Ramblings on Christina of Markyate’s mouth

So I accidentally bought a book the other day (the bookshop was just there, flashing its volumes enticingly at me): The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth-Century Recluse. It’s published in 2005 by Toronto U. P., but is actually a re-issue of a 1959 edition+translation by C. H. Talbot, who managed with great effort to transcribe those parts of the single manuscript that were not destroyed or obscured by the Cotton fire of 1731 (honestly, why would you move a collection of priceless manuscripts to a place called Ashburnham House for temporary storage? Someone was just asking for trouble).  My excuse for the flagrant self-indulgence (it cost all of $9!) is that it is tangentially related to my thesis, as it’s a product of St Albans, and I’ll be using existing studies on the historical-writing culture of St Albans as a touchstone for more original work that I intend to do on other places.  And, although she lived during the first half of the 12th century, and the vita seems to have been writing during her vita, the surviving manuscript was written (apparently with some intentional alteration from the lost original) in the mid 14th, so it’s within my time period too[1].

I’ve only just started reading it, but I was immediately struck by the style of narration, in which speech is very prominent.  It frequently uses direct speech, marked by the use of the first person (note the punctuation of the transcription):

Dixitque. Dimitte me. ut eam hostium obserare. Quia licet minime Deum metuimus. saltem homines opere tali ne superveniant vereri debemus.
And she said to him: ‘Allow me to bolt the door: for even if we have no fear of God, at least we should take precautions that no man should catch us in this act.’ (42-43) 

Direct speech is both frequent and usually marks the emotional and moral crux of each scene. Not only that, but it emphasises speech and its style and effect to such a degree that it would not be an exaggeration to call the whole vita (well, so far as I’ve read) a narrative of speech events.

• Almost every scene centres around a particular potent occasion of speech. 
• Christina’s devotion to Christ is learned and expressed through speech, as is the battle for her mind and chastity. 
• The proof of her holiness is in her speech: eg, when young she speaks aloud to Christ in her room at night, in a loud clear voice, believing that no mortal could hear her while she was addressing God.
• Her spiritual education by Sueno is told in terms of his speech and the “colloquium” he had with her. And the elided “cum” in “cum”+“loquor” is appropriate: we are told that he is learning from her speech as much as the other way around.
• Similarly, when trying to force her into marriage, her parents’ primary method of coercion is to keep all religious, god-fearing men from having “colloquium” with her, as if blocking access to the words can keep God away. Instead, she is surrounded examples of bad speech, by “people given to jesting, boasting, worldly amusement, and those whose evil communications [mala colloquia] corrupt good manners [mores bonos]” (47).
• In addition, they set one of her best friends on her, who uses flattery and persuasion and sheer persistence for a whole year to try to persuade her to consent – to that one verbal act that constitutes a contract of betrothal or marriage (depending on verb tense).
• Vows, prayers and moments of verbal consent are the turning points that provide the dramatic structure of the narrative.
• In trying to seduce her, the evil bishop Ralph of Durham uses not force, or even simply words, but explicitly “that mouth which he used to consecrate the sacred species”, neatly demonstrating the moral difference between his speech and hers.

In the example I quoted above, the use of direct speech provides the dramatic and moral crux of the scene. Ralph is  trying to seduce/rape the young Christina in his bedroom, and she is employing a ruse to allow her nearer the door so that she can escape, while pretending to acquiesce. The direct speech thus dramatises the ploy, heightening its effect, and doubles it by having her feign what we as readers know is a completely insincere disregard for God and God’s omnipresence. At the same time, that jarring note serves as a harsh reminder of exactly what the bishop’s priorities should be, highlighting his hypocrisy and thus suggesting that Christina’s apparent dishonesty is excusable, in the service of a higher truth.

The bishop demands her oath that she would not ‘fail’ but that she indeed lock the door; she swears to it, darts out of the room and locks him in. These happen in reported speech, rather than direct, playing out the suggestions inherent in the direct speech.

Incidentally, the word I’ve rendered above as ‘fail’ is my own translation of ‘falleret’.  Talbot, who prefers throughout to read this text as a literal account of her life[2], misses the double meaning here and translates it as ‘deceive him’ – certainly the primary meaning in context, and the only meaning Ralph intends, but I would have preferred to have the ominous hint preserved.  To fall truly in this instance, to fail in her vows of virginity, would be to stay in the room with him.

This emphasises the difference maintained throughout the scene between her reading of words (which is largely allegorical) and his (determinedly centred on the physically present).  She observes that the door is closed but not bolted (“clausum… sed non obseratum”). Similarly, her chastity is so far defended, but not inviolable.  Bolting the door erects a physical barrier between her and her would-be violator, just as there is already a spiritual barrier between them.  She has kept her promise she made to him: she has locked the door both physically and spiritually, in a manner far more significant than he intended. She is not forsworn: she adheres to a truth he cannot comprehend.


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[1] Copying a text, especially with substantial editing, definitely counts as historical writing for my purposes.  Oddly, Talbot seems to make little distinction between the original author and the amending copyist – so far as I can tell, as he uses the word ‘biographer’ for both, he seems to assume they’re both from St Albans on the grounds of the same textual evidence (use of “nostrum” etc when referring to the saint or monastery).


[2] He emphasises the biographer’s close relationship to her and the fact that it was written in her lifetime, as well as the paucity of fantastical tales that mark most hagiography of the period, to conclude that it was a genuine attempt at a “history” of the real woman rather than a collection of “stock elements”.  I… disagree, mostly with that distinction.

Widows, memory and identity

I was reading a couple of days ago a chapter by Bernard Jussen: “Challenging the Culture of Memoria: Dead Men, Oblivious and the ‘Faithless Widow’ in the Middle Ages”[1].

Now, for a start, that’s an interesting premise: memory not just as an abstract concept but as a culture and set of behaviour that the abandoned wife performs, with the effect that she keeps her dead husband ‘alive’ to the community; that her remarriage ‘forgets’ him, implicitly killing him or consigning him to oblivion.

Jussen examines the story of the Faithless Widow[2] in its various mutations over the years (and it dates back originally to Ancient Rome) to show that the mediaeval versions focus less on the sexual misdemeanour than on the implications of remarriage.  For Jussen, that is where the threat lies, not in the (adulterous?) sex itself. He then extends this to examine the tension between a widow’s duty to the dead (mourning, fidelity, memory) and to the living (feeding and clothing herself and her children, maintaining the dead man’s house and social status), seeing the tension as ideally resolved with a set period of mourning.  The wife ‘dies’ with her husband (and he points to extravagant hopeless behaviour associated with the deserted wife at a funeral, including flinging herself onto the coffin and into the grave) and suffers a period of ‘death’, suiting her habit and social behaviour to this new (temporary) identity, before returning to life and the living (221-22).

Of course, this is very interesting to me, because it raises the question of a very particular kind of temporal identity – that defined by a period in one’s life, rather than within a broader social epoch.  Widowhood is in itself a kind of identity bestowed by temporality and focussed on the past (until and unless it is renounced).  Effectively, your time is over.  Mourning is much more intense, more prescribed, more culturally sensitive and more symbolic – but implies a return to some kind of life, albeit the life of widowhood that is, in itself, an end. 

How did women think about themselves as different during either period? or how were they told they should? Of course, it would always differ from one individual to the next; but can we see women looking forward to the end of mourning, seeing themselves as living within a death with expected resurrection, or was the ‘death’, while experienced, meant to be complete, hopeless? Do we find comparisons to purgatory, to hell, to the three days before the Resurrection? Or (re. either mourning or widowhood) to more ordinary, everyday experiences of religion than the spiritual – Lent, for example, turning the experience to simply a kind of fasting, a time in which behaviour is culturally restricted but identity is not fundamentally altered?

Can we usefully consider widowhood (or mourning) beside other liminal and peripheral social figures / states of being?

- More permanent models of death-in-life are offered by monks and nuns, or (more extremely) anchorites, with the habits (both sartorial and behavioural!) to match. For some (all?) of these, the change in identity may have a start date, but (most likely) not an end date, or not an expected one.  On the other hand, the expected or prescribed temporal shift here might be less to do with entering a new model of identity and more to do with modelling oneself on heavenly time, rather than earthly. In moving towards that kind of time, they place themselves closer to God, and their prayers gain (presumably) more effect with him to beg favour for others.

- What about lepers – with the ceremony of consecration that is so close to a funeral? with their special outsider status, halfway elevated and halfway lowered? This has a definite starting date, and it is not something undertaken willingly.  It also has an implicit end date, in that leprosy is an eventual sentence of death – you are on time that God allows you.  Lepers are also interesting in that that time they spend suffering on earth (earthly time) reduces not just their own time suffering in heavenly time after death in purgatory, but that of other people.  Their sentence to reduced time on earth, their physical bodily status within that time, their adherence to particular socially prescribed behaviour, has the power to affect the spiritual status of others, and their very relationship to God.

- Unchurched new mothers? This was a prescribed time out of society, like mourning – but with taints of uncleanliness, like leprosy, and with the very real threat of death for one or both parties.  Like widowhood, however, it has a stipulated ending, and offers the way to a joyous ‘rebirth’ into society for the mother, who has with her own body brought another Christian soul into the world, if all went well.

Widows are also special in similar ways – particularly during mourning, they are expected to perform certain behaviours that aid their husbands’ passage through purgatory and towards God. At the same time, society expects them to return to their duties to the living, and their husbands’ living house.  In the case of many women, the ability to support their children financially would mean marrying again, potentially endangering their devotions to the dead husbands.

I don’t think I’m aiming for any particular argument here, just tossing ideas around.  But we seem to have arrived at:

- People placed on the periphery of society, in privileged, socially prescribed positions that are analogous to death (and often compared explicitly to it by the behaviour and dress custom accords them) seem to be simultaneously ‘shut away’, hidden from view, and yet to have some kind of special access to the heavenly help line. 

- In drawing closer to heavenly time, how do they gain the ability to affect the spiritual state of others, with a focus on the time allotted others in torment after death?

- How does mediaeval theology distinguish between earthly time and heavenly? how did individuals understand themselves within this pattern?

- To what extent does failure to correctly adhere to the identity prescribed to the individual by their special status diminish or remove the effect of their influence, retarding the process of (eg) the husband’s passage through purgatory?

- Meanwhile, performing proscribed actions seem to be able to cause the husband to retrospectively ‘vanish’ from time altogether.  If the re-marrying wife who violates her mourning hangs her husband up in place of the nameless thief,  remarriage figures as oblivion/death, analogous to an eternal (or very very long) time spent in purgatory.

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[1] In Patrick J. Geary, Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried (eds). Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

[2] Newly widowed woman cries and weeps on the grave of her husband, refusing to leave it despite her family’s insistence that she ‘return to life’; passing soldier says the same thing and she has sex with him on her husband’s grave, promising/proposing to marry him; his neglect of his duty has meanwhile caused the hanged corpse he ought to have been guarding to be stolen, so she proposes they dig up her husband and hang him in the other corpse’s place to prevent the soldier being punished.

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.

Sir Launfal and the ubiquitous Veiled Homosexual Reference

So, I have been quiet again, for real life is intruding - in a good way, this time! The arrival of my formal offer letter from Ottawa University has precipitating a little fluffy of Things To Do, which leave little time for creative thought. Fortunately, one can still manage the more mathematical work of grammatical study and translation - so in addition to Latin, I am now having a lot of fun (re)teaching myself modern French[1], and trying not to get distracted by Anglo-Norman spelling patterns.

But we were reading through Sir Launfal today (using this online edition) and one thing struck me particularly.

For background: Guenevere, in this poem, is the traditional Evil Predatory Scheming Evil Seductive Evil Emasculating Threatening-Homosocial-Bonds Evil Female. She has already managed to get Launfal sent away from Camelot in shame (severing him from his masculinity, or at least the ideal proof of it, as Evil Predatory Scheming Females are wont to do). Now he has returned in glory, she tries another trick in the traditional repertoire of the Evil Predatory Scheming Female. She tries to seduce him - and when he (being a noble and virtuous knight, and also in love with someone else) refuses her, she goes to Arthur and cries rape[2]. However, before stalking off in a huff, she resorts to insult:

Sche seyde, "Fy on the, thou coward!
Anhongeth worth thou hye and hard! [Thou art worthy to be hanged high and hard]
That thou ever were ybore!
That thou lyvest, hyt ys pyté! [Probably, both 'that thou's should be read as dependent on 'it is pity'.]
Thou lovyst no woman, ne no woman the -
Thou were worthy forlore [to be lost/damned]!" (485-490)

Obviously, if one cannot lust after the beautiful Guenevere, one cannot lust after any woman, or so her logic seems to run. Certainly, given the consequent beauty contest, physical attractiveness (presumably as a metaphor for other noble/virtuous qualities) is at issue here. Launfal's reply confirms this:

The knyght was sore aschamed tho;
To speke ne myghte he forgo
And seyde the Quene before,
"I have loved a fayryr woman
Than thou ever leydest thyn ey upon
Thys seven yer and more! (491-496)

What concerns me here is the terms of her accusation. Firstly, she calls him a coward - a sore insult for a knight, but her phrasing suggests it's merely a throw-away line, subsidiary to and dependent on what follows. The primary accusation - which she holds as strong enough to damn him - is that he loves no woman, and no woman loves him.

The editors of this edition read this, without a 'maybe', as a barely-veiled accusation of sodomy. The equivalent tale by Marie de France has, at this point, a much more open accusation: Launfal prefers boys to women. Yes, dramatic, shocking, scandalous, and most delectably convenient to modern sensibilities. But..?

That's not what she says. I don't deny that the accusation of homosexuality[3] is present, or the threat of theological damnation for the act (or preference) of sodomy. But I feel that her primary concern is with exactly what she says: Launfal is apparently opting out of the intricate social game of courtly love. Whether that be in the interest of celibacy or chasing pretty boys is beside the question. Guenevere is out to emasculate Launfal; and, in this poet's view, stepping out of that ultimate knightly game of courtship and stylised self-elevating self-degradation, the theoretically bloodless game with its rules as intricate as those of any tournament sport, is as damning in social terms as sodomy itself may be in theological ones. This accusation is, and should be, enough. If Launfal cannot prove his manhood in courtly love - not because he fails in it, but because he chooses to avoid it - then there is no man to be proven. The potency of the venom lies in the central accusation, which is exactly what she says: "Thou lovyst no woman, ne no woman the".

The occasional (or habitual) act of sodomy may be a corollary to this, but I think it is imposing modern sensibilities too far to say that this is the heart of Guenevere's accusation. Rather, she is accusing him of opting out of the primary activity[4] of the homosocial network that proves his knighthood (or masculinity, if you prefer), thereby revealing himself to be less than a man[5].

And Launfal, tellingly, responds to the accusation in kind. He protests not that "I love a woman, she is definitely female, so there", but "I love a woman more beautiful than you have seen in seven years" (or possibly "I have loved a woman for seven years who is more beautiful than any you have ever seen"). Like Guenevere, he ties the issue back to feminine beauty - which is, of course, one of the most potent points-scorers in the Courtly Love game (along with Difficulty Of Attaining Maiden, Brutishness Of Beast Threatening/Wooing Her, Length Of Years Spent Wandering In The Wilderness / Locked In A Dungeon Before Attaining Her and Mystical Virtue-Affirming Objects Attained In The Process). Is there any solemn tale of courtly love in which the beauty of the objet desire (object in every possible sense, of course) is not extolled above all others[6]? Launfal replies in the terms of the game, asserting that not only does he participate, but he excels - as, of course, the subsequent contest will prove. Women are scorepoints, the higher the better; and the player who doesn't bother moving his little character across the screen to chase the points won't end up on the high score table.

I've nothing against reading gay theory into literature, of course. It's certainly necessary, and we've an awful lot of re-writing to do over centuries of phobia and repression. But it does concern me that it becomes a fad and an obsession - that we see OMG GAY SEX and focus on that to the exclusion of what might actually have been meant. It's as if, at work, I were to see two women or two men walk in hand in hand, and be too busy jumping over the counter to say I AFFIRM YOUR RIGHT TO HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER, GO TO IT, HOORAY FOR NON-HETEROSEXUAL CHOICES to hear them say, "Um, hey, actually, I just wanted a latte".


[1] My modern French is weird and erratic. I can read an academic article with no trouble, needing little more concentration than I do to read Italian - but then, the thought pattern for reading that form of writing is familiar, and the English vocabulary for formal writing is largely French/Latin-derived anyway. I'm lost in a French chat forum, where you'd expect the language to be simpler. And I can read a letter to a neighbour in Anglo-Norman, eye an unfamiliar verb with an odd collection of vowels and say "that looks like an early form of the French equivalent of this verb, and that is either the subjunctive or the imperfect, third person plural", which makes it very easy to locate the right form in a verb table to cross-check. But ask me to form the subjunctive or imperfect of any given verb in any form of French and I'd be stumped. It's all intuitive leaps and no recitable verb tables. And of course, my accent is terrible and my ear is quite untrained in following a modern French speaker at normal conversational pace.

So: I have the vocabulary, and the instinct, and just need to cement my grammar and build my aural skills. Easily done - that is, after all, what online resources are for!


[2] Actually, what she says is 'he propositioned me, and ALSO HE INSULTED MY BEAUTY, HE MUST DIE'.

[3] Or homosexual preferences, or homosexual acts. Caveat lector, homosexuality being an anachronistic concept, etc, though I'd dispute the absolute generalisation that sexuality was completely defined by the act in the middle ages and that there was no concept of sexual preferences - witness this accusation, if nothing else. If one reads this passage as being primarily concerned with OMG GAY SEX, as the modern reader is conditioned to, Guenevere does appear to be referring to an established preference: a lifestyle choice, in modern terms. But I think that is only secondary to her main point.

[4] Well, yes, there's also fighting. But this is courtly romance we're talking about, and the hero is always good at fighting: it's the courtly-love half of the two primary strands of knighthood that causes the problems and requires most intricate and difficult proof.

[5] And earlier in this scene, she actually stepped between him and Gawain, thereby symbolically cutting him off from the epitome of English knighthood and manliness! The wiles of women know no end. He should just hand her a cleaver and be done with it. And then go and exchange sob stories with Erec and Yvain about losing his precious Gawain because of a woman.

[6] The Grail legends may, at this point in the argument, be read as a tale of courtly love, if you so desire, or the courtly love paradigm read as a metaphor for the Grail hunt. Either works. The Grail is shiny and pretty.

Notes on Chaucer's Dido and Fame

This is a quick draft of something I may rework in a later paper to reflect on Criseyde and her understanding of the power of her own speech. I think the central ideas of the House of Fame are more focussed on trouthe and its representation than speech per se, so I'm skewing it slightly to my own ends here; but it's just thoughts, for now. Given it's meant to be used later, it doesn't really have a thesis, nor any kind of shape.

All line references are to the first book of the House of Fame, in the Riverside Chaucer.

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The moment in which Dido falls for Aeneas is narrated twice, ascribed once to the intervention of Venus and once to Aeneas’ stories of himself. An intervention by Venus to cause sudden love is a familiar romantic figure, but so is the woman falling in love with tales of the adventuring man. Stories of Yvain’s valour win Laudine over twice. Guenevere’s heart gradually softens as she hears of Lancelot’s adventures, and Bertilak’s wife tells Gawain that she loves him because of the stories she has heard of his valour and courtesy. But the Gawain of rumour has a questionable relationship to the Gawain we see, Yvain himself is hidden once by an invisibility ring and once by a pseudonym, and news of Lancelot is slow, erratic and rumour-coloured. In this case, the fact that Aeneas himself narrates his stories could give his first-hand account greater authority, eliminating that unreliable middleman, Fame. But of course, a man may have any number of reasons for misrepresenting the truth about himself; and Chaucer undercuts the sincerity of the proceedings here by casting a shadow of irrationality and haste over both accounts the crucial moment.

And, shortly of this thyng to pace,
She made Eneas so in grace
Of Dido, quene of that contree,
That, shortly for to tellen, she
Becam hys love, and leet him doo
Al that weddynge longeth too. (240-44)

The repetition of “shortly” emphasises the immediate effect of Venus’ work. So far, this is a story of the gods’ games with mortals, and we expect her to fall in love instantly, and do not question its rationality, psychological likelihood or the moral implications of Venus’ actions. But the ominous tone of the last line, censorious or compassionate, hints at a woman deceived or tricked into not only acting but feeling contrary to her will, to her lasting detriment. And then we see this god’s game from the other side, the actors playing out the plot twist that the producer decreed. The narrator brushes aside the tale of “the manere / How they aqueynteden in fere” (249-50) as too “long” - a word he uses twice in two lines – to return to the rapidity of the seduction:

Ther sawgh I grave how Eneas
Tolde Dido every caas,
That hym was tyd upon the see.
And after grave was, how shee
Made of him, shortly, at oo word,
Hyr lyf, hir love, hir luste, hir lord; (253-58)

We know, of course, that “every caas / that hym was tyd upon the see” does, in fact, make a very impressive story, but the dry brevity of the narration makes her response seem impossibly fervent. The breathless passion of “Hir lyf, hir love, hir luste, hir lord” belongs to the climax of a whole-hearted romantic scene, not the erratic and slightly bemused narration of this dreamer. Its very rhythm feels out of place here - even without the return of that word, “shortly”, snagging the syntax in the middle of the line before it and reminding the ear of Venus’ intervention. Dido’s sudden infatuation is unnatural, and feels so; and we know it will lead to her death. Even before the narrator casts doubt on the truth of Aeneas’ stories (“Wenynge hyt had al be so, / As he hir swor” 262-63), or reveals that “he to hir a traytour was” (267), there is a sense of unfairness about both Venus’ too-partial actions[1] and Aeneas’ too-powerful words.

Dido’s love for Aeneas, on the human level, is presented as the direct result of Aeneas’ words. The man she falls in love with is the man she hears about, not the man she sees – and it is this man “unknowen” (270) who drives her to her death. This potential discrepancy between “apparence” and “existence” (265-66) is at the heart of the House of Fame, and is usually, though not invariably, expressed in concern over words: their weight and power, and their questionable ability to represent reality. Aeneas ascribes less weight to his words than does Dido. For her, they represent reality: for him, they are a deliberate manipulation of reality, a means to an end, conjuring a man who can impress Dido (and perhaps himself), easily set aside for his departure. Dido is left to lament her misconception, that “your bond / That ye have sworn” (321-22) does not have the power she believed it had, to “holde yow stille here with me” (324).

The narrator echoes Aeneas’ actions in the more cynical story of Theseus and Ariadne. Despite everything that “he had y-swore to here, / On al that ever he myghte swere” (421-22), Theseus has no qualms about abandoning Ariadne when her usefulness (or her appeal) has passed. Like Aeneas, Theseus regards his words primarily as a tool: powerful enough to win Ariadne over while he needs her, but ultimately disposable. They have no binding effect on him, and there is no necessity for them to represent reality accurately.

Dido’s experiences alter her perception. In the world that she sees now, men have “such godlyhede / In speche”, but “never a del of trouthe” (330-31). Aeneas’ exposure of the gap between fame and reality has opened her eyes - “Now see I wel” (334) – and left her bitterly aware of fame’s contradictory nature: insubstantial, but ruinously powerful. While it may not reflect reality accurately, its effect on the lives it touches has real substance.

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! (345-350)

Like Criseyde, she laments the irretrievable loss of her good name, and the injustice of the words that will memorialise her (353-60). Fame has ruined her throughout her life and beyond her death, but its uncertain nature paradoxically renders her own speech too insubstantial to recreate her in a positive image:

Al hir compleynt ne al hir moone,
Certeyn, avayleth hir not a stre. (362-63)

Uncertainty about the power and accuracy of one's own words extends beyond the characters carved on the wall, even to the narrator. Virgil's robust “Arma virumque cano” becomes a tentative “I wol now singe, if that I can, / The armes, and al-so the man”. (143-44). The narrator's reaction on leaving Venus' temple casts doubt on the poetic form itself. His prayer for protection against illusion undermines the tangibility and reliability of everything that has gone before - a poem relating and discussing the events of another oft-poesied poem - and therefore, by implication, on the validity and “auctoritee” of poetic tradition. How can poetry convey truth, after all, if the poets themselves are at odds with each other?[2] The appearance of the eagle, traditionally clear-sighted and immune to illusion, seems a promising answer to his prayer, and his feathers are the gold of purity and clarity and truth. But we've just read a whole book warning us against deceptive appearances: “Hyt is not al gold that glareth” (272).

The man Dido fell in love with was created by words, created by man, not the reality of the man created by God. There is a hook there, regarding the public and private aspects of speech – Fame vs. vice/virtue, and how each affects and effects the person – but that is for another day!



[1] From a divine perspective Venus' actions are internally consistent, but from a human level they appear as arbitrary as Fame's later judgements to her petitioners.

[2] After writing this, I read Nick Havely's introduction to HoF (Chaucer's dream poetry, eds. Helen Phillips and N. R. Havely, London: Longman, 1997), in which he makes a similar point about Chaucer problematising his own medium, the book. When the word “boke” occurs at line 426 it “refers to an authoritative witness to a woman's fidelity and trust [Ariadne's for Theseus]... Yet only three lines later “the booke” is just as emphatically invoked to justify Aeneas' betrayal of Dido”. The effect of this is to “emphasize the medium's capacity both to convey and celebrate 'truth' in love, whilst... compounding and perpetuating falsehood” (114). And of course, that takes us into the question of whether fiction is lies, and what Chaucer would have understood by “fiction”, to what extent he considered Virgil's stories as history and what ethical obligations he would have felt he had to the historical figures he himself was depicting, which is quite another tangent on the topic of fame and memory in itself.

Anglo-Norman petitions #9: J. C. to William Milton, Archdeacon of Buckingham

Translation of a petition from one J. C. of Croydon to William Milton, asking for his help to redress and call a halt to a certain nasty habit belonging to the local bailiff representing the area's feudal lord, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is not the William Milton who was Archbishop of York during the latter part of Edward II's reign; this Milton was the Archdeacon of Buckingham from 1403 until his death in 1424[1]; the editor here just dates the petition "After 1406", without explanation. According to the editor's note, Milton was also registrar to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which explains why he is the recipient of the letter. Presumably J. C. can't write to the Archbishop directly because, if he were to do so, it would have to pass through the bailiff in question.

Please note: I have no qualifications in Anglo-Norman, or in fact in any form of French. The following translation is intended as a fun exercise, not a rigorous scholarly undertaking, and accuracy and finesse are in no way guaranteed.

Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions XXVI, p 27: J. C. to William Milton.
Or, How the Feudal System Will Fail You When You Need It.

To his most honourable, most wise and discreet[2] lord, Master William Milton, archdeacon of Buckingham, a poor[3] man, J. C. of Croydon, tenant to my most honourable lord the Archbishop of Canterbury, humbly entreats that, as in the month of August last gone, Margery, the wife of the said supplicant, was walking to oversee his[4] servants at work in the fields, there came J. Piers, the junior bailiff of my said lord in Canterbury, and by force and coercion there in the field he conquered the said Margery and shamefully overcame her and carnally defiled her contrary to her will, and many times afterwards the said J. has lain in ambush by diverse roads and paths to do carnal and shameful villainy to the said Margery. And also in the meantime when your said supplicant had gone out of town about his business, the same J., perceiving this, many times came and entered the house of the said supplicant and by force overcame and carnally defiled the said Margery, as can be well and truthfully proven against him by many worthy and discreet[5] people of Croydon, to the lasting detriment of the said supplicant and of his said wife, as well as other damage to their names and honour. For which reasons, may it please you that in your most wise counsel you make relation of this loathsome matter to my said most honourable lord and to lend your good help to such end that a due remedy may be ordained and made, as required by justice. For God and in the name of charity.

Original text from Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions from All Souls MS. 182, ed. M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Texts 3 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1941). 27.

I thought I had rather a strong stomach, but working on this made for a very unpleasant afternoon's. At least she seems to have a relatively supportive husband. Though it hardly makes up for being assaulted all over the town and in her own house. I suppose if there are household servants there, they can't really stop him, because he is the Archbishop's bailiff. And they can't appeal directly to the Archbishop. Because he is the Archbishop's bailiff.

---------

[1] According to the list of Buckingham's archdeacons held at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=32598.

[2] “discret”, which might, of course, mean simple “wise” or “discerning”. But it isn't a word I've encountered in these petitions before - “sage” is usual, and is the word I just translated as “wise” here, and, given the nature of the situation, I don't think it's going too far to suppose that J. C. would want discretion to be a quality Milton bears in mind when reading this.

[3] As elsewhere, 'poor' here clearly isn't literal - the man can speak and write French, or hire someone to do it for him, and has servants working in the fields. Calling oneself poor seems to be as much part of the form as opening with elaborate flattery of the recipient and referring to oneself in the third person, and I can think of several reasons for it off the top of my head: poverty as a spiritual attribute, extreme subjugation by comparison with the recipient, simple adherence to form, etc, any or all of which may be present in the pen of any one petitioner. In a case like this, it's tempting to imagine that he is also referring to his own emotional state, but that may be reaching a little too far beyond formal words.

[4] Or, possibly, her.

[5] In this case, “discretz” may simply mean “of good judgement”, with the word choice informed by his earlier use of “discret”.

Anglo-Norman petitions #7: Margery to the Archbishop of Canterbury

Translation of a petition from a London woman called Margery to the Archbishop of Canterbury, possibly Arundel. She says that her husband believes, or feigns to believe, that she was pre-contracted to another man before marrying him, and is attempting to annul their marriage.

Please note: I have no qualifications in Anglo-Norman, or in fact in any form of French. The following translation is intended as a fun exercise, not a rigorous scholarly undertaking, and accuracy and finesse are in no way guaranteed.

Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions XL, p 40: Margery to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

To the most reverend father in God and her most gracious lord, Margery, wife of W.G. of London, humbly supplicates that, having wedded the said W. and lived with him in legal matrimony for four years, and not having been contracted to any other man before the nuptials were solemnised between them, the said W., thinking[1] falsely to be separated from the said supplicant by means of a false conspiracy between him and[2] one Robert C., clerk, has feigned a false[3] charge in the court of the most reverend father in God the Bishop of London, and there has pronounced to the said supplicant that she must have made a precontract with another man, when the said supplicant has no knowledge of any such man on this earth, and by means of this charge the said W. has pressed an annulment[4] between himself and the said supplicant, which annulment, through the false supposings[5] of the said Robert, will be carried out, if no solution may be found by your lordship, and so[6] may it please your most noble paternity, for the salvation of W.'s soul, to ordain remedy in this case. For God and in the name of charity.


Original text from Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions from All Souls MS. 182, ed. M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Texts 3 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1941). 40.

Firstly: please father, save my marriage, for the sake of my bastard of a husband's soul? This lass needs to go have a serious chat with Maude about taking charge of her own life.

Secondly: ymagenant, ymaginacions. This word appears twice, and makes the task of determining just what her husband is about rather a slippery one. The first occurrence is when we are told that W. is ymagenant fauxment d'estre departi de [Margery]... par faulx conspiracie par entre luy et un Robert C. I have translated ymagenant here as thinking, both because it lets me preserve the syntax of the original and because it's a rather neutral word and I wanted to keep discussion of implications out of the text itself. And here she uses it rather neutrally - the moral weight of that phrase is, or seems to be, on fauxment. She could have written creyent for ymagenant, without altering the sense of the phrase - in fact, I'll go out on a limb a little and say that this part reads as if she is trying to excuse her husband and lay the blame on Robert. It's perfectly possible to read ymagenant here as a blameless creyent and faulx in its sense of mistaken, incorrect, erring.

But then we come to the second use of the same word: le quel devors par faulx ymaginacions de dit Robert serra parforny s'il ne soit remedie. The two words again, faulx and ymaginacions, but here the context changes their reception. My first thought here was imaginations, fantasies, the lies Robert comes up with about her life, but the second, hard on its heels, was machinations. And indeed, on consulting the Anglo-Norman dictionary, I found it notes that "there is semantic and formal overlap and/or confusion between imaginer and machiner", defining imaginer as

v. a. 1. to imagine, envisage, create a mental image of; to imagine, conceive, think up 2. to invent, make up; to devise, contrive 3. to plot, scheme (cf. machiner);
v.n. 1. to imagine, envisage, create a mental image 2. to assume, think 3. to make plans;

So, if Margery is (consciously or otherwise) exploiting the ambiguity inherent in this word, this darkens her fau[l]xs to their more negative moral interpretations: wicked or sinful, rather than mistaken. This casts a different light back on what she was thinking when she wrote that first ymagenant, even if she meant to avoid laying the blame on her husband: paranoia, anger that she can't allow herself to feel properly, vulnerability, witnessing a conspiracy that she can neither expose nor withstand? She is concerned to keep her husband from falling into mortal sin, begging the Archbishop to save his soul, but even if she seems to try to keep most of her fau[l]xs from pointing directly at her husband, I think in her eyes his moral state is already fairly questionable. Or perhaps she wavers between seeing him as victim and agent.

This man does not make a good head, Margery. Use your own.



[1] 'Ymagenant' - but see note above.

[2] 'E[s]t' - I'm not sure why the editor has added that 's', as in context it can't be a verb, and while 'et' (in the sense of 'and') is sometimes spelt with an 's', 'et' is more common.

[3] Yes, she really does use 'fau[l]x' three times in a row. And while the double negative of ad feyné une faulx cause sounds clumsy in English, I'm leaving it in there to preserve the sense of vehemence or desperation that comes with the lady protesting too much.

[4] 'Devors', but he seems to be seeking to declare the marriage invalid altogether on the grounds of an earlier contract, not to be granted what we would call a divorce.

[5] 'Ymaginacions' - again, see note above.

[6] While 'and so' is necessary to make the grammar scan in English, it doesn't appear in the French. Her plese a vostre tresnoble paternitee... ordeigner remedie should, according to the usual form of these petitions, refer back to her opening que come ele ad esté espousé; but that has already been closed long ago, with ore le dit W... ad feyné. Technically, I think this is a grammatical flaw (unless I'm missing something); but to me, looking back at the other petitions, it seems more that the patterns within this form are becoming figures of their own. You open with supplie que, come... and close with plese a vous, and in the middle you tell a dramatic and poignant story in one long, involved sentence, but by the time you reach plese a vous you've forgotten what you're referring back to, and the form stands on its own.

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.

Chaucer and Mozart: Twin souls!

Alright, so the last post wasn't really mediaeval in subject. Neither is this one - but it has a mediaeval connection, in that I leap-frog from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Mozart along a common thread. Never mind that each leap is 200 years long.

I was chatting to a cellist friend, who's staying in this house while rehearsing for an audition for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She mentioned that she'd like to get to know the operatic repertoire a little better, and... well, it ended up with me having one of my besotted little raves about the three Mozart/da Ponte operas, particularly my favourite, Così fan tutte.

For those who don't know it - well, it's easy to summarise. Remarkably easy, for an opera. One of the reasons I love it is for its beautiful structure - it has a lovely symmetry, both musically and dramatically, which makes it a joy to listen to and gives it the perfect action curve for a theatrical piece. There are six characters - three women, three men (two sopranos, one mezzo, one tenor, two basses - symmetry!), consisting of two pairs of lovers, their older male friend (Don Alfonso) and a ladies' maid, Despina. Don Alfonso makes a bet with the headstrong, enthusiastic young men that, despite their passionate belief in their lovers' fidelity, no woman can possibly remain faithful. They're not made for fidelity, and so "così fan tutte" - all women behave like that. To prove the women's fidelity, the younger men agree to pretend to go off to war, then to dress as foreigners and each attempt to win the fiancee of the other man. Eventually, it works; a wedding feast is prepared, and in the middle of it the men slip off and return in their own persons to upbraid their erstwhile fiancees for unfaithfulness.

A two-sentence summary like that is a little misleading. The young men (Guglielmo and Ferrando) take most of the active verbs, reducing Don Alfonso's role to the initial bet, their lovers' to passive ciphers, and leaving the maid Despina out altogether. But Don Alfonso and Despina in fact run the whole affair - Alfonso is the puppet master from start to finish, and lets Despina think she is one too, though he doesn't let her in on the whole affair and she is, by the end, reduced to humiliation with her mistresses. Despina also provides an important thematic counterpoint, in that she tries to urge the women on to love, asserting feminine independence from men and their ability to choose their own path (while Alfonso maintains they have no choice but to fall), and pointing out repeatedly that men are just as unfaithful as women, if not more so. The summary, however, is not misleading in one thing: the two noblewomen (Fiordiligi and Dorabella) are passive. But to what degree, and just how - this is the critical problem!

Whenever I explain Così to anyone, I usually find myself excusing it. Don Alfonso is proved right - women are like that - so it can come across as horribly misogynistic. Its performance history has suffered from that - I believe in the nineteenth century it was rewritten to have Despina reveal the secret to her ladies early on, so that they are only playing along for most of the second act, and turn the tables on the men in the final scene. But you see, knowing the opera, and knowing (to a certain extent) Mozart and his librettist da Ponte... I can't believe that we are meant to watch it so superficially. If it were a work of non-operatic literature, no one would believe that was the intent. Perhaps operatic audiences are just too used to having morals on the surface, simple but very loud answers, tragic or comic. If the point of the opera were simply "ha, see how faithless women are!" we would be laughing at them by the end. But we aren't - the level of sympathy and the psychological depth in the music of the women - particularly in the second act, when they feel themselves beginning to give way - are such that we increasingly rebel against Don Alfonso's instructions - just as the young men are becoming too drawn in to back out. We can't lay blame easily - the women are played on, Despina is just going along with her cheerful philosophy of 'do unto men as they do unto us', the young men pledged their honour as soldiers to obey Don Alfonso's instructions for 24 hours in the blithe confidence that they would win the bet easily, and Alfonso - well, the indignant lads forced him to promise to prove his assertion, at swordpoint. Over breakfast! And the final scene is heartbreaking. They have to marry - there's no other way forward, no other way to end the opera and insist that it is a comedy, Alfonso and social expectation and genre constrain them, but the music... how on earth are these couples going to ever trust each other, or anyone else, ever again?

It's generally believed that the opera was commissioned - Lorenzo da Ponte and Mozart did not have the freedom to choose their plot, could not decide that the women would remain faithful and disprove the adage, but they could choose how they treated it: spreading the blame, exposing the cruelty to all parties involved of the situation, the plot, the actions of the characters that weren't meant to be cruel, that were all a bit of fun until... And suddenly, as I was explaining this, I realised that this line of argument was familiar - not just from my own previous rants about the opera, but from much more recently:

For which right now myn herte ginneth blede,
And now my penne, allas! With which I wryte,
Quaketh for drede of that I moot endyte.
For how Criseyde Troilus forsook,
Or at the leste, how that she was unkinde,
Mot hennes-forth ben matere of my book,
As wryten folk through which it is in minde.
Allas! That they sholde ever cause finde
To speke hir harm... (Troilus and Criseyde, IV.12-20)

And:

Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde
Ferther than the story wol devyse.
Hir name, allas! Is publisshed so wyde,
That for hir gilt it oughte y-noe suffyse.
And if I mighte excuse hir any wyse,
For she so sory was for hir untrouthe,
Y-wis, I wolde excuse hir yet for routhe. (V.1093-1099)

And so on. Chaucer's uneasiness with Criseyde's fidelity is well-known, of course, and there's little point quoting more of it. But the attitude in both cases seems to me very similar. The essential difference, I think, is the necessary lack of authorial presence in a stage production. But is it necessary? Not really. It's easy enough to add an authoritative moral presence - either through a consistent moral message that's easily detectable (often put in the mouth of the chorus), or physically, in the form of a character whose opinions are meant to be taken as sound judgement (and who is usually, in opera, disregarded, otherwise the tragic ending might be tragically averted). And then, of course, there's the even simpler expedient of sticking to plots that completely fail to challenge the audience's judgement at all and go for their effect by either tickling or punching in the belly. This is the majority of opera.[1]

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that disrupting the easy moral closure of any theatrical piece requires conscious effort on the part of the composer/playwright. Well, either that or extreme carelessness. Which brings us to our convenient midway point, he who made a theatrical piece out of Troilus and Criseyde, he who was the expert at avoiding giving us any hint of his real voice: William Shakespeare.

But even for Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida is remarkably unstable in terms of a moral base. The introduction to the play in the Norton Shakespeare[2] details admirably the competing codes for evaluating actions and events that are thrown at us in a dizzying array within just the first few scenes of the play. Those of them that do recur are never finally resolved, unless it is to be proved insufficient. The only character who might be seen as finally admirable is Hector, and his code is, finally, not sufficient either: we see him abandon it for the sake of glory when he agrees to sell away Criseyde so that he can have his duel with Achilles, and his adherence to it in the end deprives Troy of its greatest protector, Priam of his son, Andromache of her husband, his son of a father, his city of a future. Nothing that is presented to us in the course of the play suffices to judge it: they are all proved limited points of view, belonging only to the characters that speak them, incapable of comprehending the whole world. The scene that brings this most sharply into focus is quite near the end: the scene in which Criseyde, in the Greek camp, finally gives herself to Diomedes. She and he talk in the centre; she comments on her own actions; Troilus and Ulysses watch and comment on that scene; Thersites watches actors and watchers, commenting on all of them; and the audience sees them all. The instability and limitation of every judgement passed onstage is witnessed by the final set of watchers, putting them in a privileged position and inviting them to judge for themselves, but demonstrating in the process the limitations of any judgement at all.

So why the distancing? why the instability? Is Shakespeare disassociating himself from the story, drawing back as Chaucer the narrator does? I don't think so - at least, not in the same way. But certainly, to focus specifically on the question of harsh judgement on the fickle woman - it would be much harder to ascribe any comments passed about her in the play to Shakespeare himself than it is to, for example, imagine him agreeing with the final dismissal of Don John as a villain in Much Ado About Nothing. His attitude to Cressida, so far as it can be detected (which is barely at all) doesn't seem to me very similar to the attitudes of Chaucer and Mozart/da Ponte to their unfaithful women; but there may be a thread of connection there.

Mozart and da Ponte don't dissociate themselves to nearly the same extent. Neither have a narrative "I" to intrude into the theatre - but Mozart was literally in the theatre, remember, dominating the performance in a way that Shakespeare couldn't, even as an actor. As a conductor, he led it, and as composer... well. He gives it a soul which is much easier to trace, to feel, than grasping through printers' errors and actors' amendments for Shakespeare's meanings. The warmth and tenderness in his music, the wit and the humanity and the delicate distinctions in the reactions of parallel characters in identical situations... they are human, where they could so very easily remain ciphers to the plot, as the women seem determined to remain ciphers to social constructions.

... And now I think of it, there are a remarkable number of eavesdropping/spying scenes in the opera too - especially in the second act, where the seduction starts to take effect, and the characters start to obsessively analyse their own actions and feelings, as well as those of the others onstage.

That was entirely too long a post, wasn't it. If anyone read to the end - well done!

I did mention Mozart makes me rave besottedly, right?


[1] As a former singer who adores opera, I have licence to say so, just as I'm allowed by virtue of nationality to poke fun at Steve Irwin's accent.

[2] I don't remember who wrote it, and my Norton is in Melbourne and I am in Adelaide. This will have to do for a citation for now.

To venture forward a few hundred years...

I was just reading Susan Higganbotham's latest entry and realised something I've never noticed before.

Lord Darnley, who married Mary Queen of Scots... was the son of the Earl of Lennox.

Now, this may not sound terribly momentous, but think about it for a moment. This means that Darnley would have been Lennox, if he had outlived his father (which he didn't). This means that, if the queen were to take the name and title of her husband on marriage (which she didn't, as she slightly outranked him) she would have been (if we blur the distinctions between surname and title for a moment).... Mary Lennox.

Did Frances Hodgson Burnett know about this? Closer examination can prove beyond doubt that this apparent coincidence was intentional, and that The Secret Garden, far from being an innocent children's story, is in fact a subversive political paper!

To start with, Colin is Mary's cousin, and there are hints in the book that he may have a romantic interest in her. Burnett played this down, but the film perceptively picked up on this and played it out more strongly. This may seem insignificant, until we remember that Darnley was Mary Stuart's first cousin! Though Darnley and Mary shared a surname, Colin and Mary Lennox are the offspring of two sisters, clearly in order for Burnett to change Colin's surname - to Craven. Remember, Darnley is often portrayed as a bully and coward, and he was apparently killed fleeing the scene of the first attempt on his life. Colin's fits of temper and childish violence take on added resonance in the light of Darnley's violent temper, particularly the murder of his wife's lover, Rizzio. Is the memory of sudden death that hovers over Misselthwaite Manor - particularly the Secret Garden itself - a foreboding of the violence that an older Colin is to visit on his rival for Mary's affections, the outsider Dickon?

Let us consider the figure of Dickon. Clearly an analogue for the Earl of Bothwell, his presence in the story offers Mary an attractive escape from the life in the highly ordered manor, from the prospect of commanding the miniature kingdom that Mary Stuart handled so badly. The character most closely associated with the Secret Garden himself, he draws both Colin and Mary into his insidious schemes and seduces them into believing the Garden a "safe" environment for indulging in innocent childhood play. His closeness to nature recalls Bothwell's renowned weakness for indulging his primal urges (see Wikipedia, I'm sure it has much to say on the subject), and Mary's fascination in exploring this world with him bodes ill for her ability to retain her independence for long. Published eight years after the death of Queen Victoria, The Secret Garden conceals dark and disturbing messages about feminine monarchy and its limitations, from the pen of a woman who appears to have believed that death and the changes that accompanied it were long overdue.

Hm. I just realised that Bothwell's surname is... Hepburn.

No. Too easy.

Redefining masculinity: Pierre Abelard

To continue with the theme of men losing their bits!

I'm opening the discussion in our seminar today, which is on male bodies and defining masculinity, specifically the body of Pierre Abelard and his attempts to rewrite himself in his Historia Calamitatum after he was castrated by a rampaging mob of respectable uncles[1]. So here are my rough notes for the occasion!

For those who might not know, Abelard was a 12th century philosopher/scholar/theologian, one of the most brilliant men of the age. While attending university, he earned his keep by teaching Heloise, a young woman who was possibly more brilliant than he was. They had a passionate affair, until they were unfortunately found out, the uncle got rather annoyed and Abelard married her to placate him (though interestingly, Heloise didn't seem too pleased with that course of action). Unfortunately, it didn't work. After the spot of mob violence, he packed his wife off to a convent and (later) became a monk himself, while continuing his rather obnoxiously intellectual career and making many enemies. His Historia is actually a letter to a friend, written many years later, telling the story of his life to date in the vein of "stop whining, mate, see how much worse off I'VE got it".

The other two readings are "Separating the Men from the Beasts: Medieval Universities and Masculine Formation", by Ruth Mazo Karras in her From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002; and Martin Irvine's "Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity and Remasculinization" in Bonnie Wheeler and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, eds, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

I shall work on the daring assumption that everyone has (mostly) read the readings and therefore not summarise them: instead, I'll explain and pose three questions which I at least think are interesting and hope might lead to discussion!

- Was marriage also a type of castration for Abelard?
Irvine talks of two 'castrations' in Abelard's life - the physical one, and the intellectual one later at his trial for heresy. But was there a third, before all this?
- Karras talks about the effect of young men being brought up in what she calls "the university model of masculinity", and the necessity to prove yourself within it. Abelard seems to have begun his formal schooling, if not his university life, very young, and explicitly says that he renounced the school of Mars - the traditional field of masculine proof and endeavour - for that of Minerva. He's undeniably a very competitive and proud man, and presumably not going to look well on anything which got in the way of his advancement as a man in the world of intellectuals. Marriage wasn't really compatible with a career in holy orders or the university - and Abelard tells us that eunuchs can't have a position in the church either.
- Karras discusses how women were considered to fit into university life - only as a vehicle for sexual release, not for marriage or emotional involvement. "Courtly ideas of love played little role" (Karras 227) - but much of Abelard's early poetry to Heloise uses courtly language. Was it perhaps easier for both of them to pretend it wasn't happening if she was characterised as a prostitute? Later in her first letter, Heloise says she'd prefer the name of whore to wife.
- But how much of this is Abelard reconstructing his past from a distance, with the instinctive Pavlovian response to getting castrated after marriage that says "God smote me for this, IT WAS BAD we must not think any good of it at all"?


- Why did Abelard's enemies take such savage advantage of his castration to deny him even grammatical masculinity?
- It's tempting to take Abelard's story as an exaggeration here and there, with his emphasis on his own cleverness and everyone's adulation of him, and also the degree of persecution from his enemies. But see Irvine's quoting of the letters of his enemies to him (92-93), containing jibes like Roscelin's "a noun of masculine gender, if it falls away from its own gender, would refuse to signify its usual thing... since the part that makes a man has been removed, you are to be called not "Petrus" [a masculine noun] but "imperfectus Petrus"".
- Consider the metaphors of fencing within the elaborate scholarly disputatio. Fencing or jousting is a traditional way of physically proving oneself against one's (masculine) opponents, but is usually meant to be in game rather than earnest. But of course, sometimes, people would cross the line, or take something too seriously, or just see red, and it would pass into anger and people really getting hurt. Is this sort of vicious professional rivalry a reflection of that? the need to seriously injure your opponent before he could come back at you with a stronger attack?
... or was he just that unpleasant a man to have to argue with that people really did hate him?

- Did the existence of comparable social roles, like "eunuch" and (to a lesser extent) "Jew" have an effect on how Abelard could define his masculinity?
- We'd tend to understand him today as a man who'd had an unfortunate accident, suffered a loss to his symbolic masculinity perhaps, but still a man. But they had a third social 'gender', which we don't have anymore: eunuchs. Not terribly prevalent, but here and there, usually outside society, with specific roles. Similarly, the partial eunuch, the circumcised Jew (see Irvine 100), very much a social pariah. "Truncating this member is the height of foulness" and "no woman would give her consent" to be had by such a man.
- Both historians mention eunuchs, in passing, but neither of them really discusses their possible effect on Abelard's understanding of his own social position. Abelard tells us that eunuchs can't take up a position in the Church, and is repulsed by the idea of St Origen's self-castration. The use of castration as a punishment can't have helped this negative view of eunuchs. (Admittedly, as a punishment it's usually as part of execution, see Hugh Despenser!)
- Perhaps the existence of these social groups who weren't properly a part of ordinary society increased the stigma or shame of being castrated?

[1] Alright, one respectable uncle. But he brought his friends along!

The invisible norm

Sadly, my citations are being uncooperative, so there will be no Edward II essay tonight.

One of the slightly unfortunate sides of writing an essay on Edward II for a course called "The Mediaeval Body" is that it does, inevitably, involve reading a lot of queer and gender criticism. This is only slightly unfortunate because a lot of it is absolutely fascinating. It is slightly unfortunate because I find it very difficult to read a lot of it at once. Like any critical approach with a specific agenda to push, it can become very esoteric and self-absorbed, and often over-states itself. It's also prone to hyperactive political correctness and consequent over-definition of terms, or an abundance of terms that mean almost the same thing but not quite (my current favourite is "non-heternormative").

I picked up a collection of essays from the university library, in preparing for this essay, called Sodomy in Early Modern Europe[1]. It's after the time I'm looking at, of course, but one of the essays mentions Edward II retrospectively, and it was an interesting and generally well-written collection anyway. But one feature that particularly struck me was that the author of each chapter had to redefine the word 'sodomy', according to what it meant not only in the time and place he or she was studying, but how he or she intended to use it in this chapter. Mostly it was some form of sex between two men, sometimes other not-quite-normal sex acts that we wouldn't raise an eyebrow at nowadays, with occasional hints of child sexual abuse and one slightly bewildering chapter on bestiality in Scotland. I don't believe I've ever read a collection in which the key term of enquiry was redefined quite so extensively from one chapter to the next.

Of course, it makes a valid point. Sodomy was defined differently in different times and places throughout mediaeval and modern Europe, and even today there are places where it can mean anything that isn't heterosexual marital missionary-position vaginal sex for the purposes of procreation. Generally speaking, it was a term of appalled repulsion at the idea of transgressing sexual norms. But that raises the question, unaddressed in that book or any other that I've noticed yet, of just what those norms are. And that leaves a good deal not explored or fully understood about the nature of what is not normal, how a society defines it and deals with it, tries to incorporate it, exclude it, ignore it, overwrite it, anything. If we define black as "not white" that tells us very little about black until we've explored just what "white" means for us as well. And I think this is, in the end, a very likely pitfall for any of these specifically "issues"-based fields of criticism or enquiry.

I say all this, of course, from the privileged position of a not-entirely-straight woman who stands on the far side of the feminist and gay rights movements. I certainly don't mean to deny the value of these perspectives - it's important that we are able to look back and consider history and literature from all these points of view. I do think, though, that in the end we'll know the case is won when rather than saying "queers are evil!" or "celebrate being gay, it is wonderful!" we can honestly say "yes, that's part of this, but actually it doesn't matter all that much".


[1] Actually, SODOMY in Early Modern Europe. I did notice that as a feature of the queer studies shelves - an awful lot of books seemed to have a single, rather explicit word or phrase in very large eye-catching letters on the jacket, usually in very bright colours, followed by the rest of the title in self-effacing little letters. Call me odd, but I don't think a good book really needs to advertise itself like that - but maybe the editors don't agree.

Sodomy in Early Modern Europe is edited by Tom Betteridge (New York: Manchester UP, 2002).