense of acting for the good of the people, Fregoso strongly emphasizes Arthurian ideals, as mentioned above, such as largesse and the quest for glory. Clearly linked to leadership and Fürstenspiegel elements, René’s penchant for Arthurian and Fürstenspiegel ideals as apparently assumed by Fregoso is evidenced in his own writings as well as in his life. His narrator in the Livre du coeur d’amour épris, for example, informs us that one of his sources of inspiration was the Queste del Saint Graal [Quest for the Holy Grail]. In similar vein, even after the defeat he suffered in battling for control of Naples, René rewarded his allies handsomely, displaying the much lauded Arthurian, Fürstenspiegel, and chivalric trait of largesse.35 Likewise, on June 30, 1431, as mentioned above, after losing a decisive battle at Bulgnéville to his counter claimant for Lorraine, Antoine de Vaudémont—an ally of Duke Philippe of Burgundy—René was taken prisoner, surrendered to Philippe, and incarcerated in Dijon. René did gain some respite by exchanging his two sons as hostages in May 1432. In 1434, however, Philippe demanded that René return to prison, because he had violated the terms of his temporary release by consulting with the Holy Roman Emperor, who consequently ruled against Vaudémont and recognized René as Duke of Lorraine. In Lancelot-like manner, René knew that he would have to comply (in René’s case, he would not leave his two sons hostage), but like Chrétien’s hero, he nonetheless rode out to achieve his goal before returning to imprisonment. With respect to these and other Arthurian

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proclivities, one of Le coeur’s recent editors, Florence Bouchet, underscores how René blended life and literature: Osmose de la vie et de la littérature: si les héros arthuriens prennent corps dans les tournois à travers les chevaliers réels qui s’identifient à eux, les personnages historiques, en retour, entrent dans la fiction et voisinent avec les héros légendaires. On verra ainsi René, dans Le Livre du Coeur d’amour épris, installer au porche du cimetière de l’hôpital d’Amour son blason et ceux de plusieurs personnalités liées à lui familialement ou politiquement, à côté de ceux de Lancelot, Tristan et bien d’autres. [p. 12: Osmosis of life and literature: if Arthurian heroes are embodied in tournaments by real knights who identify with them, historical persons, in return, enter fiction and are neighbors with legendary heroes. One thus sees René, in his Book of the Heart Seized by Love, install his coat of arms and those of others, personalities tied to him through family or politics, in the cemetery porch of the hospital of love next to those of Lancelot, Tristan and many others.]

At the very least, as suggested by the narrator of Le coeur when he cites the Queste del Saint Graal, René was inspired by Arthurian literature. Indeed, René found in Arthurian legends materials with which to style his own approach to leadership. By René’s time, as chapter 1’s excerpt from Boccaccio’s De casibus reveals, Arthur is known as a military leader par excellence, who epically promotes the ideal of primus inter pares through the creation of an order for his knights. Moreover, Arthur serves as a guarantor of chivalric brilliance, as poetically evidenced by the superior knights and ladies he attracted to his court. Thus, Geoff rey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie epically focuses on the king as a valiant leader of his people with great military prowess, and Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances poetically arrange adventures of elect knights that, similar to the vita of St. Simeon, all elaborate the same message, in this case, that of the splendor (albeit at times problematic) defi ning Arthur’s unparalleled court. Given the almost contradictory manifestations of noble excellence (military and courtly), it is not surprising that chivalric culture is inspired by the quasi-platonic practice of elaborating the invisible through magnificence, a paradox that invites the immortal and mortal to merge and clash in a constantly dynamic negotiation that almost necessarily elicits advice, guidance, rules, and conventions, as well as reminders like those provided by Fregoso.36 Material magnificence, after all, enthymematically suggests that something great is behind it. For, as Charny realizes, while potentially too worldly, the grandeur of courtly life can nonetheless inspire a knight to higher ideals: . . . et belle grace et grans vertuz est en ceulz qui seculierement peuent mener teles vies dont les corps peuent honoreement en cest siecle conduire leurs ames en paradis en l’autre avecques celle g[l]orieuse compagnie qui durera touz temps en si tres grant joie et sanz fin. [Kennedy’s translation, 44.4–8, pp. 194–197: And fine grace and great worth are to be found in those who can live in secular terms the kind of lives through which mortal men can with honor in this world lead their souls into paradise in the next and take their place in that glorious company which will continue for ever in bliss without end.]

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It is this aim, it seems, that guides René’s own largely poetic fashionings, literary and otherwise; for René, however, pomp and magnificence seem to serve as an unequivocal symbol of greater ideals including the quasi-platonic ideal of status, an ideal that, ironically, rather than being a constant, insistently demands repeated attention to performance. In this vein, Fregoso writes regarding Fortune’s trials, “regardez ses rigueurs comme des occasions préparées par elle de faire briller votre vertu” [look at her rigors as opportunities she has prepared to display your virtue]. With this emphasis on performance, Fregoso also captures the premise informing Fürstenspiegel and articulated in Cicero’s vir bonus as well as in Augustine’s definition of a Christian orator: in his actions, a good leader hypostatizes a society’s ideals. Indeed, in describing the political literature and expectations of France during 1380–1440, Jacques Krynen articulates expectations toward a prince thus: “Un impératif nouveau vient curieusement s’ajouter à ce désir de sainteté: le prince doit faire rayonner son image. Apparaître comme un modèle de vertu ne semble plus suffire à signifier sa supériorité. Encore lui faut-il mettre en scène sa majesté” [A new imperative curiously was added to the desire for sanctity: the prince had to radiate his image. To appear as a model of virtue no longer seemed to suffice for signifying his superiority. It became necessary to put his majesty on stage].37 Demonstrating Krynen’s point, Fregoso’s exhortation underscores the public nature of governance by suggesting that a regent’s actions, since visible, are easily emblematized and readily gathered into stories that can enter the literary system of governance, thereby potentially feeding into the Arthurian drive for glory: the desire to leave stories behind that will generate still others and enhance individual fame.38 In and of itself, leaving stories as exempla for others is a metaliterary proposition; it becomes complexly metaliterary when knights know that their actions will be recorded. Thus, Boccaccio reports on creating the Round Table: Ad quam [tabulam rotundam] quasi ad conuiuium celebre quoscumque ex suis nobilioribus armis et moribus nouit egregios, conuocavit. Selectosque legibus ordinibusque in consortium et societatem coegit. Fuit quippe omnibus Lex [perpetua?], arma non ponere, monstr[u]osa exquirere, ius debilium vocatos totis viribus defensare, violare neminem, se invicem non laedere, pro salute amicorum pugnare. Pro patria vitam exponere. Sibi propter honorem nil quaerere. Fides nullam ob causam infringere. Religionem diligentissime colere. Hospitalitatem quibuscumque, grauis, per facultatibus exhibere. Contingentia seu in honorem seu in dedecus referentis vergentia, summa cum fide et veritate quibus annalium cura erat, exponere. [Book 8, p. 205, my italics: As if celebrating a feast, he called to the (Round Table), those of his knights whom he knew to be the most noble in arms and the most eminent in manners. And he gathered the select in fellowship and in community by means of ordinances and laws. The (universal?) law was: not to lay down arms; to seek the marvelous; to uphold the law for the weak, when summoned, with all one’s strength; to dishonor no one; not to harm each other; to fight for the safety of friends. To give one’s life for one’s country. To seek nothing for the sake of one’s own honor. To break faith for no reason. To cultivate religion most diligently. To furnish hospitality to anyone, according to one’s resources. To relate with the utmost faithfulness and truth, to those who take care of the annals, things that have happened no matter whether they redound to the honor or shame of the person relating them.]

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Enacting, as it were, stories that could enter Fürstenspiegel or that at the very least echo the Fürstenspiegel’s criteria for good leadership, Arthur’s knights are required to understand their metaliterary function as exempla, pointing to their citizenship in two worlds—the military and the courtly. In straddling these two worlds, they echo St. Simeon’s dilemma, although, obviously, Arthur’s knights phatically struggle in more or less secular rather than spiritual worlds. 39 The Arthurian demand to report, then, can encourage metaliterary reflection on the nature of creating epic stories to enhance one’s reputation, of perceiving the world as a stage set, “de faire briller . . . vertu.” While Arthur’s knights may self-consciously perform with the knowledge that their deeds will be revealed, René phatically transforms the Arthurian directive to narrate by putting Arthur’s world on display, by “narrating” Arthur’s influence in varied venues. For example, René not only wrote the above-mentioned treatise on tournaments, one that painstakingly prescribes exacting regulations to avoid open warfare, he also staged tournaments at a time when they were beginning to be seen as a highly formulaic ritual,40 and he does so with metaliterary nods to Arthurian romances. Thus, the 1446 tournament of Saumur, l’Emprise de la joyeuse garde [The Entertainment of the Joyous Watch] evokes the Mort Artu and Chrétien de Troyes’ Joie de la cour [ Joy of the Court] at the end of Erec et Enide (ll. 5832–6123). Likewise, the tournament held at Tarascon in 1449, the Pas de la bergère [The Tournament of the Shepherdess] also echoes Chrétien’s Erec et Enide, this time of the romance’s beginning (ll. 36–66), where the winner is honored with a kiss from the most beautiful Lady, who at Tarascon is René’s second wife.41 Welcoming the martial ritual as a poetic articulation of warfare—not unlike how Trier functioned for Archbishop Poppo as a poetic articulation of the heavenly city—René staged metaliterary narratives that, like Canterbury Cathedral’s Tree of Jesse, are to be “read” against a canonical text. Perhaps the most obviously Arthurian performance in René’s life, however, was produced in 1448, when he phatically instituted the fraternal Order of the Crescent, which, as Michael T. Reynolds writes, like “[a]ll of the late medieval orders of chivalry, from the Garter to the Croissant, borrowed from the Arthurian tradition and the military-religious Crusading orders.”42 René called the Order to life under the protection of St. Maurice, as symbolized by the white wax seal standing for the saint’s purity. Apparently writing the statutes himself,43 René begins with praise of the Trinity and the Virgin before formulating the Order’s precepts that read similarly to Boccaccio’s exposition of Arthur’s rules (quoted above). The Crescent’s fi fty nobles must thus swear to uphold and to act mindfully of the Arthurian ideal, los et fame [praise and fame], thereby foreshadowing the statute requiring that the members’ good deeds be recorded in the Order’s chronicles, a metaliterary concern with fame directly evoking Arthur and reiterated in the Order’s motto, los en croissant [growing in praise].44 Likewise, the Crescent is declared a military and religious Order created to serve the kingdom according to each member knight’s conscience, to venerate the Church, and to protect those without protection, while showing compassion, courteous manner, and respect for all women. To bolster these expectations of serving the common good, member knights are to meet periodically, dressed in sumptuous robes and following prescribed rituals. Not surprisingly, the staging of Arthur’s court in the Order of the

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Crescent seems primarily to have served René’s efforts to secure his territories, as suggested by the Order’s extinction with René’s death in 1480. In other words, to effect policy, Arthurian values indeed served as René’s Fürstenspiegel. René’s reliance upon Arthurian and Fürstenspiegel principles seems to have extended to his administrative duties as well. Thus, the King is aware that those governed need to be included in the picture if governance in fractious times is to be effective. He intervened, for example, to protect Jews when Asturge Léon was tried for blasphemy and released with a fi ne, causing the people of Aix to protest what they perceived to be insufficient punishment so violently that the richest Jewish families fled the town. The intervention was not “original,” since it echoed the position of the King of France, and it was not disinterested, since Jewish wealth contributed to his own prosperity. René’s intervention nonetheless reflects the tenor of a number of measures he instituted—pragmatic, but including the less fortunate in his pragmatism. In similar vein, René instituted measures that were designed to alleviate the economic devastation incurred from his military efforts, not least of which was establishing administrative chambers to oversee various kinds of economic transactions. In his later years, Provence benefited as well from his attention, supported as it was by his massive building projects and his encouragement of weaving and the manufacture of glass and slate. Furthermore, René allowed fairs to be free and granted duty exemptions to skilled artisans, leading to a trade boom, while guilds were organized to preside over quality control and act against abuses. Such measures, though, were thwarted by the need to collect taxes for wars and the incurring of heavy debt with Italian bankers.45 Born into a family that was central to the French royal house, René did indeed seem determined to leave his dynastic mark in chronicles, for he proved prominent in military, political, dynastic, and aesthetic venues. Seemingly driven by knowledge of how Fürstenspiegel promote exemplarity as history—as indexed in the performances of leaders and the Arthurian imperative to return from quests with tales of adventures to be measured against a chivalric code—audiences’ approbation seems to preoccupy René as a critical measure of success or failure. That is, he seemed to believe that part of his authority rested in how he communicated with others and how he presented himself in these communications. In various ways, then, his efforts further recall those of Archbishop Poppo, Abbot Eberwin, and Warnerus in their attempts to canonize Simeon and valorize Trier. Drawing on the literary system of the times, they as well as René evoke common, pertinent literary topoi to impart the poetic possibility of becoming an exemplum.

The Staging of Arthurian Ideals: Becoming an Exemplum Of course, René d’Anjou’s pursuit and portrayal of Arthurian ideals did not mesh entirely well with how he conducted his life. After his fi rst wife Isabelle had been robbed by the citizens of Metz on her way to Pont-à-Mousson in 1445, for example, Charles VII and he apparently saw in the aff ront a rallying cry for knights to gather and besiege Metz, which the two regents had sought to control for some time. Their six-month siege was raised for the payment of 200,000 ecus.46 In spite of such less than valorous deeds, frequently, René could effect a positive image by means of phatically staging himself in Arthurian light, as he took pains to make

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appearances reflect what he seemed to posit as realities. In addition to the festive and dramatized tournaments and the highly contained and ritualized Order of the Crescent, for example, he had rooms in his domiciles decorated in various themes, commissioning elaborate tapestries that in effect functioned as stage settings. Thus, for one of his palatial residences, René had a tapestry created glorifying the same Bernard du Guesclin denounced in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale. Notably for this study, René also understood staging in its denotative sense, as he regularly had mysteries, farces, and morality plays performed from at least 1443, until his death in 1480. René was consequently well-versed in the particularities of performance, in setting the stage, both literally and figuratively.47 In a semiotic study of drama and theater, Keir Elam explores the relationship between a text and a stage production of a play, arguing that in the case of the latter, a “hyper” quality of signs emerges in performance, which he describes as having the effect of putting quotation marks around an object.48 To demonstrate, Elam argues that an unplanned incident—a door refusing to open or an actor tripping—becomes part of what he calls the “performance text,” insofar as audiences read the addition as if it belonged to the script, the “dramatic text.”49 Exemplifying how the ground can affect a sign’s interpretants, such accidental interpolations can actually become touchstones that stir those trace narratives “waiting in the wings” and ready to emerge at a moment’s notice. Does her tripping insinuate that the heroine is not virtuous? Does it foreshadow an upcoming hindrance or unfortunate outcome? Does it try to instill humor in an otherwise somber subject? This hyperspace for reading signs in performance is not limited to the confi nes of a theater; it inherently informs any place distinguished by presenting, framing, a narrative. As such, performance hyperspace enhances the visual power of leadership as well. When a candidate, for example, holds a rally in the United States in this day and age, uniformly printed signs supporting the candidate are frequently distributed among the crowd to “set the stage” for her or his appearance, thereby trying not to leave anything to chance and at the same time creating expectations about how the candidate’s hyperspace is to be used. The hyperspace of performance becomes obvious as well when deviating from expectations, as, for example, in January 2008, when New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson grew a beard after withdrawing his candidacy from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The unexpected interpolation into the more conventional dramatic text of “grin and bear it” immediately drew attention, generated stories explaining the change, and reconfigured the performance text to accommodate new stories, somewhat similar to how Obama’s lack of a fl ag pin also generated controversy.50 More complexly than with such political events, a performance text can be staged even if the course of events is not perceived as theatrical in any conventional sense of the term. This holds true for René’s own life as well. As Graham A. Runnals writes, “le théâtre est pour ainsi dire le point de rencontre de toutes les autre activités de René: dans la représentation d’une pièce de théâtre médiévale on trouvait poésie, allégorie, peinture, tournois, architecture et effets exotiques” [the theatre is so to speak the point at which all René’s other activities meet: in the representation of a medieval theatrical piece, one can fi nd poetry, allegory, painting, tournaments, architecture, and exotic effects].51 For example, leading to the journey across the Apennines related by Quatrebarbes and summarized in

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chapter 1, René and Alphonse were ready to fight, each waiting for the other to make a move before René fi nally sent a herald with a bloody gauntlet to Alphonse, the bloody gauntlet poetically standing for battle. Before Alphonse would respond, he asked whether their battle was to be engaged in single combat or full battle array. René, answered the herald, chose the latter. Upon accepting the gauntlet, Alphonse set the time, eight days from then, and the place, at the foot of Vesuvius between Nola and Acerra. René retorted that he would save Alphonse the effort and attack him at Castel Viezo at his convenience. By quibbling over where they would battle, René and Alphonse not only projected performance in the sense of how well their men would fight, but also in the sense of where and how they would enact their “performance text.” In addition, when Alphonse presented the chivalric possibility of single combat, he generated a framework for the upcoming battle in a conventionally figurative manner, selecting a religiously informed sign of God’s favor, combining it with ritual formality, and equating the whole, poetically, with dynastic ambition while forcing René into a defensive posture. Alphonse, however, had generated a fiction in both senses of the word, since he also left during the night and besieged Naples instead. The “story” does not end here. In the course of the siege, cannon balls struck the church and decapitated Alphonse’s brother, a juxtaposition that seemed to confi rm divine retribution and that thus echoed back to the original challenge to fight in single combat, the form of battle resting upon the premise that God’s judgment will prevail in his choice of victor. In the end, Alphonse raised the siege.52 As presented in this narrative, then, Alphonse’s challenge prepared the way for everything that related to his attempt to effect a victory (even when not foreseen nor “scripted”), to be read with quotation marks, to be read as part of René’s performance text. Such possibilities for staging performance texts combined with René’s tendency to hypostatize Arthurian and Fürstenspiegel themes along with his proclivity for the theatrical probably heightened the Angevin King’s sensitivity to lasting fame. Stemming from a highly influential family, involved in the political and military battles of his time, and shoring up the family’s name with a plethora of titles, René knew he was in the public eye, performing a potentially highly visible role in God’s narrative.53 Indeed, as Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail write of the late medieval period, “the fi rst element of the fama nexus was performance.”54 Consequently, given the literary system of governance at the time, René probably knew he would acquire some degree of fame. He just could not know whether it would be good or bad, great or negligible. That René was highly aware of the role that performance played in establishing authoritative fame can be seen as well in the example of his will, recorded by his secretary Girardinus Boucherius on July 22, 1474,55 in which René is identified as, “Renatus Dei gratia Jherusalem, Arragonum, utriusque Sicilie, Valentie, Majoricarum, Sardinie et Corsice rex, ducatuum Andegavie et Barri dux, comitatuum Barchinonie, Provincie et Forcalquerii ac Pedimontis comes” [Quatrebarbes vol 1, p. 83: René by the grace of God, King of Jerusalem, Aragon, the two Sicilies, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia, and Corsica, Duke of the duchies of Anjou and Bar, and Count of the counties of Barcelona, Provence, Forcalquier, and Piedmont]. After commending his soul, at the age of sixty-five, to God, the Virgin, and the heavenly choir, René requests that, “son corps soyt pourté en l’eglize d’Angiers

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pour estre en icelle sevely et inhumé ou lieu qu’il ha ja esleu et preparé pour sa sepulture, et ouquel est ja sevely le corps de la feue royne Isabel de très noble memoire, en son vivant son espouze” [Quatrebarbes vol 1, p. 84: his body be carried to the Church of Angers to be buried and interred in this place that he had already chosen and prepared as his sepulcher, and where the body of the late Queen Isabelle of most noble memory, is already buried, and who while living, was his wife]. René continues to enumerate the kinds, occasions, and places where mass is to be held for the royal pair, before detailing the gifts of gold and silver along with tapestries he wished to distribute to those holding mass for them, and fi nally dividing his territories among his heirs. In the midst of the recitation of masses, there are two passages of note for purposes here. First, René orders that on the day after his death, his heart be carried by the Friars Minor to the Chapel of Saint-Bernardin, “qu’il a faict eriger, ediffier, parer et fournir contigue à l’eglize des dictz freres minneurs” [Quatrebarbes vol. 1, p. 85: which he erected, built, adorned, and furnished next to the church of said Friars Minor] in 1453, for his confessor, who was canonized in 1450. And “pour lesdictz services” [Quatrebarbes vol. 1, p. 85: for these services], he would provide alms in perpetuity. Second, he expresses the wish that on the day he is to be buried, fi fty paupers should be clothed in black, each of whom would carry a torch weighing three pounds, and that an assortment of candles and torches be placed all around the interior of the church for the entire day of the burial, “comme est accoustumé à faire pour les roys” [Quatrebarbes vol. 1, p. 86: as is accustomed to do for kings]. He underscores this visually powerful scene a few lines later with his wish that under the body, luminaries be provided, “au tel cas pour les roys est accoustumé” [Quatrebarbes vol. 1, p. 86: in such manner as is accustomed for kings]. René’s will is significant for a number of reasons, including the fact that it provides the dramatic text for the performance text of his funeral and goes so far as to assign roles for those chosen to enact the performance text.56 Moreover, poetically, René details two processions, one for the body and the other for the heart, thereby articulating in actual corporeal form, a performance text featuring the symbolic division of body and soul, essentially allegorizing by means of his own corpse.57 In addition to thus hypostatizing allegory, which itself hypostatizes concepts and abstractions, René’s wish phatically underscores how allegory per se visualizes abstractions in performance rather than by means of static images.58 Moreover, by separating heart and body, he strikingly brings attention to the question of what death means, thereby stimulating the ordinarily limited interpretants of a funeral through drawing attention to the ground. In other words, through “literally” allegorizing himself in the context of a funeral, René brings attention not only to various ways of communicating, but also to the semiotic problem of how allegory communicates knowledge. As Douglas Kelly explains, “The essential characteristic of . . . allegory is the comparison of two intersecting semantic planes.”59 Beyond these phatic articulations, the ceremony’s elaboration is additionally metaliterary, as it prolongs emphasis on the contact, both in the physical vehicle of the funeral and in its symbolically heightened connection. In this manner, René creates a dramatic text for the funeral that also generates contradictory narratives to be performed in the same hyperspace. That is, René juxtaposes the conventional

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recognition of death as the great equalizer against the Arthurian pomp appropriate to the funeral of a king, complete with processions and masses and liberal generosity projected for all who will partake in the ceremony—the chaplains, all the religious in the vicinity, the Friars Minor, and the participants in masses celebrated at the altar of St. Maurice, the patron saint, as mentioned above, of the Order of the Crescent. René knows, in other words, what “belongs” to the honoring of a king, even while his territories and claims are constantly being contested.60 Paradoxically, then, the elaborate performance text of his royally and religiously symbolized funeral asserts the message that he has regal authority and fame in the context of preparing for death that recognizes no worldly authority. Perhaps counting on the streamlining effect that ceremonies generate, René seems to place his wager on pomp as a signifier of virtue. The opulence and fanfare René articulated in a variety of venues express, as his will does, his wish to memorialize, to hold onto an image of himself as a good king, perhaps as a fi rst step to securing “everlasting” fame. In a way, his tendency to memorialize poses a response to a problem also articulated in Trevisa’s translation of Giles of Rome’s Fürstenspiegel, in which he elaborates upon an individual’s creation of his own fame in terms of truth, veritas, a virtue that demands the good to be known, a virtue that also, however, in the execution all too easily slides into the noxious trait of boasting (e.g., pp. 99–101). In other words, René allows his performance text to do the boasting.61 Notably here, in addition to demonstrating his awareness that he could become an entry in a Fürstenspiegel, his performance texts depict him as one who was great. That is, whether composing his will or planning an elaborate tournament, René seems focused on mobilizing all possible energies so that at some future point in time, he would be remembered for his past good deeds, he would become an exemplum. Significantly, this message is problematized in his allegorical courtly romance, about which Bouchet asserts, “René écrit en quelque sorte son tombeau courtois” [Bouchet 46: René in a way writes his courtly tomb].

A Summary of the Livre du coeur d’amour épris Composed in alternating and varied verse and prose segments, the Livre du coeur d’amour épris was probably begun in 1457. Le coeur survives in seven manuscripts, of which the three complete versions are illuminated with from forty-four to 173 miniatures (concluded or prepared for finishing) that were probably supervised to some degree by René himself.62 The illuminations in the Viennese manuscript 2597 of the Österrischische Nationalbibliothek, the oldest of the three, comprise particularly noteworthy miniatures, in their shading, perspectives, and high degree of verisimilitude and detail.63 Prefacing the narrative, the narrator, who identifies himself as René, addresses a letter to René d’Anjou’s actual nephew, Jean, Duke of Bourbon and Auvergne, asking for counsel in matters of the heart. At the end of the narrative, the narrator returns to this epistolary framework to petition once again for aid in extinguishing his passion, this time referring to his nephew’s own experience as a likely source for sage advice.

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Directly proceeding from the epistolary framework, the narrator creates a frame in which he describes how he was particularly tormented by love one night and expounds at some length on the physical torments his heart endured.64 This dreamer-narrator’s frame reappears right before the closing epistolary lines to the nephew, when he describes his panic upon waking, assuaged somewhat by his chamberlain’s confirming that his heart does indeed still beat in his chest. The next morning, he writes down the story. Within these two frames, that of the narrator and of the dreamer-narrator, transitions to and out of the dream world are blurred by the (dreamer-) narrator’s expressions of uncertainty: at the onset and close of his dream, he has difficulty knowing whether he is awake or asleep.65 The transition to the dream world occurs when Amours [Love] removes the dreamer-narrator’s heart and gives it to Desir [Desire]. Amours declares that if Doulce Mercy [Sweet Mercy] is to be won, Dangier [Power, Haughtiness] must be defeated in battle. As if Amours’ challenge breathes life into them, Cueur [Heart] and Desir seamlessly transform into knightly comrades-in-arms and begin their adventures. Amours thus phatically functions as a persona for the author, since his action generates the dream world. Importantly, René furnishes the dream world with detailed observations, by means of which he visualizes interactions, poses, appearances, many and varied settings, along with multifarious objects, portraying all these in life-granting verisimilitude just as meticulously as the illuminations designed to grace the manuscripts do in images. They thereby evoke the performative, setting the stage for a “performance text” inscribed in the dream world narrative.66 As Michel Zink writes, “René d’Anjou tire . . . l’allégorie vers le spectacle du concret” [René d’Anjou pulls . . . allegory toward the spectacle of the concrete].67 Upon accepting the quest, Cueur and Desir journey for a number of days before they encounter a lavishly set, richly constructed pavilion. At its entrance, they fi nd a jasper column inscribed with ancient letters, “artifficielment entaillees” [p. 100. 3. 24–25: artfully carved] and read there that lovers should remain steadfast. Meditating upon this message, Cueur is surprised by Dame Esperance [Lady Hope], who emerges from the pavilion and catches his horse by the reins. She lets Cueur know that no lover can advance without her help, and she predicts that the two comrades-in-arms will undergo many hardships in the quest to win Doulce Mercy before detailing specific stops along the way. She admonishes them to remember her in times of need. Their fi rst adventure leads them to the hermitage of the hateful dwarf, Jalousie [ Jealousy], who succeeds in deceiving them, so that they fi nd themselves traveling more deeply into the Forest de Longe Attente [Forest of Much Waiting] in hopes of fi nding sustenance and lodging for the night, which they do not fi nd. They arrive at a fountain and decide to settle there. Drinking from it, they experience a terrifying storm, an episode that recalls Chrétien de Troyes’ account of Yvain’s adventure in the forest Broceliande. Cueur has a dream in which he crosses a rickety bridge, is attacked by a ferocious bull, falls into the rushing river, and is saved by a siren. They awake and encounter Melencholie [Melancholy], who leads them to the bridge that seemed to have been foreshadowed in the dream and where Cueur fights with Soulcy [Worry]. The narrator leaves Cueur waiting to be saved to turn to Esperance, who rescues Bel Acueil

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[Fair Welcome] from Jalousie’s house. Esperance then rescues Cueur and predicts perilous episodes on the next leg of their journey. The two companions start off again and arrive at the tertre Devée de Liesse [Mount Devoid of Joy], where they enter a castle for the night, but are greeted by a rabidly aggressive Courroux [Anger], whom Cueur defeats in battle. Courroux’s lover, Tristesse [Sadness], however, begs for his life, and Cueur grants her request. Convinced to stay the night, Cueur and Desir hear the sad voices of those imprisoned, and they are relieved when, deviously, Tristesse offers to lead them to another part of the castle. Cueur falls, as plotted, through loose floor boards, and Desir escapes to seek help. He fi nds Honneur [Honor], who sends Renon [Renown], accompanied by Plaisir and Deduit [Pleasure and Delight], to rescue Cueur. Meanwhile, Tristesse has summoned Melencholie, who provides Cueur with more of the bitter bread and brackish water he had consumed earlier at her house. In despair, he eats and falls asleep to have his second metaliterary dream in the dream world, that of birds rescuing him from his prison. As if, again, his dream were being fulfi lled, Renon and his companions take the castle.68 The enemies escape. Cueur, Desir, and Renon join Honneur, and Honneur allows Cueur and Desir to continue their quest, while he and his forces prepare to battle the Mesdisans [Slanderers]. Cueur and Desir take Largesse along with them, making Honneur regret granting Cueur any help he desired. Honneur takes counsel from his barons and advisors and accordingly sends letters to Amours to inform him of their battle plans and request aid and advice. The narrator interlaces reports of the tribulations suffered by Cueur and his companions, Honneur’s enemies, and Honneur’s preparations for battle, until Cueur, Desir, and Largesse meet up with Esperance in a hermit’s chapel, where they all spend the night and exchange stories. Esperance presents a third installment of what perils the companions will suffer. The companions travel as Esperance instructed them and cross a sea, a journey that has its rough spots and that includes a night spent on a gigantic rock, complete with a cabin, before arriving on Amours’ beautiful island. Desir explains that the church is the l’ospital d’Amours [hospital of Love], where true lovers, like the renowned French poet Alain Chartier (who died in the 1430s), are buried, and the chastel de Plaisance [castle of Pleasure] is Amours’ home. They are admitted to Amours’ hospital by dame Courtoisie [Lady Courtesy] and dame Pitié [Lady Pity], who feed and lodge them for the night. Before sleeping, Cueur extracts a promise from dame Courtoisie that he may see the tomb of Alain Chartier. The next morning, they visit the cemetery of rulers, heroes, and lovers, where tombs, shields, and inscribed verses convey who is buried there and the lessons to be learned from their service to love. Dame Pitié advises Cueur, after he takes an oath to serve Amours loyally, how he may win Doulce Mercy and goes herself to his beloved, serving as his go-between, even though Doulce Mercy is guarded by Reff us [Refusal] in the manoir de Rebellion [manor of Rebellion]. Meanwhile, Cueur, Desir, and Largesse arrive at the magnificent castle of Pleasure. Upon gaining permission to present themselves to Amours, they pass through the fi rst gate and fi nd objects hanging in the threshold, which Bel Acueil [Fair Welcome] explains were objects used to punish those who scorned Amours. The comrades-in-arms view the rest of the castle’s wonders. They are fi nally granted

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an audience, Amours hears their request, and he seeks counsel. Honneur arrives at the castle, Cueur and his two comrades gaze at the wondrous tapestries, and Amours returns to let them know his decision. Having listened to his advisors, among them his mother, Venus, Amours agrees to take Cueur as his servant, and he allows him to win Doulce Mercy; beat, but not kill, Reff us; and kill Jalousie and les Mesdisans, should he be able to do so. They leave the next morning in high anticipation. (In the Viennese manuscript, the comrades take a detour to marvel at the wonders in Amours’ park.) They arrive at the manoir de Rebellion and gain admittance to Doulce Mercy, who is imprisoned and watched vigilantly. Upon pledging his service to her and approaching for a kiss, Cueur is ambushed by Reff us, and a battle ensues. Cueur wins and then receives the kiss. Readers now learn that Honneur has been given the reinforcements he requested from Amours to fight the Mesdisans. Doulce Mercy reluctantly agrees to accompany Cueur to Amours’ castle, but on the way, they are ambushed by Reff us and his band of forty Mesdisans. Cueur and his forces are defeated and left for dead, and Doulce Mercy is once again taken by Reff us. Inferno-like, Cueur’s forces arise and make their way to Amours’ castle, as if ready to repeat the “performance” all over again. Cueur asks dame Pitié to take him to Amours’ hospital, where he wishes to end his days in reflection. She does so.

René’s Le livre du coeur d’amour épris and Reading As many scholars have underscored, Le coeur is overtly influenced by Arthurian tales as well as by the Roman de la rose. Toward the end of the narrative, for example, Loyauté [Loyalty] makes Cueur take an oath to keep Amours’ commandments, as spelled out in the Roman de la rose, which he should take pains to study (p. 450. 139. 2221–2230).69 The influence exerted by the Roman de la rose, of less interest here, is also found in the use of the quest to obtain love as well as in the various allegorical abstractions of the self. Arthurian influence is equally overt; at the beginning of their quest before Desir arms Cueur, for example, the narrator heuristically grants his reader a tip: Comme jadis des haulx faiz et prouesses, des grans conquestes et vaillances en guerre et des merveilleux cas et tresaventureux perilz qui furent a fin menez, faiz et acompliz par les chevaliers preuz et hardiz Lancelot, Gauvain, Galhat, Tristan et aussi Palamides et autres chevaliers, pers de la Table Ronde ou temps du roy Artur et pour le Sang Greal conquerir, ainsi que les antiques histoires le racontent au long, aient esté faiz et dictez pluseurs romans pour perpetuel memoire, aussi et pareillement pour vous mieulx donner a entendre ceste mienne euvre . . . ensuivray les termes du parler du livre de la conqueste du Sang Greal . . . [p. 92. 2. 1–13: Just as many romances were made and written in former times to keep forever the memory of the noble deeds and prowess, of the great conquests and valiant deeds in war, of the amazing occurrences and very adventurous perils that were brought to conclusion—done and accomplished by the worthy and brave knights Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, Tristan and also Palamides and other knights, peers of the Round Table, in the times of King Arthur and to achieve the Holy Grail—as the ancient stories recount at length, so will I follow the language of the book of the quest for the Holy Grail so that you can better understand this my work . . .]

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The Arthurian influence on Le coeur situates Cueur’s journey in courtly romance conventions, complete with the knight’s questing through interlaced adventures that allow chivalric complications to dominate narratively over any ultimate goal. Thus, similar to how questing knights in Arthurian tales encounter numerous adventures, Cueur’s path is not straightforward. Yet, interestingly, he does not “really” seem focused on the quest for Doulce Mercy. If he were, it is hard to explain why he spends so much time poring over the tombstones of lovers buried in Amours’ hospital, when he might well be frenzied with expectation, eager to continue with his quest. On the contrary, he actually keeps dame Pitié waiting, who has to request several times that he move along (p. 354. 113. 2–4). On the surface an intricately fashioned allegory, Le coeur is phatically structured as a literary repository; it is indeed a romance in Arthurian mode influenced by the Roman de la rose, but it also draws on a plethora of other literary elements as well. As Armand Strubel writes, “Tout livre est une bibliothèque . . . ” [The whole book is a library].70 Demonstrating a metaliterary emphasis early on, at the very beginning of his quest, Cueur is so lost in reflecting upon the message inscribed on the jasper column in front of Esperance’s pavilion that she can easily take his horse by the reins (pp. 100–102. 4. 1–97), a passage that underscores specifically the acts of reading and writing (pp. 100–102. 4. 1–2, 4–5, 93–97) and that foreshadows all the many and various inscriptions to come. Likewise, when dame Oyseuse [Lady Leisure] explains that Amours keeps so many parrots to eat their hearts and thus remain joyful, “A ce mot se teut le Cueur et demoura pensifz . . . ” [p. 426. 133. 116–117: at this word, Cueur was silent and remained pensive . . .]; René thereby puts quotation marks, to use Elam’s phrase for objects in the performance text, around Cueur’s role as a reader who puzzles over meaning. Even more insistently metaliterary, the cemetery memorializes various poets along with the kings and heroes whom poets have immortalized (p. 294. 83. 37– p. 368. 118. 1626), by this means further highlighting the theme of fame.71 In similar vein, according to Bouchet’s edition, the narrator painstakingly follows Cueur’s fascinated eye, as the tombs and arms of the following are pondered: Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Nero, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, King David, the unnamed King Charles VII of France (identified by his shield, he died in 1461), Theseus, Aeneas, Achilles, Hercules, Paris, Troilus, Diomedes, Demophoön, Lancelot, Tristan, Ponthus, Arthur the Little, Louis Duke of Orléans, Jean Duke of Berry, Louis Duke of Bourbon, Philip Duke of Burgundy (perhaps Philip III, who died in 1467), Charles Duke of Orléans (who died in 1465), Charles Duke of Bourbon (who died in 1456), René d’Anjou, Louis de France (who died in 1483), Charles d’Anjou (René’s younger brother, who died in 1472), Gaston de Foix (perhaps Gaston IV, who died in 1472), Louis de Luxembourg (who died in 1475), and Louis Lord of Beauvau (who died in ca. 1462), along with numerous memorials in Moorish and German as well as in other languages.72 The narrator then follows Cueur as he and the others move to another, even more elaborately walled-off section with the tombs of Ovid, Guillaume de Machaut, Boccaccio, Jean de Meung, Petrarca, and Alain Chartier, before being shown the discarded nude bodies of those who proved to be unfaithful lovers and therefore were not granted burial rites inside the walls. Not much later, again visualizing the metaliterary, Cueur is shown various relics of lovers, such as a pot fi lled with water from the sea where

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Leander drowned and other similar synecdochally significant objects (pp. 374–376. 121. 7–30).73 By its sheer length alone, René implies that these scenes in Amours’ palace are central to Le coeur. He also accentuates their importance by having Cueur take his time to read and absorb the lesson of each gravesite.74 Notably, Bouchet sees the influence of various literary genres here, including that of certain Fürstenspiegel.75 Indeed, the review of kings and heroes along with poets, more or less chronologically arranged, and the lessons to be learned from the tombstones do echo the genre as they and the relics Cueur later sees amplify the power of Amours’ rule. In other words, the graveyard uses the framework and topoi of the literary system of governance as articulated in Fürstenspiegel, but translates them poetically into quasi-platonic illustrations of Amours’ power, not God’s, in and of itself intriguing. More pertinent to this study, however, René phatically implies that memorials preserve fame only when there are readers who can interpret the symbols presented by the shields; who can understand the original languages, as made clear in René’s listing of at least ten languages represented in the cemetery (p. 328. 101. 5–8); and who care enough to keep the memorials in good shape, as argued by the inscriptions that have been effaced over time and can no longer be read (p. 328. 101. 8–9). By thus drawing complex attention to what the tombs attempt to explicate, René subtly has Cueur read in metaliterary mode while additionally exhorting his own readers to remember faithfully, and, as implied by the various stories of military and political leaders who succumb to love, to understand the multifarious complexities fi lling the life of a leader. In doing so, he not only echoes the conative thrust of Fürstenspiegel, he concomitantly celebrates ideal readers, such as Cueur is here, as those who can help preserve fame. René, that is, emphasizes the readers’ importance in his romance’s performance text by means of portraying Cueur as attentively reading in the world of the dream, just as, many years later, René projects his mourners will do in the dramatic text of his own funeral. In the process, René poetically evokes the past, as becomes dissonantly obvious when he portrays his own gravesite in Le coeur. Much like Alphonse’s treacherous challenge to single combat, the projected performance becomes visible through dissonance, allowing in this case, René’s performance text on allegory to be pieced together.76 Critically, then, for René’s performance text on allegory, Le coeur emphasizes the act of reading and interpreting, a theme central to the Fürstenspiegel genre as well as to allegory itself, while he presents Cueur as a persona for the reader and therewith, as discussed below, introduces dissonance into the romance. As Jon Whitman describes allegory,77 The basis for the technique is obliquity—the separation between what a text says, the ‘fiction,’ and what it means, the ‘truth.’ This very obliquity, however, relies upon an assumed correspondence between the fiction and the truth. The apparent meaning, after all, only diverges from the actual one insofar as they are compared with each other. In these two conf licting demands—the divergence between the apparent and actual meanings, and yet the correspondence between them—it is possible to see both the birth and the death of allegorical writing. The more allegory exploits the divergence between corresponding levels of meaning, the less tenable the correspondence becomes. Alternatively, the more it closes ranks and emphasizes the correspondence, the less oblique, and thus the less allegorical, the divergence becomes.

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In Whitman’s terms, emphasizing divergence rather than correspondence, René installs moments of allegorical dissonance that assert there is more at stake than the one-to-one correspondence stereotypically expected of less complex allegories. Thus, René punctures the allegory with frequent and notable metaliterary interjections made by the narrator. For example, between meeting Esperance and confronting Jalousie, the narrator comments that Cueur and Desir had journeyed quite a bit, but without encountering anything “que puisse servir a nostre matiere” [p. 110. 8. 10–11: which could serve our material]. This formula, repeated several times in the narrative, not only removes readers from the dream world, it also points beyond the fictional epistolary framework, insofar as “a nostre matiere” evokes an author putting together material, not a letter-writer faithfully recording his dream. So too, René phatically writes his narrator into performing various detailed descriptions, as when in the midst of describing Amours’ gold- and jewelencrusted courtyard, he comments that there were more than 500,000 rubies “ce croy je” [p. 420. 133. 25: as I believe]. Although like the fi rst example, this one also represents a standard kind of narrative intrusion, coming in a dream allegory, what the narrator “thinks” to be accurate is pretty much irrelevant. More complexly, René has the narrator very frequently insert phrases such as, “Dit ly conte(s)” [the story says; e.g., p. 102. 5. 1, p. 108. 7. 1, p. 110. 8. 1, p. 116. 11. 1] or “et si aucun me demandoit” [if someone were to ask me; e.g., p. 114. 10. 11–12, p. 140. 20. 18–19, p. 144. 21. 7].78 While easily comprehended on the literal level of the words and not unusual in medieval Arthurian romances, the fi rst phrase actually allegorizes the narrative itself as something that speaks, and the second hypostatizes a potential reader. Setting the metaliterary stage for the performance text through such instances, René thus suggests to his readers that they do more than simply read; hopefully, they will prove to be thoughtful readers. Allegory is, of course, the literary style chosen by René, but it actually occupies center stage in this romance through a variety of devices, among them, some notably enigmatic passages.79 What are readers to understand, for example, when Esperance prophesies what will happen to Cueur and Desire, yet she waits and worries over them (p. 144. 22. 7–11)? In case we miss the paradox, just a few lines later, René has his narrator come close to contradicting what he has just related by informing readers how she takes her small retinue along the path without hesitation, “car elle savoit tout le chemin que les deux compaignons estoient allez, comme celle qui l’avoit deviné” [p. 146. 22. 18–19; cf. p. 150. 24. 6–8: because she knew the entire road that the two companions had traveled, for it was she who had foretold it].80 Enigmatic as well, at one point early on in the narrative, Esperance tells Cueur and Desir that they will drink from the Fontaine de Fortune, which the two will encounter in the Forest de Longe Actente (pp. 104–106. 5. 135–138). They do so, but do not learn that it is Fortune’s Fountain until the next day, when Cueur reads an inscription on the black marble stone (p. 130. 15. 303–305). It seems as if René is inviting readers to be patient. However, the black marble inscription identifying the fountain also claims that it was commissioned by, “Ung grant joyant de faulx affaire” [p. 132. 15. 308: a great giant of false dealings], named Desespoir [Despair, p. 132. 15. 314] and that it was made by Vergil or one of his associates (p. 132. 15. 319–320). Much later, when the comrades pass through the fi rst gate of Amours’ castle, they see the above-mentioned hanging objects,

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the fi rst of which is a basket. Bel Acueil [Fair Welcome] explains that this basket was the very same one with which a devious woman tricked Vergil, who climbed into it at her bidding and was left hanging. Bel Acueil goes on to pontificate about how little Vergil’s knowledge and magic could help him against Amours’ power (pp. 408–410. 132. 1868–1896). Readers could piece together a story, such as: despondent because his advances are spurned by his beloved, Vergil memorializes bad fortune by depicting its opposite in the good fortune his epic hero Aeneas experiences, all the while knowing in his heart that such good fortune belongs to the very few, as the basket makes clear, and so, the black marble slab warns others not to heed fortune’s call. Such a reading, or any other I could dream up, does not allow all pieces to fit together in a tidy fashion and makes little narrative sense. Furthermore, rather than allowing any of his characters to piece together the references to Vergil, René depicts Cueur and Desir as zeroing in on the one simplistic line on the slab informing them that whoever drinks from this fountain will suffer (p. 132. 15. 318), rather than the circumstances of how the fountain was created or the relationship between Desespoir and Vergil, thereby making the inscription’s ostensible rationale—to memorialize the fountain’s creation—pretty much useless in Cueur’s world and, on the surface, superfluous in that of the dreamer-narrator’s world too. Ordinarily, allegory invites readers to look below the surface for meaning, but it also usually makes the path to acquiring that meaning somewhat more obvious. In addition to enigmas such as Esperance’s forgetful prophesying and Fortune’s Fountain, René also provides slippery instances that provide linkages but not enough detail. Esperance, for example, informs Cueur and Desire what they must endure, but at times expresses herself so generally that readers may very well have trouble deciding what reference is actually intended. Thus, she did not explicitly predict the sudden appearance of Jalousie, but it could be interpreted as being part of the many sorrows she foretold (pp. 104–106. 5. 129–172). And, lest we should miss it, René depicts his characters as going through the same interpretative dilemma. Thus, Jalousie instructs the intrepid pair how they can reach the manoir de Bon Repose [p. 120. 11. 254: manor of Good Repose]. Following her instructions and constantly searching for the refuge, even though the two comrades by now know that Jalousie is a liar (p. 134. 17. 1–2; cf. the foreshadowing of the revelation, p. 120. 12. 1–6), they arrive at the house of Melencolie [Melancholy], where they read a panel that spells out her evil ways. Nonetheless, they enter and ask Melencolie for help (pp. 136–138. 18. 1–342). Thus, similar to readers’ perceptions of Esperance’s warnings, they know the general framework (in their case, ill intentions), but they do not possess enough details to comprehend what it all means. They do learn, slowly, along the way, as they experience enough adventures to provide a more complete interpretative ground. Later, for example, they sense that Courroux’s castle, nestled in the tertre Devée de Liesse [Mount Devoid of Joy], was not going to afford them any joyous kind of occasion; indeed, reading the sign above the gate substantiating their foreboding, they are also forewarned straightforwardly by Tristesse that she and her lover are not to be trusted. Cueur and Desir still accept lodging for the night there (p. 158. 28. 12– p. 160. 29. 7). While there are enough knights in Arthurian romances who fi nd themselves walking into traps, Cueur and Desir seem particularly ill-fated in this regard. Although they are here duped once

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again, they do, this time, recognize that there may be a problem in their staying the night, which is better than not recognizing any at all, as was the case in the adventure with Jalousie. Their learning does progress, however slowly. Thus, in a later adventure during which they are again forewarned by a panel, this one found on the cottage door belonging to Grief Soupir [Grievous Sighing], they once more enter and are affl icted by sorrow, even though they do not eat the appalling bread, as they did in Melencholie’s house; here, they escape relatively unscathed (p. 230. 65. 856– p. 232. 66. 21).81 To return to Esperance’s prediction, however, whether their encounter with Jalousie was actually predicted still remains a mystery. Enigmatic and slippery allegorical passages such as these complement and amplify passages that brazenly announce their allegorical, semiotic presence in the narrative. Thus, as readers follow Cueur’s gaze in Amours’ castle, the hero’s panoramic and detailed examination of artifacts creates the impression that there is something significant to learn. After he passes the first gate with his companions, Cueur is fascinated by the objects, which gain in significance once Bel Acueil [Fair Welcome] narrates the stories behind them. Yet, although Bel Acueil does point out that they all represent Amours’ power to subjugate even the most recalcitrant of his lord’s subjects, he does not explicitly provide the additional link that women used these objects to make fools of men (p. 404. 132. 19– p. 418. 132. 2008). Thus, because of their besotted passion for their beloveds, Vergil, as stated earlier, was left hanging in the basket on display; Samson’s hair was cut with the shears suspended to warn others; Aristotle was ridden with the help of the bridle and saddle hanging there for all to see; Sardanapalus was made to spin with the otherwise innocuous appearing distaff; Solomon agreed to worship the idol that shares space with the other relics; and Hercules used the loom and basket of materials on exhibit to help his beloved weave. In this manner, René draws attention to the metaliterary point that these objects serve as indices, as signs of larger narratives, by describing them in detail fi rst and then allowing Bel Acueil to explicate each object’s significance later. They function, in other words, like abbreviated Fürstenspiegel exempla of leaders who behaved foolishly in love. Shortly thereafter, in similar fashion, but without the exhortative function, Cueur and his companions inspect the figures in the ten silk tapestries hanging in Amours’ castle (pp. 436–444. 137. 2101–2180), featuring: Oyseuse [Leisure], Regart [Gaze], Beau Semblant [Fair Seeming], Plaisir [Pleasure], Foul Cuider [Mad Belief ], Ardant Desir [Ardent Desire], Vaine Esperance [Hopelessness] Souvenir [Memory], Pensee [Thought], Cuïderie [Opinion], Abus [Abuse], Voulenté [Will], Pouoir [Power], Lÿesse [ Joy], Dueil [Sorrow], Folie [Folly], Entendement [Understanding], Raison [Reason], Amours, and Jeunesse [Youth], not to mention the six pieces of tapestry work and two interlocutors figured on Venus’s garment (pp. 454–458. 140. 2259–2298). On fi rst glance appearing similar to the hanging objects, the tapestries’ figures nonetheless differ significantly from them in that they “meta”-phatically represent allegorical abstractions, much as they would in René the author’s world. Indeed, some of them even depict characters in Le coeur’s dream world. Thus, they are, fi rst, icons, in Peirce’s sense, since they resemble characters who are “real” in the dream world, and they are also, secondly, indices in René’s world, since they point to abstractions. 82 Moreover, they highlight the distinction between static images and the performed visualization offered by allegorical narratives. As such, they contrast

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as well with the two dreams Cueur experiences: in the fi rst dream, the bull and siren serve as indices of the adventure involving the black-armored knight and Esperance, while, in the second, the various birds function poetically to symbolize Renon and the forces who rescue Cueur. The dreams, then, share the indexical function of the passages describing various relics and tapestries, while all three kinds of allegorical representation phatically generate different kinds of stories: the dreams presage Cueur’s adventures, the objects inspire Bel Acueil’s exhortative glosses, and the silken tapestries encourage René’s readers to toggle between them and the dream world to generate additional stories. In other words, the objects, tapestries, and the dreams are not only allegorical, they put allegory on display. Enigmatic, slippery, and brazenly allegorical passages comprise part of the disruptions punctuating the allegorical surface of René’s narrative. Ordinarily, allegory invites metalingual speculation, since it solicits attention to meaning. René’s fissures do this as well, but more importantly, they also phatically reveal the staging that allows an allegory to be pieced together. As signaled by the dissonance in the opening epistolary frame, in which the narrator asks for guidance from a younger man, Le coeur’s metaliterary exploration of allegory insists on slowing readers down to encourage us not only to read and remember, but also to comprehend far more fully what additional messages a narrative, even an allegory, may express. Thus, in the epistolary frame, the narrator underscores his state of inconclusiveness in the conventional language of the Fürstenspiegel and asks his depicted reader (René’s nephew) to attend to him: Pour laquelle raison adrece ma complainte a vous plustost que a nul autre qui vive, en esperant que bien et seurement m’en saurez conseillier . . . Et ainsi languissant demeure sans garir ne sans pouoir mourir, en faczon telle et estat proprement, comme par paraboles en ce livret ycy vous pourrez au vray veoir, s’il vous plaist a le lire. [pp. 84–86. 1. 13–42, my italics: For this reason I address my lament to you rather than to any other who lives, hoping that you will know how to counsel me well and surely . . . And thus I live languishing, without cure or being able to die, in a fashion and state that you can truly see in this book by means of parables, if it pleases you to read it.]

Hinting at the hyperspace that will be traversed along the course of the narrative, René’s narrator here underscores the importance of being a willing and diligent reader.

The Livre du coeur d’amour épris and Governing René’s Hall of Mirrors Le coeur is not only about reading, it is also about the difficulty of reading below the surface effectively, the same concern conveyed by Fürstenspiegel, as implied by the genre’s fundamental focus on the need for a regent to take counsel. Counsel certainly plays a part in René’s narrative as well. Both Honneur and Amours, as mentioned above, seek formal counsel and adhere to what emerges as consensus. More than that, René rhetorically emphasizes these two characters’ following of counsel by means of relatively long passages, interjecting scenes depicting the progress

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of Honneur’s counsel-seeking activities at various points over large stretches of narrative, and interlacing Honneur’s advice-driven actions with Amours’ own recourse to seeking counsel. Thus, Honneur is introduced to readers as taking counsel when Desir arrives breathless at his camp (p. 186. 41. 19–23); much later, René interpolates a scene interrupting Cueur’s quest to Amours’ palace with one showing Honneur seeking direction again on the same subject, how to defeat the Mesdisans [Slanderers], and following his counsel’s advice (pp. 216–218. 57. 1–32); later still, Honneur enters Amours’ hall ( just after Amours decides to seek advice himself ) in order to learn what Amours desires, as his advisors counseled him to do (p. 434. 137. 13–17); and, fi nally, the narrator informs us that Honneur was granted his reinforcements, but nonetheless could not defeat the Mesdisans due to their large numbers (p. 486. 158. 24–28). Interwoven with and echoing Honneur’s willingness to be guided, Amours too is shown seeking advice. Thus, he entertains Cueur’s and Desir’s request and decides to take counsel of his advisors, friends, and Venus (p. 434. 136. 2095–2098), and after Cueur and his companions study the tapestries, Amours is shown in counsel with Venus and others, before having Honneur inform Cueur and Desir of the decision upon which he and his counsel agreed (pp. 444–446. 138. 5–31). Interestingly, both leaders had already expressed their opinions on at least part of the circumstances, and these opinions are included as part of the counsel’s fi nal advice (p. 432. 136. 2085–2088). The sum of the advice given to Honneur and Amours, however, does not seem to have been very effective—Honneur fails to defeat Amours’ enemy, and the Mesdisans keep multiplying and defeat Cueur in his quest in spite of Amours’ aid. Unlike Charlemagne in the Chanson de Roland, Honneur and Amours are not given a second chance to redirect all the advice they were given into positive and effective action. As these counsel scenes thereby demonstrate, each disparate moment in time in and of itself makes sense and further certifies Honneur’s and Amours’ attempts to follow the Fürstenspiegel desideratum to adhere to the best advice possible. Nonetheless, all the moments in their totality, as defi ned by their narrative endpoint, can become simply obliterated, just like the messages on the fading tombstones in Amours’ cemetery, with no trace remaining of the seemingly wise steps taken along the way visible for future generations. This is the dilemma apparently troubling René: in contrast to an undesired ending, such as Quatrebarbes leads to in portraying René’s life, or a spectacularly successful ending, as in saints’ lives, each prior moment is full and anticipates any number of possible stories that remain present in traces, regardless of the ending. Thus, whether in a dreamlike narrative framework or in an iconic myth, trace narratives suggest alternate versions of any story. For one seeking fame, such tensions can be a blessing or a curse; endings to the contrary, there is simply no fi nal word. To exacerbate matters, coupled with the difficulty of discerning meaning as displayed by the inhabitants of Le coeur’s dream world and nudged by the dissonant allegorical elements René inserted into the narrative, the correspondence between the surface and underlying levels, the quest for meaning, is depicted as lacking a sure guide, an advisor who, in Fürstenspiegel terms, would provide effective counsel. René emphasizes the point in various ways in the dream world. For example, although Cueur accepts Desir as a guide (cf. pp. 108–110. 7. 5–188; p. 262. 76. 20–28), Desir is, at best, erratic—even though he traveled the way many

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times before, he seems not to know what to avoid and where to go on this journey. Similarly, in the epistolary frame inviting entrance into the world of the dream, the dreamer-narrator emphasizes how much guidance he needs. Likewise, very subtly, the narrative’s insistent attention to visual detail, as exemplified by Amours’ tapestries, ironically qualifies the allegorical tendency to generate one-to-one correspondences between sign and meaning.83 That is, even the visual does not perform as a certain guide in this allegory. On the contrary, in René’s narrative, the visual contributes to ambiguity, rather than clarifies, and it achieves ambiguity by eliciting close attention to surface-level detail, rather than to edifying significance. As if to underscore these allegorical anomalies in his narrative, in his closing words to his nephew, René’s narrator writes: . . . ainsi doncques comme avez peu veoir par escript, pareillement sur ce pouez comprendre mon piteux cas et ma griefve paine au long considerer, laquelle m’est advenue par tost croire et de legier suivir au rapport de mes yeulx le plaisir de mon cuer plus tost d’assez que sa propre santé. [pp. 498. 163. 2–7, my italics: . . . thus as you have been able to see in writing, so in a parallel way you can understand my piteous case and contemplate my grievous suffering at leisure, that which happened to me by believing too quickly and following lightly, on the recommendation of my eyes, the pleasure of my heart rather than its true health.]

This excerpt begins in something akin to Horace’s ut pictura poesis, which argues that comprehension can be enhanced by visualizing in words, rather than by simply explicating.84 Indeed, with visualized narration, the narrator’s depicted reader can au long considerer [contemplate at leisure] to deepen, it is emphasized, his understanding of his uncle’s plight. This writerly conclusion, along with its conatively posed recommendation, however, almost completely evaporates in the very next words, in which the narrator poses the readerly problem, as he grapples with why he is in his wretched state: with so much to see that attracts the eye, a reader can easily be led astray. Remembering the thoughtful energy that René put into framing and presenting his palatial residences, tournaments, plays, and gardens, let alone the aesthetic care and attention he dedicated to the production of the Coeur manuscript, readers may easily be led to interpret this comment as an ironic bit of self-awareness. More importantly here, this passage presents more interpretative problems than it solves, thereby, again, phatically encouraging readers to take the time to contemplate how it conveys underlying meanings. Although these lines convey the sense that, now, after the narrator has related his dream, all is lucid, the irony of the self-accusation—that he too easily believes in what his eyes reveal to his heart—multiplies back into the narrative itself, for not only are the manuscript illuminations stunningly beautiful even as they direct interpretation, but, as exemplified above, visualizing predominates René’s narrative style.85 The narrator’s self-awareness thus underscores a highlighted theme: accompanying the problem of guiding readers is the potential insularity reading can cause, as witnessed in numerous instances throughout the narrative. In addition to the narrator’s “weakness,” for example, Cueur, upset that Desir encourages him to be steadfast, asks his companion if he had ever seen anything

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resembling cowardice in his behavior. Happy because Cueur will continue the quest in spite of the storm, but saddened that his companion mistook his intent, Desir replies: “Tout ce que je t’ay ycy dit, Ne ja ne l’ayes en despit, Car oncques je ne vis en toy Que ne voulsisse veoir en moy . . . ” [p. 128. 14. 289–292: “All that I have said to you here, do not scorn it, because I never saw in you that which I would not want to see in me . . . ”]

Besides inviting the obvious allegorically conditioned response that both Desir and Cueur form part of an individual’s psyche, these lines phatically exemplify how readers interpret from their own individual perspectives. Indeed, the entire passage reveals how personally readers interpret: Cueur bristles at the mere suggestion that his manhood is being impugned, and Desir, oscillating between emotions, essentially tells Cueur not to worry—he sees with self-imposed blinders that focus only on what is positive in Cueur, suggesting the streamlining imperative characterizing epics and iconic myths. At the end of Le coeur, René humorously makes the same point regarding how personal readings can be, when upon leaving the dream world, the panic-stricken dream-narrator is reassured by his servant, who checking his side for a gaping wound, that he, “ . . . vit que ce n’estoit nyant” [p. 496. 162. 2498: . . . sees there was nothing]. By placing considerable emphasis on the visual and by elaborating how readers perceive differently, René draws metaliterary attention to the surface, to objects, in order to emphasize their form, thereby qualifying allegorical depiction. As cited in the last chapter, according to Douglas Kelly, “Medieval imagination looks for forms inbedded in things and seeks out the rationale for marvels in the shapes possible in matter.”86 Indeed, allegory ordinarily generates a narrative from abstractions that are hypostatized into human beings or objects in order to understand the abstraction more fully. As such, the surface is typically posited as entertaining but more or less inconsequential—it is the deeper-lying meaning that readers should seek. Consequently, a conventional allegory’s two-dimensional characters are strongly indexical, as they serve mainly to point elsewhere. In Le coeur, however, by drawing prolonged attention to the surface, René short-circuits the reflex to determine whether the abstraction depicted actually accords with, or even elaborates, general understanding of the abstraction. Instead of a conditioned response immediately turning to meaning, René encourages readers to remain with the surface.87 In doing so, he guides readers to return to examining in poetic mode. Surely, the detailed passages depicting the cemetery, the relics, and the tapestries present invitations to au long considerer in earnest, both in the passages’ selections and combinations as well as in the implication that these individuals and objects refer to a greater framework. As Kelly argues elsewhere, René chose the romance structure for its “multiplication and diversification of Imaginative foci.”88 With attention focused on the surface, René can present entire panoramas, the long-term consequences of actions, and the distractions of the visible to argue that meanings cannot be located in static, discrete objects or abstractions, even in the

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realm of allegory. Rather, meaning is worked out in performance, in complex, fleshed-out panoramas that convey additional details over time, details that nuance and color initial impressions. Thus, when Cueur and his companions fi rst see the objects and Bel Acueil [Fair Welcome] phatically explains their significance by means of stories of philosophical and political leaders who fell to love, Bel Acueil thereby enthymematically makes the “meta”-point that love conquers the wisest, the richest, and the most powerful, while René illustrates that the more we see, the more we acquire new information, even about a familiar object, person, or tale. Because the world has so much to see, the epistolary narrator confesses to his reader, individuals are led astray, but in the metaliterary world of René’s narrative, the variegated and enticing surface René creates provides a way to avoid the kneejerk response that locks readers in the limits of interpretation that Eco discusses. By exaggerating and fi lling the surface, readers can be enticed to “see” anew. René conveys this perspective not only by proliferating the enticements to remain with the surface, but also by modifying allegorical elements. Thus, instead of two-dimensional, heavily indexical quasi-characters, René fleshes out his abstractions. For example, we are made aware of Cueur’s personality, at times, by his reflections upon reading, as cited above, as well as by an array of his emotions. He is ashamed at Esperance’s catching his horse by the bridle, since she is merely a woman (p. 102. 4. 11–17). Likewise, he is so infuriated by Jalousie’s lack of hospitality, he wishes to strike her (p. 114. 10. 1–5). Further, when he is unhorsed by the black-armored knight Soulcy [Worry], he insists he was not defeated (p. 152. 25. 8–12). As a fi nal example, Cueur’s perception that Desir is always mocking him enkindles anger so uncontrolled that Largess has to scold him for being too sensitive, twice (p. 222. 59. 817– p. 224. 60. 840; p. 272. 77. 1035–1048; p. 274. 78. 1049–1080). In drawing substantial attention to the surface by fleshing out characters, René transforms Cueur from a static index pointing to “heart” or “love” to a metaliterary “map” showing how to move from simply looking and reading to seeing, reflecting, and understanding, perhaps as he wished his many titles to function for those around him in his own life. René thereby avers that the surface is in and of itself valuable in its panoramic and complex reflection of all that is important and further proposes that rather than affirming conventional perspectives, it is the selecting of appropriate details and actions that determines meaning. True to this perspective, René also phatically provides examples of different kinds of readers throughout the narrative, including those who do not follow all the authoritative Fürstenspiegel-related values implied in how Honneur and Amours try to understand the enemy. Upon arriving at Amours’ hospital, for example, Cueur and his company are warmly welcomed by dame Courtoisie. When dame Pitié enters the scene, the narrator informs readers that the prioress did not know Cueur, but because she saw in him a good, young, handsome man, who traveled in the company of Desir and Largesse, whom she recognized, and because she had heard all about them from dame Courtoisie, she welcomed Cueur as well (p. 286. 81. 40–45), illustrating the potential value of good fame. Even more carefully considered, when asked advice on how best to achieve the quest, dame Pitié takes the time to think about the question before deciding to take the night to reflect upon it further (p. 290. 82.

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1–5), not unlike the emphasis put in the Chanson de Roland on Charlemagne’s pondering. Dame Pitié, then, demonstrates how a reader may gather bits of information, reflect upon them, and create guidance and meaning from the exercise. In contrast to Honneur and to Amours, that is, she is her own counsel. She also contrasts with readers and readings depicted in those enigmatic, slippery, and brazenly allegorical fissures, insofar as she dispels mystery by situating the unknown Cueur into her immediate context; she eliminates interpretative slipperiness by connecting bits of information about him in this context so that she herself can defi ne the request for support narrowly to mean providing sustenance and lodging; and she postpones further more explicitly articulated support—aid in securing Doulce Mercy—until she has time to consider the request, thereby self-reflexively drawing attention to her role; making her role central to Cueur’s adventure; and offering the possibility of future adventures, or stories, in her acceptance, or not, of additional roles to augment that of host (her role as host will indeed accrete the future roles of advisor and go-between). Consistent with René’s attempt to emphasize the importance of variety and avoid simple cause-and-effect narrative, moreover, dame Pitié is not uniformly reflective throughout Le coeur, as demonstrated by the ending when Cueur fails to win Doulce Mercy. But, even though her support did not allow Cueur to win his beloved, she is there to tell him his quest is over and to bring him back to Amours’ hospital. By illustrating the lack of effective guidance, underscoring the possible insularity of reading, fleshing out characters, and providing a variety of mirrors of readers in his narrative, René phatically places allegory per se at center stage, and he does so early on in the narrative as well. Notably, in Le coeur’s epistolary framework, the narrator does not ask for help in interpreting his dream; he asks for advice on how to cope with his passion. In doing so, he tries to express his quandary through his own allegory. He begins with the “traditional,” allegorical hypostatizing of abstractions, but then crosses the boundary, tellingly, when trying to place himself in the narrative: Mais touteffois en moy y a ung point: c’est assavoir que de trois ne sçay pas contre qui m’adrecier pour l’acuser du tort fait et martire que mon cuer, pour voir, seuff re, de Fortune ou d’Amours ou de ma destinee . . . Car le jour que je passay premier devant ma dame, Fortune me conduist celle part la plustost qu’ailleurs . . . Et d’aultre part, quant la fuz arrivé, sans gaires y tarder, Amours . . . me frappa au cuer . . . Et oultreplus, puis lors, ma destinee, quelque part que je soye, jugea mon souvenir a devoir sans cesser penser . . . a celle la qui cy dessus est dit . . . Donques auquel des trois dessus nommez, de mon martire a qui en baillier la coulpe, pas ne sçay dire, fors que a tous trois et a chascun pour le tout . . . [p. 86. 1. 15–36, my italics: However, for me there is one point: that is, I do not know against whom of the three I should address to accuse of the wrong done and the martyrdom that my heart, in truth, suffers, whether Fortune, Love or my destiny . . . Because the day that I first went past my lady, Fortune led me to that part rather than to any other . . . And on the other hand, when I arrived there, without delay, Love . . . struck my heart . . . And moreover, since then, my destiny, of which part I am, judged that my memory must think without ceasing . . . on her who is spoken of above . . . To whom, then, of the three above named, should my martyrdom be given the fault, I cannot say, except that it should be all three and each of them for everything . . .]

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In the end, the confused narrator poses that the three forces are indistinguishable, at least with respect to cause, suggesting that abstracting, the basic tool of allegory, was not a helpful exercise for his complex dilemma. René, then, brings attention to allegory to reinstate the surface as the complex starting point for interpretation. His use of allegorical features as seen in the Roman de la rose along with Arthurian elements in a visually powerful narrative allows him to create a platform for examining allegory and to suggest something larger driving the narrative. Not surprisingly, René also provides an example of how the power of the visual suggests something greater than the eye can see. Thus, the narrator twice reports upon Esperance’s unusual leave-takings to imply that she possesses some kind of invisible power. After her predictions of further trials and tribulations, for example, she seems to vanish so suddenly that Cueur and Desir wonder, “que ce fust chose invisible et esperituelle” [p. 156. 27. 5: whether this was an invisible and spiritual thing].89 These leave-takings are notable not only because they partake of the supernatural and there are two of them, but also because Esperance’s departures comprise some of the very few instances in René’s narrative that depart from the romance’s surface-level verisimilitude. Moreover, there is no simple allegorical meaning that can be garnered from them—if hope were to vanish, after all, Cueur and Desir could not continue.90 Instead, René suggests, on one level, Cueur is to maintain hope in his quest to win Doulce Mercy, and on another, he is also to pay attention to what is seen even if what is seen does not comply with what is known. Esperance’s disappearances thereby point to the quasi-platonic form of the idea of hope, and in doing so, draw metaliterary attention to the form of fictional representations per se. By having Esperance’s form disappear, that is, René emphasizes the chose invisible et esperituelle [invisible and spiritual thing], for the two comrades-in-arms know that her unseen power remains with them. Interestingly, in her second disappearing act, Largesse, who was accompanying them, is stymied, but Cueur and Desir, now experienced in the matter, reassure him; this is her modus operandi (pp. 244–246. 70. 1–8). Thus, not only do her two disappearances together quasi-platonically point to the forms that anchor knowledge, they also imply how rapidly readers anchor interpretation in what they have experienced and learned.

René, Visual Power, and Creating Fürstenspiegel Fame At this point, I hope it will prove useful to recall the five interrelated Fürstenspiegel elements I discussed in the last chapter. In some sense, they too are, like the three elements in René’s epistolary allegory, separable but, in the end, thoroughly joined. Thus, Quatrebarbe’s vignette used Fürstenspiegel elements to generate an epic portrait, validated by religious approbation, in order to present a leader attempting to communicate with his beloved subjects, whose only flaw, if it is to be considered one, was Arthurian generosity. Quatrebarbe’s portrait has some basis in René’s various dynastic efforts, as reviewed above, and faithfully conveys the Angevin ruler’s opulent staging of his chivalric and Arthurian persona: René returned to prison after he had tended to political interests, he held tournaments and entertainments that evoked Arthur’s court such as the founding of the Order of the Crescent, he provided for a hermit and elevated a saint’s remains, and he included the helpless in

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his dynastic considerations. But just as the performance text is made visible in Le coeur through dissonant fissures, so too, the performance texts that René produced in his actual life reveal the clashing of the spiritual with the corporeal, as most obviously seen in his will, the paradoxical funereal script articulating the message that here died a great king. The metaliterary message conveyed by René’s funereal script may appear to be simple, just as Cueur’s adventures could also be reduced to a few lines about how the heart feels, but it can only be understood in its full sense when traveling as a companion whose desire to learn does not flag. That is, René’s insistence on making his fi nal message, his funeral, reflect dynasty also reveals a fi ssure, one that is both literal and figurative, a fissure that, because it dissonantly places an image in an unusual venue generates questions and stories, like, for example, how do the separate processions for his body and his heart reflect upon the symbolic proclamations of his being a powerful king? Importantly, separating form into the neoplatonic dichotomy between the transitory and the eternal that seemed to preoccupy René for much of his life comprises only a temporary separation, since again as registered in the epistolary allegory beginning Le coeur, at some endpoint, the separate parts will be joined again. With his funereal dichotomy, then, René stages an allegory that not only proves phatic in its prolonged attention to the contact and poetic in its various iterations of messages about death, it also draws metalingual attention to meaning, and, perhaps above all, presents these accumulated messages through the grandeur that in Arthurian romances and the literary system of governance signifies a powerful and good king. Similar messages and modes inform the passage from Le coeur describing René’s tomb. When perusing the burial sites of leaders and writers who succumbed to love, Cueur comes across the epitaph of René d’Anjou, which characterizes him as a “coquin d’Amours” [p. 342, 107. 1484: beggar of love]. The two major manuscripts diverge considerably in the remainder of the epitaph (in and of itself enigmatic and perhaps a subject to be explored elsewhere), but in both versions, René’s arms follow those of Charles, Duke of Bourbon (p. 340, 106. 1471–1482), the father of the Jean to whom Le coeur was addressed, another intriguing juxtaposition. Thereby putting quite obvious quotation marks around his own gravesite and in spite of describing himself as a “coquin d’Amours,” René begins the transition to his own memorial, in both versions, with an additional, visually powerful description. He writes, “Ung autre escu avoir joingnant de cestui, lequel estoit plus grant et espacieux. Ou dessus avoit une couronne d’or . . . ” [pp. 340–342. 107. 1–3: Another shield was next to this one, which was larger and more spacious. On top of it was a golden crown . . .], before describing his coat of arms that emblematized his titles of Hungary, Sicily, Jerusalem, Anjou, and Bar (p. 342. 107. 6–15). That is, this memorial is marked for readerly attention not only by the fact that it is clearly described as the author’s own gravesite, but also by its grandeur. It is, in effect, another dramatic text for the performance of memorializing his own fame. By the time René had begun writing Le coeur, probably in his forty-eighth year, his parents Louis II d’Anjou and Yolande d’Aragon, his great-uncle the Duc de Bar, and his fi rst wife Isabelle de Lorraine had died. He had arranged for his two daughters’ marriages, the younger, Marguerite, to Henry VI of England, and the older, Yolande, to Ferry II de Vaudémont. His confessor, Bernardin de Sienne, had

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been canonized. He had married Jeanne de Laval some three years prior. He had been imprisoned and released, twice. He had supported and created artwork, and he had written a treatise on tournaments as well as the complex but more conventional allegory, Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance. He had fought a number of battles for territory, experienced permutations of his titles, held tournaments, and he had no idea that he would live almost another quarter-century, let alone that he would write his will in about seventeen years. In 1457, he also began what, after the death of his son in 1470, would become a permanent move of his court to Provence, apparently seeking a more pastoral lifestyle.91 By the time he had begun Le coeur, that is, René had already lived fully, and, pointedly, his vigilance over his titles and coats of arms, the forms representing his dynastic claims in words and images, never seemed to flag. Importantly here, in writing both his allegorical narratives, René underscored his decision to write in French. Thus, in his earlier allegory, the Mortifiement de vaine plaisance, his narrator briefly compares his own lack of vigilance to that of Samson before announcing his resolve to write a treatise concerning the soul and heart, which he further explains he will not complicate through intricate ordering or obscure profundity for his readers’ sake. In this declaration, the narrator elucidates that he is writing the treatise, “ . . . pour plus esmouuoir les lisans a bien faire et parfaittement sur toutes choses amer nostre vray redempteur . . . Et affi n que mieulx soit de tous entendu et que les lisans le puissant mieulx retenir lay fait en prose en langaige commun . . . ” [p. 2: in order better to move the readers to do good deeds and love our true Savior perfectly above everything else . . . And so that it be better understood by everyone and so that the readers may retain it better, I wrote it in prose in the common language]. René also draws attention to language, from a different vantage point,92 in both major manuscripts of Le coeur. Right before his epitaph, which begins, “Je suis René d’Anjou . . . ” [p. 342. 107. 1483: I am René d’Anjou], René not only re-creates the by now familiar tension between the humble servant of love and the dynastic king, he also generates a hyperspace that places language center stage, “Soubz lequel blazon avoit lectres en langaige françoys escriptes, qui disoient ainsi . . . ” [p. 342. 107. 15–16: Under this coat of arms there were letters written in the French language, which said the following . . .]. Moreover, in describing Amours’ cemetery, while the narrator mentions the script or the language or both in which an epitaph identifies in words what the coat of arms conveys, French is mentioned only once in the list of many languages (p. 328. 101. 5–8) and once more for another servant of love, Alain Chartier (p. 366. 118. 14), whose tomb is the last the narrator describes and the tomb Cueur requests to see. Writing in French, then, seems significant. A solution to the curious emphasis may emerge from considering the literary system of governance. Dynastic regent and literary love’s servant, these were among the roles that seemed to have engendered ever-recurring tensions in René’s life. His penchant for learning and for the arts would have familiarized him with the Fürstenspiegel that could, he may have reflected, contain a record of his life at some future point in time. Indeed, René’s passion for acquiring titles almost guaranteed his life would be recorded somewhere. Such readerly reflection may have fueled recognition that his “fate” may not be, in the end, articulated as he would have liked, since he knew how complex it was to be understood in a world where

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performance texts precondition audiences to receive symbols and lives in a certain way, as demonstrated by Cueur when he feared Esperance and Desir doubted his courage. Indeed, René must have known that, given the literary system of governance of his times, his deeds as a ruler would hardly have been celebrated unambiguously. Ironically, being aware that he might be remembered in qualified manner at some future time seemed to lead him to dwell on a fictionalized past, on how he might be remembered, and, as his will and Le coeur’s epitaph suggest, perhaps realizing this, René provided dissonant signs that point to how one might “read” his life. In doing so, Boccaccio’s depiction of Arthur whose fame lives on because of the belief in the stories of his return seems relevant. That is, René seemed aware that good los et fame [praise and fame] require the efforts of common people, who, in his case, speak in French and who would be the ones who would continue to remember and recount the stories of le bon roi René, audiences who might better remember if they could be provided with strikingly powerful visual and visualized images. In addition to recognizing the role of those governed in sustaining good fame, that is, René seems aware that he must provide the scaffolding and images by which he could be remembered. Pointedly, after Renon rescues Cueur from Courroux, Cueur pledges to serve Renon (pp. 204–206. 50. 717–724). Likewise, earlier, in approaching Honneur for aid to help Cueur, Desir describes Cueur’s trials and tribulations to win Doulce Mercy, “Et en a souffert, dire l’os,/ Grant travail pour acquerir los . . . ” [p. 188. 41. 629–630, my italics: “And he has suffered, I dare to say, great turmoil to gain praise . . . ”]. In similar vein, the task of saving Cueur is delegated to Renon, who expresses gratitude for the assignment (p. 190. 42. 644–43. 6). Finally, arriving at the castle, Renon takes the time to rally his forces for the battle. His words were so inspiring that, “ . . . le cuer leur crut ou corps tellement que n’y eut si petit qui a celle heure ne cuidast bien valoir Lancelot ou Hector de Troyes.” [p. 194. 45. 2–4: the bodily heart believed them so completely that in that hour even the smallest believed himself to be the equal of Lancelot or Hector of Troy]. The cascading senses of meaning set into motion with the use of “le cue(u)r” in these lines, the literary allusions to two heroes (one in Amours’ cemetery, one not), the visual cue of men bursting with pride in response to Renon’s powerful words, and the indications that Cueur worked hard for praise, all this in effect glosses Boccaccio’s observation about Arthur’s fame from another vantage point. If the common people are the ones who will in the end see to it that fame survives, then a leader can work at convincing them, a leader can work at gaining los et fame. And indeed, even on his deathbed, it seems, René played the appropriate role for someone who should be memorialized: René died with his physician Jean Bonnet and his confessor Elzéar Garnier in constant attendance, his confessor reading psalms as he passed away on July 10, 1480. As requested in his will, René was buried like a king. However, parts of his dramatic text were nonetheless modified. That is, even though his will stipulated that he be buried in the cathedral at Angers, next to his fi rst wife, he was buried in the cathedral at Saint-Sauveur. His second wife—suggesting the loyalty a good king inspires—insisted that this wish be honored. In a nocturnal stealth operation, his body was removed from his grave in Aix in a trunk purporting to hold robes and tapestries (I like to think he would

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have appreciated the irony—virtual forms, the fictional robes and tapestries, thus “clothe” his symbol-laden corpse), and René was reinterred on August 18, 1481, in Angers, next to Isabelle.93 On October 9, 1481, an elaborate funeral was held for him, at great expense, with scholars in attendance from the University, which he had munificently renovated. The stage is set for le bon roi René.

*

*

*

Relieved that they had not experienced the perilous adventure prefigured in Cueur’s fi rst dream, Cueur and Desir enjoy their jaunt, unaware that they will soon encounter Cueur’s dream “made flesh.” During this moment of respite, grounded in stories and traces of success that allow terrifying memories to evaporate, Desir jokes, “Cueur, on peult tel songe songier/Qui n’est pas trouvé mensongier.” [p. 134. 16. 327–328: “Cueur, one can dream such a dream that one did not fi nd it to lie (be a false dream).”]. Perhaps this was René’s profoundest hope.

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CHAPTER 3 CHAUCER’S HOUSE OF FAME: THE QUASI-ICONOCLASTIC PRESENT

A

s can be surmised from his actions, proclivities, and writing, René d’Anjou phatically hypostatized courtly life into performance texts that ref lect Fürstenspiegel, and particularly Arthurian, values. That is, he not only translated words into actions in his own life by heeding precepts, as witnessed in his Lancelot-like return to prison, he also surrounded himself with concrete articulations of visually powerful narratives that may well have functioned as reminders to uphold the complex ideals of chivalric behavior, whether these figured narratives were articulated in allegories, such as found in the Mortifiement de vaine plaisance, the Livre du coeur d’amours épris, and the various tapestries gracing his opulently appointed abodes; in the celebratory tournaments decked out in literary themes, Arthurian or pastoral; or in his own tomb’s complex message framed in the literary system of governance and phatically raising questions about life’s mutability. Rather than being lodged in the present mode of conative exhortation typical in the literary system of governance, René shaped allegorical and other figurative forms to create past-oriented ref lections and meditations that emphasize the addresser’s position in emotive projections of how he might be understood beyond what appearances suggest and thereby possibly be remembered in good fame. In this vein, Le coeur complexly memorializes poets, along with René himself, and demonstrates how difficult it can be to achieve a fame-worthy goal, as it also phatically ref lects upon an evocatively platonic world, in which transitory trappings promulgate Arthurian rather than eternal ideals. In doing so, René emphatically situated his metaliterary and poetic messages on the surface as the critical starting point in the quest for deep, underlying meaning, while he also complicated the more typical knee-jerk allegorical ref lex of easy equivalence between surface character and abstract quality, perhaps with an eye to persuading his readers to consider himself as worthy of good fame. After all, like Cueur, regardless of all his efforts, he too could not achieve his dream. As this chapter proposes, Chaucer also addresses fame as a metaliterary subject—that is, as created by writers—but the dissonant markers in the House of Fame addressed here emphasize issues framed in the code, as defined by Jakobson. In doing so, Chaucer presents his dream vision’s narrator in a manner significantly different than René does—Chaucer conf lates the addresser and addressee positions as much as possible.

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Much separated René d’Anjou from Geoffrey Chaucer beyond the centuries in which they lived. Most obviously, Chaucer was not a political leader, although he was one who could, importantly, extol them. Necessarily, then, they belonged to different socioeconomic classes. René was a king in his own right and further belonged, at times uneasily, to the inner circle of the King of France, and thus, although he incurred heavy debt, he possessed palaces, managed a retinue, and commanded armies. In contrast, employed by the English royal family and relying on his literary skills, Chaucer occupied a socioeconomic position that on the one hand excluded him from the power and wealth of the kind that René possessed, and on the other, allowed him access to those who were powerful and wealthy. As Lee Patterson argues, “Not bourgeois, not noble, not clerical, he nonetheless participate[d] in all three of these communities.”1 In terms of their literary proclivities, although they both shared more or less the same literary system, especially since René seemed enamored of the Arthurian narratives and allegorical poetry also valued in Chaucer’s day, interestingly, Chaucer, the earlier poet, was less conventional. Moreover, as far as his House of Fame is concerned, Chaucer’s narrator dwells in the present, the same temporal modality typically emphasized in the literary system of governance, but without its starkly conative thrust. In contrast, as evidenced in René’s own funeral along with Amours’ cemetery in Le coeur, René articulates a yearning for the Fürstenspiegel convention of honoring those who passed from this life in exemplary fashion with los et fame. Their different temporal perspectives are closely related to yet another difference, their different teleological positioning. René’s perspective, simply put, generates melancholy, in part because the closure provided by clear military triumph or failure remains suspended as a trace narrative that incessantly whispers what should have been.2 Thus, his titles and the opulence informing most of what he generated in Arthurian manner created unrealized expectations that he too would be deservedly crowned with unambiguous los et fame. Chaucer seemed to understand the kind of difficulty René was to struggle with, as reflected in the English poet’s portrait of Criseyde in another poem, Troilus and Criseyde, after she had “defected” to the other side. Thus, Chaucer portrays her lamenting the decision she had made, to be traded as a hostage, based on her trust in her own abilities to imagine a way back to Troy. She too worries about the final pronouncement on her reputation, “Prudence, allas, oon of thyne eyen thre Me lakked alwey, er that I come here! On tyme ypassed wel remembred me, And present tyme ek koud ich wel ise, But future tyme, er I was in the snare, Koude I nat sen; that causeth now my care.” [5. 744–749: “Prudence, alas, one of your three eyes I always lacked, even before I came here. On time passed I could well remember, and present time also I could well see, but future time, before I was in the trap, I could not see; that now causes my sorrow.”]

While René and Criseyde wish for a “good ending” from a past-focused perspective, an ending that would fi nalize their lives in straightforwardly positive

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emblems, Chaucer seems uncomfortable with the fi nality promoted by endings and more interested in those trace narratives that endings sometimes evoke in spite of their attempts to declare closure. Indeed, while the Canterbury Tales and, perhaps, the poem this chapter focuses on, the House of Fame, were technically left incomplete, these two narratives along with others, as numerous scholars have commented upon, also treat openness. This is clearly the case, for example, with the Parliament of Fowls, in which the conclusion allows the main “character,” the female eagle, to postpone her fi nal decision for a year, while the other birds fi nd their mates. 3 Chaucer’s openness to multiple possibilities stems in part from his focus on the present, even when he considers the past. In other words, René and Criseyde seem constrained by the past, which they have learned to understand exhortatively as a mirror reflecting how they themselves might be remembered. Chaucer, on the other hand, engages with the past not for its perspective on whether he himself would gain fame or in order to apply fame’s lessons to his life, not, therefore, as a constraint, but rather, as material for present audiences. His concern is how to shape material that will evoke trace narratives. Even when Chaucer treats the canonical narratives of his literary system, then, he does not attempt to work their perspectives into his narratives, as much as he works their material into a new perspective. Like Groucho Marx, he would never join a club that would have him as a member. In contrast, then, to René’s emotive attempts to create a fuller picture of the past that could elicit understanding and approbation from his audiences, Chaucer’s writerly concerns place his readerly narrator fully in the present to shape and at times to challenge the past. Thus, although René and Chaucer treat a number of the same issues, and both write within the allegorically enhanced genre of dream narratives, Chaucer’s scan of those immortalized in Book Three of his House of Fame seems more focused on the actual process of memorializing rather than on reflecting upon the possible results. In other words, as opposed to René’s apparent desire to be memorialized as one of Arthur’s court, so illustrious that he could become an entry in a Fürstenspiegel, Chaucer’s narrator constantly pokes his elbow into his fellow readers’ ribs, pointing at Fame not as one outside her palace walls, glorifying her in the conviction that she could be won, but as an insider, who knows better and decides, with a shrug of his shoulders rather than a defi ant fi st, to care less. In spite of their differences and their different frameworks, from yet another perspective, René and Chaucer do actually share quite a bit: they evince interest in the phenomenon of fame, understand fame’s dependence upon memorializing, insist on some relation between life and literature, and, unexpectedly perhaps, attempt to rescue themselves from (bad) fame. Perhaps most importantly, they also both recognize the efficacy of visual power.

The House of Fame: Context and the Metaliterary Probably written around 1375–1380, Chaucer (ca. 1340–1400) wrote at a time when military failures, as emblematized in the Black Prince’s extended illness and subsequent death in 1376, must have weighed heavily on those governing as well as those governed.4 As Thomas Walsingham writes,5 “Quo obeunte omnino obiit spes Anglorum, qunoiam, eo uiuente, nullius hostis incursum, eo presente, nullius

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belli congressum timuerunt” [Editors’ translation, pp. 36–37: On his death the hopes of the English utterly perished; for while he was alive they feared no enemy invasion, while he was with them they feared no hostile encounter]. The downward spin began in the 1360s, when military failures in France led to concessions that in their turn had restricting economic effects upon English society. Under King Richard II, England’s expensive foreign policy efforts further led to spiraling taxation policies that kindled the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, and subsequent uprisings, adding to other signs of unrest, such as, for example, the spread of Wycliffite thought and an increasingly vocal commons.6 About the time when these rumblings began to take form, from 1356 to 1359, Chaucer served in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster and wife of one of King Edward III’s sons, Lionel, under whom he served as a soldier in 1359, a venture that led to the poet’s capture and ransom. Thereafter, Chaucer served other members of the royal family in nonmilitary employment. In addition to writing poetry, he performed in diplomatic missions and administrative posts. His multifaceted contributions were shown favor over the years, as demonstrated by the daily gift of a gallon pitcher of wine granted by Edward III and upheld by Richard II; the bestowal in 1374, of a rent-free dwelling over Aldgate, one of London’s six city gates; and Chaucer’s appointment in the same year as a customs controller.7 Certainly, the Black Prince’s glorious victory at Poitiers in 1356, and perhaps the brave and skilled English archers who contributed to the victories at Poitiers and the earlier Battle of Crécy fought in 1346, although not yet celebrated,8 were known to Chaucer—Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale referred to in chapter 1 clearly shows that he expected his audiences to know, for example, about the Black Prince’s downfall. Witnessing the steady decline in England’s fortunes, Chaucer may have also reflected upon the inevitability of Fortune’s turning of her wheel. To quote Walsingham again, this time as he summarizes the year 1378, . . . ecclesie perturbatiuus, propter errores excrescentes in clero, tristis propter mortem Gregorii pape; Anglie, Francie, atque Scocie, siue Britannie suspectus, molestus et inquietus propter motus uarios et euentus . . . [Editors’ translation, 268–269: . . . for the Church it was (a year) of disturbance because of an increase in heresy amongst the clergy, and one of sadness because of the death of Pope Gregory (XI); for England, France, and Scotland, and for Britanny, it was a year of suspicion, trouble, and change, because of all kinds of disturbances and incidents . . .]

It is in this context that Chaucer wrote the House of Fame, a poem that treats a subject ostensibly of interest to nobles and to those devoted to learning, to those, that is, who could aspire to or philosophize about fame. Nonetheless, Chaucer has his narrator bring explicit attention to his intent to write for those who understand English, perhaps therewith proposing that there may indeed have been room to consider fame from other perspectives as well.9 That is, while both René and Chaucer state their preference for the vernacular, rather than sharing René’s thirdperson perspective (indicative of the epic mode), which clearly demarcated those whom he cared for and ruled over from himself, Chaucer’s House of Fame implies that poets, perhaps like the English archers, could do more than just shoulder

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the burdens of fame as dutiful recorders of glory or serve as “food for [cannon] powder”;10 they could contribute their intellect and vision or their technical expertise to the mission of defi ning a kingdom. Chaucer’s House of Fame does seem to be intent on reexamining the poet’s relationship to the conventional. As Wetherbee writes,11 The House of Fame dramatizes the delusions and uncertainties that hinder a courtly love poet’s attempt to reconcile his commitment to love with a desire to write poetry of a higher order—more philosophical, more Dantean, more classical . . . More than any other of Chaucer’s works, the House of Fame is a poem about poetic tradition.

While proffering a poem about poetic tradition, Chaucer also dissonantly tweaks and pinches at conventions to suggest the importance of new or different perspectives and thereby draws attention to codes in the Jakobsonian sense. In part, he sets the stage for such perspectives by framing the poem in metaliterary terms. Thus, the poem fits into the dream vision genre, of which the narrator repeatedly reminds his audiences through his metaliterary references to the dream he had.12 Likewise, regardless of whether he left the poem incomplete or intended to leave it as is, readers are left with the enigmatic fi nal line describing the sudden appearance of “A man of gret auctorite” [3. 2158: a man of great authority], a passage that encourages readers to pay further metaliterary attention to the codes determining authority.13 Similarly, the poem’s structure itself phatically elicits attention:14 the 2,158 lines written in octosyllabic couplets divide into three books, as pointedly marked not only by the incipits of Books Two and Three, but also by the prefatory material of each book, clearly separable from the ongoing dream narrative, thereby bringing metaliterary attention to the frame. In spite of the organization suggested by the poem’s division into three books, moreover, its structure is asymmetric, as reflected in the positioning of the poem’s three houses: Book One contains Venus’s Temple, there is no dwelling in Book Two, and Book Three contains both the House of Fame and the House of Rumor.15 Just as asymmetric, the three books are disproportionate in size. Including prefatory material, Book One comprises 508 lines; Book Two, 582 lines; and Book Three, 1068 lines. On the surface, fi nally, their content seems not to be linked, except by virtue of the narrator’s traveling from the Temple of Venus through the heavens to the House of Fame and fi nally to the House of Dedalus, three places phatically evoking the literary system.16 The structure, then, not only acknowledges generic and literary conventions, such as the prefatory markers, it also dissonantly draws attention to them as, for example, through asymmetry. In this manner, the phatic structure frames the poem’s highly metaliterary exploration of literature, dreams, and fame and how these three vehicles depict. With this metaliterary perspective in mind, it may prove useful now to summarize the poem.

A Summary of The House of Fame In Book One, readers learn that on the tenth of December during one year, the prefatory narrator fell immediately asleep to fi nd himself dreaming he was in Venus’s luxuriously appointed glass temple adorned with intricate architectural

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features and precious stones, along with “queynte maner of figures/ Of olde werk” [1. 126–127: elaborately styled figures made long ago], whose artistry was such as he had never seen before and which included a stunning portrait of the goddess of love herself. As he moves along in the empty temple, he fi nds inscribed, on brass, The Aeneid, which he conveys for the most part from the point of view found in Ovid’s Heroides—that is, from Dido’s perspective—but framed in Vergil’s epic. Most of Book One reports the narrator’s “reading” of the brass tablet, of which he records the words of Vergil’s first two lines, more or less completely, and translated into English, only to move to images from the Trojan stories, underscoring the visual with repeated references to seeing, rather than reading. During his recitation of the story, the narrator, one who serves the god of Love’s servants (cf. 2. 620–640), confesses in reference to lovers’ rites, “I kan not of that faculte” [1. 248: I know nothing of that area of learning]; rants against false men such as Aeneas, who perform the role of faithful lover only to prove treacherous in the end (1. 264–292); and, after Dido has killed herself, recounts, recalling the tradition of negative Fürstenspiegel examples, further examples of men who betrayed their beloveds (1. 388–426). After thus reviewing and glossing the narrative and further confi rming that he was stunned by the temple’s opulence, the narrator realizes he does not know where he is, a state of ignorance that he hopes to correct by leaving the temple, only to fi nd himself in a desert and observing the approach of Jove’s golden Eagle.17 Book Two depicts the conversation between the narrator and the Eagle, after the bird swoops him up for a fl ight into the heavens to, eventually, deposit him at the House of Fame.18 For most of the passage, the narrator seems reticent to speak; indeed, at the beginning of their fl ight, he passes out, requiring the Eagle to awaken his passenger, thereby phatically pointing to waking in a dream, which Chaucer underscores by repeating “Awak” [Awake] twice, and, in the second instance, by having the narrator explicitly report that he dreamed the Eagle had cried “Awak” in a voice that was familiar to him (2. 549–566). But the Eagle more than makes up for the narrator’s mainly monosyllabic responses by discoursing on several topics. First, he reassures his charge that their journey was not initiated to harm him, a response built around another list, this time not of faithless lovers as in Book One, but of those who had been transported to the heavens in the past. Rather, the Eagle continues, the narrator is being transported to the House of Fame as a reward for his service to the god of Love and to rejuvenate him, since he will learn there all sorts of news about love. Next, in response to the narrator’s doubt concerning how Fame could possibly know all that the Eagle claims she hears about lovers, the Eagle addresses him by name, Geff rey (2. 729), and explains what speech is (sound) along with Fame’s relationship to it, after having located her palace at the midpoint of heaven, earth, and sea (2. 715), a location that allows her ideally to hear all sounds ever produced on earth. Patting himself on the back as one who could, “Lewedly to a lewed man/ Speke” [2. 866–867: speak simply to a simple man], the Eagle soars further upward and instructs Geff rey to look down. Geff rey, however, cannot distinguish any particular object, an observation that the Eagle uses as a platform to talk about those who had traveled through the heavens but who never had traveled as far as they two. He then instructs Geff rey to look upward at the heavens, which he explicates

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and then glosses by focusing on Phaeton and concluding in Fürstenspiegel manner, “Loo, ys it not a gret myschaunce/To lete a fool han governaunce/ Of thing that he can not demeyne?” [2. 957–959: “Lo, is it not a great misfortune to let a fool govern something he cannot control?”]. Geff rey’s briefly conveyed reflections on the work of Boethius, Martianus Capella, and Alanus de Insulis are interrupted by the Eagle’s three failed attempts to interest Geff rey in a disquisition on the stars. Traveling on, the Eagle announces their pending arrival at the House of Fame, the sounds of which they experience before they see it. Finally landing at Fame’s palace, Geff rey asks about the noise they heard and learns that the people making it, whom he will see shortly, are actually the likenesses of those who spoke the words on earth, not the individuals themselves (2. 1074–1082). In Book Three, Geffrey climbs up the hillside made of ice upon which Fame’s palace is built, noting that some of the names carved on it had melted away so that they could no longer be recognized, causing him to reflect on the proverbial bit of wisdom pronouncing that nothing mortal survives in this world (3. 1146–1147). He realizes, however, that other names could not be erased since they are shaded by Fame’s elaborately built palace. Once he arrives, he sees enormous numbers of minstrels, storytellers, entertainers, and magicians waiting outside Fame’s dwelling. Geff rey lists and describes a few of them, again in Fürstenspiegel-like, exemplary, fashion. He then enters at the elaborate golden gate to observe some knightly individuals more actively pursuing fame, with their purses ready for the task. Their coats-of-arms are so numerous that, “Men myghte make of hem a bible/Twenty foot thykke” [3. 1334–1335: Men could make a bible of them (descriptions), twenty feet thick]. Within the palace, another large crowd mills about eager to win Fame’s favor. Geff rey, awed by the wealth of the palace, fi nally sees Fame, whose height fi rst appears to be only a cubit, before she suddenly seems to reach from the earth to the heavens. Described as being opulently dressed and listening to the Muses who praise her, she has many eyes, ears, and tongues; golden curly hair; and partridge wings on her feet. Then, in a lengthy section, Geff rey sees various writers on pillars, who are portrayed as assiduously bearing up that which they made famous (3. 1429–1519). After this, Geff rey witnesses nine separate troops of people approaching the goddess, with requests regarding their reputations, and registers her arbitrary responses, sealed with the trumpet blasts of “Clere Laude” [3. 1575: Bright Praise] or “Sklaundre” [3. 1580: Slander] sounded by Aeolus, the god of the winds. After watching the nine groups, Geff rey turns away, but is accosted by a man who had been standing behind him, and who now asks whether he too sought fame. Geff rey vigorously replies in the negative and explains he knows himself what he experiences and thinks without, it is implied, Fame having to inform him. In this, he echoes Geoff roi de Charny on Fortune, before going on to list numerous examples of deserved and undeserved fortune, with the philosophical view, “Et a ce pourroit on dire que l’en ne se doit point fier es biens de fortune qui viennent sanz desserte, que elle est muable et doit perir” [Kennedy’s translation, 24, 4–6, pp. 134–135: And in relation to this, it could be said that one should not put trust in the benefits of fortune, which are not earned, for fortune is fickle and is destined to come to an end]. Geff rey further relates to his interlocutor that he came in expectation of what was promised him, to learn something new, but what he had seen up until then did not fit the bill, except that he had never seen Fame’s

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dwelling nor her person before. The man accompanies Geff rey outside of the castle to point to the Domus Dedaly [3. 1920: Home of Dedalus],19 the labyrinth that Chaucerian scholars have dubbed the “House of Rumor,” and which the narrator describes as a large, revolving, rickety structure made of twigs and full of all sorts of news from everywhere. He sees the Eagle, who has arrived to shove him into a window of the constantly whirling house, where there are so many people that there was not “a fote-brede of space” [3. 2042: foot’s breadth of space]. Geffrey is amazed in the last 243 lines of the poem by all he witnesses. Each of the many people reports some gossip to others, until, Geff rey observes, the news had grown large enough to leave through a window. Sometimes a lie and a truth try to exit at the same time, forcing them to mingle and leave in a compounded form (3. 2083–2109). All these “individuals” who exit the House of Rumor arrive straight at Fame’s palace. Then, Geff rey hears a great sound created from everyone’s likenesses rushing toward a man, who seems to be a, “man of gret auctorite.” Even in this fantastical dream, there are moments approximating recognition of the need for causally informed guidance, as occurs when the Eagle explains to Geff rey that he is being granted this fl ight for having served Cupid and Venus (2. 613–640). But mostly, Geff rey, so to speak, phatically roams around in the contact, inspecting the building materials of Fame’s house to determine if they are up to code, foraging for something interesting while looking under the literary system’s conventionally patterned carpets that aesthetically hold all the furnishings together, and delighting in the attic full of potential for recovering old and discarded items to place in new settings.

Geffrey’s Metaliterary Amble through Fame’s Code In the House of Fame, Chaucer portrays readerly writers exposed to or playing with literature’s codes in order to explore fame and visual power, as is most obvious through the poem’s very visible narrator. Thus, Geff rey’s almost palpable presence is informed by his role as a “reporter,” who frequently reminds his audience of their relationship by means of his insistent punctuation of his account with references to sight, such as “I sawgh” [I saw] or with indices of who is saying what, such as “quod he” [he said] or “quod I” [I said]. That is, rather than in predominately third person as René presents Cueur, Chaucer constantly draws attention to the narrator. In doing so, Chaucer positions Geffrey as oscillating between readers and his material,20 thereby emphasizing the poet’s mediating role. More complexly, in overtly metaliterary mode, Geff rey sloughs off his role as one of love’s writers in the world of the dream ready to take Jove’s offer of a vacation (2. 644–660);21 he positions himself as a reader, eager to learn something new.22 Of course, simply in the fact that he relates what he experienced, he never completely relinquishes his role as writer, as also intimated by his interest in other writers in Fame’s palace. Even when succumbing in readerly fashion to the “guidance” of the Eagle and following the directions of the unnamed individual pointing him to the House of Rumor, Geff rey does reveal that although on holiday, he is nonetheless a writer; indeed, he continues to direct, as narrators—personae for the poet—are wont to do. Thus, although he looks where the Eagle asks him to, he also codirects the conversation by expressing his reluctance, three times (2. 994, 999, 1011), to hear

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more about the stars from the enthusiastic Eagle, who seizes the journey as an opportunity to teach Geff rey what he knows. Likewise, although the unnamed man eventually directs Geff rey to the House of Rumor, Geffrey had emphatically redirected their conversation by asserting he indeed did not wish to sue for fame. In conflating addresser and addressee by means of Geff rey, then, Chaucer mingles metaliterary roles to create a persona for the readerly writer, which he mirrors in other characters as well. Thus, from one end to the other—from more readerly to more writerly— Chaucer’s metaliterary personae for the poet walk along with readers through Geff rey’s dream.23 At the most readerly end, perhaps, is Chaucer’s depiction of Geff rey as recalling, in readerly mode, the celestial descriptions authored by Boethius, Martianus Capella, and Alanus de Insulis and confirming that their words were accurate (2. 972–990). Even so, Geff rey also relates that he mentioned these readings to the Eagle in consternation when, in writerly mode, he exhortatively applied their narratives to his current condition (2. 979–984). The Eagle too gives credence to Geff rey’s both sides, as he affi rms that his charge reads and writes in service to the god of love, for which he also opines that Geff rey spends far too much time (2. 633–640). Moving further toward the writerly end of the tension, although the Eagle’s conversation with Geff rey reveals the bird’s readerly familiarity with various authors and the heavens, he more actively resembles an enthusiastic tourist guide-addresser attentive to his tourist-addressee for whom he will gladly adjust his well-rehearsed chatter. The Eagle is eager to “perform” what he has read. Next, occupying something like the conceptual midpoint is the unidentified man who approaches Geff rey in Fame’s palace—he listens to Geff rey, adjusts his own perspective upon absorbing Geff rey’s response, and guides him to the House of Rumors, thereby balancing the two roles of reader and writer fairly evenly. Finally, starkly emphasizing the writerly end, Fame listens, without much readerly interest, in order to generate myriads of tales that will become authoritative.24 In addition to the various guides who serve as personae for the readerly writer, Chaucer also presents characters with the pointedly difficult task of interpreting and then implementing actions derived from their readings (a task frequently dramatized in Fürstenspiegel), as is most obvious with Dido, who reacts to Aeneas’ treachery by lamenting her fate, reading Aeneas against other treacherous men, bemoaning her own reputation, and regretting her sister’s ill-advised counsel, before ending her “narrative” through suicide (1. 299–374).25 In the ubiquitous and multifarious presentations of readerly writers, then, Chaucer makes the metaliterary his framework, in which he proliferates metalingual questions concerning interpretation and the consequences resulting from such readerly acts. While positioning Geff rey as an observer of his own dream, moreover, Chaucer creates dissonant moments that position the readerly perspective in the code, in problematizing what is actually meant. Everyone knows, for example, why the petitioners fi ll Fame’s court. When Geff rey refuses to participate in any of the possible permutations of addressing the goddess, though, he creates dissonance since he contravenes traditions. The fourth and fi fth groups of petitioners, after all, request that the goddess not grant them fame, since they wish to perform their good deeds for the deeds in and of themselves (3. 1689–1712). Geff rey could have joined their club.

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By not joining their club, Geff rey raises central questions lodged in the codes of the literary system, questions like, what meaning could fame possibly have to someone who does not want it? Questions like this one generate multiple levels equipped with different perspectives, very similar to how the petitioners, Fame, and Geff rey hypostatize different levels of language with various permutations of readerly and writerly functions. That is, in the dream world, all the petitioners are mere words, forms, unlike Geff rey, who is present in full bodily (and Dantean) force; in Chaucer’s world, of course, he and Fame herself are “mere” language too. Likewise, the question can also be answered on multiple, code-conscious levels: by petitioning the goddess, members of the two groups recognize her power and in their recognition actually participate in the enigmatic dialectic informing her arbitrary decisions, thereby joining the club that would have them as members. Dovetailing with this reading, by turning to rumors after having toured Fame’s palace, rather than walking the standard route, from rumors to fame, Geff rey—in words and actions—implies that there must be an alternative to Fame’s arbitrary rule. In Chaucer’s world, moreover, readers may surmise from the same juxtaposition of Geff rey’s alternate path with the two fame-shy but acquiescent groups, that the only way to ameliorate the attraction of fame (or the force of her power) is to understand fame’s mechanisms and origins and, as much as is possible, not participate in her rituals, not even in ritualistically protesting too much. In other words, by depicting her as a motionless and demanding regent, Chaucer acknowledges her power, but he also, Fürstenspiegel-like, recognizes the important role that her subjects play in maintaining and strengthening her reign. By making the metaliterary the framework of Geff rey’s poking around in the code, Chaucer not only draws attention to the contacts that generate meaning, he also explores Fame’s inexplicable attraction. Indeed, even though nobody can understand the goddess’ arbitrary decisions, people line up to acquire her blessing, and even writers who have acquired fame seem not to question the value of their status in her court, much as Arthurian glory seems to stand unchallenged as an ideal by those who venture down the chivalric path or see themselves in some future Fürstenspiegel. Thus, the writers bearing the weight of Troy (3. 1465–1480) “perform” what upholding fame entails: it demands supporting the weight of having acquired fame, as it also requires withstanding the competition necessary for one to stand out among the others. Each of the contending poets, that is, Was besy for to bere up Troye. So hevy therof was the fame That for to bere hyt was no game. But yet I gan ful wel espie, Betwex hem was a litil envye. [3. 1472–1476: Was busy bearing up Troy. So heavy was its fame, that to bear it was no game. And then I began full well to see that among them was a little envy.]

In other words, Fame’s favor never really ceases full-stop; it generates further service while concomitantly creating further contention, rather than resolution, even though, René and Criseyde seem to fear, its bestowal seems fi nal and unambiguous. The fractiousness generated, moreover, does not allow for a greater radius

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of action, as might be hoped would ensue from creating new stories on the same subject. Homer, Dares, Dictys, Lollius, Guido delle Colonne, and Geoff rey (of Monmouth) are all struggling with the same burden on one single, admittedly high, pillar—not exactly pillar saints, but like them, held up for view. Pursuing fame or following others’ paths who have secured fame, Chaucer seems to argue, may accomplish that narrow goal of attaining fame, but such accomplishments lack more substantive effect. In the House of Rumor, for example, everyone’s words stampede to the corner where “love-tydynges” [love’s news] are disseminated to gawk at the man of “gret auctorite” (3. 2141–2158), willing to surrender their stories to listen to what he has to say. Visualizing hoards petitioning Fame or rushing to the man of “gret auctorite,” Chaucer subtly argues that fame’s attraction emerges in the seductive hope of stamping one authoritative, positive, meaning on a complex story that could otherwise be told from different perspectives (an idea Chaucer also experimented with in Troilus and Criseyde). That is, the pursuit of fame, like the rush of rumors to the man of authority, reflects the desire to determine meaning in conventional manner. Such compulsion is per se understandable; at the same time, it confi nes both writer and reader to a prescribed space as it squashes the richest parts of a story into a streamlined, prefabricated frame. In a sense, this is the writerly side of the problem René d’Anjou probes. René is exhortatively fi xed on the result, Chaucer metalingually probes the process. As part of his exploration, Chaucer also suggests that Fürstenspiegel similarly attempt to determine unequivocal meaning, a suggestion that he further complicates by depicting Fame as rewarding petitioners as she sees fit. In depicting the goddess in this manner, Chaucer erodes the ethical foundation of exemplary collections like the Fürstenspiegel, whose premise is that the awarding of fame, good or bad, is not arbitrary. Indeed, Geff rey cannot understand, for example, Fame’s differentiated response to the first petitioners, all of whom, he insists, deserve good fame (3. 1542–1546). Moreover, Fame herself emphasizes her arbitrary nature in responding to members of the second group, who plead with her to grant them her favors. She responds she simply does not feel like it (3. 1564). In other words, the goddess will fi nish a story according to when and what she desires, since, in eminently rhetorical fashion, she can twist any collection of “data points” into good or bad exempla, thereby eliminating intent and effort and not bothering to take ethical or praiseworthy qualities into consideration, confirming Dido’s worst fears, fears she shares with Criseyde and René d’Anjou. In order to reverse Fame’s fl attening of complexities, a shift in perspective is required, such as effected by Geff rey who travels backward from the House of Fame to the House of Rumor. By troubling the smooth surface, Chaucer proposes that the fullness of an even well-known story can be recovered. To emphasize the salutary effect of disrupting the linear, the tried and true, Chaucer equips Geff rey’s journey with bumps along the way. For example, even while apparently traveling linearly from the Temple of Venus to the House of Fame to the House of Rumor, and in doing so, apparently progressing as he moves from the most static, to the formally ritual herding of the otherwise hustling and bustling petitioners, to total and unrelenting motion, Geff rey ruffles the seriatim progressions in space and progressive activity levels. 26 Thus, the journey from institution to institution does not proceed ever upward, but moves fi rst toward the heavens

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only then to turn downward, if only slightly, to the House of Rumor. Likewise, while nobody is to be seen in the static Temple of Venus, Geff rey’s imagination allows the brass letters “to speak” as figures; Fame’s ritualized judgments are disrupted by some of her own responses to petitioners, as exemplified by her initiation of a conversation with a member of the last group of fame-seekers (3. 1838–1861); and, as suggested earlier, the man of “gret auctorite” mobilizes order in the chaotic twig house. In visualizing both the readerly and writerly roles in personae for the poet within a metaliterary framework replete with epistemological concerns, Chaucer suggests that the metalingual urge to determine meaning only simplifies complexities, but does not offer conclusive interpretations. In the process, Geffrey’s journey, uneven as it is, charts relationships among writers and audiences, and in so doing, quasi-iconoclastically challenges any single prevailing view of the literary system.27 Chaucer’s approach is quasi-iconoclastic, because while posing multiple possibilities that could result in direct challenges to the authoritative, he concomitantly and consciously communicates through the traditional in order to arrive at some new or different perspective,28 indicating the importance of evoking the code to direct action along different paths. Again unlike the fourth and fi fth groups of petitioners, Geff rey does not participate in the ritual—he travels an alternate route, while nonetheless seeing and hearing what has already been experienced by others. Thus, resembling the tourist strolling through Canterbury Cathedral, who stops fi rst at the Black Prince’s tomb before inspecting the Tree of Jesse, Chaucer shapes new stories by bringing other perspectives to bear on what is known.29 By aligning his material to reflect upon the code and raise questions of value and meaning, Geff rey modulates known philosophical positions such as the traditional moral dictum not to seek fame. Further, as discussed below, Chaucer also evokes less obvious reflections, such as how or under what conditions a reader moves into a writer’s space, or, put in other words, how to choose which exempla a reader should adapt as touchstones for her or his behavior. In doing so, and aided by humor, Chaucer allows readers to see even confl icting stances occupying, and at times richly contributing to, that same space, a pertinent lesson for poets, rulers, and others reading Fürstenspiegel too deeply lodged in the readerly perspective.30 Before turning to this Fürstenspiegel theme, however, I will fi rst discuss the poem’s prefatory material, where there does seem to be at least some progressive movement that, while not linear, deepens understanding of what it means to be a readerly writer.

The Prefatory Material’s New Perspectives on “Old” Codes In Book One, the narrator begins with sixty-five lines that expound upon the philosophically lodged wish that dreams, wherever their origins or however they are categorized, be “turne[d] . . . to goode” (1. 1, 58) and provides a list of dream theories, categorizing the scholarly dissection of kinds of dreams and their causes known to the literary system of the times (1. 20–42), before implying that those who refuse to be warned by prophetic dreams have moral failings (1. 43–51).31 Arguing that Chaucer deliberately jumbles the scholarly theories on dreams to point to the limits of human understanding, John Fyler writes, “Chaucer’s narrator

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is also a good deal more confused than the facts of medieval dream theory require him to be . . . ”32 In providing this rambling list, Chaucer further draws attention to it by having the narrator rhetorically use epanaphora to punctuate items with “Or,” while moving through humors (1. 20–22), stress (1. 23–26), a special case mingling both of these causes (1. 27–30), inner fear (1. 31–32), focused attention on some point of interest (1. 33–35), lovers’ hard times (1. 36–40), and spirits (1. 41–42), before proclaiming the last “Or,” that introduces those dreamers who are so virtuous, they are given prophetic dreams (1. 43–51). While all these kinds and causes could be used to gloss various elements of Chaucer’s poem, doing so may well lead readers to conclude, along with Geff rey who exclaims, several times, “noght wot I” [1. 52; cf. 12, 14–15, 55: nothing do I know]. Although admittedly not likely to provide a foolproof key to interpretation, these lines can nonetheless provide touchstones to help illuminate some aspects of the poem. For example, the hybrid cause that mingles stress with humors proves useful here, as it highlights Geff rey’s disturbing, or questioning, of the conventional order of things: Or ellys by dysordynaunce Of naturel acustumaunce, That som man is to curious In studye, or melancolyous . . . [1. 27–30, my italics: Or else by disrupting the order of natural custom that comes with a man’s diligence in studying or melancholy nature . . .]

Not only does the Eagle later describe Geff rey in terms that echo these lines in their portrayal of Geff rey writing and reading in his room like a hermit until he looks, “fully daswed” [2. 658: fully dazed], this hybrid cause also draws attention to the unusual, the unconventional, the dysordynaunce that Geff rey creates or attracts during his journey, as exemplified by the very fi rst lines of the dream narrative proper, when Geff rey begins his report of this “[s]o wonderful a drem” (1. 62): Whan hit was nyght to slepe I lay Ryght ther as I was wont to done, And fil on slepe wonder sone, As he that wery was forgo On pilgrymage myles two To the corseynt Leonard, To make lythe of that was hard. [1. 112–118, my italics: When it was night, I lay down to sleep right there as I usually do, and I fell asleep unusually quickly, as one who was weary from exhaustion from a two-mile pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Leonard, to make light of that which was hard.]

First, although Geff rey begins this night as any other, that he fell asleep quickly is marked as unusual. Moreover, as scholars have noted, most dream visions in the late medieval literary system begin in spring and evolve into stories of love rather than, as the House of Fame depicts, a holiday from that subject. Just as

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dissonant, the purpose of a comparison, generally, is to clarify rather than to obfuscate by means of fi nding a “common denominator.” Even if the reference to St. Leonard, the patron saint of captives, were fully understood, its use here causes divergence rather than eliciting convergence. 33 That is, the “common denominator”—to make light of that which was hard—opens up, rather than confl ates, meaning: the phrase applies literally to the narrator’s sleeping habits to signify an exceptional situation, but since it is unlikely that a two-mile hike would cause such deep weariness, or even if it does, the application of the pilgrimage seems ironic or humorous. Rather than promoting clarity, as, say, an allusion to how Morpheus blessed him that night would, Geff rey chooses an unconventional analogy that requires minimally one shift in perspective, from literal to ironic. The dysordynaunce of natural custom, then, presents an important metalingual idea developed throughout the poem: “new” knowledge as well as stories can derive from shifts in perspective afforded by a move in location, 34 a change in habits, or the confl ation of the roles appointed to writer and reader. The section on prophetic dreams, for example, demonstrates how dysordynaunce derived from a shift in perspective can point metalingually to a new idea. In these lines, the narrator draws attention to the familiar Fürstenspiegel’s message of how difficult it is to get interpretations right: But that oure f lessh ne hath no myght To understonde [avisions or figures] aryght, For hyt is warned to derkly . . . [1. 49–51: But that our f lesh has no power to understand (visions or figured narratives) correctly, for they warn too darkly . . .]

Shortly thereafter, Geffrey invokes the god of sleep in another forty-six lines, hoping that the deity will aid him in telling his dream correctly and ending with a warning to readers that they heed the exemplum of Croesus, a king who was also memorialized in Boccaccio’s De casibus (Book 2, pp. 67–68). Leading up to the exemplum, Geffrey not only contrasts “good readers,” who read his narratives with approbation, with “bad” readers, who do not, he transforms the rhetorical marker, “Or,” enunciated just about fifty lines prior from conatively marking the scholarly list of kinds and causes of dreams to registering his own emotive concern as a narrator, thereby drawing further attention to the contact in his metaliterary emphasis on the narrative. More importantly, Chaucer here emphatically marks Geffrey in his authorial role, allowing the latter percussive “Or” listing (1. 94–96) to lead to an over-thetop, caustically marked curse, wholly disproportionate to the nature of the crime, which Geffrey semi-acknowledges in the last of the following quoted lines. Geffrey wishes: That [they] take [the drem] wel and skorne hyt noght, Ne hyt mysdemen in her thoght Thorgh malicious entencion. And whoso thorgh presumpcion, Or hate, or skorn, or thorgh envye, Dispit, or jape, or vilanye,

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Mysdeme hyt, pray I Jesus God That (dreme he barefot, dreme he shod), That every harm that any man Hath had syth the world began Befalle hym therof or he sterve, And graunte he mote hit ful deserve . . . [1. 91–102, my italics: That (they) take (the dream) well and not scorn it nor misjudge it in their thought through malicious intention. And whosoever through presumption, or hate, or scorn, or envy, despite, or teasing, or villainy, misjudge it, I pray to Jesus God that—whether he dream barefoot or with shoes on—every harm that any man has had since the world began befall upon him before he die, and grant that he may fully deserve it . . .]

Distancing himself as much as possible from such readers, and reminiscent of Minerva’s outrage at Arachne’s insolence, Geff rey banishes them to the outer limits, and in doing so exercises his full authorial power, except (since nothing is conclusive) for the nagging thought that these misguided readers might not deserve the fate he reserves for them (l. 102) and, subtly, except for the phrase, “dreme he barefot, dreme he shod” (l. 98). That is, in what seems to be a throwaway line, Chaucer visualizes the readers’ images in his narrator’s mind. There is no apparent reason why Geff rey’s readers should be depicted as ready to go to sleep, barefoot or not, except, perhaps, to portray them as refracted mirrors of the also dreaming poet-narrator who willfully “create” readings other than those the narrator intended. Chaucer makes his narrator, even in his most authorial moment, remember his readers. In addition to marking the narrator’s identity as poet, the dysordynaunce created by these lines looks “behind the scenes” in two ways. First, in Geff rey’s world, it displays a fit of spleen not ordinarily revealed in a guide, eliciting a shift in perspective. Secondly, in Chaucer’s world, it visualizes, it dramatizes, it puts quotation marks (to recall Keir Elam’s phrase) around the conventional prefatory topos in which a poet rails against his or her detractors.35 Importantly, both the unusual glimpse into Chaucer’s persona for the poet and the dissonant use of prefatory conventions receive further attention in the poem’s two remaining prefatory hyperspaces. In Book Two’s prefatory material, for example, the narrator seemingly gratuitously calls to those who can understand English to listen to his dream (2. 509–511)—he is, after all, writing in English—a dream that, he claims, compares favorably against those of six famous dreamers, before articulating a quick two-line plea to Venus for help (2. 518–519), all of which is followed by three lines invoking the Muses (2. 520–522). He then turns in the last six lines of the twenty-line preface to his own abilities to convey the materials effectively, not only correctly: O Thought, that wrot al that I mette, And in the tresorye hyt shette Of my brayn, now shal men se Yf any vertu in the be To tellen al my drem aryght. Now kythe thyn engyn and myght!

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[2. 523–528, my italics: Oh Thought, that wrote all that I dreamed, and in the treasury of my brain kept it, now men shall see if there is any virtue in you to tell my entire dream correctly. Now reveal your skill and power!]

Notably, here, rather than in the dream world, Geff rey allegorizes Thought and places his hope in his own ability to narrate the story, rather than in any of the gods or Muses.36 In doing so, while conveying the narrator’s hopes and revealing his investment in this project, Chaucer strips away the allegorical level of the prefatory convention invoking deities for inspiration even while concomitantly replacing it with another allegorical figure, Thought, one that, while fi gurative, does not “hide” the author as the one responsible for putting the story together, thereby, importantly, placing the author center stage. Indeed, even his fi rst preface’s references to God, the holy cross, and Jesus God (1. 1, 57, 97), leavened with a generous sprinkling of classical deities, convey the same attitude, as the prefatory convention of figuratively displacing responsibility is treated with irony. It seems readers are allowed further into the world of the narrator as Chaucer allegorically, but plainly, gives the responsibility for success to the narrator. He will make his own fame, willful readers or not, thereby suggesting that as much as Geff rey protests in the dream world, he is nonetheless concerned with attaining some modicum of fame. It may seem that Book Two’s stripping away of the prefatory illusion is ignored in the third book’s invocation to Apollo and that the narrator has succumbed here to the hold of the conventional. On one level, this is certainly true. Book Three’s invocation, however, also shifts perspectives once again to acquaint readers more deeply with the narrator’s metaliterary concerns as a poet. Rather than a supplicative prayer, Chaucer dramatizes the relationship between divinity and poet, and does so by means of irony, leading to several metaliterary “stories.” First, in wishing that his own mastery be apparent, Geff rey not only takes up where he left off at the end of Book Two’s prefatory material, he maintains that mastery is not to be found in the actual crafting of verses per se. That is, Apollo should take care of the fluff, he will take care of the substance, an attitude that also seems to have led Ovid’s Arachne astray as she too forgot all but her desire to portray reckless and wanton deities. O God of science and of lyght, Appollo, thurgh thy grete myght, This lytel laste bok thou gye! Nat that I wilne, for maistrye, Here art poetical be shewed, But for the rym ys lyght and lewed, Yit make hyt sumwhat agreable, Though som vers fayle in a sillable; And that I do no diligence To shewe craft, but o sentence. [3. 1091–1109, my italics: Oh, god of knowledge and of light, Apollo, through your great power guide this little last book! Not that I wish to show here mastery of the poetical art, but since the rhyme is light and common, make it somewhat agreeable, even

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though some verses fail in a syllable; since I am not putting any effort to show craft, but to show only meaning.]

With these lines, Geff rey further separates himself from love’s poets, even though he is identified as one of them in Book Two (664–668), since love’s poets traditionally pay close attention to crafting how words communicate. Indeed, the tendency of love’s poets to do so is underscored in Book One, when in viewing the Dido romance, Geff rey refuses to equivocate about her falling in love with Aeneas:37 And, shortly of this thyng to pace, [Venus] made Eneas so in grace Of Dido, quene of that contree, That, shortly for to tellen, she Becam hys love and let him doo Al that weddynge longeth too. What shulde I speke more queynte, Or peyne me my wordes peynte To speke of love? Hyt wol not be; I kan not of that faculte. And eke to telle the manere How they aqueynteden in fere, Hyt were a long proces to telle, And over-long for yow to dwelle. [1. 239–252, my italics: And to make quick work of this thing, (Venus) made Aeneas so attractive to Dido, Queen of that country, that, brief ly to relate it, she became his love and let him do all that belongs to weddings. Why should I speak more craftily, or take pains to paint my words to speak of love? It will not be; I do not have that ability, and to tell how they got to know each other would be a long process to tell, and overly long for you to live with.]

Refusing to resort to conventional forms of expression, both here and in the prefatory material to Book Three, Geff rey draws attention to the matter rather than the manner of portrayal.38 Perhaps most importantly, however, in the prefatory material to Book Three, while distancing his narrator from love’s poets, Chaucer has Geff rey close the conventionally vast distance between god and suppliant (in Ovid, this was Arachne’s mistake): here, Geff rey negotiates with Apollo as to exactly what kind of help he would like and underscores the chummy equality between the two by telling Apollo if he is granted his wish, he would kiss the next laurel tree he sees (3. 1101–1109).39 In highlighting metalingual aspects of the three books’ prefatory material, Chaucer transforms past authorities, traditional approaches, and preferred modes of versifying by means of Geff rey, who conveys a high level of concern about being able, “to shewe now/That in myn hed ymarked ys” [3. 1102–1103: to show now what is marked in my head]. In doing so, Chaucer does not propose dismissing the canonical; instead, he points to other material available in the literary system and to the generative effect of shifting perspectives. In other words, Chaucer

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has the narrator draw attention to freeing himself not from the past, but from a static way of looking at the past, from being bound by codes to present the same issues in traditional manner. Indeed, even as he tells his unnamed interlocutor in the House of Fame that he knows all about fame, he also tells him at the same time, “But certeynly, y nyste how Ne where that Fame duelled, er now, And eke of her descripcioun, Ne also her condicioun, Ne the ordre of her dom, Unto the tyme y hidder com.” [3. 1901–1906: “But indeed, I did not know how or where Fame dwelled, until now, and also her description, her circumstances, nor the order of her judgment, until the time I came here.”]

In other words, he had to see Fame to understand her more fully.40 Underscoring the power of the visual, Chaucer uses sight to mark metalingual issues and furthermore connects vision to motion, for it is in moving from place to place that a new perspective can be gained. Even the poets on pillars in Fame’s palace are not all standing ceremonially still; some of them are bickering. In using the prefatory material of the poem to portray Geff rey in this manner, Chaucer underscores the author-audience axis by drawing attention to the contact, the metaliterary. Moreover, in drawing attention to Geff rey’s concern in getting it right, Chaucer presents Geff rey’s metalingual awareness of his audiences in expressing the hope that he can articulate the meanings he sees in his mind’s eye.

Fame and Shifting Perspectives on the Fürstenspiegel As Piero Boitani has demonstrated, fame has a long tradition of being allegorized in negative manner as something uncontrollable and fickle that can destroy as well as prop up both those who deserve its effects, good or bad, and those who do not.41 Robert Hanning points to fame’s unpredictability from the writer’s point of view:42 Chaucer’s auctores, then, provided him with an illustration of how fama, as news, spreads in the laboratory conditions, as it were, of an allegorical ambience peculiar to it; and a reminder that fama, as glory, will in all probability not do justice to its subject and may also have a strong element of falsehood in it. . . . Ovid’s vivid fiction shows how language relates to itself (i.e., to past stories), rather than to experience, in perpetuating fama.

Chaucer’s Fame spreads bad news, as does Vergil’s Fame in Aeneid 4. 173–190, and dwells in a house amid air, earth, and sea, as does Ovid’s goddess (Metamorphoses 12. 39–63). Both classical writers’ Fama has vigilant eyes and the power to create fear, also traits that Chaucer depicts. Indeed, the fear of her power to destroy

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certainly informs how Dido expounds on fame, as she nears the end of her lament on her lover’s faithlessness:43 “O wel-awey that I was born! For thorgh yow is my name lorn, And alle myn actes red and songe Over al thys lond, on every tonge. O wikke Fame!—for ther nys Nothing so swift, lo, as she is! . . . though I myghte duren ever, That I have don rekever I never, That I ne shal be seyd, allas, Yshamed be thourgh Eneas . . . ” [1. 345–356: “O alas that I was ever born! For through you my name is lost and all my acts read and sung all over this land on every tongue. O Wicked Fame! for there is nothing so swift, behold, as she is . . . even if I survive forever, that which I have done I will never recover, I will be said, alas, to be shamed through Aeneas . . .”]

As suggested above, the complexity of her life and all she has done, Dido fears, will forever be fl attened into an exemplary warning, the kind of universal warning that does not need to be explicated, since it conveys one single message. As we learn in Book Three, she is at least partly wrong, since fame is not actually eternal (cf. 3. 1140–1147). Indeed, in Chaucer’s depiction, Fame is not swift, her pronouncements are, and since these are arbitrary, other trace narratives line up, ready to join the “star” on stage. Critically, then, Geff rey’s reading confi rms while it concomitantly negates Dido’s fears: she is an emblem for the betrayed woman, but, in evincing sympathy for her, he in effect diminishes her status as a victim as well as her betrayal to her deceased husband, Sychaeus, and intimates one of those trace narratives— she is worthy, not Aeneas, of having her story told. Underscoring the decentering of Vergil’s epic hero, after Dido’s lament and the narrator’s recommendation to turn to Vergil and Ovid for more details on her life, Geff rey ruminates on women who have been wronged by men and lists quite a few of them (1. 372–432), thereby turning from that which is engraved in the Temple of Venus to booklore. The women he lists could very well function as a partial table of contents in a Fürstenspiegel-like collection; several, including Dido, are to be found in Chaucer’s own Legend of Good Women.44 Abbreviating yet further than Chaucer’s Monk does, just naming them, it seems, suffices to convey their central function of warning readers. But as is typical of Chaucer’s approach in this poem, even the exempla are viewed through a different perspective. As Bevington writes,45 . . . Geffrey makes it plain that he is dismayed and even shocked by what he sees. . . . For such an innocent believer, the wanderings of Aeneas come as a rude awakening. . . . Dido and Ovid’s other deserted heroines merit a full measure of Geffrey’s sympathy towards the helpless and oppressed, for their fates explicitly deny his faith in the loyalty of lovers . . .

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Indeed, Geff rey is not only flabbergasted by Aeneas’s betrayal of Dido, “Loo, was not this a woo and routhe?” [1. 396: Lo, was not this woe and sorrow?], he similarly exclaims that Demophon’s betrayal of Phyllis should be punished, “The devel be hys soules bane!” [1. 408: The devil by his soul’s destruction], and he wishes revenge upon Theseus as he empathizes with Ariadne (1. 411–425). In other words, listing their names does instantaneously warn, but their function as exhortatory admonitions pale, since their stories are replaced, so to speak, by Geff rey’s pity for Dido generalized to express sympathy for them as well. Moreover, refracting the narrator’s curse to his “bad” readers in the prefatory material to Book One, the addressee-reader’s position here also becomes prominent in the addresser-narrator’s emotive mode: But wel-away, the harm, the routhe, That hath betyd for such untrouthe, As men may ofte in bokes rede, And al day sen hyt yet in dede, That for to thynken hyt, a tene is. [1. 383–387: But alas, the harm, the sorrow, that happened for such faithlessness, as men may often read in books, and day for day is seen still in deeds, that to think about it is a sorrow.]

It is clear from his recommendation to turn to Vergil and Ovid that Geffrey is depicted as being familiar with both Vergil’s epic and Ovid’s Heroides. What, then, fueled his reaction after this reading, and, more specifically, what made his reaction so strong that he left reading the Aeneid in brass-tablet form and free-associated with other betrayed women he had encountered in his prior readings?46 Simply put, Geffrey moved from the conative to the emotive modes through his ability to see what happened to Dido more clearly—depicted powerfully on brass—than if he had just heard it. By moving from the conative to the emotive modes, Chaucer emphasizes the reader in the writer’s position, shifts perspectives on traditional material, and suggests different kinds of stories that could be told. He thereby creates a connection between these stories and the kind of fame memorialized in Fürstenspiegel. Traditionally, a Fürstenspiegel generates fame on more than one level. First, a Fürstenspiegel serves, so to speak, as an authoritative reference book of the canonized, so that appearing in its pages in and of itself guarantees some degree of fame. Less obviously, being cast as an exemplum of a good or bad leader points to fame beyond the mortal realm, to having been used by God to articulate a moral lesson that can serve as a guidepost for how to live one’s own life. Perhaps least obviously, serving as a moral guidepost encourages what I have been describing as flattening, since a Fürstenspiegel exemplum is streamlined so that, like saints’ lives, the collection can make the same point over and over again. As discussed in chapter 1, such a rigid framework makes it difficult for Boccaccio to squash Arthur’s life into a formula, for his story lived on in the vox populi as a sign of hope, not, as presented but also problematized in Boccaccio’s lines, as a lesson regarding the vanity of the world (Book 8, p. 206). In the House of Fame, Chaucer also qualifies the exemplary function of such tales, as can be seen not only through Dido, but also in the highly abbreviated

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exemplum used by Geff rey to forewarn those who read his dream maliciously. In these lines, he completes the curse aimed at “bad” readers, by referring to Croesus, a standard Fürstenspiegel exemplum. Lo, with such a conclusion As had of his avision Cresus, that was kyng of Lyde, That high upon a gebet dyde. [1. 103–106: Lo, with such a conclusion Croesus, King of Lydia, had from his prophetic dream, who died high on a gallows.]

On the surface of these lines, the allusion guides readers to recall that Croesus disregarded his own prophetic dream and thus was hung, forewarned but not any the wiser for having been counseled. Just about sixty lines earlier, however, Geff rey asserted (as quoted above), that our mortal myopia prevents us from understanding whether a dream is actually prophetic or not. The dysordynaunce created by juxtaposing these two positions proves enigmatic and foreshadows Fame’s own contradictory judgments suiting her momentary whims rather than any authoritative guidelines (e.g., cf. 3. 1700–1701 with 3. 1713–1717). Interestingly, Croesus figures not only in the House of Fame, but also in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, of which his is the last story. As one of the Monk’s highly abbreviated adaptations of Fürstenspiegel lessons into eight-line stanzas of iambic pentameter, this particular exemplum begins with two stanzas that exemplify the king’s pride, pride that prevents him from appreciating his escape, whereby rains extinguished the fi re in which he was to burn. Instead of gratitude, he is determined to wreak vengeance. Without a transition into the world of dreams, the Monk then relates in the third of five stanzas what Croesus “thoughte” (MkT 7. 2743): he was being bathed by Jupiter and dried by Phoebus while sitting in a tree, wherewith “wax his pryde” [MkT 7. 2746: his pride grew]. Croesus then sends for his daughter who in the next stanza explicates his dream as a warning: the tree shows he will be hanged, and the gods signify that he will be left to the elements, whereby Jove’s rain and Phoebus’s sun will batter his corpse. The last stanza moralizes against undue trust in good fortune. Whether or not Chaucer had precisely the Monk’s exemplum in mind when he wrote the House of Fame poses an interesting question, but one that is more or less irrelevant here. Chaucer had something like this tale in mind, a Fürstenspiegel version perhaps, when he wrote both narratives.47 More importantly here, in both cases each narrator focuses on the reader—Geff rey does so to exhort his readers to pay attention, and the Monk draws attention to his readerly characters. Reading one text against the other, Croesus did interpret his dream “to goode,” but, according to the Monk, he still proved to be wrong. More problematically, in the second stanza of the Monk’s version, the King’s interpretation of Fortune as a positive touchstone, indicating he can count on her favor, does seem, actually, “right.” How often, after all, does something like this happen? He wende wel, for that Fortune hym sente Swich hap that he escaped thurgh the rayn, That of his foos he myghte nat be slayn . . .

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[MkT 7. 2737–2739: He clearly believed that Fortune sent him such good luck that he escaped by means of the rain, that he could not be slain by his enemies . . .]

In other words, that Croesus felt himself to be fortune’s darling does not seem like a stretch of the imagination. Trevisa might have warned him of the trap of self-praise, to which we mortals all too easily succumb (e.g., p. 100, ll. 32–34), for, inclined to interpret in his own favor and extrapolating teleologically from a single “data point,” Croesus cannot help but see a greater aim in his miraculous rescue. Technically too, the heavens did spare him. However, the king’s linear, causally oriented interpretation, the Monk and Geff rey make clear, incorporates the wrong approach.48 Having had a prophetic dream, Geff rey might reason, he should have leapt beyond logic’s boundaries to embrace its lesson, not the one taught by the rain. The problem for Croesus has to have been, leap to where? His daughter’s reading certainly does not follow the logical path as she jumps to a significantly different conclusion, but how did she get from the dream to her interpretation? In other words, it is easy to see why Croesus interpreted in bono—he appeared to be blessed and pampered by the gods. His daughter’s elucidation, on the other hand, seems to have depended largely on her glossing of the tree as a gallows; nonetheless, how she arrived there, especially given her father’s recent rescue, seems more than enigmatic, it seems dogmatic. In both of Chaucer’s uses of this exemplum, the narrators insist, Croesus should have known better; after all, he had a warning in his prophetic dream. This is the code. In affi xing this exemplum to a curse on malicious readers, however, Chaucer not only demonstrates the difficulties in “understond[ing] hyt aryght” [1. 50 understand(ing) it correctly], he also underscores just how flat Croesus’s tale has become. Similar to Fürstenspiegel exempla who are compressed into the confi nes of an exhortation, once Croesus is equated with being executed for wrongly ignoring a warning, he can be used for any instances that intend to convey the same admonition. Thus, ill-wishing readers have now been served notice and need to be wary of the consequences. As such, Geff rey’s open-and-shut use of the King makes no pretense whatsoever to present standard Fürstenspiegel material as advice addressed to a prince. Quite the contrary, it becomes a warning to anyone, “That Englissh understonde kan” [2. 510: who can understand English] and reads the House of Fame. The interpretative energy set in motion by Geff rey’s exemplum, whether by turning to the earlier prefatory lines on the impossibility of deciphering prophetic dreams or by thumbing through a manuscript to look up Croesus in some Fürstenspiegel, contrasts with the attempt to control meaning that characterizes the genre as well as his daughter’s pronouncement. Indeed, Geff rey’s dissonant curse, as suggested above, shows the readerly narrator at his most authorial. Moreover, in using Croesus in this manner, Geff rey demonstrates the opposite of that which he purportedly tries to achieve: interpretation, in the end, cannot be controlled. Boccaccio’s De casibus, a very sophisticated instance of the Fürstenspiegel genre, demonstrates the same quandary, not only through equivocating about Arthur’s value as an exemplum, but, as cited in chapter 1, in the treatise’s fi nal words. There, Boccaccio’s narrator explains, even if everything

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achieved by the leader who is his addressee were truly noble and wondrously virtuous, “Et si contingat deiici: non vestro crimine factum adpareat: set proteruia potius Fortunae cuncta vertentis” [Book 9, p. 241: And if it were to happen that you were overthrown, not by your sin it would appear to have been done, but rather all of the transformation (would appear to have been effected) by the wantonness of Fortune]. This reading stems from a generous reader of Fortune’s unpredictable governance, a reading that thus dovetails with Chaucer’s perspective. That is, Boccaccio’s narrator declares that as long as a ruler remains ethical—the Fürstenspiegel desideratum sine non qua—he or she will not be blamed for whatever fortune metes out. Boccaccio troubles the smooth surface here, however, with adpareat, “it would appear,” suggesting that actually, audiences might not really know whether he or she had remained virtuous in the face of adversity. This seems somewhat contrary to the stated goal of a Fürstenspiegel, which is to provide a regent with guidelines on how to rule well so that his resulting good fame can serve as an index of his virtuous character. Chaucer, on the other hand, works with the central idea that Fürstenspiegel bestow fame on leaders and heroes to create dysordynaunce in the author-reader relationship—readers, like Arthur’s audiences, after all, help shoulder the burden of fame. Suggesting that any readers of his poem—like readers of Fürstenspiegel, royal or not—need to be aware of the codes traditionally preferred by fame, Chaucer displays a variety of readings. The explosive passage in which the persona for the poet bristles at any sign of insubordination contrasts radically, for example, with the calm shown in Geff rey’s tour of the Temple of Venus. With no people in the Temple (nor in its immediate context, the desert49), Geff rey seems very relaxed as he encounters images of narratives. Then, upon having scanned the entire glass edifice and determined that it was indeed elaborately constructed and decorated, Geff rey comes across the brass engraving with the fi rst two lines of Vergil’s Aeneid, before perusing the story itself (1. 142–468),50 notably devoting so much time to Dido (1. 221–432), that for the length of those lines, as suggested above, Vergil’s epic in effect becomes her tragic romance. Saddened, the narrator does move on, like Aeneas, who was forced to leave, so reports Geff rey, because the gods commanded the hero to do so (1. 427–432). In spite of absorbing the fact that Aeneas must move on, however, Geffrey is not satisfied with that story. He had already shaped it in his imagination as Dido’s. From this perspective, Aeneas is a “Fugityf of Troy” [1. 146: Fugitive of Troy], not a hero on his way to establishing what will become the Roman empire. Likewise, in the middle of his retelling (in more than one sense), Geff rey pauses, it seems, to make Dido into an exemplum (1. 256–292) even if not in traditional vein, by emphasizing her innocence and warning women that appearances are deceptive. Critically, he does so not only through an explicit statement, but also by appending two proverbs: all that glitters is not gold (1. 272) and only when a herb’s properties are known should it be applied to the eye (1. 289–291). These proverbs are in and of themselves revealing, not only because they suggest Dido’s status as a newly envisioned exemplum, but also because of how Geff rey inserts them as morals learned from Dido’s story. Here readers seem to gain fi rsthand knowledge on how to extract a lesson from a tale, to use it as a touchstone.

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Thus, the first proverb echoes Geffrey’s stated sentiments—beware of fair appearances, because they can hide a treacherous heart, and so it appears to be a faultless poetic translation of the tale into an equivalent statement. The second proverb, however, not only seems mildly out of place, it seems to be generated from separate ruminations on a related topic, myopic vision. Moreover, Chaucer marks it, unlike the first one, by clearly drawing attention to its status as a proverb: Therfore I wol seye a proverbe, That “he that fully knoweth th’erbe May sauf ly leye hyt to his yë”— Withoute drede, this ys no lye. [1. 289–292: Therefore I will tell (you) a proverb, that “he who fully knows the herb can safely apply it to his eye”—no fear, this is not a lie.]

Taken out of Geff rey’s context, the proverb on its own intimates that it should be applied to a narrative that conveys the warning to act only when consequences are understood. Not a complete contrast to Geff rey’s vision-focused exemplifying of how myopically Dido judged Aeneas, that is, this last proverb nonetheless shifts perspectives, slightly, from judging appearances to understanding when to act, from observed image to active application. As such, this proverb self-reflexively enacts the metaliterary advice Geff rey is stating at the moment, insofar as he applies the proverb to advise when wisdom may be put to good use, in order to correct vision. Concomitantly, Chaucer therewith challenges the code as he foreshadows Geff rey’s rejection of Fame’s arbitrary judgments in favor of moving to the whirling House of Rumor, fi lled with language, people, and potential stories that lay bare the underlying material often disguised in too fair an appearance. That is, he metalingually applies the “herb” of motion to shift perspectives, enabling him to see better as a result. By introducing a new perspective, by providing dysordynaunce, in both the exemplum of Croesus and the presentation of Dido’s tale, Chaucer presents what Geff rey longs to experience: “Somme newe tydynges for to lere, Somme newe thinges, y not what, Tydynges, other this or that, Of love or suche thynges glade.” [3. 1886–1889: “Some new events/news to be taught, some new things, I know not what, events/news, either this or that, of love or such happy things.”]

Geff rey is not rejecting the subject matter of love; he seeks something he does not yet understand, something “to lere.”51 And Chaucer not only presents what Geffrey longs to experience by means of the exemplum and the proverb, he also does so by texturing Dido’s tale. Communicated in a visually powerful brass engraving, Dido’s Fürstenspiegel story is given a different perspective by Geff rey’s decided and clear empathy; by his leaving the third-person, referential mode that Jakobson associates with the epic; and by instead placing himself in the scene through emphasizing

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that he had heard what she had said (and thereby also putting readerly quotation marks around the scene). Thus, regarding Creusa’s ghost warning her husband to flee Troy, Geff rey narrates: [Hir gost . . .] seyde he moste unto Itayle, As was hys destinee, sauns faille; That hyt was pitee for to here, When hir spirit gan appere, The wordes that she to hym seyde, And for to kepe hir sone hym preyde. [1. 185–192, my italics: (Her ghost . . .) said he must go to Italy, as was his destiny, without a doubt; that it was a pity to hear the words when her spirit appeared that she said to him, and to take care of their son she prayed.]

Geff rey’s empathy with Creusa here could have been used to shore up, about 225 lines later, the rather limp explanation of Aeneas’s treachery that proclaims the necessity for the hero to fulfi ll his divine destiny. That Geff rey does not refer back to Creusa’s ghost not only damns Aeneas with faint praise at the moment he takes his leave of Dido, it further underscores how a reader can transform a story (a theme also preoccupying René d’Anjou). Indeed, Chaucer emphasizes the reader’s power with metaliterary references to the narrative that Geff rey saw in front of him. Thus, right after Creusa’s ghost addresses Aeneas, Geff rey writes, “Ther sawgh I graven eke . . . ” [1. 193: There I also saw engraved . . .], illustrating that Chaucer did not forget the brass version, even if Geff rey glossed over its complications. Indeed, Chaucer draws literal attention to the engraving several times throughout this fi rst book (cf. 1. 142, 157, 211, 256), as well as to what he saw (cf. 1. 151, 162, 174, 198, 209, 219, 221, 439, 451, 468) or, as in the just quoted example, to both hearing and seeing the tale (cf. 1. 212, 253, 433, 473).52 Similarly, just after starting to recount, word for word, Dido’s long lament on Aeneas’s faithlessness (1. 300–360), Geffrey inserts a reminder that all this was a dream: In suche wordes gan to pleyne Dydo of hir grete peyne, As me mette redely— Non other auctour alegge I. [1. 311–314, my italics: In such words Dido began to lament of her great pain, as I truly dreamed—no other author do I allege.]

The metaliterary attention drawn to what Geff rey is doing brings the audience into the space of the poet, not unlike how the prefatory material to Book Three confl ates the distance between Geff rey and Apollo in drawing the readers’ attention to the literary art. Chaucer thereby also underscores the poem’s restless, and insistent, focus on texturing the reader’s perspective. Indeed, Chaucer suggests, in some ways, while both writer and readers share the literary system and a certain understanding, as Peirce might put it, of standard interpretants, it is the readerly imagination, even in a writer, that takes charge of the code.

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Framing and Fame Geff rey’s readerly imagination provides frameworks defined by codes that enable him to interpret what he sees, no matter how foreign. This is vital, since the movement from place to place in Chaucer’s House of Fame occurs in a manner that often renders reflection a willed act on the part of any reader. Thus, Geff rey’s journey begins with the Temple of Venus, as sudden and noncausally situated as the invective leading to Croesus’ dream. In the middle of his describing the temple of glass and its lavish holdings, Geff rey tells readers, following the logic of dreams, that he did not know where he was, but he simply knew he was in the Temple of Venus.53 He knows he is in her temple because of a stunning portrait he sees— presumably her beauty, the doves, Cupid, and Vulcan all add up to elicit his identification: And queynte maner of figures Of olde werk, then I saugh ever. For certeynly, I nyste never Wher that I was, but wel wste I Hyt was of Venus redely, The temple; for in portreyture I sawgh anoon-ryght hir figure Naked f letynge in a see, And also on her hed, pardee, Hir rose garlond whit and red, And her comb to kembe hyr hed. Hir dowves, and daun Cupido Hir blynde sone, and Vulcano, That in his face was ful brown. [1. 126–139: And elaborated kinds of figures of old making, then I saw more and more of. Indeed, I never knew where I was, but very quickly I knew that it was of Venus’s temple; for in portrait I saw immediately her figure, naked f loating on a sea, and also on her head, by God, her rose garland, white and red, and her comb to comb her head. Her doves and Lord Cupid, her blind son, and Vulcan whose face was completely brown.]

Relating his perceptions in detail, Geff rey allows us to see that which strikes his fancy.54 As readerly as passages such as these may seem, however, they are informed by the writer’s control of information. Had it been situated completely in the reader’s perspective, the narrator probably would have begun with Cupid and Vulcan, not the reverse. In other words, in this description, Chaucer allows Geff rey to be “right” over the course of time, in the accumulation of the painting’s attributes that in their totality make it clear this is certainly Venus being portrayed.55 Thus, accompanying Geff rey as he makes his discovery and following his eye, readers are actually taken along a linear path to gaining sure knowledge, as one would hope for when traveling with a guide. Readers gain knowledge as they follow Geff rey, who, in the world of the dream, presumably saw and recognized Venus immediately in one holistic perception. What the reader has to learn in following Geff rey’s eye, however, resembles Croesus’ mode of adding up the signs, which “must” total up to only one reading. In both instances, critically, essential elements of communication—the addresser

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and the ground from which the message is conveyed—are missing, leaving interpretation unfi xed, possibly dangerous, as Geff rey’s exemplum of Croesus suggests, and just as possibly wondrous, as the narrator’s words communicate: “A, Lord,” thoughte I, “that madest us, Yet sawgh I never such noblesse Of ymages, ne such richesse As I saugh graven in this chirche; But not wot I whoo did hem wirche, Ne where I am, ne in what contree.” [1. 470–475: “Ah, Lord,” I thought, “you who made us. Never yet have I seen such noble images, nor such riches as I saw engraved in this church; but I do not know who made them nor where I am, nor in what country.”]

After he utters these words, Geffrey leaves the temple to learn where Venus’ temple is situated, a goal he never achieves. The desert he fi nds has no recognizable attributes—there is nothing with which he can establish a framework, except for the possible touchstone of Dido’s desert of Libya. Fearful and primed for an adventure of the worst sort, he is not able to situate himself in any ground, Peircian or otherwise, and there is nobody he can address. Considering the just immediately prior ground in which he demonstrated empathy for Dido in the temple of Aeneas’ mother, the goddess who provided Dido as a “sacrifice” for her son’s future empire-building role, Geff rey’s sympathy could be declared an iconoclastic act: considering where he was, how could Geff rey have sympathy for Dido or so completely scorn the goddess’ son? Nonetheless, the desert is not so much Geffrey’s punishment, but something more like Croesus’ rescuing rain—one may leap to the gods to generate an explanation, but in the end, perhaps, it is Thought that will “tellen al [the] drem aryght” [2. 527: tell (the) entire dream correctly]. The desert Geff rey enters further demonstrates, again like Croesus’ rescuing rain, that what an event or image actually means in the course of a lifetime is usually determined at the end. With this criterion, Croesus’ interpretation was wrong, but Geff rey’s was only half-wrong, as was Dido’s. That is, Dido saw Aeneas as the love of her life, but as their “story” draws to a close, she understands that, for him, she was just another conquest. She learns from this, as Croesus did, that the ending will reveal meaning: “For, though [men’s] love laste a seson, Wayte upon the conclusyon, And eke how that [men] determynen, And for the more part diffynen.” [1. 341–344: “For, though (men’s) love lasts a season, wait for the ending, and also how (men) end it and for the greater part define it.”]

This teleological emphasis seems contradictory to the open endings that Chaucer gravitates toward, as well as to the multiplicity of perspectives he creates in his poetry. However, ironically, multiple perspectives and open endings prove perceptible only when a known or familiar ending exists, a framework providing some authoritative or conventional touchstone around which to organize information.

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The readerly imagination demands some structure, it seems; otherwise, what could be ambiguity appears as chaos. As static as the brass-engraved story was in the Temple of Venus, then, its totality was familiar and hence immediately comprehensible, allowing Geff rey’s readerly imagination to be engaged with a rich, non-static, readerly experience that transformed its epic codes. He could take his time as he “romed up and doun” [1. 140: roamed up and down] the church, inspecting the artwork and allowing himself the luxury of becoming enthralled by lovers’ stories, no matter how tragic, and from this leisure, stemming in part from knowing the ending, he could also create another story. In apparent contrast, when the Eagle takes his charge on the jarring ride toward the House of Fame, it at fi rst appears as if Geff rey would experience a complete lack of freedom. Not only is Geff rey now constrained in movement, caught as he is in the Eagle’s claws, but he also initially refuses to see, to judge, to absorb, for which the Eagle chastises him: “Let see! Darst thou yet loke now? Be ful assured, boldely, I am thy frend.” And therwith I Gan for to wondren in my mynde. “O God,” thoughte I, “that madest kynde, Shal I noon other weyes dye? Wher Joves wol me stellyfye, Or what thing may this sygnifye? I neyther am Ennok, ne Elye, Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede, That was ybore up, as men rede, To hevene with daun Jupiter, And mad the goddys botiller.” [2. 580–592: “See! Do you dare look now? Be full assured, boldly, I am your friend.” And therewith I began to wonder in my mind. “Oh God,” I thought, “who made nature, shall I die in no other way than where Jove wishes to transform me into a star? Or what does this signify? I am not Enoch, nor Elijah, nor Romulus, nor Ganymede, who was carried up, as men read, to heaven with Lord Jupiter, and made into the god’s cupbearer.”]

But just as Geff rey can roam around in the static and empty Temple of Venus and partake in rich readings, the avian-constrained Geff rey is actually being moved from earth upward toward the heavens. The one situation dovetails with the other, and both feature a shift in perspective. Indeed, faced with the uncomfortable and unknown, at the moment Geff rey is asked to open his eyes, his thoughts turn to understanding this enigma by referring to what he has read, by finding a touchstone around which to organize what might otherwise seem to be chaos. Even when the author or the ground remains enigmatic and what lies ahead could be either ecstasy or danger, we mortals cannot help but depend on what we know. Thus, in trying to understand what he sees, Geff rey turns to his books to wonder, not to conclude, whether he is to be transformed, like other mortals transported into the heavens, into a star. The important

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difference is that he does not rush to judgment as Croesus, Croesus’ daughter, or Fame, does. And diving in to prevent his fear from hardening into a conclusion, the Eagle quickly disabuses him of this interpretation. Reader and writer cocreate a richer reading and a more complex narrative. Just as importantly, perhaps, this passage points to yet another shift in perspective, “literally,” as underscored in Geff rey’s refusal to look, and experientially, as indicated by Chaucer’s emphasis on Geff rey’s cloistered bookishness, which had led him to write and read stories of love even though he himself never loved (cf. 2. 619–621, 627–628, 630–633, 639–640).56 For, as the Eagle reports it, Jove’s magnanimity toward Geffrey is intended to recognize the poet’s service as a writer who, “make[s] bookys, songes, dytees” [2. 622: make(s) books, songs, and literature] in honor of Love and Love’s servants, but also to have him learn what conclusions outside the stories the lovers experienced. He is to move, explains the Eagle, outside his four walls: “ . . . thou hast no tydynges Of Loves folk yf they be glade, Ne of noght elles that God made . . . Thou herist neyther that ne this; For when thy labour doon al ys, And hast mad alle thy rekenynges, In stede of reste and newe thynges Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon, And, also domb as any stoon, Thou sittest at another book Tyl full daswed ys thy look . . . And therfore Joves, thorgh hys grace, Wol that I bere the to a place Which that hight the Hous of Fame, To do the som disport and game . . . For truste wel that thou shalt here . . . Mo wonder thynges, dar I leye . . . Then ever cornes were in graunges . . . ” [2. 644–698, my italics; cf. 3. 2000–2026: “. . . you have no news of Love’s people, whether they are glad, nor of anything else that God made . . . You hear neither that nor this; for when your work is all done, and you have completed all your accounting, instead of rest and new things, you go home to your house immediately, and, as dumb as any stone, you sit at another book until you look fully dazed . . . And therefore Jove, through his grace . . . wishes that I carry you to a place which is called the House of Fame, to have some fun and amusement . . . for trust well that you shall hear . . . more wondrous things, dare I wager . . . than grains in granaries.”]

Geff rey lives through his books, in a static, comfortable world that hermetically seals off outside influences, which on the one hand allows him enjoyment as he strolls through literary temples honoring Venus, but on the other keeps him supporting those occupying the pillars in Fame’s house. Upon seeing them, notably, Geff rey seems to have decided he wants none of that. The affirmative effect of Geff rey’s shifts in perspective becomes clear once the Eagle drops him off at the House of Fame. Indeed, Geff rey eagerly (ententyf ) looks

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around at the surroundings, willing to report all he sees that is new to him (e.g., 3. 1120–1123).57 The promise that he will hear all kinds of news about lovers further primes him to see distinctions between the Temple of Venus and the House of Fame. In spite of the newness of his adventure, as just indicated, what he has read in the past will continue to color his understanding. Indeed, while being transported through the heavens, Geff rey doubts how Fame could possibly hear, or see, stories of all lovers, thereby evaluating from his earthbound perspective:58 “ . . . For hyt Were impossible, to my wit, Though that Fame had alle the pies In al a realme, and alle the spies, How that yet she shulde here al this, Or they espie hyt.” [2. 701–706, my italics: “For it is impossible, to my knowledge, that even if Fame had all the magpies in a kingdom and all the spies, that she should hear all this, or they should see it.”]

Thus, Geff rey measures the impossibility of the task through earthly standards even as he is being flown through the air. Nonetheless, he also learns something new. Fresh from his sojourn in the Temple of Venus, Geffrey learns that to understand, it is important to visualize as well as to hear the narrative. Like the brass tablet that inspires Geff rey to understand Dido, so too poets need to create something “visual”—a narrative that, as the narrator of Book Three’s preface asks of Apollo, will “helpe me to shewe now/ That in myn hed ymerked ys—” [3. 1102–1103, my italics: help me to show now that which is marked in my head—]. In both my citations of these two lines, I have translated ymerked simply as “marked.” Its meaning, however, includes “imaged,” underscoring the idea that to tell a story is to make it palpable, to make it so imaginable that it can be seen. Indeed, as the Eagle insists in praising his own speaking abilities: “A, ha,” quod he, “lo, so I can Lewedly to a lewed man Speke, and shewe hym swyche skiles That he may shake hem be the biles, So palpable they shulden be.” [2. 865–868: “Ah, ha,” said he, “see, how I can simply speak to a simple man and show him such arguments that he may shake them by the beaks, so palpable they should be.”]

Likewise, the importance of the palpably visual nature of stories is underscored when Geff rey poses his one question upon approaching the House of Fame: what is the source of the loud noise? The Eagle responds: “Whan any speche ycomen ys Up to the paleys, anon-ryght Hyt wexeth lyk the same wight Which that the word in erthe spak . . . ”

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[2. 1074–1077: “When any speech comes up to the palace, immediately it grows like the same person who spoke the word on earth . . . ”]

The insubstantial beings making the great rumbling sound (2. 1025–1042) take on the form of their speakers, here as well as in the House of Rumor. Moving from place to place, as well as from thoughts into words, images gain in substance when conveyed in narratives that make them palpable. In time, however, the visualized can become the easily visualized and flattened into exempla; thus, it is necessary to shift perspectives, to keep moving. Chaucer thus offers a slightly different perspective on the problem discussed by Trevisa as to why a regent needs guidance. In contrast to the readily comprehensible immutable world, the mutable world has multiple interpretations to offer (e.g., pp. 352–353), a view René seems to have subscribed to as well. For Chaucer, however, this is the attraction of a performance text, in Elam’s sense of the term; each performance has something different that the eye might catch. The importance of the visual becomes especially clear at one moment when Geff rey is in Fame’s palace. Even though Geff rey purportedly knows all about Fame, upon seeing her palace, he is stunned by its beauty (3. 1172–1180) and enchanted by the harmonious sounds of minstrels and jesters and great harpers, imitated by lesser ones, along with an array of many others (3. 1197–1254). Although he hears them fi rst (3. 1201), Geff rey then sees them and, moreover, recognizes them. Recalling Book One’s many repetitions of words of sight (e.g., 3. 1214, 1227, 1233, 1237, 1250), here in Book Three, a litany of sight references continues into his description of the next group he sees, the magicians: “There saugh I, and knew hem by name,/ That by such art don men han fame” [3. 1275–1276: There I saw and knew them by name those who by such art had fame].59 That Geff rey can identify the musicians and magicians underscores one of the many aspects of fame teasingly on display in this poem. Fame allows for recognition on sight. In emphasizing the role of sight, Chaucer underscores the work that readers and writers do and thereby points to their agency. Chaucer further emphasizes the need to work at fame’s tasks by portraying the acquisition of fame in different ways. Even early on in Dido’s lament, for example, Fame seems to be something other than the goddess’s automatic assignment of a place in a book of exempla. Contemplating Aeneas’s faithlessness, Dido takes to enumerating men’s reasons for taking on multiple lovers: “ . . . of oon he wolde have fame In magnyfyinge of hys name; Another for frendshippe, seyth he; And yet ther shal the thridde be That shal be take for delyt, Loo, or for synguler profit.” [1. 305–310 “from one he would have fame to magnify his name; another for friendship, he says; and yet there will be a third who will be taken for delight, lo, or for personal advantage.”]

Here, in the first example, fame is something akin to a commodity that can be acquired. From a different perspective, when climbing up the hill of ice to Fame’s palace, Geffrey notes that names carved on the sunny side doomed some men to

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being forgotten while those whose names were carved on the shaded side continued to live on in fame (3. 1126–1160). Here, fame is a question of being at the right place at the right time and contrasts—perhaps only in emphasis—with René’s version, which strongly suggests that people must take care of tombs for them to remain known. Less obviously, all the authors that Geffrey and the Eagle refer to live on in their thoughts and shape their perceptions, suggesting that fame is a text to be remembered rather than something to be acquired or an instance of serendipity.60 In these perspectives on fame, and others, fame is not just bestowed, it can be sought after, not only with purses full of money as the knights outside her palace believe, but in the form of creating new “tydynges,” by moving and shifting perspectives.61 Indeed, unlike what is implied by Fürstenspiegel that teach one must live well to acquire good fame, the code for acquiring Fame’s favor in Chaucer’s poem remains unrelentingly enigmatic, mainly because readers have as much to say about the code as writers do.

The House of Rumor and Understanding Fame: Blogging in the Middle Ages Chaucer probably did not anticipate that mortals would one day fly through the skies, but he certainly described the achievement in his House of Fame with imaginative engagement.62 Geff rey’s fl ight does evince verisimilitude, as, for example, when Chaucer visualizes the Eagle’s transporting of Geffrey (2. 574, 660); Geff rey’s unwillingness to open his eyes and look around (2. 580); and the towns and countryside on the earth below, seemingly reduced to mere specks (2. 896–907).63 With regards to the House of Rumor, Chaucer seems to have foreseen blogs as well. In 2002, the Encyclopedia Britannica reported this about blogs:64 Web logs were not new, but as a forum for personal expression they sprouted prodigiously on the Internet, captured new audiences, and drew intensified attention in the media in 2002. Web logs (usually abbreviated to “blogs”) originated in the U.S. in 1997 . . . By mid-2002 the number of blogs had grown from only 23 (by one count) at the start of 1999 to as many as 500,000 globally.

The blogosphere has exploded exponentially since the Britannica reported on its then remarkable growth spurt. Indeed, blogs participate in today’s literary system, having gained a critical stamp of approval when The New York Times and other papers set up their own blogs, perhaps in an attempt to serve as the unifying principle of “gret auctorite.” If anything were to confi rm Chaucer’s portrait of how news circulates and can gain fame, then, blogs would be it, complete with likenesses of their speakers in the form of photos, false and accurate, to identify which words “belong” to them. More importantly, the propensity of blogs to gather comments from as many readers who wish to contribute accelerates the rapidity with which readers rush from listening to writing, or speaking, Were the tydynge soth or fals, Yit wolde he telle hyt natheles,

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And evermo with more encres Than yt was erst. [3. 2072–2075: Whether the news were true or false, it would be told nonetheless and with ever more growth than it was at first.]

Thus, by inviting readers to become writers, blogs that permit unedited comments certainly echo Chaucer, as they too diminish the distance between reader and writer. Although not much can be defi nitively said about the poem’s fi nal blog-like lines, Chaucer does suggest with all rumors rushing to the “man of gret auctorite” that the state of pointless circulation of stories, productive or not, cannot be sustained in inchoate form. If not rushing to the “man of gret auctorite,” once a rumor becomes large enough, it escapes through a window and fl ies to the House of Fame. In this visualization of the evolution of a rumor, the huge, wobbly, noisy, leaky, whirling structure made of twigs with many entrances and openings (3. 1920–1955) that Hanning so aptly designates as the “workshop of Fame,”65 functions as an etiological gloss on Fame, both from the standpoint of classical auctores, such as Vergil and Ovid who depict Fame as rumor, but also from Chaucer’s own metalingual ruminations. Fame derives not simply from the goddess’ arbitrary decisions, but from the “shipmen and pilgrimes” (3. 2122), who empty their bags of lies and tales (lesinges, 3. 2123) among the news in Rumor’s unstable space. In this portrait, something of Boccaccio’s restless portrait of Arthur’s survival resonates. Et in vulgi fabulam versa est. Gloria ingens regis et claritas desolatione in ignominiam et obscuritatem redacta est; adeo vt possint, si velint, mortales aduertere. Nil in orbe praeter humilia posse consistere. [Book 8, p. 206: And it was turned into a tale of the people. The enormous glory and fame of the king was reduced through desolation to disgrace and obscurity; truly, mortals could, if they wish, pay attention to this. Nothing in the world except the humble can endure.]

In other words, both Boccaccio and Chaucer narrow the definition of fame from glory to the report of deeds. They also propose that where reputations live on is in the common people speaking in the common tongue. Before the news is groomed, rounded up into distinct categories, and trooped into Fame’s halls, then, it percolates below. The tensions that Chaucer portrays in this phase push reader closer to writer, while concomitantly pulling them apart, for the form of the narrative—that which readers recognize—is not where Chaucer wishes to “do . . . diligence/To shewe craft, but o sentence” [3. 1099–1100: put . . . effort to show craft, but rather only in meaning]. In the House of Fame, Chaucer’s solution is to visualize what is no longer “seen” for having seen it with fresh eyes so long ago, as intimated positively in the above-discussed example of Dido and negatively in Geffrey’s attempts to keep the Eagle from lecturing on the stars. In the latter example, not unlike Cueur’s and Désir’s second encounter with Esperance’s spooky disappearances from their “been there, done that” perspective, Geffrey does not want to hear more about the stars. He gives as a reason at the Eagle’s

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first attempt, “For y am now to old” [2. 995: For I am now too old], a terse “no, really” (2. 999) on the Eagle’s second attempt, and an extemporaneous explanation in his third response, in which he wishes to allow others to write about them, and besides, the stars are too bright for him to stare at them for so long (2. 1011–1017). In spite of Geffrey, Chaucer has the Eagle name all the things he would have expounded on had Geffrey demonstrated interest as well as having Geffrey earlier mention three authorities on the subject (Boethius, Martianus Capella, and Alanus de Insulis). That is, just as Geffrey had sympathetically evoked the betrayed women’s stories by merely mentioning their names, here too, the potential for recalling other stories at each point of his journey exists, even if Geffrey proves to be recalcitrant during this particular leg of the trip. Erecting new perspectives requires willing readers, readers who will not, moreover, approach an author’s freshly presented material from old perspectives. Chaucer seems to have some sympathy for this readerly dilemma, as suggested by how rumors circulate. The speed with which rumors pass along stories leaves no time for any reader or writer to distinguish truth from falsehood or, just as importantly, reader from writer. In addition to speed, both the Houses of Rumor and Fame are also overwhelmed by numbers. Indeed, as the Eagle was transporting Geff rey to Fame’s palace, he explains to his charge that, as, “thyn oune bok hyt tellith” [2. 712: your own book tells it], Fame’s abode is located amid heaven, earth, and sea, so, “That every soun mot to hyt pace; Or what so cometh from any tonge, Be hyt rouned, red, or songe, Or spoke in suerte or in drede, Certeyn, hyt moste thider nede.” [2. 720–724: “That every sound must go to it; and whatever comes from any tongue, be it whispered, read, or sung, or spoken in confidence or fear, certainly, it must go there.”]

The Eagle’s explanation seems scientific enough, but it also holds the trace of another narrative: Fame has no option but to pronounce arbitrarily upon all her petitioners—she does not have the time, nor inclination, to distill the stories into something visibly moving; she only has the time to give audience to, to hear, blocks of people. This observation is underscored as Geff rey decides he has spent enough time describing the poets on their pillars. He writes: The halle was al ful, ywys, Of hem that writen olde gestes As ben on treës rokes nestes; But hit a ful confus matere Were alle the gestes for to here That they of write, or how they highte. [3. 1514–1519: The hall was all full, certainly, of those who had written old stories on trees, rooks’ nests; but it would be a fully confusing matter to hear all the stories that they wrote, or how they were named.]

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The sheer quantity alone of everything that reaches the House of Rumor and Fame’s halls makes individualized praise or critique impossible. Instead, Fame, like the half-truths that exit Rumor’s windows, will generate stories from the masses of material confronting her simply by providing a conclusion, and thus attempt to flatten all into easily recognized forms.

Geffrey and Fame Besides being stunned by her appearance, Geffrey becomes interested in Fame when listening to the celestial songs intoned by Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and her eight other sisters. Only then does Geff rey notice other details of the regent’s appearance. Tho was I war, loo, atte laste, As I myne eyen gan up caste, That thys ylke noble quene On her shuldres gan sustene Bothe th’armes and the name Of thoo that hadde large fame: Alexander and Hercules, That with a sherte hys lyf les. [2. 1407–1414: Then I became aware, lo, at last, as I cast my eyes upward that this same noble queen on her shoulders sustained both the arms and the name of those who had great fame: Alexander and Hercules who lost his life with his shirt.]

After these lines, Geff rey suddenly decides he will move to another subject (3. 1417–1418), portraying, apparently, his lack of deep-seated interest in her realm. For a moment, however, he was intrigued by the burden she bore and, echoing the sympathy he expressed for wronged women in Book One, at the moment he saw her burden, she became human to him; she became, “thys ylke noble quene,” who fulfi lls her service to humankind. It is telling, moreover, that Geff rey identifies Alexander with nothing more than his name, but he distinguishes Hercules through how he died, through his wife’s giving him a poisoned shirt (not unlike, in effect, the relics hanging in the entry hall to Amours’ palace in René’s Le coeur), which she thought would revive his love for her. Geffrey’s sympathy for the burdens Fame bears seems to spill over into Deianira’s story of Hercules. Shortly after seeing Hercules and remembering how he died—and without referring to the story’s conclusion, that the hero was thereafter more or less “stellified” by Jove—Geff rey no longer has interest in Fame. Not interested in the military feats of Alexander nor the strength and endurance evinced by Hercules, he looks at Fame and remembers the consequences of Deianira’s fear of losing the hero. Fame becomes human to Geff rey when he sees the burden she bears. In other words, he begins to understand that fame is about conclusions and upholding those conclusions as compressed into memorable emblems, without Thought and without attention to the actual stories. Fame is indeed static. By visualizing, however, Chaucer suggests that a flattened emblem may be resuscitated enough to speak with the passion of a Dido, to speak with or without fame’s approbation, which

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no longer seems to matter, at least to Geff rey.66 Caught in a conundrum, Geff rey wants to learn something new, presumably not something from his books, but he can only understand the new through what he has learned from his books. The solution that the House of Fame offers is to recover that which was exciting by shifting perspectives or visualizing something new, by playing with some conventional touchstone. This is the nature of the literary system, which demands the regeneration that stems from shifting perspectives on the known. It is such movement that allows the literary system to exist, for if all were known and expressed in a perfectly complete and contained narrative, there would be no need to write another word. The seriatim structure of language that entices unaware readers to believe in progress as word by word, the story moves from beginning to end also suggests that when one is “fi nished” with a story, one knows it. One can, after all, emblematize it. To escape the sense of Croesus’ surety, the reduction of Hercules’ painful transformation to a red shirt, or the sense that one knows all about Fame’s palace, a heavenly journey or a trip back to the sources might help. So might seeing Dido again, from a “new” perspective. The intractability of learning’s sense of conclusiveness contrasts with the pliability of Thought before it is constrained into some communicable form, the ratio atque oratio, Chaucer implies, where readers and writers meet. By bringing readers into the writerly position, Chaucer suggests that perhaps the dominion of form over content could be relaxed a little; after all, it is the readerly imagination that controls the code, even for writers. In this respect, Chaucer contrasts significantly from René d’Anjou, whose various expressions of Arthur’s court visualize the King’s attempt to prevent his fame from succumbing to the negative stamp emblematizing him as powerless, expressions that in their very variety and multitude also convey that, perhaps, he did not quite trust his readers to remain with what he wanted to convey. The next chapter completes this study’s journey from René’s invitation to readers to interpret and remember his stage productions correctly to Chaucer’s emphasis on the importance of visualizing narratives in order to revisit and revive codes for a writer’s readerly imagination to Edward the Black Prince’s full-blown embrace of the hyperspace of performance.

CHAPTER 4 EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE, THE FUTURE KING

The Prince, whose history is the principal subject of the annexed sheets, appears to have been graced with every quality natural or acquired which constitute the real Hero: to these were superadded the more important ones that form the virtuous man. Take him for all in all, estimate his worth from this union of characters, and we may safely pronounce, that England, or indeed any other country, never gave birth to a person whose actions more justly claimed the notice, or deserved the encomiums of Historians.1

As romanticized as Alexander Bicknell’s 1776 introduction to his biography on Edward the Black Prince seems to be, it is not very much different from near contemporary praise of this leader of men, praise that similarly focuses on chivalric inner worth and military prowess. Writing at the end of the fourteenth century, for example, the Herald of Sir John Chandos valorizes the Prince of Wales by emphasizing his virtues. The narrator introduces audiences to him thus:2 Depuis le jour q’il fuist nasqui Ne pensa forsqe loiautée, Fraunchise, valour et bountée. Et si fuist garniz de proesce, Tant fuist cil prince de hautesce, Q’il voilleit toutz les jours de sa vie Mettre tout son estudie En tenir justice et droiture, Et la prist il sa noriture. [64–72: Since the day he was born, he thought of nothing else but loyalty, nobility, valor, and excellence. And he was endowed with prowess; this prince was so noble, he wished all the days of his life to put all his effort into maintaining justice and right; from this he took his sustenance (he was nurtured).]

As such, he seems to be the picture-book regent such as glorified by Trevisa, who completes his portrait of the ideal ruler by admonishing kings and princes to remember their “addressees” whose loyalty they can ensure in three ways: they need to demonstrate largesse, they should show themselves as stalwart and courageously ready to sacrifice themselves for the people, and they must be just

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(e.g., pp. 390–392). Largesse, courage, and fairness appear amply throughout the Chandos Herald’s characterization of the Black Prince, and as if to underscore the Fürstenspiegel point, the Herald just as clearly underscores the Prince’s worthiness through the loyalty he receives from his followers. Before the Battle of Poitiers, for example, the narrator describes how Prince Edward was surrounded by the best of the kingdom and everywhere attracted adulation. La poist homme, a voir jugier, Voier le f lour de chivalrie Et tres noble bachelrie Qui feurent en grant voluntée De bien faire et entalentée . . . . . . ils arriverent a Burdeaux, Dount moult fesoient grauntz reveaux Lui noble baroun du pais. La veissez grantz et petitz Venir vers le Prince tut droit Qui doucement les festoioit. [610–622: (Around the Black Prince) a man could, to tell the truth, observe the f lower of chivalry and truly noble bachelor knights, who were very eager to do well and show their talents . . . they arrived at Bordeaux, where the noble barons of the country held grand celebrations. High and low, the vassals came immediately to the Prince, who received them warmly.]

Beyond the Chandos Herald’s biography, other near contemporary accounts similarly lionize the chivalric warrior. An eighty-line political poem celebrating the Prince of Wales’ virtues as evidenced in his expedition into Spain, for instance, begins as follows:3 Gloria cunctorum detur Domino dominorum, Qui regit astrorum fabricam terraeque polorum, Per quem grandescit princeps nosterque valescit, Bellis f lorescit, laudisque valore virescit. Anglia laetatur, Vasconia jam modulatur; Francia tristatur, Hispania justificatur; Scotia languescit, et Flandria falsa timescit; Dacia decrescit, Hibernia victa quiescit. [Wright 94: Let glory be given to the lord of all lords, who governs the creation of the stars and the poles of the earth, through whom our prince became great and grew strong; he f lourished in wars, and he thrived on praise for valor. England rejoices, Gascony sings; France mourns, Spain is vindicated. Scotland languishes, and false Flanders fears; west and north-central Romania wanes, and defeated Ireland is brought to a standstill.]

Jean Froissart, perhaps the most well-known near contemporary source of adulation, sums up Prince Edward’s life with these words:4 . . . la f leur de toutte chevalerie dou monde en ce tamps et qui le plus avoit estet fortunez en grans fais d’armez et acompli dez bellez besoingnes. Si trespassa li vaillans

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homs et gentilz princes de Galles . . . Si fu mout plains et regrettez et sa bonne chevalerie moult regretee. Et eut li gentilz princes à son trespas la plus belle recongnissance à Dieu et la plus ferme creance que on vei oncques grant signeur avoir. . . . Et pour plus autentiquement et reveranment faire la besoingne et bien avoit dou temps passet concquis par se bonne chevalerie que on li fesist toutte l’onneur et reverence que on poroit . . . [vol. 4, §929, p. 351, ll. 22–32: . . . the f lower of all chivalry in the world at the time and one who had the best of fortune in great deeds of arms and who was very well accomplished. So the valiant man and noble prince of Wales passed away . . . there was such great mourning and lamenting and his good chivalry was much mourned. And in his passing, the noble prince made the most beautiful confession to God and had the firmest belief that he would forever have sight (be in the presence) of the great Lord . . . And very genuinely and reverently the obsequies were done, for well in times past he conquered with good chivalry, so that he was given all the honor and reverence that was possible . . .]

And so Prince Edward appears,5 right down to our own day, as exemplified in the Black Prince’s few, but key, chivalric appearances in the 2001 fi lm A Knight’s Tale, directed by Brian Helgeland. Through such depictions, Edward of Woodstock, Prince d’Aquitaine, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, the eldest son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa of Hainault, and heir apparent to the English crown, stands for chivalry.6 As such, he serves as a sign in Peirce’s sense of the term, representing his country,7 whose interpretants register him as the best the English kingdom has to offer. Treated in chronicles and in one of the fi rst known biographies celebrating an English leader (that written by the Chandos Herald), the Black Prince did quickly become an emblem, one of those Fürstenspiegel-like exempla whose value to the literary system of governance lies in its affi rmation of traditional values. As argued below, he became this emblem by acting out the dysordynance, to use Chaucer’s term, inherent in chivalry. Primed to become this complex sign from the very moment he appeared on the stage of English leadership, Prince Edward in effect redefined the code by which standards of English chivalry and domination were to be measured.8 Thus, as reported by Froissart, during the Battle of Crécy (1346), during which the English archers demonstrated their military expertise, there came a point when the very young Prince was dangerously beleaguered by the enemy, and a messenger was sent to the King for reinforcements. The King instructed the messenger that he should not return until the Prince was so badly beaten that he could do no more—he was to earn his spurs that day (vol. 3, §511, pp. 19–20, ll. 23–40). The Black Prince did earn his spurs at Crécy, along with much praise, but more importantly here, King Edward is depicted as setting the stage for Prince Edward to become the future King, as allowing for the creation of a new iconic myth, not unlike how in signifying Trier, St. Simeon eventually stood for more than his individual virtue to become an emblem for a new type of sanctity. Indeed, the Prince’s dreamlike version of the vir bonus need not even convince his subjects; rather, by means of Arthurian prowess and chivalry, he, and he alone, must make subjects of his enemies. In this chapter, I hope to demonstrate how the Prince was aware of, and involved in, the metaliterary staging of chivalric Arthurian ideals, in part to garner

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the support of those who helped authorize his claim to be one of King Arthur’s “descendants,” a claim that had been part of the royal house’s public relations repertoire since at least Edward I, who used the Arthurian legend poetically (in the Jakobsonian sense), as Juliet Vale argues, “to [enter] into contemporary enthusiasm for Arthurian England and at the same time [manipulate] this interest and [bind] it to the fabric of local legend.”9 Consequently, unlike René’s attempt to gain understanding and approbation from his audiences by staging himself as royal and reminding readers of the complexities involved in any decision-making process, even when given good advice, and without Chaucer’s questioning of the value of pursuing fame in order to enact conventional roles in narrow and crowded performance spaces, Edward the Black Prince fully occupies the hyperspace of epic performance texts, seemingly secure in the knowledge that fame was his. In other words, he demonstrates no concern with his own individual fame as he demands a larger stage on which to enact his interpretation of the Arthurian story. To examine the chivalric, Arthurian, fame-endowed Prince, I rely heavily on the Chandos Herald’s La vie as a close contemporary source,10 not for its reliability, but as a representative element of the literary system of governance in which the young Edward displayed his chivalric authority. First, however, I will spend some time describing his context, particularly his father’s investment in Arthurian conventions that set the stage for his son’s performance. More so than René, then, Edward of Woodstock understood that to occupy the epic register (as opposed to communicating from it), a leader must move away from the addresser-addressee axis; it is a third-person perspective that must be established and maintained. While René was clearly aware of how to communicate in epic mode, he nonetheless emphasized the addresser-addressee axis of communication, to stress the courtly and ethical rather than the martial and dynastic, apparently in the hope that readers might take the cue that a close reading of the surface can prove more complex than it at fi rst seems. In occupying the epic register, Prince Edward also marginalizes the metaliterary questions Chaucer poses (also along the addresser-addressee axis), questions grounded in the metalingual probing of what fame means. As if learning from Chaucer’s narrator, who contests the importance and significance of glory, since, as seems evident from Fame’s arbitrary judgments, ethos does not necessarily mesh with reputation, the Black Prince similarly does not pursue Fame. Unlike Chaucer’s narrator, however, he does not walk away from the code; he redefi nes it. In “being” the future Arthur, rather than modulating Arthurian elements as seen in René, and in making dissonance teleologically serve his ends rather than dwelling in it as in Chaucer, Edward performs fully in all registers of communication. Thus, while redefi ning the code, he establishes the epic framework informing his efforts, he selects and combines various iterations of the hero in poetic mode, and he phatically stages what it means to be the future king. He has at least one advantage not wholly belonging to René and Chaucer that allows him the opportunity to perform so completely: fame is actually his “play”-ground—its stage is readymade for him as the illustrious oldest son of communication-savvy King Edward III.11 Indeed, as Antonia Gransden demonstrates, he had good press in a period of patriotic fervor.12 The arc of the Black Prince’s life nonetheless traces an adverse trajectory.

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Edward, the Prince of Wales Prince Edward was born in Woodstock to King Edward III and Queen Philippa of Hainault as their eldest son on June 15, 1330, and he died on June 8, 1376, in Westminster. In October 1361, he married his cousin, Joan, the “Fair Maid of Kent,” after she was divorced and widowed, once each, and the couple had two sons, Edward, who died at Bordeaux at the age of six, and Richard, who became King Richard II in 1377. As the embodiment of chivalry, Prince Edward is best known for his military abilities.13 His father knighted him when they landed in France for a campaign that was to last from 1346 to 1347, and he won his spurs (and signature ostrich feathers) during that campaign at the just mentioned Battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346, when he was sixteen.14 Not much later, the Prince became one of the original Knights of the Garter, the English Order founded probably in 1348.15 Prince Edward successfully led his next major battle on September 19, 1356, near Poitiers, the battle for which he is most well known, since as a result of it, King Jean II of France was captured, and for a brief, illustrious moment, King Edward III’s hopes for reclaiming territories in France and the French throne seemed within grasp.16 Aquitaine did indeed revert to the English crown in 1360, but negotiations for the French King’s ransom were troubled and not, in the end, entirely satisfactory.17 Not long after, in July 1362, Edward became Prince d’Aquitaine, and he left England in 1363, with Joan, to govern his principality.18 Convinced to help King Pedro of Castile regain his throne against the usurper Enrique of Trastamara (the Spanish king’s bastard half-brother, who was to become Enrique II of Castile and ancestor of Alphonse V, René’s nemesis), the Black Prince won the battle of Nájera on April 3, 1367, which, however, took a debilitating toll on both his health and fortune. Probably aware of Edward’s enervating illness, the new French King, Charles V, commanded the Prince in May 1369, to appear before the parlement in Paris in order to respond to complaints from his subjects, thereby trying to reassert French control of Aquitaine.19 The Black Prince retorted with the promise of armed resistance; instead, unrest and battles in his principality continued to destabilize the governance of his territories, which he unsuccessfully tried to contain, as witnessed in the uncontrolled and merciless sacking of Limoges in October 1370,20 destruction that was carried out in part by mercenaries whom Edward had engaged and could not compensate.21 Froissart sums up the cruelty displayed at Limoges after having informed readers that due to his poor health the Prince had to be carried on a litter: “y faisoient le plus grant violense du monde car nuls n’estoit pris à merchy” [vol. 4, § 809, p. 112, ll. 47–48: they committed the greatest violence of the world there, because nobody was moved by mercy]. Upon returning to England in October 1372, the Prince of Wales formally surrendered his principality to Edward III. Not much is known about his three-and-a-half years in England before he died. He was buried, according to his wish, in Canterbury’s cathedral. Virtually all these “data points” are covered in the Chandos Herald’s account of the Black Prince’s life, a biography framed in ostensibly unrelenting praise for Edward, his men, and all those devoted to chivalry. Interestingly, however, the Herald chooses to emphasize the Spanish campaign over the military movements culminating in the glorious battle of Poitiers, a structural emphasis that I will

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explore below as belonging to the Herald’s Arthurian structuring of the Prince’s biography.22 While I will focus on the structure, other elements contribute to the Arthurian coloring of the biography as well. In the beginning, for example, the narrator lauds the Prince as the greatest leader since the days of Clarus,23 Julius Caesar, or Arthur (51–52). Toward the end, he cites the same trio as an excuse to abbreviate his story, since otherwise, like their stories, his poem would continue for far too long (4099–4100). In between these two allusions, readers learn that the Black Prince’s father, King Edward III, had power such as no regent has claimed since Arthur (1837–1841).24 Although infrequent, formulaic, and only once specifically about the Prince, these allusions signal the ground that informs the Chandos Herald’s entire narrative as well as intimating the epic emphasis in his portrait, epic in the Jakobsonian sense, thereby generating a referential third-person concern with context. Complementing these straightforward allusions to Arthur, the Chandos Herald also enhances the Prince’s stature by portraying those around him as absolutely devoted. Thus, straight out of a medieval romance situated in Arthur’s court, it seems, Edward married for love, and, as conveyed by the Chandos Herald, the couple remained the most devoted of lovers. Although in actual life the union seemed not to have pleased his parents,25 the Herald conveys nothing but praise for Edward’s divorced and widowed cousin. Indeed, heightening the sense of her perfection by keeping her portrait to the bare minimum, he never even names her and only briefly notes the event of their marriage (1585–1589), therewith contributing to the impression that she is an ideal rather than a historical figure. When Joan briefly appears later in the narrative, the Chandos Herald deepens her Arthurian romance texturing.26 Thus, when the Prince announces that he will leave for the Spanish expedition, the Herald focuses on Joan’s grief, as she ironically curses the goddess of love for her husband’s singular prowess, which, because much needed, removes him from her:27 Et la tres amiers dolours Eust a coer la noble princesse, Et la regretoit la dieuesse D’amours, qi l’avoit assenée A si tres haute maiesté, Car elle avoit le plus puissant Prince de ceo siecle vivant. [2050–2056: And the most bitter sorrow the noble princess had in her heart and she blamed the goddess of love, who had raised her to such high majesty, for she had the bravest Prince living in this age.]

By portraying Joan in this manner, the Chandos Herald is able to enhance Edward’s character not through the Prince’s own words or ruminations, but, as Trevisa would probably have applauded, through another’s absolute, courtly devotion. Importantly here, the Arthurian ground, structure, and coloring generated by the Chandos Herald are similarly promoted by the Prince’s father, whose own dynastic ratio atque oratio seems to have enthused his English subjects.

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King Edward III’s Arthurian Black Prince In spite of some of his actions, such as the sacking of Limoges, and his long sickness that left him frail and led to his surrendering of Aquitaine, Edward the Black Prince for the most part has retained good fame.28 As with René or Geffrey, for Edward, Fame was not the swift goddess encountered in Vergil or Ovid. Perhaps more so than with either René or Geoffrey, however, fame belonged to Edward, not because he inherited it, but because he had all the resources necessary and his father’s directorial energy to provide the scaffolding for his highly visible role. Along with his father he established his fame in part by recognizing audiences’ proclivities for spectacles and tales of military glory, thereby winning the battle, so to speak, for the “objective correlative,” which T. S. Eliot defines thus: “ . . . a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of [a] particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”29 By understanding what touchstones could move and stimulate their subjects, King Edward and his son participated in the literary system of governance as emblems of King Arthur’s legacy for England. Poetically groomed for becoming yet another iteration of the future king, the rex futurus of Arthurian legend, the Prince’s life must have indeed seemed something like a stage production to him. The theatrical certainly seemed to be one of the languages the royal family mastered, as, for example, when King Edward III decided to reestablish Arthur’s Round Table.30 As Jean le Bel reports, Edward III returned from siege warfare in Bretagne and Normandy, resulting in the decapitation of many enemies, but he also decided to reward those who were loyal to him. Invoking Arthur, Jean le Bel describes Edward’s bringing together of the knights of his realm for a “command performance”:31 Quant il fut retourné en Angleterre, de gentillesse de coeur il s’avisa qu’il feroit refaire et rediffier le chastel de Windesore, que le roy Artus avoit fait faire, et où fut establye premierement la Table Ronde à l’occasion des proeux chevaliers qui estoient adoncq, et qu’il feroit et establiroit une pareille à celle Table Ronde pour plus essauchier l’onnour de ses chevaliers, qui si bien l’avoient servi qu’il les tenoit pour proeux, et tant que on ne trouvast les semblablez en quelque royaume, et luy sembloit qu’il ne les pouoit trop honnourer, tant les amoit. Si fist crier par tout son royaume feste generale et court plainiere pour ordonner celle Table Ronde, et manda par tous pays dames et demoiselles, chevaliers et escuiers, et que chascun, sans point d’excusation, y venist pour faire celle grande feste à Windesore, à Penthecouste l’an de grace mil CCCXLIIII. [Chapter 64, pp. 26–27: When he returned to England, out of the nobility of his heart, he thought that he would remake and rebuild Windsor castle, which King Arthur had created, and where for the first time the Round Table was founded for the opportunity of the brave knights who were there then, and he would make and establish an equal to this Round Table so that the honor of his knights would be more greatly known, those knights who had so well served him that he held them for so valiant that one could not find their like in any kingdom, and it seemed to him that he could not honor them enough, so much he loved them. So he had proclaimed throughout his kingdom a general feast and convened a court to ordain this Round Table and commanded that throughout the country, ladies and maidens, knights and

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squires, that each one, without excusing any, come there in order to celebrate the great feast at Windsor, at Pentecost in the year of our Lord 1344.]

Edward III’s drawing on the legends surrounding King Arthur to present his elite court thus mimicked his own grandfather’s use of Arthurian lore to establish authority; they drew on conventional markers to communicate the importance of their mission. As J. W. Sherborne puts it, “If contemporaries drew upon the unforgettable twelfth-century fantasies of Geoff rey of Monmouth and compared their king with that greatest of all British soldiers, King Arthur, they were speaking Edward III’s own language . . . ”32 In addition to staging Arthur’s glory, King Edward’s energetic and wardefi ned reign did in fact prove notable (and, consequently, famous), as many historians have described it, partly because the King had decisively turned around the disadvantages that he had inherited. “Few kings of England,” Maurice Keen argues, “ever set out on their reigns with more intractable problems facing them than Edward III did. His father had reigned for twenty years, and for those twenty years nothing had been stable in English politics . . . the reign had been marked by disasters abroad as well as at home.”33 Consistently involved in defi ning borders and seigniorial relationships against the French and Scottish, which “assumed importance within the broad framework of European diplomacy” that included the papacy, 34 Edward III was not only able to achieve more than his father, he, 35 . . . revealed himself as a capable military leader, and, in the aftermath of victory, a generous one . . . It was a new tone to which Edward himself sought to give conscious expression, through the scenes and symbolism that chivalrous ritual afforded . . . [and he] was clearly aware, very early, of the importance of making the most of success on the instant, in ways that would fix its memory gratefully in men’s minds.

In other words, King Edward excelled in the two spheres of action for which King Arthur was known—the battlefield and the court as well as in ensuring that “objective correlatives” were staged to convey the glory of his court. Of course, as seen with René d’Anjou, no single leader who reigned over such a long period of time, fi fty years from 1327 to 1377, was likely to have only successes or to act only wisely. As W. M. Ormrod cautions, Edward “was prepared to accept short-term compromises and to ignore the wider implications of his actions” and ultimately damaged the monarchy.36 Nonetheless, although he had his ups and downs, King Edward demonstrated clear vision, aided by his mastery of court politics, foreign policy, diplomatic maneuvering, fi nancial wizardry, military strategy, ability to rally others, and public relations savvy, all this enabling him to articulate iconically mythic common ground in order to launch battle after battle in spite of the heavy fi nancial burden placed on his kingdom. Edward III’s management of public relations is his most relevant trait for this study, and like his grandfather before him, he was highly aware of the importance of public opinion. Keen writes, “Edward deliberately sought to associate his people with his war policies, and his propaganda was both imaginative and effective. His war was given maximum publicity.”37 In doing so, Edward frequently depicted

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God as showing favor on the English.38 But he also relied on the more prosaic machinery of communication, as exemplified by his failed attempt to persuade public opinion regarding his defeat in a military campaign in France, a defeat for which he put the blame on Archbishop Stratford’s lackluster attempts to raise taxes at home. Thus, upon his unheralded return to England from the continent in 1340, he had a broadsheet published accusing the Archbishop of negligence. As it turns out, the Archbishop was more successful than Edward when he responded in kind; nonetheless, the example is significant because it demonstrates that although King Edward misjudged the people (as well as the Archbishop), he knew, as Fürstenspiegel endorse, he must appeal to them.39 Fortunately for the Prince, the King was probably more effective than not at gaining public approbation. Thus, in 1343, Edward III commemorated his victory in the naval battle of Sluys by having five golden models of ships sent to the principal pilgrimage centers in England and gold coins put into circulation that bore an image of himself aboard a war ship.40 These actions certainly had the effect of iconically marking the Battle of Sluys as a notable victory. Likewise, to weaken the Valois rule in France, in June 1344, Edward argued before Parliament that Philip VI’s orders to execute Breton lords served as a clear index of their militant intentions to attack England. This effort was highly successful, as it led to the approval of liberal funding against the likelihood of a reemergent war. Finding the principle of vilifying the enemy (reminiscent of today’s politics) as well as the medium of the letter extremely effective, in 1346 he even composed a letter claiming that Philip VI aimed to destroy the English language. In the same year, he made use of a letter apparently written years prior that conveyed French plans to attack England—this rallying cry was often repeated in times to come to create fear and support for the King’s war efforts.41 As a fi nal example, Edward III also celebrated his son’s victory at Poitiers with a letter that was distributed to the Archbishop of York, English nobles, and various Bishops throughout England, repeatedly pointing out that their success was granted, “per Dei gratiam” [by the grace of God] and “de Coelo justitia,” [ justice from heaven] while concomitantly expressing joy in the success of his son.42 Edward III’s penchant for managing public relations seems to have formed a significant part of the literary system of governance in fourteenth-century England, which may be characterized as lurching its way into defi ning what the English community, if not the English nation, comprised.43 Part of the influence of his defi ning process may be seen in Prince Edward’s own epistolary communications, as exemplified by his use of the medium to send news back to England of his victories. Not only did he write home about Nájera, as will be treated below, the Black Prince also sent letters back to England celebrating the victory against the vastly superior French forces at the battle of Poitiers, along with visual emblems of the victory, the tunic and bascinet of the French king.44 Public relations, of course, are not enough to defi ne what a kingdom is. Importantly, subjects frequently position their leaders as standing for their kingdom, thereby in the process also defi ning their own loyalties. Not unlike Chaucer’s Fame and her suppliants, subjects tend to adhere to but also to support a regent. As a consequence, as mentioned above, Fürstenspiegel declare that a kingdom’s leader may be measured by his or her faithful supporters, an axiom that

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Edward III seems to have taken to heart. Aware, for example, that a knight’s standing required wealth, preferably in land, along with a summons to Parliament as put forth in the Modus tenendi parliamentum [The Manner of Holding Parliament], Edward recognized the needs and was generous to those loyal to him.45 In doing so, he redefi ned generosity as he promoted “new men” to a higher status in a more focused manner and with a greater scope than ever before. He thereby established his kingdom as recommended by Boccaccio, through the trace narrative defi ning nobility according to the quality of loyalty rather than the accident of birth. James Bothwell writes:46 . . . due to internal changes—most notably the declining profits of feudalism and the shifting fiscal base of the royal administration, the rise of an increasingly hereditary parliamentary peerage and the developing power of parliament as a whole, the growth in the use of various legal tenures and devices, and the rise of the privy and secret seals—and external ones—especially the development of increasingly long and expensive campaigns against the Scots and French—the patronage ‘environment’ in which fourteenth century kings operated had changed markedly from that of less than a century before. Indeed, a conjunction of these changes, and an increased need to justify promotions and patronage to the polity as a whole, had given Edward III more incentive than his forbearers to think out the way he both packaged and distributed his royal largesse.

Strategically distributing roughly even numbers of grants, but also bestowing substantial favors on those who could help him in time of need, King Edward openly conveyed the reasons for promoting his “new men,” revealing his desire to reward accountability. Linked to these efforts of supporting and encouraging loyalty, Edward also founded the kingdom-building Order of the Garter.47 Like the exempla of the Fürstenspiegel, like the chronicles relating a king’s deeds, like the life and miracles of St. Simeon, like René’s Order of the Crescent, the founding of the Order of the Garter too was a clarion call to glory, ready to be memorialized and emblematized as that which allowed England to stand for chivalry. Concomitantly, the King’s founding of the Order (linked with the college of St. George at Windsor) served to rally support for Edward’s claim to the title of King of France, as Juliet Vale meticulously demonstrates, support evidenced in part by the King’s admitting members who had fought well together in tournaments and on the battlefield.48 Vale summarizes,49 His simultaneous political achievement was two-fold: to provide a perpetual memorial to the justification of his own kingly claims; and also to create a prestigious chivalric élite comprising representatives of every section of society that could aspire to inclusion—established noble families and allies abroad, as well as members of his own household and family—who were characterised first and foremost by loyalty to the order’s head.

Given these proclivities and the King’s modus operandi, it actually must have seemed pretty much like a foregone conclusion that the life of the Black Prince would take on Arthurian coloring. Conditions were ideal for such a “narrative.” By the fourteenth century, Arthur’s story had transformed and proliferated into

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multiple languages and forms, both prose and verse, as well as into visual narratives such as tapestries.50 The popularity of the Arthurian legend thus allowed it to be a superbly resonant nexus of ideals for the royalty to promote English authority, as witnessed by the King’s plan to re-create the magnetic grandeur of Arthur’s Camelot, including a more imposing Windsor castle and an attempt to reconstruct the Round Table.51 Indeed, even though a number of his projects fizzled over time, Edward III’s “workshop” made use of the five tightly interrelated Fürstenspiegel elements introduced in chapter 1: he generated and encouraged presentations of heroic deeds graced with religious favor in Arthurian mode that aimed to win public approbation.

Houmout and Ich Dene: The Arthurian Fault Line King Edward had chosen an easily recognizable narrative with which to work, the Arthurian exemplum extolling the best of all kings. The central problem in conveying the association was not so much controlling the interpretation—a topic of consideration for both René and Chaucer’s narrator—it was that Arthurian ideas of chivalry were at times ill-suited to both wartime and political situations.52 Indeed, although King Edward III furthered association with Camelot, he was not blind to the problems created in doing so. As noted above, the King’s new cadre of nobles was not favored because of birth or inheritance; indeed, Bothwell reports that of the 243 who had received individual summonses to Parliament during Edward’s reign (1330–1377), fifty-nine had no previous writ, and neither did their fathers or grandfathers. For them to thrive, however, Edward had to provide opportunities. In response to this need, Edward was apparently the fi rst English king to distribute lands and other incentives as patronage, even though it strapped his resources to do so, especially since there was no guarantee that his “investment” would prove worthwhile.53 In addition to his attempts to create a royalist base, the King understood that fame was a necessary component of Arthurian success, and to meet the need, he proved adept at promoting his men. “Edward,” Bothwell writes,54 made sure that his subjects realized the worth of his new men . . . [the] broad disbursement [of patronage], together with the continuance of a war which, after the early 1340s, brought glory to the nation and profit to the participants, all helped Edward to overcome any opposition which his patronage programme might otherwise have provoked.

Given his investment (on many levels) in the Arthurian mythos, it is not too difficult to understand how Arthurian chivalry came to defi ne the ground against which the Black Prince developed his own Arthurian signature, literally as well as figuratively. The Prince’s chivalric signature captured the tensions inherent in Arthurian lore. For the Prince’s audiences, Arthur was associated with superlative military successes, as conveyed by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the courtly knights and ladies he could attract to his dominion, as epitomized in Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances, which generated other courtly romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight;

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the brilliant excellence, doomed to extinction, resulting from these two strains; and the promise captured in the idea of the rex quondam rexque futurus (once and future King).55 For the Edwards, dysordynaunce arose when the royal family attempted, in a sense, to reestablish Camelot on the battlefield as well as in the court. It seems, that is, that both war and peace settings could provide opportunities to demonstrate excellence and virtue only as long as the spheres were kept more or less separate. As stages for performing excellence, in other words, martial and courtly settings could also exacerbate partly hidden fault lines. Without the loyalty ideally epitomized on the battlefield, for example, a fault-line could crack open a kingdom, as evidenced by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s depiction of Mordred’s fatal treachery plotted back home in peacetime affluence. Likewise, performing courtly conduct toward an enemy in armed situations could just as badly deepen a fault-line, as seen in Chrétien’s depiction of Lancelot in Le chevalier de la charette [The Knight of the Cart], who allowed himself to be imprisoned to uphold a vow, but in so doing, he left Camelot without its best knight. Of specific interest here, the Black Prince seems to have recognized that Arthurian excellence demanded iconically mythic performance on the often confl icting stages of the battlefield and the court, as becomes clear especially at the beginning and end of his military career. At the beginning of his career, for example, the Battle of Crécy served not only as the venue through which the young Prince of Wales earned his spurs and ostrich feathers, or “the foundation for his military and chivalric reputation,” as David Green puts it.56 He also defi ned himself from about this time on through two mottos, one prepared for war, Houmout [courage], and the other, for peace, Ich Dene [I serve]. That these mottos were important to Edward is evidenced by the fact that he used them to authenticate his signature.57 Linked as they are, the mottos nonetheless express a variety of tensions; in addition to linking the polar opposites of war and peace, they also embody a less overt set of tensions between inner value and outward demeanor. For example, Houmout is the inner quality that allows for the battlefield heroism that can lead to a glorious death, but it can also prove less than ideal in outward, courtly situations that may require diplomacy rather than assertion. Likewise, the outward, courtly recognition of service, regardless of rank, implied in Ich Dene may articulate the laudable ideal that we are all equal before God, but absorbing the attitude inwardly can lead to tragedy on the battlefield. The quasi-platonic (and neoplatonic) tensions that emerge from coupling these two mottos echo other tensions well-known to the late medieval literary system, tensions generated when mortals are confronted with the prospect of unimaginable eternity, leading some to seek, as Geoffroi Charny illustrates, the chivalric rituals and symbols that provide a comprehensible framework; tensions that are also captured in the exhortation to act in memento mori while perhaps engaged in full enjoyment of transitory pleasures, spurring some to pursue fame; and tensions that emerge when ideals forged from belief in something other than the visible collide against concrete realities. Such tensions are developed by the Chandos Herald in his biography of the Prince. In the Chandos Herald’s narrative, importantly, the two mottos essentially reformulate Arthur’s rationale for the Round Table; that is, they paraphrase the idea of Arthur’s reigning as primus inter pares, fi rst among equals. Even the fi rst should serve, as King Edward demonstrated when graciously serving his defeated

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enemies at the banquet following the successful siege of Calais. 58 Perhaps, his father’s courteousness is what the Prince of Wales (or the Chandos Herald) had in mind in the aftermath of the Battle of Poitiers, when he too served his defeated opponent. Although King Jean II was captured at Poitiers, that is, the Black Prince received the French King not as a fallen enemy, but as his superior. When Edward tried to serve Jean by helping him remove his armor, the French regent protested that the Prince should not render him this service, since he proved to be the worthier warrior. According to the Chandos Herald, the Prince responded: . . . “Sire douls, Dieux l’ad fait et noun mie nous. Si lui ent devons remercier Et de bon coer vers lui prier Q’il nous voille ottroier sa glorie Et perdoner ceste victoire.” [1427–1432: . . . “Sweet sir, God did this, not we. So we must thank him and with good heart pray to him that he will grant us his glory and pardon this victory.”]

Courtly and Arthurian, the Black Prince not only serves the French King in this vignette, he also gives thanks to God, and in doing so, he achieves while slightly transforming the paradox of Arthur’s motto by shifting perspectives.59 Mortals, he implies, may construct hierarchies, but a leader can aspire to no more than serving primus inter pares, since God is the only true leader.60 The portrait of Prince Edward that emerges here is one that meshes well with Boccaccio’s rendering of the ideals held by Arthur, cited in chapter 2, as suggested in the statutes the legendary King adopted: . . . arma non ponere, monstruosa exquirere, ius debilium vocatos totis viribus defensare, violare neminem, se invicem non laedere, pro salute amicorum pugnare. Pro patria vitam exponere. Sibi propter honorem nil quaerere. Fides nullam ob causam infringere. Religionem diligentissime colere. Hospitalitatem quibuscumque, grauis, per facultatibus exhibere. [Book 8, p. 205: . . . not to lay down arms; to seek the marvelous; to uphold the law for the weak, when summoned, with all one’s strength; to dishonor no one; not to harm each other; to fight for the safety of friends. To give one’s life for one’s country. To seek nothing for the sake of one’s own honor. To break faith for no reason. To cultivate religion most diligently. To furnish hospitality to anyone, according to one’s resources.]

Bridling military and courtly energy to serve the greater community, the Black Prince is Edward III’s best emblem for England. The Prince’s victory witnessed England at a high point. After the battle of Poitiers, with the French King in English hands, and France torn by warfare, if not official war, the glory that was celebrated spilled over into economic benefits for Edward’s kingdom. Keen writes, “[King] Edward had challenged the proudest kingdom in Europe and humbled her rulers in war. He had made himself sovereign lord in the lands in France where his father and his grandfather had been vassals, and in lands where they had never been lords at all.”61

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At the time the Chandos Herald was writing, however, England was pretty clearly on a downward spiral. Writing after the Prince’s death and during the early years of King Richard II’s reign, as described in the last chapter, bleak conditions were emerging as troubling patterns in England’s social fabric. Perhaps the Black Prince’s biography was undertaken to help rally nobles to complete both Edwards’ mission to establish English rule over France. If so, the Chandos Herald has left a dysordynaunt document, for even though he conveys the Prince of Wales’ chivalric excellence with Fame’s trumpet blasts of “Clere Laude” [Bright Praise], to use another of Chaucer’s phrases, the problem he must face is how to portray the last part of the Prince’s life. Rather than dilating the Battle of Poitiers and telescoping the Spanish campaign, as might be expected, the Herald dwells on the battle of Nájera.62 Essentially, in doing so, the Chandos Herald suggests that in performing courtly peacetime principles on the stage of war, the Black Prince allowed power to devolve to another. Ironically, such a development is actually inherent to the principle of serving, Ich Dene, which places others at center stage.63

Staging Ich Dene: Kings and the Prince On the surface, it seems as if the Black Prince performs Ich Dene to further chivalric ideals. In the Chandos Herald’s narrative, however, Prince Edward’s adherence to this motto is further associated with dysordynauce that serves to point to chivalry’s complexities, complexities that the Prince eventually masters to dominate a larger stage than that of a prince. By contrasting Edward with the Spanish King and comparing him with the French King, the Chandos Herald suggests that the Prince’s service is not only chivalric, it is dynastic. In marginalizing and also glossing over King Pedro of Spain’s disreputable actions, the Chandos Herald’s narrator nonetheless reveals that the monarch was forced to leave Spain because of the great disloyalty among those who should have served him well, before offering a maxim that could have been lifted directly from a Fürstenspiegel: Si qe homme doit dire, a voir counter, Ne doit estre sires clamés Qui de ses hommes n’est amez. [1758–1760: So that one must say, to tell the truth, that one should not be called a lord who is not loved by his men.]

As is also true in these lines, the last half of La vie implicitly contrasts the King of Spain with Prince Edward, whose men, we have clearly learned by this point, evince strong loyalty and admiration for their leader. The contrast is perhaps most evident after the battle is won, when a fierce King Pedro reappears with a desire for deadly revenge and is turned from his full intent by the courtly Prince d’Aquitaine. In addition to not possessing the loyalty of his men that Prince Edward enjoys, Pedro seems temperamentally uneven, as when they embark upon the Spanish venture, and he is described in exile as, “ . . . plein de dolorouse amer;/Car cils lui avoient failli/Qui li devoient estre amy” [1826–1828: . . . full of heavy bitterness, because they had failed him who should have been his friends]. More disturbingly,

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in the Herald’s account, the Spanish King is markedly absent from the battlefield on which his own interest is being contested. In contrast, the Black Prince dominates the stage as he attempts to negotiate with Enrique of Trastamara, ensures that their fighting forces are replete with the best soldiers, and leads his men to victory. The contrasts between the two are not as sharp, of course, as between either of them and Enrique of Trastamara. Indeed, even though Edward’s support of Pedro left the Prince of Wales unable to recompense his men, Pedro is not depicted as a villain. In some sense, the Chandos Herald “must” portray Pedro in a positive light, because Prince Edward supported him. However, the Herald could have expunged any negative shading at all, as he does with his portrait of Joan, and as Chaucer’s Monk does in his Fürstenspiegel version of Pedro’s life. Instead, the King of Castile’s portrayed weaknesses emphasize all the more that the Black Prince was serving an Arthurian ideal as the Chandos Herald portrays it, not this particular regent and, as the ending suggests, risked life and possessions to uphold justice, a key Fürstenspiegel trait of a good king, as Trevisa’s treatise, cited above, makes abundantly clear. Occupying more than half of the Chandos Herald’s narrative, then, Prince Edward’s willingness to fight in Spain defi nes Edward of Woodstock as a truly epic champion of justice, a leader believing in the value of Ich Dene.64 In this respect, the Chandos Herald echoes Geoff roi de Charny’s understanding of how the chivalric should face their challenges. Charny writes: Et la ou li chaitis ont grant envie de vivre et grant paour de mourir, c’est tout au contraire des bons; car aus bons ne chaut il de leur vie ne de mourir, mais que leur vie soit bonne a mourir honorablement. Et bien y pert es estranges et perileuses aventures que il querent. . . . que Dieux fait belle grace a ceulz a qui leur vie est tele que le morir est honnorable . . . [Kennedy’s translation, 22. 41–49, p. 126–129: And while the cowards have a great desire to live and a great fear of dying, it is quite the contrary for the men of worth who do not mind whether they live or die, provided that their life be good enough for them to die with honor. And this is evident in the strange and perilous adventures which they seek . . . for God is gracious toward those who find their life of such quality that death is honorable . . .]

Of course, in actuality, political considerations as well as promised compensation served as additional motivating factors for the Black Prince.65 In this respect, since the Chandos Herald’s primary audience would probably have known how the Prince of Wales was deceived,66 the suppression of more explicitly negative comments regarding Pedro’s treachery or the Prince’s judgment may have seemed at best a poorly executed spin to some. Indeed, not being able to recompense his men due to Pedro’s reneging on his agreement, the Black Prince taxed Aquitaine more severely, contributing to the disaffection he was to experience and providing grounds for the French king to manipulate conditions and stir unrest among Edward’s subjects.67 In other words, what could have been a standard Fürstenspiegel exercise filling glorious content into the narrative framework of a good hero betrayed becomes something equivocal through the Herald’s portrait, intimating trace narratives that qualify the ostensible deference paid to the Black Prince’s decisions. Charlemagne, after all, recognized his error and strove

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to correct it. Importantly for this study, the tensions the Herald decides to emphasize by focusing on the single episode in the Black Prince’s life that unequivocally left him broken on fortune’s wheel recreates the tensions inherent in the coupling of the Prince’s two mottos. Thus, with all the Chandos Herald’s penchant for glorifying the Prince of Wales, every now and then, a glimpse emerges that serves to shade the otherwise two-dimensional portrait. This occurs, for example, when the narrator reports that the Prince d’Aquitaine wrote to Enrique of Trastamara to dissuade the usurper from engaging in battle:68 “Car vous deveroiez bien sentir En vostre coer qe ceo n’est pas droitz Q’un bastard deust estre rois. Par un droit heir desheriter Nulle homme ne se doit accorder Qe soit de loial mariage. D’un autre point vous faceons sage: Qe, pur ceo qe homme vous prise tant Et qe homme vous tient pur si vaillant, Si accorder vous ambedeux purroie, Moult voluntiers m’en peyneroie Et ferroi tant de ma part Q’en Castille averez grant part.” [2928–2940: “For you should well feel in your heart that it is not right for a bastard to be king. No man should agree to disinherit a legal heir, who is born of lawful marriage. We make known to you another point: because people hold you so highly and deem you are so brave, both I could acknowledge, I would very willingly take pains on my part to see that you would have a large share in Castile.”]

Although Edward is presented in many places as straightforwardly faithful to the principles of chivalry and the Prince does acknowledge Enrique’s reputation in this letter, England’s heir apparent nonetheless uses here a form of bribery—a large share in Castile—to encourage Enrique to settle. If a bastard has no claim to a kingdom, then, one might argue, he should not be offered any, let alone a large part, of it. That is, the principle of justice or noble lineage does not assert priority; rather, these lines seem to tug at the principle of Ich Dene, a principle that serves to collapse hierarchy. In allowing these tensions to surface, interestingly, the biography’s letter moreover contrasts with the emphasis on noble blood that is found in the Prince’s actual letter to Joan recounting the Battle of Nájera. Except for the last seventy-five words, I cite the letter in its entirety here and italicize “bastard” to underscore the frequency of its use.69 Trescher et tresentier coer, bien ame compaigne. Nous vous saluoms de tut nostre coer, desiraunt etc. Et treschere compaigne, quant as noveles, voilliez sauoir auxint qe auint le secounde iour daprille esteioms logiez sur les chaumps pres de Naverres, et illoesqes auoms nouelles qe le Bastard de Spaigne oue tut son host estoit logie a dieux lieux de nous sur la Ryuere de Nazare. Et lendemayn, cest assauoir bien matyn, nous nous deslogeamez pur aler deuer luy et y enuoiasmes nos scouerours devaunt pur sauoir lestat du dit Bastard, les queux nous reporterount qil auoit pris

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sa place et armez ses batailles en un bel lieu pur nous attendre, et tantost nous nous mesme en ordinaunce de luy combatre, esteiant taunt par la volunte et grace de Dieux qe le dit Bastard et touz les sens furent desconfitz, regracez soit nostre Seignur, et en furent mortz entre cynk ou sys mille des combatauntz et y furent tut pleyn des prisoners des queux nous ne sauoms mye les nouns a present, mes entre aultres qi estoieunt pris Done Sencho, frere de dit Bastard, le Counte de Denee, monsire Bertram Claykin, le marchal Doudenham, monsire Johan Remery, monsir Johan (?) de Neuille, le (Counte) Craundon, le Beek de Villains, S(eignur) Charibhel, le Mestre Seynt Jame, et plusours chastelains qe nous ne sauoms nomer iesqes a dieux mille prisoners des (gens) destat, et le Bastard mesmes nous ne sauoms quant a present sil estoit pris mort ou fuy. Et apres le dit iourne nous nous logeamez a soir en logges de dit Bastard, et en ses tentes mesmes ou nous esteioms mieulz esez qe nous ne fuissoms de qatre iours ou cynk devaunt, et y demorasmes lendemayn tut le iour. [Prince 418: Dearest and truest heart, my beloved companion. We salute you from our whole heart, with desire, etc. And dearest companion, as for the news, you will want to know that on the second day of April, we were camped on the fields near Naverete, and there we had news of the Bastard of Spain who had his army camped two leagues from us at the river of Nájera. And on the next day, this well known morning, we broke camp to advance towards him, and there we sent our scouts ahead to know the state of said Bastard; they reported to us that he had taken his place and prepared his army in a good position to wait for us, and so we put ourselves in order quickly to combat him; it was, by the will and grace of God the said Bastard and all his men were defeated, thanks again be to our Lord, and there were dead, between five and six thousand combatants and there were very many prisoners of whom we do not know their names at present, but among others who were taken were Don Sancho, brother of said Bastard, the Count of Denia, Sir Bertrand du Guesclin, the Marshal of Audrehem, Don Juan Ramirez, Sir John (?) de Neville, the (Count) of Craundon, Lebegue de Villaines, S(ir) Carriollo, the Master of Saint John, and many castellans; we do not know how to name up to 2,000 prisoners of estate, and as to the Bastard himself we do not know whether at present he was taken, dead, or has f led. And after the said day we lodged in the evening in the lodgings of said Bastard, in his own tents. and we were more comfortable than we had been for four or five days prior, and there we stayed the next day all day.]

In contrast to the Chandos Herald’s portrait, then, the Black Prince in this letter does not budge from his hierarchically superior position. Refusing to call Enrique by name and referring to him as “the Bastard of Spain,” or “said Bastard” six times in this passage of 366 words, the Prince of Wales implies that only those of legitimate birth could be kings. In doing so, his words suggest that Prince Edward’s adherence to the principle of Ich Dene has, ironically, aristocratically hierarchical limits, and proves, perhaps, more fitting for staged performances than for actual circumstances.70 Put another way, the Ich Dene imperative is played on a stage only in certain contexts for purposes of reading against the ground of fame, such as occurs when Prince Edward serves King Jean II. Indeed, this very episode in Froissart’s Chroniques glorifies service and heightens it to the status of a ritual, a “play” performed in front of a highly select audience. Thus, in the Prince’s battlefield lodging, as Froissart conveys it, various lords, knights, and squires gather ostensibly to honor the fallen king, “Et servoit toudis li prinches au devant de la table dou roy et par tout les autres tables ossi

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humblement qu’il pooit” [vol. 3, § 563, p.120, ll. 11–12: And completely the prince served the table of the king and other tables as humbly as he could]. Edward refused to sit at the King’s table, claiming his unworthiness and then, according to Froissart, he guaranteed the King that he would be treated well for his valor on the field. At the end, to the praise of all present, enemy and friend alike, Prince Edward reassures the King that everyone on the battlefield believed Jean deserved the prize of the day, an assertion that begins with self-reflexive “quotation marks,” “ ‘Je nel di mies che, sachiés chiers sires, pour vous lober . . . ’ ” [vol. 3, § 563, p. 120, ll.26–27: “I do not say this, please know dear lord, to flatter you . . .”]. Of course, this passage was written by Froissart and it may very well not represent an accurate transcript of what did transpire. Especially when juxtaposed to Edward’s letter to Joan, however, what Froissart’s words do suggest is that the Prince’s chivalric behavior requires not only the performance of duties such as those that Boccaccio and Charny promulgate, but also reveals the Prince’s understanding of how chivalry informs and scripts performance. In spite of his private insistence on hierarchy, as revealed by his letter to Joan, he will perform in public spaces, as revealed by both the Chandos Herald and Froissart, as might well be expected of an Arthurian leader under the aegis of Ich Dene. By serving the French King in defeat, then, the Black Prince replicates an emblem used by his father to gather desired associations, such as the magnanimity implicit in Ich Dene, associations that indeed should be read against the ground of fame as yet another sign indicating why this vir bonus deserves glory. More importantly here, the Prince’s actions and words are counterfactual in their ritual dissolving of enmity, as is ironically underscored by all those praising him as the truly superior leader. That is, unlike his father when executing the same chivalric gesture (and thereby evincing self-assured power), the Prince is inferior in rank to the French King. While all observing the Prince’s service understand this (including the Prince, as suggested by the letter’s sensitivity to hierarchy), that understanding is based in the knowledge that his performance looks beyond the present moment—he is not only the victor, but he will also be (so it seemed) the future King of an expanded dynasty, thereby actually, eventually, outranking Jean II. More than “simply” chivalric, then, the act of serving here emblematizes superiority in arms, superiority in courtly demeanor, and superiority in political understanding: the Prince is making a subject of the King of France in the register of peacetime chivalry. Interpreting the Prince’s decision to fight for Pedro and to serve Jean II through Edward’s deep and full embrace of Arthurian chivalry seems to be the Chandos Herald’s solution to presenting the Black Prince’s last years—it is the fame-seeking, glorious Arthurian ground that spurs the hero on to, in effect, imitate the legendary King’s virtues, even to echoing Arthur’s downfall by misplacing his trust in those not worthy of it.

The Chandos Herald’s Prince The Herald seems to realize how difficult it is to keep ideals in sight, especially when these ideals create fault lines. Ideals are maintained, for example, when noble enemies are nonetheless recognized for their valor. Similar to Froissart’s account, the Chandos Herald portrays King Jean as expressing admiration for his royal opponent, “ ‘Pluis avez a jour de hui de honour/Q’onqes n’eust prince a un

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jour’ ” [1425–1426: “you have honor this day as no other prince had in one day”].71 Likewise, the Chandos Herald praises Bertrand du Guesclin—vilified by Chaucer’s Monk, but widely recognized in contemporary French chronicles as the epitome of chivalric prowess and glorified in one of René d’Anjou’s actual tapestries—as one, who “ot grant pris” [1662: had great renown], who “ot le coer hardy et fyn” [1686, cf. 2972: who had a bold and noble heart], and as one capable of giving sound advice as well as having the sense to recognize how magnificent the Black Prince and his men are (2973–2983). As part of chivalric behavior, then, noble enemies are to be honored for their valor. Variations, however, pose problems—a chivalric hero can hardly be extolled for ineffective or shameful deeds; yet, as Boccaccio recorded in his De casibus, the Arthurian desideratum is to proclaim all adventures, shameful or praiseworthy: “Contingentia seu in honorem seu in dedecus referentis vergentia, summa cum fide et veritate quibus annalium cura erat, exponere” [Book 8, p. 205: To relate with the utmost faithfulness and truth, to those who take care of the annals, things that have happened no matter whether they redound to the honor or shame of the person relating them]. Obviously, as Boccaccio presents it, the rule is forged in order to encourage honorable behavior. But what happens when the embodiment of the Arthurian code acts dysordynauntly against chivalry? In such situations, the Chandos Herald abbreviates the transgressions. He treats the Prince’s less than chivalric sacking of Limoges, for example, in two lines. Likewise, he also minimizes the adventurous episode at Calais in which the Prince rescued his father from certain death during a failed nighttime expedition involving the English royal pair in trickery and disguises.72 In other words, the Chandos Herald’s choices do not, as upon fi rst glance may seem to be the case, simply praise the Prince’s Arthurian character, they also reflect the paradoxical tensions informing Arthurian chivalry. Read in this light, the Herald’s clear and prolonged focus on the Spanish campaign can indeed be interpreted as echoing Arthur’s slide into tragedy, for, as stated above, Prince Edward’s trust too is betrayed. Condensing and magnifying various facts of Prince Edward’s life, the Chandos Herald conveys the tragic impossibility of perfection in the mutable world. From the beginning of his biography until about line 1709, Edward is seen as, well, perfect. The Herald then takes several occasions to prepare audiences for the downfall that is to unfold by suggesting that the Prince is about to reach the climax of his career at the height of his powers and fortune. The Herald writes of the upcoming Spanish venture that, “ . . . ceo fuist le plus noble emprise/ Q’onqes cristiens emprist . . . ” [1642–1643: it was the noblest enterprise that ever Christian undertook. . .]. Later, the narrator “restarts” his account thus, “Ore comence noble matiere/ De noble et puissant mestiere . . . ” [1817–1818: Now noble material begins, of noble and powerful mastery . . .]. In similar vein, he reports that Fernandez de Castro, who will soon become the Prince d’Aquitaine’s ally in the cause to reinstate Pedro, claims that nobody could defeat the Black Prince, except God (1856–1861). In addition to suggesting that the Black Prince is at the height of his career, the Chandos Herald inserts a series of passages depicting how greatly the Prince is loved and, since the ending of this epically marked hero is well known, implying how much he will be missed. Thus, he relates that Joan’s grief at Edward’s departure was so severe that she gave birth to their child, which, he further asserts,

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serves as a good omen (2050–2102).73 Shortly after, he records John of Gaunt’s arrival in Spain as an event that brought the Black Prince boundless joy (2135– 2180). Moreover, for about 200 lines (2180–2360) in epic gesture, the Herald then describes the gathering of forces bringing together all the glorious knights who serve the Black Prince (many of whom he lists). Finally, before turning to the events that lead to the Battle of Nájera, we learn that Bertrand du Guesclin is rallying French forces to fi ght against the legitimate King of Spain and to support Enrique. Thus, not only has the Black Prince reached the apex of his life as fully and perfectly as can be imagined, but another star is ascending on the horizon. Importantly, those who were the Herald’s primary audience would have known not only of the Black Prince’s crumbling demise after the Spanish campaign, but also that the Black Prince’s poorly judged Arthurian gesture allowing Guesclin to go free essentially permitted the French mercenary hero to continue harassing and killing the English.74 Similarly acknowledging Fortune’s turning of her wheel, Froissart, after reporting the sack of Limoges, focuses on Guesclin’s series of victories and his appointment to the office of Constable of France. The next we learn of the English royal family from him is of Edward III’s attempts at reconciliation with Aquitaine, the death of the Prince’s oldest son, and the Prince’s return, with Joan, to England (vol. 4, §§809–816, pp. 111–126). Knowing how his “story” will end thus allows the Chandos Herald as well as Froissart to select and combine details that poetically nuance the Black Prince’s life and heighten all that he lost to create a rich space for readers to dwell a while, not unlike how Chaucer could refocus Aeneas’ story to expand upon Dido’s life in the Temple of Venus, and Quatrebarbes glorified René’s character rather than his troubled reign. I have been describing the Black Prince as having performed, in epic mode, on the stage of governance. Of course, the description is intended, at least partly, to be a figurative way of conveying the public nature of Edward’s life, so public that he had already achieved “undying” fame at sixteen, so public that his actions would be interpreted as in some way emblematic of England, perhaps even had his father not groomed him and prepared England to receive him as King Arthur’s heir. I nonetheless qualify here the use of terms associated with the theater as only partly figurative, because in the fourteenth century, processions and the theater were not all that obviously separate; both, for example, were performed on the streets, and both used platforms. Such similarities could lead, in other words, to difficulties in distinguishing between the two forms, at least among audiences who may have also associated processions with conventional religious rituals as well. St. Simeon’s procession to his cell in the Porta Nigra, which symbolized his dying to the world, for example, could easily suggest a funeral. In other words, while the separation between others and the saint, between Simeon’s way and theirs, was distinct, the separation between “real” and “symbolic” seems to have been less plainly delineated. The ritual nature of processions and drama made performance less aesthetic and more of a meeting between the spiritual and the transitory, a meeting because—like the exempla found in Fürstenspiegel, like emblems created to convey meaning instantaneously, like the ratio atque oratio of a charismatic leader—processions and drama could embody meaning, simply, visually, and powerfully.

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Fourteenth-century England is particularly interesting with respect to performances, since not only was theater in a formative phase at the time, but also the Corpus Christi procession was becoming more and more authoritative. In this context, as will be discussed in an attempt to adumbrate the Black Prince’s funeral, the epic emphasis acquires a resonance and a force that becomes a declaration for future generations. For the next few pages, then, I will attempt to review concisely some of the context and kinds of performances that could help comment on those of the Black Prince and his subjects, before turning to his funeral.

The Authority of Staging The Chandos Herald visualizes Edward’s actions and in so doing creates easily remembered vignettes that act as signs, standing for the ideals of chivalry. In the process, Prince Edward embodies the code for what the kingdom should mean and achieve. The Chandos Herald creates these “performances” without neglecting the tensions generated when bringing chivalry’s contrary platforms together, tensions that are in part communicable since they too comprise familiar topoi that capture the tensions informing transitory life, tensions in which the material wrestles with some invisible ideal. Such tensions inherent to the ground of fame and Arthurian ideals, naturally, reflect tensions and transitions in fourteenth-century England and not only those created by warfare. In addition to the political and economic problems besetting the country at the time the Chandos Herald was writing, changes within the social fabric led to shifts in social structures.75 For example, French became, so to speak, the new Latin in its growing dominance in juridical and official venues, while the English vernacular was becoming increasingly important, in part because of the emerging merchant classes, as exemplified not only by Geffrey’s call in the House of Fame to those who understood English to heed his poem, but also by King Edward’s rallying cry to protect English against the aggressive French.76 The shifting of class structures was caused in part, as suggested earlier, by the Black Death, which decimated approximately one-third of Europe’s population, and its resulting erosion of social hierarchies and norms led, among other things, to widely spread crime, thereby articulating clear challenges to chivalric ideals and established hierarchies.77 Moreover, increasingly during Edward III’s reign, the commons influenced government policies through leveraging their role in taxation,78 and attempts to create more equitable legal standards were also effected.79 Ormrod argues that although the majority of Edward’s subjects remained powerless,80 [i]t was in the reign of Edward III that the crown finally came to terms with the new political conditions which had emerged since the later thirteenth century. Realizing the dangers of perpetual conf lict and the positive advantages to be gained from consensus, Edward III acknowledged the inf luence not only of the magnates but also of the other politically active classes—the clergy, the county landholders and the prosperous townsmen—and tried to win their active support for his domestic and foreign policies.

Like these domestic shifts, foreign policy created opportunities and challenges as well. Edward III’s desire to yoke Scottish and French territories under English

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rule, for example, required superior fighting forces and contributed to dependency on mercenaries for both the English and French, mercenaries who, like those loosely grouped together to form La grande compagnie, lawlessly pillaged throughout English and French territories in times of treatied peace. Given both domestic and foreign turmoil, the need to provide edifying images of leaders such as an Arthurian prince could evoke probably seemed more than important. Fourteenth-century leaders needed to win over their subjects, since, beyond obvious reasons like discouraging armed revolts, their subjects were the ones being taxed to fuel their wars and lifestyles.81 As Maurice Keen writes, “The stresses of the war taught Edward III to take both the peers and the commons into partnership with the monarchy.”82 Among these turbulent conditions, the Church too was undergoing its own divisive trials, as patently demonstrated by the move of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon (1309–1377), the rift that evolved into the Great Schism with both cities anointing competing Popes (1378–1417). There were less spectacular indices of the Church’s turmoil as well, from confrontations with heads of states to battles between royalist and canon lawyers. In England, papal bulls that were deemed prejudicial to the kingdom were banned, and English churches were made to support Edward’s war efforts more fully. Moreover, Lollards and mystics posed additional powerful challenges to the Church’s authority.83 The Church even had to face a decline in the monastic oversight of chronicle-writing, Antonia Gransden demonstrates, as these were replaced by an enthusiasm for Edward III’s military victories and for spectacle.84 Perhaps, it was the accumulation of such complexities along with what must have seemed like destabilizing changes in social hierarchies that fueled the increasing popularity of medieval stages. On the one hand, the Church needed to assert its relevance to an increasingly vocal populace, and on the other hand, with guilds that were growing in power and influence and sponsoring staged productions, communities could express their belonging to the secular as well as religious realms. In fourteenth-century England, theater was still mostly associated with religion, as it had been since the tenth century, when, as the earliest extant records suggest, the stage for biblical vignettes was found either in or in front of a church. Late medieval drama evolved from this “staged bible” through a variety of forms, before it narrowed into the early modern fi xed stage associated with Shakespeare and made known to many of us today through Johannes de Witt’s 1596 sketch of the Swan Theatre.85 Moving backward to the fi fteenth century, for example, pageants or short religious plays were performed on wagons that processed around a town. Long stages also provided the venue for plays such as Everyman, and circular arenas—arranged around a small hill or an elevated area in the center, embraced by various platforms and then the audience—provided theatrical spaces for plays like The Castle of Perseverance or The Digby Mary Magdalene. Entertainments were probably performed indoors as well, in the exclusive space of a court. In the fourteenth century, however, theater was somewhere between these multiple venues and the Church’s dramatized rituals, not only in the actual stages for the productions, but in the fact that religious plays were sponsored by the Church and secular guilds as well.86

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Perhaps the transitions theater was experiencing in fourteenth-century England may best be exemplified by considering briefly the Corpus Christi cycle—a series of plays depicting scenes from the Bible performed on movable platforms that processed through a town—and the Corpus Christi spring procession through a town celebrating the transubstantiation, a high religious feast that fi nally took hold in the early fourteenth century, after having been called into being in 1246.87 Of the two kinds of celebrations, Clifford Davidson writes:88 We may . . . see the York Passion pageants not only as an aid to understanding and imaginatively seeing the Passion but also as an adjunct to the ritual of the Mass, which through the miracle of Transubstantiation was believed to make the body of crucified Jesus present in the Host. It should be kept in mind that the usual act of devotion for laypersons at Mass was not communion but seeing the consecrated Host or, as the experience was then understood, eating through seeing. Seeing an imaginative replication of the Passion on wagon stages was not the same thing but . . . was undoubtedly a moving event . . .

Whether the relation between the two kinds of processions is directly causal or not,89 each of the events, as Davidson suggests, must have seemed to have accomplished the same thing, the visualized celebration of the transubstantiation.90 Perhaps, a main difference is “ownership”—the high feast was maintained by the Church; the cycle, by guilds. In reality, though, the distinction between the two sponsors was probably not an unrelentingly sharp one, since, in all likelihood, the same audiences were drawn to both highly festive events. As Roger E. Reynolds argues, medieval processions are per se a form of drama.91 In such changing and turbulent times as experienced in fourteenth-century England, spectacles, cycles, and processions must have suggested order and seemed as unifying as Chaucer’s “man of gret auctorite” magnetically attracting the eager crowds rushing, presumably, to hear what he had to say. The loosening of sacred space from the Church to various locations in town may have been intended to create unanimity, to encourage a perceptual shift suggesting that the sacred is everywhere. In reality, it may have suggested the obverse as well: once costumes and scaffolding are removed and chores again punctuate the day, the secular is everywhere too. In other words, subtly and compellingly, secular and religious realms share and at times contest the same space, not unlike the body and soul or courtly chivalry and chivalric warfare. Regardless of how they were performed, the boundaries between plays and processions must have come close to disappearing in regards to their providing some clarity through their visual interpretations of the invisible. The Black Prince seems to have been aware of this dynamic too, as is evident in his triumphant procession to and through London with the King of France as his prisoner. After describing the foresters who came to see the Prince with his royal prisoner, for example, the Anonimalle Chronicle continues in this manner:92 Bien apres le prince amena le dit roy de Frauns et les prisoners devers Londres et si les encontrerent plusours seignurs et gentz du pays bien mountez et bien arrayes. Et le meir et les citizeyns de Loundres les encountrerent hors de la citee en graunt route,

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bien a chival et honourablement vestus et arrayes, chescun arte par soi; et puis furent amenez parmy Loundres od graunt noumbre des comunes de la cite et del pays . . . [Afterwards, the prince led the said King of France and the prisoners towards London and there they encountered many lords and country gentry who were well horsed and well arrayed. And the Mayor and the citizens of London met them outside the city with a large crowd, on horse and honorably clothed and arrayed, each according to his station, and then they were led through London with a great number of the common people of the city and the country . . .]

Importantly here, Gerd Althoff ’s descriptions of medieval rituals overlap with some of Keir Elam’s insights concerning a play’s performance text. Thus, Althoff argues that there must be rules, oral or written, for performing rituals since they are supposed to convey certain meanings and that regarding the rituals themselves, “müssen ihre ‘Aussagen’ eindeutig and für alle Beteiligten verständlich sein” [p. 24: their “messages” must be clear and understandable to all involved].93 Elam’s semiotic study, introduced in chapter 2, again proves useful here in its focus, as with the ritual, on the efficient communication of the performance text:94 It is an essential feature of the semiotic economy of the theatrical performance that it employs a limited repertory of sign-vehicles in order to generate a potentially unlimited range of cultural units . . . [T]he ‘generative capacity’ of the theatrical sign [refers to] the extraordinary economy of communicational means whereby in certain forms of dramatic presentation . . . a rich semantic structure is produced by a small and predictable stock of vehicles. . . . [articulated in the dramatic possible worlds that] are presented to the spectator as ‘hypothetically actual’ constructs, since they are ‘seen’ in progress ‘here and now’ without narratorial mediation [in, as John Searle argues, a] “pretended state of affairs itself.”

Taken as a given in Elam’s study, Althoff also discusses how the performance of rituals could not have occurred without practice (rehearsals) and that rituals were created to meet the needs of all relevant parties, “Die Gestaltung von Ritualen unterstand ja nicht der Willkür Einzelner, und seien sie auch noch so mächtig. Sie entsprang vielmehr einem Prozess des Aushandelns, an dem idealiter alle involvierten Parteien beteiligt waren” [p. 201: The form of rituals was not subject to the arbitrary power of individuals, regardless of how powerful they were. They stemmed more from a process of negotiation, in which, ideally, all involved parties took part]. The semiotic efficiency of ritual allows for the instantaneous communication of authority, especially when, as Ernst H. Kantorowicz argues, the state and church conferred upon each other, and shared, symbols, authority, and laws.95 That is, even though occupying the same space, secular and religious worlds do not so much cancel each other out, as they allow for the coexistence of both worlds, even if such coexistence creates tensions.96 Thus, it is not difficult to imagine that a procession, secular or religious, would have something like the same value to those watching it. In the creation of a hyperspace, both secular and religious processions draw attention to the code linking performers and audiences, as articulated in the ratio atque oratio that eloquently recalls shared traditions to make a point through them. Of course, the subject matter of a procession would serve to highlight which

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code was dominant, but in “blends,” such as in the carefully staged splendor of a royal funeral, as that of René’s, both transitory and spiritual worlds exert authority to proclaim not only, simply, that everyone must die, but also, at the same time, that those who rule are privileged. The two messages clash, but in the iconically mythic space of a ritual, tensions can remain in emblematic “flatness,” unchallenged. The evocation, then, of the epic in the hyperspace of a procession or other performance can draw audiences to support the ideals of the English kingdom even through religious referents, not unlike the stained glass example in Canterbury Cathedral could do.97 As witnessed in chapter 2, Arthurian and chivalric tales formed one of those quasi-platonic touchstones that came as close to erasing the boundary between performance and actual life as could be imagined in the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century, for example, Ulrich von Lichtenstein wrote that he took two journeys, in 1227 and in 1240, and in Arthurian manner jousted with all comers; as Richard Barber describes it, “ . . . from the outset we are in an Arthurian play.” Other knights too, Barber reports, staged Arthurian round tables, whereby they took on fictional names and “played” Camelot.98 Historical events were also transformed into more obvious courtly performance texts, as demonstrated by Laura Hibbard Loomis, who describes performances in the royal palace of Paris, the Palais de la Cité; thus, the First Crusade was performed on January 6, 1378, for the French King Charles V and the Emperor Charles IV, and the Fall of Troy was performed on June 21, 1389, for Charles VI (the production had to be aborted due to technical difficulties). She points also to the attention given to verisimilitude, as, for example, in scripting a Saracen calling for prayer in Arabic and in providing a stage ship large enough to hold about 100 men of arms. Further, Loomis shows how staged productions, such as the Pas Saladin, moved into other venues of the literary system, such as into poetry, paintings, carvings, and tapestries (like the one the Black Prince gave his son in 1376), before continuing to argue their potential for propaganda.99 Closer to the Black Prince while less overtly theatrical, although clearly staged, the Vow of the Heron was purportedly “performed” in order to inspire King Edward to take back French territories belonging to the English. The poem reports how in 1338, the great Robert of Artois, who had been exiled from France (p. 4), had a heron he had hunted prepared for a feast and then presented, “[e]ntre deux plats d’argent” [p. 4: between two dishes of silver], accompanied by three players of stringed instruments and two singing maidens, before being taken before the King. Robert then challenges the King, with the heron, “Le plus couart oysel” [p. 5: the most cowardly bird], which he poetically offered to the, “plus couart” [p. 5: the greatest coward], that is, to the King, for not claiming his rightful inheritance, France. Shamed into action, it is reported, Edward vows he would invade France, and others are induced to make similar promises to support the cause; they shift rapidly between being observers and actors similar to Chaucer’s blog-like rumors, as Robert presents the bird to each of them in turn: the Earl of Salisbury has his Lady close one eye so that he can pledge never to open it until he too has landed in France; the daughter of the Earl of Derby declares she will never take a husband until the Earl of Salisbury returns, to whom she promises herself; Walter of Mauny boasts he will take a well-fortified town; the Earl of Derby vows to attack the

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Count of Flanders; the Earl of Suffolk swears he will fight the King of Bohemia, for which he receives a rebuke from John of Beaumont, a near relative of that King; Jean de Fauquemont proclaims he will burn the countryside for Edward; Jean de Beaumont declares he will be the King’s marshal in battle, unless the King of France recalls and compensates him for the harm done him, whereupon he would serve his rightful king; and Queen Philippa vows not to have her child until she and Edward land in France, and if need be, she would kill herself to keep her promise. Hers was determined by Edward to be the greatest sacrifice; the heron was carved, and she ate of it.100 Malcolm Vale interprets the poem as showing how, “[p]olitical aims are embodied and enshrined within a chivalric ritual . . . ”101 These examples mingle the real with performance, thereby drawing attention to the visual power that culturally significant touchstones can have on audiences. Although referring to Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599/1600), David Bevington’s Bakhtinian observations on how the dramatic can engage the social prove relevant here:102 Dekker’s play is about drama itself as holiday, about the ways in which drama engages with social conf lict in such a way as to contain and simultaneously liberate. Containment and social change are not as incompatible as the terms might suggest . . . By literally acting out and resolving social conf lict in the theatre, The Shoemaker’s Holiday gives substance to “play” in its many forms—as make-believe, reenactment, and enabling mirror of social reality.

Bevington suggests that as long as the probing of social status remains within certain boundaries, a play’s depiction of hierarchical tensions can be enabling. In this sense, both the Corpus Christi procession and the cycle plays not only embody ideals, they engage audiences in the hyperspace of performance, making the space they normally inhabit reveal, for a brief moment in time, the hypostatized world of the ideal, somewhat similar to how René d’Anjou surrounded himself with emblems of a better, more chivalric world. As discussed below, the Black Prince’s approach to his own death contains similar tensions that—unlike René’s decidedly lyric positioning of the epic mode and unlike Geff rey’s instances of dysordynaunce disturbing the smooth surface of the code—attempts to take full possession of the epic mode’s third-person register. The distinctions between performance and daily life, then, were not as firmly set in fourteenth-century England as in our day, with performance space being more fluid and visual literacy more critical in a society in which written communication was still limited to a small percentage of the population. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the performative itself was a “unit” of communication, a means by which words could take on corporeal shape, not unlike those spoken fi gures crowding Chaucer’s Houses of Fame and Rumor. Thus, the Chandos Herald too underscores the performative in his narrative of the Black Prince’s life by texturing it with vignettes that “speak” insofar as they are visual, much like Dido’s story “spoke” to Geffrey. The Chandos Herald, that is, visualizes numerous instances in ritualistic, processional form, even when other more psychologically revealing, militarily interesting, or narratively relevant elements could be emphasized. For example, several times,

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rather than describing a valiant knight rushing headlong into battle with his heart bursting from loyal fervor, as witnessed in Renon’s inspired troops in Le coeur, or a knight quietly preparing himself for battles to come, as seen in Cueur’s many reflective moments, the Chandos Herald prefers to have his narrator describe a favorite noble or the Prince himself ceremonially requesting permission to participate in battle or to take over a command. Thus, the Prince courteously petitions his father to give him permission to occupy Aquitaine (533–546); the Cardinal of Périgord humbly entreats the King of France to allow him to sue for peace (767–790); and Audeley sincerely appeals to the Prince, that he might fulfi ll his vow to be the first on the battlefield, that he might be allowed this privilege (1282–1292). Just as pointedly formal and ritualistic, rather than simply issuing a command or focusing on the dire need to have a skilled warrior assume a specific post, the narrator has the Prince entreat the Earl of Warwick in about twenty-five lines to take command of the vanguard at Poitiers (1070–1095). The courteously performed ritual performed on the battlefield is taken to its highpoint in the Spanish campaign, when John Chandos is made a banneret,103 just at the moment when it is clear that there is no choice but to wage battle: Monsire Johan de Chaundos Est venuz au Prince tantos Et la porta sa baniere Qi fuist de soie riche et fier. Moult doucement li dist ensi: “Sire,” fait il, “pur Dieu mercy, Servi vous ai du temps passée, Et tut quant Dieux m’ad donée De biens, ils me veignent de vous; Et bien savez qe je sui touz Le vostre, et serray touz temps; Et s’il vous semble lieu et temps Qe je puisse a banier ester, J’ai bien de quoi a mon mester, Qe Dieux m’ad donée, pur tenir. Ore en faitz vostre pleisir. Veiez le ci, je vous present.” Adonqes le Prince, sanz attent, Et le roi dan Petro, sanz detri, Et le duc de Lancastre auxi La banier li desploierent Et par la hant li baillerent; Et lui disrent, sanz plus retraire: “Dieux vous en laist vostre preu faire!” [3121–3144: Sir John Chandos came to the Prince immediately and carried his banner, which was of silk, rich and proud. Very sweetly he spoke thus to him, “Sire,” says he, “for the mercy of God, I have served you in times past, and all that God has given me of goods, they came to me from you; and well you know that I am always yours and will be for all time. And if it seems to you the place and time for me to raise my banner, I have enough of my own that God gave me, to maintain it. Now at your pleasure, see this, I present it to you.” Then the Prince, without waiting, and

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the King, Lord Pedro, without delay, and the Duke of Lancaster also unfurled the banner and they gave it to him by the handle, and they said to him, without longer waiting, “May God allow you prosper with it!”]

After this ceremony, John Chandos takes the banner and passes it on to his men with formal words, so that they all share in the processional-like ritual, “ ‘Car auxi bien est vostre come nostre’ ” [3150: “For it is also just as much yours as ours”]. It is not only that John Chandos requested that he may take his banner into the field thereby communicating his loyalty to the Prince to anyone “watching.” The processional-like quality captured in this vignette—giving special attention to the beauty of the banner, the courteous request, and the approbation articulated by the Prince, King Pedro, and John of Gaunt, who themselves lay hands on the banner to unfurl it and return it to the petitioner—referentially embodies chivalric heroism. In the midst of what all four know will become a bloody and chaotic mass of bodies seeking to extinguish or take charge of the lives of others, this performance generates an emblem that can be remembered and repeated as rallying cries, public relations, or other narratives require. By putting quotation marks around the scene, the passage has the effect of theatrical performance: audiences witness a ritual in which they too take part. Whether exhorted by the church or state, the ideal of sacrificing for some unseen cause or immaterial benefit draws members of a community closer together.104 The vignettes in the Chandos Herald’s biography, then, take on meaning beyond what is denotatively described. In doing so, they contribute to the creation of Prince Edward as the Future King, someone, as the Chandos Herald presents it, he was meant to be, and actually was throughout his life, for he never actually became the King.

Staging the Future King Shortly after John Chandos’ granted request, the Herald depicts the Black Prince addressing his men before praying with them. The Black Prince then himself creates a vignette focused on their hunger; in other words, he provides a visual enthymeme, which in effect allows his men to see the benefits of fighting hard to win the battle:105 “Seigniours, n’i ad autre termine. Vous savez bien qe de famine Par defaute de vitaille sumes pres pris, Et veez ci et la noz enemis Qui de vitaille ont assez, Pain et vin et de pessons salez Et freez de douce eawe et de meer, Mais il les nous faut conquester Au ferir du glaive et d’espée. Ore faceons tant ceste journée Qe partir puissons a honour.” [3161–3171: “Sirs, there is no other ending. You know well that famine, for want of food, we are very near, and you see that our enemies have food enough, bread and wine and salted fish and fresh, from sweet water and the sea, but we have to conquer

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with the lance and sword. Now let us perform this day in such a way that we can part with honor.”]

Unlike the processional-like ritual featuring John Chandos just about fi fteen lines prior, here the Herald depicts a character, the Black Prince, visualizing for his “audience,” much as the narrator does, thereby—in part due to its juxtaposition to the ceremony making John Chandos a banneret—self-reflexively evoking a hyperspace that the audience can approach more closely to become part of the community. In this metaliterary, poetic, and epic context, then, the Black Prince makes an address, elaborating on a code. According to the Chandos Herald, Prince Edward addresses the vanguard (designated as such in the section heading and in line 3196), otherwise called only the “Englois” [3157: English], and led by John of Gaunt and John Chandos, “with a large proportion of archers.”106 These men, notably, he addresses as “Seigniours” thereby in effect elevating all men, together, apparently regardless of social status. Whether or not the Black Prince actually used this term of address, the author, being a herald, would probably have been keenly aware of status and its various signifying markers, both visual and verbal,107 making this particular designation a signally provocative marker. In spite, or perhaps because, of his awareness of forms, somewhat like Chaucer’s Geffrey, the Herald seems to be looking at substance rather than giving credence to the surface. Thus, he does not seem to feel the need to designate the ritual unfurling and passing along of the banner as a ceremony granting John Chandos a new status. More interestingly here, the Herald presents the Black Prince drawing together his fighting forces in dovetailing emblems. On one hand, Prince Edward addresses the “Englois” as “Seigniours” and ends with a call to fi ght with honor. On the other, dovetailing with these elevated ideas, he visualizes not the glory of their cause, but simple needs—bread, wine, and fish—appealing to the “common” basics for every human being (and concomitantly using deeply resonant Christian symbols), thereby redefi ning the code he embodies. Like John Chandos ritualistically handing his banner to his men, he too ritualistically invites his men to prove that fighting with honor is what being an English soldier means. Combining Houmout, fierce pride, with Ich Dene, service, Edward, as the Chandos Herald depicts him, straddles the tensions inherent in Arthurian chivalry. Not only does the Black Prince master the tensions, he constrains and shapes them to glorify England. Thus, the Chandos Herald’s narrator informs his readers in an earlier passage, that after having slept poorly in a pavilion, a structure associated with the courtly, on a plain among the dead of Poitiers, a setting of war (1436–1440), the Black Prince sent news to his parents, asking for ships to bring the King of France to England, “Pur faire plus de honour a la terre” [1468: to bring more honor to the country]. As the Chandos Herald depicts him, then, even in the devastation of battle, courtly Edward’s interests focus on representing England. Effectively staging the victory of the English over the French so that it could be clearly communicated, the narrator further suggests that the Prince of Aquitaine knew how to perform victory for England’s subjects as well.108 The Prince’s ability to visualize motivating enthymemes as well as to stage English victory probably did constitute an actual part of his makeup, given the ground of Arthurian glory

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in which King Edward helped defi ne him and the epic mode in which his role was shaped. Indeed, his poetic and metaliterary modes of communicating his epic role clearly reemerge in his emphasizing the redefined code on his deathbed. Prince Edward’s ability to communicate through emblems, that is, also found articulation in his will in a passage describing wishes for his funeral, not unlike about a century later, René d’Anjou would also do. In contrast to René, however, Edward of Wales focused context, message, contact, and code on England’s rightful place as he envisioned it, all the more important to him, it seems, because of his decline, signs of which were hypostatized in military failures as well as in his health. After the battle of Nájera on April 3, 1367, for example, Prince Edward camped with his men outside Burgos for almost four months, negotiating with a reluctant and eventually fraudulent Pedro over their payments before returning to a fractious and disgruntled Aquitaine financially and physically weakened. As demonstrated further by his refusal to recognize King Charles V’s summons in late 1369, his sacking of Limoges in 1370, his return to England in 1371, England’s steady military losses along with his formal surrender of Aquitaine in 1372, and his sporadic participation in government up until about 1374, Edward the Black Prince was diminished, and he experienced what must have seemed like an irreversible downturn in his fortunes. He may well have contemplated his death as imminently impending.109 Against this context of decline, Edward’s will confirms that while he honored the Church, his true allegiance was to England. In it, for example, it is clear that he had a special connection with Canterbury Cathedral, its Trinity Chapel, and its bishop. His affection especially for the Trinity (he also died on its feast day) has been observed by a number of scholars,110 and by various contemporaries as well. The Chandos Herald writes: Ore est bon temps qe je m’adresse A bouter avant ma matiere, Coment il fuist, c’este chose clere, Si pruys, si hardy, si vaillant, Et si curtois et si sachant Et si bien amoit seinte Esglise De bon coer, et sur tut guise La tres hauteine Trinitée; La feste et la solenintée En comencea a sustenir Tres le primer de son venir Et le sustient tut sa vie De bon coer, sanz penser envie. [80–92, my italics: Now is a good time for me to address myself to push forth with my material, how he was, this is a clear thing, so noble, so hardy, so bold, and so courteous and so knowing and he loved well the holy church with good heart, and above all, the very exalted Trinity, the feast and the solemnity he began to uphold from the very beginning of his path and he upheld it all his life in good heart, without thinking harm.]

Likewise the Chandos Herald stresses the Black Prince’s allegiance to the Trinity toward the end of his poem as well (4176–4178).

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While thus fulfi lling Fürstenspiegel, Arthurian, and courtly expectations regarding a knight’s chivalric worship of God, nonetheless, both when he was in full health and later as he was approaching death, the Black Prince did not allow anything to overcome his allegiance to the kingdom. Before the Battle of Poitiers, for example, Cardinal Périgord calls on God and the Holy Trinity to persuade Edward to peace. The Prince, according to the Chandos Herald, replies, “Certes, beaux douce piere en Dieu, Bien savoms qe ce qe vous ditez Est voirs. Ce sont raisons escriptez. Mais nous voillons bien sustenir Qe nostre querelle, sanz mentir, Est juste, verrai et veritable. . . . Mais nient contreesteant pas ne voille Qe homme die que par mon orgoille Moerge tant bele juvente. Mais ceo n’est mie mon entente Qe je face le contraire De la paix, si homme le pooit faire. Eins en ferray tout mon pooir. Mais sachez qe, tut pur voir, Je ne puisse pas ceste matiere Accompler sanz le roi mon piere . . . ” [822–844: “Certainly, fair sweet father in God, well we know that what you say is true. This is rightly written. But we would well uphold that our quarrel, without lying, is just, true, and accurate . . . nonetheless I do not wish that men say that through my pride many a fair youth died. But it is never my intent that I act in opposition to peace if one can establish it. Thus, I will do all in my power, but know that, for all truth, I cannot realize this matter without the King my father . . . ”]

Juggling concerns of religion, justice, his young men, and his King and father, the Black Prince is shown here valuing kingdom more heavily than the Church, however courteously he conveys his unwillingness to bend to the wish of the churchman.111 Likewise, as he was approaching death, as Thomas Walsingham describes it, the Prince peacefully prayed to the Trinity and distributed some of his wealth to loyal servants. When Richard Stury entered, however, the Prince refused to forgive him, since he regarded him a traitor, and Stury had to leave without Edward’s forgiveness. Only after the bishop of Bangor insisted several times that the Prince truly forgive his enemies, only after a struggle, and after having been sprinkled with holy water, Walsingham claims, he fi nally forgave.112 Edward’s life demonstrates that the tensions present in Arthurian romance are fueled by the tensions attempting to translate spiritual, Christian values into the world. Emulating the city of heaven on earth in secular terms (as opposed to Poppo’s presenting Trier as a civitas sancta), Camelot is patently inhabited by mortals, and even the most noble learn that good does not perfectly align with right. When the Prince is dying, these tensions come fully to the fore. In addition to the struggle caused by Richard Stury, for example, Edward exhorted his household to understand that none may escape death, before opening his room to

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all those who served him, letting them know he could not reward them according to their worth, but that God certainly would. Capturing the spirit of primus inter pares, while recognizing that all serve, Ich Dene, and facing his fi nal battle with courage, Houmout, the Black Prince also asks that his son be served as loyally as he was served and that his wife be well protected. Coming just short of the realization that death is the great equalizer, he struggles as Everyman does with letting his companions go. He delegates responsibilities to others, thereby perpetuating the creation of tensions, as can be seen in his fi nal attempt to hold on to both Houmout and Ich Dene. The Black Prince made his will on June 7, 1376, and he died the next day. His body was embalmed and kept until the meeting of Parliament at Michaelmas, on September 29, 1376, in order to inter him in Canterbury as he wished.113 With great detail, he devoted about a fi fth of his approximately 3,000-word testament to how he would like to be buried, before distributing what wealth he had to the chapel of Our Lady Undercroft in Canterbury, which he himself had founded, and to his loved ones. In part, the approximately 250 words describing his donations to the chapel could be added to the instructions regarding his burial, since they comprised lavish materials along with gold and silver objects to adorn the space where his tomb was to be constructed. In spite of the detail, a number of Edward’s wishes were not carried out exactly as recorded in a surviving copy of the will as edited by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (pp. 164–171). Nonetheless, what the will expresses recapitulates the theme discussed here: the tensions inherent in Arthurian excellence are balanced on the stage of public display, problematizing the pursuit of inner worth, since quasi-platonic chivalric rituals and displays stand for, but also at times, can seem to replace inner chivalric values. On one side of the tension, that addressing inner worth, the Black Prince not only remembers Canterbury Cathedral first to distribute his belongings, but he also begins the divesting of all he had with his soul, “Primerement nous devisons notre alme à Dieu notre Creatour, et à la seinte benoite Trinite et à la glorieuse virgine Marie, et à touz lez sainz et seintez . . . ” [Stanley 164: First, we give our soul to God our Creator and to the holy blessed Trinity and to the glorious virgin Mary and to all male and female saints]. Likewise, he requests that a poem be inscribed on his tomb where it might easily be read, one derived from a French translation of the Clericalis disciplina by Petrus Alphonsus and which was essentially the same poem recorded in the two surviving manuscripts of the Chandos Herald’s biography, the version I record here.114 Tu qui passez de bouche close Par la ou ce corps repose, Entendez ce qe te dirray Si come je dire le say. Tiel come tu es, et tiel je fu. Tu serras tiel come je su. De la mort ne pensa je mie Tant come j’avoi la vie. En terre avoi je grant richesse Dont je fis grant noblesse: Terre, maisons et grant tresor,

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Draps, chivalx, argent et or. Mais je sui ore poevres et cheitifs. Parfound en la terre gis. Ma grand beauté est tut alée, Ma char est tut gasté. Moult est estroit ma maisoun, Ove moi n’ad si vermin noun. Et se ore me veissez, Je ne quide pas qe vous deissez Qe j’eusse unqes homme estée, Si su je tut chaungée. Pur Dieu, priez au celestien Roi Q’il mercy eit de l’alme de moi. Tut cil qui pur moi prieront Ou a Dieu m’acorderont, Dieux les mette en son paris Ou nulle ne poet estre cheitifs. Amen. [4253–4280: You who pass by with closed mouth, there where the body lies; listen as I will tell you what I say I know. As you are, so was I; You will be as I am. Of death I never thought when I had life. On the earth I had great riches, from which I supported great nobility: land, houses, and great treasure, clothes, horses, silver and gold. But I am now poor and wretched. Deep in the earth I lie. My great beauty is gone. My body is totally ravaged. Very narrow is my house. With me nothing but worms. And if you would see me now, I do not believe you would say that once I was a man, so much I have completely changed. For God, pray to the celestial King that he have mercy on my soul. For all who pray for me, or seek accord with God for me, may God give them paradise where none can be miserable. Amen.]

It seems as if the Prince of Wales had totally assimilated the medieval exhortation to live in remembrance of death, in memento mori, the philosophical stance supporting the idea in his two mottos. As David Green puts it, however, “With its inherent contradictions the prince’s tomb is indicative of the widening range of aristocratic religious attitudes in the late medieval period.”115 While “purely” focused on the afterlife in these two sections of his will, that is, the Black Prince’s other requests recreate the dysordynaunt tensions characterizing his life, as they evoke the splendor and excellence of Arthur’s court and the need for war. He requests, for example, a full-length brass effigy in armor, suggesting the epic preparedness for battle that Charny praised as belonging to the true chivalric knight. In evoking the warrior’s stance, the Prince of Wales also becomes very specific.116 His “armez pur la guerre” [Stanley 166: arms for war] are embossed in quarters on his breastplate—the lions of England alternating with the fleurde-lis of France, evoking the code, by which he becomes a defi nition of England occupying territory purportedly belonging to France. Even in death, that is, the Black Prince sees his father’s cause as just and tries to signal who the true regent of France is, perhaps also to motivate those who come to worship at his tomb not to lose faith in English claims.117 That same alternation of the English lion with the French fleur-de-lis occurs on the tester suspended above his tomb, which, according to Marie-Louise Sauerberg, was probably built in the same year of the Black Prince’s death, suggesting, because of its elaborate and fi ne workmanship, that it

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was likely to have been commissioned during Prince Edward’s long illness.118 The poetic iteration of alternating English lions with French fleurs-de-lis also draws attention to the contact, in its phatic attempt to prolong attention to the importance of English domination. Similarly reflecting tensions, Edward requested that the marble tomb be decorated with twelve one-foot wide brass escutcheons around it. Six of those should be prepared with his whole, quartered arms, and Houmout embossed above them, and the other six should display the ostrich feathers with Ich Dene engraved to gloss them (Stanley 165). Again metaliterary, these escutcheons also poetically juxtapose his two mottos with the emblems of England and France, since reading the two sets of emblems together, they generate a narrative of the need for wartime epic bravery until the two kingdoms are united in one future king.119 In placing them alternating one with the other on each long side of the tomb, the war and peace mottos materialize as the imperial tensions defi ning the relationships between England and France. And as if he were afraid that these messages may not be conveyed clearly enough, for the poetic, phatic processional taking his corpse to Canterbury, the Black Prince elucidates that he wished to be preceded by two knights riding in full armor on fully draped horses, one knight and horse in full arms of war quartered and the other pair with the ostrich feathers and the accoutrements of peace (Stanley 166), staging victory, of a sort, in the hope of the future English kingdom, one whose territorial possessions included France.120 Even when contemplating imminent death, then, the Black Prince’s magisterial narrative conveys the importance of staging chivalric ethos and evoking Arthurian

Figure 4.1 Detail of the South Side of the Tester above the Black Prince’s Tomb. Source: Photography by Chris Titmus. Copyright Hamilton Kerr Institute.

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glory with all their dysordynaunce, of claiming a dynasty for a future king—when successful, such performances might inspire the rallying cry that could repair fault lines and level tensions in a surge of loyalty that could win a kingdom and crown a future king. They could just as easily destroy all that had been won. Although not dying on the battlefield, at least in his imagination, the Black Prince seemed to remember something similar to Charny’s exhortation, “Et la ou li chaitis ont grant envie de vivre et grant paour de mourir, c’est tout au contraire des bons; car aus bons ne chaut il de leur vie ne de mourir, mais que leur vie soit bonne a mourir honorablement” [Kennedy’s translation, 22, 41–44, pp. 126–127: And while the cowards have a great desire to live and a great fear of dying, it is quite the contrary for the men of worth who do not mind whether they live or die provided that their life be good enough for them to die with honor]. Indeed, as Charny further claims, Mais quant a l’ordre de chevalerie, pour bien dire et monstrer veritablement que c’est la plus perilleuse et d’arme et de corps et la ou il appartient plus et mieux gouverner nettement conscience, ceste ordre de chevalerie, que nulle autre ordre qui soit en ce monde. [Kennedy’s translation, 35, 236–239, pp. 166–167: But as for the order of chivalry, it can truly be said and demonstrated that it is the most dangerous for both soul and body, and the one in which it is necessary to maintain a clearer conscience than in any other order in the world (this order of chivalry).]

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hile the messages that leaders deliver may seem straightforward, and with some justification viewed with suspicion, what they convey is usually familiar, but not simple. To sacrifice for an invisible concept such as an empire, as Plato well knew, is not a simple idea. Nonetheless, like those who pursue Fame’s favors in Chaucer’s poem, we may think we know what the apparently simple messages, emblems, and performances mean, especially since the kind of highly efficient, instantaneous communication that takes place in a theater also informs our leaders’ messages. There is something, moreover, about crowds of people coming together to listen to a ruler that in and of itself creates the best conditions for consensus. Consensus must still be won, but the stage is set for persuasion, and the audience generally is knowledgeable enough to realize that this is what their coming together is all about. As I hope this study has demonstrated, on the simplest level, in drawing people together to contribute to a common cause, it is not so much soaring rhetoric that persuades—although an eloquently turned phrase certainly does not hurt—it is the ability of leaders to tap into trace narratives in a way that enables audiences to envision, to see, the point in a manner relevant to themselves. It is the able wielding of visual power. When, according to the Chandos Herald, the Black Prince addressed his men to fight, he did not try to instill in them a greater cause. That may have been difficult material to make palpable—after all, his hungry and wearied forces were fighting in a foreign country to oust someone, like most of them, who was not born of noble blood. Instead, Edward’s transparent focus on their needs reveals his desire to persuade them. In contrast, when Chaucer’s Eagle gloats about how simply he can speak, without contrived language or complicated thoughts, he has not really taken stock of his charge, who, he does know, spends all his time reading and writing. Similar to, yet different from, the Black Prince and the Eagle, René d’Anjou is highly aware of his audiences, but he seems to focus mainly on their ability to grant him good fame; his many processions and lavishly decorated palaces, complete with debt, along with his clamoring for titles suggest what he wishes to convey: he is a powerful, and good, king in spite of his military losses and fi nancial shortfalls. That chivalric King Arthur developed into a Fürstenspiegel touchstone for both René and Edward is not hard to understand. He was a ready-made emblem of the worthiest king—fantastically wealthy, beloved by his people, surrounded by the best knights and ladies, and known to be just. That his kingdom was fi nally

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destroyed by one evil man seems to have left Boccaccio with the Fürstenspiegel conundrum: how does one evaluate the king’s life? Was it not a deserved fate, given the King’s pursuit of worldly glory? Boccaccio’s narrator is clear that worldly vanity cannot survive—after all, it is the way of the transitory world since Adam and Eve’s paradise was destroyed by the machinations of the serpent. Nonetheless, how does a writer, a philosopher, and a learned scholar weigh this truism against the popularity bestowed by the common people who believe that Arthur will return? Fame cannot be ignored, even if it should not be sought after, leaving Boccaccio’s narrator exasperated by the power of the vox populi. What René, Chaucer, and the Black Prince reveal is that fame, dependent as it is upon the vox populi, does not reward with a conclusion. On the contrary, fame creates a field of tensions—Dido’s story was retold sympathetically; others’ good fame could be just as persuasively reassessed negatively; and poets clamor to write the authoritative version of the Trojan War. Ironically, such trace narratives proliferate because fame has the tendency to regularize individuals into the types that meet with Fürstenspiegel or Hall of Fame qualifications—fame attempts to squash and to marginalize complexities that could offer alternate stories. It is for these reasons that Chaucer’s Dido fears fame as much as René and Chaucer’s Criseyde do. They would like that authoritative stamp of approval, if it were positive. A bad reputation, however, not only damns them in the eyes of the world, it picks out those parts of their lives that least please them and that do not, they fear, encourage all those trace narratives to ameliorate the picture. Caught up in the value systems that keep them in their places, they hope for simple approbation, such as Boccaccio’s Petrarca promises. When René’s Cueur is piqued by Desir’s comments, reading them as attacks on his manhood, he articulates this same protective fear for his reputation. He does not wish to be known as a coward, but perhaps he also wishes he would not, at times, act like one. On the other hand, not occupying center stage, Geff rey seems to be able to ignore fame and glory, although he too reveals some preference for good fame. It is telling, moreover, that, as far as we know, Chaucer did not treat Arthurian legend often— the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” set in Arthurian “culture” does not have much good to say about it. Indeed, Chaucer does not even mention Arthur as one of the glorious in Fame’s palace. For a poet writing in English and calling for all who understand this language to listen, this is curious and suggests what the House of Fame seems to convey: fame (perhaps also Arthur’s story) is simply too constricting to allow into a poet’s life. In contrast to both René and Chaucer, Prince Edward does not seem to worry about his reputation. Instead, the staging of his life ever since he was young seems to have inoculated him into believing that fame was a given, while obliterating as much as possible the distinction between performance and actual life, so that whatever he did, he was metalingually defi ning England in creating the only story he knew how to fulfi ll. He is the future King, the one who will defi ne England as the best kingdom, whose subjects—both English and French—are most worthy of his protection and energy. Toward the end of his life, however, he seems to have understood how limiting the role can be, especially since he could not enact it any more. Sick and defeated, he nonetheless shook his fi st and made sure what his dying words would be: Houmout and Ich Dene.

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With René’s positioning his epic narratives in lyric mode, his metaliterary focus in Le coeur registers how worrying it is for him that in spite of a life well lived in many respects, his reputation might not reflect all that he achieved. Suggesting that the surface betrays what lies underneath, he fi nally separates his heart from his body, Cueur from Desir. Geffrey steps out of Fame’s way as much as Chaucer avoids King Arthur’s all-consuming swathe. Rather than be trampled by the hooves of knights galloping toward epic glory, Geff rey (perhaps Chaucer as well) seems to prefer dwelling in the code before it becomes sealed, enjoying the ambiguity and insights gained from multiple and at times confl icting perspectives. The Black Prince, lastly, takes full possession of the stage, defies any other individual’s attempts to keep him from reenvisioning the code, and, like a sacrificial, ritual, lamb, prepares himself for the epic flattening his life will undergo as he battles to defi ne England as most glorious. In order to perform, he suggests, leaders and poets must occupy the stage and ensure that they have enough approved authority, fame, to effect their performances.

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NOTES

Preface 1. Of course, this idea is expressed negatively when Plato has Socrates limit the kinds of myths allowed in the ideal republic, a limit that is deemed necessary because of myths’ power to inf luence; see Plato, Republic 2.377.b–3.412.e. Edition used: Plato, “The Republic,” trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Bollingen Series 71 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 575–844. Although not applicable here, unless otherwise indicated, translations throughout this study are mine. 2. Edition used: Alcuin, The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne: A Translation, with an Introduction, the Latin Text, and Notes, ed. and trans. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Princeton Studies in English 23 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), ll. 33–48, pp. 68–69. Compare with Cicero, Rhetorici libri duo qui vocantur de inventionee, ed. E. Stroebel (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1965) 1.2.17–1.3.8. I use Alcuin’s version to suggest Cicero’s inf luence in the Middle Ages. Readers need only consult classical treatises from Plato’s Gorgias (ca. 380 BCE) to Cicero’s De oratore (ca. 55 BCE) to ascertain that western European preoccupation with civic persuasion has a long and illustrious pedigree; see Michaela Paasche Grudin, Chaucer and the Politics of Discourse (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 1–26, for a succinct overview of rhetorical inf luence from Augustine through Chaucer’s time from a mainly English perspective that treats the religious and humanist inf luences on rhetorically shaped discourse and its relationship to the state. 3. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 2 vols., ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1960), 2.143. 4. See, for example, Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2: Mythical Thought, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 8–9. Critical to Cassirer’s thought is the interplay between the sensuous and the intellectual that characterizes language, knowledge, myth, and art. Thus, history is derived from myth and is also determined by a country’s mythology (p. 5). 5. On the enthymeme, popularly referred to as the rhetorical syllogism, see Lloyd F. Bitzer, “Aristotle’s Enthymeme Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 45 (1959): 399– 408. On the enthymeme as conveyed in classical and medieval sources, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft (Munich: Max Hueber, 1960), vol. 1, §§371, 875, 879. The very popular, Anon. [Cicero] ad C. Herennium: De ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium), ed. and trans. Harry Caplan, The Loeb Classical Library 403 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), discusses the enthymeme as a figure of diction (exornatio verborum), calling it a contrarium (4.17.25–26), the first of the topoi Aristotle lists in his Rhetoric. Finally, on the enthymeme as used in literature, see SunHee Kim Gertz, Poetic

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6.

7.

8.

9.

NOTES

Prologues: Medieval Conversations with the Literary Past, Analecta Romanica 56, ed. Frank-Rutger Hausmann and Harro Stammerjohann (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), pp. 47–54. The text of Barack Obama’s speech may be found at The Huffington Post, October 20, 2008. www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077. html. The exemplary function that narrative can evince is explored with respect to Fürstenspiegel in Dominique Boutet, “Le prince au miroir de la littérature narrative (XIIe–XIIIe siècles),” in Le prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’antiquité aux lumières, ed. Frédérique Lachaud and Lydwine Scordia (Mont-Saint-Aignan Cedex: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2007), pp. 143–159. Critical to the Fürstenspiegel’s exemplary efficacy is drawing from and stimulating the imagination, the ability to visualize and retain, a faculty examined in late medieval terms in Robert W. Hanning, The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 105–138; Douglas Kelly, Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); and Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 94–104. On classical and medieval modes of the related faculty of memory, see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992); SunHee Kim Gertz, Echoes and Reflections: Memory and Memorials in Ovid and Marie de France, Faux Titre 232, ed. Keith Busby, M. J. Freeman, Sjef Houppermans, et al (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), pp. 9–36; and Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993). In addition, see Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), who, in the context of examining memory as conveyed through medieval Latin texts, argues that reading was essentially a visual act and that the distinction between oral and written texts was less important to classical and medieval textual communities than it is today, even to the extent that books were considered to function as mnemonic aids. On textual communities, see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) along with his Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past. Parallax Re-Visions of Culture and Society, ed. Stephen G. Nichols, Gerald Prince, and Wendy Steiner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). Daniel Poirion, Le poète et le prince: L’Évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), explores how court and poetry interrelated in the Middle Ages. “Pour résoudre les enigmes du sphinx poétique,” he cautions, “ne perdons pas de vue la pyramide courtoise” [p. 11: In order to resolve the enigmas of the poetical sphinx, let us not lose sight of the courtly pyramid]. As argued by Antony Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 9, especially Cicero’s De officiis was important to political thought throughout the medieval and early modern periods: “Cicero was an important source for a catalogue of virtues, for the notion of humanitas . . . and for the view that a sensitive literary education made one gentle and virile. One of Cicero’s fundamental points was the ultimately Platonic doctrine, unchallenged till Machiavelli, that virtue and honesty coincide with one’s true self-interest (nihil utili nisi quod honestum).” Also see Marcia

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L. Colish, “Cicero’s De Officiis and Machiavelli’s Prince,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978): 82–83 [81–93].

Introduction 1. Editions used: Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses with an English Translation, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller; rev. G. P. Goold, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994) and Publius Vergil Maro, Virgil with an English Translation, vol.1, ed. and trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956). 2. Most important of these is Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, New Accents, gen. ed. Terence Hawkes (London: Routledge, 1980). In addition, a study that dovetails with concerns here is Susan Noakes, Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), which modulates the array of temporalities in the reading process from semiotic, hermeneutic, and other philosophical perspectives to map reading as an activity oscillating between exegesis, which emphasizes temporal distance to the reader, and interpretation, which emphasizes closeness to the reader. Finally, my semiotic readings are informed by rhetorical theory. Rather than rhetoric’s lists of pointers and definitions, however, I draw on the attention rhetorical treatises give to effectively structuring narratives. Thus, classical rhetorical treatises, like the Rhetorica ad Herennium (s. i BCE), along with their medieval heirs, including the treatises on poetry, the artes poetriae, and those on letter writing, the artes dictandi (ca. s. xii), prove illuminating. See Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400: Interpreted from Representative Works (Saint Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1972); Martin Camargo, ed., Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition: Five English Artes Dictandi and Their Tradition. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 115 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995); Edmond Faral, ed., Les arts poétiques du Xiie et du Xiiie siècle, Sciences Historiques et Philologiques 238 (Paris: Ancienne Edouard Champion, 1923); James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); and James J. Murphy, ed., Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 3. Maria Corti, An Introduction to Literary Semiotics, trans., Margherita Bogat and Allen Mandelbaum, Advances in Semiotics, gen. ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 2, argues that we can read a text against a literary context because of literature’s viability as a communication system, dependent on shared conventions, “not the sum of its texts but a kind of totality both linked and linking, and in movement.” Essentially arguing from the same perspective, but with respect to political literature in order to account for the great variety in the narratives categorized as Fürstenspiegel, is Jean-Philippe Genet, “Conclusion: La littérature au miroir du prince,” in Le prince au miroir de la littérature politique, pp. 419–420 [405–423]. 4. Although not treating the area covered in this study, Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson, ed. City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), convey a sense of the increasing attention to and participation in public events, such as parades and pageants, informing the late Middle Ages. Such public performances form a critical part of the context of this study. 5. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 2. paragraph 228, p.135, his italics. 6. Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, Advances in Semiotics, gen. ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).

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7. Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Language In Literature, ed. Krystna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1996), pp. 66–71. 8. Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” p. 66. 9. The window dates from about 1200; for image and information, see www.sacreddestinations.com/england/canterbury-cathedral-stained-glass-windows.htm. 10. On how the visual conveys meaning, see Suzanne K. Langer, “Discursive and Presentational Forms,” in Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology, ed. Robert E. Innis, Advances in Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 87–107; and Robert E. Innis, “Dimensions of an Aesthetic Encounter: Perception, Interpretation, and the Signs of Art,” in Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds, ed. SunHee Kim Gertz, Jaan Valsiner, and Jean-Paul Breaux, Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development (Charlotte NC: Information Age Publishing, 2007), pp. 113–134. 11. See Alan C. Charity, Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). For use of types in history, see Robert Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), pp. 7–8, and Geoffrey Green, Literary Criticism & the Structures of History: Erich Auerbach & Leo Spitzer, foreword Robert Scholes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 30–47, on Auerbach’s figura as historical and hidden meaning. 12. Indeed, the depiction of the Tree of Jesse in stained glass became so conventional that fragments from a Tree of Jesse window could be, for example, convincingly and insightfully reconstructed in, Madeline H. Caviness and Virginia Chieffo Raguin, “Another Dispersed Window from Soissons: A Tree of Jesse in the SainteChapelle Style,” Gesta 20: Essays in Honor of Harry Bober (1981): 191–198. 13. Marie-Thérèse de Medeiros, “Voyage et lieux de mémoire: Le retour de Froissart en Angleterre,” Le Moyen Âge 98 (1992): 421–422 [419–428], indicates that in 1395, Jean Froissart returned to England and stopped first at Canterbury Cathedral, where he also visited the Black Prince’s tomb. Froissart’s quiet coupling of the prince with St. Thomas suggests yet another narrative than that of divinely sanctioned dynasty; see Jean Froissart, Oeuvres de Froissart: Chroniques, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: Victor Devaux, 1871), vol. 15, pp. 140–143. 14. Black, Political Thought in Europe, p. 24, his italics. Also see Christian D. Liddy, War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350– 1400, Royal Historical Society Studies in History (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 16–17, who notes that from 1350–1400, both the English crown and the urban elite from York and Bristol used the rhetoric of the common good to pursue political and economic interests. 15. Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” p. 93. 16. See, however: Tuomas Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis: Ein hochmittelaltericher Heiligenkult im Kontext, Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia Humaniora 326 (Helsinki: Academica Scientiarum Fennica, 2002), p. 53, who does not share the view that Simeon’s life belongs to the popular types. Also see Wolfgang Schmid, Poppo von Babenberg (+ 1047): Erzbischof von Trier—Förderer des hl. Simeon— Schutzpatron der Habsburger (Trier: Auenthal Verlag, 1998), pp. 23–32, who emphasizes the literary nature of the vita. 17. See Franz-Josef Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, Germania Sacra n.s. 41: Die Bistümer der Kirchenprovinz Trier, Das Erzbistum Trier 9 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), p. 506. 18. See Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 51, 175. 19. Interestingly, Archbishop Poppo, who died on June 16, 1047, requested that he be buried near Simeon; see Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 42–43, 488.

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20. For the extensive and unusually large-scaled building projects, see Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 32–59, 261–263; Joachim Hoffmann, “Zur Stiftsklausur von St. Simeon in Trier,” Neues Trierisches Jahrbuch 41 (2001): 75–91; and Joachim Hupe, “Untersuchungen im romanischen Simeonstift zu Trier,” in Archäologie in RheinlandPfalz 2004: Kultur- und Erdgeschichte, ed. Landesamt für Denkmalpf lege RheinlandPfalz, Abteilung Archäologische Denkmalpf lege (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2004), pp. 94–97. Also see Reiner Nolden, “Zur Urkunde Heinrichs IV. für das Simeonstift aus dem Jahre 1098,” Jahrbuch Kreis Trier-Saarburg, gen. ed. Edgar Christoffel (Trier: Kreisvervaltung Trier-Saarburg, 1997), pp. 52–55, regarding manuscript evidence. 21. Examples of regional or diocese-related publications include: Rolf Blasius, “Heidenburg kommt an ‘St. Simeon,’ ” Der Schellemann 10 (1997): 85–88; Rolf Blasius, “Heidenburg unter der Grundherrschaft von St. Simeon zu Trier,” in Kreis Bernkastel-Wittlich Jahrbuch, gen. ed. Beate Läsch-Weber (Bernkastel-Wittlich: Kreisverwaltung, 1998), pp. 264–268; Alfred Haverkamp, “Simeon von Trier in universalen Zusammenhängen,” Neues Trierisches Jahrbuch 44 (2004): 21–32; Franz Ronig, “Der heilige Simeon von Trier (+1035): Ein monastischer Weltenbummler und Rekluse in der Porta Nigra,” in Rotary-Club Trier, 50 Jahre (Trier: Klaus Schmidt-Ott, 2001), pp. 118–129. An example of a children’s book is Kathrin Held, Gregor Scherf, and Andrea Schwarz, Simeon Wartet Schon: Ein Museumsrundgang mit dem heiligen Simeon (Trier: Städtisches Museum Simeonstift, 2002). 22. Edition used: Eberwin of St. Martin, Acta sanctorum Iunii, vol. 1, ed. Gottfried Henschen, Daniel Papebroch, François Baert, et al. (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1867), pp. 85–104. References in parentheses record first the page number, then the column location, and finally the paragraph number. 23. The secular translatio studii et imperii topos traces the ever westward movement replacing one elect empire after another, from Troy to Rome to a variety of European nations. While there is a biblical version, this saint’s life seems to trace a spiritual translatio in the secular realm. On the translatio studii et imperii topos, see Gertz, Poetic Prologues, pp. 34–42. 24. See Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 55–59, 86–87. 25. See Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Pélerinages et culte des saints: Thème d’un congrès,” in Études critiques d’hagiographie et iconologie, Subsidia Hagiographica 43 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1967), pp. 31–49, who provides a brief overview of the close relationship between cults and pilgrimages. 26. Black, Political Thought in Europe, p. 52. 27. See Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 109, 261, 468–471 and Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 16–30, 47, 149–168. 28. Josef Kahmann, gen. ed., St. Simeon: Ein Trierer Heiliger und seine Patronatskirche im westlichen Stadtteil (Trier: Katholische Kirchengemeinde St. Simeon, 2000), p. 13, reports that his was the Church’s second canonization that was not a martyrdom. See Eric Waldram Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), who argues that from the age of the martyrs up through about the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the process of canonization eventually became centralized as the process moved from local control to seeking authority ever higher in the Church hierarchy (pp. 7, 36, 52–53, 69, 81, 110–113). Regarding St. Simeon (whom he calls Simeon of Syracuse), Kemp offers that his canonization probably took place in 1041 (p. 60). 29. See Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 16, 28–30, 44–48, 112–115. Perhaps another contributing factor to Simeon’s very good fit with Poppo’s civitas sancta, the Trier archdiocese had already established a cloister of Greek and Irish monks, founded by Bishop Gerhard of Toul in the last third of the tenth century. That is,

150

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30.

31.

32.

33.

the cloister had already established some fame, authoritative approbation, in Trier, making Simeon’s case less difficult to make. On Archbishop Poppo’s skills in leadership as well as his efforts to make Trier even more known for its spirituality, see Johannes Jacobi, “Erzbischof Poppo von Trier (1016–1047): Ein Beitrag zur geistigen und politischen Situation der Reform,” Archiv für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 13 (1961): 9–26, and Schmid, Poppo von Babenberg, pp. 19–23, 64–70. On his intent to establish a cult, see Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 113–115; Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 32, 261–262; and Schmid, Poppo von Babenberg, p. 123. Indeed, writers of saints’ lives recognized the importance of appealing to audiences, as evidenced by the fact that older vitae were often rewritten to meet the tastes of the times, which in the eleventh century meant including exciting adventures and local color, as also appear in Eberwin’s life of Simeon, even if underdeveloped and subordinated to the leitmotif of pilgrimage. I borrow the term “workshop” from Robert W. Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid: Metamorphosis and Poetic Tradition in The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame,” in Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction, ed. Leigh A. Arrathoon (Rochester, MI: Solaris Press, 1986), p. 147 [121–163], who applies it to Chaucer’s House of Fame (see chapter 3). Trier’s plethora of saints and cults are described in: Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, p. 73; Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 263–279; 447– 462; and Schmid, Poppo von Babenberg, pp. 14–15. Nonetheless, Simeon’s cult remained regional; see Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 520–528; and Schmid, Poppo von Babenberg, pp. 35–36. See Haverkamp, “Simeon von Trier in universalen Zusammenhängen,” pp. 21–30; Heikkilä, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis, pp. 17–19, 43–90, 113–114; and Heyen, Das Stift St. Simeon in Trier, pp. 448–462.

1 Fame and Fürstenspiegel 1. Cf. Plato, Republic 7. 517c, 520c. In the allegory of the cave, Plato defines universals or eternal forms as being truly beautiful, just, and good. 2. Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century, pp. 30–36. 3. Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), pp. 157–158; cf. pp. 38–41. 4. Anomalies operate similarly to Victor Shlovsky’s ostranenie [alienation], which was adapted by Bertolt Brecht into the principle of Verfremdung [alienation], whereby theater’s conventions were revealed by means of striking or clashing reminders; see Bertolt Brecht, “On Chinese Acting,” trans. Eric Bentley, in Brecht Sourcebook, ed. Carol Martin and Henry Bial (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 13–20. In this case, the f lag pin should have been revealed as an artificial theatrical symbol, except that some reporters kept insisting on the absolute identity of the pin with patriotism. Likewise, see Robert E. Innis, “The Thread of Subjectivity: Philosophical Remarks on Bühler’s Language Theory,” in Karl Bühler’s Theory of Language, ed. Achim Eschbach, Viennese Heritage/Wiener Erbe 2. Gen. Ed. A. Eschbach, K. Mulligan, H. Walter Schmitz (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988), pp. 92–99 [77–106], for Bühler’s definition of a sign as a diacriticon, which signifies through its contrasts with its context. 5. See, for example: Jeff Zeleny, “The Politician and the Absent American Flag Pin,” New York Times, October 4, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/us/politics/05obama. html. 6. Edition used: Fr. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1950), ll. 499–581.

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7. See Peter Brown, ed., Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, intro. A. C. Spearing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and Alain Corbellari and Jean-Yves Tilliette, eds. Le rêve médiéval, Recherches et Rencontres 25 (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2007) for essays on dreams in medieval literature. Also see Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 14, gen. ed. Alastair Minnis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) for an informative array of materials and explications on the subject. 8. On how narrators engage their audiences, see Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 9. Vergil’s and Ovid’s depictions of Fama are found in the Aeneid 4. 173–190 and the Metamorphoses 9. 137–139, 12. 39–63. In elaborating upon an ambiguity clarified by one of his students, Robert Rutherfurd Dyer, “Vergil’s Fama: A New Interpretation of ‘Aeneid’ 4.173ff.,” Greece & Rome 36 (1989): 28 [28–32] makes this comment, “Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative.” Also see Arthur L. Keith, “Vergil’s Allegory of Fama,” Classical Journal 16 (1921): 298–301, on monstrous fame as being largely Vergil’s depiction. 10. See Piero Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame, Chaucer Studies 10 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984), pp. 18–71. Boitani points out that it was Fulgentius who connected fame with Clio, the muse associated with epic and history (p. 42). 11. See Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 20, gen. ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 131–134, who discusses the conversation between Petrarca and Boccaccio as writerly, for writers produce fame, but also arguing that the lay tradition essentially equates reading with acting morally. 12. John Trevisa, The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa’s Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus, ed. David C. Fowler, Charles F. Briggs, and Paul G. Remley, Garland Medieval Texts, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 22 (ll. 29–34) and 23 (ll. 9–12). I use Trevisa, since in the very fact that his work is a late fourteenth-century Middle English translation of an inf luential Fürstenspiegel (Giles of Rome’s—Aegidius Romanus’—De regimine principum, written between 1270 and 1285, p. ix), his work demonstrates the importance of Fürstenspiegel, and it is also closer than Giles of Rome’s treatise to the centuries under observation. 13. See Claire Richter Sherman, “Some Visual Definitions in the Illustrations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics in the French Translations of Nicole Oresme,” The Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 320–330, who examines a 1370s translation of Aristotle for Charles V of France from Latin into French. She cites Nicole Oresme’s rationale for the translation: “the difficulty of the Latin texts for the audience of the king and his counselors, and the clearly defined ethical and political purposes of the translations” (p. 321). As such, this example illustrates three closely interrelated elements of importance to this study: the increasing inf luence of the populace on governance, the increasing use of the vernacular, and the increasing need for regents to take other voices into account. 14. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425: Italy, France, and Flanders (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 35. Also interesting is: Sandra Billington, Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), who studies ritualistic and festive counter-kings, but also outlaws, in England.

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15. On the importance of gaining favor with public opinion, especially in the local assemblies dominated by the bourgeoisie in fifteenth-century France, see P. S. Lewis, Essays in Later Medieval French History (London: The Hambledom Press, 1985), pp. 7–9, 107–116. In chapter 3, I brief ly treat the English context. 16. Peter N. Riesenberg, Inalienability of Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 137. 17. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds. Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornal University Press, 2003), pp. 3–4, my italics. This collection of essays explores an array of meanings of fama, focusing on the testimony of what people say, or public talk. Also see Mary C. Flannery, “Brunhilde on Trial: Fama and Lydgatean Poetics,” Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 139–160, on how legal concepts of fama support Lydgate’s view on the importance of the poet’s reputation, which, she argues, Chaucer does not share. A complementary collection of essays focusing on how news was disseminated, mainly in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France, in systems that derived partly from the Avignon papacy is Michel Balard, ed., La circulation des nouvelles au moyen âge: XXIVe Congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Avignon, Juin 1993), Collection de l’École Française de Rome 190; Série Histoire Ancienne et Médiévale 29 (Rome: École Française, 1994). On how rumor and noise were distinguished in late medieval literature, see Nelly Andrieux-Reix, “Les bruits et la rumeur: Noise au moyen âge,” in Et c’est la fin pour quoy sommes ensemble. Hommage à Jean Dufournet: Littérature, histoire et langue du moyen âge, vol. 1, ed. Jean-Claude Aubailly, Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Francis Dubost, et al., Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen Âge 25 (Paris: Champion, 1993), pp. 89–99. 18. e.g., Trevisa, pp. 390–392. 19. L. O. Aranye Fradenburg, “Pro patria mori,” in Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Kathy Lavezzo. Medieval Cultures 37, series ed. Rita Copeland, Barbara A. Hanawalt, and David Wallace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), pp. 26–30 [3–38]. Also see John Leyerle, “Conclusion: The Major Themes of Chivalric Literature,” in Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations Between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle, Studies in Medieval Culture 14 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980), pp. 131–146, on the subject. 20. For an overview that does not, however, include Boccaccio, see Lester Kruger Born, “The Perfect Prince: A Study in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Ideals,” Speculum 3 (1928): 470–504, who analyzes the exemplary traits furthered by the treatises he considers. In summary, a leader should be (p. 504): “wise, self-restrained, just; devoted to the welfare of his people; a pattern in virtues for his subjects; interested in economic developments, an educational program, and the true religion of God; surrounded by efficient ministers and able advisers; opposed to aggressive war; and . . . zealous for the attainment of peace and unity.” A Fürstenspiegel that focuses more on childhood education is Christine de Pizan, Le livre du corps de policie: Edition critique avec introduction, notes et glossaire, ed. Angus J. Kennedy (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998). Also see Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, pp. 81–145. 21. See István P. Bejczy and Cary J. Nederman, eds. Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages 1200–1500 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007); and Lachaud and Scordia, eds. Le prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’antiquité aux lumières. Both collections explore the critiques articulated by Fürstenspiegel, as well as ambiguities in defining the genre. Also see Warren Ginsberg, Chaucer’s Italian Tradition (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 190–239, particularly on Boccaccio’s narrator in the De casibus and on the collection’s relationship to Chaucer; and Paul Strohm, Politique: Languages of Statecraft Between Chaucer and Shakespeare, The

NOTES

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23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

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Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2003 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 87–132, on Boccaccio’s seminal role in the articulation of Fürstenspiegel in the late medieval English tradition. While I am not sure that Boccaccio’s advice in the De casibus was entirely “rigourously dour and world-denying” (p. 92), he clearly tried to shift perspectives. Edition used: Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus illustrium virorum: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Paris Edition of 1520, ed. Louis Brewer Hall (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1962), pp. v–vii. See Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, pp. 119–134, who writes that the De casibus, “was probably Boccaccio’s most inf luential and widely circulated [work] during the two centuries following his death” (p. 119) and further discusses its exemplarity and rhetorical emphases. Also see Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), pp. 165–169, on the exemplarity of chronicle-writing in medieval England. In this study, Given-Wilson covers various perspectives on writing history (e.g., the truth, usefulness, propaganda, situating in certain realms and locations) as well as the cultural beliefs that make certain events unverifiable, as the belief in prophetic dreams and Christian interpretations. Edition used: John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, ed. Henry Bergen (Washington DC: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1923). Otto Eberhardt, Via Regia: Der Fürstenspiegel Smaragds von St Mihiel und seine literarische Gattung, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 28, ed. H. Belting, H. Borger, H. Claussen, et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1977), p. 678. Edition used: Secretum secretorum: Nine English Versions, vol. 1, ed. Mahmoud A. Manzalaoui, Early English Text Society 276 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. ix–xxvi. Also see Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 39–54, on the Secretum secretorum’s ideology. Although Ferster’s study mainly treats English public discourse after the Black Prince and Chaucer, its principles and analyses are useful for this study as well. See Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275–1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Briggs limits his study to manuscripts found in English collections and speculates about their audiences from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. Frank Tang, “Machiavelli’s Image of the Ruler: Il principe and the Tradition of the Mirror for Princes,” in Machiavelli: Figure-Reputation, Yearbook of European Studies 8, ed. Joep Leerssen and Menno Spiering (1996): 188 [187–200]. Similarly, Léon Gautier, Chivalry trans. Henry Frith (London: Routledge, 1891), p. 2, claims that chivalry is relatively straightforward, arguing, “Chivalry is the Christian form of the military profession: the knight is the Christian soldier,” before he discusses the matter of a just war (pp. 2–11). He further discusses the “ten commandments” of chivalry, which he lists on p. 26, guidelines that essentially put the Church and country above all and admonish the individual knight to be faithful, generous, and just. Robert J. Schneider, “A ‘Mirror for Princes’ by Vincent de Beauvais,” in Studium Generale: Studies Offered to Astrik L. Gabriel, ed. L. S. Domonkos and R. J. Schneider. Texts and Studies in the History of Mediaeval Education 11 (Notre Dame, IN: Mediaeval Institute, 1967), pp. 211–213. [205–223]. Jonas d’Orléans, Jonas d’Orléans et son “De institutione regia”: Étude et texte critique, ed. Jean Reviron, L’Église et l’État au Moyen Âge, ed. H.-X. Arquillière, vol. 1: Les

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34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

NOTES

idées politico-religieuses d’un évêque du IXe siècle (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1930), pp. 56, 84–94. See Boccaccio, De casibus, p. vii. Boccaccio, De casibus, Book 2, p. 53. See Boccaccio, De casibus, pp. v–vii; xxx and Trevisa, pp. 346–351. Also see Sverre Bagge, The Political Thought of The King’s Mirror Mediaeval Scandinavia Supplements 3 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1987); Jeremy Catto, “Ideas and Experience in the Political Thought of Aquinas,” Past and Present 71 (1976): 3–21; Eberhardt, Via regia, pp. 5, 286–361, 392–476, 675; M. A. Manzalaoui, “ ‘Noght in the Registre of Venus’: Gower’s English Mirror for Princes,” in Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett: Aetatis suae LXX, ed. P. L. Heyworth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), pp. 159–183; Wilfrid Parsons, “The Mediaeval Theory of the Tyrant,” The Review of Politics 4 (1942): 129–143; Riesenberg, Inalienability of Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought; Nicolai Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958):179–207; Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, pp. 215–229; and Schneider, “A ‘Mirror for Princes’ by Vincent de Beauvais,” pp. 205–223. See Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) on the forms and ethical purposes of medieval literature, and Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), who contextualizes literary delight, or recreation, in medieval thought and literature as helpful of restoring balance. In her doctoral dissertation, Ratgeber des Königs: Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherideal im spätmittelalterlichen England, Europäische Kulturstudien 15, ed. Klaus Garber, Martin Geck, and Jutta Held (Köln: Böhlau, 2004), Ulrike Graßnick explores late medieval English Fürstenspiegel, along with John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Book VII) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Tale of Melibee” to illustrate how pervasive the genre had become. The vignette is conveyed in René d’Anjou, Oeuvres complètes du roi René, vol. 1, ed. M. le Comte de Quatrebarbes, illus. M. Hawke (Angers: Cosnier et Lachèse, 1845), pp. liii–lvi. Subsequent, early René scholars, such as A. Lecoy de la Marche, refer to his editions and to the biographical material prefacing them, suggesting that Quartrebarbes’ early portrait was inf luential. This is Quatrebarbes’ identification: Quatrebarbes, Oeuvres completes du roi René, vol. 1, p. liv. What may have been intended was the Santa Maria del Carmine or the Santa Croce across from the Piazza Mercato. Angevin inf luence on Neapolitan architecture before René is examined in Caroline Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy 1266–1343 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Interestingly, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, one of the most popular rhetorical treatises in the middle ages, seems to be the foundation for the advice here. In the Ad Herennium: “Verum hae tres utilitates tametsi in tota oratione sunt conparandae, hoc est, ut auditores sese perpetuo nobis adtentos, dociles, benivolos praebeant, tamen id per exordium causae maxime conparandum est” [1.7.11, Caplan’s translation: But though this threefold advantage—that the hearers constantly show themselves attentive, receptive, and well-disposed to us—is to be secured throughout the discourse, it must in the main be won by the Introduction to the cause]. On the popularity of the Ad Herennium in the Middle Ages, see James R. Banker, “The Ars Dictaminis and Rhetorical Textbooks at the Bolognese University in the Fourteenth

NOTES

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40.

41.

42.

43.

155

Century,” Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1974): 153–168; Hennig Brinkmann, Zu Wesen und Form mittelalterlicher Dichtung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979), pp. 40–41; Faral, Les arts poétiques, vol.1, pp. 48–49; Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, pp. 18–21. See Black, Political Thought in Europe, p. 26, on Aquinas’ distinction between just and unjust laws and pp. 148–152, on justifiable resistance to tyranny and tyrannicide. On medieval views of true nobility as being seated in virtue rather than in the bloodline, see Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 156–161. The religious shares an uneasy space with the epic, as witnessed in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s characterization of King Arthur mainly as a warrior king, but also as a regent who paid attention to the Church’s rituals and representatives, as illustrated in the beginning of section 156, p. 109, where Arthur’s victory did lead him to celebrate the Pentecost solemnly, and in section 157, pp. 111–112, with the Archbishop Dubricius’s celebratory coronation of Arthur as king. Edition used: Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth: I, Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS.568, ed. Neil Wright (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1984). Indeed, the force of an exemplum, according to Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, pp. 31–34, lies in the invisible beliefs informing its narrative form that allows it, “an ideological power doctrine often lack[s]. . . . defined . . . by its constant movement between the historical and the textual. . . . [thereby] reenact[ing] the actual historical embodiment of communal value in a protagonist or an event . . . [and] effect[ing] the value’s reemergence with the obligatory force of moral law.” For a sense of how widely and variously the subject can be explored, see Lawrence Besserman, ed. Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays, The New Middle Ages, series ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Using the example of Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide, Boutet suggests that Arthur’s ability to act as a model is most present in those narratives that depict him in a kind of eternal present; “Le prince au miroir de la littérature narrative,” p. 155 [143–159]. Below I will cite passages from Boccaccio’s Fürstenspiegel that convey a vision of Arthur common to the late Middle Ages. This is not to say that Arthur was overall accepted as a mythical guarantor for a loftier concept of kingdom; see, for example, Andrew Galloway, “Latin England,” in Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Lavezzo, pp. 56–59 [41–95], on Ranulph Higden’s doubts regarding Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthur. A recent contestation of the origins and meanings of Arthurian myth is presented in Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). The material on Arthur is endless. For thorough overviews and material on the Arthurian legends, see the studies written and overseen by Norris J. Lacy, among them: Norris J. Lacy, ed., A History of Arthurian Scholarship (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2006); Norris J. Lacy and Geoffrey Ashe with Debra N. Mancoff, The Arthurian Handbook, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1920 (New York: Garland, 1997); and Norris J. Lacy, Geoffrey Ashe, Sandra Ness Ihle, et al., eds. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996). For additional overviews, see Martin Aurell, La légende du roi Arthur: 550–1250 (Paris: Perrin, 2007); W. R. J. Barron, ed. The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages 2 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001); Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt, The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature, Arthurian Literature in the Middle

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45.

46.

47.

NOTES

Ages 4 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006); Roger Sherman Loomis, ed., Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959); Alan Lupack, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Derek Pearsall, Arthurian Romance: A Short Introduction, Blackwell Introductions to Literature 4 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003); and focusing on Malory, Bonnie Wheeler, ed., Arthurian Studies in Honour of P. J. C. Field, Arthurian Studies 57, gen. ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge, UK: Derek Brewer, 2004). Also see Jane H. M. Taylor, “The Fourteenth Century: Context, Text and Intertext,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby, vol.1, Faux Titre 31, ed. Keith Busby, M. J. Freeman, Sjef Houppermans, et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp. 267–332. This volume demonstrates how widely Arthurian literature inf luenced the late medieval literary system. Taylor’s essay shows how the popularity of the material led to various authors’ incorporation of the material as well as how they assumed their audiences would be familiar with it. Although not treating periods covered here, Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, King Arthur and the Myth of History (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004), looks at how Arthurian authority is used in historical writing. D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325–1520 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1987), p. 5. Also see Denys Hay, “History and Historians in France and England During the Fifteenth Century,” Bulletin of the London University Institute of Historical Research 35 (1962): 111–127, who argues that by the fourteenth century, romance inf luence on chronicles was clearly evident. See V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), on how socioeconomic hierarchies effect and affect communication. See, however, Lewis, Essays in Later Medieval French History, pp. 5–7, 11–22, 170–187, 191, on the fifteenth-century French resistance to challenge a monarch; how deeply embedded the French monarchy was through its controlled distribution of power among the nobility and civil servants; and literary critiques as well as the controversial debate over justifiable tyrannicide. In medieval literature, a variety of advisor types exists, including the sycophant, the traitor, the fool, and the wise man. A common kind of advisor is the seneschal, who is left in charge of the ruler’s lands to act in his lord’s stead. In the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo, the seneschal governing Orfeo’s lands while he searches for his wife, rules wisely, and he ethically returns the kingdom to Orfeo when the time comes. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Mordred acts in the King’s stead while he is on his way to conquering Rome, but proves treacherous. Kay, the seneschal in Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances, proves incapable, as he allows Guenevere to be taken in Le chevalier de la charette [The Knight of the Cart] by Lancelot as well as by an overt enemy of Arthur’s court. The advisor as teacher appears in Alcuin’s Rhetoric of Charlemagne to allow the Emperor to understand the benefit of the trivium. In Marie de France’s twelfth-century lai, Le Fresne, the bad wife offers bad advice (that a wife could only have twins if she had two lovers), which, although rejected by her husband, is more or less accepted by the court. Then, there is Chaucer’s Pandarus, who, for example, advises Troilus, in order for his letter to Criseyde to have more effect, to “[b]iblotte it with [his] teris ek a lite” [2.1027: blot it with (his) tears also a little]. Obviously, the list could go on. Edition used for all Chaucer texts: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Miff lin, 1987).

NOTES

157

48. Edition used: Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. and trans. Carleton W. Carroll, intro. William W. Kibler, Garland Library of Medieval Literature Series A, vol. 25 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987). Compare with the lavish celebration Arthur provides for Erec and Enide at the end of the romance, ll. 6610–6911. Also see Peter F. Ainsworth, “The Art of Hesitation: Chrétien, Froissart and the Inheritance of Chivalry,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, vol. 2, pp. 187–206, who argues by means of Froissart’s Meliador and the Chroniques that the dilemma inherited from Chrétien with respect to chivalry’s ethics is revealed in passages that are designed to allow the reader to pause and consider moral issues. 49. Peter F. Dembowski, “Chivalry, Ideal and Real, in the Narrative Poetry of Jean Froissart,” Medievalia et Humanistica 14 (1986): 7 [1–15]. Dembowski points to the importance of reading Froissart in terms of other chivalric manifestations, which he examines in detail in Jean Froissart and his “Meliador”: Context, Craft, and Sense, The Edward C. Armstrong Monographs on Medieval Literature 2, gen. ed. Karl D. Uitti (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1983), e.g., pp. 105–109. Likewise, Malcolm Vale argues that public performance was a part of the chivalric life; for example, he writes, “The popularity of the joust in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may partly result from the fact that it offered greater opportunities for performing notable feats in public than did the collective tournoi.” Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France, and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1981), p. 76, cf. pp. 63–99. 50. See Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, Middle Ages Series, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 3–64. Also see Philippe Contamine, Pages d’histoire militaire médiévale (XIVe–XVe siècles), Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 32 (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 2005), pp. 171–184; Keen, Chivalry, pp. 2–15, who notes that typical virtues associated with knighthood belong to chivalry, such as prouesse, loyauté, largesse, courtoisie, and franchise [p. 2: prowess, loyalty, generosity, courtly sensibilities, and noble bearing]. 51. The Riverside Chaucer, 7.1986; also see note to the line, p. 929. Further, see R. W. Babcock, “The Mediaeval Setting of Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale,” PMLA 46 (1931): 205– 213, who distinguishes “The Monk’s Tale” from Boccaccio’s Fürstenspiegel on stylistic grounds, such as Boccaccio’s use of a dream framework; and Grudin, Chaucer and the Politics of Discourse, pp. 12–13, who links the two poets through the humanist tradition that revived the importance of eloquence used in the service of state. 52. See Henry Savage, “Chaucer and the ‘Pitous Deeth’ of ‘Petro, Glorie of Spayne,’ ” Speculum 24 (1949): 357–375, for potential sources of this tale. 53. Charlemagne is only very brief ly mentioned in De casibus, Book 9, p. 215. Also see Sidney Painter, French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Mediaeval France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), pp. 72–88, on the consonance of the Chanson de Roland with concepts of religious chivalry in two fundamental late medieval treatises, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus and Ramon Lull’s Le libre del orde de cauayleria. Painter sees the three major strands of late medieval chivalry—feudal chivalry, religious chivalry, and courtly love, as he terms them—as essentially incompatible, surviving through various compromises and modulations of elements of the three strands (pp. 149–172). 54. Edition used: La chanson de Roland, ed. Cesare Segre, Madeleine Tyssens, and Bernard Guidot, Textes Littéraires Français (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2003). 55. While Charlemagne is not critiqued, Olivier does scold Roland for not sounding Oliphant in Fürstenspiegel terms. “Ço dist Rollant: ‘Por quei me portez ire?’/E il

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respont: ‘Cumpainz, vos le feïstes, / Kar vasselage par sens nen est folie;/Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie.’ ” [131. ll. 1721–1724: This Roland says, “Why are you angry with me?” And (Olivier) responds: “Comrade, you did it—because loyalty (should be governed) by understanding, not folly, measuredness is worth more than arrogance.”] In doing so, Olivier also underscores a key problem that Fürstenspiegel attempt to address—what makes an action wise and at what point does an action become intractable? 56. The Angevin family clearly plays a positive role in this epic. The Duke of Anjou’s brother, Tierri, advised that Ganelon be punished (277. ll. 3818–3837), and thus becomes Roland’s champion against Ganelon’s, Pinabel, in a trial by combat fought to determine Ganelon’s fate.

2

René d’Anjou’s Negotiations with Fame: Creating for a Future Past

1. René d’Anjou, Le livre du coeur d’amour épris, ed. Florence Bouchet, Lettres Gothiques, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Librairie Génerale Française, 2003), p. 10. 2. Quatrebarbes himself was descended from one of René’s companions; see Noël Coulet, Alice Planche, and Françoise Robin, Le roi René: Le prince, le mécène, l’écrivain, le mythe (Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 1982), p. 145. 3. I have culled information about René d’Anjou and the times from the following sources: Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris; Pierre Champion, Le roi René: Écrivain, Conférence du 7 février 1925, No. 16 (Monaco: Société de Conférences, 1925); Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René; Stephanie Viereck Gibbs and Kathryn Karczewska, eds. and trans., The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart by René d’Anjou (New York: Routledge, 2001); Margaret L. Kekewich, The Good King: René of Anjou and Fifteenth Century Europe (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); A. Lecoy de la Marche, Le roi René. Sa vie, son administration, ses travaux artistiques et littéraires. D’Après les documents inédits des archives de France et d’Italie, vol. 1. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1875); Jacques Levron, Le bon roi René (Paris: B. Arthaud, 1972); Quatrebarbes, Oeuvres complètes du roi René; Poirion, Le poète et le prince, pp. 52–54; Françoise Robin, La cour d’Anjou-Provence: La vie artistique sous le règne du roi René (Paris: Picard, 1985); Guy Massin Le Goff, ed., L’Europe des Anjou: Aventure des princes angevins du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art, 2001); and Susan Wharton, ed., René d’Anjou: Le livre du cuer d’amours espris, Bibliothèque Médiévale, ed. Paul Zumthor (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1980). 4. Michael T. Reynolds, “René of Anjou, King of Sicily, and the Order of the Croissant,” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993): 127 [125–161]. While inf luenced by other knightly orders as well, Reynolds also points out that the Crescent’s statutes are unorganized and heavily religious (pp. 136, 139). The Order held an annual feast on the eve of Saint Martin’s Feast Day (September 22), and it was unique in its annual election of a leader (pp. 129, 141,143). Perhaps most importantly, the Croissant played a key role in René’s dynastic ambitions. 5. For example, Francis Leary, The Golden Longing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), p. 118, writes of the parting of the ways between René d’Anjou and Jeanne d’Arc: “Charles and his council broke up the army (not wishing to do anything to irritate Burgundy!); and René never saw Jeanne again. She went her f lamelit way, to the terrible glory at Rouen, while henceforth René interpolated his own vision with the golden life, wine and peacocks, sundrenched gardens, delectable girls. Yet Jeanne never vanished from his world.” More f latly positive, Maryvonne Miquel, Quand le bon roi René etait en Provence (1447–1480) (Paris: Librairie

NOTES

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

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Arthème Fayard, 1979), attempts to depict what life was like in Provence during René’s life; R.-L. Mouliérac-Lamoureux, Le roi René ou les hasards du destin (1409– 1480) (Avignon: Aubanel, 1980), p. 139, writes, “René incarne le déclin de la civilisation féodale. . . . Poète spirituel, artiste, mécène, ce n’est plus un homme du moyen âge, c’est déjà un prince de la Renaissance” [René embodies the decline of feudal civilization . . . spiritual poet, artist, patron, he is no longer a man of the Middle Ages, he is already a prince of the Renaissance]; Helen Irene Pope, “René of Anjou: A Concise Biography” (Roanoke, VA: M.A. Thesis Hollins College 1990), also illustrates the defensive admiration that fuels some writers’ approaches to René as one who did not garner the credit he deserved. In similar vein, he has been lauded in various arts; thus, Sir Edward Burne-Jones created an oil painting, entitled “King René’s Wedding,” in 1870 (Bridgeman Art Library Archive), and in 1886, a fantaisie militaire for the piano was published by F. Chantaize, entitled “Le roi René d’Anjou, Op. 18: Fantaisie militaire pour piano,” 1886, as stored in gallica. fr (cote: NUMM-394966). Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris, p. 9. Bouchet’s Le coeur is the edition I use here. See also Raymond Lincoln Kilgour, The Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages, Harvard Studies in Romance Languages 12 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1966), who presents a similar view regarding chivalric ethos in the French kingdom, whose decline, he argues, was sealed with the English victory at Crécy and also under attack especially from the clergy, but from lay writers as well. Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, p. 8. Edition used for all citations from Shakespeare: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David M. Bevington (New York: Pearson Longman, 2003). Michel Zink, “La tristesse du coeur dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou,” in Le récit amoureux, ed. Didier Coste and Michel Zéraffa (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1984), p. 22 [22–38]. Likewise, Christian Murciaux, “René d’Anjou: Peintre, poète et mystique,” La Table Ronde 165 (1961): 7–28, enumerates René’s lack of abilities as a ruler, peacemaker, and military leader, while pointing to his proclivities for the arts and, in Freudian manner, to the inf luence of his mother and other strong women in his life; and Jules Renouvier, “Les peintres et les enlumineurs du roi René,” Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Montpellier 4 (1855): 345 [345–374], characterizes René as not capable of leading because of his love of bourgeois processions and games along with the gentler life’s cultivation of wine and the arts. See Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, pp. 221–231, on how his reputation changed and survived over the centuries. See Levron, Le bon roi René, pp. 47–52. For context, see Constance B. Bouchard, “The Origins of the French Nobility: A Reassessment,” The American Historical Review 86 (1981): 501–532, who nuances the hypothesis that the new nobles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries represent a break from past aristocratic lines. The Anjou dynasty serves as her first example of a viscomital family moving up into the ranks of nobility (pp. 514–516). A sense of the extent of the wealth and power held by the House of Anjou from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries (along with a few essays on René as well as details on items that belonged to him) is conveyed in the catalogue, Le Goff, L’Europe des Anjou. See Emile Duvernoy, “Documents sur les débuts de René d’Anjou dans les duchés de Lorraine et de Bar, 1419–1431,” Annuaire de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de la Lorraine 39 (1930): 55–73. Duvernoy translates the document of August 13, 1419,

160

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

NOTES

transferring northeast Bar to René, after René’s marriage to the Duke’s daughter on March 20, 1419. The Duke had another document prepared on the same date, declaring that if René’s mother would drop the suit against the Duke, René would also inherit the four remaining territories in Bar (pp. 57–65). Another measure of her inf luence is a Fürstenspiegel, which was apparently addressed to her with advice on raising her son-in-law and nephew, King Charles VII; see JeanPatrice Boudet, “ ‘Pour commencer bonne maniere de gouverner ledit royaume.’ Un miroir du prince du XVe siècle: l’avis à Yolande d’Aragon” in Le prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’antiquité aux lumières, pp. 277–296. Adding to the complexity of these tumultuous times, the idea of nationhood may have been forming. For an interesting indicator, see André Bossuat, “L’idée de nation et la jurisprudence du parlement de Paris au XVe siècle,” Revue Historique 204 (1950): 54–61, who examines judgments pronounced in two marriage cases that evoked the idea of nation. But also see P. S. Lewis, “War Propaganda and Historiography in Fifteenth-Century France and England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 15 (1965): 1–21. See Le Marquis de Forbin, “L’union de la Provence à la France, 11 décembre 1481,” Mémoires de l’Académie de Vaucluse 2 (1981): 19–54 [19–112], who reviews the intrigues and complexities involved in their territorial claims (and the negative reports regarding one of René’s advisors who was later rewarded by Louis XI, Palamède de Forbin, presumably one of the author’s ancestors), which eventually led to France’s absorption of Provence after René’s death and ever diminishing independent rights. Among them were battles waged at Chantilly, Soissons, Château-Thierry, Provins, Crépy-en-Valois, Orléans, and Paris. Securing his Italian inheritance did indeed preoccupy René for much of his life. While in prison, for example, he had sent Isabelle, his wife, to defend his kingdom. This obsession seemed partly to remove him from one of the major power struggles of the fifteenth century as well, that between England and France. Nonetheless, see Margaret L. King, “An Inconsolable Father and His Humanist Consolers: Jacopo Antonio Marcello, Venetian Nobleman, Patron, and Man of Letters,” in Svpplementvm Festivvm: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins, John Monfasani, and Frederick Purnell, Jr. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 49 (Binghamton: SUNY PRESS, 1987), pp. 221–246, who illustrates that even though Count Francesco Sforza and Jacoppo Antonio Marcello changed sides, they remained friends with René and were, indeed, added to his Order of the Croissant in 1449, one year after its founding. Marcello’s relationship with René was per se notable; for example, he sent René fabulous books and other gifts. René nonetheless continued to engage in combat, as when, in 1449, he responded to Charles VII’s call to battle against René’s own son-in-law Henry VI in Normandy. In 1452, he served again upon Charles’ request for help, but in early 1454 he abruptly left the combat, which infuriated the monarch. Finally, in 1466, René successfully led Louis XI’s forces in Normandy (ten years before Louis accused him of treason). He was rewarded by being allowed to seal Louis’ letters with the yellow wax of the Royal Chancellery, a privilege that had been reserved to French kings, and Louis also named him King of Sicily, Jerusalem, and Aragon. See Patricia-Ann Lee, “Ref lections of Power: Margaret of Anjou and the Dark Side of Queenship,” Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986): 185 [183–217]. For the very public marriage of his daughter Margaret to Henry VI in Tours, René celebrated the union sumptuously with tournaments and other entertainment, after his older daughter’s marriage to Ferry de Vaudémont had just been celebrated, if not so lavishly, only a few days earlier.

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21. When the Ligue du Bien Public was created in 1465, Brittany, Bourbon, Burgundy, Armagnac, Berry, and René’s son, John, joined in opposition to Louis. René remained neutral, which apparently led the regent to support his claims to Aragon and Naples. 22. See Françoise Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale: La cour d’Anjou XIVe–XVe siècle, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, VIe Section, Sciences Économiques et Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques: Civilisations et Sociétés 21 (Paris-La Haye: Mouton, 1970); and Elizabeth Gonzalez, Un prince en son hôtel: Les serviteurs des ducs d’Orléans au XVe siècle, Histoire Ancienne et Médiévale 74, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004). Although Gonzalez treats the Dukes of Orléans from 1380 to 1498, her data and analyses provide a detailed picture of how the court and hôtel of at least a nearby Duke functioned. Reading through G. Arnaud d’Agnel, Les comptes du roi René, publiés d’après les originaux inédits conservés aux Archives des Bouches-du-Rhône, 3 vols. (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1908, 1909, 1910) in the context of Piponnier’s and Gonzalez’s work gives a sense of the scale of René’s desired lifestyle, which he had to adjust at times to cover expenses. 23. J.-H. Albanès, “La bibliothèque du roi René.” Revue des Sociétés Savantes des Departéments 8 (1874): 310–311 [301–311]. 24. On his participation in, as well as love and patronage of, the visual and performing arts, see Albert Châtelet, “Jean de Pestinien au service de Philippe le Bon et de son prisonnier le roi René,” Artibus et Historiae 20 (1999): 77–88; Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, pp. 55–220; Yves Esquieu with Noël Coulet. “La musique à la cour provençale du roi René,” Provence Historique 31 (1981): 299–312; Otto Pächt, “René d’Anjou et les van Eyck,” Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises 8 ( June 1956): 41–67; Françoise Perrot, Jean-Louis Taupon, and François Enaud, “Le roi René à Avignon,” Archéologia 73 (August 1974): 20–38; Ottokar Smital and Emil Winkler, eds., Nationalbibliothek in Wien: Handschrift 2597: Herzog René von Anjou, Livre du cuer d’amours espris, Buch vom liebentbrannten Herzen, vol. 1 (Wien: Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1926), pp. 11–28; Renouvier, “Les peintres et les enlumineurs du roi René,” pp. 345–374; Ernst Trenkler, Das Livre de cuer d’amours espris des Herzogs René von Anjou (Wien: F. Deuticke, 1946), pp. 1–12. 25. See Pierre Quarré, “Le roi René prisonnier du Duc de Bourgogne à Dijon et son oeuvre de peintre,” La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 14 (1964): 67–74, who portrays René’s appreciation for and possible participation in painting. 26. Even after retiring to Provence after his son John of Calabria died in December 1470, René concentrated on local administration, the arts, and literature. 27. See Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, p. xcii. Also see Christian de Mérindol, Le roi René et la seconde maison d’Anjou: Emblématique, art, histoire, Preface Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1987), who situates René in his dynasty and connects his various life stages with emblems he used and created, such as his seals, coins, and works of art. The volume has seventy-two glossy pages illustrating these objects. Another volume combining his life with his artwork is Robin, La cour d’Anjou-Provence. 28. Shira Schwam-Baird, “The Crucified Heart of René d’Anjou in Text and Image,” Fifteenth Century Studies 25 (2000): 228–252, reads the manuscript’s text and illuminations in part through René’s love of mystery plays and spectacles, suggesting his own individual and personal approach to aesthetics, as illustrated by René’s having himself depicted in one of the illuminations. 29. See Albert Châtelet, “Le problème du Maître du Coeur d’amour épris: Le roi René ou Guillaume Porchier?” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français (1980): 7–14; and

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30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

NOTES

Emil Winkler, Die textliche Stellung der Handschrift 2597 der Wiener Nationalbibliothek (Wien: n.p., 1926), pp. 867–869. His love of the arts also celebrated his own fame, as seen in the self-portraits he had fashioned, which were executed to have verisimilar, non-f lattering features, after the Italian style; see Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, pp. 117–119; and Eugène Hucher, “Iconographie du roi René, de Jeanne de Laval, sa seconde femme et de divers autres princes de la maison d’Anjou.” Revue Historique et Archéologique du Maine 4 (1879): 130–135 [125–150]. See Alan Ryder, “The Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples, “ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 7 (ca. 1415–1500), ed. Christopher Allmand (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 577 [571–587], who points to the stream of defections in the last phase of the battle and describes René thus: “Having spent everything on ransoming himself from Burgundy, he arrived in Naples as a pensioner of the Genoese with little to offer his followers but an agreeable personality.” See Boccaccio, De casibus, Book 8, p. 205, quoted below, on the importance of bringing back stories to enhance the glory of Arthur’s knights while encouraging them to achieve brave deeds. Also see Painter, French Chivalry, pp. 35–37, 51–62, on the emergence (and erosion) of attaining glory as the true aim of a knight, since that would perpetuate his memory. Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, p. lxi. Quatrebarbes found the letter in Papon’s Histoire de Provence. While Fregoso’s exhortation to remain steadfast is all that suggests a Christian orientation, nonetheless, René did clearly adhere to Christian ideals, as exemplified in his providing for religious houses and individuals. In 1448, moreover, he saw to it that the relics of the holy Maries in the Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer were elevated, moving them from the foot of the altar to the top, a ceremony whose significance was marked by the Pope’s presiding over the translatio with great pomp and ceremony. Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris, p. 14, notes that René’s family was particularly known for devotion to the Passion. Interestingly, Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, p. cx, describes René’s Christian virtue in Arthurian romance manner: when hunting one day, René rode more deeply into the forest than usual until he came across a holy anchorite, Macé Bucheron. Moved by his virtue, René built him a cell and a small chapel and provided him with a garden and modest lodgings. He dubbed the hermitage Reculée [Withdrawn] and with his own hand, it is reported, fashioned allegorical paintings for it. See Painter, French Chivalry, pp. 42–44; also see Vale, War and Chivalry, for chivalry in practice. Winthrop Wetherbee writes, “The court of Arthur or Mark may be seen as analogous in its function to the court of Jove, the ‘locus universitatis’ in the mythographical poetry of the schools, like the Platonic cosmos, the central image of the court imposes thematic coherence and a system of values on the fictional world in which it functions, and enables us to analyze the tensions which beset the heroes of romance.” Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century, p. 226. Jacques Krynen, Idéal du prince et pouvoir royal en France à la fin du moyen âge (1380– 1440): Étude de la littérature politique du temps, foreword Bernard Guenée (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 1981), p. 129. Krynen observes that due to the crises plaguing France, French political literature of the time was less concerned with political theory than with education and morality, and even more importantly, the absolute belief in the majesty of the king, who became an emblem of the nation.

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38. See Robert W. Hanning, “Poetic Emblems in Medieval Narrative Texts,” in Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages, ed. Lois Ebin, Studies in Medieval Culture 16 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), pp. 1–32, who looks at the important roles emblems play in medieval literature, exemplifying by means of emblems that still have vitality, not the conventional ones frequently a subject of this study. 39. See this chapter’s note 65 on worlds theory. 40. See Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler, eds., The Study of Chivalry: Resources and Approaches, The Consortium for Teaching the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1988), pp. 213–214; and especially footnote 2 on p. 241, from the article, Helmut Nickel, “The Tournament,” pp. 213–262. Also see Keen, Chivalry, pp. 83–101, on the origins of tournaments. Poirion, Le poète et le prince, p. 78, describes René’s devotion to tournaments as a way to display nobility. 41. The tournament also revealed that René reveled in the exotic, complete with two turbaned Moors leading two lions and preceded by an old dwarf dressed like a Turk. See Keen, Chivalry, pp. 202–210, on the ritualistic quality of late medieval tournaments and the efforts that went into staging them. Also see Robin, La cour d’AnjouProvence, pp. 46–52, on celebrations, including tournaments. 42. Reynolds, “René of Anjou, King of Sicily, and the Order of the Croissant,” p. 134 [125–161]. See Keen, Chivalry, pp. 179–199, on secular chivalric orders and their founding for militaristic aims. In René’s case, Keen notes, his quest for Naples was the motivating factor for the order’s creation (pp. 184–185). Also see King, “An Inconsolable Father and His Humanist Consolers,” pp. 225–226 [221–246], concerning the manuscript gifts that one of the Order, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, prepared for René, one of which included a life of St. Maurice, the patron saint of the Order, with some secretly coded material as well. 43. Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, p. lxxxiv. In spite of his founding the order, René refused to serve as its permanent president. 44. The Order’s statutes can be found in Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. 51–79; the statutes are fairly exacting about the clothing, their meeting days, masses, and expenses as well. Reynolds, “René of Anjou, King of Sicily, and the Order of the Croissant,” argues that the Crescent and other orders of the mid-fifteenth century troped Arthurian elements as a vehicle for “a remarkable political resource for late medieval rulers who cleverly exploited traditional ideals for pragmatic purposes” (p. 125). Also see Vale, War and Chivalry, pp. 51–62. The recounting of deeds is an Arthurian element that is found in other orders as well, as for example, with the French Company of the Star; see Kaeuper and Kennedy, eds., The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, p. 21. 45. In assessing René’s administrative legacy, Raoul Busquet portrays René in sharp contrast to the Arthurian image created by Quatrebarbes; for Busquet, René introduced administrative changes and new positions out of a corrupt greed to acquire more income. Alain Girardot portrays René’s efforts as somewhere between these two positions. Focusing on the conf licts concerning territorial rights in Lorraine and Bar, which sharpened once René wrote his will, Girardot suggests that René’s attempts to maintain control over his inherited territories were plagued by the need for finances. See Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. xxi–xxix; lvi;.xcv– xcvi; Raoul Busquet, “Les créations administratives judiciaires et fiscales du roi René en Provence,” Mémoires de l’Institut historique de Provence 1 (1924): 12–57; and Alain Girardot, “Les Angevins, ducs de Lorraine et de Bar,” Le Pays Lorrain 59 (1978): 1–18. Also see Henri Bellogou, Le roi René et la réforme fiscale dans le Duché

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46.

47.

48.

49. 50.

51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

NOTES

d’Anjou au milieu du XVe siècle (Angers: L’Imprimerie de l’Anjou, 1962), pp. 59–61, who concludes that the financial and taxation struggles between René and the royal house signaled the end of feudal economics. See Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, p. lxviii, who gives the positive version, but also see Dieter Heckmann, “Metz und der Franko-Burgundische Konf likt in Oberlothringen (1440–1500),” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 51 (1987): 115–119 [115–128], who does not mention Isabelle’s role in the siege, but points to Charles VII’s long-standing wish to take Metz. See Lynette R. Muir, “René d’Anjou and the Theatre in Provence,” European Medieval Drama 3 (1999): 57–72; Poirion, Le poète et le prince, p. 79; and Graham A. Runnals, “René d’Anjou et le théâtre,” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest 88 (1980): 157–180. Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, pp. 8–10. Also see Corti, An Introduction to Literary Semiotics, pp. 78–80, 89–114, who explicates the hypersign function of poetic texts, by examining how denotation is conveyed and by using Jakobson’s work on the message. Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, pp. 7–19. Compare, for example, the following two news stories. The first considers how political failure can turn a leader to grow facial hair: Bruce Daniels, “What’s Up with Bill’s New Beard?” ABQnews Seeker January 21, 2008, www.abq journal.com/ abqnews/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6045&Itemid=2. The second, “Fox News Panel Ponders Significance of Richardson’s Beard,” March 24, 2008, mediamatters.org/items/200803240006, asserts that Richardson wanted to look more Hispanic. Runnals, “René d’Anjou et le théâtre,” p. 158. Runnals examines records to establish that René supported or took part in more than fifty theatrical performances and that he seemed particularly interested in mystery plays, but also in farces and morality plays. See Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. l–liii; and Levron, Le bon roi René, pp. 69–77. Even in the unlikely scenario that René did not know any chronicles featuring the Counts of Anjou, he must have known that his family dated back to the ninth century, and consequently it is likely that he perceived himself to be a part of world history, as conveyed by the twelfth-century Liber de compositione castri Ambaziae [Book of the Structure of the Castle of Amboise], Gesta Consulum Andegavorum [Deeds of the counts of Anjou] and that his ancestors were “players.” See Bernard S. Bachrach, “Enforcement of the Forma Fidelitatis: The Techniques Used by Fulk Nerra, Count of the Angevins (987–1040),” Speculum 59 (1984): 796–819, who examines the actions of Fulk Nerra (987–1040), René’s legendary ancestor, who understood well how to gain territory and keep power. Edition used: Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. Louis Halphen and René Poupardin. Collection de textes pour servir à l’etude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire 48 (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1913). In the Liber de compositione castri Ambaziae, for example, the record begins with Julius Caesar (p. 1) and includes King Arthur in its march forward in time (pp. 9–11), along with the tip to read Geoffrey of Monmouth if more information on Arthur is desired (p. 10). Fenster and Smail, ed., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, p. 210. Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. 83–101. See Joseph Denais, “Le tombeau du roi René à la cathédrale d’Angers,” Réunion des sociétés des Beaux-Arts des departments 15 (1891): 133–154, on René’s tomb, which he

NOTES

57.

58.

59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

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may well have conceived in 1442, upon the death of Yolande d’Aragon, his mother, although its first mention is attributed to 1447 (p.143), and the construction of which was plagued by delays due to René’s lack of financial resources. Also see Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, p. 109, who write that the plan was formed in 1444, after the marriages of his two daughters. Apparently, much of what he wished was carried out; see Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. 119– 134, whose pages record his removal from Saint-Sauveur in Aix to Saint-Lau and the Saint-Bernardin Chapel in Angers and the subsequent interments of his body and heart. Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, pp. 43–45, too describe the funeral but add that René’s entrails were buried in the Carmelite convent in Aix, an addition also recorded by Lecoy de la Marche, Le roi René, pp. 426–428, although the additional burial is not conveyed in the testament, as edited by Quatrebarbes. In doing so, René echoes the opening scene of his allegorical narratives, Le livre du coeur d’amour épris and the more somber, earlier Mortifiement de vaine plaisance, both of which depict the removal of a heart. In the former, the heart becomes a knight launched on a quest, and in the latter, the heart grows to understand that an individual’s true home is not the worldly. See Daniel Poirion, “Le coeur de René d’Anjou,” Les Angevins de le Littérature: Actes du colloque d’Angers, 14–16 Décembre 1978 (Angers: Presses de l’Université, 1979), pp. 48–62, who begins with the separation of the body to the cathedral at Angers, which he identifies as Saint-Martin, thereby associating it with René’s Order of the Crescent, and his heart to the SaintBernardin chapel, as symbolic of his chivalric and spiritual pursuits, respectively. Poirion then points to René’s two allegorical works, their modulations of the “I,” and the attempt in both narratives to transcend the corporeal. Poirion himself arrives at an allegorical conclusion, which he glosses thus: the two narratives go beyond the examination of the “I” to unite three themes: blood, desire, and love, each of which oscillates, respectively, between chivalry and Christ’s sacrifice, desire and cupidity, and corporeal and spiritual love. Similarly, Kelly, Medieval Imagination, p. 212, reads Le coeur as, essentially, putting Charles d’Orléans’ ballad images into motion. On religious symbolism of the heart in the medieval literary system, see Eric Jager, “The Book of the Heart: Reading and Writing the Medieval Subject,” Speculum 71 (1996): 1–26. Kelly, Medieval Imagination, p. xvi. Apparently, René’s tomb marked a significant departure from prior Angevin tombs in its highly ornate, royal execution; see Le Goff, L’Europe des Anjou, p. 384. It is interesting that in the Trevisa passage, boasting is represented as overstepping veritas, and hence not desirable, but that underreporting veritas is usually not the problem. In other words, Trevisa argues that audiences cannot abide bragging but are not perturbed by the absence of self-reporting, making it difficult indeed to praise oneself. Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris, pp. 64–66. Also see Florence Bouchet, “Jeux de clair-obscur dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou: Quête du sens et plaisirs des sens,” in Feu et lumière au moyen âge, vol. 1, ed. J.-C Faucon. Collection Moyen Âge (Toulouse: Édisud, 1998), pp. 7–21, who argues that the “clair-obscur” effects of both illuminations and text of Le coeur work in concert to nuance the soul’s interior. See Otto Pächt, “René d’Anjou—Studien I,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 69 (1973): 85–126; and Otto Pächt, “René d’Anjou—Studien II,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 73 (1977): 7–17 [7–106], who examines the style of the Coeur-Meister from a comparative art historical perspective,

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64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

NOTES

to argue that, among other reasons, the illuminations’ uniquely close relationship to the narrative suggests that René could have been the illuminator; and Jean R. Scheidegger, “Couleurs, amour et fantaisie dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou,” in Les couleurs au moyen âge, Sénéfiance 24 (Aix-en-Provence: CUERMA, Université de Provence, 1988), pp. 387–399, who examines the colors of the Viennese manuscript and the colors of rhetoric found in the narrative. Very good reproductions of the illuminations may be found in: Le livre du coeur d’amour épris du roi René, commentary by André Chamson, commentary and cover by Henri Matisse, Verve 6,23 (Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1949); Eberhard König, Das liebentbrannte Herz: Der Wiener Codex und der Maler Barthélemy d’Eyck (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1996); and King René’s Book of Love (Le cuer d’amours espris), introduction and commentaries F. Unterkircher (New York: Braziller, 1980). A facsimile edition is also available: Smital and Winkler, eds., Handschrift 2597. The emphasis on the torment, rather than on who causes the torment, as found, for example, in courtly love lyrics, is somewhat reminiscent of Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance, which presents “soliloquies” as well as dialogues between the soul and various abstractions and between the soul and the author. For example, one could expect that Contrition might focus on that which causes Soul to wish to confess. Instead, Contrition speaks about the general perilous state of leadership and society. See René d’Anjou, Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance de René d’Anjou: Étude du texte et des manuscrits à peintures, ed. Frédéric Lyna (Bruxelles: Ch. Weckesser, 1926), p. 15. Of course, the distinctions between narrator and dreamer-narrator are porous. I will use “dreamer-narrator” here just to indicate the narrator’s voice in the second frame, a slightly more befuddled voice, mirroring how the world occupied there functions as a transition from the present moment framed in the letter into the past moment of the night of the dream, which evokes past chivalric values (positive and negative) in the dream world. On fiction’s ability to convey “small worlds,” depicted worlds that derive from actual worlds, see Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, pp. 64–82, and Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, pp. 99–117. On the dream as poetic space, see Sally Tartline Carden, “ ‘Forment pensifz ou lit me mis’: Le songe dans le Livre du cuer d’amours espris,” Les Lettres Romanes 49 (1995): 21–36, who also links Le coeur with Arthurian material. See Daniel Poirion, “L’Allégorie dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris, de René d’Anjou,” Travaux de Linguistique et de Littérature 9 (1971): 54 [51–64], who posits that René sets up the allegory in theatrical terms, even if the narrative’s dialogue does not remind of drama; and Danielle Régnier-Bohler, “L’Oeil du quattrocento: Une dramaturgie du visuel dans le Coeur d’amour épris de René d’Anjou,” in Recherches sur la littérature du xve siècle. Actes du VIe colloque international sur le moyen français, Milan, 4–6 mai 1988, vol III. Vita e Pensiero (Milan: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1991), pp. 47–70, who does discuss the dramaturgical verisimilitude in Le coeur, especially with respect to the poem’s sea voyage. Zink, “La tristesse du coeur dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris,” p. 28 [22–38], who reads Le coeur as testing the boundaries of allegory with deprecatory humor and from the standpoint of one who has experienced setbacks, looking at chivalric culture as if in a dream, worthy of admiration. Carden, “Forment pensifz ou lit me mis,” pp. 30–33 [21–36], reads both dreams within the dream as symbolic per se, but also as symbolic of the three dreams of the text itself. These instructions fit in the narrative world of the dream allegory, as it complicates René’s readers’ understanding of the inf luence of the Rose beyond the use of some

NOTES

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

75. 76.

77.

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similar characters. On the complex reception and varied interpretations of the Roman de la rose, see Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 16, gen. ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993). On interpretations and medieval conceptual models for interpreting the Roman de la rose, see Douglas Kelly, Internal Difference and Meanings in the Roman de la Rose (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). Also see Pierre-Yves Badel, Le roman de la rose au XIVe siècle: Étude de la réception de l’oeuvre, Publications Romanes et Françaises 153 (Geneva: Librarire Droz, 1980); although treating mainly the fourteenth-century reception of the Roman de la rose, Badel’s analysis is thorough and also helpful for reading René’s Le coeur. On the inf luence of the Roman de la rose on René’s narrative, see Kelly, Medieval Imagination, pp. 187–188, 212–218; and Zink, “La tristesse du coeur dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris,” pp. 22–38. Armand Strubel, “Grant senefiance a”: Allégorie et littérature au moyen âge (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), p. 286. Strubel, pp. 285, 288–289, categorizes Le coeur as a courtly allegory that renews an entire array of well-known allegorical elements with unexpected combinations. See Daniel Poirion, “Les tombeaux allégoriques et la poétique de l’inscription dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou (1457),” Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 1990 de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 2 (1990): 321–334, who looks at the cemetery as a library with particularly Italian interests. Also see Denis Hüe, “Un tombeau de Tristan,” in, Tristan et Iseut, mythe européen et mondial: Actes du colloque des 10, 11 et 12 Janvier 1986, ed. Danielle Buschinger. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 474, ed. Ulrich Müller, Franz Hundsnurscher, and Cornelius Sommer (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1987), pp. 151–167, who looks at Tristan in the context of the cemetery and his occurrences in French literature to argue that in Le coeur, Tristan functions as an emblem of passionate chivalric love. There are further interesting aspects that cannot be explored here: some variances in the list and ordering of Love’s loyal servants among the manuscripts; some of Love’s still living victims, one of them being René d’Anjou himself; and the many languages inscribed on the memorials. Catherine M. Jones, “Blazon and Allegory in the Livre du cuer d’amours espris,” in Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy. Faux Titre 83, eds. Keith Busby, M. J. Freeman, Sjef Houppermans, et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 193–204, argues that the blazons are part of the allegory. Interestingly, Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame, pp. 93–95, reads the visualized triumphs depicted in Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione, an allegorical dream narrative, as a celebration of civilization. The same perspective could easily be applied to René’s panoramic depictions of those who had achieved fame. See Strubel, “Grant senefiance a,” p. 290, who characterizes the static tableaux as invitations to contemplate. Also see Poirion, “L’allégorie dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris,” 56 [51–64], who points out that 130 of the 315 paragraphs of Le coeur are dedicated to evoking the beauty of Amours’ island. Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris, pp. 26–27. Strubel, “Grant senefiance a,” pp. 286–287, sees the narrator’s intrusions as creating tableaux and further argues that the theatrical quality of the narrative is all the more visible upon examining how the Viennese miniatures support the text. Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 2. Also see Strubel, “Grant senefiance a,” pp. 19–83, for a review of rhetorical and philosophical components, sources, and approaches relevant

168

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79.

80.

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

NOTES

to late medieval allegory. His study also presents a compendium of medieval French allegorical literature. Susanne Rinne, “René d’Anjou and His Livre du cuer d’amours espris: The Roles of Author, Narrator, and Protagonist,” Fifteenth Century Studies 12 (1987): 145–163, examines personae for the author in Le coeur through the author, the narrator, Cuer, and Desir (his guide), using phrases like these as touchstones. See Badel, Le roman de la rose au XIVe siècle, p. 335, who writes, with respect to the allegorical tradition informing the Roman de la rose, “L’allégorie est lumière et raison. Elle tend à clarifier les rapports des êtres et du monde ou des êtres entre eux” [Allegory is light and reason. It tends to clarify the relationships between abstractions and the world or among abstractions]. This is, more or less, the tradition that René seems to be questioning. Also see Monty R. Laycox, An Intertextual Study of the Livre du cuer d’amours espris by Fifteenth-Century French Author René d’Anjou, foreword Judith Rice Rothschild (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), who examines some of the poem’s challenges to allegory’s literary traditions. René even has the narrator relate that after Esperance saves Cueur (and Desir), she asks them what adventures they have undergone (p. 152. 25. 19–23). While one could argue she is simply being courteous, even the explanation raises questions, because what does it mean that hope (Esperance) asks heart (Cueur) to recount what is already known? See Joël Blanchard, “L’Effet autobiographique dans la tradition: Le Livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou,” in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, Selected Papers from the 5 Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 9–16 August 1986, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper. Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 25, gen. ed. Douwe Fokkema (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1990), pp. 11–21, who reads Le coeur as a quest for the self, whereby all the objects described, in their accumulation, and through the course of the narrative defines René. In making his argument, Blanchard too points to the unallegorical allegory, and the allegories within the allegories presented in the tableaux. See Henrik Heger, Die Melancholie bei den französischen Lyrikern des Spätmittelalters (Bonn: Romanisches Seminar der Universität Bonn, 1967), pp. 237–247, who reads these passages as connected through their relationship to melancholy, which he traces as entering French literature in the twelfth century. “An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not . . . An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object . . . A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object.” Peirce, Collected Papers vol. 2, paragraphs 247–249, p. 143. On René’s visualizing, connected to memorializing, see Florence Bouchet, “Rhétorique de l’héraldique dans le roman arthurien tardif: Le Meliador de Froissart et le Livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou,” Romania 461–462 (1998): 239–255. But see Bouchet, ed., Le livre du coeur d’amours épris, pp. 33–34, who argues that the narrative substantiates Huizinga’s reading that the fifteenth century’s intense visuality corresponds with the decline of the spiritual. That is, Horace advises poets to effect verisimilitude as vividly as possible. Edition used: Q. Horatius Flaccus, Satiren und Briefe: Lateinisch und Deutsch, ed. and trans. Rudolf Helm (Zürich: Artemis, 1962). See Jean Arrouye, “Le coeur et son paysage,” in Le “cuer” au moyen âge (Réalité et Senefiance), Senefiance 30, gen. ed. Jean Subrenat (Aix-en-Provence: CUERMA,

NOTES

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87.

88. 89.

90.

91. 92. 93.

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Université de Provence, 1991), pp. 27–42, who examines illuminations of the Viennese manuscript to suggest the symbolic direction of the realistically portrayed miniatures. Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance, pp. 157–158. Although I am not arguing for inf luence, it seems as if René’s allegorical propensity reveals deeply neoplatonic roots, that also resemble, for example, the theory propagated by Dietrich of Freiberg’s notion of quiditas, which Markus Führer, “Dietrich of Freiburg,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/ dietrich-freiberg, summarizes this way: “quiditas denotes the formality by means of which a thing is a quid . . . quiditas denotes the formal determination of a thing. This is something over and above the being of the thing. It is a form, the form of a thing. But it is not the same as the thing . . . without its existence there could be no determination of a thing.” Although certainly not proof that René knew Dietrich’s thought, it is interesting that he left all his books, except those in medicine, to the Dominican friars of Saint-Maximin; see Albanès, “La bibliothèque du roi René,” p. 301 [301–311]; and Robin, La cour d’Anjou-Provence, pp. 43–46. See Gilles Polizzi, “ ‘Sens plastique’: Le spectacle des merveilles dans le Livre du cuer d’amours espris,” in De l’étranger à l’étrange ou la conjointure de la merveille (En hommage à Marguerite Rossi et Paul Bancourt) Senefiance 25, gen. ed. Jean Subrenat (Aix-enProvence: Université de Provence, 1988), pp. 393–430, who argues that René’s unique aesthetic sense led him to describe objects with verisimilitude, objects that had otherworldly significance for him, based in his love of variety. Likewise, Polizzi argues in “Le crépuscule des magicians: Topiques de l’enchantement dans le Livre du cuer et les Amadis français,” in Magie et illusion au moyen âge, Sénéfiance 42, gen. ed. Jean Subrenat (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1999), pp. 455–467, that magic took a backseat to allegory in Le coeur. Kelly, Medieval Imagination, p. 214. Daniel Poirion describes her multiple interventions to be, “comme une divinité dans l’épopée antique.” [like a divinity in classical epics]. Poirion, “L’allégorie dans Le livre du cuer d’amours espris de René d’Anjou.” p. 54 [51–64]. Thus, according to the analysis provided by: Jeff Rider, “The Other Worlds of Romance,” in the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 120–121 [115–131], Esperance might very well belong to the “intermediate” intervention of the otherworldly, because she does not initiate the marvelous, but enhances the narrative, thereby leading to a focus on meaning. See Robin, “Le roi René, amateur d’art et mécene,” in L’Europe des Anjou, pp. 259–265. Language is indeed at issue in the cemetery—even the epitaphs that are either explicitly or implicitly written in another language are conveyed in French. Denais, “Le tombeau du roi René à la cathédrale d’Angers,” p. 150 [133–154]; Coulet, Planche, and Robin, Le roi René, pp. 43–44; Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, pp. cxxxviii–cxl.

3

Chaucer’s House of Fame: The Quasi-Iconoclastic Present

1. Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 39. Patterson sees Chaucer’s socioeconomic circumstances as informing the marginality present in his poetry. Also see Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey

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3.

4.

5.

6.

NOTES

Chaucer: A Critical Biography, Blackwell Critical Biographies 1, gen. ed. Claude Rawso (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), who describes Chaucer in his times; and Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), who examines how Chaucer demonstrates polyphony (a term he takes from Bakhtin) in the execution of his socially diverse portraits. Poirion, Le poète et le prince, p. 10, argues in his study that lyricism in late medieval France (ca. 1350 to ca. 1465) developed from a delight in rich imagery to a reevaluation of love in actual life to a deepening of the interior life resulting in tristesse, and finally to “une sagesse éclairée par une culture morale plus humaniste mais toujours orientée vers Dieu” [p. 10: a wisdom enlightened by a very humanist moral culture but always oriented toward God]. With his orientation toward the past, René seems to have incorporated the entire development in his own life. On the inconclusiveness in Chaucer’s poetry per se, see Hugo Keiper, “ ‘I wot myself best how y stonde’: Literary Nominalism, Open Textual Form and the Enfranchisement of Individual Perspective in Chaucer’s Dream Visions,” in Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm, ed. Richard J. Utz. Mediaeval Studies 5 (Lewiston NY: Mellen, 1995), pp. 205–234, who reads Chaucer’s dream visions as nominalist texts that promulgate multiple voices; Gale C. Schricker, “On the Relation of Fact and Fiction in Chaucer’s Poetic Endings,” Philological Quarterly 60 (1981): 13–27, who reads the endings as transitions that enhance imaginative interplay between real and fictional worlds; and Larry Sklute, Virtue of Necessity: Inconclusiveness and Narrative Form in Chaucer (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), who reads the lack of endings, or inconclusive endings, as Chaucer’s way of mirroring the inconclusiveness of life. See John Barnie, War in Medieval English Society: Social Values in the Hundred Years War 1337–1399 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 20–21, who writes, “His untimely death in 1376 was consequently a great blow . . . This atmosphere of despondency and defeatism was hardly alleviated by the death of Edward III in the following year . . . [his death] following closely on that of the prince, was felt to mark the end of an era.” Barnie further points out that by 1377, “nearly all the captains who had fought at Crécy, Poitiers, and Nájera were either dead or in captivity” (p. 25). Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 154–160, illustrates how the Black Prince’s death was also part of a general decline of aristocratic inf luence at court, due to the deaths of many who had served Edward III. Edition used: Thomas Walsingham, The St. Albans Chronicle: The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, vol. I (1376–1394), eds. and trans. John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss, Oxford Medieval Texts, gen. eds J. W. Binns, W. J. Blair, M. Lapage et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). According to the editors (pp. xviii–xix), Walsingham was ordained in September 1364, and worked about forty years on the chronicles (ca. 1380–1420). The themes in this excerpt recur throughout this period. Also see Galloway, “Latin England,” pp.73–86 [41–95], on Walsingham’s secular nationalism, which, Galloway argues, “emphasize[s] the secular English community as the focus of all his historical fascination and his narrative energy and craft” (p. 82). The Wycliffite Tractatus de Regibus, for example, forcefully puts man, made in God’s likeness, at the center of this Fürstenspiegel. Edition used: Jean-Philippe Genet, ed. Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, Camden Fourth Series 18 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 1–21. Also see Liddy, War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns, pp. 91–99, on the economic relations between the urban elite of York and Bristol and the crown that led to the Peasants Rebellion in 1381.

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On Wycliff ’s political theory, see Black, Political Thought in Europe, pp. 79–82. Also see Maurice Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages: A Political History, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 180–198. Marion Turner, Chaucerian Conflict: Languages of Antagonism in Late Fourteenth-Century London, Oxford English Monographs, gen. eds. Helen Barr, David Bradshaw, Christopher Butler, et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 8–30, reads the House of Fame against the Mercer’s Petition and King Richard’s desire to quash opposition; focusing on the 1380s, Turner portrays London as claustrophobically engaged in political conf lict, which she sees ref lected in Chaucer’s poem. 7. As Charles Muscatine, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, University of Notre Dame Ward-Phillips Lectures in English Language and Literature 4 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), p. 27, reminds readers: “Chaucer’s knowledge of court and of international politics must have been equaled by his knowledge of commerce and of public works. In middle and late life he held a variety of responsible posts: Controller of Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Hides in the port of London; Controller of the Petty Custom on Wines; Clerk of the King’s Works; Deputy Forester of the royal forest of North Petherton. He was for four years a justice of the peace for Kent, and he sat in Parliament for Kent in the session of 1386. Shortly thereafter, he seems to have suffered financial reverses. But he survived extremely well the violent political vicissitudes of the reign of Richard II, including the deposing of Richard. In 1399, a year before Chaucer’s death, the new king, Henry IV, renewed and increased his annuity from the crown.” Also see A. J. Minnis, with V. J. Scattergood and J. J. Smith, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 9–35, for context and bibliography, and pp. 161–251, on the House of Fame. David R. Carlson, Chaucer’s Jobs, The New Middle Ages, series ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004), points to Chaucer’s functions to serve and protect as policeman and lackey in his work, writing, and reception. 8. See Andrew Ayton, “The English Army at Crécy,” in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston. Warfare in History (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 215–224 [159–252], who points to the difficulties of gathering information about archers and surmises that there seem to have been geographical groupings. Although highly effective, they were not really praised until the eighteenth century. See in the same volume: Andrew Ayton, “Crécy and the Chroniclers,” p. 346 [287–350]. Nonetheless, as Ayton further notes in the introductory essay, “The Battle of Crécy: Context and Significance,” p. 19 [1–34]: “The scale of the defeat is also indicated by the extraordinarily heavy casualties suffered by the French and allied nobility and their retinues. Most, it seems, fell to archery rather than to the sword, lance or battle-axe.” While archers were not yet praised in writing, recognition of their clear strategic importance in battle, as seen in recruiting efforts, serves as another example of shifting socioeconomic constellations. Also see Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle, vol. 1, Middle Ages Series, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 46–57, who describes a society in which political and economic activity was more widely shared than in France. 9. See Janet Coleman, English Literature in History 1350–1400: Medieval Readers and Writers. English Literature in History, ed. Raymond Williams (London: Hutchinson, 1981), who observes, “the growth in lay literacy and social mobility as it was expressed in fourteenth-century literature, a literature that did not merely passively ref lect its time and context but was written as an encouragement to critique and change” (p. 17).

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10. I Henry IV 4. 2. 64–65. This is Shakespeare’s Falstaff describing the feeble men he recruited in order to pocket as much of the money as possible that was given him to engage soldiers. On the increasing reliance upon gunpowder and mercenaries during the late middle ages, see Philippe Contamine, La guerre au moyen âge, Nouvelle Clio 24, ed. Jean Delumeau and Paul Lemerle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), pp. 258–296. 11. Winthrop Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 17–18. Many scholars explore The House of Fame for Chaucer’s views on poetry; see, for example, J. A. W. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame: An Exposition of “The House of Fame” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Willi Erzgräber, “Problems of Oral and Written Transmission as Ref lected in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” in Historical & Editorial Studies in Medieval & Early Modern English for Johan Gerritsen, ed. Mary-Jo Arn, Hanneke Wirtjes, and Hans Jansen (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985), pp. 113–128, who looks at the oral and written transmissions in the poem to suggest Chaucer’s poetic inspiration in the former; Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid,” pp. 121–163, who explores Ovid’s inf luence on the poem and characterizes The House of Fame as a discomforting poem that reveals poetry’s limits; Phillipa Hardman, “Chaucer’s Muses and His ‘Art Poetical,’ ” Review of English Studies 37 (1986): 478–494, who looks at the invocations to suggest that the House of Fame presents an affirmation of the poet’s vocation; Robert M. Jordan, Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 22–50, who looks at the poem as exemplifying Chaucer’s rhetorical poetics; Lesley Kordecki, “Subversive Voices in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Exemplaria 11 (1999): 53–77, who sees Chaucer assuming the voices of the marginalized, women and animals, to explore the margins; Laurence K. Shook, “The House of Fame,” in Companion to Chaucer Studies, ed. Beryl Rowland (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 341–354, who reads the poem generally as an art of poetry; Eugene Vance, “Chaucer’s House of Fame and the Poetics of Inf lation,” Boundary 2 7 (1979): 17–38, who reads the poem semiologically as exemplifying Chaucer’s distaste for verbal fetishism used to displace physical desire by monetary metaphors; and Katherine Zieman, “Chaucer’s Voys,” Representations 60 (1997): 70–91, who argues that the Eagle speaks as a rational peasant to recover the literary vernacular amid an array of discourses. 12. Regarding the literary preferences in late medieval England, see V. J. Scattergood, “Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II,” in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1983), p. 40 [29–43], who writes “ . . . from the evidence of books owned by the aristocracy it appears they preferred literature in Latin and French on a variety of serious subjects, but that for entertainment they relied almost exclusively on romances; the career diplomats, civil servants, officials and administrators, on the other hand, appear to have been open to the new, serious-minded poetry dealing with philosophy and love, often written in the vernacular.” But also see Elizabeth Salter, “Chaucer and Internationalism,” in English and International Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England, ed. Derek Pearsall and Nicolette Zeeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 239–244, who points to more f luidity; and Paul Strohm’s work, such as “Chaucer’s Audience,” Literature and History 5 (1977): 26–41; “Chaucer’s Audience(s): Fictional, Implied, Intended, Actual,” Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 137– 145; and Social Chaucer, which contextualizes Chaucer’s “poetics of juxtaposition” in the social class transformations of the period. 13. See David M. Bevington, “The Obtuse Narrator in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Speculum 36 (1961): 289–290 [288–298], whose analysis of the positions offered on

NOTES

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15.

16.

17.

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the ending pretty much still holds, even if more recent scholarship, obviously, could not be included. Also see Kay Stevenson, “The Endings of Chaucer’s House of Fame,” English Studies 59 (1978): 10–26, for categorizing various schools of thought on the “man of gret auctorite.” Whether Chaucer completed the poem or not is a moot point here, since I do not present an argument based on the poem’s structure. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame, p. x, calls it a “supremely architectural poem”; and Mary Flowers Braswell, “Architectural Portraiture in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981): 101–112, looks at examples of architecture in Chaucer’s times to suggest their inf luence on the structures in the poem. Although he does not treat this poem, E. D. Blodgett, “Chaucerian Pryvetee and the Opposition to Time,” Speculum 51 (1976): 477–493, draws attention to Chaucer’s treatment of the fruitless attempt to capture time as figured in his use of buildings, a perspective that would have been particularly interesting for The House of Fame; Blodgett (p. 480), states “ . . . time was both mortal and the vehicle that led to immortality . . . efforts to seize the temporal as if it were an eternal good may only accelerate the effects of time.” Also see Joan Evans, “Chaucer and Decorative Art,” Review of English Studies 6 (1930): 408–409 [408–412], who suggests that Chaucer may have seen miniature palaces created to adorn royal tables that resemble the House of Fame. Interestingly, the narrator’s journey seems, on the surface, to echo the kinds of journeys that St. Simeon and other saints take, except that St. Simeon moves from the dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual to the spiritual in the secular, while Chaucer’s narrator moves, also somewhat in Dantean manner, from earth to somewhere in the heavens, a journey that, in spite of appearances, remains pretty firmly in the secular. The House of Fame resonantly textures several metaliterary themes that cannot be explored here, gathered around the poem’s portrait of Dido. Geffrey draws attention, for example, to sources for her tale in Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Heroides, so that readers can learn more about her life (1. 378–379). In doing so, among many other things, Chaucer mingles hagiographical elements with those of the translatio studii et imperii [transferal of culture and empire] to shape Dido further into a metaphor for love’s literature and the literary system. The Vergilian movement propelling the transferal of excellence coincides with the exemplary and exhortatory impulses of hagiography, and the multiple manifestations of the one divine message inherent in any saint’s life overlaps with the Ovidian fascination with love’s multiple forms and its dominant emotion. Cutting across these parallels is Chaucer’s profiling of forms through a narrator at the crux of varied literary streams with multiple perspectives on his material. See Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 24, gen. ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 224–248, who examines Chaucer’s Ovidian and Boethian modifications of Vergil’s Aeneid; Marilynn Desmond, “Chaucer’s Aeneid: ‘The Naked Text in English,’ ” Pacific Coast Philology 19 (1984): 62 [62–67], who, in following modulations of Dido in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, characterizes its narrator as, “at once a reader, a translator, a critic and a producer of texts”; Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 87–107, who reads Dido from the perspective of sexual politics; Daniel J. Pinti, “Translation and the Aesthetics of Synecdoche in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Medieval Perspectives 8 (1993): 104–111, who sees the Dido passage as a creative

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translation of the classical sources in the framework of synecdoche. Also see Whitman, Allegory, pp. 48–54, in which he reads Vergil’s Fama passage with regard to Dido as part of an allegorical continuum. 18. Chaucer’s Eagle has been associated with philosophical sources and Dantean inf luence; for example, see Reginald Berry, “Chaucer’s Eagle and the Element Air,” University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 285–297, who looks at traditions associating eagles with air, one of the four elements; Joseph A. Dane, “Chaucer’s Eagle’s Ovid’s Phaëthon: A Study in Literary Reception,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981): 71–82, who argues that the poem is about literary reception; Robert R. Edwards, The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in the Early Narratives (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 103–114, who discusses the Dantean allusion to Thought at the beginning of Book Two, as well as to memory and Macrobius, along with Geffrey’s allusions to Boethius, Martianus Capella, and Alanus de Insulis; Joseph E. Grennen, “Chaucer and Chalcidius: The Platonic Origins of the Hous of Fame,” Viator 15 (1984): 237–262, who explores the relationship between Chalcidian commentary on Plato and Chaucer’s Eagle to suggest that Chaucer playfully sets up opposing positions on the acquisition of knowledge; Rory McTurk, “Chaucer and Giraldus Cambrensis,” Leeds Studies in English 29 (1998): 173–183, who sees the Topographia Hibernie as informing the portrait of Chaucer’s Eagle; James Simpson, “Dante’s ‘Astripetam Aquilam’ and the Theme of Poetic Discretion in the ‘House of Fame,’ ” Essays and Studies 39 (1986): 1–18, who argues that the poem displays respect for great poets, as seen in how Chaucer uses Dante’s concept of poetic discretion; and John Steadman, “Chaucer’s Eagle: A Contemplative Symbol,” PMLA 75 (1960): 153–159, who demonstrates that the eagle is a medieval symbol of contemplative thought. The eagle is in and of itself an illustration of how fame can grant long life, since in the avian characterization and the Eagle’s own disquisitions, authoritative material is continually shaped from new perspectives. For sources, see John M. Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 43–56, on the eagle, which illustrates Fyler’s argument that the House of Fame shows how mutability provides exuberance and beauty at the same time it argues for retreat from the world and the impossibility of comprehending the universe as a mortal; John M. Fyler, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 63, gen. ed. Alastair Minnis (Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 101– 154, which further plays the House of Fame against Dante with regards to their more or less opposing perspectives on the nature and limits of fallen language, as read against various philosophical commentaries and approaches to language; and Jesse Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 175–199, as developing Dante’s ideas about interpreting signs. Also see A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, Middle Ages Series, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), pp. 190–210, on scholastic ideas regarding compilatio that are ref lected in some of Chaucer’s personae for the poet. On Boccaccio’s inf luence on the House of Fame, particularly via the Amorosa Visione, itself celebrating Dante, see David Wallace, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio, Chaucer Studies 12 (Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1985), pp. 5–22; and on Chaucer’s relations to Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarca, see Ginsberg, Chaucer’s Italian Tradition. 19. See Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame, pp. 166–168, for sources on Daedalus. 20. See Bevington, “The Obtuse Narrator in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” who argues that the poem’s unifying factor is the narrator; Alfred David, “Literary Satire in the

NOTES

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

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House of Fame,” PMLA 75 (1960): 333–339, who argues the poem’s chaos stems from the narrator, intended as a vehicle for satire; Thomas J. Garbáty, “The Degradation of Chaucer’s ‘Geffrey,’ ” PMLA 89 (1974): 97–104, who reads The House of Fame’s Geffrey against other Chaucerian narrators, pointing out that he is also commonsensical; and Charles P. R. Tisdale, “The House of Fame: Virgilian Reason and Boethian Wisdom,” Comparative Literature 25 (1973): 247–261, who reads the narrator-dreamer as associated with Aeneas, insofar as both need to move on to greater things. See also Kathryn L. Lynch, Chaucer’s Philosophical Visions, Chaucer Studies 27 (Cambridge UK: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 61–82, who reads Chaucer’s dream narratives as philosophical visions and The House of Fame specifically as a poem focused on the fruitless attempts to capture mortal diversity in logical systems. In his poetry, Chaucer frequently brings in the efficacy of “pleye,” an occupation that Trevisa also validates, as long as it is moderate (e.g., p. 101, ll. 27–31). Indeed, Geffrey is highly aware of the medium of communication from the standpoint of a reader, as is obvious in Chaucer’s depiction of Dido’s story, giving the Eagle a “mannes vois” [2. 556: a man’s voice], or in depicting—in comic and inverted imitatione Dei— how all the words that rise up to the House of Fame materialize in the shape of their speakers. Like the Eagle, Geffrey adjusts to the understanding of his readers: “Now herkeneth every maner man/ That Englissh understonde kan/ And listeth of my drem to lere . . . ” [2. 509–511: Now listen, all kinds of people—anyone who can understand English, and listen and learn from my dream].To move and shift perspectives, he implies, it is important to, at the same time, take into account the readers, with whom the writer only shares the traditional narratives and their forms, the material of the literary system. See Laurel Amtower, “Authorizing the Reader in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Philological Quarterly 79 (2000): 273–291, reproduced in Laurel Amtower, Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages, gen. ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 127–144. Amtower explores the depiction of Geffrey as a reader to suggest that readers have ultimate authority and that experience is more valuable than authority in determining the value of a text. At the opposite end, in focusing on the “newe tydynges” as entertainment, W. O. Sypherd, “The Completeness of Chaucer’s Hous of Fame,” Modern Language Notes 30 (1915): 65–68, nonetheless also underscores Geffrey’s positioning as a reader. Thus, his array of readerly writers also parallels, but differs from, René’s metaliterary observations, as Le coeur too presents an array of ref lective readers. Of course, the “man of gret auctorite” would fit somewhere in this array, even if Chaucer had left his poem incomplete. Even in its present state, the “man of gret auctorite” suggests both a readerly positioning—the authority he emits must be based in knowing materials and conventions exceptionally well—as well as a writerly penchant, since all rush to him to hear, as it were, the last word. Chaucer, however, suggests hers is not the last word. Not only does he refer to the stories as told by Ovid and Vergil (1. 375–380), he also recounts how Aeneas sees her once again, among the dead in Hades (1. 444). Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages, pp. 167–201, reads the House of Fame as an examination of language, narrative, and myth whereby the usual anchoring of meaning in narrative is suspended so that sequence and the “secret matter” associated with myth are not reconciled. William Joyner, “Parallel Journeys in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Papers on Language and Literature 12 (1976): 3–19, shows how Chaucer weaves multiple journeys in the poem, including those of Aeneas, Peter to Rome, and the poet’s own.

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28. See Willi Erzgräber, “Die antiken Episoden in Chaucers frühen erzählerischen Werken,” in Exempla: Studien zur Bedeutung und Funktion exemplarischen Erzählens, ed. Bernd Engler and Kurt Müller. Schriften zur Literaturwissenschaft 10, ed. Bernd Engler, Volker Kapp, Helmuth Kiesel, et al. (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1995), pp. 55–77, who examines Chaucer’s three dream visions to argue that he enjoyed making something new from old material. For the House of Fame, Erzgräber focuses on Dido, and also on Aeneas’ function as an exemplum. He further points to the parallels between Dido and Creusa (pp. 62–65), arguing, however, that they demonstrate the importance of Aeneas’s mission, while exemplifying that women should not love strangers. Thus, Aeneas is a hero and an antihero, ref lecting both sides of fame—good for Aeneas and bad for Dido—whereby Aeneas’ good fame is made ambiguous through Dido (pp. 69–70). 29. Chaucer not only depicts poets and philosophers in Fame’s palace, he also weaves them into his poem and initiates metaliterary ref lections upon the art of writing itself, as argued below. For sources, the notes to the edition used here offer an excellent starting point: The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 977–990. Many scholars offer their views on the degree of inf luence as well as the use of sources; see, for example: Josephine Bloomfield, “ ‘The Doctrine of These Olde Wyse’: Commentary on the Commentary Tradition in Chaucer’s Dream Visions,” Essays in Medieval Studies 20 (2003): 125–133, who looks at the commentary tradition as a source for much of Chaucer’s work; Margery L. Brown, “The Hous of Fame and the Corbaccio,” Modern Language Notes 32 (1917): 411–415; Clarence G. Child, “Chaucer’s House of Fame and Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione,” Modern Language Notes 10 (1895): 190–192; Sheila Delany, “Chaucer’s House of Fame and the Ovide moralisé,” Comparative Literature 20 (1968): 254–264; Albert C. Friend, “Chaucer’s Version of the Aeneid.” Speculum 28 (1953): 317–323, who compares the poem with the Ilias of Simon Aurea Capra; Leo J. Henkin, “The Apocrypha and Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Modern Language Notes 56 (1941): 583–588; Lisa J. Kiser, Truth and Textuality in Chaucer’s Poetry (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1991), who reads The House of Fame as a project historically framed to test notions of truth using Dante as touchstone; B. G. Koonce, Chaucer and the Tradition of Fame: Symbolism in The House of Fame (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), who examines sources to interpret the poem as Christian allegory strongly inf luenced by Dante’s Commedia, with the books of the House of Fame structured to parallel the Commedia’s three cantos; Kathryn Lynch, “The Logic of the Dream Vision in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” in Utz, Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts, pp. 179–203, who sees the poem as one that multiplies truths and perspectives and explores medieval scholastic views; and Howard Patch, “Chaucer’s Desert,” Modern Language Notes 34 (1919): 321–328, who looks at the role of the Panthere d’amours as well as Dante as possible inf luences. 30. See Sheila Delany, Chaucer’s House of Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), who argues that the skeptical fideism that emerges from attempting to resolve conf licting traditions pervades Chaucer’s poem, which she examines particularly in terms of Chaucer’s contesting of authority. Similarly, Jordan, Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader, pp. 10–13, makes the fourteenth-century pluralistic venues of inquiry the framework in which he posits his rhetorical approach to understanding Chaucer’s poetics. In contrast, see David Lyle Jeffrey, “Sacred and Secular Scripture: Authority and Interpretation in The House of Fame,” in Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition, comp. and ed. David Lyle Jeffrey, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 207–228, who argues that the structure of Chaucer’s poem reveals that its apparent skepticism is essentially a

NOTES

31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

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skepticism of multifarious historical viewpoints requiring a leap of faith, will, and inspiration. See Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, for wide-ranging materials on dreaming, that provide insight into how dreams per se were viewed in the Middle Ages and how literary uses of dream material comprise self-ref lexive venues for gaining knowledge of the self; see especially pp. 126–130, for his discussion of Walahfrid Strabo’s Visio Wettini, which exhibits interesting parallels to Chaucer’s poem. Also see Brown, Reading Dreams, for a collection of essays on late medieval and early modern interpretations of dreams; Edwards, The Dream of Chaucer, on Chaucer’s rhetorically informed poetics, and in particular, pp. 35–37, 95–99, on Guillaume de Lorris’ inf luence, via his reading of Macrobius on the dream theories expounded by Geffrey, which he reads as being corrected by Chaucer; John Fyler, “ ‘Cloude,’ –and ‘Al That Y of Spak’: ‘The House of Fame,’ v. 978,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 87 (1986): 565–568, on using Boethius to suggest confusion and ambiguity; and GivenWilson, Chronicles, pp. 48–56, on medieval dream theory with respect to historical authority. Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid, p. 25. The Riverside Chaucer, p. 979: the note to ll. 117–118 points to the difficulty of comprehending the intended joke. Brother Robert Meade, “The Saints and the Problem of Fame in the House of Fame,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 84 (1983): 201–205, observes that all the saints named in the poem shied away from fame; they thereby, along with Geffrey’s rejection of fame, play a contrapuntal role to those who seek fame. Thus, movement in the House of Fame is decidedly different from that experienced by St. Simeon, who remains the same regardless of shifts in perspectives. As Thomas C. Kennedy, “Rhetoric and Meaning in The House of Fame,” Studia Neophilologica 68 (1996): 10 [9–23], writes, “ Chaucer’s frame . . . occupies the present time of the poet and focusses our attention not on the act of dreaming but on the act of describing the dream in words.” His essay tracks how Chaucer links rhetorical devices to meaning. There are also contemplative moments in The House of Fame, although these are less obvious; see Elizabeth Buckmaster, “Meditation and Memory in Chaucer’s ‘House of Fame,’ ” Modern Language Studies 16 (1986): 279–287, who argues that the visual aspect of Chaucer’s poems points to memory houses (see note 70), reminding of memory’s relationship to meditation; Ann C. Watts, “ ‘Amor gloriae’ in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1973): 87–113, who argues that the narrator is caught in ambivalent philosophical traditions that eschew while recognizing the not wholly negative effects of fame. René too has his quasi-iconoclastic moments, such as when Pity instructs Coeur to go first to the Castle of Love before entering the Manor of Rebellion. In her neat, conative instructions, however, the phatic insistence on drawing out the moment of transformation attenuates the explosiveness and tensions ordinarily associated with rebellion. As scholars have pointed out, this passage also shows Dante’s inf luence. See, for example, Edwards, The Dream of Chaucer, pp. 103–114, and note 18 above. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame, pp. 38–48, sees Chaucer as sympathizing with Dido, pointing out that Chaucer presents the same warning to be wary of fickle men in Troilus and Criseyde. The parallels to the romance are plentiful, not only in terms of fickle men, but also in the concern with reputation, the bookish narrator, Boethian philosophy, and the metaliterary explorations of literature and its literati. Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame, pp. 200–210, reads the poem as Chaucer’s investigation of his as well as western Europe’s imaginary, one it celebrates through the image of the labyrinth.

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NOTES

39. Likewise, in the Dido passage, he collapses the distance between narrator and audience as he defends his approach. See Glenn A. Steinberg, “Chaucer in the Field of Cultural Production: Humanism, Dante, and the House of Fame,” Chaucer Review 35 (2000): 194–196 [182–203], who reads this passage as derisive of Dante’s approach to poetry. 40. John Finlayson, “Seeing, Hearing and Knowing in The House of Fame,” Studia Neophilologica 58 (1986): 47–57, argues that Chaucer brings specific and repeated attention to vision and sound to ref lect upon the uncertainties characterizing attempts to gain knowledge. By tallying instances of seeing and hearing, Finlayson shows how Books One and Two deal with indirect seeing and hearing, while Book Three presents a direct experience. 41. Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame, pp. 18–71, 156, 159, reads Chaucer’s approach to fame as closer to the Italian rather than the French tradition, as evidenced by Chaucer’s celebration of poets and literature and by the poem’s articulation in a dream vision as part of the traditional identification of fame with vainglory. 42. Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid,” pp. 144–145 [121–163]. Explicating the inf luence of Vergil, Ovid, and Boethius on Chaucer’s poem, Hanning argues that the Eagle’s identifying the Metamorphoses as Geffrey’s own book suggests that Ovid’s description of Fame, and particularly of her dwelling—also between land, sea, and sky— was central to The House of Fame. 43. Drawing on various chivalric touchstones, Laura Kendrick, “Fame’s Fabrication,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1 (1985): 135–148, argues that Chaucer’s poem would probably have been read as disturbing. 44. Boccaccio’s companion piece to his De casibus was a collection of edifying tales about women, De claris mulieribus, which may have inf luenced Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. 45. Bevington, “The Obtuse Narrator in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” 293 [288–298]. Bevington further suggests that, “although much of the narrative content and epic machinery comes from Virgil, it is especially Ovid who provides the tone of poignant sympathy with man’s misfortune . . . Following Ovid, he could gain practice in observing life from a detached, humorous, and occasionally sardonic point of view” (p. 294). On how Ovid and Vergil play a role in the House of Fame, see Dane, “Chaucer’s Eagle’s Ovid’s Phaëthon”; Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid”; and Koonce, Chaucer and the Tradition of Fame, pp. 32–45. 46. Ann C. Watts, “ ‘Amor gloriae’ in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” p. 104 [87–113], argues, from the writer’s viewpoint, “Chaucer’s skepticism is closer to the negative than the positive tradition of gloria, though it must depend on the positive idea that poets do preserve fame forever.” 47. The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 929, 977, suggests that “The Monk’s Tale” was written in the early 1370s, while The House of Fame may have been written around 1380. Although these dates would be of particular interest to my reading, as is the case with many attempts to date medieval literature, there are too many uncertainties to ground an argument in even effectively argued speculation. Douglas Kelly has pointed out to me that the tale is also in Jean de Meun’s warning about trusting in allegories. 48. In this, Chaucer shares René’s concern that although each single step along a certain path may be advisedly taken, in the end, they may all add up to an error. 49. While many, if not most, scholars interpret the desert as negatively connoted, thereby mirroring Geffrey’s distress, Simon Meecham-Jones, “Bitwixen Hevene and Erthe and See: Seeing Words in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” in Unity and Difference

NOTES

50.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

179

in European Cultures, ed. Neil Thomas and Françoise Le Saux. Durham Modern Languages Series (Durham, UK: University of Durham Press, 1998), pp. 155–171, reviews the religious association of the desert with contemptus mundi to argue that Chaucer did not wish to become part of an European tradition, as Dante did; and John M. Steadman, “Chaucer’s ‘Desert of Libye,’ Venus, and Jove (The Hous of Fame, 486–87),” Modern Language Notes 76 (1961): 196–201, demonstrates the desert is also associated with Jove’s benevolent gifts. The first two lines of the Aeneid are particularly well known due to the multiplepage analysis given in Priscianus’ Institutiones, a fundamental textbook of grammar. Medieval grammar taught the ars recte loquendi et enarratio poetarum, the art of speaking eloquently and of interpreting literature, and, as such, is offered as a touchstone in The House of Fame. This becomes particularly clear, when, in Book Two, the eagle defines sound (2. 765–781), a fundamental doctrine explored in grammar and replicated in The House of Fame. See, for example: Martin Irvine, “Medieval Grammatical Theory and Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Speculum 60 (1985): 850–876, who analyzes grammatical allusions and ideas in Chaucer’s poem, which he uses to argue that Chaucer shows that all writings are rewritings; Jordan, Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader, pp. 22–50, who reads the poem for its rhetorical poetics; and Lynch, Chaucer’s Philosophical Visions, pp. 61–82, who argues that the poem is organized about philosophical logic. Indeed, Chaucer shifts perspectives on the three language arts comprising the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and logic—too complex a theme to discuss here, but one that can be intimated by means of the Eagle’s boast: he was able to demonstrate his interpretation (grammatical exercise) without any sophisticated terminology or overdoing, “Of termes of philosophie,/ Of figures of poetrie, Or colours of rethoricke” (2. 857–859). Also see the essays by William S. Wilson, who shows the poem’s relationships to grammar, rhetoric, and logic respectively in: “Exegetical Grammar in the House of Fame,” English Language Notes 1 (1964): 244–248; “The Eagle’s Speech in Chaucer’s House of Fame.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 50;1 (1964): 153–158; and “Scholastic Logic in Chaucer’s House of Fame,” Chaucer Review 1 (1967): 181–184. See Steven F. Kruger, “Imagination and the Complex Movement of Chaucer’s House of Fame,” The Chaucer Review 28 (1993): 128 [117–134]: “At every moment when external revelation seems imminent, worldly phenomena interfere and the poem turns its gaze back to the realm of imagination.” Kruger reads the poem in the context of dream theory and the self-ref lexive quality of dream visions in light of the quest for knowledge, while taking into account the poem’s irony. Margaret Bridges, “The Picture in the Text: Ecphrasis as Self-Ref lectivity in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles, Book of the Duchess, and House of Fame,” Word & Image 5 (1989): 156 [151–158], observes, “Sometimes Chaucer seems to abandon completely . . . the f iction that he is reporting a pictorial version of the Aeneid . . . For instance, in the fourteen lines extending from lines 239 to 252 the six-fold use of verbs of speech . . . transforms the picture in the text into a narrative performance . . . ” This ignorance is underscored right before he leaves the Temple of Venus, still not knowing who engraved such images and in what country he was located (1. 470–475). Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame, pp. 178–179 points to the atemporal, space-conscious setting of the poem. See Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid, pp. 34–36, on the complexities of Venus’ portrait. See Ann W. Astell, Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), who describes Chaucer’s learning and his own, “clerkly persona . . . [as] . . .

180

57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62.

NOTES

awkwardly out of place as an intellectual—not learned enough to be a magister himself . . . but yet irredeemably bookish, well versed in astronomy, alchemy, and letters, conversant in the current academic debates, and the admiring friend of men like ‘moral Gower’ and philosophical Strode” (p. 21). Michael Hagiioannu, “Giotto’s Bardi Chapel Frescoes and Chaucer’s House of Fame: Inf luence, Evidence, and Interpretations,” Chaucer Review 36 (2001): 28–47, explores the possible inf luence of the Giotto frescoes on Chaucer’s poem, through comparing perspective and The House of Fame’s many references to sight that also effect a shift in perspective. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame, p. 122, suggests that the focus on sound is not a surprise, given that it “has been the eagle’s primary concern.” For sources on the music, see Roland M. Smith, “ ‘Mynstralcie and Noyse’ in the House of Fame,” Modern Language Notes 65 (1950): 521–530. In “Bishop Bradwardine, the Artificial Memory, and the House of Fame,” in Chaucer at Albany, ed. Rossell Hope Robbins (New York: Burt Franklin, 1975), pp. 41–62, and in “The Art of Memory and the Art of Poetry in the House of Fame,” Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa 51 (1981): 162–171, Beryl Rowland connects the visualizing in The House of Fame with the arts of memory, which she argues is the central subject of the poem, since memory allows poetry to be created. Mary J. Carruthers, “Italy, Ars Memorativa, and Fame’s House,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2 (1986): 179–188, focuses on the rhetorical memory tradition to liken Chaucer’s approach with Dante’s. For Carruthers, memory is one of the modalities of medieval culture; see Carruthers, The Book of Memory. Ruth Evans, “Chaucer in Cyberspace: Medieval Technologies of Memory and The House of Fame,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23 (2001): 43–69, explores memory in the poem as evidence of Chaucer’s breaking from tradition; Daniel Poirion, “Literature as Memory: Wo die Zeit wird Raum,” trans. Gretchen V. Angelo, Yale French Studies 95: Rereading Allegory: Essays in Memory of Daniel Poirion 95 (1999): 33–46, discusses how literature functions as a kind of memory and how rhetoric shapes memory into genres. Finally, Raymond P. Tripp, Jr., “Chaucer’s Psychologizing of Virgil’s Dido,” The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24 (1970): 51–59, essentially points to the related quality of making a character seem real enough to the mind’s eye to be memorable. Interestingly, from the point of visualizing that which is memorable, Muscatine, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, p. 114, uses the phrase, “dramatic realism” to refer to Chaucer’s characterization of the eagle. Lori J. Walters, “Constructing Reputations: Fama and Memory in Christine de Pizan’s Charles V and L’Advision Cristine,” in Fama, pp. 118–142, examines how Christine de Pizan tried to create her own good fame, as well as that of King Charles V, thereby providing an example of a similar understanding in a near contemporary writer. The House of Fame has attracted numerous comparisons, attesting to its openness to readerly creation. Thus, Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid,” p. 141 [121–163], compares the poem with Monty Python; Irvine, “Medieval Grammatical Theory and Chaucer’s House of Fame,” p. 873 [850–876], compares the House of Rumor to an “aerial word processor”; Michael R. Kelley, “Chaucer’s House of Fame: England’s Earliest Science Fiction,” Extrapolation 16 (1974): 7–16, reads the poem as the first science fiction written in English; Laura Hibbard Loomis, “Secular Dramatics in the Royal Palace, Paris, 1378, 1389, and Chaucer’s ‘Tragetoures,’ ” Speculum 33 (1958): 242 [242–255], compares lines 1070–1083 to television; Francis P. Magoun, Jr. and Tauno F. Mustanoja, “Chaucer’s Chimera: His Protosurrealist Portrait of Fame,” Speculum 50 (1975): 48–54, relate the poem to surrealist painting; and

NOTES

63. 64.

65. 66.

181

Zieman, “Chaucer’s Voys,” p. 85 [70–91], compares the House of Rumor to a salad spinner. Of course, writers before Chaucer whom he most likely had read described f lights into the heavens, as the Eagle himself points out (2. 914–923). “Blogs Mix Up the Media.” Britannica Book of the Year, 2003. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. July 21, 2008, http://goddard40.clarku.edu:2105/eb/article9389625. On various aspects of blogs, I have been advised by my colleague, James P. Elliott, along with two M. A. students, Josh Flaccavento and Steven Bruso, the latter of whom informed me that a blog dedicated to Chaucer exists. Hanning, “Chaucer’s First Ovid,” p. 147 [121–163]. Geffrey is not cowed into submission: he tells the Eagle he does not believe Fame can hear all possible sounds (2. 700–706); although later, he brief ly says he is convinced, he uses equivocal language to suggest what the Eagle has argued is possible (2. 864, 872–874); he does not want to learn about the stars (2. 994–995, 999, 1011–1017); he insists on asking the Eagle the question he wants answered, once he is safely out of his claws (2. 1054–1065); and he tells his nameless interlocutor, he does not care to learn more about fame (3. 1895).

4

Edward the Black Prince, the Future King

1. Alexander Bicknell, The History of Edward Prince of Wales, Commonly Termed the Black Prince, Eldest Son of King Edward the Third, with a Short View of the Reigns of Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, and a Summary Account of the Institution of the Order of the Garter (London: J. Bew, 1776), pp. v–vi, his italics. 2. Sir John Chandos was one of the Black Prince’s more notable fighting companions. Edition used: Diana B. Tyson, ed., La vie du prince noir by Chandos Herald: Edited from the Manuscript in the University of London Library, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 147, ed. Kurt Baldinger (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1975). Regarding this biography, Tyson writes, “Chandos Herald is one of the most valuable authorities on certain episodes in the Hundred Years War, and his poem is in all probability the source of almost all our information respecting the Spanish campaign of the Black Prince in 1366–67. Its place in medieval French literature is equally significant: it is one of the few examples we have of French biographical writing on contemporary figures in the fourteenth century . . . ” (p. 1). For context on heralds, see Keen, Chivalry, pp. 125–142. On the Chandos Herald himself, see Sumner Ferris, “Chronicle, Chivalric Biography, and Family Tradition in Fourteenth-Century England,” in Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations Between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle. Studies in Medieval Culture 14 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980), pp. 25–38, who discusses the Herald and his biography of the Black Prince. 3. Edition used: Thomas Wright, ed. Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Composed during the Period from the Accession of Edw. III. to that of Ric. III, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859). Indeed, the poem also claims that he stems from the root of Jesse (p. 96). See J. R. Maddicott, “Poems of Social Protest in Early Fourteenth-Century England,” in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 130–144, on the protest poems in Wright’s collection that may have stemmed from clerks. Also see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 99–116, for various articulations of patriotic spirit during the period. 4. Edition used: Jean Froissart, Chroniques: Le manuscrit d’Amiens, bibliothèque municipale n 486, ed. George T. Diller, vols. 3 and 4 of 5 (1991–1998), Textes Littéraires

182

5.

6.

7. 8.

NOTES

Français (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1993). Too complex to examine in this study, it is nonetheless interesting to note that although Froissart clearly praises Prince Edward here, there are qualifications, for example, “en ce tamps” [in these times] and silence (for example, regarding his prowess in battle) that suggest Froissart may not have been as impressed by him as some scholars have suggested. Comparing with his account of the death of Edward III, for example, who, Froissart reports, was not only mourned by the entire country but whose like had not been seen since the times of King Arthur (vol. 4, § 934, p. 360, ll. 36–56), it is possible to read Froissart’s depiction of the Black Prince as qualified. The deeds of Edward III are far more numerous and far-reaching than were the Prince’s, of course, but still, a funeral is an occasion when exaggerations are permitted. On Froissart, see Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Froissart Across the Genres (Gainseville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1998); J. J. N. Palmer, ed. Froissart: Historian (Woodbridge: Boydell Press; Rowman and Littlefield, 1981); and Michel Zink, Froissart et le temps, Moyen Âge, ed. Philippe Contamine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998). In the Palmer collection, the article by Richard Barber, “Jean Froissart and Edward the Black Prince,” pp. 25–35, reviews Froissart’s materials about the Black Prince and concludes that Froissart does not portray Edward as the greatest of heroes. Interestingly, in his edition of René d’Anjou’s complete works, Quatrebarbes includes a lengthy essay on chivalry, in which he also treats King Edward III, usually in negative terms depicting his pride, and the Black Prince, usually in positive terms, except at times when he resembles his father; see Quatrebarbes, ed., Oeuvres completes, vol 2, pp. xxxiv–liii. He was Prince d’Aquitaine from 1362 to 1372, and he became Prince of Wales in May 1343, the first Duke of Cornwall in February 1337, and the Earl of Chester in March 1333. Biographical accounts of the Black Prince abound; see, for example, Richard W. Barber, The Black Prince (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2003); Hubert Cole, The Black Prince (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976); R. P. Dunn-Pattison, The Black Prince (London: Methuen & Co., 1910); Barbara Emerson, The Black Prince (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976); David Green, Edward The Black Prince: Power in Medieval Europe, The Medieval World, series ed. Julia Smith (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2007); John Hooper Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976); G. P. R. James, A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, and of Various Events Connected Therewith, Which Occurred During the Reign of Edward III, King of England, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1842); Henry Dwight Sedgwick, The Life of Edward the Black Prince 1330–1376: The Flower of Knighthood Out of All the World (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932); and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, “Edward the Black Prince,” Historical Memorials of Canterbury: The Landing of Augustine, The Murder of Becket, Edward the Black Prince, and Becket’s Shrine (London: John Murray, 1904), pp. 130–158. There are also children’s versions of his life, such as that of J. G. Edgar, “The Black Prince,” Heroes of England, Biography for Young People, ed. Ernest Rhys (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1853), pp. 3–18. See Introduction, note 5 and the corresponding text. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 1, p. 252, reports that Edward was nominal Guardian of the Realm already at the age of eight. Even though the counsel worked through him, from a very early age, he must have been aware to some degree, as anyone in that position might be, of his role as future King. Also see Margaret Sharp, “The Administrative Chancery of the Black Prince Before 1362,” in Essays in Mediaeval History Presented to Thomas Frederick Tout, ed. A. G. Little and F. M. Powicke (Manchester: Printed for the Subscribers, 1925), pp. 321–334, who analyzes the Prince’s administrative organization and observes with regard to his central chancery,

NOTES

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

183

that it was small but also supported by a number of local chanceries. This is relevant here, because she also writes that Edward, “was, from almost the day of his birth, the nominal head of a household organisation” (p. 321). Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and Its Context, 1270–1350 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1982), p. 17. Also see Antonia Gransden, “Propaganda in English Medieval Historiography,” Journal of Medieval History 1 (1975): 367 [363–382], on the efficacy of Edward I’s attempts to sway opinion. As Tyson notes, the two extant manuscripts begin and end the narrative using rubrics that refer to Edward as, “Prince de Gales et d’Aquitaine.” See Tyson, ed., La vie, p. 10. He was not called the “Black Prince” until the sixteenth century. See Barber, The Black Prince, p. 242. There are fairly good records of Prince Edward’s behind-the-scene activities, such as of the taxes he imposed and the conf licts he adjudicated. See, for example, Alfred Edward Stamp and Michael Charles Burdett Dawes, eds., Register of Edward, the Black Prince Preserved in the Public Record Office, 4 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1930–1933). See Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 58–115. Also see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 33–37 on Edward III’s ability to sway opinion using material gain as incentive. Interestingly, the Chandos Herald does not portray Edward in individual combat; see Tyson, ed., La vie, p. 41. Dunn-Pattison, The Black Prince, pp. 309–310, responds to the implication that the great leaders under him actually carried the battles by arguing that his ability to select excellent warriors actually made the Prince’s leadership all the more valuable and that in the end Edward exceeded the talents of his military teacher, Sir John Chandos. Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 67–69, observes that although gunpowder had been invented and used on the battlefield, the Black Prince adhered to the traditional modes of combat, at which he excelled. See Contamine, La guerre au moyen âge, pp. 258–275, who demonstrates that gunpowder was increasingly used starting from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 1, pp. 501–534. See Boulton, The Knights of the Crown, pp. 3–5, 96–166, on the Order. He writes toward the end of his chapter on the Garter, “Edward III’s motives for creating the Order of the Garter seem to have been complex. To begin with, in order to increase his personal prestige both at home and abroad, he wanted to promote an image of himself as a heroic king in the tradition of Arthur by surrounding himself with an international company of heroic knights, and initially attempted to ‘restore’ the Round Table company itself in a form very similar to that presented in the later romances, in what he proclaimed to be the very castle that had housed the original society” (p. 164). In trying to reconstruct the Battle of Poitiers, A. H. Burne, “The Battle of Poitiers,” The English Historical Review 53 (1938): 21–52, indicates there are about twenty contemporary or near contemporary sources, only four of which prove useful. One of these, Geoffrey le Baker, signaled the importance of Poitiers to the English when recounting the Prince’s birth: “Hoc anno scilicet 1330, regis vero 4, die 15 mensis Junii, natus est apud Wodestoke primogenitus dominus Edwardus de Wodestoke, cujus laudes et magnificos triumphos, quos in captura regis Francorum habuit, et alios, suis locis describere divina clementia nos permittat” [p. 114: In this year, that is 1330, the king’s fourth year, on the 15th day of June, his first son was born at Woodstock, Lord Edward of Woodstock, whose praiseworthy and magnificent

184

17.

18.

19.

20.

NOTES

triumphs, which include the capture of the King of France, and other deeds, will be described in various places, if God’s mercy permits us]. Edition used: Geoffrey le Baker de Swinbroke, Galfridi le Baker de Swinbroke chronicon Angliae: Temporibus Edwardi II et Edwardi III, ed. J. A. Giles. Publications of the Caxton Society 7 (London: Jacob Bohn, 1847). On the Prince’s role in the battle, see Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 2, pp. 225–249. For information before and after the Battle, especially in terms of logistics and potential and actual consequences, which contextualizes his account of the battle, see Herbert James Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958). Emerson, The Black Prince, p. 141, describes the victorious entry into London as “one of the high points in the Hundred Years’ War for the English people . . . At St Paul’s the Bishop of London and clergy met them; at one time the Black Prince was delayed for an hour listening to a congratulatory address. Then, via Ludgate and Fleet Street, they made their way to Westminster where they arrived nine hours after leaving London Bridge. There the King of England waited to congratulate his son.” Not surprisingly, the narration of how the Prince took the King of France is far more laconic in Les grandes chroniques de France selon que elles sont conservées en l’église de Saint-Denis en France, vol. 6, ed. Paulin Paris (Paris: Techener Librairie: 1838), p. 34, being covered in less than a sentence. Delineating the history of chronicle-writing at Saint Denis, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey, Medieval Classics: Texts and Studies 10 (Brookline, MA: Classical Folia Editions, 1978), pp. 121–122, notes that the character of the Grandes chroniques had become institutionalized by this point in time. See John Le Patourel, “The Treaty of Brétigny, 1360,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 19 (1960): 19–39, on the vicissitudes of the demands made for King Jean’s freedom, which became more troubled with time, because Edward’s 1359–1360 campaign against the French was not successful. But also see Clifford J. Rogers, “The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations of 1354–1360 Reconsidered,” in The Age of Edward III, ed. James S. Bothwell (Woodbridge, UK: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 193–213, who essentially argues that Edward III was able to conclude negotiations, having met his initial goals. As argued in Pierre Chaplais, ed., “II. The Opinions of the Doctors of Bologna on the Sovereignty of Aquitaine (1369): A Source of the Songe du Verger.” Some Documents Regarding the Fulfillment and Interpretation of the Treaty of Brétigny 1361–1369, Camden Miscellany 19, Camden Third Series 80 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1952), p. 52 [51–78], due to the complications involved in the question of sovereignty, negotiations dragged on, and “Edward III . . . decided to create in his southern French possessions a dignified authority which would keep his officials under control and inspire respect amongst his subjects. The principality of Aquitaine was therefore created on July 19, 1362 for Edward the Black Prince, the victor of Poitiers.” Even though Gascony is the more common medieval name, I will refer to the region as Aquitaine, in part because it underscores the Prince’s title and in part because, “[t]he region to which the Prince of Wales was to go was called in English writings of the fourteenth century Aquitaine, Guienne or Gascony without careful distinction.” See Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357, p. 4. Complaints arose due to his taxing of his subjects. The Anonimalle Chronicle suggests that his spending was out of control, leading to taxes that were unreasonable. See The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333 to 1381: From a Ms. Written at St. Mary’s Abbey, York, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970), pp. 55–56. Tyson, ed., La vie, p. 35, underscores that the Black Prince’s sacking of Limoges, in which innocent civilians were ordered to be killed by Edward himself, is related by

NOTES

21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

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the Chandos Herald in only two lines, ll. 4049–4050. However, see Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 25–27, who asserts that the Prince was within his rights; and Barber, The Black Prince, pp. 225–226, who suggests that the destruction was within a conqueror’s rights, but that one should remain skeptical about the numbers killed. The Black Prince did raze the town to the ground (its Bishop, who was godfather to his eldest son, had betrayed him by simply turning the town over to the French forces). Also see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 74–82, who reads the carnage in the context of the Prince’s readiness to engage in savage warfare and his desire to defend his honor. Interestingly, Sedgwick, The Life of Edward the Black Prince, p. 273, who is otherwise effusive about the Prince’s qualities, keeps the incident to a minimum and writes, “It was the last spring of the wounded lion.” Finally, Herbert James Hewitt, The Organization of War Under Edward III, 1338–1362, foreword by Andrew Ayton (Barnsley UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2004), p. 121, writes, “Though the death of non-combatants who had no connection whatever with the quarrels of princes was coming to be regarded as undeserved and even regrettable, no widely accepted code protected their lives.” Engaging in mercenary service was not per se deemed unchivalric. The Chandos Herald, ll. 1971–1982, shows, for example, his patron, Sir John Chandos, persuading members of the Grande Compagnie (Great Company or mercenaries) to leave Henry and to join Pedro’s forces, which they do. According to Geoffroi de Charny, 10, 1–23, p. 92, the motive was the more important factor. Charny writes, as cited in chapter 1, “Et pour ce doit l’en mettre en ce mestier plus son cuer et s’entente a l’onnour, qui tous temps dure, que a proffit et gaing que l’en peut perdre en une seule heure” [Kennedy’s translation 15, 22–24 p. 98: In this vocation one should therefore set one’s heart and mind on winning honor, which endures for ever, rather than on winning profit and booty, which one can lose within one single hour]. Later, at least for René d’Anjou, participating as a mercenary was a reason to exclude knights from his Order of the Crescent. See Keen, Chivalry, pp. 211–212. Also see Contamine, La guerre au moyen âge, pp. 275–296, on the increasing reliance upon mercenaries from the mid-fourteenth century onward. There are only two known manuscripts of the Chandos Herald’s biography. Both of them have prose headings, which, although perhaps not composed by the Herald himself (Tyson, ed., La vie, p. 9) could nonetheless serve as indices that suggest the Herald’s attention to structure. See Gransden, Historical Writing in England, II, pp. 97–100, on the Chandos Herald and his account. Tyson, ed., La vie, p.167, note to l. 51, identifies Clarus as the king of India, one of the main characters in the Voeux du paon [Vow of the Peacock]. Edward III certainly was the subject of much praise in popular verse, as conveyed in Laurence Minot, The Poems of Laurence Minot 1333–1352, ed. Joseph Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887). The Herald also alludes to Roland and Olivier, thereby comparing the Black Prince and his men to the French heroes who also passed through Roncevaux and died in the effort to protect Charlemagne (ll.161–163; 2794–2798; 3378–3383), although the allusion is missing where it would have been obvious to use, when they were actually planning to cross the pass (e.g., ll. 2188– 2194). See Green, Edward The Black Prince, p. 14; Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, p. 102; and Tyson, ed., La vie, p. 36. Having pointed out that the Prince may have already been her lover and that she probably had had affairs, Cole, The Black Prince, pp. 138–139, writes, “ The quite strong breath of scandal . . . made her an unlikely and scarcely acceptable bride for the heir apparent. The pope disapproved on the grounds of consanguinity—she was the prince’s first cousin once removed and he

186

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

NOTES

had stood as godfather to two of her five children.” Barber, The Black Prince, p. 240, however, disagrees. See, for example, ll. 3769–3772. Also see Keen, Chivalry, pp. 116–117, who sees such romance as a key Arthurian inf luence on chivalric culture. The Prince is portrayed as being very close to his family as well. Compare this short passage that portrays the couple holding hands and kissing when Edward returned from the Spanish expedition with the much longer one at the beginning of the expedition, in which Edward greets his brother, John of Gaunt, when he arrives in Spain—they also kiss, converse, walk, and hold hands (2152–2180). Also see J. W. Sherborne, “Aspects of English Court Culture in the Later Fourteenth Century,” in Scattergood and Sherborne, English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, p. 15 [1–27], who conveys the same family picture. The epic mode soon takes over, though, as we learn that Joan, who was with child, gave birth to Richard, to the Prince’s great joy, and immediately thereafter, he leaves for battle (2093–2103). More lovingly, on his deathbed, Edward commends Joan to the King and Gaunt, and the Chandos Herald reports how greatly the Prince loved her and his son, before reporting how wretchedly she lamented his passing (4156–4164). See Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 20, 65, 87–88, on the Prince’s good fame, which persisted in spite of the fact that—as far as can be determined—he never addressed the importance of the crusades. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), pp. 124–125, his italics. See J. Enoch Powell and Keith Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages: A History of the English House of Lords to 1540 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 353–355, on the peace announced by the truce of Malestroit in 1343, allowing for festivities that led to the plan to house a Round Table to evoke King Arthur, and how this celebration eventually evolved, on St. George’s Day, April 23, 1348, to establish the Order of the Garter. See Richard Barber, “What was a Round Table?” in Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor: The House of the Round Table and the Windsor Festival of 1344, Arthurian Studies 68. Gen Ed. Norris J. Lacy (Woodbridge UK: The Boydell Press, 2007), ed. Julian Munby, Richard Barber, and Richard Brown, pp. 69–70 [69–76], on the political symbolism of the round table as displaying unity. Apparently, René too had such dreams. According to Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff, The Arthurian Handbook, p. 96, René built a castle for the round table he hosted. Edition used: Jean Le Bel. Chronique de Jean le Bel, vol. 2, ed. Jules Viard and Eugène Déprez (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1905). See Le Bel’s similar comparison with respect to the French establishing of the Order of the Star, in 1352, based on “la Table Ronde qui fut jadis ou temps du roy Artus.” [p. 204, the Round Table, which was made in past times by King Arthur]. On Edward III’s architectural energy, see Sherborne, “Aspects of English Court Culture in the Later Fourteenth Century,” pp. 11–15. Also see Keen, Chivalry, pp. 190–197, on the Arthurian anchoring of the Order of the Garter. The following three articles by Richard Barber describe additional accounts by Adam of Murimuth (two versions); a Herald, possibly from Saint-Omer; the Brut chronicle; Thomas Walsingham; Jean Froissart on Edward III’s plan for the Round Table building; and the plans for the failed Order of the Round Table in: Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor: “The Round Table Feast of 1344,” ed. Munby, Barber, and Brown, pp. 38–43; “Imaginary Buildings,” pp. 100–115; and “The Order of the Round Table,” pp. 137–152; also see Appendix B on chronicle sources, pp. 182–189.

NOTES

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32. See Sherborne, “Aspects of English Court Culture in the Later Fourteenth Century,” p. 8; also see pp. 6–7, on King Edward’s reliance on conventions. 33. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 85. Also see W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. xi–xiii. 34. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 93. 35. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 89–90. Although here Keen is describing the aftermath of the short-lived victory against the Scottish at Halidon Hill, these were principles Edward III carried forth throughout his long reign as King (1330–1377). 36. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377, pp. x–xi. Also see Cary J. Nederman, “The Opposite of Love: Royal Virtue, Economic Prosperity, and Popular Discontent in Fourteenth-Century Political Thought,” in Princely Virtues in the Middle Ages, ed. Bejczy and Nederman, pp. 183–190 [177–199], who discusses the attack launched in the two versions of Speculum Regis Edwardi III (1331, 1332) by the parish vicar William of Pagula against Edward III’s reliance on royal purveyance to fund his wars at the cost of impoverishing his people. For a translation of both versions, which may not have been read by the King, along with two other political treatises that attest to how open the King was to critique, see Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham, ed. and trans. Cary J. Nederman, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 250, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 10 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002). 37. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 117. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, p. 45, writes “Edward III, in fact, emerges from the records as one of the most image-conscious kings of the later Middle Ages.” Also see A. K. McHardy, “Some Ref lections on Edward III’s Use of Propaganda,” in The Age of Edward III, ed. Bothwell, pp. 171–192, who observes that Edward’s public relations efforts were not as sophisticated as of those of some continental kings. Thus, while King Edward sent war heroes to address the Canterbury assembly for special tax grants, the kings of Aragon preached to meetings of parliament and wrote chronicles, while French kings sponsored an official chronicle (pp. 171–172). Nonetheless, McHardy points out, Edward did make conscientious PR efforts in the churches and used English as his medium to do so. On war propaganda during the late Middle Ages, see Contamine, Pages d’histoire militaire médiévale, pp. 144–160, which generally comprised sermons, speeches, requests for prayers, declarations on church doors, predictions, newsletters, heavily interpreted signs and miracles, trophies, erecting a cross or other religious edifice, organizing masses and processions, slanted histories, images, and songs, among other modes. Contamine argues that Edward III was particularly well versed in the art (pp. 152–155). In contrast, Edward’s adversary, Philippe VI was, according to Contamine, quite discrete (p. 155). 38. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 117–118. King Edward III was particularly gifted in creating an iconically mythic English stage. Also see Lynn Staley, “Translating ‘Communitas,’ ” in Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Lavezzo, pp. 261–303, who sketches the efforts to create unifying images of governance by regents in the generation after Edward III—by France’s Charles V, who was, according to Staley, highly successful, and by Richard II, who was less so. 39. For a fuller account of the incident, see Ferster, Fictions of Advice, pp. 72–77. On the Archbishop, see Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, pp. 81–86. 40. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, p. 45. 41. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 118. See Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 1, p. 39, on the growing importance of English for Edward’s court. Also see Jill

188

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

NOTES

C. Havens, “As Englishe is comoun langage to oure puple,” in Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Lavezzo, pp. 96–128, on how Lollards created a religiously defined community, one of whose foundations was the English language. Edition used: Thomas Rymer, ed. Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cuiuscunque generis acta publica, inter reges Angliae, et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates, vol 3 (Farnborough, UK: Gregg Press Limited, 1967), p. 129, col. 2. See Lavezzo, ed. Imagining a Medieval English Nation. In this collection of essays, Galloway, “Latin England,” pp. 41–95, treats monastic chronicles’ attempts to define secular nationalism. Concerning the Polychronicon, Galloway writes that Ranuph Higden, “ . . . made a trope about English instability in social identity into a set feature of national ideology . . . His pessimistic proposal spurred others to imagine solutions in the form of nationalisms that they would not otherwise have conceived . . . ” (pp. 64–65). Also see Michael Michael, “The Iconography of Kingship in the Walter of Milemete Treatise,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994): 35–47, who describes a Fürstenspiegel presented to King Edward III. See Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357, pp. 136–139. Also see Eugène Déprez, “La bataille de Najéra (3 avril 1367): Le communiqué du Prince Noir,” Revue Historique 136 (1921): 37–59. As the editors indicate, the Modus was probably created by lawyers for lawyers in the early fourteenth century, during the reign of Edward II, when technical treatises instructing new lay professional classes on parliament emerged, treatises that included the fully representative assembly and, although also treating the clergy, that seemed to be generated from a secular perspective (pp. 6–7, 14–18, 22–23, 35–36, 38–40, 42–43). Edition used: Modus tenendi parliamentum, in Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages, ed. Nicholas Pronay and John Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 13–114. James Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility and Political Control in 14th-Century England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), p. 44; cf. pp. 7–8, 28–29; 149–153. Bothwell (pp. 127–137), also indicates that Edward III’s promotions did not go unchallenged, although the traditional peerage did not seem to contest the quality of his new men as rigorously once the English began to win battles against the Scottish and French. For the founding of the Garter, relevant documents, and related information, see Barber, The Black Prince, pp. 80–109; Richard Barber, “Why did Edward III Hold the Round Table?” in Edward III’s Round Table, pp. 77–83; George Frederick Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, From its Foundation to the Present Time. With Biographical Notices of the Knights in the Reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. (London: William Pickering, 1841); Grace Holmes, The Order of the Garter (Windsor: Oxley and Sons, 1984); and N. H. Nicolas, “Observations on the Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” Archaeologia 31 (1846): 104–163. For the order’s connection to St. George, its statutes and other information on its founding, see William Arthur Rees-Jones, Saint George, The Order of Saint George and The Church of Saint George in Stamford:A Monograph Dealing with the Order and Its Connection with S. George’s Church, Stamford, 1349–1449 (London: The Churchman Publishing Co., 1937); and Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, pp. 76–91. Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, pp. 77–91. Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, p. 91. See Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff, The Arthurian Handbook, pp. xx–xxiii, 57–135. See Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 73–74, on the abandoning of the Windsor Castle and Round Table projects in favor of the Order. On Edward’s

NOTES

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58. 59.

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relationship to Arthurian lore and ethos, see Munby, Barber, and Brown, eds. Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor. See Green, Edward The Black Prince, pp. 73–105, on how chivalry’s demands and deviations from ideals in the fourteenth century were fraught by the tensions propelled in part by changes in military arms and strategies. Also see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 56–96; Chickering and Seiler, eds., The Study of Chivalry; Keen, Chivalry; and Vale, Edward III and Chivalry. Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage, pp.16, 94; cf. p. 71: “ . . . escheats, expectancies, forfeitures, marriages and wardships were all crucial sources for royal patronage to Edward III’s new men during the reign. When it came to deciding how to distribute such resources, however, the least important factor were ties of blood . . . ” Bothwell’s study argues that the King effectively created a royalist cadre through a variety of instruments, investing substantial wealth in individuals at not inconsequential risk and varying his use of these instruments to confer wealth and status according to how much he favored the individual being considered. James Bothwell, “Edward III and the ‘New Nobility’: Largesse and Limitation in Fourteenth-Century England,” The English Historical Review 112; 449 (November 1997): 1128 [1111–1140]. Also see Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Commentary (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), especially pp. 1–25, on conditions in general as well as conditions that allowed Edward III to promote outside the already embedded aristocracy. While this formulation did not appear until the fifteenth century and was not immediately popular, I use it here to underscore the attempt of English kings since at least Edward I to use Arthur as an authority. As such, these allusions pretty much effect the same desire embedded in the Latin phrase: to reestablish the glorious kingdom. See Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff, The Arthurian Handbook, p. 27. Green, Edward The Black Prince, p. 12; also see pp. 34–39. On the battle from various perspectives, see Ayton and Preston, eds. The Battle of Crécy, 1346. Particularly telling, as Andrew Ayton writes in his introductory essay, “The Battle of Crécy: Context and Significance,” p. 6 [1–34]: “At Crécy, all regard for the bonds of an international chivalric brotherhood were set aside in the single-minded pursuit of a crushing victory. At the end of the fight the field was littered with the corpses of French (and allied) noblemen.” Although the English forces were not as small as legend would have it, the consequences for the French were indeed far-reaching (pp. 24–27). He summarizes (p. 29), “Edward III and his lieutenants may not have been altogether surprised by the outcome of the battle, yet Crécy was a landmark event because a well-rehearsed performance had been presented on the grandest of continental stages.” The mottos were in Flemish, perhaps in deference to his mother. See Barber, The Black Prince, pp. 68–69, on the mottos’ possible origins. On using the mottos as his authenticating signature, see Sir Israel Gollancz, Ich Dene: Some Observations on a Manuscript of the Life and Feats of Arms of Edward Prince of Wales, the Black Prince: A Metrical Chronicle in French Verse by the Herald of Sir John Chandos: Presented by Members of the University of London to H. R. H. Edward, Prince of Wales, K. G., on the Fifth of May, 1921 (London: Geo. W. Jones, 1921)—this small volume has no page numbers; and Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 174. See, for example, James, A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, vol. 2, pp. 66–75, and Sedgwick, The Life of Edward the Black Prince, pp. 73–77. The courtly treatment of his royal prisoner continued in England. See, for example, Nigel Wilkins, “Music and Poetry at Court: England and France in the Late Middle

190

60.

61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67. 68.

NOTES

Ages,” in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Scattergood and Sherborne, pp. 194–195 [183–204], who indicates that the French king had his retinue accompany him, including musicians, and who argues that inf luences between the French and the English continued in music and poetry, perhaps even because of the Hundred Years War, which allowed for many exchanges. Although the Chandos Herald was himself clear about the Prince’s superior standing, as Green, Edward The Black Prince, pp. 19–20, points out, Prince Edward’s status was ambiguous—although he had the power of a king in Aquitaine, for example, he was a prince, and his official status had consequences on how he was to interact with those around him. Also see Pierre Chaplais, “Règlement des conf lits internationaux franco-anglais au XIVe siècle (1293–1377),” Le Moyen Âge 57 (1951): 269– 302, who describes the myriad attempts to settle the question of who had rights to Aquitaine, and in this context depicts the hierarchical framework of the feudal world, making the sense of Arthurian primus inter pares, according to Chaplais, an impossibility; see especially pp. 292–294. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p.114. Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 142, who, for example, in his panegyric biography of the Prince keeps the Spanish venture to a minimum. Even the political poem cited earlier colors Edward’s Spanish victory with overt markers of bereavement, epically mourning its soon to be fallen Prince. Nonetheless, also suggesting the prolonged emphasis was intended, the Chandos Herald was not, for example, hesitant about inserting formulaic phrases conveying the necessity to abbreviate his material—he could have done this as well with respect to Nájera, had he wished to do so. Also see Given-Wilson, Chronicles, pp. 7–8, who observes that being the Herald of Sir John Chandos made him truly well qualified to report on the Black Prince’s valor. He also surmises that the battle of Nájera was probably the only one the Chandos Herald actually witnessed, thereby explaining the full treatment of the battle. While this may be true, I think that other factors, as discussed in this chapter, play an additional role. J. J. N. Palmer, “Froissart et le héraut Chandos,” Le Moyen Âge 88 (1982): 281 [271–292], however, attributes the disproportion to lack of concern for aesthetic values since the biography’s aim was to support Lancaster. In benign form, this development can be seen in Chrétien’s romances and Arthurian prose romances as well, since Arthur, although respected, rarely appears in the romance genre in battle, leaving the stage for other excellent knights to demonstrate their prowess. Narratively speaking, of course, doing so allows for endless variation. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 2, pp. 540–585, describes the battle essentially from the perspective of his chapter heading, “The Disastrous Victory”; he states that this battle was “the Prince’s greatest military victory and his worst political failure” (p. 557). See Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 2, pp. 555–559. On the political advantages of allying with the enemy of the friend of France as well as the extravagant payment promised by Pedro for the Black Prince’s aid, see Barber, The Black Prince, pp. 186–191, and Green, Edward The Black Prince, pp. 14–15. Since the Prince’s biography was written in French, I assume it was intended for the nobility, unlike Chaucer’s “Monk’s Tale,” which could have included the nobility, but was also accessible to others as well. Chaucer’s Monk avoids negative remarks about the Spanish regent and portrays him as the victim of his bastard brother and Bertrand du Guesclin. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 201–203. On the letters, see James, A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, vol. 2, p. 376, and the accompanying note. In a sense, Edward’s letter as presented by the Herald

NOTES

69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74. 75.

76.

191

is analogous to his response to the Cardinal of Périgord—even if a formality, it is nonetheless a concession to the wisdom of attempting peace before war. Edition used: A. E. Prince, ed., “A Letter of Edward the Black Prince Describing the Battle of Nájera in 1367,” The English Historical Review 41 (1926): 415–418. Captured in the Black Prince’s use of the term “bastard” is an attempt to squash, linguistically, any possible threat to the existing hierarchy. On this particularly good attempt to reestablish uni-accentuality and curb multi-accentual perspectives, see V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 22–23, 99–106. While the Herald mostly refers to Enrique of Trastamaras as le bastard, or le bastard Henri, he also refers to him a few times as roi de Castille or le roi Henri [King of Castile, King Henry: e.g., ll. 1806–1807, 1983, 2960] and also, interestingly, as le rois bastard [the bastard king: e.g., ll. 2859–2860, 3484]. See Given-Wilson, Chronicles, pp. 101–102, on the Herald’s reluctance to go on at length about unchivalric behavior. According to Gransden, Historical Writing in England, p. 97, Froissart used the Chandos Herald’s account for his Chroniques. Interestingly, even in the detail of the verse form, the Chandos Herald expresses the same tensions linking the Prince’s two mottos. That is, he recounts epic, historical matter in octosyllabic couplets rather than in alexandrines or prose, thereby combining Arthurian romance form with epic or historical material. Tyson, ed., La vie, pp. 26–30, attributes the Herald’s use of verse form either to inf luence exerted by an early Froissart chronicle or to the unknown patron’s wish, although she concedes that there is no evidence that verse was the preferred courtly choice. Also see Palmer, “Froissart et le héraut Chandos,” and Peter F. Ainsworth, “Collationnement, montage et Jeu parti: Le début de la campagne espagnole du Prince Noir (1366–1367) dans les Chroniques de Jean Froissart,” Le Moyen Âge 100 (1994): 369–411, on the possible relations between the various versions of Froissart’s Chroniques and La vie. Tyson, ed., La vie, pp. 35–36, looks at the Herald’s conf lation of harmful material from the vantage point of his necessity to please his patron, whom she equates with a young King Richard II. Regarding Limoges, James, A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, vol. 2, pp. 470–471, writes: “The fact of the treason on part of its inhabitants, the fact of its having been taken without an offer to surrender, the fact of the exasperation of all parties at the moment, can hardly be received as any palliation of a premeditated act, which confounded the innocent with the guilty, and crushed the helpless with the strong . . . ” Also see note 20. With regard to the Calais adventure, the Chandos Herald, ll. 411–471, relates only generally that in 1346, the Prince rescued his father in a situation that involved Aimery of Pavia’s betrayal of the French forces led by Charny, but he does not go into detail, and he closes the passage with an emphasis on how happy the Queen was at having both her husband safe and secure and at having such a brave son. Besides the possibility that the Herald was commissioned by King Richard to write this biography, he was also writing at a time prior to King Richard II’s inglorious downfall. See Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 17, 113–114. Black, Political Thought in Europe, pp. 28–34, argues that the idea of liberty constituted part of political theory throughout the late Middle Ages and that its constraints were believed to have emerged as a consequence of the Fall. See Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 97–103, on the uneasy relationship between the English and French courts. Also see Deanne Williams, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), on the ambivalence the English expressed toward French culture and political power, as seen through her use of Marxist and Freudian definitions of fetish.

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77. See for example: Green, Edward The Black Prince, pp. 2–7; Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 135–198; and Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, on the general context. John Aberth, “Crime and Justice under Edward III: The Case of Thomas de Lisle,” The English Historical Review 107 (1992): 283–301, suggests that Edward III’s own inconsistent and personal legal judgments contributed to the failure of his attempts to improve the legal system. He writes: “Edward III’s shortcomings as the ultimate guarantor of the law—his preoccupation with military affairs and his personal, rather than literal, interpretation of his role as lawgiver—indicate that crime remained a problem during his reign and may well have increased” (p. 299). 78. See Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 125–131. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, pp. 77–81, points out how administrative processes limited its inf luence. Also see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 38–45, 118–125, on criticism of the war and Edward’s governance; and Liddy, War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns, pp. 20–43, who discusses the loans made by the urban elite of York and Bristol to the crown, loans that were more or less coerced, although there was some right to refuse. King Edward III was led to making loans with town citizens by the collapse of the Italian banking firms of the Peruzzi and Bardi, followed by the drying up of funding from the syndicates of English merchants. He made an appeal for the first time in 1347. Also see Powell and Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages, pp. 377–379, on the great councils that had begun to be called in 1371, when both the Black Prince and Edward III were physically incapacitated, and which seemed to have met without the commons. 79. See Anthony Musson, “Second ‘English Justinian’ or Pragmatic Opportunist? A Re-Examination of the Legal Legislation of Edward III’s Reign,” in Bothwell, The Age of Edward III, pp. 69–88, who argues that parliament, both commons and lords, acquired more responsibility in legislation under Edward III; and Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 124–133. 80. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III, p. xii; also see pp. 37–39 on the 1376 Good Parliament’s attempts to reform government, as driven by the commons; Ormrod writes (p. 201): “ . . . most of the important changes in the structure of politics were carried through by co-operation and consensus.” 81. See Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity, on the framework, historical circumstances, logistics, and finances of Kings Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV from 1360 to 1413. He points to how: Edward III’s household diminished steadily from 1360 to 1377, the last years of his reign (p. 39); parliament’s complaints about activities of the household increased in the 1370s (pp. 110, 121); and at around 1370, the system of retaining about sixty to seventy knights began to change, being replaced in the new reign by a wider body of knights and esquires (p. 254). He remarks that “[t]he affinity, that is the servants, retainers, and other followers of a lord, was the most important political grouping in medieval society” (p. 203). Also see Green, Edward The Black Prince, pp. 107–140, as well as his “Politics and Service with Edward the Black Prince,” in Bothwell, The Age of Edward III, pp. 53–68, on the Black Prince’s household. 82. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 131. 83. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 184–196. 84. See Gransden, Historical Writing in England, pp. 101–102. 85. See Thomas P. Campbell, “Liturgy and Drama: Recent Approaches to Medieval Theatre,” Theatre Journal 33 (1981): 289–301, for the centrality of the liturgy in medieval drama; Cecilia Pietropoli, “Il dramma ciclico inglese come teatro popolare: Forme della consolazione e forme della celebrazione,” Quaderni di filologia germanica 2 (1982): 45–60, who discusses how the religious nature of medieval biblical drama

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elicits celebratory participation; Carol Symes, “The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theater,” Speculum 77 (2002): 778–831, for defining the performative from extant sources prior to the fourteenth century as a more complex enterprise than traditionally believed, for her review of past approaches to the study of medieval drama, and for her analysis revealing dramatic codes in literature. Symes (p. 829) writes: “the closer European culture came to a model of theater dependent on enclosed space, an authorized text, and a specialized acting profession, the less it was able to accept the indeterminacy of medieval plays.” Also see John M. Wasson, “The English Church as Theatrical Space,” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 25–37, on the importance of church interiors as playing spaces. 86. See Richard Beadle, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); David Bevington, ed. Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Miff lin, 1975); A. C. Cawley, Marion Jones, Peter F. McDonald, et al, Medieval Drama, The Revels History of Drama in English 1 (London: Methuen, 1983); and Stanley J. Kahrl, Traditions of Medieval English Drama, English and European Literature (London: Hutchinson, 1974). Also see Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1974), whose introductory study on European medieval theater focuses on religion and the growing trends toward leisure and the use of drama for religious propaganda. Wickham, p. 12, discusses Amalarius of Metz’s Liber officialis, in which the mass was seen to have, allegorically, “an immediate and recurring significance for all who partook of it as well as an historical significance in commemorating past events.” Also see Clifford Davidson, ed., A Middle English Treatise on the Playing of Miracles (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1981), a Wycliffite treatise that records objections to theater. Davidson’s introduction situates the treatise in the church’s long and problematic relationship to drama. Perhaps of most relevance here is the third rationale against drama, that people are moved to tears and compassion through miracle plays (p. 39, ll. 191–195), to which the writer responds, “but the weping that fallith to men and wymmen by the sighte of siche miraclis pleyinge, as they ben not principaly for theire oune sinnes ne of theire gode feith withinneforthe, but more of theire sight withouteforth is not alowable byfore God but more reprowable” [p. 43. ll. 357–362: but the weeping that men and women do at the sight of such miracle plays, since it is not mainly for their own sins nor for their inner faith, but stems more from outward sight is not pleasing to God, but all the more deserving of reproof ]. I cite the passage here, because it suggests that those watching miracle plays, approved or not, seem to have indeed felt religiously inspired. See too Richard Hosley, “Three Kinds of Outdoor Theatre Before Shakespeare,” Theatre Survey 12 (1971): 1–33, who describes the circular theater, the pageant wagons, and the booth stage. 87. See Martin Stevens, “Illusion and Reality in the Medieval Drama,” College English 32 (1971): 460–464 [448–464], on the relations between the procession and the plays; Clifford Davidson, Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 49–79, on kinds of performances and their relation to the observance of transubstantiation; Ann Higgins, “Streets and Markets,” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. Cox and Kastan, pp. 77–92, on how the plays “took to the streets”; Mervyn James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 98 (1983): 3–29, on the role of social integration performed by the Corpus Christi ritual and the language of the body inherent to the festival and complemented by the plays; V. A. Kolve, The Play Called

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Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), who emphasizes the celebratory ritual shared by feast and plays; Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), who looks carefully at town records concerning the Corpus Christi plays; and Wickham, The Medieval Theatre, pp. 59–67, who sees the feast as laying the foundations for the development of vernacular drama in its equation of the physical universe and the theatrical representation of it, macrocosm mirrored in the microcosm. The feast day in and of itself had a troubled history. Pope Urban IV called a synod in 1246, to order the celebration commemorated the next year; it was first celebrated in Liège. He then published a Bull, “Transiturus,” on September 8, 1264, urging its celebration and fixing dating principles. After Urban IV died, Clement V revived the effort at the General Council of Vienne in 1311, decreeing the observation of the feast day. The feast day was accepted by Cologne in 1306, Worms in 1315, Strasburg in 1316, and some time between 1320 and 1325 in England; see the Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent article, www.newadvent.org/cathen/04390b.htm. Also see Margaret Aston, “Corpus Christi and Corpus Regni: Heresy and the Peasants’ Revolt,” Past and Present 143 (May 1994): 3–47, for the use of the Corpus Christi feast day as a rallying date for the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, in part for its symbolic import. Aston, p. 19, writes: it “was a high day for preaching in the church’s calendar . . . [as a] day appropriated to celebrating the supreme sacrifice of Christ on the cross [it] was [also] a supremely appropriate day to celebrate the freedom thereby purchased equally for all men” (cf. p. 10 on major feast-days serving as useful times for insurrections, since people were free to move about)—and in part because of Wycliffite opposition to the feast day as an instance of idolatry. Finally, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), who examines how the symbolism of the eucharist manifested eventually into the Corpus Christi festival, along with its secular and political implications. 88. Davidson, Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain, p. 65, his italics; cf. Rainer Warning, “On the Alterity of Medieval Religious Drama,” trans. Marshall Brown, New Literary History 10 (1979): 265–292, who argues that medieval drama f lattens the difference between stage performance and ritual participation. Also see Bevington, Medieval Drama, p. 234: “In summary, the following elements seem to have helped shape the newly-emerging cyclical drama in the fourteenth century: the establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christi during a clement season in midsummer, the position of Corpus Christi day at the end of the liturgical year, the doctrinal relevance of Corpus Christi to the history of God’s miracles from the Creation to Doomsday, the availability in church tradition of various lists of patriarchs who were seen as figural antetypes of Christ, the inf luence of carvings and paintings depicting favorite iconographical subjects, treatments of these same topics in sermons and in other literary forms including folk art, a new Gothic emphasis on popular religion for the laity stressing of Christ’s humanity and suffering, the consolidation of the English language, and the rise of craft guilds.” 89. James F. Hoy, “On the Relationship of the Corpus Christi Plays to the Corpus Christi Procession at York,” Modern Philology 71 (1973): 166–168, argues that there is no direct relation between the two, since they followed different routes. 90. Too complex to go into here, the transubstantiation ritual adds another level to an intricate mise-en-abyme, as The Word was hypostasized in Christ, whose life, in turn, was transformed into Latin narratives, written on the page and spoken in rituals, which continually transform a figurative representation (the bread and wine) into the literal Christ, all of which is hypostasized in the Corpus Christi

NOTES

91.

92. 93.

94.

95.

96.

195

festival as well as in the Corpus Christi plays as a figurative representation of a literal truth. Such intricacies also point to why it is difficult to separate the religious from the secular cleanly. Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions,” Revue de Musicologie 86 (2000): 127–142; cf. Jesse D. Hurlbut, “The Sound of Civic Spectacle: Noise in Burgundian Ceremonial Entries,” in Material Culture & Medieval Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 25 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), pp. 127–140, who examines the music and other noises involved in Burgundian processions. He writes (p. 135, his italics): “One might consider the central spectacle to be either the duke or the city. It seems more accurate, however, to define the spectacle as the point of reciprocal interaction—as it moves through the city streets—between the two major players in a social drama.” Also see Williams, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare, pp. 67–68, who points to the ways the Corpus Christi plays were associated with power. The Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 41. Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003). Althoff ’s study deals primarily with the Germanic empire, stemming from approximately the sixth through the twelfth centuries, but his principles and his penultimate chapter looking forward to the late medieval period prove nonetheless useful for this study. Also see Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe 1270–1380 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 200–246, on the pervasive reliance on ritual to demonstrate power. Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, pp. 11–12, 111. David Fiala, “Le prince au miroir des musiques politiques des XIVe et XVe siècles,” in Le prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’antiquité aux lumières, ed. Lachaud and Scordia, pp. 319–350, describes how music may function to elaborate a political performance. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins,” Selected Studies (Locust Valley NY: J. J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 381–398. Also see Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds. The Court as a Stage: England and the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). Although this collection of essays does not develop the metaphor, it does look at various aspects of courtly life. Martin Stevens, “The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 317–337, essentially argues that art and drama inf luence one another. In this study’s terms, they are part of the same literary system, one that shares inf luences and inspirations with the political realm as well. Also see Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 259, who observes: “The iconography of power which developed around the eucharistic procession was also adopted in other contexts. Those using it wished to imply that the very same will which made God institute the eucharist and ordain its celebration also placed the monarch in his God-given position. Thus, the French kings took up some eucharistic trappings, and especially the canopy which came to be associated with notions of majesty. Drawing from the eucharistic iconography the kings of France, England, Navarre and Aragon came to use canopies in their own ceremonies. In the coronation city of Reims the French kings carefully superimposed symbols of royal authority onto the Corpus Christi ritual; in 1350 John II had his torches carried at the procession and a royal mass of the Holy Spirit was celebrated for the king and his predecessors on the morrow of the feast. Majesty was the theme of the eucharistic procession, and just as in a royal presence, music was played ‘videlen to love and to ere dene hilgen lichamen.’ ”

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97. See D. A. Bullough, “Games People Played: Drama and Ritual as Propaganda in Medieval Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (1974): 97–122, who surveys the theatrical element in aristocratic behavior and compares it with a variety of medieval plays to argue that both kinds of staged activities were used as propaganda for the state and church. 98. Barber, “Why did Edward III Hold the Round Table?” pp. 87–89. For a fuller synopsis of Ulrich’s adventures, see Keen, Chivalry, pp. 92–93. 99. Loomis, “Secular Dramatics in the Royal Palace, Paris, 1378, 1389, and Chaucer’s ‘Tragetoures.’ ” 100. Wright, ed. Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, vol. I, pp. 1–25; also see pp. x–xviii. 101. Vale, The Princely Court, p. 218. Also see pp. 213–220, where he reads against the Voeux du paon [Vow of the Peacock]. Vale’s study describes in detail the socioeconomic, political, and religious functions, as well as significant cultural elements of courts in northwestern Europe during this period, revealing a common culture. Vale writes (p. 31): “The court was greater than the household and was not identical with it. It was the prince’s environment, both a place, normally of unfixed location, and an assemblage of people. Where the prince was, there too was the court. The ruler’s actual presence was a prerequisite for a court at this time.” 102. David Bevington, “Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday: Theatre as Holiday,” in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576– 1649, ed. David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington, (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 101–102 [101–116]. 103. See Green, Edward the Black Prince, p. 99: “Around this same time the banneret (who ranked higher than a knight bachelor and so-called because of his squareshaped banner) became a military and social distinction, within the knightly ranks . . . ” Also see Keen, Chivalry, p. 168, who records Froissart’s version of the event. On Sir John Chandos, see Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 89–91, as a praiseworthy follower of the Black Prince. 104. Interestingly, God is not invoked when the Black Prince asks the Earl of Warwick to command the vanguard. 105. The Black Prince’s attempts to modulate the tensions inherent in the English hierarchy can also be seen in that and how he addresses his men at Poitiers, which Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 42, 95–97, argues presented a rare way of rallying the troops. 106. Barber, The Black Prince, p. 200. 107. See Keen, Chivalry, pp. 135– 141, on the role heralds played in staging tournaments and their value in, essentially, identifying and hence defining what is noble. 108. Likewise, King Edward III mastered an early version of spinning data, whereby copies of letters were made to be distributed throughout the kingdom, particularly to archbishops, the bishops, and the city of London. See Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 56–57. 109. Barber, The Black Prince, pp. 227–237. 110. See, for example: Green, Edward The Black Prince, p. 16; Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age, pp. 48–49, who attributes his devotion to the Trinity to his mother’s proclivity; Arthur Oswald, “Canterbury Cathedral: The Nave and Its Designer,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 75 (1939): 228 [221–228]; and Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 177. 111. Similarly combining the secular with the religious, at the critical moment before the thick of battle at Poitiers, the Chandos Herald reports, the Black Prince

NOTES

112. 113. 114.

115. 116.

117. 118.

119. 120.

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prayed to Christ, claiming his right (1262–1273). Likewise, as cited above, when the captured King Jean II praised him as deserving more honor than any man on the field, the Prince gave God the glory (1427–1432). Walsingham, The St Albans Chronicle, pp. 32–39. See Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, pp. 148–179, for an account of the burial and tomb. See Diana B. Tyson, “The Epitaph of Edward the Black Prince,” Medium Aevum 46 (1977): 98–104, who notes that although English epitaphs were generally more widely used at this period, French epitaphs nonetheless continued to be used into the fifteenth century (pp. 102–103). Green, Edward The Black Prince, p.163. Also see Vale, The Princely Court, pp. 240–244, on the highly elaborate funerals of nobles from this period. See Rachel Ann Dressler, Of Armor and Men in Medieval England: The Chivalric Rhetoric of Three English Knights’ Effigies (Aldershot, UK; and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). While Dressler treats three English knights who died in 1221, c. 1317, and 1329, and further indicates that their stone likenesses on their tombs mark the end of an era, her approach to reading the tombs focuses on the martial stance, which was part of the ground informing Edward the Black Prince’s understanding of funereal symbolism. Although his brass effigy is quite different, he certainly was portrayed in military stance. An image can be viewed at: home.gwu.edu/~jhsy/chaucer-ppp-bp.html. Marie-Louise Sauerberg graciously met with me on August 25, 2006. She informed me that the effigy and tester are of extremely high quality, and the oak used for the tester may have been imported from the Baltic area. I noted that the image on the inside of the tester depicting God holding the cross and crucified Christ (known as the Throne of Mercy) is similar to that in University of London Library MS. 1, the Chandos Herald’s biography, as well as on the metal badge, found in the British Museum, of the Order of the Garter, except that there is neither the kneeling Black Prince nor the Holy Ghost in form of the dove depicted. In addition, the tester image has symbols of the four gospel writers in each corner. See J. J. G. Alexander, “Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages,” in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Scattergood and Sherborne, pp. 143–145 [141–162], on its probable derivation from St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, “whose interior must have been one of the richest decorated interiors of the later middle ages in Europe” (p. 143). James Mann, The Funeral Achievements of Edward, the Black Prince (London: Wm. Clowes and Sons, 1950), pp. 3–4, points out that during the sixteen weeks between his death and his funeral, sufficient time would have elapsed for the crafting of his funeral achievements: a helm and crest, a jupon of arms, a shield of arms, a pair of gauntlets, a sword (of which only the scabbard remains), a pair of spurs, and no longer surviving, a dagger and a second shield, which, tellingly, Mann describes as “these most precious and beautiful relics” (pp. 9–10, my italics). An image of the two escutcheons may be seen in Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, between pp. 174 and 175. The funeral achievements that originally hung above the tester, but now are protected under glass, comprise: his lion-crested helmet, his jupon or surcoat, his shield with coat of arms, his gauntlets, and his scabbard. See Janet Arnold, “The Jupon or Coat-Armour of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral,” Church Monuments 8 (1993): 12–24, who underscores the lavishness of his achievements.

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PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS BY SUNHEE KIM GERTZ

Echoes and Reflections: Memory and Memorials in Ovid and Marie de France (2003) Chaucer to Shakespeare, 1337–1580 (2001) Poetic Prologues: Medieval Conversations with the Literary Past (1996) (Principal Editor) with Jaan Valsiner and Jean-Paul Breaux, eds. Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds (2007)

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INDEX

allegory, 14, 16, 38, 45–65, 69–70, 84–86, 150, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 174, 176, 193 Alphonse V, 22, 33, 36, 46, 53, 109, 161 Arachne, xviii, 15, 83, 84, 85 Arthur, 25, 26, 27, 38, 41, 43, 51, 52, 63, 66, 71, 88, 90, 91, 101, 104, 108–117, 122–124, 136, 137, 141–143, 151, 155, 156, 157, 162, 164, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 190, 196 primus inter pares, 25, 41, 116, 117, 136, 190 Round Table, The, 42, 51, 111, 115, 116, 183, 186–189, 196 audience, xv, xviii, 4, 15, 17, 19, 26, 30, 33, 35, 51, 76, 86, 93, 102, 119, 121, 124, 126, 133, 141, 151, 178 vernacular, 17, 72, 125, 151, 172, 194 vox populi, xviii, 26, 88, 142 Augustine, xv, xvi, 9, 21, 27, 42, 145, 147, 182, 199 Bevington, David, 87, 130, 159, 172, 174, 178, 193, 194, 196 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 17–43, 52, 66, 82, 88, 90, 91, 101, 114, 117, 122, 123, 142, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 162, 167, 174, 176, 178 De casibus illustrium virorum, 17–31, 36, 41, 82, 90, 123, 152, 153, 154, 157, 162, 178 Bothwell, James S., 114, 115, 184, 187, 188, 189, 192 Bouchet, Florence, 34, 41, 48, 52, 53, 158, 159, 162, 165, 167, 168

Canterbury Cathedral, 3, 4, 18, 29, 30, 43, 71, 80, 109, 129, 134, 136, 138, 148, 182, 187, 189, 190, 196, 197 Chandos Herald, The, 105–110, 116–125, 130–136, 141, 181, 183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 196, 197 Charlemagne, xiii, 30, 31, 32, 58, 62, 119, 145, 156, 157, 185 de Charny, Geoffroi, 28–29, 41, 75, 116, 119, 122, 137, 139, 157, 163, 185, 191 Chaucer, Geoffrey, xvi , xviii, 1, 2, 3, 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 29, 30, 32, 45, 69–104, 107, 108, 113, 115, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127, 129, 130, 133, 141, 142, 143, 145, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 190, 191, 195, 196 Dido, 74, 77, 79, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 95, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 124, 130, 142, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180 Eagle, The, xvi, 74–77, 81, 96–98, 100, 101, 102, 141, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181 man of gret auctorite, 73, 76, 79, 80, 100, 101, 127, 173, 175 chivalry, xvi, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 40–46, 52, 63, 69, 78, 105–109, 114–141, 153, 157, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 178, 182, 186, 189 Chrétien de Troyes, 25, 27, 40, 41, 43, 49, 115, 116, 155, 156, 157, 190 Cicero, xiii–xvi, 42, 145, 146, 147 Corpus Christi, 125–130, 193, 194, 195

226

IN DEX

Corti, Maria, 1, 4, 147, 164, 199 Crescent, Order of, 43–48, 63, 114, 158, 163, 165, 185 data points, 14, 79, 109 Dembowski, Peter F., 28, 157 drama, theater, 45, 124–127, 130, 141, 150, 166, 192, 193, 194, 195 processions, 1, 47, 48, 64, 124, 127, 128, 141, 159, 187, 195 stage, xv, xviii, 15, 19, 35, 40–45, 49, 54, 62, 65, 67, 73, 84, 87, 104, 107, 108, 111, 118, 119, 121, 124, 126, 129, 133, 136, 141, 142, 143, 187, 190, 193, 194 dreamlike narration, 16, 19, 20, 23, 40, 58, 107 dysordynaunce, dissonance, 15, 53, 54, 57, 62, 64, 77, 81, 82, 83, 89, 91, 92, 108, 116, 130, 139 Eco, Umberto, 2, 4, 15, 61, 147, 166 Edward III, 72, 107–117, 124–126, 129, 134, 170, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 196 Edward, the Black Prince, xvi, 1, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 28, 29, 30, 32, 71, 72, 80, 104, 105–139, 141, 142, 143, 148, 153, 170, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 196, 197 Battle of Crécy, 72, 107, 109, 116, 159, 170, 171, 189 Battle of Nájera, 121, 124, 134, 170, 190 Battle of Poitiers, 5, 18, 28, 72, 106, 109, 113, 117, 118, 131, 133, 135, 170, 183, 184, 196 Enrique of Trastamara, 29, 109, 119, 120, 121, 124, 191 Houmout, Ich Dene, 115–122, 133, 136, 138, 142, 189 Joan of Kent, 35, 109, 110, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 173, 186 Elam, Keir, 45, 52, 83, 99, 128, 147, 164, 166, 195, 199 dramatic text, 45, 47, 53, 64, 66 performance text, 45–49, 52–54, 64, 99, 128 quotation marks, 45, 46, 52, 64, 83, 93, 122, 132

enthymeme, xviii, 132, 145 Fregoso, Doge Tommaso, 33, 39, 40–42, 162 Froissart, Jean, 28, 106, 107, 109, 121, 122, 124, 148, 157, 168, 181, 182, 186, 190, 191, 196 Fürstenspiegel, xv–xvi, 11, 12, 17–48, 53, 56–58, 61, 63, 65, 69–71, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 86–92, 100, 106, 107, 113–115, 118, 119, 124, 135, 141, 142, 146, 147, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 160, 170, 188, 199 Garter, Order of, 28, 43, 109, 114, 181, 183, 186, 188, 197 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 25, 41, 79, 112, 115, 116, 148, 155, 156, 164 Given-Wilson, Chris, 153, 170, 177, 189, 190, 191, 192 governance, xiii– xviii, 1–5, 10, 11, 14, 16–23, 29, 30, 33, 38, 39, 42, 44, 46, 53, 64–70, 91, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 124, 151, 187, 192 Guesclin, Bertrand du, 30, 45, 121, 123, 124, 190 Hanning, Robert W., 86, 101, 146, 148, 150, 163, 172, 178, 180, 181 iconic myth, xiv–xvi, 13, 58, 107 Innis, Robert E., 148, 150 Jakobson, Roman, 2–6, 17, 22, 33, 38, 69, 92, 148, 164, 199 code (metalingual), 3, 22, 44, 57, 64, 69, 76–78, 80, 82, 85, 86, 90, 92, 93, 100, 101, 104, 107, 108, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 137, 143, 185 conative, 2, 14, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 53, 56, 57, 69, 70, 88, 177 emotive, 2, 17, 69, 71, 82, 88 message (poetic), 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 42, 43, 44, 60, 64, 69, 73, 92, 108, 133, 134, 138, 164, 166, 172, 174 phatic (metaliterary), 3, 4, 19, 30, 33, 38, 42, 43, 47, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 64, 69, 73, 76, 77,

227

IN DEX

78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 92, 93, 107, 108, 133, 134, 138, 143, 173, 175, 176, 177 referential (epic), 3, 4, 15, 16, 17, 23, 30, 33, 40, 43, 55, 63, 72, 74, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 103, 108, 110, 119, 124, 125, 129, 130, 133, 134, 137, 138, 143, 151, 155, 158, 178, 186, 191 Jean II of France, 28, 109, 117, 121, 122, 197 Jean le Bel, 111, 186 Keen, Maurice, 112, 117, 126, 155, 157, 163, 171, 181, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 192, 196 Kelly, Douglas, 14, 47, 60, 146, 150, 156, 165, 167, 169, 178 Langer, Suzanne K., 148 Lydgate, John, 19, 152, 153 memorializing, 5, 33, 48, 55, 64, 71, 168

154, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 169, 182 ratio atque oratio, xiii–xv, 12, 15, 32, 104, 110, 128 René d’Anjou, xvi, 1, 3, 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33–67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 93, 99, 100, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 123, 124, 129, 130, 134, 141, 142, 143, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 177, 178, 182, 185, 186 Mortifiement de vaine plaisance, 65, 69, 165 St. Simeon, 3–14, 24, 28, 41, 43, 44, 107, 114, 124, 148, 149, 150, 173, 177 Abbot Eberwin, 6–10, 44, 149, 150 Archbishop Poppo, 5–11, 14, 28, 43, 44, 135, 148, 149, 150 streamlining, 16, 19, 23, 30, 40, 48, 60, 79, 88, 103

Noakes, Susan J., 147 objective correlative, 111 Ovid, xviii, 1, 13, 16, 52, 74, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 101, 146, 150, 151, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181 Peirce, Charles S., xiv, 2, 9, 56, 93, 107, 145, 147, 168 ground, 2, 4, 6, 9, 15, 29, 30, 31, 35, 45, 47, 55, 95, 96, 108, 110, 112, 115, 121, 122, 125, 133, 178, 185, 197 index, 35, 61, 91, 113, 164 Poirion, Daniel, 146, 158, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 180 quasi-platonic, 14, 16, 19, 29, 38, 41, 42, 53, 63, 116, 129, 136 Quatrebarbes, M. le Comte, 22–27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 40, 45–47, 58, 124,

trace narrative, 45, 58, 70, 71, 87, 102, 114, 119, 141, 142, 149 Tree of Jesse, 3, 4, 30, 43, 80, 148, 174, 181, 195 Trier Stadtarchiv, 6, 7 Vergil, 1, 16, 54–56, 74, 86–88, 91, 101, 147, 151, 173, 174, 175, 178, 199 vir bonus, xiii–xvi, 18, 28, 42, 107, 122 visual power, xiv–xvi, 1, 37, 45, 59, 60, 63, 66, 71, 74, 76, 86, 98, 99, 113, 115, 127, 130, 132, 133 Walsingham, Thomas, 71, 72, 135, 170, 186, 197 Wetherbee, Winthrop, 14, 73, 146, 150, 162, 172 Zink, Michel, 34, 49, 158, 159, 166, 167, 182