The Tale of Zeus and Dame Ragnelle

No, it will make sense. Bear with me.

So, I’ve a conference next week at which I’m speaking on The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, a mid-15C analogue of the Loathly Lady tale that also appears in, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. The fact that the conference theme is “Intimacy: Family, Friendship and Fealty” means that I can’t just go haring off after the diversion that occurred to me last night, so: once more unto the blog!

The history of the Loathly Lady figure relative to Irish sovereignty tales (in which the lady represents the country) has been well established.  I have no citations by me, as I am writing this on the bus, but I believe Frederick Madden had something to say about it in his collection of Gawain stories, and it goes on from there according to the usual patterns of late 19-early 20C myth-discovery.  That is, therefore, the accepted mythical ancestor of the figure, and as hunting out mythological precedents is rather out of fashion and the genealogy is well traced I don’t believe  anyone has thought to dispute it, or posit any additional ancestor.

But surely the obvious classical precedent is the god-who-comes-to-dinner? Zeus, or some other god (usually Zeus as the patron of hospitality), disguises him/herself as some ugly, poor old beggar and asks for shelter and food. Or, of course, for help crossing a river, etc.  This is a test, the protagonist responds according to their moral stature, and the god suddenly sheds his unprepossessing exterior to reveal himself in all his glory to pass judgement on the protagonist, along with appropriate reward or punishment.  I don’t recall offhand whether any examples of that trope appear in Ovid, but it’s entirely in keeping with the system of virtue and reward evident in the Aeneid, to consider just two of the most culturally influential classical texts extant in the Middle Ages.

The main linking device is, of course, the transformation: a disguised stranger who appeared unworthy according to the ideals of the genre – poor and old and helpless in Greek mythology, disgusting and unmannerly and often old in romance – is suddenly transformed into the epitome of those ideals. In addition:

• the transformation is in direct response to the actions of the protagonist towards the stranger,
• in entering the narrative, the stranger will, explicitly or otherwise, initiate a kind of test for the protagonist, in which their response demonstrates (and thereby establishes) their virtue,
• the stranger retains to him/herself the authority to pass judgement on the protagonist’s actions after the return transformation (rather than delegating that task to the narrator), claiming the status of moral arbiter of the narrative,
• similarly, the stranger him/herself dispenses punishment or reward.

The trouble with this is that it’s a bit of a jump from Greek mythology to mediaeval romance.  And there is a good deal of cultural filtering and reconditioning that must take place there to make any Greek story (or figure) have any relevance to a late-mediaeval audience.

So where else can we find a more immediate precedent to this figure, a precedent that provides a type of bridging device between classical myth and late-mediaeval readership? a precedent in a tradition that is entirely accustomed to absorbing classical and/or pagan stories and recasting them to its own set of moral values?

Well:

... whanne Seint Iulian reste hym aboute midnyght al forweried [weary] and the wedyr colde and a gret froste, he herde a vois that wepte piteously and cried: 'Iulian, helpe me ouer for Goddes loue or ellis I perische for greuous colde.' And whanne he herde that voys he arose al sodenly [immediately] and passed the colde water and founde that pore creature that deied nigh for colde, toke hym up and bere hym to his hous and light the fere and dede al his diligence to warme hym. And as he myght in no wise make hym take warmthe he toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde... And a litell after he that apered to be so sike and as a foule lepre stied vp shinyng into heuene, saieng to his oste: 'Iulian, oure Lorde hathe sent me to the, sendyng the to saie that he hathe receiued thi and ye bothe shull reste in oure Lorde witheinne a litell tyme' And anone he vanished awaye... (Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer, EETS 2006; v. 1, 144)

Appropriately enough, that comes from the story of St Julian Hospitaller, Zeus’ descendant in the role of protecting the sacred laws of hospitality and defending the safety of guests.  But it works perfectly well in a Christian context, thus refigured – well enough that throughout the Gilte Legende (and elsewhere), saints and even Jesus himself regularly pop up where they’re not expected, mysteriously disguised, usually as someone helpless, and initiate a test of some kind or another.  Quite of a piece with the popular belief that saints really could interfere in a very material way with everyday life – all your big brothers are watching you.

So, if Dame Ragnelle has cross-genre precedents in, for example, St Julian and others, can we expect that her contemporary audience might have recognised them and picked up on the currents? I think so – if nothing else, Ragnelle seems to deliberately play with the collision of genre, pushing herself forcibly into society, conscious of her own incongruity and playing it for all it’s worth with her fine clothes and horse.  If so, the audience could expect her at her appearance to make demands which would set up a challenge as a moral test – apparently for both Arthur and Gawain. And she does, tests which Gawain passes and Arthur fails (largely by fobbing responsibility off on his nephew).

But if she refers to or recalls testing figures in hagiography, does this have an effect on what is being tested? Courtly virtues? Christian ones?  The story of St Julian explicitly opposes the life of the court (and its values) with the humble Christian values that  attend helping mysterious sick strangers (for which you have to live in an isolated hut beside a ‘flode’). The Wife of Bath’s nameless loathly lady gives a pillow-lecture that could be read as being in opposition to ‘courtly’ virtues. And Gawain, when his ugly wife has become beautiful, thanks God for her deliverance from a curse (and presumably for his from the equally horrible fate of having to look on her all the time). Perhaps Arthur’s failure is that he tries to adhere to courtly virtues which are (or could be read as) so dependent on appearance as reflective of personal status.

The fiend as God’s sergeant (part 2/2)

And if the fiend functions as God’s – executor, as it were – carrying out God’s will to the greater glory of the saints while managing to be evil himself (because apparently God has great PR officers), what can we say about these lads?  This is the torture and mastectomy of St Agatha, and I think I may venture to hypothesise that the two at her with pliers are EVILEVILEVIL. Look at their faces – they’re approaching the fiendish themselves[1].

Bibl. Nationale, MS n. a. fr. 16251 fol 87v. Le Livre d'images de Madame Marie, c. 1300. Image taken from Caviness 82.

Hassig has written a chapter on specific details of mediaeval portrayals of Jews/monsters/others/foreigners/devils, all of which elide rather tellingingly at some point.  If I recall[2], there were several things that functioned most strongly in depicting evilother, among them distorted faces, grimaces, crouching posture, tightly curled hair and dark skin.  All of these features are not only present in these unpleasant-looking lads, but accentuated by contrast in every case to the serene, upright, very pale figure between them. So they are associated, not only by narrative function but by visual language, with the actions of the devil.  Standing in for him in the physical performance of Agatha’s martyrdom, they take on physical attributes associated with him – but also, of course, with themselves as ethnically other.

So Christianity’s tendency to create enemies [3] comes in handy here – we have a sliding scale between foreign and devil, between not-us and persecutor and enemy of God, where the only difference between foreigner, pagan, idol, demon and Satan is  of degree.


As the corollary to this, what does Agatha resemble in this picture? Well, in context, that’s rather obvious – who stands around looking bright and benevolent while surrounded by tormentors, with arms stretched out to either side of his head?  And is a complete contrast to devils? In case we missed the similarity, she has her convenient halo to point it out.  There is also a clear sexual difference – she is pure and white and fully clothed (save where they have exposed her body for humiliation and torture) with skirts to the ground, while their legs are bared and the violating instruments are held in a suspiciously phallic position.

Physically, she is approaching (literally) Christ – she is raised above her tormentors, as if halfway to heaven.  And alright, so she has breasts and that’s not entirely Christ-like – but hey, her tormentors are (sergeant-like) removing those for her, so that won’t be a problem for much longer.   Remove those curves, and she would be almost entirely masculine in appearance. 

Of course saints are often depicted as resembling Christ, or rather partaking of the same visual code of virtue and holiness, just as the torturers resemble the devil. But a female saint is visually farther from Christ to begin with, and it’s hardly illogical that she should become masculinised in depiction in the process of approaching him[4].  Caviness has mentioned the tendency towards masculinisation in the tortures visited on female martyrs - Agatha’s isn’t the only mastectomy, and the torments often appear to result in a masculine display of physical courage or fortitude, etc (Caviness 90).

I’ve described it as purely visual, but of course the cultural attitudes are hardly limited to the pictorial. Though Caviness is primarily discussing images, rather than literature, she implies that this tendency is also present in the shape of the stories of the female martyrs: “The threat of the female is expunged by her becoming masculine (or female-less) in response to bodily exposure and torture.  The repetition of the mastectomy topos in so many saints’ lives, possibly by a borrowing from one to the other, is an indication of its cathartic power” (93). 

But doesn’t this imply that ‘female’ is something expunged from the body to leave a pure male remaining? Yet the feminine is already defined by its lack relative to the male body, so logically in lacking both masculinity and femininity one becomes genderless.  Is there, then, a similar tradition (though fainter, I think) in the purification of male saints by castration? I can’t think of nearly so many instances, but one could construct an idea of an idealised non-gendered spiritual body, purged of sex. 

Of course, this is rather too (theo)logical and rather less fundamentally attractive than the idea of ripping off women’s breasts or ‘improving’ the bodies of admired women until they resemble men (the best of men), so it’s not likely to have such a wide currency in popular stories.


[1] Cf. the faces of the people flaying St Barthlomew (from the same ms) in the picture at the end of the last post: one's turning his head away, one looks uncomfortable, and one looks like he's positively enjoying himself.  All three are similarly dressed to Agatha’s tormentors, and the face of the third is the most distorted. 


[2] Unfortunately I haven’t read this article for over a year and my photocopy of it is in Canada and I can’t source it over here in Adelaide, but I shall sharpen the specifics as soon as I get back to Ottawa. I don’t think my memory misrepresents her.

[3] It's ridiculous, isn't it? given the cultural dominance of Christianity for, oh, 1700 years, its insistence on a neurotic self-representation as a persecuted minority. Childhood really is a very formative time, apparently for religions as well as people. It is a very attractive self-representation too, isn't it - it means you needn't mature emotionally beyond that childhood phase of ranting at injustice and being misunderstood, and may construct enemies everywhere at a moment's notice. After all, you're the victim, right?


[4] This raises a question, which I’m not addressing now because I’m really just thinking aloud (well, on a screen): Are any female martyrs depicted in a Marian code, rather than a Messianic one? I can’t think of any, and it’s less intuitive – but are the unmartyred female saints depicted consistently in the visual tradition of Mary, then? Is there an appreciable divide there?


Cited.
Caviness, Madeline H. Visualizing women in the Middle Ages: Sight, spectacle and scopic economy. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2001.
Hassig, Debra. "The iconography of Rejection: Jews and other Monstrous Races". Image and Belief: Studies in the Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art. Ed. Colum Hourihane. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999. 25-46.

Querela divina and Responsio humana in BL Add 37049 (transcription)

For reference, this is the full text of the poetic exchange on the page discussed in the last post (BL Add 37049 20r).  Couplets are compressed onto one line for space, line breaks indicated with /.  The only punctuation is an occasional medial punctus, transcribed as a full stop.  Maiuscules follow the manuscript.  Abbreviations are expanded with italics.  The scribe made a few errors in the final lines (were they obscured in his original?) and has crossed them out, possibly with some attempt at scraping or rubbing – it’s hard to say on the colourless image.  On the first two occasions he crossed the letters out before completing the word and continued on the same line, while on the third he completed the line before realising his mistake and inserted a superlinear correction.

Querela diuina

O man vnkynde / Hafe in mynde

My paynes smert

Beholde and see / Þat is for þe

Percyd my hert

And yitt I wolde / Or þan þu schuld

Þi saule forsak

On cros with payne / Scharp deth agayne

Ffor þi luf take.

Ffor whilk I aske / None oþer taske

Bot luf agayne

Me þan to luf / Althyng abofe

Þow aght be fayne

 

Responsio humana

O lord right dere / Þi wordes I here

With hert ful sore

Þerfore fro synne / I hope to blynne

And grefe no more

Bot in þis case / Now helpe þi grace

My frelnes

Þat I may euer / Do þi pleser

With lastyngnes

Þis grace to gytt / Þi moder -eh- eke

Euer be –þry- prone

Þat we may alle / In to –þat- \þi/ halle

With ioy cum sone

Amen.

 

The words around the wound in the heart: 

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þat our / Jhesus crist sufferd for oure redempcoun [sic – I just can’t make out an i anywhere in there!]

 

Christ’s words:

Þies woundes smert. bere in þin hert and luf god aye. / If þow do þis . þu fil haf blys with owten delay

Incidentally, the scribe originally started writing this verse higher on the page, stopping when he realised that the words would run into Christ’s halo.  There seems to be an attempt at scraping the first attempt away, and the line enclosing the text banner is thicker over the half-erased words in an attempt to hide them.  It’s probably not to much of a jump to hazard that the scribe was also the illustrator, and didn’t do anything very elaborate in the way of plotting out his page layout beforehand.  I think we also have an indication that he was thinking about the illustrative rather than the poetic side of things when copying out the second line of this couplet, in that he (automatically?) added the usual “en” to “withowten”: it rather destroys the rhythm, and could have been omitted.

Herte and mesure in BL Add. 37049 20r: in response to Caroline Walker Bynum

I was reading through an article by Caroline Walker Bynum a few days ago (see below for citation), and found a few points with regards to one manuscript image she discussed that I wanted to expand.

The article focuses on the violence and gore in many high to late mediaeval theological images, its possible implications and the differing emphases laid on images of the perforated or violated body. The manuscript is BL Additional 37049, a Carthusian miscellany which has plenty of other creatively gruesome images. I particularly like this take on the usual memento mori: you may look pretty and rich and noble even in death, but you are still worm-food, frail mortals! Specifically, Bynum examines 20r:

British Library Additional 37049 fol. 20r. Click for full size.

Bynum cites this image to support her argument that the wounds of Christ “evoked love”. Specifically, she notes that Christ “displays his own heart … [which] bears within it all five wounds of Christ’s body, and the accompanying dialogue… ends with the hope that we will soon come to joy” (Bynum 18). She also adds that the image “returns us to the theme of fragmentation”.

However, although she quotes the exchange between Christ and the kneeling man, she doesn’t, to my mind, adequately examine the literal centrality of the heart on the page and in the poetic exchange:

Querela diuina: O man unkynde / hafe i[n] mynde / my paynes smert[.] / Beholde + see / Þat is for þe / percyd my hert [...]

Responsio humana: O lord right dere / þi wordes I here / with herte ful sore[.] / Þ[ere]fore fro synne / I hope to wynne / And greue no more [...]

The heart is the centre and focus of the page; but also, it seems to me, of their exchange. The pain in Christ’s heart is matched by the pain in the heart of man, caused by the same sin. The mutual wound suggests a shared heart – as indeed the page represents, presenting the heart as the means of communication, the addressee of the gaze and words of each. The word “heart” is exchanged between them as is the wound, something shared and mutually comprehensible. In this way, I’d question (or at least complicate) Bynum’s interpretation of the heart as Christ’s: it seems to me the heart shared between God and man. On the other hand, by that very token, it becomes a form of mediation between the human and the divine, the common halfway point: Christ himself, as the word made flesh, the mediator for humanity before God.

Aptly, the heart literalises the concept of “word made flesh”: it appears to speak. The central wound seems almost a mouth, and the words around it may be seen as issuing from it. Interestingly, though the image of Christ is made to speak, and the heart appears to, the man remains silent, except for the voice in the poem. Silent before Christ, or only capable of speaking through the emissary of the heart – whether that be addressing God through Christ, or one’s own internal voice of prayer, rather than the potentially destructive external voice?

Central throughout Bynum’s article is the idea of metonymy, “undergirded by… the doctrine of concomitance (the idea that the whole Christ is present in every particle of the eucharist)” (22):

From folk assumptions that a measure or particle (fingernails or hair) can be the person to abstruse theological debates over the mode of presence of an immaterial God, medieval culture gloried in the paradox of parts that not so much represented as were the whole. (23)

Bynum then draws the connection between this and the mediaeval obsession with numerology, particularly the ability of the right numbers to convey truth: effectively, to stand in as a metonymical “part” that might stand for / be the whole. I’d draw the comparison, for example’s sake, with the pentangle on Gawain’s shield and its ability to simultaneously represent Gawain (or the idealised version of him) and the perfection of Christ or the Trinity[1]. She applies this to the motto inscribed around the “mouth” of the heart:

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þ[a]t our Ih[esu]s Christ sufferd for oure rede[m]ptiou[n].

Bynum points out the emphasis on the precise length of the wound contained in “mesure”, pointing out a long mediaeval tradition in which “length is a metonym for person” (20). The correct dimensions of the wound carry with them the nature of the person represented by it, and therefore, if it adheres to those dimensions, “an image of the wound was Christ” (20). However, I’d venture to add to her conclusion. It seems to me that the evidence she cites to the effect that precise numerical detailing of an object can reproduce it in its precise identity means that perhaps in this case the numerical “mesure” need not be the central concern. If “mesure” has become abstracted to the extent she describes, we might as well read “this is the nature”, or “this is exactly that wound Christ suffered and how it was given him”. In this way the heart that is the focus of the gaze of Christ, of the kneeling man and of the reader (given the layout of the page) becomes a demonstration and revelation of the words they exchange through it: the manner of the wound, the piercing sin that harms both (or all three) in the doing, a visual representation of the exact truth – the “mesure” – of the Passion.

----------

Arthur, Ross G. Medieval sign theory in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Toronto: Toronto UP, 1987.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Violent imagery and Late Medieval Piety”, German Historical Institute Bulletin 30 (2002), 3-36. Available online on the GHI Bulletin website.

Notes on Malory: the sword in the stone

So I just realised that I haven't actually read Malory for three years, and when last I did I didn't know any of the names beyond the obvious, so most of it's rather a blur of lots of knights being the best knight ever, sequentially.

Therefore, it is only logical to read it again, and take notes of anything interesting that happens along the way.

And something must be very broken in my head, because whenever I read "Uther Pendragon" I see Anthony Stewart Head, and whenever I see "Merlyn" I see Colin Morgan, and the image of Colin-Merlin actually telling Tony-Uther what to do is very, very wrong.

Besides, I think Bradley-Arthur would have a fit if he heard Merlin giving his dad masterful advice on his sex life.

Anyway.

1) So, the first time Sir Kay is introduced, his name is actually Kaynus:

... and with hym rode syr Kaynus, his sone, and yong Arthur that was hys nourisshed broder; and syr Kay was made knyght at Alhalowmas afore. So as they rode to the justes-ward sir Kay had lord his suerd... (8.15-17)

And thencefore he remains Kay. I don't remember him being Kaynus, or variants on it, in earlier versions: I wonder if Malory (or whoever he copied this bit from)[1] meant it as an echo of Cain? I know Kay's meant to be variously a bit annoying, a bit of comic relief or the epitome of bad manners, but surely Cain is going a bit far. Or maybe, somewhere along the way, the echo in the name became the reason.

And also, justes-ward? I wonder if the editor got that hyphen right. It could be just “as they rode towards the jousting”, but that makes the “to” slightly awkward: might it also be “as they rode to the joust-sward”, in the sense of grass, lawn, arena?


2) Arthur pulls that sword out of the stone six times. Firstly, all alone, to provide Kay with a sword (8.27-28), then in front of Kay and Ector (9.14), then in front of the assembled lords four times (9.40, 10.5-9, 10.19-20) before they believe it.

The first three seem to be a logical progression, the burden of proof of entitlement, and provide a logical dramatic structure as well: witnessed only by himself and God, innocent and not recognising the import; witnessed by his family and learning that he is something else, that they are not his blood family and is now destined to be king; witnessed by the barons, proving his identity to the whole country. Besides, everyone knows these things happen in threes.

But then the story is pulled out of shape: the barons don't believe him. I suppose there are at least two reasons for it, and one is the narrative necessity for resistence at this point if Arthur is to win his throne, because it's much more interesting if there is fighting and besides, what about all those juicy stories left over from warlord days where he has to carve out a kingdom by defeating people? Wouldn't do to leave them out, just for the sake of one neatly shaped myth. So you have at least two legends tacked onto each other - warlord and divine appointment.

But then, for the second reason, we must have several more versions rolled into one. The first two drawings-out take place on New Year's Day[2], the third twelve days afterwards. The next three are, variously, Candlemas, Easter and Pentecost. So unless there's some precedent about having to prove oneself at each of the major Catholic feast days throughout the year, I'd guess that Malory, or his source, had seen different version in which the final proof happened on different days, and incorporated them all - for added legitimacy!

And is Arthur still meant to be two years old at this point?


3) “And the thyrd syster, Morgan le Fey, was put to scole in a nonnery, and ther she lerned so moche that she was a grete clerke of nygromancye”. In a nunnery[3]? Honestly? I can buy that she got a much better and more literary education there than she might have elsewhere and therefore had the tools to learn “nygromancye”, theoretically, but - the nuns had those books in their library? I think, Malory, you may be protesting a tad too much with this whole 'impose Christianity on the pagan myths' business.

On the other hand... everyone knows Morgan le Fay, and knows what he means she learned there. So if he just means “And that is where she learned all her Stuff, because YOU KNOW WHAT goes on in THOSE places”... isn't that a fairly extreme example of male paranoia of all-female societies? Sure, they might have the father of the local chapter of monks being nominally in charge, but behind those walls... who knows what those strange, floaty women in weird clothes get up to.


4) On that note, Malory is very careful to preserve the shape of the original myths but keep them acceptable to Christian sensibilities. Such as his insistence that Arthur, though conceived through trickery and Uther taking on the shape of Igrayne's husband, is not illegitimate, through two carefully timed (and carefully insisted on) chances. Firstly, as Uther rides off in Gorlois' shape, Gorlois attacks Uther's former position and is killed, and therefore “after the deth of the duke kyng Uther lay with Igrayne, more than thre houres after his deth, and begat on her that night Arthur”. So it wasn't adultery, as we are told twice in a sentence, because that would presumably make him a bastard, as much as him being born out of wedlock. And, of course, Uther and his trusty Ulfius make sure to avoid the second as well.

Then we have the emphasis on Arthur's baptism (6.15-27). We have preserved Merlin's insistence that Arthur be delivered to him unchristened (and again I'm getting disturbing images of Colin Morgan holding a baby Bradley James, which is just wrong too), which might have been at one point a remnant of some tension between Merlin as Christian wise man and pre-Christian... something, rewriting magic as mysticism[4]. But here it just serves the secret-heritage plot, because no one but Merlin knows the name he bestowed on the royal child.

And again, all the events of the sword-from-the-stone legend are surrounded in Christian trappings. Uther, on his death bed, gives his unknown son “Gods blissyng and myne, and byd hym pray for my soule” (7.9-10); to call an assembly of the lords, Merlin goes and has a friendly chat to the Archbishop of Canterbury (and there's an image I have trouble fitting into my head, for reasons for once wholly unconnected with any BBC TV series), and they, when they come, “made hem clene of her lyf, that her prayer myghte be the more acceptable unto God” (7.25-26). And masses are said, and though it looks like Merlin orchestrated this whole event, mysterious stone included, it is emphasised repeatedly that “God wil make hym knowen”, he “that shall encheve the swerd” (8.1-2).


5) Speaking of Christianising - how about Anglicising? The stone containing the sword, and therefore presumably all the events centred on it, including Arthur's coronation, are “in the grettest chirch of London - whether it were Powlis or not the Frensshe booke maketh no mencyon”. Well, that's definitely one way to reconcile the fact that you revere a Welsh king with the fact that you revile the Welsh. And all that pother about him being crowned in Caerleon (or Carlisle, or Cardiff, or Camelot, or one of those other somewhat interchangeable Welsh places starting with C)? Easily sorted.

[After the coronation at St Paul's (or not), and after] the kyng had stablisshed all the countryes aboute London... within fewe yeres after Arthur wan alle the North, Scotland, and alle that were under their obeissaunce, also Walys... Thenne the kyng remeved into Walys and lete crye a grete feste, that it shold be holdyn at Pentecost after the incoronacion of hym at the cyté of Carlyon. (10.38-44)

So, two coronations - one nice and Christian and English, as king, and one nice and mythic and Welsh, presumably as high king - or possibly just another ceremony to say “See me, I have totally done what Edward I will never manage: take that, Norman apocryphal-descendents!”

Wales has not succeeded in culturally invading England, oh no. England physically invaded Wales. Well, the Welsh are too backwards for it to have happened any other way, surely?

“A parte of it helde ayenst Arthur, but he overcam hem al, as he dyd the remenaunt, thurgh the noble prowesse of hymself and his knyghtes of the Round Table” (11.1-3). Which doesn't exist yet. Though, given I have distinct memories of entire knights coming back to life in later books of Malory without any mention of supernatural intervention, I suppose a slightly anachronistic piece of dining room furniture isn't too much to expect.

Also, I think he is still about five years old at this point.



All quotes from Malory, Thomas. Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.


[1] And please take that little hedging comment as read every time I say “Malory”.

[2] Or possibly Christmas. It's New Year's throughout page 8, not mentioned on page 9, then at 10.5-7 we have “And right as Arthur dyd at Cristmasse he dyd at Candelmasse, and pulled oute the swerde easely”.

[3] Didn't even prevent her from being a breeder of sinners, did it?

[4] And that is definitely a trick Colin-Merlin should try on Tony-Uther, if he ever looks like getting executed for sorcery.

Being Taken In

“Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?” said the King. “That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”
“I know,” said Jewel. “Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up.”
“There is no need for both of us to go.”
“If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now,” said the Unicorn. If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me?”
They turned and walked back together, shedding bitter tears. (C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, 1956. London: Bodley Head, 1972. 31)

The Last Battle is not popular. People who enjoy Lewis’ other Narnia books, who find they can excuse all that Christianity nonsense in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or ignore it in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, tend to find themselves stumped by The Last Battle. Lewis is accused of being heavy-handed, offensive, dreary, of having an axe to grind, of sacrificing plot to religious allegory that is too ponderous to be affecting and too overt, dark or naïve for a childrens’ book.

Well, perhaps. But then why does it still invariably reduce me to tears?

Partly it’s the quality of the prose, pure Lewis. Simple, direct vocabulary, but with a beautifully resonant rhythm that pulls you right in:

The Bear lay on the ground, moving feebly. Then it mumbled in its throaty voice, bewildered to the last, “I – I don’t – understand,” laid its big head down on the grass as quietly as a child going to sleep, and never moved again. (122)

And partly it’s that combined with his ability to state a common experience, simultaneously evoking it in such a way that the moment becomes my defining literary experience or memory of that feeling:

Then Tirian realised that these people could see him; they were staring at him as if they saw a ghost. But he noticed that the king-like one who sat at the old man’s right never moved (though he turned pale) except that he clenched his hand very tight. Then he said:
“Speak, if you’re not a phantom or a dream. You have a Narnian look about you and we are the seven friends of Narnia.”
Tirian was longing to speak, and he tried to cry out aloud that he was Tirian of Narnia, in great need of help. But he found (as I have sometimes found in dreams too) that his voice made no noise at all.
The one who had already spoken to him rose to his feet. “Shadow or spirit or whatever you are,” he said, fixing his eyes full upon Tirian. “If you are from Narnia, I charge you in the name of Aslan, speak to me. I am Peter the High King.” (49-50)

But to a large extent it’s that I love the book, and have done since childhood, and that, of course, affects and informs my experience of reading it now. That love can be rationalised and explained in many ways – the two examples above for a start – but is also in itself also a factor in how I respond to the book. I remember when we were quite young we had a series of audio tapes of several of the Narnia books – not dramatised, just read aloud, with incidental music at appropriate moments. And the score for The Last Battle was so moving, so noble and sad (two of Lewis’ favourite adjectives, of course), that I was always sobbing through the final battle in the stable door. You wouldn’t stop to question the xenophobia, the absolutism, the religious agenda, to mock the pretensions of Peter and Tirian and Jewel, because you didn’t want to. You wanted to believe the story.

"But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash that his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, child?” (166)

Reading the story now, I want it to remain the Narnia I remember and love; and so it does. The elements that made me love it are still there. I have changed, not the book, but I can choose to see it primarily with the eyes of a child, and not any of my sets of adult eyes: the ones I closed and turned away from the priest in Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral when I stood in the choir loft, wondering why the rest of the congregation couldn’t see certain of his words for the propaganda and mass manipulation they were; or the ones with which I would read Chaucer, detached from its emotional context, only to analyse; or the ones with which I would read a Harry Potter book, impatient with Rowling’s inability to notice her own moral grey areas (a group of kids being obnoxious at school does not mean they will all be irrevocably evil and should therefore be ostracised by all right-thinking people for the rest of their lives).

So I can see the shortcomings in Lewis’ writing, and the potential offensiveness of his preaching, but when I read it I choose not to see it. I choose to immerse myself in it and take it at face value, just as I believe in trawþe for Gawain’s sake when I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Not being a Christian, I take ‘Aslan’ purely on his Narnian terms, isolating Lewis’ version of right and wrong from the real world. But others prefer to take a more active approach in their reading.

Most famously, Neil Gaiman wrote a short story in 2004 criticising Lewis’ treatment of Susan, excluded from Aslan’s country for her love of “nylons and lipsticks” (Last Battle 138), left behind in England to mourn all three siblings and her parents. And I’m currently following the writing of a fanfic author, bedlamsbard, who regards The Last Battle as we have it as effectively an Apocalypse myth (and refuses to admit The Magician’s Nephew as canon at all). Her Dust in the Air picks up the story five years after Jill and Eustace are sent to Narnia, with Narnia in Calormene control and resistance reduced to fitful guerilla warfare in the outlying forests. Tirian is perhaps as much a fugitive from the angry Narnians as from the Calormenes, Cair Paravel and the surrounding city are a New Orleans-style melting pot of different cultures, languages and styles, every race and culture and family has its own motivations and opinions which necessitates a good deal more political negotiation than just waving a sword and crying “For Aslan!”, and the Pevensies (all four of them) are rather surprised to be summoned back to Narnia by a dark magic ritual (involving Susan’s horn and the life’s blood of a willing Centaur) performed by a group of religious fanatics who are convinced the kings and queens of old are demigods.

So for this author, reading Lewis provokes the desire both to explore the world farther, and to amend it. Reading Dust, and her simultaneous reflections on writing it, is an exercise in reconsidering points of Lewis’ writing that could have been handled differently if he had chosen to engage with his own world on a deeper, more realistic level, rather than light fantasy and heroism. For example, living back and forth across two worlds, ageing and returning to childhood, has tipped Bedlam’s Pevensies much closer to the edge of sanity than Lewis’ idealised English children. If the world held no interest for her, provoked no love, there would be no motivation to engage with it on that deeper level; but if it were perfect, if she were happy to be entirely that audience Lewis portrays and no more, to take him entirely at face value and let his views shape hers – to be, effectively, constructed by him – she would have no reason to write her own version.

So she constructs him instead - more directly than any critic. She makes her own Narnia, her own Last Battle, writing her own reading of the text.

But she found, a few days ago, that some anonymous reader has been through the fiction she’s posted on her journal over the last two years, and written a series of comments on how she’s ‘got Lewis wrong’.

So this begs the question of which party in the experience of reading ought to be prioritised: the author, or the reader?

It’s not a novel question at all (pun intended after the fact): it’s one that most literary critics have had to grapple with at some point in the process of defining their critical approach in general. For example:

It does not follow for Hirsch [in Validity and Interpretation (1967)] that because the meaning of a work is identical with what the author meant by it at the time of writing, only one interpretation of the text is possible. There may be a number of different valid interpretations, but all of them must move within the ‘system of typical expectations and probabilities’ which the author’s meaning permits. Nor does Hirsch deny that a literary work may ‘mean’ different things to different people at different times. But this, he claims, is more properly a matter of the work’s ‘significance’ rather than its ‘meaning’. The fact that I may produce Macbeth in a way which makes it relevant to nuclear warfare does not alter the fact that this is not what Macbeth, from Shakespeare’s point of view, means. Significances vary through history, whereas meanings remain constant; authors put in meanings, whereas readers assign significances.

This is all well and good, so long as all we want to do with a text is seek the author’s purpose. But it a) presupposes that the author had one (only one?) finite purpose and b) that it can be discovered, which, by its own argument, it can’t: anything I discover about the text is a significance, even if I discover it while in pursuit of meaning. If meanings remain constant, they resist historical change, and sorry, but history has changed. I am not living in Lewis’ world, or Chaucer’s, and more than that, I am not living in their minds. Seeking to construct the author’s thoughts is a futile exercise because, as Hirsch admits, we will never be in a position to know what those thoughts were, even if we do hit on the right meaning. ‘Meaning’ therefore becomes everything general or unarguable that we can deduce about a text, without allowing us to probe further. Or rather, we can – but anything we come up with is automatically subordinated by being assigned the label ‘significance’. Essentially, reader is completely subordinate to author. Or to what we perceive the author to be. It’s a circular argument, and the only way you can get anywhere within it is to decide what is, overall, most likely to be the author’s intention – or submit to the opinion of some great authority on the subject – then make everything else fit that. Which leads eventually to something like this:

“And now there’s another thing you got to learn,” said the Ape. “I hear some of you saying I’m an Ape. Well, I’m not. I’m a Man. If I look like an Ape, that’s because I’m so very old: hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it’s because I’m so old that I’m so wise. And it’s because I’m so wise that I’m the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to. He can’t be bothered talking to a lot of stupid animals. He’ll tell me what you’ve got to do, and I’ll tell the rest of you. And take my advice, and see you do it in double quick time, for He doesn’t mean to stand any nonsense.”
There was dead silence except for the noise of a very young badger crying and its mother trying to make it keep quiet. (35)

And of course, I’d rather have the freedom to do many more things with a text than simply seek the author’s purpose. That has its place, of course, but too much of it and not only do you cease to think for yourself, you cease to enjoy: in fact, you lose the text.

So do we have a third party in this equation – author, reader and the text itself? On either end there is an absolute (more or less) – the author’s intention and the reader’s reception – and in the centre there is the nebulous thing itself. I rather like the analogy of text as performance: actor, audience and that space between them that comes to life. The actor has something he[1] wants to convey, the performance is rarely exactly what he had in his head, and what the audience sees is going to be different again. I went to see The Merchant of Venice some years ago, and there is a terrible moment in the judgement scene when the tables have turned completely on the once-triumphant Shylock, and Antonio asks the Duke to be lenient and spare his life. Just one thing more: “that for this favour, he presently become a Christian”. And that is a line that makes me cringe; but many people in the audience laughed. There was a question and answer session with the cast after the play, and I asked the Antonio what he thought of that moment – did he believe Antonio was trying to be merciful, save Shylock’s soul despite him by forcing his conversion? And he said no – his Antonio was being purely malicious, purely vengeful. So what I saw in that actor’s portrayal of Antonio (which was a moment of horribly wrong-headed nobility) differed from what the actor saw, and from what the rest of the audience saw (which somehow found a way for that to be funny).

So we have at least three interpretations in the theatre – but of course, they were none of the disinterested. The members of the audience who laughed were predisposed to respond with laughter because the rest of the play was acted as a light comedy, even if they appreciated the darkness of that moment. I know the play well and love it, knew that line was coming up, and expected to find it appalling because I always do: and therefore, I did. And the actor has just been up on stage wholely immersed in portraying a man who is about to have his heart cut out and now has a chance to get his own back – it’s hardly surprising that he sees it as Antonio’s revenge and thinks it’s fully justified. And between them all, playing a game of cause and effect with each point of view but being wholly defined by none of them, is that thing called the performance. And I also, in different times and contexts, will respond to that line differently – in the theatre with the gut-wrenching emotional response, in narrating it to a friend with irony and amusement, in writing critically with detached evaluation.

So, thanks but no thanks to that anonymous commenter – there is no right way. My way of reading is not your way and not Lewis’ way and, most of all, I reserve the right to change my way. I want to feel free to say, on some days, “So what on earth do all those leopards and tigers in the Narnian army eat? I hope they’re vegetarians, or some of the herbivores are going to be finding those living conditions in Aslan’s How very cramped. And also, Lewis, I reserve the right to decide that people are not evil just because they spread oil on their bread instead of wholesome English butter”. But on other days I will read The Last Battle, or Pride and Prejudice, or the Odyssey, with whole-hearted emotional immersion, believing in it and living in it. If the text is good, I want to have faith in it, even if I don’t agree with it. It deserves that. And it's as much a challenge as the other, really, because to believe in cultures and ideals that aren't yours is hard work.

I shall let Lewis have the last word, on the condition that he and I agree to disagree to a certain extent, on the subject of How the Dwarfs Refused to be Taken Into the Text.

“Look out!” said one of [the dwarfs] in a surly voice. “Mind where you’re going! Don’t walk into our faces!”
“All right!” said Eustace indignantly. “We’re not blind. We’ve got eyes in our heads.”
“They must be darn good ones if you can see in here,” said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
“In where?” asked Edmund.
“Why you bone-head, in here of course,” said Diggle. “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”
“Are you blind?” said Tirian.
“Ain’t we all blind in the dark!” said Diggle.
“But it isn’t dark at all, you poor stupid Dwarfs,” said Lucy. “Can’t you see? Look up! Look round! Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you see me?”
“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there?”
...
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.” (146-150)

[1] Yes, I know, but I’m using the male pronoun for a reason – or rather, using the fact that I’m about to talk about an example involving male actors as an excuse to avoid that ugly s/he business.

Save the unicorn!

Just a short post, as I'm sick and tired and not really eager to engage the cerebellum...

Wandering through the blogsphere, I encountered David Badke's post on unicorn capture at his bestiary blog. It contains several manuscript images, all after a pattern: virgin with the unicorn in her lap, man or men slaughtering the helpless beast. Finally, he questions,

And what are we to make of the maiden’s betrayal of the trusting unicorn? Well, we can’t be sure she was in on the trick; maybe she didn’t know the true intent of the hunters. In some illustrations, the maiden seems upset at the killing.

The girl in the image included at this point is indeed reaching out her hand towards the killer in some sort of gesture, perhaps of supplication. It's hard to tell - she also has the unicorn's horn trapped under her arm, effectively preventing it from moving. But on looking back, all the girls (save one) in the images are gesturing.

There are other similarities: like many other similar manuscript illustrations, there seems to be a pattern. In all but one image, the girl and unicorn are on the left side of the painting. The girl always gestures with the hand farthest from the 'camera' - ie, her left hand, except in the one reversed image. Her other hand is on the unicorn, usually on its horn, and in most of the pictures she could be read as restraining the unicorn. In some, the gestures seem to be encouragement to the hunters; in some, reproach or shock, perhaps. The figure of the maiden in this series of images, then, can be seen as expressing a kind of ambivalence to the death of the unicorn: complicit (to varying degrees) in its capture, she may also prefer not to see it actually slaughtered.

There is one striking exception, in the image from Harley MS 4751. Here, the maiden's arms are wrapped firmly around the unicorn, her right hand at the nape of its neck, her left pinning its forelegs to its chest, while she turns her head to smile at the hunters. More than complicit, she is taking an active role in betraying and restraining the unicorn to prevent it from resisting its slaughter. In fact, the way she clasps it to her body is almost sexual, but of course we all know that sexualised women are evil and treacherous, so that's not surprising. If we are to read the unicorn as a Christ analogue, this falls in with some of the more dramatic depictions of either the torments before the crucifixion, or the betrayal of Judas (an embrace for a kiss?).

Anyway. The reason for this post was to add another exception, in the other direction: an image in which the girl was apparently just enjoying a peaceful cuddle with her unicorn when along came a knight with a great big spear to attack it. Again, the girl is to the left and her left hand is the one held out to the knight, but in this instance I think her aversion to the unicorn's death is much clearer. And interestingly, this is the only one in which the unicorn is free. She is not holding it - her hand rests on its head in what can only be a friendly or affectionate gesture, not a restraining one - and its head is turned around so that the long horn is levelled at the knight's chest. Uselessly, of course, as his spear is already in its side, but it's not quite the passively suffering or cruelly betrayed Christ anymore.

Ormesby Psalter, Bodleian MS Douce 366

Sacred and profane dismemberment

At a seminar last Thursday, we were debating the mediaeval cult of saintly relics, which started me thinking about the prevalence of the theme of dismemberment in the Legenda aurea, a thirteenth-century best-seller that gives accounts of the legends attached to saints' lives. Many of the saints, of course, were martyred, and the descriptions tend to be lurid, and heavy on the dismemberment.

Just for example:

Sir Thomas Becket, of course, was set upon by four hot-headed young knights who thought to do Henry II a favour: "And then smote each at him, that they smote off a great piece of the skull of his head, that his brain fell on the pavement... And when he was dead they stirred his brain, and after went in to his chamber and took away his goods, and his horse out of his stable, and took away his bulls and writings."

St Winifred was one of those pious, holy virgins we hear so much of, who told her would-be rapist she'd rather die than betray her incorporeal spouse - "I will in no wise consent to thy foul and corrupt desire, for I am joined to my spouse Jesu Christ which preserveth and keepeth my virginity" - so he obligingly cut off her head. Interestingly, in this case, the head was fixed back on afterwards, bringing her back to life - "And ever, as long as she lived after, there appeared about her neck a redness round about, like to a red thread of silk, in sign and token of her martyrdom."

St Theodore had a particularly delightful scene. Refusing to recant his religion (and, incidentally, having burnt down the temple of Mars instead), "he was hanged on a tree by commandment of the emperor, and cruelly his body was rent and torn with hooks of iron, that his bare ribs appeared. Then the provost demanded of him: Theodore, wilt thou be with us or with thy God Christ? And Theodore answered: I have been with my Jesu Christ, and am, and shall be. Then the provost commanded that he should be burnt in a fire."

St James the Martyr found himself in a similar predicament, only longer. They cut up his body member by member, starting with the little finger, asking after each amputation whether he recanted. Instead, he made a parable out of Christian numerology about the number of fingers he had lost, or the significance of this or that part of the body: "Then the seventh finger was cut off, and he said: Lord, I have said to thee seven times in the day praisings.... Then the butchers having despite, cut off the great toe of the right foot, and S. James said: The foot of Jesu Christ was pierced and blood issued out." After some time of this, the Christian was obdurate, but the "butchers" swooned. "And after they came to themselves, and cut off the left leg unto the thigh, and then the blessed James cried and said: O good Lord, hear me half alive, thou Lord of living men and dead; Lord, I have no fingers to lift up to thee, ne hands that I may enhance to thee; my feet be cut off, and my knees so that I may not kneel to thee, and am like to a house fallen, of whom the pillars be taken away by which the house was borne up and sustained; hear me, Lord Jesu Christ, and take out my soul from this prison. And when he had said this, one of the butchers smote off his head."

And so on. There are many in there. But why the emphasis on tearing bodies apart? I suspect one answer is the simple delight in gory detail which we all know to an ineradicable element of human nature - I'm sure I don't need to quote all the horror films that capitalise on that. There is also, of course, the sympathy factor, getting the audience on side with the good Christians undergoing a type of Christ's death for our sake. Another answer may well be the fact that the stories of martyrs tend to have two distinct themes - the completely unattainable heights of disinterested spirituality, which it is very hard for ordinary humans to relate to, and the gruesome story of their death, acted out in great detail on the physical body in which every human has a share. The horror of the physical ordeal, which we can all at least imagine, is a good deal easier to relate to than the first theme, but the way they are usually interwoven (the torture or threats of it as a result of one's religion, and one's religion as a solace in the torture), perhaps help to draw them together, to make that unattainable perfection of soul a little less daunting to approach.

There is also a strong symbolic element to most of these accounts - James provides his own allegorical commentary, and the decapitation element of Winifred and Thomas' stories relates to the theme of authority. The struggle between Henry II (theoretically the head of the country) and Thomas as Archbishop (head of the church) over whether secular or religious power should hold sway both justifies the knights' attack on the head of Thomas' physical body, and simultaneously makes it pointless - the spiritual body is what counts. Winifred protests that she is "joined" to her spouse Jesus, and with the husband allegorically believed to be a woman's head, her attacker's choice to strike that off is more than just random pique. She is vindicated by being brought back to life and re-"joined" to that head.

However.

Whatever the reasons for gruesome dismemberment in saints' stories, heightening the prestige of the saint, preparing for the relic cult, impressing with their endurance, anything - how does this relate to the mediaeval forms of torture and execution, particularly the hanging, drawing and quartering inflicted on that worst of social enemies, the traitor? As I'm in between the researching and drafting stages of my essay on Edward II at the moment, the images of execution and "let the punishment fit the crime" are rather clear in my head at the moment - particularly as regards Hugh Despencer.

There is, of course, a good deal of symbolism or allegory involved in the prescribed punishment. Lady Despenser detailed a lot of this in a blog post a month ago. The curious thing is that
the hanging, drawing and emasculation (possibly an innovation designed especially for Hugh, and allegedly at Isabella's insistence, though I don't place a lot of credence on that) can all be seen as paralleling the purification aspects of saintly dismemberment, by atoning for crime, burning out the sin, amending the soul. However, if the body is then quartered and the quarters separated, as Lady Despenser points out, the person will be unable to reassemble their body come the day of Judgement. In other words, the soul is denied immortality.

Inconsistent? Perhaps. The gruesomely public aspect of the execution does mean, I suppose, that for the vast majority of people it was essentially retribution and example. It's probably fair to say that the same is true of our justice system today. We do like to think that we focus a little more on the aspect of redemption (or rehabilitation, as we'd put it), that it is in fact an invention of our modern enlightened times; but is it, in fact, present in the symbolism of mediaeval acts of judicial violence, and their disturbing vicinity to the legends of injustices committed on the bodies of saints?

Or did people just like really violent things? Never discount the lowest common denominator!